Bible Treasury: Volume N9

I have often thought that an interesting exposition remains to be written in which should be set forth and illustrated by the typical imagery of the book of Genesis the wonderful triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ that will be manifested when His people shall be willing (Psalm 110:3) in the day of His power. That triumph was virtually secured in the all-embracing triumphs of the cross. But Israel was not willing in that day of the Lord's weakness, though, stronger than men, it proved as is said of the gospel, to be the power of God unto salvation for Jew and Gentile that believe, and is so still. Here in Genesis we have a vivid picture of what will be in the millennial day after the church has been translated to heaven. It is a wonderful pre-figurement. Surely it is not for nothing that Joseph and Benjamin were full brothers, being both of them Rachel's children as well as her only ones. Thus is the link between the ultimately coalescing constituents of the type made all the stronger. For Benjamin is no longer the “son of my sorrow,” as he was pathetically named by his dying mother, sorrow abundantly realized in Joseph's story, but now at last he is linked with Joseph in the latter's typical character as God's chosen man, the man of His right hand. This “son of the right hand” is, as we know, the meaning of the name Benjamin. And it is interesting withal to notice the prophetic insight displayed by his father in thus naming him (see Gen. 35), a flash of that sustained God-given prescience which marked so wonderfully Jacob's dying charge to his sons. For none of the patriarchs had such a glorious exodus as he who had alas! been so crooked in his life, so crafty and so subtle, so fond of bargaining (see Gen. 38:28), though ever, as one has said, there was a noble side to him, and “his whole soul was steeped in tenderness.” Truly we may apply to him, and in a far deeper sense, the words that England's great poet puts into the mouth of his most faulty hero, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” Thus is it instructive to see that the story of Joseph is not only the most moving that ever was penned, save only His whose life and death of perfect grace it prefigures, but that (for that very reason) it is instinct and penetrated with deep spiritual meaning, and weighty with supreme prophetic import.

Again, do we not see, in the long-drawn out ordeal through which Joseph's brethren have to pass, a picture of the future exhaustive sufferings and humiliations of the Jew, so that God will at length declare in His grace that Jerusalem has received double for all her sins (Isaiah 40:2)?

Finally, in Joseph we have a character not only the most striking, but also (spite of the perhaps too great self-consciousness of his early youth) by far the least faulty of all those who had the high privilege of being types of our blessed Lord.

R. B.

The Dealings of God With Peter: 14. In the Acts of the Apostles

The Scripture is beautiful in dealing with difficulties—in showing that, even as we might be startled with objectors now, such objectors were not unknown in Jerusalem—not only that, but even in the church in Jerusalem—not only that, but even against an apostle such as Peter was. The apostles, therefore, had to bear the objections of ignorant and unreasonable men, and that among Christians themselves. And so it was upon this very occasion. “The apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem they that were of the circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised and did eat with them. But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning and expounded it by order unto them” (chap. 11:1-3). On that I need not dwell. He takes particular care to show that the Spirit bade him go. It was not simply an angelic interposition. We have the two things. We find here the same distinction as is found elsewhere; namely, that where it is providential it is angelic; and where it is anything that touches upon truth for the soul, it is the Spirit. Both are true, and, although there may be a difference in the form, and there may not be any visible interposition of an angel, or any audible interposition of the Spirit of God, it is as real now as then. Angels are not the less real because we do not see them; and the Spirit of God as surely gives His guidance as if we heard Him. That is a matter of faith simply.

But I recall your attention to this—that men were to be sent to Joppa. “And call for Simon whose surname is Peter; who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.” It is not, “Whereby thou and all thy house shall be converted,” for several of them, at least, if not all, were converted already. But though converted, they had not been entitled to that peace, joy, liberty, conscious relationship of sons of God, which now they were. The Holy Ghost only seals them as settled on redemption by the grace of God—not merely waiting for it, or hoping that in some inscrutable way God would give them the benefit of it, although they never had the enjoyment of it as a possessed thing in this world; but now they had it here in this world. “And, as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.”

There we have this very important phrase of the Spirit of God; that is “the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Here it takes in the Gentile as well as the Jew. As Paul says in chap. 12 of 1 Corinthians “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, and have all been made to drink of one Spirit.” It is the great distinctive position of the church of God. It is what makes the believers to be not merely believers, but the church—nay, more than that, the body; because one may look at the church in the point of view of a building —a house where God dwells. That is a very different thing from being the body of Christ. The house where God dwells may have stones in it that are not really instinct with life. There may be deceivers. There may be persons that enter into that house that ought not to be there. We see how Simon Magus was brought in before. I do not say that the church was yet in its full place. If it was not, he was, at any rate, baptized; but, no doubt, what was true of him was even more carried out with others. That is to say, they were baptized and even breaking bread. But the body of Christ means those, and those only, who are united to the Lord Jesus by the Holy Ghost who consequently have a unity which is divine. There are no false members. There are none that are not living—more than living. They have this oneness by the Holy Ghost which is a very different thing, and another and greater privilege altogether.

Well, the apostle Peter, then, was the great instrument of this new work of God, and thus the Lord accomplished what He had said, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” At the same time we have in the chapter just an incidental allusion made, which I must not pass by entirely, to another remarkable fact; and that is that the people that had been dispersed abroad in consequence of the persecution that arose were also preaching to the Gentiles. They went to various parts and preached, not merely to “the Grecians,” as they are called in our New Testament, but to the Greeks. The New Testament distinguishes between Greeks and Grecians, only we must remember that in this verse, what is called Grecians ought to be Greeks. The “Grecians” were Greek-speaking Jews. The “Greeks” were Gentiles, not Jews; and the point here was not that they preached to the Grecians—which was no new thing, and which had been done long before—but they preached to the Greeks. If you look at any proper version—any correct version of the New Testament—you will find it is Greeks here and not Grecians. These, then, had heard the gospel; “and the hand of the Lord was with them; and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.”

And this brings in Saul of Tarsus, but Saul is not the object that I have before me, but Peter. Herod comes before us in a new way in the 12th chapter. At that time there was a persecution. Herod had already killed James, the son of Zebedee, whom we must distinguish from James, the Lord's brother, who wrote the Epistle. This was the son of Zebedee. He was baptized with the baptism wherewith the Lord was baptized. He was drinking of that same cup, as the Lord said. Herod meant to lay his hand on Peter also, but the Lord ordered otherwise, and, the very night before the day he was to suffer, an angel was sent. But Peter was asleep; so little was he affected by any anxiety as to that which was coming. He lay between the soldiers, chained to them. The angel enters, awakes him from his sleep, delivers him from the chains, bids him clothe himself, leads him out, and afterward brings him from the courts of the prison into the street, and leaves him. Peter goes to a house where at that very night there was a prayer meeting. And the prayer meeting was about Peter. So it is plain that, as far as that is concerned, they had very much the same thing that we should have ourselves under similar circumstances. No doubt it had a special character, but that also we know, too. There they were, praying for him; and the remarkable thing is that as Peter was little expecting the angel's visit to deliver him, so also the saints that were praying were taken completely by surprise when Peter stood at the door. We have in the most graphic manner the Spirit of God showing how Rhoda herself kept him there, for the joy that it was he, and she ran and told it to them to their astonishment, bringing out their unbelief indeed; but Peter was let in, and he tells the story, and goes to another place. Where he went we are not told.

But after this we find a still more remarkable occurrence, and a great event in the history of the church. One word, however, before I pass on. I have no doubt whatever that the 12th of Acts has a look to the future, and that, just before we have Paul coming out in his full character as the apostle of the Gentiles, we have an account of, or typical view of, God's dealings with the Jews. We have under James and Peter them that suffer and those that are spared. We have the Lord interfering to deliver, and at the very same time the presence of the persecutor—the wicked one—in Jerusalem itself, as there will be “the wicked one” in Jerusalem at the latter day. We have Herod seen under heaven, who is evidently a figure of the antichrist that will persecute, and receive his doom, in the day that is coming. It is remarkable, too, how close the analogy is, because, when Herod is seen upon his throne, the voice of the people was that it was not the voice of a man but the voice of a god, and because he gave not God the glory—because he did not, like Peter, rebuke them, and tell them to stand up upon their feet, and that it was not god but man —because, on the contrary, he arrogated to himself and delighted in this false ascription, God smote him by His vengeance, just as the false prophet will be smitten in the day that is coming. Well, that clears the way for the dealing of God with the Gentiles.

And after the Holy Ghost is given, and Paul and Barnabas go forth on their first great Gentile mission, we have the final struggle. The Pharisaic spirit that had objected to Peter's going to the Gentiles now put forth itself once more, and the great question had to be decided whether the Gentile believers had anything to do with the law of Moses; whether they were virtually to become Jews in any measure. And the Spirit of God decided this, Peter taking a remarkable part in the discussion, and, indeed, the apostles in general, Paul and Barnabas, too, having their place, though it is important to observe that they are not spoken of as apostles. It was not the authority of Paul and Barnabas that decided it. On the contrary, there was a great deal of dissension and disputation, and it is quite clear that Paul and Barnabas were not able to stop the mouths of the objectors in Jerusalem. Who did it then? The Jewish apostles themselves. Nothing could be more profitable. It was out of Jerusalem that the evil came; it was in Jerusalem that the evil was judged. It would not at all have met the case to deal with it at Antioch. It was there they went down, no doubt, and did the mischief; but it was not decided there. It was decided in the fountain of the mischief. It was decided not by Paul and Barnabas, which would not at all have answered the same thing, but it was decided by the Jewish apostles. And this is exactly what chap. 15 of the Acts of the Apostles brings before us, together with the part that Peter took in it. I shall be brief in speaking of it.

“Certain men, which came down from Judea, taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles; and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them. But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed.” You must remember that it was not the unbelieving Pharisees, but persons within the bosom of the church who retained their old leaven. And they said, “It was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and eiders came together, for to consider of this matter. And when there had been much disputing.” I mention that, because I am persuaded that there is often an idea that it is one of the sad signs of the present state of ruin that one finds sometimes a spirit that is uncomely and disputatious. But we see that this was the case even in the presence of the apostles—the whole of them—so that, although I do not say that to mitigate our sorrow and shame at everything that is unworthy, still there is the sad fact that from the beginning there was too much disputation, even against the very persons who had a title and an authority that no men have ever had since their day.

“Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.” That gives us the peculiar work of Peter, and my object has been to show the way in which God put honor upon that blessed servant of His. It was by his mouth that the Jews, as a whole, heard the gospel in its fullness and received the Holy Ghost on their being baptized as well as believing, as we find on the day of Pentecost. That is, it was not enough that the Jews must be baptized, as we have seen (for he would not allow such a thing as their shirking the place of separateness to the name of the Lord), but now you see it is a question of the Gentiles, and it was by the same. Now this is very important, and Peter was used to preach to the Gentiles first of all; and Paul, I would observe, was used to write to the Jews last of all. Both were perfectly in season, and this shuts out all thought of independence, because it might have been thought that Peter was out of his place. He was the apostle of the circumcision. Yes, but for all that it was by his mouth that the Gentiles first heard the gospel.

On the other hand it might have been said, “What has Paul to do with the Jews?” Paul has this to do with the Jews—that he wrote a much more important epistle to them than any of the apostles of the circumcision; and therefore the Epistle to the Hebrews has a character altogether peculiar. It is not merely making use of Jewish types and law and prophets and psalms, but it is much more than that. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the summons to go outside the camp —the old place where the tabernacle and everything were—to go forth unto Christ. Forms were tolerated by such Christians, and in such Christians as had been Jews; but from the moment that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written from that time forth they had to quit everything for Christ; so that Peter, the Jewish apostle, should be used to preach to the Gentiles, and that Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, should be used to write such an epistle to Jews, strikes me as a beautiful proof of the way in which God took care that, where every man had his work, He would not allow the slightest thought of two churches, or of such absolute separateness of work as to make one independent of the other. Independence was completely set aside by such an action on the part of the Spirit of God by those two blessed men.

We shall now see how truly that is the case here by Peter. Although he was the apostle of the circumcision, God made choice of him, “that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” Mark the strength of the language. Any one else would have said, “We believe that they shall be saved, even as we,” but now Peter puts down the Jew, and says, “We believe that, through the grace of God, we shall be saved—we Jews—even as they"; not, “they, even as we.”

Thus there is the utmost care to show the ground of sovereign grace that was now given out, and more particularly with such a certain sound, from the apostle of the circumcision. It is a sorrowful thing that that is the very man that went down to Antioch and there dissembled.

It is not my purpose to-night to enter into the subject of Peter in his own Epistles, but I may just add a closing word as to Peter in Paul's Epistles. The Epistle to the Galatians, as we know, speaks, I presume, of what occurred after this council. Peter goes down, and, sad to say, forgets in practice not only the word of the Lord in His life, and the word of the Lord in resurrection, but the word of the Lord from heaven—forgets all these wondrous dealings of God. And how was that? In a way that may often snare: for peace sake, compromise! It is true it did not look much. He would not eat with the Gentiles. It is a question, not of the Lord's table, but of ordinary intercourse with them, and this was so extremely important, as it appears to me, that the apostle Paul treats Peter's absenting himself, and not eating with the Gentiles, as compromising the truth of the gospel. A very little thing in itself, it might seem, but it was the symbol of a mighty truth. It was the question whether Jews and Gentiles stood on a common ground of grace. Not eat with them? Why that was the very figure by which God had instructed him, in lowering the sheet. “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” And now this very Peter, sad to say, lives to show the utter failure of the most blessed servant of the Lord, and that, too, after the wonderful grace that God had shown him, and the honor that He had put upon him.

And, mark, he breaks down in the very thing that God had given him to do as his peculiar work. Has that no voice to us? And are we not to learn, beloved friends, that it is always true that whenever we are confident, that whenever we lose either the sense of dependence, or the need of waiting, upon God because we distrust ourselves—whenever we go down thinking we are strong, as no doubt Peter did—such is the time when we fail. The very fact of Peter's going down to Antioch was a proof of communion with the Gentiles. You may depend upon it, he never had the smallest question or slightest thought of what he was going to do there; nor did he when he separated himself from the Gentiles see the desperate evil that was involved in it, and what a blow was struck at the truth of the gospel; because the truth of the gospel is to make nothing of man; the truth of the gospel is to make everything of Christ. Why then did he not eat with, the Gentiles? These Gentiles, too, were believers. Thus there was a complete failure in what least of all became Peter. Do I say that for the purpose of magnifying his fault? I say it for the purpose of guarding against such a fault in ourselves, and more particularly in the thing in which we might not suspect ourselves. I have always known this to be the case—that in the very point in which we have been proud we have been broken down. Have you never seen persons boast of their faith? Look for unbelief there. Have you never seen persons confident of their love? Expect that in that very matter of love they will fail. Have you ever seen them boastful of knowledge? They will break down in knowledge. In the very thing in which we exalt ourselves we must be abased.

What, then, is the great lesson of it all? To boast of nothing, to be confident of nothing, to exalt ourselves in nothing, but Christ. Exalt Him, and know that in dependence upon Him we shall be kept, spite of our weakness. No previous blessing, no previous power, no previous honor that God may have put upon us, is any safeguard in the hour of difficulty, and more particularly when we enter upon anything confidently.

It is thus, I believe, that we are to explain what took place at Antioch. We must not allow the dreadful idea that was started in the early church, that this dispute was a kind of friendly skirmish between Paul and Peter for the purpose of illustrating a principle; that is, that Peter pretended to fail in what he did not fail in, and that Paul rebuked him in order to bring out a principle. Let men—let divines if they will—represent the apostles as playing the miserable part of religious actors upon the world's stage! It is not for us to doubt that it was a far more solemn thing. It was Satan. Satan took advantage of one whom he had overturned before; but that might have been said to have been in the days when he had not the Holy Ghost. Ah, but remember, beloved friends, that though the Spirit of God is power, the Spirit of God does not act as power except so far as Christ is before us. We have not got a lease of the Spirit. We have not got that kind of possession of the Spirit that can claim His activity for our own purposes, or at our own will. We have only the power of the Spirit where we are abased, and where Christ is the Object that is before our soul. And it is because this was not so that both Peter and Barnabas failed on that very day. It was indeed a failure so serious that the apostle Paul does apply to them what ignorant men as I must call them—have dared to apply to them all—the charge of dissimulation. It was so; and it was of a most serious character, and it was sinful dissimulation. It was not merely the appearance of it; it was really so. It was shirking what God always calls us to—the truth of Christ at all costs the truth of Christ for the comfort of souls, and more particularly for the despised. The despised Gentiles—for such they were—were special objects for the grace of God; and Paul felt it, and judged and rebuked even the great apostle of the circumcision. I need not then, beloved friends, say more now. This will suffice for the glance, which I have been endeavoring to give, at the history of Peter as shown us in the Acts of the Apostles. W. K.*

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“Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all unto me.” Judgment; this world; its prince, not the Lord Jesus, but Satan; his ejection. Then Another before us—One come down from heaven—the humbled Son of man, to be lifted up upon the cross—God's blessed Object for faith, who shall draw all, not Jews only, but Gentiles also—to Himself. By this same One, God in all His holy nature glorified, and revealed as the everlasting Blesser of mankind!

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How earnestly the apostle Paul desired that the saints, yea, all saints should be in the intelligence of his stewardship of the mystery which had been hidden in God from the beginning of the world. For to him it was given, as he says, to fill out the word of God. Without the revelation of this mystery, the whole counsel of God could not be known. It is now revealed. And he desired the saints' full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of it.

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Did ever man see such lowliness as was manifested in the Lord Jesus? Faith, and only faith, can say, “We beheld His glory.” A glory never before seen on earth, not now visiting, but dwelling amongst us, not a creature, but the Creator “Emmanuel, God with us.”

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Now that redemption is accomplished, the cleansing power of Christ's precious blood is made known which renders the believer fit for the light of God's presence into which he is brought with a purged conscience. He is therefore responsible to walk according to the light in which God is.

Jesus Christ Come in Flesh 1 John 4:2

It is probable that J.N.D.'s rendering of this verse is more exact, and a more adequate presentment of the original than the translation as it stands in the A.V. or the R.V. No doubt both the latter give the force substantially, though, as I shall endeavor to show, less forcibly than the Greek has it. For there can be no doubt that the stress is not so much on our Lord's coming per se, as on His coming in flesh. This is of supreme consequence, and the participial construction adopted by John charges the words with the profoundest meaning. For the all-important truth of the blessed Lord's true humanity was even then, thus early after His departure from the earth, being weakened and denied. And even still the enemy has subtly sought to swamp this truth, though the more prominent error of to-day may be the denial of His deity. Either denial is fatal.

Happy are they who hold to both these cardinal truths without essaying to understand the inscrutable mystery of His Person.

Now here the apostle is insistent in pressing upon us that the incarnation was a most real, as also a most vital fact. It was essential that the Lord should so come, if the human race was to have a Savior. It is true that our Lord might have come in some other way. The limitations that bind the race of Adam were not obligatory on Him. He had appeared of old oftentimes in angelic form, a subject to which we may presently return. We, of course, could not have come in any other way, as is somewhere forcibly remarked by the late Editor of the Bible Treasury. The Lord Jesus condescended to come in this way. And every spirit that owns Him thus come is of God.

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” Remark that nothing is here said of the atonement, or of any other capital truths. The apostles had none of what I must call the feverish anxiety that some excellent people betray to give all the truth in every discourse. Not so. There are times for insisting on special lines and aspects of the great circle of revelation. We have the profitable example of the apostle Paul, who fed the Corinthians with milk, not with meat, whilst to the Ephesians he could say, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27; 1 Cor. 2:2,6; 3:1).

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” It is striking to note that the form of the word for “come” in the original is that very expressive participle of which the apostle John is so fond, viz., the perfect. Again and again he uses it in this Epistle, notably at the beginning of it, e.g., “That which we have seen and heard.” It has to do with the propounding of doctrine, a view confirmed by the fact that when historical retrospect is in question, the inspired writer uses the aorist. Most noticeable is the conjunction and contrast in 1 John 1 in the employment, surely neither accidentally nor indifferently, of both tenses in this sublime chapter. And how interesting to contrast the “We have seen and heard” (ἑωράκομεν καὶ ἀκηκόαμεν) of 1 John 1 with the “We saw and heard” (εἴδομεν καὶ ἠκούσαμεν) of Acts 4:20. The former is doctrinal, the latter testifies to the reality of their historical experience. And one may note, too, the special emphasis on the pronoun. “We (ἡμεῖς) saw and heard.” How beautiful, too, is the way in which these two passages, in Acts and in 1 John, corroborate one another. For, though Peter be linked with John here (that also a noteworthy fact), we have the latter holding the same language as a young man and very soon after the Ascension, as in that later day when, full of years, he wrote down under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that wonderful Epistle (1 John), which, in profundity of meaning and majestic calm, almost eclipses every other portion even of Holy Writ, always excepting his own Gospel.

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” As we have said, what is here asserted is the cardinal truth of the incarnation. But this also involves and carries with it all the rest. These concise statements are ever in the manner of John. He does not unfold and elaborate doctrine in the highly logical and systematic style of the apostle Paul. As another has said, we find in the Johannine writings not so much sequence of reasoning (though that also be surely there), but succession of contemplation. At least the latter is what most strikes the devout reader. Yet this apostle again and again contends for truths that are only rightly apprehended when held in concert with all the highly developed doctrines of Paul to which we have alluded. It were easy to give instances of similar statements, as profound as they are luminous, as comforting as they are searching, scattered through the pages of this most spiritual epistle. The apostle, as it were, gives them as so many marks, characteristics, cachets, if I may be allowed this rather mundane word, of the true believer as of every Christ-honoring spirit. The word of God, needless to say, would not have been complete without this special presentment of the truth, of which John was the chosen vehicle, and for which he was so admirably fitted by nature, life, age, and experience—the Holy Spirit, of course, dominating and purifying all. In him, as much as in Paul of Tarsus, is the fine saying of J.N.D. exemplified, viz., that while the same divine water flows through all the vessels that were the channels of revelation, that water takes the form of the vessel through which it flows.

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” He had come before in the semblance of flesh to many a favored patriarch of old. In particular, as bearing specially on our present subject, we may recall the story detailed in Gen. 32 And this brings us to the name of God, which our blessed Lord came expressly to declare— “came in flesh” to declare—so that it should no longer be a secret. And, though it be a digression from the main point of this little paper, yet the linking it on to what has gone before will not be arduous, and may be both comforting and edifying to the reader.

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” We go back then to that wonderful story, and will recollect how when Jacob set out to meet his deeply-wronged brother—the essential worldliness of Esau, it is needless to say, was no justification of Jacob's deceitfulness—he sent on flocks and herds in front to propitiate him, but now something transpired far beyond his calculations. For he was met by a mysterious visitant who assuredly was none other than the Son of God, afterward incarnate, and Jacob asked Him His name. But not then was the name revealed. We may surely say, with reverence, that God's name, in its fullness of blessing and mercy, could not be revealed then. It was necessary for Jesus Christ to come in flesh. It was necessary for the gospel story to be written down “for our learning,” for the word of God to be completed. Thus may we happily link together the former and the later oracles. Not to Jacob could the fullness of God's name be declared, although his blessing was not a slight one. Was he not a prince with God, and had he not prevailed? And we read, “He blessed him there.” Like all the pictures of this wonderful book, there is in it a perennial freshness, and I suppose no portion of the Old Testament is more attractive to the heart than these utterly veracious, because divinely-given, histories of the fathers of Israel.

“Jesus Christ come in flesh.” Yes, it was necessary for the Son of God so to come, if we were to be blessed according to the high purposes of God. For so only could His name be declared by Him in whom all the fullness dwelt bodily (Col. 2:9). For the name of God connotes all His attributes, His mercy and His judgment. And, if the gospel light is so much more vivid than that granted in the old dispensation, we may not wonder that the shadows are so much darker. Even in natural things, as we know, the brighter the light the darker the shadow. May the light that is in us be not darkness!

R. B.

Notes on Luke: 2. Chapter 3

The two preceding chapters have given the general character; they have shown the going out of the thoughts of God to man. Accordingly we find that the Gospel, as a whole, is particularly occupied with what is not Jewish. Still the Jewish part is given at first with considerable detail, inasmuch as Israel, because of their unbelief and moral worthlessness, are to be set aside, in order to make way for new relationships, founded on what God reveals Himself to be for man in Jesus, the true and only Mediator. But if chapter 1 disclosed the faithfulness of God to the Abrahamic promises, to His covenant and His oath, chapter 2 puts us in the presence of the actual government of the world and of the Lord's land and people under the fourth beast, the Roman empire. What confusion does not sin create? The Jews are subject to the Gentiles; Joseph and Mary, of David's royal house, go up to be taxed. Nevertheless the ways of God shine so much the brighter for the darkness that surrounded them: He was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. Israel, however, would be put to a new moral test by His presentation of Himself. Alas! it would soon appear that, if they had not kept the law, they hated grace. “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel: and for a sign which shall be spoken against.”

In chapter 3, we have the ministry of God coming in by a prophet, as of old by Samuel. “The word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.” It is not without object that the Spirit mentions the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, &c. All the earth was seemingly at rest under its heathen lord; the word of God found its suited sphere in the wilderness. The law and the prophets were until John: and where should he be in such a state of things but in the wilderness? Could he morally own it? God will not have His messenger in Jerusalem.

Prophecy is the sovereign means whereby God can communicate with His people when they are ruined and departed from Him. John understands this, and preaches the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And such was the place assigned him, many centuries before, by Esaias the prophet. It was vain for Israel to plead their privileges and rights. All was wrong, and the Judge was at the door. John's work was not to lead the people back to the law: he was preparing the way of the Lord. Herein he differed from the prophets as well as the law, or rather he went farther; for God's time was coming for a step in advance. The prophets led back to Horeb: John says not a word of this, though his father was a priest, and himself, of course, an Aaronite. He does not try to set up again what was closed; he announces the kingdom. He may not introduce the church, nor even the glad tidings of God's grace (both awaited the accomplishment of the work of redemption), but he drops the law, and shows that God's purpose is the kingdom.

The quotation from Esaias sets aside Israel—not the Gentiles merely but Israel—as grass, withered grass, without a green blade left. Yet the word of the Lord endureth forever, and this when all hope for man was gone. Israel may have failed, but the word of the Lord shall stand. Moreover, since it was the Lord who was coming, every valley should be filled &c. Not the Jews alone, but all flesh, should see God's deliverance. If sin plunges all in indiscriminate ruin and a common judgment, God can meet man thus ruined, but His glory will not be shut up in the narrow limits of Israel.

Verses 7-14. But, to be blessed, man must repent. God would have realities, and not a mere nominal people; He must have fruits answering to hearts which felt and judged their moral condition, and which therefore turned from themselves to God. Ordinances, formal claims, &c., which should have been means of blessing, would be no shelter against the coming wrath; nor would God permit them to hinder His creating true children of the promise, if this generation were but Ishmael over again. Judgment must begin at the house of God.

In fact, as we know, John was beheaded, and the Lord was crucified, and the kingdom, presented in Him, and by Him, was rejected by Israel. By and by it will be set up visibly and in power. Meanwhile the church is set up, because the kingdom is not set up in this manifested way. And those who now take their place with the Lord share His rejection. They are members of His body, the church. They shall share His glory, but it will be heavenly, and not earthly, glory. In another sense we are in the kingdom now. To faith heaven rules now, and we own it, and know it; but Satan is actually prince and god of this world; and hence those who are made kings to God (for that is our true place) are called to suffer. Therefore Paul went everywhere preaching the kingdom of God, as well as Christ and the church. We have that by virtue of which we shall reign with Christ; but even that is not our best portion. To be one with Christ—His body and bride—is far more blessed. If your mind only rests on the person of Christ, there is no difficulty in seeing that when He is cut off all must cease as regards the earth. He is the center of all; and when rejected, what prophecy spoke of, and what seemed about to be accomplished, breaks. Thereupon Christ ascends, and takes up a glory above the heavens, and there now the saints find their place with Him. (Compare Psalm 2 and 8.)

John Baptist, then, addresses himself to the Jews, demanding repentance, and righteousness as its fruit; shows them that, if they were nearer to God outwardly as Jews, they must expect judgment the sooner. If the Lord was coming, He must have what became the Lord. The ax was even then lying at the root of the trees; if there was not good fruit on the trees, everyone must be hewn down and burnt. Repentance or wrath—which? The Lord would allow no plea of descent from Abraham, if their ways belied Abraham; He must have righteousness. It is the Lord that is just at hand, and He must have a people fit for Him, or He would out of the very stones make a suited people for Himself.

Evidently John's word is not a voice of mercy to the poor sinner. God is presented in the way of judgment, not of sovereign mercy. He does not say, “Come unto me.” John could not say it, because He was not Christ, and none but He could say, “Come unto me.” John came in righteousness.

In verses 10-14 moral testimony is given, and that in detail. John deals with the practical iniquity of each set of people. So even when the question of the Christ is raised (vers. 15-18), “one mightier than I cometh,” says he. It is of His power specially he thinks—His power morally as outwardly. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” It is the power of the Holy Ghost and His consuming judgment. He could not speak of the grace of the gospel which we know now. He proclaims One who was coming after him, not a present salvation. Whatever would not stand the fire was to be burnt up. For His fan “is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner, but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.” (Compare Isaiah 21:10, &c.) God's floor was Israel; there He was getting His wheat, if any were to be found. But His fan is in His hand; He is going to make short work. Titus finally set aside God's floor upon the earth. Israel's sin had lost it morally when they rejected Christ; but at the destruction of Jerusalem it was done with thoroughly for the present.

Verses 19, &c.-Luke's method of instruction is to be noticed in passing. He shows that John had preached and exhorted moral truth, and then disposes of him, putting him, as it were, out of the scene, in order to bring Christ in. It was not that historically John was imprisoned at that juncture by Herod the tetrarch; it took place long after. But it is a sample of Luke's manner, who returns to the Lord's taking His place amongst the remnant of Israel. For the Lord does not identify Himself with the nation; but, directly there is a poor remnant, He identifies Himself with it.

The history opens with verse 21, and how wonderful and full of grace! “Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove, upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” One may have looked and listened mournfully, as one reads of John Baptist and his testimony. We might have asked, as the dying record of men passed before us, What is man? But now my eye rests on Jesus: I find the Lord from heaven a man. All is to begin again. Do I ask again, What is man? At once Christ comes out. Do I look at myself? at all around? What do I see? Enough to break my heart, if there is a heart to be broken. The only thing which prevents people being utterly broken down is that they have not a heart to feel things as they are.

But a rest is here! I have got a man now who satisfied God—this blessed man on earth in the presence of God, looking to God, and an object to God! not Messiah purging His floor, but Him in whom God's thoughts and purposes are all folded up—not man perishing before the moth, but Jesus the Son of man, not merely coming down from Abraham and David, but traced up, “which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” —the, Second man, the last Adam, the quickening Spirit. What a relief; for what is man? What one's self when the heart's sin is known?—giving up God for an apple from the beginning hitherto! But now a man, a blessed man, appears, “and praying.” We are not told this elsewhere, and why here? Because Luke, presents man in his perfection—the dependent man; for dependence is the essence of a perfect man. Truly we see God shining all through, but yet in Jesus the dependent man, in the place and condition of perfectness as man. The root of sin in us is self-will, independence. Here my heart has rest! A dependent man in the midst of sorrow, but perfectly with God in all. See Luke's account of the transfiguration also: in humiliation or in glory, it makes no difference as to this; the perfect is ever the dependent one.

And when that blessed heart thus expressed its dependence, did He get no answer? “The heaven was opened.” Does heaven open thus on me? It is open to me indeed, no doubt, but I pray because it is open; it opened because He prayed. I come and look up because the heavens were opened on Him.

It is, indeed, a lovely picture of grace, and we may be bold to say that the Father loved to look on—to look down, in the midst of all sin, on His beloved Son. Nothing but what was divine could thus awaken God's heart; and yet it was the lowly perfect man. He takes not the place of His eternal glory, as the Creator, the Son of God. He stoops and is baptized (Psalm 16). He says, “in thee do I trust.” He says to Jehovah, “Thou art my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee"; He says, as to the godly remnant in Israel (that is, to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent), “All my delight is in them.” He needed no repentance, yet is He baptized with them; just as when, later on, He puts forth His sheep, He goes before them. He identifies Himself in grace with Israel, even with such as were of a clean heart. And the Holy Ghost descends like a dove on Him—fit emblem of that spotless man!—fit resting place for the Spirit in the deluge of this world! And how sweet, too, that Jesus is pointed out to us as God's object. I know the way the Father feels about Him. I am made His intimate, and admitted to hear Him expressing His affection for His Son, to see the links re-formed between God and man. Heaven is opened, not on something above, but upon a man on the earth. Thus I get rest, and my heart finds communion with God in His beloved Son. It is only the believer who enjoys it, but the link is there. And if I have that in and about me which distresses the soul, I have that in Him which is unfailing joy and comfort.

The genealogy quite falls in with the thought that God is showing grace in man and to man. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, is traced up to Adam and to God. Jesus is Son of man; He is heir in this sense. He takes up the inheritance God gave to man. Oh, what a truth! Where could one's heart turn for rest, if it had not Jesus to rest in? With Him let heaven and earth be turned upside down, and still I have a rest. What blessedness for the heart to have the object God Himself is occupied with! May our hearts also be more and more occupied with Him!

(To be continued). [J. N.D.]

Notes on Luke: 4. Chapter 5

It is interesting to know the progressive power of the word of God. The Lord was preaching, as related at the close of chap. 4, and in so doing, as well as in the miracles He wrought, He was manifesting the power of goodness. Thus, in performing miracles, two purposes had to be accomplished — confirmation of the testimony given, and present deliverance from the power of Satan. But His great business was preaching the kingdom of God. He will set up the kingdom in power by-and-by, but His great object then was (and is) to bring the heart into contact with God; and the word does this more than miracles.

Verses 1-5. In a measure even the unconverted are sensible of the presence of God. Adam was, when he tried to hide himself. When the gospel is preached with power, crowds are gathered together by it, touched, perhaps, by something new, but without fruit. So it was with the Lord's preaching and miracles. We know their motives were selfish often, yet He went on all the same. Come for the blessing of man, He would associate others with Himself in this work of grace; but He calls them in such a way as leaves no glory to man.

He “saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would launch out a little from the land; and he sat down and taught the multitudes out of the ship. Now when he had left off speaking, He said to Simon, Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draft” (vers. 2-4).

The word had authority in the conscience. Peter and Andrew had seen Jesus before, but had not yet stayed with Him; there had not been sufficient power in their faith to attach them to Christ. There are many now, as ever, who own the authority of the word, and yet are not attached by its power to His person—many absorbed by their every-day pursuits, the word not having laid hold of their souls so as to make them walk thoroughly with Christ. It is one thing simply to hear His word when spoken to them; quite a different thing when the word reaches them, and becomes the spring and motive of all their ways. So, here, these men had spent a little time with Jesus, had heard Him speak, and owned Him as Messiah; so, now also, we see obedience to His word when it comes to them. They launch out at His word, and at His word they let down their nets.

The miracle which the Lord wrought was one every way suited to act on those concerned. Their own powerlessness was confessed— “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” Man could do nothing in such a case: if Jesus could, it was because everything was at His disposal. “At thy word I will let down the net” (ver. 5).

Verses 6-8. “And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes, and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners... and they came and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.” There was not even strength to receive of themselves. “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful. man, O Lord.” If the word of Jesus had not reached Peter's heart, he would merely have obeyed it as a means of temporal help; but he owns Him as Lord, hearing far more in the words spoken. His conscience was reached. The Lord Himself is revealed to Peter, and that shows Peter himself. When the eye of God is consciously upon us, we see in ourselves what He saw. This was Peter's case. He, when brought into God's presence, feels that he has been deceiving himself.

Grace begins here, but we have not the end yet. So Paul was blind three days, and his soul so wrought on that he could neither eat nor drink. Here Peter falls down at Jesus' knees. So with us: when brought really into His presence, there is the discovery of our sinfulness. The means used to bring us there may be various—circumstances of life, providential occurrences (with Luther, a thunder-storm). But when we are there, there is the revelation of Christ Himself, and wherever He is, He takes His right place in the soul. It is not only that a man then has salvation, but he cannot longer be content without God having His due place before him.

Peter does not fly away from the Lord, like Adam hiding himself. He is attracted to Him. At the same time he is there a judged, convicted, sinful man in his own conscience, which takes the part of Christ against itself. “Depart from me,” he says, but he says it at Jesus' knees. This might seem like a contradiction. It was really love to the Lord and care for His honor, because His word had become the revelation of Christ to him. His heart has not perfect peace, but Christ has got possession of it. Grace draws to Christ, but there is withal the sense of unfitness till His work is known in all its peace-giving consequences. God sees the thoughts and intents of the heart, and we are made to see these as He sees them. Righteousness is planted in the conscience; God and man are brought together. It was not that Peter could be happy anywhere but at the knees of Jesus, but he felt all the while how unfit he was to be in such company.

But the Lord deals in perfect grace. He does not leave Simon Peter. He knew all his sin before He went into the ship, and says to him, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” Jesus went into the ship to skew Peter that he had nothing to fear. Truly, “perfect love casteth out fear.” Fear has torment till grace is fully revealed; and now it was, with as much authority as that miracle-working word, “Let down your nets for a draft.” It was the word of Christ to his heart. If he trusted it for the fish, why not for his fears? Peter had said, “Depart,” but instead of that, Christ had already come, knowing all he was better than Peter. He was come as a Savior; nay, more, He intimates to Peter that He was going to make him an instrument in gathering others. Everyone who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart becomes a vessel of living grace himself: not the source, but the river flows through him, so that people may come and drink. Recipients of grace, we are associated with Christ in the activity of love. Outward gift is not meant here, but that, as members of His body, there is living fellowship with the Head in the testimony of His grace and power.

Verses 9-11. We see in these disciples the effect of all. They are absorbed with Christ now. They not only look to Him for salvation, but they think of nothing else for life, speaking now generally and apart from any particular failure. “They forsook all and followed him.” Christ becomes their life. It is a new line altogether—not merely obedience to an express command, with the reserve of thinking and saying, perhaps, “there is no harm in this or that.” Christ pleased not Himself. His reason for action was His Father's will, and not the absence of a prohibition. And we are sanctified unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. “They forsook all,” and where Christ went they went. They are associated with their Lord in His love to souls, and in the walk of life. This is liberty. May we, having Christ our life, have Him as our one motive! detached from all to Him, yet channels for all the blessing and grace we have ourselves tasted in Him! There is power to attract out of every corruption around, and to gather the soul into the thoughts and ways of God, by the revelation of Christ Himself.

Verses 12-15. Christ was the manifestation on earth of God's power and character—of grace. Of this the leper's case which follows is a striking witness; for leprosy was an evil which none but God could remove. But God was there in grace. Leprosy presented sin in the aspect of uncleanness. A man full of it on seeing Jesus, fell on his face, and besought Him, saying, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” There is the recognition of divine power in Jesus, but He has not full confidence in His grace. He seems disheartened by misery, and, almost in despair, says, “If thou wilt,” etc. But He who alone on earth had the title so to say, says, “I will.” It was God only—not in heaven, but come down in man and among men. Christ was there, who could touch the leper and the leprosy without being touched by it. Divine power was needed, doubtless, and the very priests could not but attest the results of its intervention, but there was divine and perfect love in His touch, while it was the touch of a man, a man who acknowledged the ordinances of God, as one who had been born under law. Thus this “turned for a testimony.” For the leper must go to the priest, and what could he think? Why, who has been here? Jehovah must have been here to heal the man!

Verse 16. And what next? Jesus “withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed.” Let the power exercised be ever so great, and manifestly divine, He is the dependent man; and this is just where we fail.

Verses 17-26. Here we have another thing—not the power of Satan, as in chapter 4, nor the uncleanness of sin, typified by leprosy, but the guilt of sin. They brought the man, because they felt the need; and there was the perseverance of faith, which would not be put off till another day. And Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, as well as cleansing from defilement. This is what appears in the instance of the palsied man. The first and grand point is that Jesus pronounces his sins forgiven. Authority to pardon was come in the person of the Son of man on earth, whatever scribes and Pharisees might think. It was God, the Lord Jehovah, but the Son of man withal, having on earth power to forgive sins, and using it. It is in the way Israel is to be forgiven by-and-by (compare Psalm 103:3); and accordingly, the Lord here gives the proof of that authority to forgive by healing the disease of the paralytic. “That ye may know,” etc. (ver. 14). The man was to know in his relationship to God, that his guilt was gone. Through infinite grace, we are entitled to more than even this; for we have the righteousness of the accepted Man in God's presence. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. This palsied man was a sample of what will be, in the future day, Israel's portion. Jesus was forgiving iniquities and healing diseases. He had shown the power to do the one; now He would show that He could do the other also. It is God's delight to do it all. You may not believe that you can have such a boon, but it is ours in Christ. The perfect Man has come with perfect title in His Person. God wrought there, but it was also as a man filled with the Holy Ghost. The believer walks, too, a proof not to himself so much as to others that God is there. The man ought not to say, “I wonder if I can walk"; if he has faith, he will get up and do it.

Two things are here present. First, the exceeding blessed grace that the Lord is come, the power of God within the sphere of human misery, which, extreme as it may be, does but make that power evident. If I look around as a man, I am lost. I cannot unriddle the history of the world —abominations committed in the name of Christ, Himself rejected by His people Israel, and crucified by those Gentiles to whom God had entrusted the government of the world, Mahometanism, heathenism; what kind of a God have you, says the reasoning heart, when it is such a world! But here I have the Lord come down into all the wretchedness, sickness, sin; and my heart is drawn away from pleasure and sorrow to Him. How beautiful to see heart after heart brought around this One, the only true center, soon to be, as risen, Head of the new creation, Himself the object drawing out feelings and affections of which He alone is worthy; He who by His excellency, gives excellency, and by His gracious thoughts towards us produces and draws out gracious thoughts in us. Next, our hearts are fixed just so far as we have an object—fixed according to God, when we have Christ Himself before us. How can I love if I have nothing to love? A man is what he feels, and likes, and thinks. If my soul lives and feeds upon that which is most excellent—Christ the bread of God Christ becomes, in a practical sense, formed in the heart. In Him, the man Christ Jesus, God has had all His delight, and the display of it too.

Remark further, that in the accounts we have seen, divine power in the person of Jesus, the Son of man, is exercised in the midst of Israel. First, chapter 4: 31-41, its triumph over the enemy's power in sicknesses and in demoniacal possessions, and the testimony of the kingdom, when all such effects of Satan's work should disappear. This last opens the way for the more positive and deeper blessing of souls, being put in relationship to God. Hence from chapter v. 1-26 (the call of Peter, the cleansing of the leper, and the pardon of the palsied man), it is a question of the state of the soul (whatever the outward accompaniments might be), of the authority of the word over the heart, of faith, and of Christ's personal glory. Still it was grace in operation towards Israel; grace, if one may so speak, in government. To Israel God had said that He would not put upon them the plagues of Egypt, save for their sin. They were an outwardly elect, redeemed people, but they were under God's government; and hence chastening came, of which the leprosy and the palsy were peculiar samples. Jesus shows Himself to be “Jehovah that healeth thee,” in the midst of Israel, though He was passing away from them into a wider display of power and goodness. He could have healed every one, leprous or paralytic; He could have removed all the diseases, now, alas! brought on the Israelites; but in these cases it is where they come to Him in quest of healing, that is, it is in answer to faith that He works. He was there, showing divine power and grace in healing.

Verses 27-32. But this grace, being of God and sovereign, could not be bounded by human circumstances. Wherever a want appeared to Him, could He gainsay His power or His love? Now, see how that connects itself with what follows. There was full deliverance for all who trusted, in Israel; but He could not, and would not limit His grace. The law limited; but when Himself, the God who gave it, came, everybody who needs Him is welcome; His house is a house of prayer for all nations. Hence He calls a publican, a Jew indeed, but detested by the Israelites, and in a sense rightly, when viewed as the mark of their servitude nationally. A publican was one who profited by their Gentile masters, to extort money from Israel, and therefore was naturally regarded with horror. But Jesus calls one named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom—calls him to be an apostle! Grace must act according to its own rights. If God has been good to you and me, does that hinder His mercy and love to another? Grace creates the instrument it wants to act by; and it will flow farther than the publican yet, even to the most distant Gentile. True, Israel had the promises, the Gentile, strictly speaking, had none; but for that very reason it was more purely grace; and grace would act towards the Gentiles. The Lord Himself, God, was there, and Israel could not be the center, nor the temple, when He was there, the despised Lord of both. He is the door, the new center and turning-point of blessing; not a mere branch of the old vine, but Himself the true vine. As a Jew, He was subject to ordinances, but as the Lord, He is above them, and He breaks out beyond all the old restrictions.

“Levi made him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them; but their scribes and Pharisees murmured.” It was a terrible sight and blow to such. But Jesus answers, “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” They mistook the Lord altogether: He came to show how grace could deal with those who had no righteousness.

Verses 33-35. He is now breaking, as it were, out of the old thing. He is faithful to Israel, but breaking up that order of things. How could they fast who owned the presence of the divine Husband of Israel, the Messiah! The time was coming when the cross must be taken; but when the Bridegroom is there, fasting was out of place and season.

Verses 36-39. Further, the old garment cannot be patched with new cloth. Jesus would do no such thing as tack on Christianity to Judaism. Flesh and law go together, but grace and law, God's righteousness and man's, will never mix. Neither can the new wine, the power of the Spirit, he put into the old legal ordinances without loss on all sides. A man accustomed to forms, human arrangement, fathers' religion, etc., never likes the new principle and power of the kingdom; he says, The old is better. Such is nature; grace is offensive to it. Nor does man improve in divine things. He can degrade himself and give up what his heart never relished. And this goes on rapidly today. [J. N.D.]

I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life*

(John 14:6)

The words of Holy Scripture may be weighed with their context, often best so, but they can sometimes be profitably considered from the point of view of their own intrinsic fullness. Especially is this the case with many of the words of our Lord, peculiarly so, perhaps, with those that are recorded in the Fourth Gospel. It need hardly be said that such isolated contemplation makes no assumption of exhausting the meaning of the Savior's briefest sayings. Rather the contrary. For the more His words are dwelt on, the fuller they seem to grow, and they prove their divinity by a perennial freshness, constantly striking the thoughtful Christian reader with new wonder as he recurs to them, and sometimes almost startling him with some, to him, novel aspect of the truth unrealized before. They are indeed “words of profound illumination” (Dean Wace); always solemn, they arrest now by their strength and majesty, now by their tenderness and sweetness, again by their sternness and severity—such severity as could not be absent from the words of the All-Holy.

An interesting living writer who has said many true, many beautiful things anent the “common salvation,” sadly fails, however, in speaking, in one of his more recent books, of the “essential sweetness of Christ's character.” How one-sided is this, and how forgetful that He who is in question is no mere man! So might one speak of some amiable human character, who would necessarily have what the French happily call les défauts de ses qualités, in other words, that want of balance that marks more or less even the most Christian of mankind. Not so with our Lord. His was the perfect evenness that is symbolized in the meal offering. Nay, singular to say, an unbeliever, the brilliant Frenchman whose “Vie de Jésus” made such a stir a generation or so ago, was far nearer 'the truth, when he summed up the comprehensive character of our Lord's utterances in a striking phrase, saying of them that they were marked by “a flashing brightness, at once sweet and terrible” (une clarté, étincelanie, à la fois douce et terrible). Yes, they must be terrible to such as turn away willfully from them.

Here, however, they are wholly sweet, though pervaded by the inalienable atmosphere of solemnity. The divine dignity of the Speaker impresses the hearer, and also the thought of what the consequences must be of rejecting His words. Clearly they are intolerant of all other claims, being definite, authoritative, and final. And first let us notice the implicit assertion that He who speaks is no less than Jehovah. “I am,” runs the sentence, and the mind at once recalls the sublime words of the Old Testament, “I am hath sent me unto you” (Ex. 3:14). “I am that I am” (ibid). It is God's sovereign and eternal Name. It is not fanciful to recognize this, occurring as it does so many times in this Gospel. I am the Bread of Life, the Door, the True Vine, the Good Shepherd.

Next let us mark the perfection of the order that characterizes our verse. It is not haphazard; of that we may be sure. For the way leads to the truth, and the truth leads to life. Doubtless the Christian life is spoken of in the New Testament (see Acts 19:9 and 23) as a way, but here, of course, with some difference in the application of the metaphor. Yet truly the two uses shade off into one another, for Christ is the way all along, even as He is the beginning and the end— “Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ,” as one has sung. “I am the way.” The desponding Thomas (and here it is desirable to look for a moment at the context) had been deploring that he and his brother disciples knew of no way by which they might rejoin their beloved Master and Lord. So He declares to them that He is Himself the Way, that everything is summed up in Him, the truth and the life as well, that He is “Christus Consummator.” We may also notice, incidentally, that here, as so often, we have a trinity, marking divine completeness—the way, the truth, and the life.

In the presence of such claims how paltry are all reason's solutions of human destiny, as is likewise all sublunary grandeur! Where else is there a way in this dark and distracted world? Naturally we brush aside its ephemeral and turbulent politics, its vain pleasures, its equally vain ambitions. But what about its poets and philosophers? Is there any hope for us here? Surely not, though the poets do sometimes give us partial truths. As the late editor of the Bible Treasury used to say, “the poets are occasionally right, the philosophers always wrong.” Doubtless some may think this a harsh judgment. But how can they fail to go wrong who start from false assumptions, to wit, the competency of the human mind to deal finally with moral and spiritual problems, the right of sick men to discuss the methods of their physician? As an acute modern writer (Dr. Illingworth) has pointed out, “Men assume that their intellect will act as impartially upon spiritual problems as upon mathematics, and this is not, and never can be the case. A sinner criticizing God is like a patient criticizing his physician at a time when his mind is clouded by disease.” And earlier in his remarks, ad hoc, this writer had forcibly said that the successes of the human mind in secular learning and in science had emboldened men to deal with equal confidence with spiritual matters, such as “the being and nature of God, and His relations to man.” “Here,” says he, “we are moving in a region that sin profoundly affects,” and where the unaided mind is bound to err.

So we go back with renewed delight to the gracious words of Him who spoke as never man spake, who alone had, and has, “words of eternal life"; and rejoice to know that that way leads us to the truth, and the truth leads to the life; and that is “life indeed.” R. B.

The Test of Love

(John 14:21)

The Lord Jesus, on the night of His betrayal, gathered the twelve around Himself, and instituted the memorial supper, enjoining them to break the bread and drink the wine as showing forth His death until His return—not to the earth in judgment, but to the air, to receive His own to Himself (1 Thess. 4:16-18). In Matt. 26:27 the Lord enjoins them— “Drink ye all of it.” They all were to drink of the wine, foreknowing that the time would come when the cup would be withheld from the greater multitude of professing Christians. He did not say, “Eat ye all of it,” for that injunction would be quite unnecessary. But He did say, “Drink ye all,” and Mark records the fact, “they all drank of it,” while Luke records the institution, and John makes no distinct mention of the supper, since the testimony of the two other Evangelists suffices.

According to the old ordinance cited in Matt. 20:19, we learn that on the day of His resurrection came Jesus and stood in the midst of them, and that eight days after, being gathered a second time, He came again in conformity with His promise in Matt. 18:20, and it seems to be a reasonable deduction that they were already fulfilling His request, as also in Acts 2:1, for we have no knowledge of any other purpose that could produce such absolute unity of action, as it is written, “They were all with one accord in one place.” Again, in Acts 2:42, “They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” These were the salient acts of their Christian life. Yet once more, in Acts 20:7. It is clearly stated that when the disciples [or, we] had come together on the first day of the week to break bread, Paul preached to them. They did not come together for the purpose of hearing even Paul preach, but with a far more important object, viz., to fulfill the Lord's injunction to break bread and thus show forth His death until He should come. Lastly, in Acts 2 it is to be noted that they continued, etc., and therefore must have commenced some time previously, as indeed we have seen was the fact.

In 1 Cor. 10:16 we learn something more of the details of the supper. The cup of blessing necessarily comes first in the enumeration, for it is written, Christ loved us before we loved Him. But in the next chapter (1 Cor. 11) we have the Lord's table in its original order, viz., the breaking of the bread first, and then the drinking of the wine next. It is extremely important and instructive to note that the table of the Lord is shown as having a place for all believers on a common standing, without any distinction or discrimination—no priest, no clergyman, or minister, or president—each privileged to partake of the elements separately. We have the lordship of Christ clearly stated no fewer than seven times in 1 Cor. 11:23-29, “I have received of the Lord,” “that the Lord Jesus,” “when he had given thanks,” “He took the cup,” “the Lord's death,” “whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,” “not discerning the Lord's body.” “Christ is Son of his own house, whose house ye are"; and Lord over His own table, of course, also. If any man preside where Christ is, and where the Holy Ghost is in each believer, and amongst them all, the man daring to preside, by that action, displaces Christ, and goes far on the way to “quench the Spirit” by that act of presidency. For Christ has never said to any man, “Give thou,” or, “Administer thou.” But Scripture says, in His own words, “Take ye,” “Eat ye,” “Drink ye all of it,” and no man has any authority to come between the Christian and His present Lord.

In thus calling attention to the very words of the Lord Himself, there is not the least wish or intention to grieve any one, but only to call to God's beloved people's memory all that the Lord our God hath spoken. For have not those who are entangled in human systematic theology unwittingly forsaken the ways of the Lord for the arrangements of men? But the truth of God must be plainly spoken at all costs, even though it lead to a strait path, and a narrow way, wherein few care to tread. But the truth must needs be spoken, more especially the special truth so intimately associated with Christ's one request, and the one request made on the night of His betrayal, to His Hebrew disciples, and confirmed to Gentiles by the Holy Ghost speaking through the apostle of the Gentiles His one request, “This do in remembrance of me.” He was present to rule at the first, and is as really present on each recurring first day of the week. Present as really in this twentieth century as He was then. Faith week by week perceives Him present. Love rejoices in its reality, while hope looks forward to the period when He shall come in fulfillment of His promise, “I will come and receive you unto myself.”

It has been said that one day is as good as any other for the celebration of the Lord's supper. But not so. The first day of the week is that chosen by Himself at Emmaus; and on the same day at Jerusalem, it was confirmed by Him; and a week later again confirmed. At Pentecost the Holy Ghost from heaven came amongst them consequent upon the Lord's triumphant ascension. In addition to this, the suitability of the first day is strikingly manifest. To show forth Christ's death on Friday would be to perpetuate His apparent defeat by death! To show forth His death on Saturday would be to announce the transient triumph of the grave! But to show forth the Lord's death on the first day of the week is to signalize His triumphant resurrection and full and irreversible victory over the world, and sin and Satan, death and the grave, by the glory of the Father.

It is also important to observe that not until the full truth as to the Lord's table and His supper had been stated in the Corinthian Epistle is anything revealed concerning gifts, excepting the gift common to all believers, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the only gift indispensable at the Lord's table, where the youngest Christian is as much at the disposal of the Lord, the Spirit, for the vocal expression of praise, as even a Paul or an Apollos.

At the termination of creation's wonderful day, divine majesty established a single, simple test of obedience. The tree of life was quite freely accessible to man. But the fruit of the tree of knowledge was as strictly prohibited, under the most terrible sanction of death. But the tree of life was practically rejected, and the tree of knowledge was partaken of, with the issue of death and not life. The beautiful tree of life is despised and rejected by the great mass of mankind until this day; and, “Knowledge, knowledge,” is still the cry. “Educate the people and elevate the masses,” and still the gracious Savior weeps over the world that cast Him out. “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.”

When the work of redemption was completely accomplished another test was established—the test of love for believers in Himself. “If a man love me he will keep my word"; “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me"; “He that loveth me not keepeth not my words.” And this is the simple test in brief, That we do this in remembrance of Him; and that, loving Him, we love our brother also. It is no great, costly, difficult thing the dying Savior asks of you, but nevertheless it is the test of love. G. S.-M.

The Coming Hour of Temptation

REVELATION 3: 10

That there is a time of trouble, a special season of tribulation for the world, revealed in several important and plain passages of the word of God, no thoughtful Christian can for a moment question. All may not be clear as to those whose lot will be cast in those days, but that such a season is to befall the world is not to be doubted. That it is also to be a day through which some of God's own people are to pass is equally certain. We shall now inquire what it is that God's word affirms as to both those who shall be there and those who shall be in the grace of God exempted from it.

At the same time a wider question arises than the hour of tribulation. We must not confound scriptures that differ, even if the difference be comparatively slight in appearance. “The hour of temptation” does not appear to me to be exactly the same as that of the great tribulation. Temptation may take the form of severe affliction, but it is not limited to such a type of things. Temptation may assume the character of seduction, as well as of trial in the shape of tribulation. I shall show tonight that there is a well-defined period as to which scripture leaves no just ground of hesitation; that there are preliminary judgments on one side, and on the other snares of all kinds, as well as a storm of trouble that will fall on those who have slighted the grace of God, and cast away His truth.

I shall show further that it is by no means true that none of His people are to be exempted from that “hour of temptation.” The verse that I have read proves the contrary. We have the Holy Ghost here addressing to this effect the assembly of God in Philadelphia—the Christian assembly there. More strictly speaking, the angel of the church is before us—who was, it seems, a kind of ideal representative of the assembly—and the promise runs in the most distinct terms: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”

It is evident that the import of this is not merely that the faithful are to be preserved. I shall prove that for others preservation is assured; but there is a special exemption promised here. We can all conceive how, supposing the fearful time of trial came, some might go, however secured, through that hour, and others might be kept out of it altogether. The question is, whether the scripture is clear that both of these methods are to be made good—that some are to be exempted from the hour of trial that is coming upon the habitable world, but that others are to be kept not out of it, but through it. I have not a doubt that these two schemes are true, and that God's word explicitly teaches both.

Further, the analogy of the dealings of God in past times leads to the same conclusion. If we look back to the earliest times, when God dealt with the world as a whole, undoubtedly He kept for His own name's sake some through that flood that swept the world away before it; but was that all? Was there merely a Noah and his family preserved in the ark? We all know the contrary. We know of one at least that walked with God before the flood came, and was not insensible to what was coming. He knew it as well or better than Noah; and whereas he walked in communion with the Lord before the season of judgment came, he was taken without seeing death. Enoch was translated from the earth, and taken to be with God above. Thus we have the circumstances of a great divine intervention—a time most striking and unexampled in the previous history of the world. When God was visiting the sons of men, and this with displeasure, for there was manifestly a tremendous judgment coming on the earth, God wrought in a twofold way. He removed one who looked to Himself and walked with Himself before the flood came; He brought others through the flood of waters that they might be a nucleus of blessing for the fresh conditions of the earth that were to follow the deluge.

We find again, if we look farther down the history of God's people, one similarly taken in special grace out of the world. In the course of the Jewish nation Elijah was caught up to heaven, while his successor, Elisha, was left to testify on the earth. Thus we have clearly God giving more than once a premonition of His will and of His ways in both respects. Therefore, in setting before those who are here tonight, as distinctly as God enables me, a sketch of what awaits the world, at least as to this short season of signal trial, we are not left without signs and tokens of what the Lord has done: this we may do well to compare with that which the Lord is going to do, both in exemption and in preservation.

Nevertheless, be it observed that I do not rest the proof on types. Nothing but direct scripture ought to be the foundation for any man's faith; and I shall cite enough to demonstrate that the word of God is as precise and positive as possible. I shall show that no other meaning is so satisfactory; that it is the simple unforced sense of the word of God. At the same time I shall be exceedingly obliged to any child of God who doubts it if he will only favor me with what he conceives to be a more satisfactory exposition of any one of the scriptures we may refer to. Need it be said that we ought to be above any question of our own opinion in these matters? They are too serious; they too closely affect the glory of God and the well-being of God's people.

Let me add, beloved friends, another thing, that my aim is not at all to excite or entertain any one's mind, but to furnish from the Bible for the Christian's faith what is of very great importance. Clearly if this is what is before God, if He means to remove some of His people from the earth, if He means also to have a people for His name to go through the time of temptation as well troublous as seductive that precedes the day of Jehovah, it evidently must be of the utmost possible interest and moment to know whether we can on scriptural grounds look confidently to the precious blessing of being with Christ Himself when the fearful hour of retributive infliction shall come upon the world.

Whether we open the Old Testament or the New, however we take the passages to be cited, we shall not fail to gather instruction. But to show how little depends upon anything artificial, I shall at this time take the texts simply in the order in which they stand in our common English Bible. The Christian has no interest—we ought surely to have none—but the glory of God.

(To be continued)

Notes of an Address on 1 Corinthians 15:12-23

It may seem surprising that these saints at Corinth should so soon have been led away from the truth that had been taught them. The apostle Paul had labored there for one and a half years, and it is a marvel that there should have been found among them those that said there is no resurrection of the dead. Perhaps you think it is not so very important after all. Their belief or unbelief would not affect the resurrection—this would come just the same, and then they would find out their mistake. But God never makes light of the slightest departure from His truth, no matter how small it may seem. You never know where it will lead you. Look at this portion before you. All is gone if you say there is no resurrection of the dead. If you leave God out of the question that is where you are landed. A dead man cannot raise himself, everybody knows that; and everybody knows that the greatest and cleverest living person cannot raise one dead man, nor can an angel from heaven. God alone can raise the dead.

The apostle had to write severely to some of these Corinthians— “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.” Even the chief priests of our Lord's time were in great fear lest even the report might be spread that Jesus was “risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64).

Notice particularly the words, “If the dead be not raised, then is not Christ raised.” Christ was as truly dead as any. He had given up His spirit into the hands of His Father in that supreme hour at Calvary, and His body was taken down and laid in Joseph's tomb. There was no question raised about His death. “If the dead he not raised, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” If the resurrection of the dead is questioned the foundation is swept away at once. People are trying to explain away the fact of Christ's resurrection. When staying at a friend's house I saw a book by a great Russian philanthropist written expressly to prove that Christ did not rise from the dead! And a certain notable clergyman said not long ago that if sufficient care were taken the dead body of Jesus might be found in Jerusalem!

There is no limit to the lengths to which man's daring will carry him. But we must come in utter simplicity to God's word. It is wonderful how that will set you up if you will believe it. We cannot be led astray if we listen to it. For instance, man has often said, “The Lord's coming will take place on such a day in such and such a year.” But the day comes and goes, and still the Lord has not come. People would not be carried away by this if they took notice of one little word of the Lord's— “Ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” And yet man has the audacity to say that he can tell you not only the year, but the week, the day, the hour. Without the word of God, the mind of man may lead into all sorts of fantastic speculations.

“Now is Christ risen from the dead” —that is a note of triumph. There is no uncertainty about it in the apostle's mind. We can think of this great truth in several ways. It was due to Christ, as the perfect Man in this world fulfilling all the will and glory of God, that God should raise Him from the dead. Had He not glorified the Father on the earth? Had He not finished the work given Him to do? It became an act of righteousness on God's part to raise Him. And He “gave Him glory.”

The resurrection shows His complete victory over the powers of evil. He was never led aside by the allurements of the world; He overcame the world. You know how Satan assailed Him in the wilderness; you know He overcame him with the sharp two-edged sword of the Spirit “It is written.” You remember, too, how the enemy assailed Him through Peter, and how He recognized the evil— “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Peter, the impetuous, and perhaps the one who most loved the Lord of all the disciples, was playing into the hands of Satan. Peter was showing himself so thoroughly human, and the Lord was showing Himself on His own level, minding the things of God. You remember what the Lord said about the strong man armed. There was Satan; but the Lord was stronger than he, and He first binds the strong man (in the temptation), and then He spoils his house (all along His pathway, healing, etc.). But it was when He ascended on high that He led captivity captive and received gifts for men. God said to Him, “Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” and there He sits in glorious victory. Has not God shown His perfect satisfaction in all that that blessed One did by raising Him from the dead? At the opening of His ministry the voice came from the heavens, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and again also on the mount of Transfiguration, when His ministry was closing. But in the resurrection from the dead God proclaimed to all the universe His acceptance of the Sacrifice. In that awful darkness the question of sin was settled between Christ and God, and perfectly settled. And where do we have the witness? In the resurrection. Now Christ is seated on the throne in the heavens in glory and majesty, by the hand of God.

But whilst there is this glorious victory and the glory of God vindicated, what has that to do with us, you may say. Everything. “He was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” Not only is every sin forgiven, but righteousness is reckoned to us. When we see Him yonder at the right hand of God we know, as believers, that our sins have been atoned for and put away, and we are now justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 4:24).

Look a little further. You see He has become the first-fruits of them that slept. What are we to understand by this? Surely something vast must come of it. This word “firstfruits” has a great deal of meaning in it. It carries us back to the book of Leviticus. There, when the harvest was ripe, before it was gathered in, a sheaf was to be cut and taken to the temple, where the priest would wave it before the Lord. And notice when it was to be waved—on the morning after the Sabbath, the first day of the week. Surely that points forward to the resurrection. The sheaf of firstfruits has its fulfillment in Christ being raised from the dead. The sheaf was only part of the one great harvest; there was a great likeness between the sheaf of firstfruits and all the other sheaves. And so it is here. “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.” The sheaf of firstfruits was to be waved before Jehovah. Christ was raised from the dead, and is in the heavens, and all the others will be raised in due course, all that are His will be like Him and with Him forever. You see how much God has to teach us in these types.

Let us look a little now at verses 21 and 22. We know that man, the first man, the disobedient man, brought in death. God has brought in the Second man; He came a life-giving Spirit. He delivers from death and sin. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” “They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life” —these will respond to His call and come out of their graves with glorified bodies. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” What a comprehensive declaration! All are under the sentence of death—this applies to the whole race. But do not think for a moment that the latter part speaks of the whole world. The wicked dead will be raised, but that is the second resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.” The resurrection of Jesus was from among the dead. So likewise is the resurrection of believers.

“Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” All under Adam's headship are under death. All under Christ's headship are made alive—only those in Him. That “in Him” is a lovely word; we meet it frequently in the New Testament. Where is He? At the right hand of God. He is not going to leave one of His own under the power of death—not one of them. These are wondrous and glorious things. And to think of ourselves as being linked up with the victorious One, who passed through this world without being in the least degree tainted by it, that we are now in living union with Him, now risen and ascended on high. Christ is the Firstborn among many brethren, Head of His body, the church, and of that body we are members. As surely as the Head is in the heavens, so surely shall every member be there too. We are going to be glorified together with Him—we have it as the word of Him that cannot lie.

There have been promoters of many different religions. Many of them are dead and others will die. How different it is with us. It is true that the Lord Jesus laid down His life. He did give up His spirit on the cross; He did lie among the dead, but it was impossible for Him to be holden of death. I think Satan found out his mistake after he had led men to put Christ to death, and that was why he sought to keep Him in the grave. But He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. He is sitting in heaven while you are sitting on those seats.

We are saved by His life, now that He has died and is risen. We are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, and He lives to lead us safely through to glory. We are not trusting in a dead Christ, but in One that is now alive for evermore. He gives not only peace to the conscience, but satisfaction to the heart. The more we grow in the knowledge of Him the more we shall love Him, and trust Him, and adore Him. We can never be disappointed in Christ, He is always more than our thoughts. The queen of Sheba found it hard to believe what was told her in her own land of the fame of Solomon, but when she came to see for herself she found that the half had not been told her. You are always safe in trusting Him. You may love Him as much as you will, and trust Him as much as you will; He will never disappoint you.

See how competent He is to make us conquerors even as He conquered. “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” It is remarkable that when saints have been exposed to sufferings for Christ, instead of trying to escape they have gloried in them. We may not have attained to that. But if we should be called to suffer for Him we might have grace given us to act in a similar way. It has often been found that timid souls, who have dreaded death, and whose testimony perhaps has not been altogether what it should have been, at the end of their lives have met death with faces that shone with joy. The world has lost its hold on them, and Christ alone is filling the scene for them. He has delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

I remember once being called to see a young girl of eighteen, a bright girl, for whom the world had had its attractions. But she was dying. Immediately I walked in, “O Mr.,” she said, “I am going to be with Jesus! I believe I shall go tonight.” She didn't go that night, nor for some days. But so it was; she was full of holy rapture, and this continued right on to the end. I knew one who had been visiting deathbeds for forty years, and he said he had never visited one who had seen death. They were experiencing His love. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” And not only shall nothing separate us from the love of Christ, but nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God. Is not that too much? Surely not; it is His love. He will love us to the end. As it all depends on Him, it is sure. God will never cease to love His children. No principality, or power, or might, or anything that can be imagined, can sever us from His love. These are truths of God; we cannot exaggerate them. They are stupendous realities. With what a gladsome mind we should love and serve Him. His love will never have satisfaction until He has us with Himself. What can we do to bring glory to Him? This question should occupy our minds and thoughts continually. R. K.

Attainment

Now, I believe we see among the saints at present, what we thus might have seen among the churches of old; we have our Ephesian and Corinthian difficulties still. The truths received by some disciples are treated as mere speculation by others, and the condition of some is low and doubtful. The large and blessed mind of God, which filled the apostle, could, of old, survey them all, and provide for them all, and feed them at Ephesus and trim them at Corinth. But we are weak and narrow-hearted; and the only result commonly is, to walk in mutual distance and suspicion. Thus we do not understand one another's speech, and we are scattered. But better is it to be scattered than to be brought together on the terms of any bond short of God's own bond in the Holy Ghost. Whereto we have already attained in that, let us walk by the same rule, hoping for more. But let us not force beyond that, by any fleshy compacts. The fear of God must not be taught by the commandment of men.

In connection with this I would notice the state of Job and his three friends; for I believe that it illustrates the same thing which this state of the churches does. Job could not understand the truth which was in their thoughts, nor could they allow that which he had of God's mind in his; they were but partially in the light, and, through the remainder of darkness that was in them, they mistook the way and jostled each other. And the correction lay only in God, and in the end He applied it. They were all accepted—God proved Himself the adequate healer of all their divisions, as He will, by-and-bye, join the whole of the heavenly family in one body in the mansions on high, and unite the two sticks of Ephraim and Judah in the earth below. The largeness of the mind of God contains the remedy, but nothing else does. That mind may express itself forth from the whirlwind, or by the ministry of an apostle; but however that be, it bears the remedy with it. The Lord who can with one hand separate the chaff from the wheat, with the other can gather up all the scattered grains that are now strewing His field in shameful disorder, and find room in His garner for them all.

And this comforts, while it admonishes. It is not that we are to confound the chaff with the wheat. It is as much of the Spirit of God to say, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema,” as to say, “Peace be on all them who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” It is as much of the testimony of God to say, “He that hath not the Son of God hath not life,” as to say, “He that hath the Son hath life"; “if any other man preach any other gospel let him be anathema.” But still let us know that there have been different measures of attainments among the saints, and let our personal and individual care be, so to walk in light and grace ourselves, as not to give occasion either to the enemy to speak reproachfully, or to our brethren to speak doubtfully of us. And let us have our hearts and consciences in lively exercise before God, with a purpose to follow our light, lead us where it may, in the grace and fear of the Lord. But when these are the springs of the personal movement and course of each of us, we have, though in many things differently minded, the materials of both safe and blessed communion. J. G. B.

A False Christ and Falsehood

God's detestation of idols, so early marked in His dealings with Israel long after the call of Abraham to be a witness to the one living and true God, is clearly in view of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus. The injunction, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them: for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God” (Ex. 20:3-5), becomes luminous in the light of “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only begotten with a Father) full of grace and truth.” “No one hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:14, 15, 18).

In Deut. 13 the possibility of “a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams,” giving “a sign or a wonder,” and the same coming to pass, his object being to turn them to other gods which they had not known, to serve them, is brought before the people with the striking prohibition, “Thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, for Jehovah your God proveth you.” Does not this clearly show that no pretended communication from God could ever set aside that memorable word with which the Lord Jesus vanquished Satan in the wilderness— “It is written.” The children of Israel were told to put to death the seducer “because he hath spoken to turn you away from Jehovah your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage.” Could there be a stronger claim than that of redemption, or one that more appeals to the heart? Then again, it might even be “thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul,” who should secretly entice to the service of other gods! but so far from the nearness of the relationship, or friendship, being allowed as an excuse for yielding to the snare, there was to be no pitying, sparing, nor concealing, but “thine hand Shall be first upon him to put him to death,” and the claim of God's redemption is again urged (ver. 10). Is the Christian's indebtedness to Him “who delivered us from so great a death” on a less plane than that of an obedient Israelite?

The judgment to be inflicted in the case of “one of thy cities,” whence children of Belial have gone out with a similar seductive object, after due inquiry, diligent search, and the truth and certainty of “such abomination” being established (for God Himself never acts without sufficient evidence, as we may see in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, where He says, “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know,” Genesis 18:21), was to be even more drastic than that inflicted on some of the cities of the Canaanites; for not only were all the inhabitants and cattle to be utterly destroyed, but “all the spoil,” “every whit” was to be gathered and burnt with fire in the city. The cattle and spoil of Ai, for instance, “Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of Jehovah” (Joshua 8:27).

In connection with the above, I would call attention to a solemn lesson we learn from 1 Kings 12; 13. We there read, “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 placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. So he offered upon the altar which he made in Bethel, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart.” The true altar was the means of approach to God. Believers now “have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle,” and this altar—our altar—is clearly “Jesus,” who, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate, and to whom we are called to go forth “without the camp bearing his reproach” (Hebrews 13:10-16). Jeroboam had established a false altar; in other words had set up not the true, but a false, Christ.

Now the man of God out of Judah, as commissioned by Jehovah, when Jeroboam stood by the altar, and burnt incense, cried against it, and foretold that Josiah, of the house of David, should burn bones and offer upon it the priests of the high places; and he gave as a sign that Jehovah had spoken, a rent altar and ashes poured out. Jeroboam, indignant, put out his hand against the prophet of Judah, only to have that hand dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him. God vindicated His word and His servant, for the altar was rent and the ashes poured out. The king then entreats the man of God for his hand, and God hears the prayer of the prophet from Judah, and it is restored. But now comes the trial of the man of God. After all that he has done, will he stand (compare Ephesians 6:13)? He refuses the king's offer to come home with him and refresh himself, and the reward, “For so it was charged me, by the word of the LORD, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest” (13:9). To be in association with those who in any way are in association with a false Christ, according to John's Second Epistle (ver. 11), is to be partaker of their evil deeds.

The man of God from Judah does turn to go back another way, but he lingers on the road “in this place” where he was neither to eat bread nor drink water. Alas, he falls an easy prey; and the words of the old prophet of Bethel, “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” —these words effected what the king's invitation had failed to do. How striking is the Spirit's commentary, “he lied unto him"! How truly awful.

May we not ask, Has this no counterpart, today? Is it in vain that it is written, “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father, but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also” (1 John 2:22, 23). What must have been the feelings of the man of God from Judah, when, at the table of the old prophet, a veritable message from God comes through the latter, telling the man of God, “As thou hast disobeyed the mouth of Jehovah, and hast not kept the commandment which Jehovah thy God commanded thee... thy carcass shall not come unto the sepulcher of thy fathers!” The lion which met him as he rode on his way home, which slew him but touched not his ass, is an eloquent tribute to what the beasts can do when man fails in his obedience to God. But oh, what a lesson for us! If I have the word of God for myself, I am bound to obey it, whatever others say. No pleading can absolve me from its claim on me, for we are set apart from conversion to obedience. Cleaving to it and to the Lord, I shall have the protection of both Himself and His word. It is no question of another saying, “I am a prophet also as thou art.” He may be a fellow saint, and a worthier one; but the word to the faithful heart is what our blessed Lord said to Peter, “Follow thou Me” (John 21:21). “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than the fat of rams.”

W. N. T.

Studies in Mark: 31. Shining in Public: Growing in Secret

“And he said unto them, is the lamp brought to be put under the bushel, or under the bed, and not to be put on the stand? For there is nothing hid, save that it should be manifested; neither was anything made secret, but that it should come to light. If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear. And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you: and more shall be given unto you. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.

“And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. The earth beareth fruit of herself first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come” (4:21-29, R.V.).

This section is one which, upon consideration and comparison, will be found to afford, like many other passages throughout the historical narratives, a striking illustration of the varying purpose of the several Gospels. With the object of gathering what instruction we may on this particular point it is proposed to make a brief reference to the context of the parable of the Sower, comparing the records in Matthew and Mark as to their designs.

In the First Gospel (Matt. 13) the parable of the Sower is followed by six others, each of which is specifically stated to be a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens. The obvious fact that this group of parables numbers seven, a numeral which in scriptural usage signifies completeness and adequacy of representation, coupled with the further fact, easily ascertained by inspection, that the period covered by the series of parables extends from its beginning to the close, that is to say, from the sowing of the seed to the harvest at the end of the world [age] (Matt. 13:39, 49), points unmistakably to the conclusion that the selection and arrangement of these parables was made with the definite object of presenting a synopsis of the various phases which the kingdom of the heavens would assume in consequence of the rejection of the King.

Now, in Mark's narrative, we have, in connection with the parable of the Sower, what is altogether different, and, as we shall see, distinctive. Here it is followed by, not six, but two parables only, the first of which is found nowhere else in the Gospels, while the second (that of the mustard seed) is one of the six following this parable in Matthew. Moreover, these two parables are separated from that of the Sower by two sayings of the Lord which in the First Gospel are recorded in entirely different associations.

Having noted these important differences, let us now proceed to inquire what their significance may be. And in the first place it will be evident that the meaning of the variations in the records must, in each case, lie in close relation to the main purpose of the inspired Evangelist. For, be it observed, the “harmony” of the Gospels is not to be sought, as is frequently done, by the construction of a single continuous narrative, composed by combining the accounts of the four writers to the utter destruction of the individuality of each of them. On the contrary, the true “harmony,” using the word now in the sense of the consistency of the Gospel with itself, will be discerned by the discovery of the manner in which the various historical episodes are disposed by each of the four biographers in order to set forth his special design. Hence it is that in this particular inquiry the differences in the several narratives are of greater importance than the resemblances. These differences then are the subject of our present study.

It will be admitted that the object of Mark was to compose a biography of the Lord Jesus in His character as the Anointed Servant and Prophet of Jehovah. And we may therefore expect to find that, in order to display Him in this aspect, the nature and characteristics of His service and ministry will be more prominently and fully expressed than in the other Gospels, and that this will be more especially the case with regard to that modified form of teaching as to the kingdom which He adopted because the nation had, in effect, refused Him as the Messiah.

THE LORD'S MINISTRY AND ITS EFFECT

Now, it will at once be observed that in this fourth chapter all the parables relate to the Lord's ministry and its effects. In each of the three parables the seed is the central object of the picture. In the first the diverse results of sowing the seed are shown; in the second the seed grows spontaneously; and in the third the seed develops from a state of outward insignificance to one of prominence. These parables, then, are correlated delineations of that ministry of the good news of the kingdom of God which was begun to be spoken by the Lord, and was continued by the apostles and their successors; and on this account these parables, as they are here arranged, could appear in no other Gospel with the same propriety as in that which sets forth Jesus as Jehovah's Servant.

In the series of Matt. 13 we have the new earthly system which was about to arise presented variously, e.g., by the field, the measures of meal, the great tree, the hidden treasure, the costly pearl, and such figures; but in Mark we have brought forward the power which accomplishes the outward effects rather than the thing itself which is produced. The third parable of the Second Gospel is only an apparent exception to this generalization, the spreading tree being introduced to show the magnitude of the visible results of the presence and operation of the word of God in the world in contrast with its appearance at the beginning. In brief, the main theme of Matt. 13 is the kingdom itself, and that of Mark 4 the gospel or word of the kingdom.

Bearing in mind, then, that this section of Mark is designed to teach what is the nature of the ministry of the new covenant by Jehovah's Servant (in general terms, of course, not in detail as in the Sermon on the Mount), we proceed to inquire concerning the meaning of the two sayings of the Lord which are interpolated between the first and second parables. And it will be seen that they have a direct bearing upon the truth brought out in the immediately preceding verses. In these we have that part of the Lord's ministry which was couched in a parabolic form. And this mode of discourse was employed, as we learn from the Lord Himself, in order that the mystery of the kingdom might be hidden from the unbelieving nation at large, although it was revealed by special interpretation to the disciples (Mark 4:34, 10-13). Now the sayings which follow guard against a misconception which this form of teaching might cause in the minds of the apostles. They were not to assume that, because the Master had begun to speak publicly in parables, these wonderful communications of the Great Prophet would always be enveloped in obscurity. If there was darkness abroad as to divine knowledge, the darkness was not in or from the Sower, but in the people themselves. He was the true Light, come into the world to lighten every man. Is it not the function of light to shine abroad in radiant testimony—whether this light exists absolutely in the Prophet, as it did, or in the apostles, the sons of light, as deriving it from Him? So that the veiling of the truth in parables by the Lord was but a temporary measure.

These sayings of Jesus therefore are not introduced immediately after the parable of the Sower at haphazard; on the contrary, they have a direct relation to the main theme of the chapter. They assign a responsibility to the hearers of the word to communicate to others what they themselves receive. The truth must not be covered from view. Though the character of the coming kingdom was concealed from those whose will was opposed to its reception in the heart, the ultimate object of the Lord's ministry was that the gospel might be spread abroad, not hidden under a bushel or a bed. The light was to be placed on a lampstand. And in proportion to the zeal of His servants in imparting the truth to others, further revelations would be made to them.

THE LAMP AND THE STAND, THE BUSHEL AND THE COUCH

The Lord, in this saying here recorded, made reference to the common objects of a Galilean household to impress upon His disciples their responsibility with regard to what they heard. A lamp was among the essential furniture of the poorest home, and where means forbade the possession of more than one there the necessity was the most apparent that for its greatest usefulness it should be set upon a stand and not be obscured beneath a couch or extinguished under a bushel measure. Let the lamp be placed upon its appropriate stand, and it would shed its light upon all in the house (Matt. 5:15), as well as upon all who might enter (Luke 8:16).

Here then we find the Lord preparing His followers for the missionary work to which He had called them, and to which He would soon send them forth, first to the cities of Israel and then to the ends of the earth (Mark 6:7-13). Light was given them that it might shine to others. John the Baptist, the forerunner, was a burning and shining lamp (John 5:35); now the testimony of the kingdom was transferred to the apostles. They were His witnesses, and what He told them in the darkness they were to preach in the light, and what they heard in the ear they must proclaim upon the housetops (Matt. 10:27). The essence of Christ's gospel was its publicity, and also, as was subsequently developed, its universality. Its ultimate scope was to all men and not to a few only.

And the Lord declared, referring generally to divine communications, that nothing was concealed except to be manifested eventually, and everything made secret for a time and for a purpose would assuredly be brought to light in due course. The dimness of the typical shadows would disappear in the light emanating from the perfect Priest and Sacrifice. That which was dark and involved in the predictions of the Old Testament would be fully elucidated by application and fulfillment in the New. The Lord Himself was not a lamp, but the LIGHT, shining in a darkness which was not dispelled but was deepened thereby (John 1:5). But to those who would receive it He had come to reveal the unknown. In His teaching was fulfilled the double prophecy of the Psalmist: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world” (Psa. 78:2; Matt. 13:35). And the apostles, in their turn, did not obscure or c6nceal the light of testimony, but by the Spirit preached God's wisdom and taught the heavenly calling of the church previously hidden from all ages and generations (Col. 1:26; Eph. 3:9). Paul, as a good steward of the manifold grace of God, addressing the Ephesian elders, reminded them that in his ministry he had kept back nothing that was profitable, and that he had not shrunk from declaring to them the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:20, 27).

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Studies in Mark: 32. Shining in Public: Growing in Secret

(Continued)

This saying of the Lord therefore has reference, not to the eventual discovery of secret sins, but to the character of the period begun by His own ministry, which was an epoch of disclosure and promulgation of divine truth previously concealed. The Prophet of Jehovah was bringing out of His treasure-house “things new and old,” and in view of the consequent importance of such an occasion He reiterated His word of warning, first addressed to the multitude at large, now spoken to the disciples: “If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear." In the first case there was the general responsibility applying to all Israel to hear their Messiah for their individual enlightenment, but in the second case there is the further responsibility of those who have heard in the former sense to hear in such a manner as to be able to communicate faithfully and fully to others what they heard. This agrees with the final message to the church and the individual in the Apocalypse, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come” (Rev. 22:17).

What is the special significance of the reference to the bed and the bushel? If the bed may be considered to point to self-ease and self-indulgence, the bushel, or corn-measure, may indicate those domestic and other duties, legitimate in themselves, but which, equally with selfishness, may seriously interfere with an effective testimony. But, whatever may be the exact meaning, it is certain that both duty and recreation are liable, apart from necessary precautions, to obscure or even to extinguish the witness of discipleship. And by such a lapse from faithfulness, the truth, divinely revealed for diffusion throughout the world, is virtually placed again in a place of concealment. In another context the Lord specifically warned against such secretion of the light, “No man when he hath lighted a lamp putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but upon the stand, that they which enter in may see the light” (Luke 11:33). In contrast with others mentioned in a subsequent parable, the “wicked and slothful servant” having received the talent went away and hid his lord's money to his own reprobation.

HEEDFULNESS IN HEARING

Another saying immediately follows that relating to the lamp, and this is introduced by the phrase of frequent recurrence in this section, “And he said unto them." For the disciples it was pre-eminently the day for them to sit at the Master's feet “to hear.” Moreover, in their hearing they were to beware of the leavening influence of the teaching of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees (Matt. 16:12). They were not to be carried about by every wind of human opinion as to who He, the Son of man, was. “Take heed,” said He, “what ye hear,” supplementing this warning as to the matter of their hearing, by another as to the manner of it: “Take heed how ye hear” (Luke 8:18).

The Lord next applied the principle of divine righteousness to their future ministry of what they heard. God would not be unrighteous to forget their work and love and service in this respect (Heb. 6:10). In proportion to their zeal and energy in transmitting what they received to others, they should receive still further communications of truth. Let them therefore use the corn-measure not to cover up the lamp, but in useful service to others. “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you, and more shall be given unto you.” According to the ancient proverb, “There is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat; and he that watereth shall be watered also himself” (Proverbs 11:24, 25). In the terms recorded by the Evangelists, grace was giving a revised version of the “lex talionis.” The Lord was not saying to them, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” but laying upon them a newer and nobler injunction, “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:38).

Those to whom “more is given” are those who hear, as it is expressed in the A.V. This “hearing” implies a reception of the new teaching in the truest and deepest sense of the word, receiving the testimony as of God (John 3:34; 1 Thessalonians 2:13). Such persons are the good-ground and fruit-bearing hearers. These enter into possession of the word. They make it their own by faith. They have it. And the Lord added, “He that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Was not this so with the wayside hearer? The good seed was immediately snatched away, since it lay upon the surface. In a formal sense this class of hearer had the word; in a vital sense he had it not.

The infallible evidence of vitality is fruit-bearing, and we are taught in this section that “ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4) is one of the forms of spiritual fruition. The word enters the heart of the disciple by the ear (Rom. 10:17), and is transmitted from thence to the eyes of others by the lamp of testimony for Christ, shining out, as this does, in every good work and word (2 Thessalonians 2:17).

THE SPONTANEITY OF THE SEED'S GROWTH

Another saying of the Lord is next introduced in the Gospel, and this is of the nature of a parable. And, as has been previously stated, it is noteworthy that this parable is not recorded elsewhere in Scripture. Dealing, as it does, with the inherent vitality of the word of God, its beautiful appropriateness in this section is not difficult to observe when it is remembered that the general subject of this chapter is the ministry of the kingdom.

Such a view, however, is not always held or sought. “What follows [the parable in question] has the special interest of being the only parable peculiar to St. Mark, one therefore which had escaped the manifest eagerness of St. Matthew and St. Luke to gather up all they could find of this form of our Lord's teaching.” This remark, taken from a popular commentary, illustrates the disparaging manner in which the professed friends of the Gospels are apt to speak of them. It is assumed in this comment that the Evangelists compiled their histories after the manner of a schoolboy essay, without any purpose or special design, eager only to record every item they could collect or remember, stringing their paragraphs together with an utter disregard of chronological order. According to this degrading theory we are asked to believe that of Matthew's seven parables (Matt. 13) Mark was ignorant of five, though he knew one which had escaped both Matthew and Luke; and that the latter (Luke) was only acquainted with three out of seven, one of which he inserted in one connection and two in another (Luke 8 and 13). In opposition to this unworthy hypothesis, which regards each of the Gospels as imperfect and fragmentary, we believe that the Spirit of God superintended both the inclusion and the exclusion of the facts of the Sacred Biography, and also the arrangement of the narrative, so that the particular design of each of the Gospels is secured. We believe, in short, that the writers were inspired of God (2 Peter 1:21), and also their writings (2 Tim. 3:16).

Returning from this digression, let us briefly recapitulate the main features observed in our examination of this chapter. We saw, first, the varied and but partially successful results of sowing the word of the kingdom portrayed in the parable of the Sower, the meaning of which the Lord communicated in private to His disciples. This is followed by some of the sayings of the Lord to His followers, assigning to them in metaphorical language the responsibility of duly and diligently publishing abroad for the benefit of all what they had learned in secret. Now, further instruction upon the same theme is added in the form of a parable to show the apostles that the propagation of the gospel depended not so much upon the skill and efficiency of the laborers who do no more than cast the seed upon the ground, as upon the self-contained vitality of the seed itself, it being the word of God.

This parable, like the earlier one of the Sower, is founded upon the phenomenon of growth in the vegetable kingdom, the main features in this case being that during the period between the sowing and the reaping manual labor is excluded so far as the parable is concerned. It is thus with the kingdom of God, the Lord said. A man scatters seed upon the land. He then pursues his other occupations, waking and sleeping, night and day; but apart from any intervention on his part, and without his possessing any real knowledge of the mysterious processes which were active within the seed, it sprouts and germinates and develops. Automatically the fruit is produced; first the blade appears, then the ear, and finally the fully ripened corn. Thereupon the time of harvest having come, the husbandman resumes work, using now the sickle to gather the grain.

This pastoral picture presents an analogy of the kingdom of God, especially in the form in which it was introduced by the Servant of Jehovah in view of His rejection. The millennial kingdom of the future will be founded upon the righteous judgments of the King; but the present moral kingdom is founded upon the teaching of the Lord the Prophet. And the great lesson taught here is that the word of the Lord carries with itself a power to effect the divine purpose altogether apart from external agencies. The seed is shown to have its foes in the thievish birds, the torrid sun, the luxuriant thorns; while the light of the lamp may be dimmed or destroyed by the bushel or the bed. But the Lord assured the hearts of His followers that, in spite of the activity of its enemies and the feebleness of its friends the word of the kingdom will inevitably make progress and prevail. So it came about, as we read, that in the days of the apostles “the word of God grew and multiplied” (Acts 12:24). And so Paul wrote to the Colossians of “the word of the truth of the gospel, which is come unto you; even as it is also in all the world, bearing fruit and increasing, as it doth in you also, since the day ye heard, and knew the grace of God in truth” (Col. 1:5, 6, R.V.).

THE SEED LEFT TO GROW

Thus while the duty of the servants of Christ was to let the truth shine in their actions, and to measure it out generously in their words, they were without power to produce any living result from their work. Let Paul plant and Apollos water, the increase is of God alone (1 Corinthians 3:6,7). The spirit and the life are in His word. It is the word itself, not the ministry of it, that works within those that believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

This was a comforting assurance for the timorous disciples, seeing that everything in connection with their Messiah was going contrary to their expectations. They herein learned that the word of the Master would ultimately succeed, and however unpromising the day of sowing might seem, the day of harvest would follow at its appointed time. Such a truth as is conveyed in this parable would, on the one hand, encourage them to trust in God to work out His plans by the invisible and invariable agencies of His word and Spirit, and, on the other hand, condemn any feelings of vanity and self-satisfaction, as though the preachers of the gospel by their own power or godliness caused its spread among men.

It has been a matter of debate among students of the Scriptures whether the “man” in this parable was intended to represent the Lord Himself or His servants. Those who contend for the latter view point out that it cannot be imagined of the Lord that “He knoweth not how” the seed grows, nor that He leaves it to take care of itself. On the other hand, others urge that it could not be predicated of the servants of Christ that they will put in the sickle and reap the corn in the day of harvest.

The truth is that neither the one nor the other of these interpretations is exclusively correct. The exact meaning lies, as it so often does in Holy Writ, between the two extremes. The Lord was conveying the important principle that in the ministry of the word its growth and ultimate fructification depended upon the intrinsic vitality of the word itself, irrespective of the personality of the minister. The central thought of the parable is the service, not the servant. This spontaneous activity of the seed's growth is equally true of the preaching of the Lord Himself and of His delegates.

But what a beautiful example is here afforded of the unobtrusive humility of Jesus! In this self-effacement of the Servant of Jehovah, we are permitted to behold one element of the perfection of His service. Consumed with zeal for the glory of God, yet seeming to labor in vain and spend His strength for naught (Isaiah 49:4), He committed the results of His ministry to Him who gave Him the word to declare (John 17:8, 14). Having sown the seed, He waited patiently for the fruiting time. We cannot but observe how peculiarly appropriate this feature of the Lord's ministry is in the Second Gospel, where alone it is so strikingly recorded by parable.

Such a spirit of meek dependence and patient perseverance in service in view of the long-distant harvest is, by implication, to be acquired by all those whom the Lord sends forth to serve. The apostle Paul had this outlook. Writing to the Thessalonians, he thus expressed himself, “What is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20). His eye was upon the distant future day of “bringing in the sheaves,” like his Master, who, in the pathway of the Faithful Witness, had His eye upon “the joy that was set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2).

In this manner the spirit of true service first known in Christ was in measure reproduced in the apostles, and perpetuated in those who believed on Him through their word (John 17:20). In such a sense there is genuine “apostolical succession” in service, though not in ecclesiastical authority. So far as labor “in word and doctrine” is concerned, the words of the well-known epitaph apply, “God buries His workmen, but carries on His work.” The servant will continue to sow until the day of harvest, but all the while the germination, the growth, and the ripe grain are incessantly wrought by an invisible and infallible Agent.

[W.J.H.]

Bruising.

(1) THE RISE AND FALL OF SATAN'S POWER

Scripture, from first to last, teems with the rich unfolding of the wonderful ways of God. The serpent's hiss, so subtlety expressed in his words to Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” which led to her fall, was divinely answered in the prophetic announcement, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Sin thus brought in by the first man, involving death not only for himself but for all the human family, could only be atoned for and eventually put away by the death of the Second man, the Lord from heaven; and reconciliation between a holy God and His guilty creatures could only be effected by the blood-shedding of a sinless Victim— of Him who was both God and man. Ever since time began, Satan has been the relentless enemy of both God and man, and, while still in open rebellion against the former, he has not ceased to exercise his power of death against the latter.

In due time, however, the promised Seed of the woman came into the very world His own hands had made, and in vain was every effort of the tempter to lure the lowly Nazarene from His path of unswerving obedience to His Father's will and pleasure. He was the only One who could say, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me"; yet that blessed, perfect, sinless life could not of itself avail for man's deliverance from the power of Satan. The prophetic announcement in Eden's garden must be fulfilled. The battle was fought and won at Calvary, and the cross where Jesus died proclaims, indeed, the bruising of Christ's heel, but, what is of infinitely deeper importance, the bruising of the serpent's head. The Savior's words are clear and plain: “How else can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house?”

Where disobedience brought the first man, obedience brought the Second. Of flesh and blood the Lord took part, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. The Prince of life laid down His life in obedience to His Father's commandment.

Thus, in the counsels of God, the cross of Christ involved three distinct issues—the judgment of sin, the judgment of the world, and the casting out and final judgment of Satan. Till this last, when Satan is cast into the lake of fire for eternity, that old serpent is still permitted to blind the minds of those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, but after the catching up of the saints to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17), he will work “with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” The “man of sin” will be his direct agent in the land of Israel, even “the son of perdition,” who will oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he himself will sit down in the temple of God in Jerusalem, showing himself that he is God; “whom the Lord will consume with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy with the brightness of his coming.” The victory through death of the Son of God at Calvary was the bruising of Satan's head, but both heaven and earth are yet to witness his complete defeat and eternal judgment.

In the opening of the second volume of the prophetic part of the Revelation (chap. 11:19) we have the temple of God opened in heaven, where is seen the ark of His covenant. His covenant was with Israel, and so, under the symbol of the woman (chap. 12), Israel is brought before us, “of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came.” Satan's antagonism to the woman and to her Seed—the man child—is here prophetically given, as it is historically made known in the Gospels (Matthew 2) and The Acts (4:21-30). Then there is war in heaven, and Satan is cast out into the earth with his angels, who will then no longer have access to the heavenly places as now (compare Ephesians 6:12). The heavens indeed rejoice, but alas for earth's inhabiters! when that time arrives, for knowing that his time is short, he wrathfully persecutes the woman (she is not the church, but Israelites, Abraham's seed), and makes war with the remnant of her seed now repentant, not, as once, laying aside, but keeping, the commandments of God, and who have the testimony of Jesus.

In the next chapter he is said to give power to the beast, or Roman Empire to be resuscitated in that day (ver. 12); and in the nineteenth he leads on the Empire and the false prophet, or “man of sin,” in Jerusalem, to make war against Him that sat on the horse. These two powers—political and religious—are overcome by the King of kings and Lord of lords, and are both cast alive (they do not die) into the lake of fire. After this Satan himself is bound for a thousand years in the abyss, and at the close of the millennial reign of Christ is loosed out of his prison. He goes forth to deceive and gather the unconverted nations to battle. It is his last desperate, but futile, effort against the authority of God, and his deception of men. The nations go up on the breadth of the earth. They compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, but not a sword is drawn nor a gun fired. God acts in His own sovereign rights as God, and fire comes down from heaven and devours them. This is Satan's third battle with God—first, at Calvary's cross, then in the second heaven, and finally at the beloved city Jerusalem; but all in vain. And in this last scene we see his power utterly crushed and broken. His final doom is now irrevocably fixed. “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are; and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

(2) THE DIVINE BRUISING OF CHRIST

Forty centuries of sin had rolled away since the driving out from Eden of our first parents, and man's utter failure and hopeless ruin in every successive dispensation in which God had placed him had been fully proved; when, in the counsels of God, the due time arrived for the fulfillment of the prophetic word, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts; smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.” Such was the message by Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, to Israel's guilty race, of which message the Lord's disciples were reminded when, after the singing of a hymn, He led them out to the mount of Olives.

Yes, the hour had now come when “all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning” Him. Sin had ruined God's fair creation, and wrecked His rebellious creatures; and sin, root and branch, must therefore needs be judged. “Lo I come to do thy will, O God” was the voice that from the eternal ages past had echoed down the stream of time; and, in obedience to that will, the Seed of the woman appears in the person of the obedient Nazarene. This one, through the “eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God,” to become the willing Victim and the divine Sin-bearer. Hence the record runs, “It pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.”

It was God's own act to make the sinless Christ “sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” But this involved judgment, and hence, when our iniquities were laid on Him, He was “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” All was against the lowly Nazarene in those hours of suffering on the cross. There the bitter waves and billows of divine judgment rolled over the Savior's head. God, Satan, man, and the world, in all their force and power, found expression there. Wounded in the house of His friends, He was forsaken by His own, and mocked, taunted, and reviled by soldiers, priests, robbers, and the Roman mob, and bruised by Satan. But more than all, bruised by God! then was atonement made, where no creature had a part. How bitter was the cry that rose up to heaven, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Before this, there was suffering, not for sins, but for righteousness. Dogs compassed Him about; strong bulls of Bashan beset Him round; reproach was breaking His heart; yet no murmur escaped His lips, but a dying prayer for His murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” “Deep answered unto deep at the noise of God's waterspouts,” and He could say, as none else, “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.” Yes, He “suffered once for sins, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God"; and if Satan was allowed to bruise the mighty Conqueror's heel, yet was his own head being then bruised by the Seed of the woman. The Captain of our salvation was perfected through sufferings. The victory over God's bitterest foe was won through His obedience unto death, the death of the cross. But death could have no dominion over Him who had power to lay down His life and power to take it again. Bursting asunder its iron bars, the Son of God rose triumphant from the tomb, and ascending to His Father's throne, the Satanic hosts fell back as the Lord of glory passed through their serried ranks. God's glory had been fully vindicated by the Man Christ Jesus. He had glorified His Father on the earth, and He is now glorified in heaven, set down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Christ, the glorious First-Begotten from among the dead, has gone to appear in the presence of God for us; and at His coming again to take home to Himself all His blood-bought ones, those Satanic hosts will again fall back as the ransomed army of firstborn ones wing their way to the Father's house above. As an earnest of that bright and fast-approaching day well may the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with rapture and delight, as the precious message rings in our ears, “The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” 'Tis but a moment, the twinkling of an eye, and the Bridegroom's words shall be verified, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

“O day of wondrous promise,

The Bridegroom and the bride,

Are seen in glory ever;

O God, how satisfied!*

S. T.

The Red Heifer — Numbers 19.

In this chapter we have a most instructive ordinance of God, peculiar to the book of Numbers. “This is the ordinance of the law which Jehovah hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke.” What the great atonement-day is to the center of the book of Leviticus, the red heifer is to the book of Numbers. Each seems characteristic of the book wherein they are given, which shows how systematic are the order and contents of Scripture.

Thus we have here a provision distinctly for the defilements which are met with as we journey through this world. This is of vital moment in practice. There is many a soul disposed to make the atonement do, as it were, all the work. There is no truth more blessed than the atonement, unless it be His person who gives that work its divine value; but we must leave room for all that our God has given us. There is nothing which so tends to make a sect as to take truth out of its proportions, treating a part as if it were the whole mind of God. It cannot be too much insisted upon, that the Bible is the book which delivers from all petty exclusiveness. What does it matter to have good thoughts here and right ways there, if there be along with this the essential vice of settling down contented with a part of God's mind to the rejection of the rest? Our place is carrying out the Lord's will, nothing but His will, and all His will, as far as we know it. Less than this gives up the glory of Christ. It is impossible to be sectarian where His word governs all; and there is no way of being unsectarian without it. Our being in this position or that will never make us individually and really unsectarian. The seeds of error go along with wretched self, from which there is no deliverance except by walking in the power of Christ dead and risen. This too applies here, where we have not merely the wrong of sectarianism, but the evil of thus abusing the most precious truths of God. When used exclusively, they will ere long turn into an excuse for sin, whatever the high assumptions of an earlier stage.

It will not do to confine the saint then even to Christ's atoning work, which has forever abolished our guilt before God; not even if we add to this that we know that in Him risen we are placed in an entirely new position, a life where evil never enters. Both most true and precious; but are these the whole truth? Certainly not; and there is no course more dangerous than to construe them as the whole truth. They are as precious as they are needed for the soul; but there is really no part of truth which is not needed, and this largeness and openness to all truth is precisely what we have to insist on. Indeed I am persuaded that this is after all what is most peculiar—to avoid peculiarities and pet subjects, welcoming all truth by the grace of God. Not that one can say much if the question be, How far we have made it our own? but it is truly of God to be in a position where all truth is open to us and we to it, and which does not exclude a single fragment of God's mind and will. It will be impossible, I am assured, save on the ground of the assembly of God, to find a place which will not shut out truth, and perhaps much which is evidently most precious. It is well to guard sedulously another thing—that we do not simply satisfy ourselves that we are on right ground according to God, but that our heart earnestly desire to turn what He has given us always and only to the account of His glory. The red heifer teaches the children of Israel on the surface of it that the work of the day of atonement had not so completely dealt with all sin that they might treat daily defilements as immaterial. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of the shedding of Christ's blood for our sins. It does give no more conscience of sins. We are justified by His blood; yea more, with Christ we have died to sin; and we are alive to God in Him. But though this is all quite true (and was then set forth imperfectly as far as figure could, when we look at an Israelite), such grace is the strongest motive why we cannot tamper with what is defiled. The very fact that we are cleansed perfectly before God is a loud call to us not to endure a blot before men. It was to guard His people from soils by the way that God gave here a provision so remarkable. “A red heifer” was to be brought “without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke,” a striking picture of Christ, but of Christ in a way not often spoken of in Scripture. The requirement supposes not only the absence of such blemishes as was indispensable in every sacrifice; but here expressly also it must have never known the yoke, that is, the pressure of sin. How this speaks of the antitype! Christ was always perfectly acceptable unto God. “And ye shall give her to Eleazar the priest that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face.”

The blood was taken and put seven times before the tabernacle. It was quite right that the connection should be kept up with the great truth of the blood that makes atonement, and that vindicates God wherever the thought of sin occurs. But its special use points to another feature. The sprinkling of the blood is the continual witness of the truth of sacrifice; but the characteristic want follows. “And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn. And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.” Then we find the ashes of the heifer laid up in a clean place. “And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation; it is a purification for sin.” In what sense? Simply and solely with a view to communion, i.e. of restoring it when broken. It is not at all a question of establishing relationships (that was already done), but on the ground of the subsisting relation the Israelite must allow nothing by the way which would sully the holiness that suits the sanctuary of Jehovah. This was the point.

Such is the true standard as set forth in this type. It is not merely the law of Jehovah condemning this or that. This shadow of good things demanded separation from anything inconsistent with the sanctuary. The form which this ordinance took was in respect of traveling through the wilderness, where they were exposed constantly to the contact of death. It is death that is here brought in as defiling in various shapes and degrees. Supposing one touched the dead body of a man, he shall be unclean seven days. What was to be done? “He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.” It was not permitted to purify one's self on the first day. Am I wrong in thinking a priori we might have thought this haste much the best course? Why not at once? It was ordered not for the first but the third day. When there is defilement on the spirit, when anything succeeds in interrupting communion with God, it is of deep moral importance that we should thoroughly realize our offense. This seems the meaning of its being done on the third day. It was to be no mere sudden feeling that one had sinned, and there was an end of the matter. The Israelite was obliged to remain till the third day under a sense of his sin. This was a painful position. He had to reckon up the days, and remain till the third, when he has the water of separation first sprinkled on him. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses” (the well-known provision in every case) “every word shall be established.” Thus we see he who had come in contact with death must remain an adequate time to show the deliberate sense of it, and must take the place of one that was defiled before God. A hasty expression of sorrow does not prove genuine repentance for sin. We see something like this with children. There is many a one who has a child ready enough to ask for forgiveness, or even own its fault; but the child that feels it most is not always quick. A child who is far slower to own it may have, and commonly has, a deeper sense of what confession means. However, I am not now speaking of the natural character; but I say that it is right and becoming (and this I believe to be the general meaning of the Lord's ordinance here) that he who is defiled (that is, has his communion with God interrupted) should take that place seriously. Of course, in Christianity it is not a question of days, but of that which corresponds to the meaning; which is that there should be time enough to prove a real sense of the evil of one's defilement as dishonoring God and His sanctuary, and not the haste which really evinces an absence of right feeling. He who duly purified himself on the third day was in effect purified on the seventh day.

Thus, first of all, he has a sense of his sin in the presence of this grace that provides against it; then, he has at last the precious realization of grace in the presence of sin. The two sprinklings are one the converse of the other. They set forth how sin had brought shame on grace, and how grace had triumphed over sin. This seems the meaning, and more particularly for the following reason. The ashes of the heifer express the effect of the consuming judgment of God on the Lord Jesus because of sin. It is not simply blood sheaving that I am guilty, and that God gives a sacrifice to put it away. The ashes attest the judicial dealing of God in the consumption, as it were, of that blessed offering which came under all the holy sentence of God through our sins. The water (or Spirit by the word) gives us to realize Christ's having suffered for that which we, alas! are apt to feel so little, if not to trifle with it.

There is another thing to notice in passing. The water of purification was not merely wanted when one touched a dead body, but in different modes and measures. That might be called a great case, but the institution shows that God takes notice of the least thing. So should we—at least in ourselves, “This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent; all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean. And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.” “The bone of a man” might be a much lesser object, but whatever defiles comes into notice, and is provided for in Christ our Lord. Thus God would habituate us to the nicest discernment and the most thorough self-judgment. It is not only grave matters that defile, but little occasions, as men would say, which come between us and communion with our God and Father. At the same time He provides the unchanging remedy of grace for every defilement.

W. K.

The Third and Seventh Days — Numbers 19.

Of the use of the third day and the seventh day in Num. 19:12, I should not give any very dogmatically certain interpretation, drawing its meaning more from the experiences pointed to by the figure than from directly scriptural proofs. “Third” is little used in scripture as a number to which meaning is attached; it is, however, somewhat as that which is beyond two. Two seems to import completeness by corroboration in witness; the third more than enough, and hence, also, what leave the previous state whose witness is complete. It is here used, I believe, only as a division of seven.

But the moral bearing I apprehend is this. The red heifer was a provision for defilement in the way—hence introduced into the book of Numbers, not in Leviticus. Its use was not to found communion by blood (though that groundwork was first laid and perfectly laid, in that the blood was sprinkled seven times there where Jehovah was to meet the people), but to restore communion interrupted by defilement. The sign (the ashes) of sin having been consumed long ago, was put into running water, and the unclean sprinkled with it the third day. For two days he lay under the uncleanness—must feel it as such. There was no haste in restoration to communion till the privation of it (and thus the uncleanness of sin) was felt. Then in the water (the application by the word in the power of the Holy Ghost), the sense that the sin (which interrupted communion) was put away before God, was given after the full witness, in the soul, of the evil. The man was brought out of it in the sense of the grace that put it away, and that cleansed from it; and connected the sense of sin, not with the bitterness of lost communion, but with the grace that had put it away: giving a deeper and more justifying sense of it in connection with grace, making us judge it with God in grace; not in the sense of being, as to enjoyment, without Him, and the Holy Ghost a reprover.

Still, this is not communion; it is not the soul occupied with God without the conscience having to be exercised, but the conscience in exercise, though now no longer a bad one, but in a renewed sense of grace and goodness. Judging the evil thence, one is in a sense purified, but not so as to be peacefully in communion with God; enjoying Christ for His own precious excellences, which we do in communion. When the full work is wrought; when this purifying is complete, and grace in respect of sin is fully entered into—then, communion is entered into which leaves sin and all thoughts about it behind. The grace that has purified, in making us judge sin according to grace, makes us now enjoy grace without any more thinking of sin—in a word, enjoy God. Communion is restored, and, in the full acceptableness of the offering of Christ, understood and enjoyed. I enter into the presence of, and communion with, God—sin, as the subject of my thoughts, being wholly left behind. This is the seventh day. All is complete.

J. N. D.

Scripture Query and Answer.

Q.-Rev. 20:11-15. Would you kindly explain if any who will stand before the “great white throne” will have their names in the book of life? H. J. D.

A.-Not one of those who have their names in the book of life will stand before the great white throne. Only the wicked “dead” are there arraigned—no longer dead, but raised for “judgment"! Into judgment the believer does not come, as we are told by the Lord Himself, in John 5 And here (in Rev. 20) we learn that “blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection.” None but the good are here. The rest of the dead are the wicked who lived not again (i.e. were not raised) till a thousand years after. Then they are seen before the great white throne, and each one is judged out of those things which were written in “the books” according to their works. The inevitable issue of judgment is the lake of fire. As the opened “books” reveal positively the wicked deeds of all there standing “before the throne,” so does the absence of their names from the “book of life” negative their title to a place in heaven (c.f. Luke 10:20).

There will be no death during the millennium —the thousand years—except of the sinner, who is accursed (Isai. 65:20). Death and hades, into which the sinner passes (his body into “death,” and his spirit and soul into “hades"), “till the time of the dead that they should be judged,” now deliver up the dead which were in them, and they are judged each according to their works. “Death and hell” (i.e. the contents of both) “were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”

Scripture Queries and Answers.

Q.-What is the teaching of Holy Scripture as to Sheol or Hades?

1. Does the “three days the Son of man was in the heart of the earth,” and our Lord's descent “into the lower parts of the earth,” refer to anything more than, in the former the grave; and in the latter the dust of death and the grave?

2. Would it be according to scripture to say that Sheol or Hades (including Abraham's bosom, and Paradise) were below the earth? and that the Lord Jesus went there and emptied one compartment of it taking them on high? Or was Paradise or Abraham's bosom always in heaven, and never below the earth even in Old Testament times?

3. If so what is the force of such expressions as going down into Sheol?

4. Is the “bottomless pit” distinct from Hades?

5. Could the word Sheol or Hades be applied to heaven in that it also was part of the unseen?

J. C. B.

A.-The Old Testament word “Sheol” occurs sixty-five times and is translated in our Authorized Version thirty-one times by “grave,” three times by “pit,” and thirty-one times by “hell"; so that our excellent translators of 1611 did not consider the word of uniform signification.

It is represented in the Greek Version sixty-one times by Hades (ἄδης); twice (2 Samuel 22:6; Proverbs 23:14) by “death” (θἁνατος); whilst in two passages (Job 24:19; Ezekiel 32:21) no exact counterpart of the Hebrew clauses is reproduced in the Septuagint, and so the rendering of the word in these instances does not appear.

Now in the following passages (to give no more), Genesis 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; Numbers 16:30, 33; 1 Kings 2:6, 9; Psalm 49:15 his; 141:7, Sheol cannot well mean anything but “the grave,” and is so rendered in our Authorized Version (excepting Num. 16, where they say “pit"); whilst elsewhere for the most part its general reference is to the place of departed spirits. The grave receives the inanimate body. Thus in the Old Testament Sheol is used for both receptacles.

When, however, we turn to the New Testament this indefiniteness disappears. For life and incorruptibility are now brought to light through the gospel. Hades, the general representative of the word Sheol, is in the New Testament restricted to the unseen world of separate spirits, as “death,” or the grave, applies (Rev. 20) only to the body, and not to soul nor to spirit. It is the body that dies; whilst the spirit returns to God who gave it. The spirit and soul never cease to exist, whether for weal or for woe. Further, Hades receives only the wicked; the believer, if called to die, goes not to Hades, but to paradise.

Yet it has been supposed that to Hades both good and bad alike go, at death, with the two classes nevertheless separated there by a great gulf; but scripture nowhere speaks of the good being in Hades, but rather as “afar off” from those there. Certainly, if Psalm 16:10 (twice quoted in the Acts, chap. 2) be considered as teaching that our Lord on dying did go to Sheol, or Hades, His soul being not left there then—as we know He went to paradise (a garden of delight, not of darkness), where also the dying robber was received—there must in that case have been two parts for good and bad respectively. But this mistake arises from a faulty translation of the Psalm in our 1611 version. What the verse does say is, Thou wilt not leave (abandon, or, relegate) my soul to (not in) Sheol (see R.V.), and this rendering is confirmed also by the corrected text of Acts 2:27 (accepted by the Critical Editors Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, and the Revisers.

Again, Hades is never spoken of in the New Testament in a good sense. If there was a good part of Hades, as well as a bad part, why should we read of its allotment to the wicked invariably, whilst no hint is given of the good being there also?

By “the heart,” or “lower parts,” of the earth, we understand the grave. Our Lord not only died, but “was buried” and “rose again the third day.” Of this Jonah was a sign. Psalm 139:15 may serve to guard us from a too literal interpretation of the words which would seem to indicate that by the lowest parts of the earth is meant what is plainly out of sight— “in secret.” The sepulcher was made sure and the stone sealed (Matthew 27:66). Thus no human eye should peer into that holy domain where lay the body of Jesus.

Before the Savior came Abraham's bosom represented the acme of bliss to the pious Jew, seeing that Abraham was called the friend of God! To be “with Christ” is the Christian's blissful prospect as now revealed. This is in the paradise of God, above. Paradise is not Hades, nor was Abraham in Hades, but seen “afar off” by the tormented soul that was in Hades. It is a dream of man that our Lord went to Hades and delivered any there from. Not to Hades but to paradise the Lord went. Nor does scripture give any hint of deliverance from Hades. Judges 5:12; Psalm 68:18; Ephesians 4:8 speak not of the liberating of prisoners, but of the leading captive the oppressive powers of evil, here called “captivity.” Christ has spoiled the [wicked] principalities and the powers and made a show of them openly, in His triumph over them (Col. 2:15). He led captivity captive; not a word as to setting free hell's captives, as some would make out.

“Going down” to Sheol—the grave or the pit being ocularly beneath us.

The bottomless pit (Revelation 20) is not where man is but where Satan will be bound for a thousand years, preliminary to his being cast into the lake of fire for eternity; whereas Hades receives the spirits of those who have died—the wicked dead whose spirits once inhabited a mortal body. The soul and spirit go to Hades, whilst the body made of dust has meanwhile its part in “the grave” (whether it be sea or land), awaiting its resurrection to judgment. When “man” is raised, the earth and heavens being no more, he is cast—not into Hades (which finds place no longer), but into the lake of fire prepared (not for man but) for the devil and his angels. The believer, if put to sleep, is raised, not for judgment, but for glory (Philippians 3:20, 21).

Sheol or Hades cannot be applied to heaven, but is in contrast with heaven, as it is its opposite.

What Is the Church? 8.

(Concluded from page 252)

To return to the revelation of this mystery. Speaking of the church—the body of Christ (Col. 1:26)—the apostle calls it, “The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints; to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” For the Jew, Christ is the accomplishment of the glory; but Christ, present in Spirit, becomes the hope of heavenly glory for those in whom He dwells.

Thus, also in the Epistle to the Romans: “Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest,” etc.

The more the Epistles of Paul, or of Peter, are examined, the more examples we shall find of the contrast between the hopes and the election of Jews and Christians (only, Peter never treats the subject of the church), and the more we shall find the eternal election of the church brought into light. In Eph. 3 this mystery is called also the mystery of Christ; for indeed before it was Christ an individual man, and not Christ the Head of a body spiritually united to Him; and the apostle declares that it was by a special revelation that it had been made known to him (vers. 3, 4, 5)—the knowledge of a mystery which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men; this mystery being that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs of the same body.

These passages show sufficiently the way in which Paul presents the church as an essential doctrine of truth; but yet as a mystery which had never been revealed under the Old Testament, and which never had any accomplishment before the death of Jesus had closed all those relations of God with Israel, which had reference to the prophecies and promises, so far as they depended upon the faith and faithfulness of man. They show that blindness having come upon them for a time, God, who will fulfill His promises to His earthly people, has found, in the period of their blindness, the occasion of manifesting this admirable fruit of His eternal counsels, viz., the church which, when Israel is restored, through grace, to the enjoyment of the promises made to them, will shine as the bride of the Lord, in the brightness in which He will Himself be manifested.

Such is her destiny! Whilst waiting, what is her place—what is her calling? We have said that the Holy Ghost, come down from heaven, gathers her upon earth. If the Bridegroom delays His coming, and if souls go to wait with Him for the moment of the assembling of all that are His, raised or changed, in His presence in the air, those of the redeemed who remain gathered down here, where the Holy Ghost the Comforter abides, always form the church. There may be ignorance, the members may be scattered here and there, the church may have been unfaithful and stripped of her ornaments, but it remains equally true that until Christ calls her to meet Him in heaven she is always the church—always the bride of Christ. She has been espoused as a chaste virgin to Him, but it is to a heavenly Christ.

Israel is His people upon earth. Whilst Christ is in heaven, the Holy Ghost is gathering the church to be His up there. However, she has not only a heavenly calling, she is also His bride and His body. When all the thoughts of God have been fulfilled, she will, as a fact, be with Him. Her thoughts and her character are (at least they ought to be) formed after her portion, according to God. Thus she is already united to Christ by the Spirit. She is one, and can be one only. But she is characterized by yet other traits. When the world rejected Christ, it passed judgment and condemnation upon itself. “Now,” said the Lord, in referring to His cross, “is the judgment of this world.” The church was set up in grace when the relations of God with the world, on the footing of the responsibility of man, were ended forever by the rejection of Christ. Thus she has been called to come out of the world to be received of God. She is Christ's alone. “Come out from among them,” says the word, “and I will receive you.” It is a peculiar people, belonging only to Him. “Ye are not of the world,” says Jesus, “as I am not of the world.”

And this is true, not only as regards individuals, but “that they may be one,” says the Lord, “that the world may believe.” It is a unity perceptible to the world outside itself. “What have I to do,” says the apostle, “to judge them also that are without? Do not ye judge them that are within? Them that are without, God judgeth.” The Holy Ghost was upon earth to establish the closest and most formal union between the members of the body; they were members one of another. This unity was recognized among them. All knew that a Christian was not of the world, because he was of the church. If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. This unity was truly and distinctly manifested in each locality. There was the church of each place, as the very addresses of several Epistles show. But this local unity proved the universal unity. Any one member of it was thereby a member of the universal unity.

Teachers, evangelists, apostles—Timothy, Titus, Paul—did not belong to one church more than another. The gifts were members of the body. The idea of a member of a church is not found in the Bible: the thought there is very different; it is that of members of the body of Christ. But these “joints and bands,” which might exercise their activity in local churches, proved the unity of the whole body, and made it visible and perfectly perceptible to the world.

Christians acknowledged one another, and were acknowledged as one body—a sole, well-known, and well-defined body, having common interests, and the most intimate ties, as a body apart from the world. The Holy Ghost cannot unite the church with that world out of the midst of which He has taken her. Persons might come in unawares into the formal body, but it was a distinct body into which they came as false brethren. It is plain that if the church he one in the midst of the world, her duty is to glorify the Lord in that unity, and by that unity, and as a whole. For this responsibility cannot be separated from any position whatsoever, in which we are placed by God.

And the motives are so much the more powerful as the grace of that position is excellent. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city set on a hill, the epistle of Christ, an epistle which ought to be read and known of all men. The body of Christ ought to re-produce, by the power of the Spirit—that power which overcomes all the separative principles which selfishness and sin have introduced into the world—the character of its Head; and thus glorify Him on the earth. The bride should manifest her attachment to the Bridegroom—that she is wholly and exclusively His!

People talk about an “invisible” church. The word says nothing about this: it is a notion which quite denies the force of the passages we have just quoted. The scattering of the children of God has hid them; but no one would venture to maintain that individuals should be invisible, that is, that they should conceal their Christianity — “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” It is clear then that individuals should not be invisible. Now if that be true, to say that the church may be invisible means nothing short of this, that these individuals ought not to be united. Yet it is certain that the Lord says that they ought to have been one, that the world might believe.

If there be divisions, they are carnal, and walk as men. If the duty of all individuals he to let their light shine before men, and if all these individuals are closely united and form a separate body outside the world, making everywhere a profession of their union, as it was undeniably the case at the beginning; to say that that body is invisible has no sense. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” But this in passing.

The question I am now treating is not how far the church realizes this position. I am speaking of the church such as it is presented in the word. But if the church be the bride of Jesus, she ought to desire, as such, to glorify Him during His absence. Her heart must be given to Him; she must receive her directions from Him alone.

If she be the house of God, she must seek to keep herself pure, on account of the holiness of the Spirit who dwells therein. If she be the pillar and ground of the truth, she will not be able to endure anything but the truth, which is the basis of her existence; for the glorious revelation of Christ, who has accomplished her redemption—God manifested in the flesh, preached to the Gentiles, received up into glory—has given her being, and she is the witness of it.

Conscious of being the bride of the Lamb, she will have the affections proper to such a relationship; she will long for the coming of the Bridegroom to receive her to Himself. She will understand that she belongs to Him in heaven; and, consequently, will not mix herself up with the world, nor confound her expectation with the coming of Jesus to judge the world. She knows that when He appears she will appear with Him in glory. Thus separated from the world by the Spirit, who is the power and earnest of this hope, she will seek to realize it as much as possible upon the earth. He that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure. This is also the force of the teaching of Phil. 3; which, however, has an individual for its object. I quote it because I speak of the normal effect of this truth in the heart of the Christian. He who has learned it will have the conscience that the church is one—can be only one. He will have the conscience that she belongs to Christ and can belong to none other. He will have the conscience that she ought to manifest this unity and render a constant and practical testimony that she is His alone. The presence in her of the Holy Ghost, who gathers the members in one body, will be the power and life of this testimony. The path will be the path of faith, and the path of faith will be the path of sufferings; but they will be the sufferings of Christ for His body, that we may be glorified together.

J. N. D.

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings 19

1 Kings 17-22. (Continued)

But more than that. In the Lord Jesus Christ's case there was this difference. There we get perfection. It was not in the presence of Jehovah—in the presence of His Father—here it was in the presence of Satan, and there He was kept, because He and He alone was found in the power of dependence upon God by faith. Where there was not the visible display of His presence and His glory there is nothing like the sustaining power of dependence and faith. And the Lord Jesus showed us that in its full perfection in the presence of the enemy. Thus you see the cases are all different. Elijah's was decidedly the lowest one of the three, for there there was the gift of that which miraculously sustained. It was not the power of the Lord alone without anything, but it was what God gave power to sustain. It was therefore more what was conferred. In Moses's case it was what was enjoyed, not conferred. It was not things or creature—things used to give him power, but it was the Creator Himself that was enjoyed. And in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ it was the Creator Himself in the most perfect self-abnegation, and dependence upon His Father.

Well, the prophet now goes forth to a cave, or the cave, for it seems to be some special one, and lodged there. “Behold the word of Jehovah [came] to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for Jehovah God of hosts.” The presence of God always brings out our true state—invariably. So we find in the case of the companions of our Lord Jesus Christ. Directly they get near enough to the glory they go to sleep. It does not matter whether it is glory or whether it is sorrow. There is no power in flesh, even in a saint of God nor in a prophet. There was no power to enter in either instance. The men that sleep upon the mount sleep at Gethsemane. There was One that slept not; there was only one.

And now Elijah's trial comes, and, “What doest thou here?” brings out the state of his heart. “I have been very jealous.” “I have been very jealous.” There was the point. It was Elijah. Elijah was full of Elijah. “I have been very jealous for the Jehovah God of hosts—for the children of Israel” —that was his first thought. It was not that God was not in his thoughts. He was a true saint, and I trust that no soul will admit such a thought as that I wish to lower him. But I do wish to exalt the Lord; and I do wish to draw out the profit and the blessing of the word of the Lord; and I say, beloved friends, rather than that He should not have His glory, let every man be a liar. “I have been very jealous for Jehovah God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword, and I, even I, only am left.” It was not true. It was not “I, even I, only.” He was wrong. It was not that what he said was the smallest approach to deceit. There was no deceit about Elijah—none. But it was the blinding power of self even in a most true saint of God, for self always blinds, and the one and only thing that gives us to see clearly is when self is judged. “When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light.” Now singleness of eye means that—instead of having self as the center which is occupied with every object around, or, at any rate, with such objects as engage me for the moment—one object fills me. The eye is single then, and then only.

That was not the case with Elijah. God was not his first thought. Self was possessing his mind as well as God. It was not what God was for Elijah, but what Elijah was for God. After he was grieved and wounded this is what it came to— “I, even I, only.” “And he said, Go forth and stand upon the mount before Jehovah. And behold Jehovah passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before Jehovah; but Jehovah was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but Jehovah was not in the earthquake.” The Lord was not there either. “And after the earthquake a fire, but Jehovah was not in the fire.” He was not in any of these exertions of judicial power. The time will come for wind, and earthquake, and fire, but not yet. It was the due testimony. It was the testimony for the prophet to bring in God, for that is the very business of the prophet —to bring in God, as we see in 1 Cor. 14—that where there is prophecy, the man, if he were an unbeliever, is smitten in his conscience and falls down and says, “God is in you of a truth.” That is the effect of it—the sense of the presence of God being there, not merely in the person that prophesies. It is not that God is in the prophet, but God is in you, the people of God—in the assembly of God—a much more important thing than even in the prophet.

And so now, God was in none of these exertions of judicial power—all most truly of God, but still they were of God and not God. Where was He? And how? “After the fire a still small voice.” Who would have thought of finding God there? None. None, perhaps, save those that have seen Jesus. Elijah learns, but he never would have thought of it. He learns it. He never could have anticipated it. He could follow, and does follow. He had to be taught. He needed it. “And it was so when Elijah heard it” —for he was a true man of God— “that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?” Was he brought down to the true point yet? Not quite yet. He said, “I have been very jealous.” There he is again. “I have been very jealous.” There it is again. “I have been the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I, only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away. And Jehovah said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha” —solemn word that for Elijah!— “Elisha, the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah, shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room.”

Elijah's work — Elijah's proper work — was closed. It was not that he died yet—for indeed he was not to die, but to be translated—nor was it that he did not yet wonderful deeds. It was not that there was not a lingering. But he was sentenced. He was sentenced to die, as it were. His proper work was closed, and this, too, because, as far as he was concerned, as far as the ability went, as far as he had failed to answer according to the grace of God towards His people he had failed just as another before him had failed, and there is a singular resemblance between the two. Moses had failed at a most critical point before. Moses had not sanctified Jehovah when the great trial came, for when Jehovah was full of grace towards the people, Moses, smitten by the people's dishonor that they had put upon him and his brother, resented it, and Moses would have brought out something judicial. Moses would have liked the wind or the earthquake, or the fire, just as Elijah would. He would have liked to have burnt up Jezebel and all the rest of them. No doubt they deserved it, no doubt of it. But where was God in it? Where was God? Was this what God had called him to? Elijah failed the Lord at this most serious crisis in the dealing with His people. Instead of sanctifying Him he had, on the contrary, isolated himself, and here separated himself from the twelve tribes. He no longer, as it were, reared the twelve stones for an altar for all Israel before the Lord God. He found the Lord true to His name, but Elijah now was filled with the thought of his own injured honor his own slighted place — his own power before Jezebel. Elijah accordingly was in a complaining, murmuring spirit.

Even though a most true man of God, there was no real representation of the Lord God of Israel in such a state, and the consequence is Elijah not only must call forth others for whatever God gave them in His providence to do, but he must hand over his prophetic gift to another man in his room. It was a solemn word from God for Elijah.

And mark, too, how completely God shows the connection of this. “Yet I have left me,” says He, “after all you have been saying as to ‘I, and I only’ — yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” A sorrowful tale that it should be so—that out of all the thousands of Israel there should be but seven thousand; but still there were seven thousand, instead of Elijah, and Elijah alone, left. Elijah was wrong, and he was wrong most of all because he had not known this from the Lord. He ought to have known it, for I am persuaded of this, that where our heart is with the Lord, where we look for God, we shall see God.

No doubt if people are always on the hunt for evil they will always find evil enough in such a world as this, and there is no great spirituality in seeing and pronouncing upon evil. The great thing is whether we are able to bring down the goodness of Christ to meet the evil and the difficulty.

This is where faith really shows itself, not in finding fault only, and finding this or that that is not correct that is easy enough and requires no power at all, but the other does, and it requires what is greater than power — grace willingness and delight of heart for that which is good.

Now Elijah failed there, and failing there he failed God, for certainly these were very precious to God, and Elijah had not seen one of them, did not know one of them, did not suspect the existence of one. If Elijah had not thought so much about himself he would have seen some of these seven thousand before, and so too, with ourselves; for 1 am quite persuaded that while the Lord has given us a most special place, and a place of communion with His own mind in the present ruined state of the church of God, still we must not forget the seven thousand. We must not forget that there are those that we do not see—that we do not meet with — that we are not in the habit of having to do with, but we must leave room for them in our hearts, in our faith. We must hear them on our soul before God. If not, the Lord has a controversy with every one who does not, as He had with Elijah then. And be assured of this, beloved friends, it is of the very greatest importance for our own souls, as well as for God's glory, that He has these, and the only question is whether we give credit for it and whether our souls take it in, not as a mere thing that we believe, but as that which acts upon our hearts, which draws us out in prayer, in intercession, in care, and in desire for every one of these seven thousand—every one of the lips that have not kissed Baal.

Well, the next thing is that he finds Elisha, for that comes first, though mentioned last. He finds Elisha. “And Elijah passed by him and cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah,” for he understood the act, “and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee? And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose.”

You see there was at once the free action of prophetic power. Had he not had the mantle of Elijah he would not have been authorized to act as he did. Who is he to sacrifice thus? He understood it; he understood it well, and you observe it was not merely the return to his parents. It was not that God was not in his thoughts. He sacrificed the oxen. It was not only the thought of natural relationships. “Then he arose and went after Elijah and ministered unto him.” Now the Lord does not rebuke that. Where He is concerned He rebuked it, but Elijah was not the Lord, and there was just the difference between them. Elijah had not that all-absorbing claim that was to supersede a father and a mother; but the Lord Jesus had, and therefore it was a sign of want of perception, want of faith, for the man mentioned in the New Testament to wish to go back even though it were to bury his father. That might be a great deal more, surely, than kissing father or mother as a farewell—to bury him. Surely it was impossible for nature to stand out against that, but this is the very thing—the Lord God of heaven and earth was there, and the very first point of faith is that His claim should be paramount; he was not even to go and first bury his father. Christ first, and not even the burial of one's father! [W. K.]

(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 4:13-20: The First Parable Interpreted

4:13-20

21.-The First Parable Interpreted “And he saith unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how shall ye know all the parables? The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; and when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them. And these in like manner are they that are sown upon the rocky places, who, when they have heard the word, straightway receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway they stumble. And others are they that are sown among the thorns; these are they that have heard the word, and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And those are they that were sown upon the good ground; such as hear the word, and accept it, and bear fruit, thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredford “.

The apostles came to the Lord to seek enlightenment with regard to the meaning of the parable of the sower. He told them that the mysteries of the kingdom, though concealed from the unbelieving mass, were committed to them. But it was one thing for them to have these mysteries in a parabolic form, and another thing to know the true inwardness of the parables. The ignorance of the disciples upon the latter head stood confessed in their inquiry concerning the parable of the sower. This parable was, in comparison with others, elementary in nature, and introductory in character. If they were unable to comprehend the initial lesson regarding the hitherto unrevealed phases of the kingdom, how much less would they be able to understand further parables of a more advanced and more complex nature? The Lord said to them, “Know (οἴδατε) ye not this parable? how then will ye be acquainted with (γνώσεσθε) all the parables?”

This inability of even the apostles to understand the significance of the parables apart from the Lord's own exposition shows that they were not used as are figures of speech, in the ordinary acceptation of this term. They were not like similes or metaphors or allegories introduced in order to illuminate or embellish or simplify a discourse. The parables, on the contrary, however deeply they might be impressed upon the memory, presented the truth shrouded in a veil, which was impenetrable to the disciples and to the multitude alike. The Prophet lifted the veil for the instruction of His followers; as we read, “Without a parable spoke he not to them [the populace]; and in private he explained all things to his disciples” (Mark 4:34, New Trans.), so that when He said to them, Have ye understood all these things? they were able to reply, Yea, Lord (Matt. 13:51). What the disciples failed to retain of the parables and their interpretations unfolded to them during the term of their Master's ministry, the Holy Spirit (so the Lord promised), should bring to their remembrance after His descent at Pentecost (John 14:26).

It is remarkable that but few of the Lord's own interpretations of His parables are recorded in the Gospels. Those of the sower and of the wheat and tares are given (Matt. 13:18-23; 37-43), as well as that relating to the true nature of defilement (Matt. 15:10-20; Mark 7:14-23). It may also be said that we have the explanation of the parable of the drag-net (Matt. 13:47-50). With regard to the others, however, we are left to seek to understand their meaning in the light of the subsequent revelations of the Spirit, transmitted through the medium of the apostles in the Epistles.

THE SOWER AND THE SEED

It has been suggested that “the parable of the sower” is not altogether a suitable title for the Lord's first parable, since there is no definite statement of the identity of the sower, while a lengthy explanation is given regarding the behavior of the seed in the various soils; and that a preferable description would be the parable of the seed and the soils. This remark must have been made without adequate reference and reflection. For the former is precisely the designation bestowed upon it by the Lord Himself. According to Matthew He prefaced His interpretation by the words, “Hear ye the parable of the sower.” And evidently the parable is so described by the Lord to indicate that it unfolded the relationship He Himself was assuming towards the kingdom of God in its altered character. He, so to speak, laid aside the sword of the King and Judge and took up the word of the Prophet and Teacher.

This new function, as about to be exercised, possessed also a special feature which the parable made clear. This feature was that the work of the Sower would, to outward seeming, be a partial failure. When Messiah reigns in power His rule will be successful, without exception, in subduing all things to Himself. When the Sower sowed the word, three-fourths would be absolute failure, and the remainder fruitful only in varying degrees.

The Sower therefore is the subject of this parable, and, in agreement with the second parable, it may be understood that “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man” (Matt. 13:37). Subsequently, the apostles, in their ministry of the truth, became sowers themselves in a secondary sense. For example, Paul used this figure when writing to the Corinthians: “If we sowed unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your carnal things?” (1 Cor. 9:11; cp. also 1 Cor. 3:6).

The Lord's declaration that He was among them as the Sower implied that His errand of seeking fruit in Jehovah's vineyard was futile, as it was definitely expressed in another of His parables (Luke 13:6-9). It was not yet the glorious year of jubilee to which the ancient type pointed when there should be no need of sowing (Lev. 25:11); nor was it that millennial day of extreme fruitfulness when, according to the prophecy, “the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed” (Amos 9:13). But it was a day to “sow beside all waters” —a day when the Great Husbandman must, in fulfillment of the purposes of God, wait patiently for the precious fruit of the earth. It was, moreover, a day of shame and suffering for the Servant of Jehovah, when the Sower must sow in tears; yet, in the words of the Psalmist, “though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed; he shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psa. 126:6, R.V.). For if He was the patient Sower, He was also the Lord of the harvest. Israel then, having been found barren and unfruitful, the Lord came bringing that which would produce fruit, and this good seed He scattered broadcast, upon good and bad soils alike. He had come to serve, and, as the Perfect Servant, He left the results of His work with Him who sent Him, according to the promise of Jehovah concerning His word of grace, “For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:10, 11). In the strength of this assurance the Prophet of God sowed in the morn His seed, and in the evening withheld not His hand.

In Mark the seed is called the word simply, without any qualification; but in Luke we read more definitely, “The seed is the word of God.”

This phrase predicates the divine origin of the word. It is of God. “I have given unto them thy word,” the Son said to the Father. The word of God has the germ of life within itself.

It is living and operative. It is incorruptible and eternal. It possesses life, and it bestows life. In the Gospel by Luke where the kingdom of God is treated in its world-wide aspect, this designation is on this account the most appropriate. But in Matthew we have not the generic but the specific term. The seed is there described as the “word of the kingdom.” This phrase covered the subject of the word, while that of Luke looked to its Author. Christ's word had special and particular reference to the kingdom. We learn therefore from the First Gospel that in the parable of the sower the Lord made direct allusion to His own teaching on the topic of the kingdom. And it is well to remember that while the instruction in regard of the hindrances to the germination and fruitfulness of the seed is of general application to spiritual matters at all periods, primarily it referred to the gospel of the kingdom, preached by the Lord and His apostles.

On comparing the accounts in Matthew and in Luke, it will be further noted that the former emphasizes the necessity for understanding the word, and the latter the necessity of believing it. The hollowing extract refers to these differences in mode of expression between the two Evangelists.

“There is, of course, a great deal in common between the two; but the Spirit had a wise reason for using the different expressions. It would have been rather giving an opportunity to an enemy, unless there had been some good grounds for it. I repeat that it is ‘the word of the kingdom' in Matthew, and ‘of God' in Luke. In the latter we have ‘lest they should believe,' and in the former 'lest they should understand.'

“What is taught by the difference? It is manifest that, in Matthew, the Holy Ghost has the Jewish people particularly in His mind, although the word is going out to the Gentiles in due time; whereas, in Luke, the Lord had particularly the Gentiles before Him. They understood that there was a great kingdom, which God was about to establish, destined to swallow up all their kingdoms. The Jews being already familiar with the word of God, their great point was understanding what God taught. They had His word already, though superstition and self-righteousness never understood it (you might have been controverted had you said to a Jew, You do not believe what Isaiah says); and a serious question came, Do you understand it? But if you looked at the Gentiles — they had not the lively oracles, so that among them the question was believing what God said; and this is what we have in Luke. The point for a Gentile was that, instead of setting up his own wisdom, he should bow to what God said.

“Hence you will observe that, looking at people who had not the word of God, and who were to be tested by the gospel going out to them in due time, the question was believing something that had not been brought out to them before. In Matthew, speaking to a people who had the word already, the great thing was to understand it.

This they did not. The Lord intimates that, if they heard with their ears, they did not understand with their hearts. So that this difference, when connected with the different ideas and objects of the two Gospels is manifest, interesting, and instructive.

“When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not.” Another solemn truth we learn from this — the great thing that hinders spiritual understanding is religious prejudice.

The Jews were charged with not understanding. They were not idolaters, or open infidels, but had a system of religion in their minds in which they had been trained from infancy, and which darkened their intelligence of what the Lord was bringing out. So it is now. Among the heathen, though you would find an evil state morally, yet at least there would be that kind of barren waste where the word of God might be freely sown, and by grace, be believed. That is not the case where people have been nurtured in ordinances and superstition: there the difficulty is to understand the word.” [W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

The Lord Jesus a Servant for Ever: Part 1

Luke 12:35-41

These verses, and indeed the whole chapter, show how the saints are viewed apart from this world. There was a scene around which was plotting against them. They were not to fear. “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” But there was something in it that they were to fear; they were to beware of hypocrisy (ver. 1), for all would be disclosed. The Lord presses that they should have their treasure in heaven. It is not as people often say, “Where your heart is, there is your treasure,” but, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” They were taken out of the world to serve in it; and He encourages them to have entire confidence in the care and love of God watching over them, and tells them that in God's mind and thought they were of value—of value to God. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His care. “Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” He is your Father— “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You must trust Him. For the present they were obliged to have their loins girded. This was not rest. They were to be tucked up ready for work and service; their lights burning—, and they watching—ready for their Lord.

While that was their character in this world, there was a world that belonged to them—to the Father, and He was occupied with them about that world, though taking care of them through this. We have thus the constant abiding of His love. The Son of God has taken “the form of a servant,” and He will never give it up. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, one with the Father, God over all, blessed forever; but that gives the more force to His being a servant. He has had His ear pierced through with the awl at the doorpost. The Hebrew servant, when he had served seven years, if he said, “I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free,” became a servant forever; his ear, the sign of obedience, was bored. That is what He has done, and it is His glory—outward humiliation, but divine glory and love.

Love always delights to serve, but selfishness to be served. He is love, and He delights to serve; but if He is to serve us, He must come down low, and He comes in a love that is above everything that hinders; and the more He humbles Himself, the more I can see a love that can only be of God! It is this that is so touching in His life. He sits, weary with His journey, on the well, and says, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and” —not, who it is that speaketh to you, but— “who it is that saith to thee” (who it is that has come low enough to say) “Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” He was a divine Person sitting, talking to her, and He was her servant! He says again, “I am among you as he that serveth.” He was their only Master and Lord, but being above all, He has the privilege of taking the title of servant; and having refused to go out free, He has taken this place of serving love, forever. It is His glory, and has nothing to do with His Godhead, except to show His unutterable grace.

We find in Phil. 2 His coming down to take this place. “He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.” He served God; served us too in grace. He took the place in willing love. “Lo I come to do thy will, O God.” And He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He lays the form of the glory of Godhead aside (Godhead He never could lay aside), and thus we find His perfect, infinite love. Where should we have been if He had not taken the form of a servant? Lost forever. But there was love enough in Him to come to this place. He goes to death, and there I find the power of divine love in His service. Nothing stopped it; Satan's power was there; man's bitter and base ingratitude, as He says in that beautiful fiftieth of Isaiah, “When I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?” He goes on; “Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke, I dry up the sea,” etc. As Jehovah—God—He did as He pleased. He not only did miracles Himself; but what proved His divine power much more, He gave others power to do them. “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to my Father” (John 14:12).

He is working in that perfectness of love in this world, and nothing stops it at all. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” I have not ceased to be Jehovah, but I have taken the place of a servant, to take up every sorrow you are in. And see the return—men found it an occasion to reject Him! “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” Nothing stopped Him—death did not stop Him. He came to die; and felt what it was to die as none of us can; for He has taken the sting out of it. He came to be “made sin,” and felt how dreadful it was; for He was holy. He came to bear the wrath, and felt what it was; for He knew His Father's love. Desertion was there and betrayal, and the cup He had to drink was there. He felt it all; but in it all, divine love was there to serve and go through it, to serve us wretched sinners.

There was the power of divine love when everything was gone (for God had forsaken Him), except bitterness and death, Satan's power, and the wrath of God. There you get divine love, and service too. It is a divine power and a power of love to us—to His Father, but to us too—a power that carries Him through everything when everything was against Him; divine love that made Him serve through it, till it was finished. There I adore the love that led Him to be made sin for me. There was the full testing of the love that carried Him through all. It is deeply instructive, though very dreadful to see there what man is. What do I expect of my friends if I am on trial? At least that they will not forsake me. They all forsook Him, and fled! In a Judge? I expect him to protect innocence. Pilate washes his hands of His blood, and gives Him over to the people! In a priest, what do I expect? That he will intercede for the ignorant and for them that are out of the way. They urge the people, who cry, “Away with him, away with him!” Every man was the opposite of what was right, and that one Man was not only right, but in divine love was He going through it all!

First, I get Him serving me in His life; then, when He served us in death, in spite of ourselves (for man was against Him), there He was alone, all forsook Him, and God hid His face from Him. He went into the desert (Mark 6), and had no time to eat, but when the people come He ministers to them; “He could not be hid.” If He is in agony on the cross, there is a poor thief to be attended to. He tells him, “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” If He sits weary on a well, and a poor wretched woman comes, He waits on her. All through He takes the sorrows of human nature—weariness, hunger; but with a heart that never was weary when a service of love was to be performed; a Man who does not shrink from all the vileness and wretchedness of the world; a Man in all the perfection of holiness, carrying divine love to serve every need! It was, what was divine, in a Man who took the lowest place, and there is nothing like it. It is most sweet and blessed to see it, and to see He had no will of His own in it. When they tell Him, “He whom thou lovest is sick,” we should have thought He would have started off at once. No, He abode two days still where He was, He had no commandment from His Father. We see it was to show His Godhead. Still, as a servant, He had no word, and He did not stir. It seemed very hard. His home, if He had one on earth, was that house at Bethany. You never find Him going out of the place of a servant, and He was never anything but the perfection of love in it. That service He took, and performed, and finished; and now His service [here] is over, and He is going to glory (Luke 12).

In John, where we find more the divine side than the servant's side, He shows that His going to the Father does not change His service, save the character of it. He is not serving among men, but He is serving His people up there. When He was going away, there came the thought that now He is in the glory His service is ended. That would not do for His heart. He says, In the glory I am not going to stop serving those poor things. Could His heart stop serving them? No, it could not! He is the Advocate, as we find in the Epistle of John (1 John 2:1), and this is not in the world. He does not take it up till He goes to heaven. How could a heavenly person know the sorrows, temptations, and trials of us poor sinful beings? He comes down here, sinless of course; and, after being acknowledged by the Father, He is led of the Spirit to be tempted in the wilderness, because we were there. As soon as He has given the pattern of the place in which we are by redemption (Matt. 3:16, 17), He says, I must go there; and He is led of the Spirit (we are often led by other things) into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Now (John 13) He is going to glory, having so glorified God here as to have an earned place there, as well as having a rightful one there—an official place as well as a moral one. The world will not have Me. I cannot stay here with you. You cannot have rest here—it is polluted. I can serve, but not rest here. He must go up to God, I must go on serving. He says, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” I cannot have part with you in this sinful place, and I must fit you to have part with Me on high. Though we are washed so as to have part with Him, we pick up dirt by the way; but He is our Advocate and is still serving. He brings the heart to be humbled and broken at having dishonored His name, and it is restored. His blood is on us, but He is still washing our feet. I must make you clean according to my idea of cleanness. That is what He is doing now. It is blessed love, but it is service. Is He going to give up this satisfaction of His heart in serving us (it makes us adore Him)? He is not going to give it up, and never will. He is a Man, and a Man forever; that is what we learn in this chapter. Yet He is more than that, for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

There is one thing new for God, and what He only could do—to come down a Man here. No angel could do it; but God could come down, acting in divine supremacy and love. I cannot take the form of a servant, for if I am not a rebellious sinner, I am a servant. (I may have got into rebellion as one—that is another thing). A divine person can “take” on Him the form of a servant, and that is what He has done.

He says, “Let your loins be girded.” Here I am in the middle of a world that says, “Tomorrow shall be as yesterday, and yet more abundant.” I am to be expecting Christ; the world goes on (He alone knows how long); but “the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night; for when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” That is the character given it. “As in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man.” (There is sin, and still more now, but that is not the point). I believe this—not that it is the portion of believers—and so must have my loins girded. I cannot go on loosely with a world that is not going on forever. There ought to be a better motive the heart drawn out to Him. Oh, if it were only that! They go on saying, “Tomorrow shall be as yesterday,” etc., and yet terror is in their hearts; for there is uncertainty —nothing to reckon on for a day, or a week, or a year. He calls all Christians to take their places with their lights burning the distinct, unequivocal testimony of what they are, carrying their lights as servants, and not going on with a careless world that is basting to judgment. You cannot say how soon it may fall. The saints will be with the Lord before then. Can you say that it is the first thing the Lord will do—take you up in the air, to be forever with Himself? Can you tell what day He is coming? Are you ready for Him? You do not know what hour He is coming.

I believe it is hastening on rapidly. The saints were converted to wait for God's Son from heaven; and when they lost that, all the mischief came in. It is their character—not a bit of knowledge that is stuck up as a chief thing in teaching, but—that is what you are to be. If you were constantly waiting for Him, would it not change you? Finding duties to do, and doing them—quite right; but would people be heaping up money or treasures when they know He is coming? They enjoy themselves while they can, and then comes death, and they hope it will be all right. If you are expecting the Lord and ready to open to Him, it gives a character, “Ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord” like a man that has his hand on the lock of the door, “that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.” The Lord keep us in that readiness of condition and heart as servants waiting! That is our present condition when the Lord is not [yet] come. You cannot float down the stream of the world that is going to the ocean of judgment! You are to be looking for Him. If, by His first coming, I have been saved and justified, I look for Him to come again, that I may be where He is. Here we get what the believer's portion is who is waiting for Him.

[J. N. D.]

(To be continued)

The Dealings of God With Peter in the Acts

The occasion that claims our attention first tonight is one of the deepest possible moment. It is not merely that God had abandoned His ancient people as the seat of His power—that He had done hundreds of years before. There is a further step, and a great one, in the development of God's ways; for the call still remained to this people, but now henceforward the call is going out to the Gentiles. It is not merely power. One can understand power being vested in a people that were altogether unworthy. Power does not necessarily suppose conversion—does not suppose the communion of the mind of God. Power might be given sovereignly. Power might be employed by one who was wholly alien to the thoughts of God, though God might be making use of him. As we are told, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.” We know, therefore, that God is able to use anything For His purpose; but it was a very different thing when the call of grace was going from the Jews, the favored people of God. And going out to whom? To the dogs of the Gentiles. For so they had ever been regarded; they were “sinners of the Gentiles,” even to put it in the mildest possible form. They were those who had, from the beginning, from the earliest days, from the flood, grown old in idolatry of every form; and now to these very Gentiles the call of God was about to go forth. The Lord had prepared Peter on the first great occasion when He distinguished him—when He said to him, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” He did not say that only. He said, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

We must never confound the kingdom of heaven with the church. They are two totally distinct things. I do not deny that there may be links of connection between them, but they are distinct. The keys of the kingdom were used by Peter, or, at least, one key, if I may so express myself, on the day of Pentecost, in opening the kingdom to the Jew in a far fuller manner than had ever been true before; and now that same Peter, albeit the apostle of the circumcision, was the very one that God used in His own holy wisdom to open the door to others, that is to say, to the Gentiles. And God was pleased on this occasion also to make it very marked; for, though there was no question of any fitness on the part of the Gentile, and though it was pre-eminently to be grace, yet the one by whom God brought out the grace in all its fullness was Paul, himself a master of the law trained up under the most distinguished of the legal teachers.

Peter was used of God, first of all, to present the gospel to a very pious man—a man of godly character and of good report, more particularly in Israel. And I think it was just as wise on God's part to bring in a godly man first—a man that was evidently known as such by Peter—as, on the other hand, to present the gospel by Paul to the very vilest and worst, wherever they might be found as, for instance, at Corinth. It was a question of stopping the mouths of the circumcision, and this, therefore, was done, and guarded too, remarkably, in sending Peter first of all to Cornelius. For we are told here that Cornelius, while the centurion of the band which was called the Italian band, was a devout man; and I do not believe that that means merely that he was a devout man after the flesh. Not only so, but he fasted, he feared God, and gave large alms, and prayed, and so on. He was a person that was known for his devotedness in various ways. He was one that had intercourse with God habitually.

Thus, you see, we learn that it was not strictly a question of conversion. The man was converted already. He was not a bit more converted after Peter went than before. We must never confound conversion with salvation. The two things may coalesce, but they may not; and in the case of Cornelius they most certainly did not. Cornelius may have been converted for years before, but then he could not say that he was saved. That was what he was brought into. He was brought in so that not only he should know that he was saved, but that all the others, too, should know that he was saved. That is, he was to be put openly and publicly by God's own work, and according to His will, on the same ground of known common salvation which the gospel had brought the believing Jew into, for we must always distinguish these two things.

There is often a haze in the minds of many persons on this very important matter, and I could not think that people are at all clear as to the gospel, and certainly not as compared with the Old Testament dealings with God, who do not see this difference. If one thinks merely of getting to heaven of being delivered from judgment —well, it is evident that all the Old Testament saints were; but that is not what is called the salvation of the soul. “Receiving the end of your faith,” says Peter, “the salvation of your souls.” That means the soul consciously brought, as a present thing, to know that all is clear between God and it—the soul knowing that sins are gone and righteousness come. Was that the case in Old Testament times? Certainly not. All that you could say of an Old Testament soul was that he was hoping for righteousness: he was waiting for this salvation. But the salvation was not come, and the righteousness was only near, for it was not yet arrived. That was all that Isaiah could say, even in the prophetic spirit.

But there is a different thing now. Now, the Spirit of God is not a Spirit of prophecy, but a Spirit of communion—not a Spirit of leading you to wait for a blessing which you have not got, but a Spirit of leading you into communion with that which you have—that which God has now given you and has announced as your portion. That is salvation, and until a soul is brought there it is not scripturally just to say that that soul has got salvation in the true full sense of the term. It you merely mean that the person is quickened—and that is what people do mean, and a most mischievous confusion it is—if you merely mean that a soul may be quickened and be still full of anxieties, still tried, still unhappy, that is another question. This is not salvation. The person may be as truly born again as you; and indeed very often you might have more confidence in a person who is full of doubts than in many a person who seems never to know what doubt is. You might he afraid that such a person had never judged self, or learned what sin was, or had any adequate sense of the judgment of God; whereas, although it is a most unhappy state for a person to be in—full of continual anxieties and questions about acceptance—still there might be other things that would show a conscience towards God, earnestness of desire to serve Him, though there might be ignorance, no doubt, of His ways—ignorance of this great deliverance—of what scripture calls “salvation.”

Now that was what Cornelius was brought into that day. It was not only salvation. The Jews on the day of Pentecost had been brought into salvation, for they had known nothing of that at all. Up till the accomplishment of redemption nobody knew salvation as a present thing. It could not be said of any one, and yet at the same time you would have no doubt of their eventual security. What people confound is future security with present salvation. Now they are not at all the same thing, and no amount of confidence about security is the same thing as the enjoyment of known present salvation. That was what Cornelius was brought into that day, and this is what is characteristic of the gospel to-day, and therefore it is said, “The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”

Hence, at once you find sealing. There was sealing with the Holy Spirit, because the seal of God comes upon those who enter into present salvation. What we find on this occasion was not merely the Spirit of God working in the soul of Cornelius—there was much more. Cornelius, I repeat, was not a self-righteous man that was merely going through forms of religion. If Cornelius had died he would have gone where all the other saints had gone before him. There were saints among Jews, and saints among Gentiles, but there were none before Pentecost, even among Jews, that were brought into this salvation. And, on the other hand, there had been none up to this time among the Gentiles at all. Cornelius was the first. And God particularly took care that the man that was first brought should be a man that was of most excellent character prayerful. But still, had you asked him, “Are you saved, Cornelius?” he would have said, “Oh, I would not presume—I would not dare—to say such a thing.” “But do you not know that God is giving salvation to His people? Do you not know the great work that is going on in Jerusalem?” “Oh, yes,” he would say, “but that is for the people that have got the promise; that is for the people to whom God bound Himself. Now He has accomplished it; now He has given the Spirit according to prophecy. But then, for me, I am only a Gentile.”

In short, he took what people sometimes call the place of the un-covenanted mercy of God. It was not at all that he doubted the mercy of God to his soul, but, as to present clearness, present consciousness of nearness to God, he had no thought of it, did not know that God was about to bring His people, whether Jews or Gentiles, on to this common ground. He knew it for the Jews. For Peter, in his preaching to him, alludes to the peace that was being preached to the Jews. It was not that he doubted that. But is it for the Gentile? He learns that it was. And God made His new dealing very marked, for, you observe, in the whole matter we have special intimations from God. God was not content to leave Peter to act now merely by any less thing, such as reminding him of the commission of the Lord Jesus. Do you not remember, Peter, that the Lord said, “Preach the gospel to every creature"? Do you not remember that he said, “Make disciples of all the Gentiles"?

None of these things first. There was a present dealing. There was a trance into which Peter fell, and in that trance he learns. There was that great sheet, those creatures of all kinds of which Peter was commanded to kill and eat, he being very hungry. And the voice that accompanied it showed what the meaning of it was, interpreted as it now was by the messengers that came to Cornelius to whom God had sent His angel. That angel had directed him to send for Peter. Thus, you see, there was a most careful, watchful care on God's part. There was a dealing in Caesarea; there was a dealing also in Joppa—two different intimations from God, each of them having its own distinct type but to the same point. And now they meet at the house of Simon. Peter commits himself to the guidance of the servant of Cornelius, and they come down to Caesarea. Here was Cornelius waiting, with his kinsmen and near friends. “And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him.” We see how little he entered into the measure of man in the presence of God which the knowledge of Christ gives. We see the extraordinary veneration, which Peter stops at once. Peter was only a man, after all, though he was come down to declare the salvation of God.

But there are some other particulars to which I shall direct your attention in a moment. In the discourse of Peter, he says, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him.” Now Cornelius was one of these. Cornelius, let me reiterate, was not a man of mere forms—he was anything but that. He was a man of reality. It was no question of his being born again, but of his being saved; that is, saved in the sense which you will not find generally in Christendom. Christendom has lost the true sense of salvation. It has not lost the idea of the Lord Jesus as a Savior, after a sort. But salvation as a present state, as a present state of soul entered into by faith, unquestionably it has lost. It has lowered it down and confounded salvation with the new birth. This is not at all merely a question of the mere ignorant formalist. You will find it, bad or worse, if possible, among excellent men, and it does not matter what school—Arminian or Calvinist—it makes no difference. The Calvinist is just as ignorant about it as the Arminian. There is no difference in this respect among any of them as far as I know. That is, the want of perception of the truth as to this great matter, is universal. And that is my reason for dwelling upon it at considerable length, because it is eminently practical. You know very well how many souls are tried, and full of what they call their anxious experience—their painful experience. Well! no doubt. But the reason is just this: that experience is founded upon Old Testament truth. They have not entered into the fullness of the blessing and deliverance which is now preached in the gospel.

This, then, Peter opens. “He that feareth God and worketh righteousness” —the case with Cornelius— “he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel” —that was what I described at the beginning— “preaching peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all); that word, I say, ye know.” Cornelius was not ignorant of that, but his very humility made him unwilling to appropriate it until God sent it to him—until he knew that it was presented to him. This will be so the greater your value for the people of God, if you know that you do not belong to them. And there again I am reminded of another thing, and that is, that the phrase “people of God” has lost its sense; for now all that people mean by “the people of God” is the elect. They obliterate by that very fact the distinction between the ancient people of God and the Gentiles to which they naturally belong; so that you see the fact is that the phraseology of Scripture is completely misleading in modern Christendom, and, indeed, in ancient too; and the phrase, “people of God” has been appropriated by those who are now found here below, to the denial of it to the ancient people. Here it is used in its scriptural sense.

“That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Juda, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and hanged on a tree; him God raised up the third day and showed him openly, not to all the people” —you see “the people” is constantly used here for the Jewish people only— “not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen of God, even to us"; for now God was forming a new people altogether, “who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.” But was it only to the people? “He commanded us to preach to the people.” What does he mean by that? The Jew, of course. Not so. “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him.” So we find light beginning to dawn upon this going forth of the gospel to every creature—to the Gentile as much as to the Jew.

“And, while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.” A very notable difference to what we saw on the day of Pentecost, for there they were baptized first. They were baptized every one, and believed on Jesus for the remission of sins, and then they received the gift of the Holy Ghost; but here it was while he spake the word, and these were Gentiles. This was the way of God, as you observe, with the Gentiles. “While Peter spake these words the Holy Ghost fell on them which heard the word.” And no doubt there was great wisdom in it, because who would have been bold enough? Perhaps Peter. But then there were these brethren of the circumcision there. What would they have thought? So it is plain that there was the remarkable anticipation of the difficulty of souls, in tender anxiety, on the part of God who would remove their difficulties. There was this fact. How was it attested? God had taken care of that also. It was a new thing—the gift of the Holy Ghost and accordingly, as in the case of all new things ushered in by God into the world, there were outward signs and wonders. It was accompanied by speaking with tongues—by miracles.

It was not that these signs or miracles that accompanied it were the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but they were the means of manifesting the gift of the Holy Ghost. The signs might drop, but not the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost when given was to abide forever. So our Lord had declared. Now it was made good. The Spirit of God was come. There never was a promise that the signs were always to be given. It was said in the Gospel of Mark, “These signs shall follow them that believe.” It was never said that these signs shall always follow them that believe. That is what people constantly assume who harp upon the importance of miracles, and are constantly yearning for God to restore miracles. They seem to assume that the Lord gave ground in this statement for looking for miracles and signs at any time. Not so. “These signs shall follow them that believe.” How long was just a question for God—for His wisdom. God gave an unmistakable token of that which was still deeper —that which the world will not and cannot believe —a divine person coming down and deigning to dwell both in the saint and in the church. That is what is meant by the gift of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost given in a way in which He never was before. And this, accordingly, was given to Cornelius and his house. They “were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost; for they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God.” Accordingly, “Can any man forbid water?” said Peter. It was not a question of keeping them till they learned what baptism meant, but they were brought into the privilege of baptism at once. It was a thing conferred upon them. It was not to be as a kind of duty, or law, or attainment, or a question of intelligence, or anything of the sort, but it was a privilege conferred upon them. Who could forbid water baptism to those that were baptized with the Holy Ghost? So the thing was settled. The great question was solved, and now grace could have its free way, and the mouths of Pharisaic objectors outside and inside were stopped forever. At least it ought to have been so.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

Joying in God, and God Joying in Us

“We joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." What does the world know of this? Yet is it the blessed privilege of all believers now, and in the fullest degree will be the consummation of their every blessing, and the sweetest note in their heavenly song throughout eternity, when God is “all in all.” Even now, this joy is ours, though passing through “the valley of the shadow of death,” for it is, or should be, the direct result of faith's acceptance of the sevenfold blessing which belongs to every believer, as unfolded in Rom. 5:1-11, and which may thus be summed up—(1) peace with God; (2) standing in God's grace, or favor; (3) rejoicing in hope of God's glory; (4) God's love shed abroad in our hearts, through (5) God's indwelling Spirit; (6) reconciled to God, through the death of His Son; and (7) saved by His life.

Thus God Himself, the God to whom we are brought without a cloud between, becomes in Himself the supreme object, both of our joy and of our worship. All this untold wealth of blessing, however, flows to us only through Christ, the One in whom the Father finds His ceaseless joy and eternal delight. Where it is the blessed result of God's Spirit's work within, joy naturally follows peace; but where it appears to precede it, the joy is only transient, as the Lord's divine teaching clearly shows in the parable of the sower, the seed, and the soil. Where the seed falls on the rock, the Master's words are, “They on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these having no root, for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.” The conscience having never been reached, settled peace with God is unknown, and this superficial joy does not last. But where God is personally known and trusted, the apostle could truly pray, as he did for the Roman saints, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Here joy and peace are sweetly linked together, and in their cementing union produce in the soul a deepening confidence in God Himself, and that confidence abounds yet more and more under the mighty power of the indwelling Spirit. Though God is never called the God of joy, yet Scripture fully proves how deep is His delight in His well-beloved Son. In the long eternal past, the voice of the Son Himself reveals this glorious fact, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.... Then was I by him, as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.”

More than seven hundred years before “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” the Father's voice announced, through the prophet's pen, the same unchanging joy: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him.” And this was fully confirmed when, baptized by John and entering upon His public ministry as the obedient Servant and Son, that same voice again was heard. “For lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him. And lo, a voice from heaven, saving, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This same testimony from the Father's lips was again repeated on the mount of transfiguration when the Savior's face shone like the sun, but with the addition of these all-important words, “Hear ye him.”

Yes, the Father did not leave Him alone, for He did always the things that pleased Him. That perfect Servant was ever found in the path of unswerving obedience, which even death itself could not stop; and true joy is only found in that path. Did He not say to His own, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” Obedience begets fellowship, and fellowship deepens joy; and the apostle John declares in a later day, “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you that your joy may be full.”

This joy lifts the heart above all circumstances so that we can “rejoice in the Lord always"; and, like the psalmist, can prove the truth of the words, “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Thus “the joy of the Lord is our strength,” and though in our service we may go forth weeping, yet, if bearing precious seed, we shall doubtless come again with joy bringing our sheaves with us; for they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Well, we may say that all this is true to faith, and, God being the object, we reach the living spring and divine source of all our joy; but there is also the divine side. If we, in our tiny measure, have found our joy in God, what is it when compared with God's joy in His Son, and their common joy in us? This carries our thoughts back to the beginning of His ways with us, as guilty sinners, ruined by the fall. Luke 15 is the starting-point that proves this. “Rejoice with me,” is the cry of the Good Shepherd (Christ), “for I have found my sheep which was lost.” Such, too, is the language of the Spirit (typified by the woman), who when, after diligent search, she had found the lost piece of silver, calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost.”

Further, there is the joy of the Father who, when the prodigal “was yet a great way off,” ran to meet him, and fell on his neck and kissed him. The best robe, the ring, and the royal sandals, were the precious and fitting answer to the true confession, “Father, I have sinned"; and the killing of the fatted calf was the sweet expression of the intense joy of that father's heart, as he exclaims, “Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Such is the joy of the Trinity in the salvation of souls once far from God and in their sins.

It was “for the joy that was set before him” that the lowly Nazarene “endured the cross despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” That joy sustained Him in all His pilgrim path, and, though He had, as the Sin-Bearer, to taste the “exceeding sorrow” and bitterness of death, as well as the awful storm of divine judgment at Calvary's cross, yet the day is not far distant when He shall present us “faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” Yes, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” But this is not all—the marriage of the Lamb is yet to come; and when, on that bright, cloudless day, His eyes gaze upon His glorious bride, heaven's courts shall ring with ceaseless “Hallelujahs,” as He presents her to Himself without “spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” “Arrayed in fine linen, clean and white,” the Lamb's wife shall then behold the King in His beauty. But whose joy shall be the deeper, hers or His?

“Oh! day of wondrous promise,

The Bridegroom and the bride

Are seen in glory ever;

Oh! God, how satisfied!*

All heaven will be in ecstasy as that glorious anthem rings out from countless millions. “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him,” for in all things He alone, as Lord of heaven and earth, must have the pre-eminence. Yet still a further joy awaits God's Holy One, for after the marriage is consummated heaven's door will open for the last time, and He who rules in the armies of heaven, and whose names are “Faithful and True,” “the Word of God,” and “King of kings and Lord of lords,” will come forth as the returning Conqueror to assert His rights, and establish His kingdom, on the very earth that has been the scene of His murder, and that still rejects Him. “Kings shall fall down before him,” and “His enemies shall lick the dust” in that coming day, when God shall set His King upon His holy hill of Zion.

Then shall that promise be fulfilled, when the Father says to the Son, “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” “In that day shall the daughter of Zion sing, and Israel shout for joy; yea, the daughter of Jerusalem shall be glad and rejoice with all her heart.” Then, too, shall these words be fulfilled, “The Lord hath taken away thy judgments; he hath cast out thine enemy; the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not, and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save; he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest (or, be silent), in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”

“Hosannas glad, Thou Prince of peace,

Thy welcome shall proclaim;

And all creation shall rejoice

In Thy beloved Name.”

Thus both heaven and earth alike shall witness God's joy in His own; and our joy shall be full, and that forever.

S. T.

Scripture Query and Answer: King Saul Chosen by the People or the Lord

Q.-Was king Saul chosen by the people, or chosen by the Lord (1 Sam. 8:18; 10:24; 12:13)? H. C. M.

A.-The quotations of the querist afford the answer. It was Israel's rebellious will to have, as they said, “our” king, instead of waiting for Jehovah's purposed King (1 Sam. 2:10; Psa. 2; compare also Num. 24:7; Deut. 17:14, 15; 28:36; Psa. 45), whom He will in His time yet set on His holy hill of Zion. Remonstrance and warning being alike refused, God gave them their king in His anger, but nevertheless, one “on whom was all the desire of Israel” —the people's choice indeed—not the one after God's own heart. “That [is] not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.”

Published

LONDON

T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings 20-22

In the next chapter (20)—and on this I shall not dwell long—we are in the presence, for the most part, of the national place of Israel with their enemies, but yet we have the singular fact that even when judgment was approaching on the people, still when evil was judged, when the Lord was owned, He owns His people, a thing which people often wonder at. Look, for instance, at the religious world now. Well, does any one of us who understands the nature of the church of God doubt what God thinks of that which is going on under the name of the Lord Jesus there? Does any one of us doubt how horrible is the system of clergy? I am not speaking of any particular body, but of all, for to me it makes no difference whether it is clergy of Rome or clergy of anything else. It is all the same principle, for it is the direct dishonor of the Holy Ghost, and yet, beloved friends, does not God own the preaching of His word and of His gospel there? I am never surprised if there should be, apparently, ten times more effect produced in that which is flagrantly contrary to God than in that which is according to Him, and I will tell you why. If you are come out to see wonders wrought and to see great things done you have made a great mistake; and if you are caught by such things you will fall into a serious error, and you will lose the place of blessing to which you are called. Do not be deceived; we are come out to the word of the Lord. We are come out to that Person that was sent down from heaven to represent the Lord Jesus Christ here, and it is no question of what results; it is no question of great things done. On the contrary, wherever anything on our part becomes great, or becomes an object, or becomes something for us, depend upon it there is something human in it undiscovered; there is something of nature that is unjudged—infallibly so. We are called to the despised One, we are called to the rejected One, and it is not merely so, but we are called out of what is broken or ruined, and anything that would gainsay the breach and the ruin is not true in the sight of God; and if so I say that unless our souls are prepared to cleave to the Spirit of God and the word of God, apart from all appearances, we are unworthy of the place that God has given us.

And therefore, shall one be jealous of the mighty grace of God working? I rejoice in it. Why, there are persons that get their thousands where we get our tens, and shall I not rejoice in these thousands that go to hear, even though it may be a most imperfect testimony—though it may be mixed with a great deal that is fleshly and contrary to God? Shall we not rejoice that God awakens souls and that souls are brought to Him; that there were hundreds converted, if there were hundreds, or that there were thousands converted, if there were thousands? Certainly, let God do it. We love to hear of it. So we find in this very case, because, after all, it is a great mercy in the midst of the ritualism and infidelity of the day, that there are persons, although they are hand in glove with ritualists and rationalists, yet who, for all that, are preaching Christ. Most miserable that they are obliged to own, perhaps, a rationalistic bishop, or a ritualistic one! But yet for all that, they are godly men, and they preach the gospel as far as they know the gospel, and are blest—often largely: I do not say deeply. You will never find the man in that state who has got, what I should call, solid peace. At least I have never seen one, and I have seen many; but I do say that, although you will not find a deep work in that state, you will find an extensive one, and that is exactly what I bless God for, because if it seemed to be deep it would not be true. You cannot have what is deep where things are false, but you may have a wide scattering of the seed and a great extent, apparently, of result from it, and you may have that which looks very fair, because there is nothing that keeps up weakness so much as great appearances. Well, that is the case there. And accordingly one can rejoice, and the more so because judgment is coming; and therefore that God should gather out of what is going to be judged is what one delights in.

So it was here. The Lord had partially dealt with the evil in Israel. He had smitten down, and Ahab was there and had seen it, and these prophets had been destroyed by the mere prophet of God, Elijah himself, and God was free therefore to give an apparent blessing and a real blessing, as far as it went.

A most remarkable change takes place. Benhadad besieges Samaria, and God, by the direction of a prophet, sends out even the feeble part of the army, because there must he honor put upon that which is known—not the warriors, but the armor-bearers — and the Syrians are demolished, and they learn not that God was against them. No, it was “the god of the hills.” They knew very well that Samaria was a hill, and Jerusalem was a hill, and they thought that the Jehovah God of Israel was only a god of the hills. Well, the next time they would go into the valleys and they would see whether the God of Israel was able to meet them there; but the God of Israel was the God of the hills and of the valleys as much as of the hills; and there they are beaten more disastrously on the second occasion than on the first, for there was a challenge given by them and God answers, and they were overwhelmed. Well, one might have thought to look at the outside, “What a good state Ahab was in now,” or, “The children of Israel.” Not at all. They are going to be thoroughly judged, but inasmuch as there was a measure of the outward holding of the true God—a measure of truth and of honesty —so far the king was a party. He was in the presence of the slaughter of the prophets of Baal. God did, so far, grant this outward mercy from His hand. The enemies of Israel were utterly put to naught, and yet, for all that, there was no soundness in the king. And this became apparent from another circumstance deeply to be considered by us. When Ben-hadad now fled, a man that had been so bold and vaunting, his servants said unto him, “Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray thee, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel: peradventure he will save thy life. So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said, Thy servant Ben-hadad saith, I pray thee, let me live. And he said, Is he yet alive? he is my brother. Now the men did diligently observe whether anything would come from him, and did hastily catch it: and they said, Thy brother Ben-hadad. Then he said, Go ye, bring him. Then Ben-hadad came forth to him; and he caused him to come up into the chariot. And Ben-hadad said unto him, The cities which my father took from thy father I will restore; and thou shalt make streets for thee in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him, and sent him away.”

But God had seen and God had heard. “And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbor in the word of Jehovah, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man refused to smite him. Then said he unto him, Because thou hast not obeyed the voice of Jehovah, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee.” And so it was. He found another man. He said the same. The man smote him and wounded him. Now he could be a sign—a sign to king Ahab—and he goes. “And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, “Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it. And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets. And he said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall be for his life, and thy people for his people. And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria.”

Mercy is not always of God: There are times when God's honor is concerned, when mercy is a curse, when mercy is purely human and purely according to self-will, and the more deceitful because it seems so fair. There are times when to spare the enemy of the Lord is to fail entirely in meeting the Lord's will and the Lord's glory. And so it was now, and we too have to do with the very same principle; and let us look to it, beloved friends, that whenever the time comes to stand firm, though it may seem to be showing an unkindness—though it may seem to be a rejecting those that would gladly avail themselves of mercy—on the contrary we are bound to be firm against that which overthrows the glory of the Lord. God only can show us when mercy is right, and when it is fatal. Ahab entirely failed the Lord, and this becomes most apparent in the next chapter, on which I will not dwell in this lecture. The vineyard of Naboth becomes an object, and Ahab cowers before the difficulty even of that which he coveted. But the wife had none. Possessed of not one link of feeling with the people of God, an enemy, although the wife of the king of Israel—it was nothing to her to rob an Israelite. It was nothing to her to shed the blood of the guiltless. It was nothing to her to fly in the face of the Lord Jehovah, and what her weak and guilty husband shrank from she stimulates him to. Jezebel has therefore an undying, but a most miserable memory in the word of God, and the last book of Scripture does not fail still to bring before us the sad character and way of Jezebel for our instruction.

So Naboth perishes, but his blood was watched by the Lord, and the word comes forth, too, in consequence, through Elijah. “Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria: behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine. And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of Jehovah. Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab every man child, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel also spake Jehovah, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat” (1 Kings 21:18-24).

Nevertheless, Ahab humbled himself, and in consequence the judgment lingers, and the word of the Lord meets his trembling heart as he humbled himself and walked softly. The blow was only to fall in the days of his sons. Ahab reigns; his next son reigns too. On Jehoram it falls. The word of the Lord never fails. But for all that we find in the very next chapter that this same man is led away by false spirits, by evil prophets, and that he is slain according to the word of a true prophet of Jehovah, and the dogs do lick up his blood, and his son succeeds him. And then Jehoshaphat reigns, but the chapter does not end before we have another, and a most sorrowful, picture, for the pious king of Judah seeks an alliance with the guilty, idolatrous king of Israel. Oh, what a solemn warning this is for us, for it was not merely that the guilty man sought him, but he sought the guilty king of Israel. And what was the consequence? He becomes the servant of Israel's wicked purposes. Never does the king of Israel join in what was of God. You never can, by an alliance with what is unfaithful, raise or recover the unfaithful. The faithful man sinks to the level of the unfaithful, instead of lifting the unfaithful out of his infidelity.

I need not say more now. I commit the whole details of it as most profitable for every soul that respects and loves the word of the Lord.

W. K.

Studies in Mark 4:13-20: The First Parable Interpreted, Concluded

4:13-20

21-The First Parable Interpreted (Concluded)

Wayside Hearers

Both Mark and Luke refer to the various classes of hearers in the plural, but Matthew specifies the individual, “This is he which received seed by the wayside.” The former lay down what is true generally, while the latter applies the truth particularly and personally to those who heard the word.

In this case the result of the sowing is purely negative. The seed falls upon a hard and unreceptive heart: it does not even germinate, but is removed immediately by the spiritual enemy of man. The cause of the failure is not in any degree ascribed to the Sower or to the seed. These, on the contrary, are perfect, without defect of any kind. But the ground was hard and beaten—unploughed, while the birds of the air were alert to steal the good seed.

The trodden pathway across the Galilean hillside is an apt simile of multitudes of mankind, then and now. Out of the heart of man are “the issues of life.” It is the avenue of his being. Duty and enterprise as well as pleasure and pain, all throng daily in ceaseless procession along the highway of the heart. The continual succession of these earthly objects, each claiming concern, if not concentration of mind, wears down the heart into the ruts of a dull routine. When truth from above falls in such a street, it lies unheeded, and is “trodden under foot,” as Luke says in the parable.

Under these circumstances, the word being sown in a heart irresponsive to its claim, and oblivious of its value, a personal and active foe of the truth appears and snatches it away. This foe is named Satan in Mark; the devil (διάβολος) in Luke; and the evil or wicked one in Matthew. And it is noticeable that in the threefold power which hinders the growth and fructification of the seed Satan is placed first. The Lord shows by the three classes that

(1) the power of the devil removes the seed (the birds)

(2) the power of the flesh prevents the seed rooting (the rocks)

(3) the power of the world prevents the seed fruiting (the thorns)

The Pharisees had blasphemously charged the Lord with being in alliance with Satan (3: 22-30); the Lord here declared Satan to be the foremost enemy of the word of the kingdom, who “immediately,” so energetic in his opposition is he, catches away the word. In Luke, where he is represented as the devil, the adversary of man, in contrast with the Savior of men, his object in stealing the word is given— “lest they should believe and be saved.” In Matthew it is as the wicked one that he snatches away the good seed. This expression seems to emphasize the moral contrast between the kingdoms of light, and or darkness, and their respective heads. The wayside hearers then are the careless and indifferent persons, too absorbed in other things to receive the truth in the love of it. The Athenians seem to have been, among others, an example of this class (Acts 17: 15-32). They had habituated themselves ever to be telling or hearing some new thing. The novelty of the gospel, therefore, awakened a passing superficial interest in the preaching of Paul, but no more. Heathen philosophy, like formal Judaism, was unreceptive of the gospel of Jesus.

STONY GROUND HEARERS

The main difference between this class of hearers and the preceding, with which it is coupled by the adverbial phrase, “in like manner,” is that in the former instance the hardness and impenetrability were found on the surface, but in this case the density occurred at a little distance beneath. In outward appearance the exterior of the soil was actually more promising, but the resistance by the rocky subsoil to the growth of the seed was none the less effectual. Under normal conditions the sun's rays should have caused the seed to root more firmly and deeply as it struck downwards in search of moisture. But under these circumstances the heat exercised a withering influence, hastening the total destruction of the growth.

These persons are characterized by superficiality. When they hear the word, immediately (Matt., Mark) they receive it with joy (Matt., Mark, Luke). The conscience, that fierce self-accuser within the heart, is clearly not awakened. Repentance does not rejoice, as these are said to do, but sits in sackcloth and ashes. Confession of sins is made in tears, not with joy. Peter's audience, when they heard the word on the day of Pentecost, were “sawn asunder” in their hearts. These in the parable, however, receive the word because of the pleasure it affords by its novelty, or its beauty, or the like. The result is a rapid growth which by its fair promise may deceive some, but such profession, as soon as tribulation or persecution on account of the word arises, quickly withers away.

There were many such shallow fickle hearers in our Lord's days; there have been many such since. It is written that the common people heard Him gladly, but the priests soon persuaded them to ask Pilate to spare Barabbas and to crucify Jesus. A sign in Jerusalem, and many crowded to follow Him! A “hard saying,” and many turned back to walk no more with Him (John 2:23; 6:60, 61)!

They “endured for a while,” but it is a little while only, even as they rejoiced in the testimony of John the Baptist “for a season” (John 5:35). Many put their hands to the plow, but quickly looked back, proving their unfitness to produce fruit. And the Lord, in the interpretation of this parable, unveiled the cause of this failure. The hindrance was within—the unbroken spirit, the adamantine heart. “To this man will I look,” saith Jehovah, “even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word” (Isa. 66:2).

THORNY GROUND HEARERS

This would appear to be a more promising class than either of the former. The seed germinates, and grows and develops to a certain degree. But it is nevertheless unfruitful, on account of a powerful external influence. The thorns grow more vigorously than the good seed, and eventually suffocate it.

The Lord explained what the thorns signify. They set forth the adverse influence which present things may exercise upon eternal things—a possible influence so great as to extinguish and exclude the latter entirely from the human heart. This influence is not manifestly hostile like that of affliction and persecution 'in the previous class; but it is none the less deadly, and much more dangerous because of its insidious nature. The thorns were growing too near the seed; a mile away it would not have mattered; and consequently they were able secretly, but effectually, to rob the good seed of its necessary light, air, moisture, and nutrition from the soil. Similarly, the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life, if allowed the supremacy in the heart, choke the good seed, and unfruitfulness is the dire result.

Thorns are emblematical of the world outside of Eden. The thorns introduced through the fall of the first Adam formed the insignia awarded by his children to the last Adam. The kingdoms of man and of God are in a state of irreconcilable enmity. And here the Lord shows that the employments, the successes, and the enjoyments of this present age may have a blighting and destructive effect upon the work of the word of God within a man.

Mark records the fullest description of these worldly forces. Luke summarizes them as the “cares and riches and pleasures of this life.” Matthew mentions only two of these three, which, however, he amplifies— “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” The second Evangelist has a yet ampler category, adding, moreover, that the mischief is wrought through their entering into the heart, where the word of God should be hidden (Psalm 119:11)— “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entering in choke the word.”

These hearers lack singleness of eye and heart. The attention becomes absorbed by the incessant occupations of a busy world, by the distracting anxieties of everyday life and by the excitements of a restless and reckless age. Such divided efforts to serve God and mammon invariably result in luxuriant thorns and withered wheat.

The “cares” have a particular reference to the “poor man's toil how to live at all, to keep the wolf from the door,” the struggle for a daily subsistence, the cares of this life, which, if not met in faith, hinders the thriving of the spiritual word in the heart.” The affluent are specially susceptible to the “deceitfulness of riches,” particularly when the love of money accompanies its possession (1 Tim. 6:9, 10). The “lusts of other things” cover all the ambitious strivings after temporal objects, however innocent the objects may be in themselves, to which all conditions of men are liable, and which may fill the heart to the consequent exclusion of what is divine.

FRUITFUL HEARERS

The main object of sowing is the subsequent reaping. And fruitfulness is the indisputable evidence of effective growth. The Lord was preeminently the Sower, and, as He said, others reaped (John 4:34-38). Pentecost and onwards, were reaping times, as also, in a fuller measure, the coming day of glory will be. And in all cases the divine Husbandman alone is a competent judge of the quality and quantity of the fruit (John 15:1, 5, 8), though, in a general way, we may be able to recognize the fruitful effects of the word (Col. 1:6; Phil. 4:17).

In this instance the word is heard in a prepared heart—in an “honest and good heart,” as the Lord said (Luke). And in examining the three Gospels it will be observed that three inward actions are stated to precede the fruit-bearing.

1.The word is understood (Matt.).

2.The word is received (Mark).

3.The word is held fast (Luke).

(1)It has already been pointed out that lack of understanding was specially attributed to the nation of Israel, who had Moses and the prophets before the coming of the Lord. And it is from the First Gospel therefore that we learn that in order to bear fruit it was necessary to understand (συνίημι). This was so in the case of the apostles themselves. After His resurrection the Lord opened their minds that they might understand the scriptures, particularly in that case, those relating to His death and resurrection (Luke 24:45). Those disciples who understand what the will of the Lord is are those who know what things are pleasing in His sight, and by doing such yield fruit to His praise.

In Mark, the word is received into the heart, that is, it is taken to oneself, welcomed and cherished. The truth is received not in a formal sense as in verse 16, where a different Greek word is used, but in the love of it. The Bereans were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word of the gospel in all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so; “therefore” we are told, “many of them believed” (Acts 17:12, 13).

Further, it is necessary to keep, or to hold fast, the word. This expression implies the energy Of active resistance against all opposing influences. Spiritual fruit bearing has its particular enemies. In view of these, therefore, there is an individual responsibility to use a special endeavor to preserve a sense of joy in the word and a love for it in the heart. To do so demands spiritual energy.

But there are degrees of fruitfulness in the good ground. All do not bear fruit in equal profusion. The power of Satan, and the seductions of the world, which altogether extinguish the growth in other cases, are here shown to have the effect of reducing the amount of fruit borne. Some, the Lord said, bring forth fruit thirty-fold, and some sixty-fold, while others, like the seed Isaac sowed (Gen. 26:12), yield a hundred-fold.

Luke only mentions the full degree of fruition, and it is there explained that seed on good ground brings forth fruit “with patience” (8:15). A hundred-fold is the “perfect work” of patience or endurance (James 1:3, 4). There must be not only well doing, but patient continuance in it (Rom. 2:7). The faithful disciple is called to endure a “great fight of afflictions,” for tribulation and patience are inseparable adjuncts to the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the exiled apostle in Patmos testified (Rev. 1:9). Those in Philadelphia whom the Lord commended because they had “kept the word of his patience” (Rev. 3:10), are surely such fruitful ones as He contemplated in His parable of the Sower (Luke 8:15).

[W. J. H.]

The Lord Jesus a Servant for Ever: Part 2

(Concluded from page 10)

Now, what follows? The characteristic of a person who has his ear open to the Lord, is—watching. “Blessed are those servants, whom the lord, when he cometh, shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat (that is a figure), and will come forth and serve them.” I find Him serving then, in divine love, still in the same character. He comes and brings us to heaven—to His Father's house, that where He is, there we may be also. While you were in that wicked world, He says, I was obliged to keep you on the watch, in a state of tension, with diligent earnestness to keep the heart waiting, but I bring you to a place where you are to sit down, and it will be My delight to minister to you.

It is one of the greatest comforts to me that I shall not want my conscience in heaven. If I let it go to sleep for a moment now, there are temptations and snares; there, there is no evil, and the more my heart goes out, the more good it is. Here, I dare not let it, but I must watch and pray. I shall not need that in heaven. The full blessedness of it is, the Lord being there, of course; and next, the saints being perfect. What does the heart desire that cares for the Lord's people? That they should be just what Christ's heart would have them. That will be there; He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. Then there is after that this comfort, that my heart can go out—here it cannot—to God and the Lamb, and to the saints in measure too; but then, roam as it will, there is nothing to roam over but a paradise where evil never comes, and it can never go wrong.

He comes then, and takes us there, and what heaven can find there for the heart to feed on is spread on the table of God. You shall rest there and feed on it, He says, and I will gird Myself and come forth and serve you. I am not going to give up My service of love. Thus, while I have the blessedness of feeding on what God has to give, I have the increased satisfaction that if I put a morsel of divine meat into my mouth, I receive it from the hand of love that brings it to me.

When He brings us there, all is turned round. Here, He says, you must have your lights burning, and be watching; when I get My way, I must put you at ease, and make you happy. “Then shall the Son also himself be subject.” He was serving here. It was man's perfection to serve—the very thing the devil tried to get Him out of. If he had, it would have been doing His own will; but “though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” But when all things shall have been subdued unto Him, He is subject after that. In the meanwhile He has been on His own throne; now, He is on His Father's throne, our High Priest; but He will take His own throne and power, and reign, bringing everything into subjection. Then it is not serving, but reigning: afterward He gives up the kingdom in that sense to His Father, for everything is brought into order. In the millennium it is a king reigning in righteousness; but then it is new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness. Innocence dwelt in the first paradise; sin dwells in the present earth; and then, in the new heavens and earth, it will be “wherein dwelleth righteousness.” He gives up the mediatorial kingdom (as it is called) to God, and takes His place as a Man, “the firstborn among many brethren.” He never gives up a place in which He can own us as associated with Himself in the blessedness of First-born of many brethren. As all was ruined in the first Adam, all shall be blessed in the Last. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Then, I find myself enjoying everything that God can give to the objects of His love, and enjoying it with Christ then at the head of everything—Son of God and Son of man; we associated with all the blessedness, and He administering it to us, so that the heart can taste His love. And He does not just bring us there, but it is to all eternity. He has purchased us too dearly to give us up. His love will be in constant exercise towards us. It leads us to adore Him more than anything can be thought of; but we can trust a love that never ceases in heaven.

You see here His heart going out to do it. Then you must have your lights burning. “Let your light (not your works) so shine before men” that they may know where your works come from, and, “glorify your Father which is in heaven,” that they may attribute them to God. I do whatever God tells me to do, and it is a testimony to Christ; people say, That is what comes from a man being a Christian! It is that there may be no uncertainty as to what we are, a well-trimmed lamp, the testimony of the life of Christ, that it may be manifested what I am, and what I am about—a pilgrim and a stranger, in a thousand different circumstances, the ordinary duties of life to perform, but one service, to be the epistle of Christ. I may be a carpenter, or a shoemaker, I must be a Christian. In various relationships, servants, masters, in eating or drinking, in our houses, wherever it is, I must be a Christian.

What characterized these servants was waiting, and they got the blessing. “Blessed are those servants whom the lord, when he cometh, shall find so watching.” Ah, beloved friends, are you watching, waiting for Christ practically? I cannot be watching, and going on in my own way. Are our lights burning? Or have we slipped down to the ease and comforts of this world like other people? That is not having our loins girded. And it is not as a doctrine we are to have it only.

He refers to serving in ver. 43, but the reward is connected with another thing—made “ruler over all that he hath"; it is the kingdom, the lower part. In my calling, I look up; in my reigning, it is looking down. It is better to look up than down. The watching person gets the Person he is watching for. The calling is better than the inheritance—heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. You find in Rev. 4 the elders sitting on thrones ("seats” they put in, for they thought it too much for us to be seated on “thrones” and crowned when He is there, but that is what it is); but when the nature of God is proclaimed, they leave their thrones, and that is the higher place. When they were on their thrones they had their own glory; when they are prostrated, they adore His glory. So, in the transfiguration, the voice came out of the cloud (the cloud was always the sign of Jehovah's presence in Israel), and they went into the cloud; that was more than the kingdom. A voice came from the excellent glory, and where it came from, they went into. It was a great thing to be standing there on the mountain, but still greater to go into the cloud—the Father's house, and they were afraid. It is a wonderful thing that the ruling is for us (ver. 44); but it is not the greatest thing. His love takes us into the enjoyment with Himself of every place He has—not the Godhead, of course—but of everything He has received from the Father as Man. He, in divine love, gives it to us; He gives not as the world gives. It gives liberally sometimes, but it gives away. Christ does not give away; He takes us where He is, and gives us what He has His own peace, His glory.

It seemed strange to Peter that the Lord should wash his feet. But where should we be if He did not wash our feet? In one sense we ought to be ashamed; but where should we be? If He were not a servant now, we should have our feet dirty, poor creatures that we are. Then it will be fullness of joy, His ministering of God's table in heaven to us, and half the happiness would be lost if it were not that. Now the Lord takes pains to assure us of His love, to persuade us of His love. “Ye are of more value than many sparrows.” He says, Do not fear; and then gives the strongest motive to serve Him. In the Epistle of John it does not say, We ought to love Him, because He first loved us—it is quite true; but that “we do love Him” (1 John 4:19). Where there really is the sense of the Lord's love to us, there is the return of it. If you hear a child saying, Oh! if you only knew my mother, her patience, her love, I am so tiresome, she never fails in affection, I cannot tell you what she is! I say, That child loves its mother; it has the sense of its mother's love in its soul. And that is love. It is the going back of the heart in the consciousness of the blessed love He has to us. The inflow of the love, with a new nature capable of receiving it, is the love.

How sweet and blessed is it thus to see how He has come down! He has not loved us from on high. He never says to the poor sinner, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” till He had come to them. He never called for confidence in His love till He had come to them Himself, however vile they might be. It will surely make us adore Him. A divine Person come to be a servant! that our hearts may know His love. And He wants us to know it. Does the Father say, This is My Son whom you ought to love? No, He tells His affection for Christ, to lead us into it. Therefore, we are in fellowship with the Father. What is that? It is having the same thoughts and joys in blessing, the same feelings and affections in blessing. Depend on it, if you get near to God, it will not make you think lightly of Him. If you get near to the greatest man in the country you will find out his foibles; but being near to God will never give you want of respect to Him; you find out what God is. It is not dangerous, as people often say, to be on the mount; but to have been there. When Paul got out of the third heaven, he wanted the thorn in the flesh. Then there was a danger of his saying, No one but you, Paul, has been there! Everything is dangerous for the flesh to get hold of—law, gospel, and everything. Being near to God, never lets the flesh in.

If the Spirit is the spring of our thoughts and feelings, He can never give us anything but thoughts of the Son. We are poor, feeble things, and He is infinite—there is that exception of course. But if I look at Christ's death, I say, Look at that obedience—there is love to the Father, and giving up Himself, and love to us! Look at His devotedness, obedience, and giving up of self-love beaming through the agony of the cross if ever it did! Did not the Father delight in it? To be sure He did! Of course, all our thoughts are poverty itself; but He brings His love down to us in grace, and then takes us up to the glory. We learn the power of His obedience when nothing stopped Him. He brought it to us in grace here; washes our feet by the way, and then will serve us in glory up there.

The Lord give us to have our loins girded, and our lights burning, that we may be found watching, living in this town, or in any other, in our common every-day life; but that we may be there with our loins girded, and our lights burning, and we like men that wait for their Lord, that, when He comes and knocks, we may open to Him immediately! Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. “He shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” May the Lord's love and approbation be the things that govern us, and not the things that fade away! J. N. D.

“Wonder not, brethren, if the world hateth you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not the brother abideth in death. Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath life eternal abiding in him. Herein we know love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives. Dear children, let us not love with word nor with the tongue, but in deed and truth.”

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Lectures on 2 Kings 1-2

2 Kings 1, 2

It has been already remarked that the mission, or, at any rate, the proper ministry of Elijah closed with his own complaint against the children of Israel. God took him at his word. He pleaded against, instead of for, Israel. Now he was called to a ministry of a judicial character, but it ought to have been in communion with all that were of God and for His name, and there was, so far, a want of entrance into the mind of God. There was the full, complete remnant of the people according to the election of grace. They were as nothing to Elijah, but they were very much to God. It is evident, therefore, that God and His servant were totally at issue, and, therefore, if such was the condition of the servant, he was virtually resigning his office. So God, from that very moment, taking him at his own word, appoints Elisha to succeed him. Yet, nevertheless, God did not take him away in anger. Far from it. On the contrary, though it was the lack of grace on behalf of the people of God which was surely offensive to the Lord in His servant the prophet, there was no lack of grace on God's part. Elijah therefore remains, though by no means as before. There was a certain transition of position, before the Lord took him. But when he did take him it was with the highest honor that could be put upon man here upon earth—he was caught up to heaven without even passing through death.

The opening chapter then of this Second Book of Kings presents in a very striking manner the acting, if not the ministry, of the prophet—the proof that the power of God was still with him. For when the wicked king, now himself sick, sent to the power of evil to learn about himself, God answers him—not the enemy—God gives him a more speedy answer than he had looked for. To Elijah God communicates the fact, orders him to stop the messengers and to give that most solemn intelligence to the king that he was then lying on his death-bed, and should therefore by no means recover. It was not that the king was ignorant of Elijah, but he followed in the evil of his father, and, as his father was the open enemy of Elijah, he therefore counted him as his enemy. So the son in the very same footsteps walks after his father. Nevertheless, for this very reason, just as it was when God employed the daring of Pharaoh to manifest His glory, so it was now in Israel where it was come to this, that a large part—the greater part indeed—of the people of God was a sphere for the display of Jehovah's glory just because of their total departure from, and opposition to, His will. Consequently it bears this judicial character, for God was still dealing with His servant Elijah.

The messengers, then, arrested by the prophet, bring back the word of his coming death to the king, who soon finds out that it is none other than Elijah the Tishbite. He thereupon sends an officer with his company to take him. This was more easily said than done, and, in fact, brought an immediate judgment upon the heads of those that obeyed the king. We can understand that there are some who wonder at this. But it must never be forgotten that not even in Judah was it a mere monarchy, still less in Israel, now that they were divided. The government of the kingdom of Israel was a theocracy. No doubt the king was the representative of God's power, but still it was a throne of Jehovah. When, therefore, a king set himself in defiance of Jehovah he must take the consequences. No person, for instance, hearing the Queen's commission, is entitled to order his men against the Queen, and the Queen is perfectly entitled to punish them. Their pleading the order of the officer has nothing to do with the matter. The officer has no commission against the Queen. If the men choose to follow their officer's command against the Queen's authority they need not be surprised at what must be the issue.

And so in fact the king of Israel was in direct rebellion against God. I make this remark of a general kind, because it is the key to what otherwise must seem a little surprising, and of which infidelity constantly makes a difficulty, that is, the summary judgment executed every now and then in Israel. The constitution in Israel was strictly the law, and the law knows nothing but death for rebellion against the authority of God. This necessarily belongs to the law, and it is simply man who denies the title of God to put man under law. Such a thought is worthy of an atheist, for grant the Being of God, the reality of God, and God's authority is clearly entitled to act thus, if He think fit for His own glory. But then when once this is allowed, it is seen that the kingdom of Israel differs from all other kingdoms, inasmuch as if these kingdoms pretend to be theocratic it is merely a delusion and a falsehood, whereas in Israel it is the fact. And all the effort of Satan was to make the Israelites and their king forget that it was a theocracy—forget the peculiarity of their place and of their calling. In all other cases the pretension was a mere spurious thing, the cover of downright hypocrisy and tyranny; in Israel it was the simple truth. Now this clears away heaps of difficulty in Scripture, because then God's dealing, even in a manner so terrible as the prompting His servant to ask for fire from heaven to consume a captain and his men, because of the daring defiance against God, the God of Israel, is simply a necessary consequence of the position of Israel. Instead of being a difficulty, it is what must be, what ought to be. God would be giving up His own authority otherwise.

Just as no parent ought to allow his children to deny his authority in his own house, and no master ought to allow it in his servants, so it would be the greatest absurdity if God were to permit defiance of His own authority in those that took the place of being His people. The king, therefore, sending out word was nothing to the purpose, because the king of Israel was the servant of Jehovah. He was merely the highest servant then. No doubt he was the expression of the visible authority, but then that authority could not be used against God. There is a limit necessary to all authority, “until he come whose right it is” to reign. And there indeed is what gives the true meaning of the place of the king of Israel, and it just ends when one comes who is not only man but God, and who will reign not only as man but as God. There will be one Jehovah, and His name one, and He will reign over all the earth.

This then clears away, I trust, any difficulty to a believer, that can be found in the scene before us. And indeed I have made the remarks more general in order to take in many other difficulties, for after all we must remember, even if we come to the general principle of it, that God is acting not in a close rigid way, but He is acting on the broad thought of His own plan with every man, woman, and child in the whole world. Because what is death if it be not an act of God's judging sin? And those who quarrel therefore with God's dealing with fifty men at a time forget that He is dealing with every person, and themselves among the rest, as objectors. I merely make this remark because people overlook the plainest facts before their eyes.

Another thing to which I would call your attention is this. Had there been compunction of heart and activity of conscience in the captains of these fifties, not one of them would have perished. We see that most clearly from the last captain and his company. He humbles himself, and the mercy of God flows out at once. We may be perfectly certain therefore that in the case of the others there was hardness of conscience and indifference. For there was not one of the captains—and I doubt not, not one of the fifties—that did not know the prophet Elijah, that had not the fullest testimony to his heart and conscience that that man was the most faithful representative of God's will and glory and power. If therefore men chose to bear the risk (and the object was great, the design was the injury, if not the death, of that very servant of God, and this, too, when God was acting on the grounds of righteousness and of law), they must take the consequences. It is plain that government by theocracy would be impossible if God did not reserve to Himself the right to punish, to impress upon others the necessity of obedience. In this scene, therefore, we have clearly that God still puts honor upon His servant. His proper ministry was closed, but in this there is no sign of one disgraced or one upon whom God is heaping dishonor—not the slightest. And there cannot be a greater proof than this very fact in these closing scenes of Elijah, that when the leader of the last troop humbles himself before the prophet, the prophet goes down by the word of the Lord, for he at least, a servant, abides in obedience to God. He goes before the king and gives, to the king's face, what he little desired to hear— “On that bed thou must die!” “So he died, according to the word of Jehovah which Elijah had spoken.”

But the next chapter (2) shows us the closing and final scene of Elijah. “And it came to pass when Jehovah would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for Jehovah hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said, As Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha and said unto him, Knowest thou that Jehovah will take away thy master from thy head today? And he said, Yea, I know it, hold ye your peace. And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for Jehovah hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As Jehovah liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha and said unto him, Knowest thou that Jehovah will take away thy master from thy head to-day? And he answered, Yea, I know it, hold ye your peace. And Elijah said unto him, Tarry here, I pray thee; for Jehovah hath sent me to Jordan. And he said, As Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on.”

Elijah then tests the faith of Elisha. We find this constantly in Scripture. An easier path is presented. You may spare yourself the trouble. But where there is faith to see that it is but a test, the soul is prepared to go forward understands the mind of God about it. It is impossible for any person to lay down rules as to such a matter. It was not by a rule that the cleansed Samaritan knew the mind of the Lord. Outwardly, the nine were following more literally what the Savior said, but the cleansed Samaritan knew better. The letter, even of Scripture, is insufficient to guide the child of God. We need the Holy Ghost to give the word of God power “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” I grant you that the natural mind of man, taking up such a principle, would make terrible havoc of the word of God, but there is just the difference. The Spirit of God wielding the word makes it to be the sword of God; the mind of man dabbling with the word of God only reflects itself. Now in the present case it was clearly the test of Elisha's faith. If he was not prepared to go on with the prophet, he need not take so much trouble. His heart was thoroughly willing; he was about to gain a good degree, as it is said, in the faith in a little, for he that is faithful in little is faithful in much, and he that not merely was called and knew that the prophet's mantle was cast around him, and understood by that significant token that he was to succeed Elijah here below—that same prophet looks for more and he receives more.

“According to thy faith be it done unto thee.” He waits. He well understood that the time was not come to fulfill his office. He looks for more. The sons of the prophets gave no intelligence; they were indeed but intruders. They would have liked him to occupy his mind with their information. Elisha told them to hold their peace. His heart was elsewhere—it was with Elijah, and these great things that were in store for him that day. Nothing would suffer from the prophet. So Elijah said to him, “Tarry I pray thee here.” He bade him remain in Bethel, and Bethel was a place of great note in Israel. And Jericho was a place, I will not say of note, but marked with a curse, and God would not allow His curse to slumber any more than His blessing. But Elisha would go on with Elijah.

Now they come to Jordan “As Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on. And fifty men, the sons of the prophets, went and stood afar off.” They did not go on; they were arrested by the difficulties; but “they two,” the two that were as one, so to speak, stood by Jordan. “And Elijah took his mantle and wrapped it together and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither so that they two went over on dry ground. And it came to pass when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee.” They had gone down through the great and well-known sign of death not now passing through death to enter into the land, but passing through death for one of them at least. And this becomes an epoch that gives its proper character to the prophet. He was right. Not merely his own mind, but a spiritual instinct of the Holy Ghost gave him to look for a higher degree still. He goes on, and now he is on the very eve of it. Elijah puts the question, “Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” Not a double portion as compared with Elijah's, but a double portion as compared with any other as a successor of Elijah. A double portion was the firstborn's portion. He asked for this, for the firstborn's portion. “And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing, nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.”

Now came the moment to decide whether faith in this case was to have her commensurate blessing. “And it came to pass as they still went on, and talked, that behold there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” Elijah was in fact a man with a heart and tongue of fire, if I may say so, and all his ministry was of this character—consuming and judicial, of all men most unsparing. But if Elisha was given to see him caught up in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire, and with a whirlwind mounting up to heaven, this new starting-point of Elisha's becomes of importance. For heaven is not the place of fire. There may be exceptionally the bursting out of consuming judgments of God, but heaven, I repeat, normally is not the place of fire, but rather of love, of peace, of divine glory, of rest and peace, unbroken by sin. And Elisha accordingly was to have his ministry characterized by these very qualities.

We shall find him, therefore, instead of being a mere repetition of his fiery predecessor, a most suited successor, and one, in divine wisdom, given to meet the exigencies of God's glory in Israel. But Elisha has another character, for although righteousness be of God, righteousness is not all that is in God. And indeed if we look at God's attributes, righteousness is not the highest, although it is that which God can never sacrifice. But, nevertheless, if we are to speak of attributes, grace is surely of a higher character, and as the heavens are higher than the earth, so surely is the earth the place where righteousness must govern, and heaven is the place where grace must govern. And Elisha therefore becomes not merely what he began, but he became also the witness of grace; and it is not therefore merely as Elijah, for he starts just like the apostles themselves, who received once their commission in the land of Israel, and then went forth bearing the solemn message and wiping the dust from off their feet against those who rejected them as witnesses. But those apostles received another appointment of a higher ministry which that same Lord Jesus that sent them through the earth sent them from the heavens—Himself ascending up there.

So it was with this beautiful witness to the truth of God, and almost, I must add, to the grace of God. “Elijah saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.” The double portion would be most surely his. “And he saw him no more; and he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces.” But it is added, and most strikingly, “He took up also the mantle of Elijah” —not merely flung it across his shoulders. Now it was his own, now it was perfectly his own, now there was the fullest confirmation of his place; and I repeat again, not merely as of a judging prophet on earth, but of a raptured prophet that had gone up to heaven. “He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and went back and stood by the bank of Jordan.” And now came the test, whether in truth the double portion did rest upon Elisha. “And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters and said, Where is Jehovah God of Elijah? And when he also had smitten the waters they parted hither and thither; and Elisha went over.”

Elisha was the true and God-given successor of Elijah, but not after the same sort; for God does not repeat Himself. The God with whom we have to do is a living God, and the God that sent Elijah was now sending Elisha for another work and of a different character, and this it will be my object to open a little to-night—to show how the Spirit of God brings out this new ministry. For now Elisha has been waiting, just as Elijah himself had waited. There was this pause, and we can see the great purpose. For undoubtedly had Elisha gone forward before, we have no reason to believe that there would have been any such character to his ministry. He waited, and he waited to prove that it is not always those that are the quickest to go forward in a work of the Lord that have, and bear, and produce, the best fruits. By no means. But those who know what it is to wait a little while that the Lord may deal with them before they are competent to deal with others, and also at the particular season.

And here we find how truly his waiting upon the Lord had this result. “And when the sons of the prophets, which were to view at Jericho saw him they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him and bowed themselves to the ground before him. And they said unto him, Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty strong men; let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master.” Were these the men that could give information to Elisha? These same men now propose, and this proves how poor even the son of a prophet may be when he no longer speaks the word of the Lord, that they should seek Elijah, “Lest peradventure the Spirit of Jehovah hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley. And he said, Ye shall not send. And when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send.” That is, he first deals with them according to wisdom. In the next place, if they will be foolish, let them prove their folly. “They sent, therefore, fifty men, and they sought three days but found him not. And when they came again to him (for he tarried at Jericho), he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not.”

But now we begin to see in the next instance recorded the peculiar action of the prophet Elisha. “And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth; but the water is naught, and the ground is barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruise and put salt therein.” When God brought out the place of our Lord above, He brought out further all that was suitable to a new creation. When souls know that which is the truth of God and our Lord Jesus, and consciously look up to Him, we know that they belong to Him. When God was dealing by the law it was always the old creation. When the Lord Jesus took His place on high after the accomplishment of redemption, the new creation surely came in. And this we see most completely in the doctrine of the apostle Paul. Here we have as far as a sign or a token can be, the new cruise, as just the sign of this new creation in the mind of God. And the application of this is the place of a curse. Now if there was a spot in the Holy Land that was under a curse, it was Jericho. Every one knows that who reads his Bible. Jericho accordingly is the spot to which the prophet directs this new cruise with salt put in to be brought.

“And he went forth unto the spring of the waters” —and so was dealing with the fountainhead— “and cast the salt in there and said, Thus saith Jehovah, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more dearth or barren land. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.” Can anything more distinctly show that here we have to do with a new character of action. There is no longer the death-bed judgment of Jehovah, administered according to the word of the prophet. Here we have the power of sin and the power of evil, and according to the purpose of God, the new creation, for undoubtedly this new cruise with the salt therein is the type of it. Jericho is a sample of that which will be done universally by the Lord Jesus Christ in the day of His appearing. He means to reconcile all things unto Himself. It might be but a little here, but it is the sample of a very great result. “So the waters were healed according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.”

And thence he goes up, not to the place which was under the curse, and where he brings in a divine power of blessing and healing, but, to Bethel. Bethel was not under the curse, but it was under the burden of corruption. It is the place where God had caused the pledge and promise of His faithful care to be given to one that needed it, to one that was under circumstances of the greatest possible distress—forlorn, obliged to flee from the house of his father and mother, with a deadly burning hatred of his brother against him. There it was that Jacob has a vision of God, and there it was that God plighted His word forever. There it was that there was the house of God, that there was the gate of heaven opened to the slumbering Jacob, and there it was too that God made good, in after days, the purpose that was to be broken alas! by the unfaithfulness of man. But there Satan had so gained over the hearts of Israel that they had lifted up their calf-god and there they had insulted the God of Israel to His face. It was here that the prophet came, not to challenge, not to make of it another Gomorrah, not to bring down the calf worshippers and slay them, but here Elisha came, for it is Elisha with a heavenly vision. And yet for all that, it is remarkable—it is one of the great exceptions of the prophet, that although he had this heavenly vision, woe be to the man that slights him; for the returning Lord Jesus Christ is the moral judge upon the earth—His severest judgments will be from heaven.

That which will deal with the last mockers is given here in a little way, if I may so speak. Here there were those that insulted the prophet. It might be only little children, but little children often let out what their parents mean. How often you may know what goes wrong at home by that which little children say. And so it was with these little ones that mocked Elisha, and said, “Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald head! Now it was mockery that filled the land; there is no question of it. Elijah had gone up, and it was as good as telling him that he had better follow; that Elisha had better take the same route as Elijah. No doubt it would have been a relief to the carnal and the worldly and the idolatrous and the wicked generally in the land of Israel were there no Elijahs and no Elishas. It was therefore the taunt of unbelief, for if men had seriously realized that Elijah had gone up to heaven, and that Elisha was one that was here upon earth doing the will of God, neither the little children nor their parents would have so uttered their evil thoughts and feelings against the Lord. And so it was. And here again we have the same solemn thing, only in an exceptional way, with Elisha—we have judgment accompanying the heavenly testimony.

The very same thing we find in Paul. It is not only that Peter tells of the day of the Lord, but there is judgment, and necessarily judgment executed by the Lord Jesus Christ upon earth. These little ones then who so spake “he cursed in the name of Jehovah. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood and tare forty and two children of them. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.” Heaven is by no means the ordinary place from which judgment comes. Throughout the millennial reign heaven will be the source of countless comforts and blessings in a richer measure than the world has ever tasted before. So we find in Elisha a further illustration.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

After All This

These words mark an epoch in the inspired record of the life of Josiah, king of Judah. They indicate the close of a career of brilliant usefulness, and the commencement of a course of self-will leading to defeat, disaster and death. To the saints of God the whole story is full of solemn warning, and furnishes food for reflection. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). “All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition ... wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:11, 12).

Like a sign-post on the highway of Josiah's life-story there stand these three ominous words “After all this.” They point backward to many distinctly marked evidences of early piety with all their wealth of promise. Josiah began well, for at the age of fifteen he began to seek after the God of David his father, and when only nineteen years old was so zealous for the honor of Jehovah, that he commences a national revival by purging Judah of the high places, images and idolatrous emblems which by their defiling presence dishonored the true God, and disfigured the place He had chosen.

Josiah's zeal increases as the years pass, and produces four most important results. The temple is cleansed; there is a re-discovery of forgotten truth and prophecy; a voluntary, personal self-dedication takes place; and the greatest passover kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet is solemnly celebrated. Truly a marvelous record for a young man to achieve; and, more happy still, is the gracious moral effect upon his own heart; Josiah's humility and tenderheartedness receiving special mention by God. Add to this his splendid character given in 2 Kings 23:25, and we have afforded us a pen portrait, up to a given period of his life, of a pious, zealous, humble-minded, tenderhearted servant of God. Then, like the note of a tocsin, sounds these three terse words of ominous import, “After all this,” with an abrupt introduction to a collapse, pathetic indeed, and full of tremendous warning for saints today.

There are many striking points of resemblance between the circumstances of Josiah's time and those of our own.

Christendom, like Israel when Josiah ascended the throne, had slipped away from the simple, sufficient rule of the word of God as the true believer's rule of life and directory of worship; and, by additions, and accretions which had gathered around the revealed will of the Lord, had created a situation fairly corresponding to images, high places, and groves, namely, worship and service fashioned after human devices, imaginations, and long-grown religious customs.

Then nearly a century ago, by the re-discovery of long forgotten truth, many were humbled by the church's failure and became tenderhearted; zeal and piety revived to a surprising degree; and once again the Lord's death was shown week by week in the breaking of bread after the simple, primitive and apostolic manner recorded in Acts 20, the whole church of God being contemplated in its observance. Upon the ground of the one body of Christ, saints gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, rejoiced to keep the feast knowing that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.

It was the re-discovery of the will of the Lord in His word which constituted the sole sufficient authority for so acting in independence of any mere churchly sanction or human rules. Freshness, joy and holy enthusiasm reigned, but “after all this” came the long years of quiet simple testimony; and these are the days of real testing.

It is interesting and instructive to note that between the glowing account of Josiah's great passover—the high water mark, so to say, of his reign, and the record of his decline, there occurs one of those silences of scripture which speak so loudly to the thoughtful reader. Thirteen years elapse without any mention made of their passing. They speak of the long quiet years when principles are being tested. No great work of idol-breaking done; no excitement caused by new discoveries of truth; no stirring of emotion by great spiritual crises such as the wonderful passover and the service of voluntary self-dedication; but a tranquil period, a testing time, the long and eventful years of maintenance, of holding fast to known truth and position.

Individually the condition of many a young believer morally resembles that of king Josiah. The first flush of youthful piety is very gracious; the earnest, zealous willingness to serve the Lord is very delightful to behold; the ardent devotion to His blessed Person is very beautiful; the holy emotions of sacred seasons at His table are peculiarly sweet; but after all this—what? Shall we adopt the easy path of least resistance, and by dalliance with the world, the flesh and Satan prepare for deterioration, or, as we read the inspired history of Josiah's life, hearken to the striking note of warning and alarm sounded in those words — “after all this?”

For these words appear to signify that the years of quietness had in his case bred deterioration, the parent of declension and self-will. “After all this” we hear of Josiah's meddling with God, and of his being sorely wounded in affairs which neither concerned his person nor his position. What an ending for one who had such a splendid record of piety and service behind him! Yet, as we ponder, we are afresh reminded that “the best of men are but men at the best,” apart from the grace of God.

His motives were probably good. He may have thought that his knowledge and position warranted interference on his part; but the inspired history records three facts which, may we not say, are of singular significance for saints and servants of the Lord to-day. First, it is quite evident that he acted independently; then that he refused advice, not hearkening to the word of God; and, lastly, he disguised himself, acting unlike himself, appearing other than he really was.

“After all this!” Warned, willful and wounded, Josiah is now cut off from all further usefulness in his prime at the early age of thirty-nine years! The more noteworthy is this, in that length of days was a mark of divine favor to a godly Israelite. How entirely unlike the true Servant of Jehovah, who —we say it with reverence—not only began well, but eaten up by the zeal of God's house, continued in holy dependence, confidence and communion throughout His life here, and in those last hours upon the cross gaining more glory to God than ever man and Satan combined had robbed Him of. Blessed be His holy name forever!

The believer who acts independently of the will of the Lord, meddles with God; leaves the position of true usefulness (albeit perhaps with the notion that he is well employed); and of necessity, like king Josiah, disguises himself. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

Nothing can ever dispense with the need of constant dependence upon God, the continual looking to Him for direction, and the reverent, habitual searching of the word. However splendid a record one may have for piety, zeal, devotion, humble mindedness and tenderheartedness, nothing will keep the heart fresh and true to the Lord, like the threefold mark of the Lord Jesus when here as man, namely, absolute dependence upon the living God, unwavering confidence in Him, and unbroken communion with the Father.

Only by this, practically known, shall our conduct, character and conversation be such as becometh saints in these days when the marked tendency is to surrender much that was once prized. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” W. G. T.

Notes on Luke 1-2

Chapter 1

The Savior is presented to us in Luke in His character as Son of man, displaying the power of Jehovah in grace in the midst of men. At first, doubtless, we find Him in relationship with Israel, to whom He had been promised; but afterward moral principles are brought out, which apply to man, as such, wherever he might be. And indeed what characterizes Luke's account of our Lord, and gives special interest to his Gospel, is that it presents to us Christ Himself, and not His official glory as in Matthew, nor His mission or service as in Mark, nor the peculiar revelation of His divine nature as in John. It is Himself, such as He was, a man upon the earth, moving among men day by day.

Verses 1-4. Many had undertaken to give an account of what was historically received amongst Christians, as it had been related to them by the eye-witnesses. However well intended this might be, yet it was a work undertaken and executed by men. Luke had an exact and intimate knowledge of all from the beginning, and he found it good to write in order to Theophilus, that he might know the certainty of the things he had been instructed in. It is thus that God has provided for the whole church by the teaching contained in the living picture of Jesus that we owe to this man of God. For Luke, although he might be personally moved by Christian motives, was of course none the less inspired by the Holy Ghost to write.

Verses 5-17. The history brings us into the midst of Jewish institutions, feelings, and expectations. First, we have a priest of Abia (one of the twenty-four courses: 1 Chron. 24), with his wife who was of the daughters of Aaron. “They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” All was with them in accordance with God's law Jewishly; but they did not enjoy the blessing so earnestly desired by every Jew; they were childless. Yet it was according to the ways of God to accomplish His work of blessing while manifesting the weakness of the instrument which He was using. But now this long-prayed-for blessing was to be withheld no longer; and when Zacharias draws near to offer the incense, the angel of Jehovah appears to him. At the sight of so glorious a being Zacharias is troubled; but the angel says to him, “Fear not, thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John,” that is, “the favor of Jehovah.” And not only should the hearts of many rejoice in him, but he should be great in the sight of the Lord and be filled with the Holy Ghost. “Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before, him in the spirit and power of Elias.... to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” The “spirit of Elias” was a firm and ardent zeal for the glory of Jehovah and for the re-establishment, through repentance, of Israel's relations with Him. The heart of John clung to this link of the people with God, and it is in the moral force of his call to repentance that John is here compared to Elias.

Verses 18-23. But Zacharias's faith, as is alas! so often the case, was not equal to the greatness of his request. He knows not how to walk in the steps of Abraham, and he asks again how such a thing can be (ver. 18). God's goodness turns the unbelief of His servant into a chastening that was profitable for him, and that served, at the same time, as a proof to the people that he had been visited from on high. Zacharias remains dumb until the word of Jehovah is accomplished.

Verses 24, 25. Elizabeth, with feelings so suitable to a holy woman, remembering what had been a shame to her in Israel (the traces of which were only made the more marked by the supernatural blessing now granted to her), hides herself, whilst at the same time she owns the Lord's goodness to her. But what may conceal us from the eyes of men has great value before God.

Verses 26-38. And now the scene changes, in order to introduce the Lord Himself into this marvelous scene that is unfolding itself before our eyes. In Nazareth, that despised place, there was found a young virgin, unknown by the world, whose name was Mary. She was espoused to Joseph, who was of the house of David; but so out of order was everything in Israel, that this descendant of the king was a carpenter. But what is this to God? Mary was a chosen vessel; she had found favor in the eyes of God.

We must remark that the subject here is the birth of the child Jesus as born of Mary. It is not so much His divine nature as the Word which was God and which was made flesh (though, of course, it is the same precious Savior presented here as in John's Gospel), but it is Jesus as really and truly man—born of a virgin. His name was to be Jesus, that is, Jehovah the Savior. “He shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David” —still looking at Him as man born into the world. But He was God as well as man. Holy by [in] His birth, conceived by the power of God, this blessed One, who even as born of Mary is spoken of as “that holy thing,” was to be called “the Son of God.”

The angel then tells Mary of the blessing God had bestowed upon Elizabeth. The wonderful intervention of God had rendered Mary humble instead of lifting her up: she had seen God and not herself in what had happened. Self was hidden from her because God had been brought so near, and she bows to His holy will. “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

Verses 39-45. Afterward we find that Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, for her heart loves to see and acknowledge the goodness of the Lord. Elizabeth, speaking by the Spirit, acknowledges Mary as the mother of her Lord, and announces the accomplishment of God's promise. “Blessed is she that believed,” &c.

Verse 46. The heart of Mary is filled with joy, and she breaks forth into a song of praise. She acknowledges God her Savior in the grace that has filled her with such joy, whilst, at the same time, she owns her utter littleness. For whatever might be the holiness of the instrument that God might employ, and that was found really in Mary, yet she was only great so long as she hid herself; for then God was everything. By making something of herself she would have lost her place; but this she did not. God kept her in order that His grace, might be fully manifested.

The character of the thoughts that fill the heart of Mary is Jewish. It reminds us of Hannah's song in 1 Sam. 2, which speaks prophetically of this same blessed intervention of God. But Mary goes back to the promises made to the fathers, and takes in the whole of Israel.

Verse 56. After remaining three months with Elizabeth, she returns to her house humbly to follow her own path, in order that God's ways may be accomplished. Nothing is more beautiful in its way than this account of the conversations of these holy women, unknown to the world, but who were the instruments of God's grace to accomplish His glorious designs. They moved in a scene where nothing entered but piety and grace. But God was there Himself, no better known to the world than were these poor women, but preparing and accomplishing what the angels would desire to look into.

Verses 57-59. But what is only known in secret by faith is at last to be accomplished before all men. The son of Zacharias and Elizabeth is horn, and Zacharias, no longer dumb, pronounces the blessed prophecy we have in verses 68-80. The visitation of Israel by Jehovah, which he speaks of, embraces all the happiness of the millennium, connected with the presence of Jesus upon the earth. All the promises are Yea and Amen in Him. All the prophecies encircle Him with the glory which will be then realized. We know that, since He has been rejected and while He is now absent, the accomplishment of these things is necessarily put off till His return.

CHAPTER II.

When God is pleased to occupy Himself with the world, and to take a part in what passes therein, it is marvelous to see how He acts, and the instruction He gives. There is no agreement, but a total opposition, between His ways and those of men. The emperor and his decree are but insignificant instruments. Caesar Augustus acts in view of his subjects; yet he is, without knowing it, the means of accomplishing the prophecy that Jesus should be born in Bethlehem. The entire course of the world is outside the current of God's thoughts. The capital fact for Him and for His kingdom here is the Babe's birth at Bethlehem; but the emperor has no thought about it. The decree puts the world in motion, and God makes good His thoughts here below. How wondrous! All the world is in movement to bring about this event, needed to fulfill prophecy, that the poor carpenter, with Mary, his espoused wife, should be in the city of David, and David's heir should be born there and then. And this is the more striking, for the census itself was first made some years afterward, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria: God is accomplishing His purpose of love. But man was blind to it. Who cared to notice the poor Jew, though he might be of the house and lineage of David? The things that are perfectly indifferent to man fill the heart and eye of God.

Still we are in Jewish atmosphere. Promises are being accomplished; the babe must be born in Bethlehem. “The city of David” is nothing to the Christian as such, save as sheaving prophecy fulfilled: to us the Son comes from heaven. On earth the babe is the object of God's counsels; angels and all heaven are occupied with His birth; but there is no place in the world for Him! Go where the great world registers every individual, go to the little world of an inn, where each is measured by the servant's knowing eye, and place is accordingly awarded from the garret to the first floor; but there is no room for Jesus! And the manger led, in due time, to the lowest place—to the cross.

What a lesson for us as to this world! What a difference, too, between giving up the world and the world giving us up! We may do the one with comparative ease; but when we feel the world despises us as Christ was despised, we shall discover, unless He fills and satisfies the heart, that we had a value for its esteem that we were not aware of. When obedience is as important to us in our measure, as obeying was to Christ, we shall go right on whatever be before us, without regarding the world: not that we shall be insensible, but when Christ is the object we shall only be occupied with Him.

All intelligence of the things of God comes from His revelation, and not from the reasonings of men. Hence, the simple go farther in spiritual understanding than the wise and prudent of the earth. God acts here so as to set aside all appearance of human wisdom. Happy he who has so seized the intention of God as to be identified with it, and to want none but God! This was the case with the shepherds. They little entered into the great intent of the registration; but it was to them, and not to the prudent that God revealed Himself. Our true wisdom is through what God reveals. But we never get God's fullest blessings till we are where the flesh is brought down and destroyed—I speak as regards walk. We cannot get, into the simple joy and power of God, till we accept the place of lowliness and humiliation—till the heart is emptied of what is contrary to the lowliness of Christ. These shepherds were in the quiet fulfillment of their humble duty; and that is the place of blessing. Whoever is keeping on terms with the world is not walking with God; for God is not walking with you there. From the manger to the cross all in Christ was simple obedience. How unlike a Theudas, who boasted himself to be somebody! Christ did all in God's way; and not only so, but we must come so too.

The glory of the Lord shines round about the shepherds, the angel speaks to them, the sign is given; and what a sign! “Ye shall find a babe wrapped up in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God” and for what? “The mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.” The hope of Israel is revealed to them—glad tidings of great joy to all the people. For Jesus is the pivot of all God's counsels in grace. Adam himself was but a type of Him who was to come. Christ was ever in the mind of God. Such displays of glory are not shown to mortal eyes every day; but God sets them before us in His word, and we must every day follow the sign given follow Jesus the babe in the manger. If He filled the eye, the ear, the heart, how we should see the effects in person, spirit, conversation, dress, house, money, &c.

Such, then, is the sign of God's accomplishment of promise and of His presence in the world— “a babe in a manger” —the least and lowest thing. But God is found there, though these things are beyond man, who cannot walk with God, nor understand His moral glory. But God's sign is within the reach of faith. It is the token of perfect weakness; a little infant who can only weep! Such, born into this world is Christ the Lord. Such is the place God chose—the low degree. God's intervention is recognized by a sign like this. Man would not have sought that. The heavenly host praise God and say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward [in] men.” Nothing higher nor more astonishing (save the cross) for those who have the mind of heaven. The choir above see God in it —God manifested in flesh, and praise God in the highest. They rejoice that His delights are with the sons of men. Of old God had displayed Himself to Moses in a flame of fire, without consuming the bush, and here, still more marvelously, in the feeblest thing on earth; infinite thought morally, though despicable in the eye of the world! How hard it is to receive that, the work of God and of His Christ is always in weakness! the rulers of the people saw in Peter and John unlearned and ignorant men. Paul's weakness at Corinth was the trial of his friends, the taunt of his enemies, the boast of himself. The Lord's strength is made perfect in weakness. The thorn in the flesh made Paul despised, and he conceived it would be better if that were gone. He had need of the lesson, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” It is God's rule of action, if we may so say, to choose the weak things. Everything must rest on God's power, otherwise God's work cannot be done according to His mind. One can hardly believe that one must be feeble to do the work of God: but Christ was crucified in weakness, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For the work of God we must be weak, that the strength may be of God; and that work will last when all the earth shall be moved away.

Verses 21-38. But besides the additional testimony, rendered by the offering of His mother, to the circumstances in this world, in which the Lord of glory was born, we may see that, while God all through the Gospel is settling man in his new place with Himself, He did not forget His ancient people. He shows us here that He met every thought in every heart that was touched by grace in Israel. His heart was especially towards those who sorrowed over the sins and desolation of His people; and who, withal, waited for redemption, crying from the darkness, “How long, O Lord?” God will accomplish in power that wherein man has failed in responsibility. Should we therefore be content if God's people do not glorify Him? No; faith is not hard; it will sorrow, but it will wait for God, and God's time too; for faithful is He who hath promised, who also will do it. He will bring about His own purposes.

Verse 25. Thus was Simeon “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Thus Anna departed not from the temple, but served with fastings and prayers night and day; thus all that had looked for redemption in Jerusalem. There were those who watched, and Anna knew and spake to them. The rest doubtless were occupied with Roman oppression; but these few waited for Him, bowing before His hand in judgment of evil, but looking for His deliverance.

I believe there was something more in Simeon's soul than the joy of holding in his arms the babe, the expected Messiah; Simeon felt he had God, and was satisfied. So he says, without even looking on to the glory, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.” In Rom. 5:11 the apostle, after speaking of rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, says, “and not only so.” What could be more than that hope? Yes, there is more: “we also have joy in God.” The eyes of Simeon have seen God's salvation, and he begs of the sovereign Lord that he may go.

We often see something like this in dying saints, who deeply joy in the Lord's love to His own, and in the nearness of His coming for them. Why, one might say, What is His near coming to those who are dying and departing to Him? just this—the nearer we are to God, the more precious is all the truth of God, and everything which is near to His heart. So in verses 30-32 Simeon rejoices as he surveys the extent of the divine deliverance. It was for the revelation of the Gentiles, who had been till now hidden in the dark of idolatry and ungodliness, as well as for the glory of Israel. But his soul is satisfied possessing Christ, and anticipating the effect of His presence in the whole world: he has all in Him, and desires to depart. If a man walks with God and has finished his course, he knows that his work is done and is conscious of the Lord's time being come. He has a companionship and communion with the Lord he has walked with. If simply brought to a bed of sickness, he is not then ready to go; not that he fears, but God is teaching him something else. But when God's time is come, all is joy and readiness. He feels like Simeon, Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.

But, further, when Simeon blessed Joseph and Mary, the Spirit gives him to disclose the more immediate results of the babe's presence in Israel. He should be the touchstone of many hearts, an occasion for the fall as well as the rise of many. He should be a sign spoken against, a rejected Messiah; and Mary's heart should be pierced through, whatever the present joy or the future glory.

Israel was low indeed, but did not know it; Israel must be made to know it, and Christians too; for Christ had to descend to the grave and rise again. The thoughts of the heart must be revealed, whatever the outward garb. But then He is the one who brings out God's thoughts too. If He is the Christ, the glory of God's people, He is also the one who will abase the flesh, and meet and humble man in his pride; He is the one who will make you know whether His rejection is more precious than all beside.

Verse 39. When all was done according to the law, they returned to Galilee, to Nazareth. Jesus would not be the Christ we need, if He had taken any glory from Jerusalem. His place is among the poor of the flock—His place all through in Israel.

Verse 40. “And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him.” Luke gives us more of the reality of His childhood than the other Gospels. He was not made man full-formed like Adam. If one only reads the account without comment, how the soul feels it unspeakably precious! When we see who it was, we see human nature in Him filled with God, so to speak. It is not official distinction, but the heart feels God brought nigh. The blessedness of the child's intrinsic loveliness fills the heart. Deeply instructive too is the incident recorded in connection with the passover when He was twelve years old. His true character comes out, though He was not yet to act upon it. He came to be a Nazarene—to be about His Father's business. This is here stated distinctly before He enters upon His public ministry, that it might be seen to be connected with His person, and not to depend merely upon His office. He was the Pastor of the flock in spirit and character. It belonged to Him. He was the Son of the Father, though abiding God's time for showing it.

Verse 51. Nevertheless “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.” What a majesty in His whole life! His being God secured His perfection as a child and man here below. He had ever the blessed consciousness of His relationship to His Father—an obedient child, but conscious also of a glory unconnected in itself with subjection to human parentage. He belonged to Mary and even Joseph; in another sense he was not theirs. His divine Sonship was as well-known to Him, as His obedience to His parents was in due season absolutely right.

Verse 52. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” His human intelligence being developed, He, though ever perfect, became so in a full way—the perfect man. The lovely plant grew up and unfolded before God and man.

[J.N.D.]

(To be continued)

Fragment: God Becoming a Man

“It is the greatest of all comforts to know that God did thus come down and become a man—reveal Himself to us so near us. I know God in knowing Christ, find Him grace and love, and cannot in any other way know Himself.”

Luke 12:50 and John 19:30

There is a very striking link between these two passages which is disguised, as far as I know, in all English versions at any rate. Not but what the Greek is forcibly and most correctly translated, whether by the word “accomplished” in Luke, or “finished” in John. But the fact is that the same word, though in different tenses, is used by both Evangelists. Hence it seems to me, that if we rendered the sublime word in John 19 (for it is only one in the original), “It is accomplished,” instead of “It is finished,” we should gain appreciably thereby. The Lord shrank from being “made sin” —that was, may we not reverently say, the bitterest ingredient in His cup of suffering, that and the consequent hiding of God's face? But there were other ingredients in that awful cup, and our Lord, in His perfect humanity, could not but be straitened to the utmost. “How am I straitened!” He says. At length, on Calvary, comes the triumphant cry, “It is accomplished.”

But indeed the link is but imperfectly established unless we note the force of the change of tense alluded to above. That in the verse in Luke is the aorist, and the emphasis is on the transaction, as taking place at, and in, a definite time. In the Johannine verse it is the perfect, and as all scholars know, the force is “the work abides accomplished,” its consequences are everlasting. Such is the indubitable force of these two passages. There is no precision like that of the Holy Scriptures.

R. B.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Lectures Introductory to the Books of Kings .. 49

The Son of My Right Hand .. 55

Studies in the Gospel of Mark (iv. 21-29, continued) 56

Notes of Addresses on the Gospel of Luke (iii.) 59

Notes of an Address on Eph. 3:20, 21 .. 62

Lectures on 2 Kings 3-9

2 Kings 3-9

However, the next chapter (3) brings us at once into earthly circumstances. “Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah.” There was no doubt a painful state of things most offensive to God. Not that the king of Judah was not pious, but that his testimony was ruined by his alliance with the kingdom of Israel. Accordingly, then, we find there is great weakness here, though God deals in nothing but tender mercy and goodness. The king of Moab provokes a rebellion against the king of Israel, and Jehoram goes to put it down. He calls upon Jehoshaphat to fulfill his treaty obligations, and, with the king of Edom, goes against the refractory king of Moab. But they come into difficulties. They are in danger of being themselves overthrown.

“Alas!” said the king of Moab, after they had been for some time without water and food for the cattle— “alas! that Jehovah hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.” Jehoshaphat knew better. “Is there not here a prophet of Jehovah,” says he, “that we may inquire of Jehovah by him?” And one of them tells him of Elisha. Jehoshaphat at once recognized him. He knows that the word of Jehovah is with him. So they go down to him; and Elisha says to the king of Israel, “What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay; for Jehovah hath called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.” False confidence soon yields to real despair, but faith can be calm and wait upon God. “And Elisha said, As Jehovah liveth before whom I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.”

There is no doubt in this a rebuke, and a stern one, but we shall find that the action of the prophet is full of grace. “But now bring me a minstrel.” He felt, as it were, that he was out of tune with his proper ministry. The presence of the wicked king had disturbed the heavenly tone of his soul. “Bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of Jehovah came upon him. And he said, Thus saith Jehovah, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith Jehovah, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye and your cattle and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight of Jehovah; he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.” Thus an answer of mercy comes instead of judgment. “And it came to pass in the morning, when the meat offering was offered, that behold there came water by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water.” This very thing misleads the Moabites, for they fancy it is blood. “And they rose up early in the morning and the sun shone upon the waters, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood” —for God was pleased that so it should appear. “And they said, “This is blood: the kings are surely slain, and they have smitten one another; now therefore Moab to the spoil.” They were caught in their own trap. “But when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rode up and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them; but they went forward smiting the Moabites even but they went forward smiting the Moabites even in their country. And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about and smote it. And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom; but they could not.” The defeat not only was immediate but hopeless, so much so that the king was guilty of an act that filled the people of Edom with indignation against Israel."For he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel, and they departed from him.” This then was another signal manifestation of the mercy that God had caused to shine through Elisha.

But we find further in the next chapter (4), and in a very beautiful way — not in these outward events that the world calls great, but in that which in my judgment is a still more blessed pledge, a witness of the real greatness of God. The greatness of God is far more shown in His care for souls, for individuals and in his ability to think of the least want and of the least necessity of His people. “Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear Jehovah; and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons as bondmen.”

Elisha asked her what she wished him to do, and what she had in the house. “And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil.” Now it is according to what we can receive that God loves to bless us.

“Go, borrow thee,” says he, “vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.

And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.” It is only so that the blessing stays. There never can be a stay to the blessing as long as there is a heart ready to receive it. What a remarkable illustration! “Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt.”

But this is not all. There is no doubt the rich supply of that which is the well-known type too, of what is essential — of the Spirit. But further, “it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman” — that is, a person of consequence — “and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread” — for Elisha was not as Elijah. Elijah was more after the pattern of John the Baptist — who repelled the advances of men; who rebuked, if he came across those who were in exalted station but living to dishonor God. Elisha, on the contrary, was a witness of grace, and he therefore does not turn away from the habitations of men into the desert, but could, as we see, pass in to eat bread with this Shunammite.

“And she said unto her husband, Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick; and it shall be when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither.”

So on one day that he was there, he bethought him of a return of love for the love that was shown to him. And he called the Shunammite, and when she stood before him, he said unto her, “Behold thou hast been careful for us with all this care — what is to be done for thee? Wouldst thou be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host?” We can hardly conceive such an inquiry from Elijah; it was perfectly in keeping with Elisha; and I am anxious to bring out strongly the contrast between this twofold ministry. “And she answered, I dwell among mine own people"; she was right, she was content; and godliness with contentment is great gain. “He said to Gehazi, What then is to be done for her? And Gehazi answered, Verily she hath no child and her husband is old. And he said, Call her. And when he had called her, she stood in the door. And he said, About this season, according to the time of life, thou shalt embrace a son. And she said, Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid” —but so it was according to the word of the prophet.

Yet in this world, even the mercies and the gifts of God are not without deep trial, and so it was that the Shunammite's son—for the more that he was loved and valued as the gift of God, most especially by his mother, sorrow was her portion —was taken sick, comes home to his mother and dies. “And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God and shut the door upon him and went out. And she called unto her husband and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God and come again.” The husband little knowing what was the matter, wonders, but the point is yielded, and she sets out and comes in full haste to mount Carmel. And the man of God seeing her afar off, remarks upon it to his servant Gehazi. And when she came to him she caught him by the feet, so that the servant wished to repel her. But the prophet knew right well that there was some worthy cause for an action so peculiar. “Her soul is vexed within her,” said he most surely, “and Jehovah hath hid it from me” —even the one that was the witness of grace none the less. “Then she said, Did I desire a son, O my lord? did I not say, Do not deceive me?”

He understands. He says to Gehazi, “Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand and go thy way.” He was to go peremptorily, heeding no one, saluting no one. He had his mission to lay the prophet's staff upon the face of the child. This would not satisfy the faith of the mother. The staff would not do. The prophet, and nothing else than the prophet, must go. She said, “As Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose and followed her.”

So here again was another test of faith, and she was right. “And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face of the child; but there was neither voice nor hearing. Yes, she was right. “Wherefore he went again to meet him, and told him saying, The child is not awaked. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto Jehovah. And he went up and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.”

All the world might have done it in vain. God was pleased so to draw out the mind and heart of the prophet. It was not merely to be a cold request or even an earnest one. It showed in the most vivid manner that God had an interest in the prophet and answers faith. “Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up and stretched himself upon him; and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. And he called Gehazi and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. Then she went in and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son and went out.”

Here then was not merely the gracious reply of what was good, but the power that was superior to evil, in its form most terrible to man upon the earth, superior to death. And this too in perfect grace. It was not that the Shunammite had asked him for the blessing, for it was he who had sought to give the blessing. But at the same time God wrought in her heart to expect another, and she was not disappointed.

Yet it was not merely in this way; for now we find a dearth in the land. And the sons of the prophets were there. “And as they were seething pottage, one of them put in some wild gourds, which were poisonous. So they poured out for the men to eat, and it came to pass as they were eating of the pottage that they cried out and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof. But he said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot; and he said, Pour out for the people that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.” It is the same character of gracious power.

Further, another thing—it was unselfishly gracious; for when the prophet was presented with twenty loaves of barley and full ears of corn in the husks thereof, he says again, “Give unto the people that they may eat.” We remember the remarkable difference in the case of Elijah, who tested the faith of the poor widow by asking first for himself. Not but what he knew the power that would meet her need, but still he tested her after so severe a sort. But in this case, thoroughly characteristic of Elisha's ministry, what is sent to him, he gives to others. And his servant, astonished, asked him, “What, should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people that they may eat, for thus saith Jehovah, They shall eat and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat and left thereof, according to the word of Jehovah.” There is no stinting with God. But it is not merely in the midst of the distressed, and the mourning, and the needy, and the dying, or dead, of God's people. The grace of God, when once it begins to flow, breaks over all boundaries.

And this is what we learn in the chapter that now follows (5) and that we have authority from God to interpret it so, can be easily shown. Our Lord Himself shows that the very essence of the teaching of this chapter is the grace that went out sovereignly to visit the Gentiles. There were many lepers in Israel, but it was not there that grace worked. If grace works it will prove its own character, it will prove its own sovereignty, it will prove its own wisdom. God was looking for the neediest where He could be least expected—where there was evidently no claim upon Him. Naaman the Syrian, commander in chief of the most powerful Gentile army opposed to Israel, was the one that God was pleased to visit with His mercy and in a manner altogether peculiar, and most encouraging. A little maid of Israel, a little captive maid, becomes the instrument of making it known. But the king of Israel's own powerlessness comes out, for he knew right well that it was not in man to cure leprosy; it was one of the things that God kept in His own power. However, here was exactly the opportunity of the prophet.

I have already referred to the fact, and it is even more remarkable in Elisha's case than in Elijah's, that it is more indeed than in word that we find these two prophets manifesting God. Acts may be as prophetic as words, and their acts were so. We are entitled therefore to give them the fullest meaning they can bear—a meaning, of course, guided by scripture elsewhere; for we must bear in mind that symbolic language is just as precise as the ordinary language of every day, and I should say rather more so. It is not everyone that can understand it so easily, but when the heart gets accustomed to the language of the book of God, it is not found so very difficult. There must, of course, be the hearing ear and the attentive heart; but I say again that the symbols of scripture are as fixed in their meaning as the plain language of it.

Now, in this case, we have the Gentile coming to the prophet, and he comes as Gentiles will do, very full of their own thoughts and their own expectations. But the heart must prove its own utter ignorance and folly; it is only so that the full blessing may come. However, to Jordan he must go. His own rivers would not suit just because they were his own. The river of God—that is the river for the leper. And there he goes down into the waters of death, for such is the meaning of Jordan—not merely for the Jew to enter in, but for the Gentile by grace to receive the full blessing of God. And this, too, when Israel had utterly departed from the living God, and was under a cloud. This chapter puts it very strongly, for I have no doubt that guilty, covetous and unbelieving, is as rightly descriptive of the state of Israel now as then.

Naaman was of the Gentile race; but, alas! the Jew is accursed with the leprosy from which the Gentile is delivered. And such was the state, not merely without a blessing, but under a judicial curse from God. The Gentile then is delivered, and we see the beautiful picture of a man not only set free, but with conscience active because he was set free. I do not say that he was all right; it is in vain to expect that all at once, but he was on the right road. And beautiful it is, beloved friends, to learn the lesson—I think we all need it sometimes—not to hurry souls, and not to be anxious to form them according to our own mold or our own measure.

Thus we see, though the prophet could have answered at once as to the difficulty that Namaan presented, he leaves him in the hands of God. He had done that which ought well to awaken and exercise the conscience of the Gentile. He would rather leave him than give him premature knowledge. There is nothing that often more stifles the divine life. When people want to use their little well they should be disciplined in the right use of the little they know already. This was the case then with Naaman. Gehazi, alas! disappears: he has gone out from the presence of God as Israel is now, as it were, gone out from God's presence.

In the next scene (chapter 11) we have Elisha still in the same career of grace. The sons of the prophets find the place where they dwell is too strait for them, and they say, “Let us go to Jordan,” and there they take beams, and so on, for the construction of their large dwellings. “But as one was felling a beam, the ax head fell into the water. And he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed.”

Now here again we see the same thing. It is not reprimand. No doubt there was carelessness, but it is the grace that can meet every need, the little just as much as the great. And I do not hesitate to say that true greatness shows itself in its capacity to take in the little. “And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim. Therefore, said he, Take it up to thee; and he put out his hand and took it.”

In what follows we have what is on a totally different scale, that is, the deliverance that appears from the enemy. Elisha's servant was alarmed, but the prophet prays for him. The film is removed from his eyes, and he sees how true is the word that more were on their side than on that of their adversaries. Elisha's prayer then is answered by the Lord and the mountain was seen to be full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. “And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto Jehovah and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness.” But then there is all the difference even between this act and Elijah's. Where Elijah sends anything of the sort, he leaves them to it. When Elisha seems to depart for a season from grace, it is only to show the fuller grace in the end—just like our Lord, who, when appearing to be deaf to the Syro-Phenician's request, only meant to send her away with a greater blessing, and a deeper sense of the Lord's goodness.

So now, Elisha leads these very, blinded, men into Samaria, into the city which least of all they would have wished so to enter. They were helpless prisoners—so much so that the king of Israel wants to smite them; but the prophet stays his hand. “My father, shall I smite them?” “Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? Set bread and water before them that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” And what was the effect? “The bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel. To have smitten them would have only provoked another campaign. To have smitten them with blindness and to have restored their sight, and then to have fed them with bread and water in the very heart of the enemy's land, brought the immediate surrounding of the power of God so impressively before their eyes that the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel. It was no doubt a most effectual blow, but it was a blow of mercy and not of judgment.

What next follows I may be brief upon. We are all more or less familiar, no doubt, with the great famine in Samaria, and how the Lord changed everything, and changed so surprisingly, and by such simple means. The distress was excessive. The king of Israel was most helpless, and all was in confusion. “And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him saying, Help, my lord, O king. And he said, If Jehovah do not help thee whence shall I help thee?” “And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him, and she hath hid her son.” No wonder that the king rent his clothes, and wore sackcloth; but there was no fear of God—on the contrary, there was a murderous intent against the prophet of God.

The blame was laid upon him. “But Elisha sat in his house and the elders sat with him; and the king sent a man from before him; but ere the messengers came to him, he said to the elders, See ye how this son of a murderer” (for indeed he was) “hath sent to take away mine head.” But there is no fire that comes down from heaven to consume him—quite the contrary. He said, “Behold this evil is of Jehovah; what should I wait for Jehovah any longer.” There was no fear of God before the king's eyes. There was no confidence in God; and the fear of, and confidence in, God go together.

Now what does Elisha say? “Hear ye the word of Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.” There was to be then the utmost abundance, and that, too, the very next day, where there was this most excessive famine even to the eating of poor little children. We can understand how that unbelieving lord should challenge the word of the prophet and say, “Behold, if Jehovah would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” He did not expect that God was listening, and that God was answering, for his prophet instantly replies, “Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” And so it was.

Then we have details of the four lepers brought before us, and the fleeing away of the Syrians, and the abundance that was left behind, and the way in which they themselves had found the mercy of God meeting them in their distress. They became the heralds of it to others that were only less distressed than themselves. Thus was the word accomplished, and there was abundance of food for the people. The word was fulfilled to the letter, but not yet was the ministry of Elisha exhausted.

For in the next chapter (8)he goes and says to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Arise, and go thou and thy household, and sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn.” What was he going to do? To inflict a famine upon the land? Nay. We do not hear that it was he that prayed for it, but we do hear that it was he that warned this Shunammite, so that she should be preserved from the bitter consequences of the famine. It was an intervention of grace and not an execution of judgment. The Shunammite woman is told to go where she can. “It shall come upon the land,” says he, “for seven years. And the woman arose and did after the saying of the man of God. And she went with her household and sojourned in the land of the Philistines seven years.” And when the full time of dearth was passed, this woman returned.

Can one doubt that as Gehazi represents Israel in their unbelief, and the solemn judgment of God upon them, because of it, and that too when the Gentile receives the blessing (for nothing more irritated Israel, as we see in the New Testament, than the Gentile receiving such a blessing of God), so here we find this woman is the sign of the return of Israel after the long period. The full term of famine has passed over the land once favored of God, but now given up to the miserable curse. She returns again, then, out of the land of the Philistines, and she comes and cries to the king for her house and land. And the king was talking at that very moment with Gehazi (or what remained of this miserable man) of the wonders he had once seen, but no longer had an active personal interest in. And this is all that poor Israel can do. This is all that Gehazi does in the courts of the king.

So the Jew may talk of his traditional glory, but he has got none now. All that he can have now is to his shame. He is a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth. No matter what he may be, such is an Israelite now. He is under the very badge of shame. He carries on his brow his sentence as a wanderer and a leper before God. But there are bright hopes for Israel, and to Israel they will surely come. Not to this generation—the generation that cast out the Lord and has continued in its unbelief—it will still come under the desperate judgments of God. But there is a generation to come. I believe therefore that as Gehazi is the type of this generation, the woman now returning after the seven years is the type of the generation to come. And she has all restored to her, and the fruits of the field. She not merely enters upon her land intact, but all that she should have had during the long seven years is all given back; for the Lord will repay with interest all that is due to Israel. And what will He not count due when He is pleased to take up the cause of His ancient people? Thus, then, we have Elisha still in the activity of grace.

And he comes to Damascus, and there he acts more strictly as a prophet than we have usually seen him, though I do not doubt that all was prophetic. All his actions were prophetic, as have been endeavoring a little to show you here. And Elisha tells Hazael, in answer to the request of the king of Syria, that his master was to die, but that there was no necessity that he should die. Alas! he was to die by the treacherous hand of man; and the man was there. It was none other than this Hazael. Elisha said to him, “Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover; howbeit Jehovah hath showed me that he shall surely die.” This was a riddle. “And he settled his countenance steadfastly, until he was ashamed.” For deep thoughts passed in the prophet's mind as he looked upon the face of the murderer—the murderer in prospect. “And the man of God wept.” Well he might as he thought of such ways upon earth. “And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel. And Hazael said, But what! is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, Jehovah hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.” And so it came to pass. And the chapter pursues the public events of the kingdom, on which I need not dwell more than just to finish the story of Elisha.

But in the ninth chapter, Elisha again is found. “He called one of the children of the prophets and said unto him, Gird up thy loins and take this box of oil in thine hand and go to Ramoth Gilead. And when thou comest thither, look out there Jehu the son of Jehosophat the son of Nimshi and go in and make him arise up from among his brethren.” And so it was done. The young man went and anointed him for his work. He gives him his terrible commission, and Jehu does not fail of accomplishing it—the commission of destroying, cutting off from Ahab every male. “And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel,” —the portion of sin, of covetousness and blood. But here I must close for the present. [W. K.]

Notes on Ephesians 3:20

How large and comprehensive is this scripture! Here is a vast amount of truth compressed into a small compass. This grand doxology grows naturally out of the prayer preceding it. The apostle had prayed for the deep things of God for the Ephesians (vers. 16-19)—vast and all-glorious realities. Having uttered such things it is not surprising to have such an outburst of praise. These words are full of all that is encouraging to our faith. God is revealing Himself and unveiling His glories. This is a wonderful scripture—the words are piled up as if the Spirit of God labored to express the vastness of what He wanted to reveal. The language is perfectly marvelous. Notice it is not what we can ask or think, but what we do ask or think. There is no measure to His ability—the measure is in our apprehension.

“Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask, or think.” There are times when our minds and hearts seem enlarged, and we then ask for great things—and we think more largely than we ask. Thoughts sometimes come into our minds which we should be afraid to put into words before the throne of grace. Has the question never come up, “May I expect God to do such great things for me?” Look at this word— “Able to do exceeding abundantly.” His abilities surpass all our words and all our thoughts. It is not a question of what we are able to do; God is making known what He is able to do. His resources are infinite. We may feel as weak as water spilled upon the ground.

Just so. But we must not carry that thought up to God. It is bringing Him down to our level. You may think, “I could not expect the dearest friend I have in the world to do that for me! How can I ask it of God?” We cannot compare God with the creature. In Him all fullness dwells. We need to pull ourselves up sharply. Our thoughts and askings should be formed according to His revelation of Himself and His promises.

“Exceeding great and precious promises.” Are we to deduct fifty per cent from them, and think that God cannot mean as much as He says? It is not so at all. He has spoken in the sincerest reality. We little know the depths of unbelief in all our natures. “Take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” See how important it is! “Take heed,” says the apostle. All unbelief is of the flesh there is nothing spiritual about it. It is very profitable for us, when asking something direct from God, to pause and ask ourselves this question: “Do I believe that God will give me what I ask for?” “Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.”

Oh, what a great God is our God!—He who built up the universe, who spake and it was done, commanded and it stood fast, and who sustains the worlds! As is said in Jeremiah, “If heaven above can be measured!” implying in the most emphatic way that it cannot be measured. And God says, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” Can we measure His resources? Our scripture not only unveils His ability, but His willingness. “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, we know we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” That is very emphatic.

It is said in connection with Elijah that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. It does not say how much. It is as large as it can be. Elijah is given as an illustration. We are carefully told that he was a man of like passions with us. After the mighty conflict and victory at Carmel we see him under the juniper tree wishing he might die! What a collapse! Why is it brought before us in that way? Just to show us that our weakness cannot hinder His power.

A remarkable statement closes the verse. What is the power that worketh in us? It seems that the apostle refers to it in his prayer— “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.” The power that worketh in us is the Holy Spirit of God. “By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens.” “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The Lord was quickened by the Spirit, and that is the power that worketh in us. “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Satanic power is not omnipotent. But this power that worketh in us is the power of the Holy Ghost. How mightily He works! Do we not read in this epistle how Christ was raised from the dead by God's almighty power, and that this very same power has wrought in regard to us—giving us life, drawing us to Christ, subduing our rebellious wills and bringing our hearts into subjection to God and to Christ? Surely this was a mighty work—only God could do it, and, as we learn elsewhere, it is by His Spirit, so that now we can say, We “know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you.” “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” Have we not by His power been led into the truth, been comforted, cheered, encouraged, helped, kept from temptation? How little we enter into His power! But God worketh in us by that power. He is able to give spiritual wisdom, the comfort of love, able to strengthen us in weakness and to arm us for the fight. Oh! this power that worketh in us. Would we might realize it more! There would not then be the cry of weakness that we so often hear. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Is there any deficiency in Him? Surely not. All the weakness and deficiency are in us; we fail to take hold of Him; there is apathy; or perhaps the Spirit is grieved. The blame must be in ourselves, for the Holy Spirit has not taken His departure. We are sealed until the day of redemption. “He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.” If we realize that He is grieved we must get down on our knees before God about it. Sin in thought, word and deed must grieve the Holy Spirit of God; and if unjudged by us His working is hindered. You see then how to get rid of weakness.

Having such things as these, how they should deepen our desires and increase our faith! The faith of the Thessalonians grew exceedingly. We should judge every unbelieving thought. We should seek to have faith like Abraham; or, rather, our faith should be greater than Abraham's. Have we not greater promises than he? These exceeding great and precious promises! “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not, with him, also freely give us all things?” He is waiting—seeking an opportunity to enrich us more and more, to strengthen us. We should have larger thoughts and expectations concerning it. Regarding the gospel—I know there is much infidelity about, but it was the same in those days. Yet the power of God rested on them. Eloquence is no good without that. “All that the Father giveth me shall come unto me.” Wonderful indeed His working! He works in strange ways sometimes. We should have that confidence in Him that although we do not know in what way, we yet expect Him to do something.

“Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” What then? “Unto him be glory in the church throughout all ages.” Again I say, it is what we might expect. You will observe that it is in “the church” or assembly not the world. That will come some day under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ; but in the present condition of things it is in the church. “Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Surely this is our desire —to give glory to God. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me.” Do we think of that? We should be very much occupied with it. Let us give praise—praise, and glory, unto our God.

It is by Christ Jesus—only through Him—and it is continuous throughout all ages. It never loses its freshness—never becomes stale. The world's songs will be hushed; but when we shall see Him as He is, our praises will burst out afresh.

“To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, Amen.”

May He enable us to hide this word away in our hearts and to ponder over it!

R. K.

ERRATA

Page 36, col. 2, line 6 from the bottom—For Elijah read Elisha.

Page 39, col. 1, line 3 from the bottom—For sounds read sound.

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Lectures on 2 Kings 9

2 Kings 9

We now enter upon the solemn stroke of judgment which it pleased God to execute at this time; first, within Israel, and at the hands either of men raised up in their midst, or from without, until at last it pleased God to sweep away the ten tribes from the land of their inheritance. An evil time may be one when God is pleased in His government to employ the rough instrument; and this is one principle of God's ways in His government that we do well to consider. God's employment of a man is by no means the seal of God's approval of his person. We see it in the case before us. Jehu was a man in whom God had no complacency, nor could He have. For there is one feature that belongs to the family of faith, without which there is no communion with God. This is shown from the very beginning of life in the soul, and that is, repentance toward God. And Jehu had not this. Whatever might be his zeal, and whatever, too, the righteousness, to a certain extent, of his action according to the sovereign will of God, he had no brokenness of spirit. He had never measured himself in the presence of God, and repentance is distinguished by this above all others, that whereas faith may be the perception of the truth, as no doubt it is, still it is not a mere mental one; for the door of all blessing to the soul is the conscience, and the Spirit of God awakening the conscience. Unless light enter by that door it cannot be trusted, and the way in which the entrance of the light acts is not merely to give the perception of God's character in a way in which it has never been seen before, but it always shows itself in dealing with the soul of him that sees God.

Hence, you never can separate real faith from real repentance; and as the one is the eye open to see God as revealed in His own Son in a way in which He was never seen before—I am speaking now, of course, of the full Christian knowledge of God; the principle is the same all through, but still I use it now as applicable to our own souls—I say that as faith is the eye that is open by the Holy Ghost to see God revealing Himself in Christ, so, along with that, the eye sees, spiritually, what it cannot naturally. It sees within as well as without; it sees backward as well as forward. It sees, not only the object of faith which God has presented, but, along with that, it invariably sees ourselves; and this is very often the way in which you will detect a faith that is not of God, because it is quite within the capacity of the human spirit to take a great deal of truth, and a person may be zealous for the truth, too—orthodox after a sort—as the apostle Paul speaks in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans of the unrighteousness of them that hold the truth in unrighteousness. And the word is particularly emphatic. It is not merely those that hold the truth loosely; they may be very tenacious, they may be exceedingly keen for points of dogma. And this is supposed in that place. It is persons that hold firm and fast the truth, but what is the good of it if it is held in un-righteousness? Hence, therefore, they come under a more than ordinary judgment of God. Unrighteousness anywhere is evil, but especially where the truth is held ever so fast in un-righteousness is it abomination. And, sorrowful to say, so it is always where the testimony of God is found. It was so in Israel, for they had the truth in a way that the Gentiles had not; and Christendom now has the truth in a way in which Israel had not. Hence, therefore, the apostle brings in the word as a most solemn warning, not merely as descriptive of what was already a past thing, but a solemn hint of that which was coming to pass.

Now Jehu was one of those. He had a perception of the truth to a certain extent. He had a horror of Baal, but he had no true care for God, and he proved it by this, that he had no brokenness of spirit, no conscience, therefore, towards God as to his own faith. Quick as lightning to see the failures of others and to judge them, particularly where their judgment would be for his own interest, Jehu drove furiously through all the Baal worship of Israel. This is the man that God was pleased to use for His execution of judgment in that day. Far different was the spirit of Elisha, but Elisha would accomplish the purposes of God, and therefore directs the young man, the prophet, to take the oil, for doubtless there might have been a hesitation. God gave spiritual judgment, if to any man, to His prophets, and there may well, therefore, have been hesitation both on the part of Elisha to send, and to the young man to be sent, upon such an errand. But there is one thing which answers all questions—the will of God. God does all things wisely, all things righteously; and there is a suitability, too, when we come to think of the matter, that so very unlovely an instrument should be employed for so unlovely a work. Jehu, at any rate, is singled out and has his bloody commission entrusted to him. He was to deal with the whole house of Ahab; he was to cut off every male, he was to make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. He was to deal even with Jezebel, so that the dogs should eat of her in Jezreel, and there should be none to bury her. We shall see how punctually all was fulfilled according to the word of God.

Jehu then comes forth, and the captains asked in astonishment what had he to do with that “mad fellow” (9:11)—a word we do well to consider—for so a prophet appeared! a true prophet of Jehovah! This was his appearance to the eye of the men of the world—a mad fellow. The world was just the same in Israel that it was afterward in the days of the apostles, who were set forth, as the apostle so touchingly says, alas, as the off scouring of all men! So they were regarded then. And, beloved friends, bear with me if I remind every one that is here, so, more or less, the scorn and contempt of the world must be just in proportion to our entrance into the mind of God now. Be not deceived. I admit that there will be a change, but that change has not yet come. The world is the same unchanged world now—the circumstances, no doubt, varied. The texture, the color of them may be changed a little, but the material is the same—the real condition and relation to God just the same as before. I speak not of outward privileges, they are incomparably greater; I speak of the inner heart of the world. It is no better; if possible, worse. No doubt there will be a change, but that bright day is reserved for Jesus. He that suffered must have the glory. Till then we must be content to suffer with Christ.

We see the spirit of it in this prophet; in the contemptuous expression of these captains about a messenger of God. Jehu answers, “Ye know the man and his communication.” They were well known outwardly; how little inwardly! They said, “It is false; tell us now.” He tells it plainly out. Jehu was not a man to keep a secret. “Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king.” The very men that despised the prophet were well disposed to act upon the prophecy. Such is the spirit of man. The reason is evident: it suited their ambition, and, further, it made what even they could not but feel in conscience—for man has a conscience whatever may be the wickedness of his life—and they were well aware that what was now going on, both in Judah and in Israel, was utterly contrary to God. Although they had no feeling for God's glory, they could have contempt for false appearances, and, also, their spirit rose against the unrighteousness which was now enthroned in the throne—doubly enthroned.

So then they at once proclaim Jehu king at the word even of him that they had just branded as “that mad fellow.” And Jehu begins to act then against his master: he had now God's authority for it. The God that had raised up the king was perfectly entitled to cast him down. Jehu, therefore, was thoroughly right in acting upon the anointing of the prophet. And it is remarkable that Jehu is the only one of these many successors that, one after another, overturned the kingdom in Israel—the only one that was anointed. In Judah the anointing was sanctioned of the Lord, no doubt, and we have no reason to suppose that it was not always acted upon, but not so in Israel. In Jehu's case it was. Jehu required this extraordinary act of the prophet to enable him to go forward, and to give him confidence, as well as other people about him. God was pleased so to invest him.

So king Joram was now returning to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, and Jehu at once proposes to pay a visit to his master. “So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there.” At this very time, sad to say, the king of Judah was there too, and here we find a very solemn fact in God's government—that if one who ought to be on the side of righteousness swerves from it into an unholy alliance with evil, he suffers according to the character of the evil he joins, and not of the righteousness that he may have previously possessed. This seems very hard, and there are many that cannot understand that God could deal so with those that have a measure of righteousness; but the truth is, the more we examine the principle the more we see how just it is. A sin is a sin whoever commits it, but whose sin is the greatest? Surely sin in a Christian is worse than sin in an ordinary man who has no Christianity. Sin is always measured by the privilege of him who commits it, and consequently in Israel God Himself showed these differences. The sin of the priest that was anointed had a totally different character from that of one of the people; and the sin of a ruler was not at all to be met in the same way as the sin of one of the common people. So God, in His own people, showed that there were these differences; but even when you leave the people of God it is just the same.

Now the king of Judah then, who ought to have been as the lamp of God in the darkness of that night—the king of Judah had chosen an evil association, for alas! the holy seed was polluted, and there was an alliance that boded evil that was now formed by the royal house. The king of Judah was in the company of the king of Israel. God permitted that they should be found together when the solemn moment came for judgment. The judgment must be shared by those who had sinned together. It was not only, therefore, Joram for whom, properly speaking, the blow was intended; it was not only upon him that it fell, but upon the king of Judah also.

The very same thing is true in the church of God. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. It is not merely that each particle requires to be leavened, but that that which contains the leaven is pronounced upon by God. Doubtless, if the leaven is allowed to work its way it will actually corrupt the whole lump; but God acts, and so should Christians according to the principle of the thing, and not merely the bare fact which comes out before the world. So we find in the most serious matters. Take the lady, even, in the Second Epistle of John—she was responsible for the people she received. She might say that she was only a woman, and who was she to judge. Was it not a woman's place to be very unobtrusive? Yes, but it is a woman's place to be true, and, if she ought to be true to anybody, true to Christ above all. If she, therefore, received those who brought not the doctrine of Christ, her orthodoxy would be no shield. She is warned by the apostle that she became a partaker of their evil deeds. She may not have received the doctrine; it is not supposed that she had received the doctrine—in that case she would have shared their guilt. But she shared the punishment because she chose to identify the name of the Lord in her person with those that were His enemies. Thus you see this great principle is found true in every part of the word of God, though it comes out most stringently in the New Testament, and most of all where it is a question of Christ, and not merely an ordinary evil thing. Now this is most righteous, because of all evils none so bad as that which touches Christ—Christ, the spring of all that is good—the only means of deliverance. When His name is made a cover for evil, and for that which destroys, how great is that darkness!

Jehu then rides on, and as they come, a watchman spies them; and after a little while, although messenger after messenger is sent without returning, it seems evident that it must be Jehu. His driving betrayed him. So the kings at last became disturbed, and Joram, wounded as he was, said, “Make ready,” and he “and Ahaziah, king of Judah, went out, each in his chariot, and they went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite. And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu?” He had his qualms. Well he might. “And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witch-crafts are so many? And Joram turned his hands and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah. And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sank down in his chariot.” But it did not end there, for while Jehu told his captain to take him up and cast him in the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, according to the word of Jehovah, judgment did not fail to overtake Ahaziah as he fled. Jehu followed after him and said, “Smite him also in his chariot,” and so he too dies at Megiddo. But this is not all. There remained a worse end for the one whose craft and violence had wrought such evil in Israel—Jezebel. She painted her face, she fled to her old artifices; but they were all vain to preserve her. The hour of her judgment was at hand. “And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace who slew his master?” But Jehu was not to be alarmed or turned away from the dread commission that God had given him. And he lifted up his face to the window and asked who was on his side, and when the eunuchs showed themselves he commanded them to throw her down, and her blood, as it is said, was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses, and he trod her under foot.

What is remarkable, too, is this. The will of man has but little to do with the accomplishment of the word of God, for Jehu, now in the fullness of his power, relents somewhat towards this wicked woman Jezebel; and although he does say, “Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her, for she is a king's daughter” —well, what had God said? The prophet had said, “The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.” Jehu had heard that word only a short time before, and he evidently showed that his intention was to fulfill his commission exactly; but how little man, good or bad, carries out the word of God. Now, apparently, the old sense of respect for one that was a queen—a king's daughter—rises in his mind, and he says, “Bury her, for she is a king's daughter.” But the word of God had spoken its own command before. And they went to bury her. Their purpose was to obey him. In vain. They found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. Wherefore they came again and told him, and he, convinced how mighty was the word of the Lord, said, “This is the word of Jehovah which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel; and the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.” Thus had God accomplished it, and the blood of Naboth was avenged of the Lord most sternly. And the field was dearly bought, and wrested from the family. Had Naboth been slain? Had his sons failed to inherit? The king was slain too, and there is blood. So with the woman, the queen, who had stirred up her husband the king, and, further, the king's son. In every part sin meets its punishment.

[W. K.]

Studies in Mark 4:30-34: Surprising Growth of a Tiny Seed

4:30-34

23.-The Surprising Growth of a Tiny Seed

“And he said, How shall we liken the kingdom of God? or in what parable shall we set it forth? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, groweth up, and becometh greater than all the herbs, and putteth out great branches; so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof.

“And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it: and without a parable spake he not unto them: but privately to his own disciples he expounded all things” (4:30-34, R.V.).

This section is introduced by the phrase, “And he said.” But whether the audience then addressed by the Lord consisted only of His disciples, or comprised also the multitudes at large we are not specifically informed. It is not, however, extravagant, judging from the nature of the questions which precede the parable, to assume that the Lord was speaking to the apostles. A point bearing upon the character of His ministry, as the parable does, would hardly be laid before promiscuous listeners in the crowd.

The Lord had chosen the twelve that they might be “with Him.” They were His personal attendants, and He constantly associated them with Himself in His service. When emergencies arose He at times consulted them as to what should be done. Not that He needed advice from any, but to question them as He did was to educate them in the understanding (1) of their own natural inefficiency in matters of the kind, and (2) of the vast resources at their Master's command. For example, when He saw the hungry multitudes He said to Philip, “Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat? And this he said to prove him, for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5, 6). Again, we often find that, during His itinerary He graciously included them with Himself when expressing His intentions for the future, e.g., “Let us go into Judea again” (John 11:7); “Let us go over unto the other side [of the sea]” (Mark 4:35); “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem” (Matt. 20:18).

On this occasion the Lord said, “How shall we liken the kingdom of God? or in what parable shall we set it forth?” How gracious this speech was! What did the simple fishermen know of the real nature of the coming kingdom? Yet in this manner He acknowledged them as His fellow-servants, and even as more than this, for a “bond-servant knoweth not what his lord doeth” (John 15:15). They were admitted to the intimacy of His friendship, and He assumed that the object of His love would be the object of their love also, as He said on one occasion to them, “Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep.”

This beautiful expression uniting the apostles with the Servant of Jehovah in divine ministry is only found in the Gospel of Mark. Matthew and Luke both give the pronoun in the singular: “Whereunto shall I liken it?” (Matthew 11:16; Luke 13:18, 20). And in point of fact the Lord, as we know, provided the similitude Himself, needing no prompting from the twelve; yet it is good for us, as it was for them, to learn the lowly grace of the Savior who put the matter so that the apostles might learn that they were chosen to share His service of declaring the kingdom of God.

THE PARABLE

This parable of the grain of mustard seed has the distinction, shared only by that of the Sower and that of the wicked husbandmen, of being recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. It is

short and simple in character, teaching by illustration what wide spreading results may follow from a small and unpretentious beginning.

A grain of mustard seed was proverbially minute in size; and on this account was, on another occasion, chosen by our Lord as a simile when referring to the least modicum of faith a person might exercise and yet remove mountains therewith (Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6). Here the basis of the parable is the mustard seed. This a man took and sowed upon the earth ("in his field,” Matthew; “in his own garden,” Luke). But in spite of its relatively small size the seed grew until it exceeded in magnitude the herbs, and was worthy of being classed among the trees of the field. In the shadow of its spreading branches the birds of the heaven, which once might easily have devoured it as a seed, found shelter and shade.

The mustard of the parable is generally supposed by students of Scriptural botany to be the variety known as sinapis niger, from which the popular condiment is obtained. Though small in this country, the shrub, in the more southern latitudes in which Palestine is situated, attains a considerable size. Travelers report having observed it growing as high as a man on horseback. This is no great height for a tree, but it must be remembered that the main feature of the similitude is not the vast bulk of the tree, but the relative minuteness of the seed when compared with its subsequent development. What from the size of the seed might he expected to grow no larger than a garden herb, in point of fact becomes a tree. Neglect of this consideration has led some to seek to identify the tree of the parable with members of another botanical family.

THE TREE AS A SCRIPTURAL METAPHOR

Trees were of comparatively rare occurrence in the Palestinian landscape, and by reason of this fewness were objects of greater prominence. And various striking metaphors used in scriptural language are founded upon them. It must now suffice to refer to two of the senses in which such allusions are made. A tree is used (1) as an emblem of fruitfulness; and from this point of view the tree of the field was said to be “man's life” (Deut. 20:19); it is used also (2) as an emblem of greatness; “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree” (Psalm 37:35). These two qualities might possibly be found combined in the same tree, but not necessarily so; and it is important to bear in mind these distinct characteristics of fruitfulness and of greatness in the consideration of this parable.

Of the fruit trees mentioned in the Bible perhaps those of most frequent occurrence are the ones named by Jotham in his parable of the trees desiring a king (Judges 9:7-18), viz., the olive with its fatness, the fig with its sweet and good fruit, and the vine with its wine, cheering God and man. Each of these, as is well known, is employed on many occasions in figurative reference to the people of God and their responsibility to bear fruit for Him. The “blessed” man of the first Psalm is also compared to a tree with unwithering leaf, bearing fruit in its season. And the Lord Jesus, using the same metaphor, solemnly declared that good trees bring forth good fruit, and also that every barren tree shall be hewn down and cast into the fire (Matthew 7:16-20; cp. also 21:17-22).

Now it is clear that in this parable of the mustard seed the former of the two senses named is not implied, since fruitfulness is not the point at issue here, though it is in both of the preceding parables. But, as we have already remarked, a tree may also be regarded as an object of verdant beauty in an arid country, all the more noticeable because of its conspicuous size in comparison with commoner and lesser shrubs and herbs; and hence, emblematically, it may be regarded as an object of eminence. In the Old Testament a tree, viewed in this aspect, is used, in more than one instance, as a symbol of political power and earthly greatness. Thus, the Assyrian empire was compared by one of the prophets to a cedar of Lebanon, excelling in height all the trees of the field, the fowls of heaven nesting in the boughs, and great nations dwelling in the shadow. And the prophet applied the same simile to Pharaoh and the hosts of Egypt (Ezekiel 31). Again, the rapid rise and the vast extent of the Babylonian empire were presented to its king, Nebuchadnezzar, in a dream under the figure of a tree which “grew and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth; the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the branches thereof” (Dan. 4). And in the New Testament we read, at this point, that the Great Prophet likened His kingdom to a small seed becoming a great tree, evidently teaching thereby that the kingdom was to develop into an earthly power conspicuous in the eyes of men by the magnitude it would attain in comparison with its initial exiguousness.

THE LITTLE BECOMING GREAT

In all three of the parables narrated in this chapter, the ministry of the kingdom of God by the Servant of Jehovah is presented under the figure of the growth of seed. In the first it is shown that fruitfulness depended upon the suitability of the soil into which the seed was cast; in the second the parable illustrates how the growth and eventual fruitfulness of the seed was independent altogether of human aid. In the third parable, however, quite a different feature is prominent. Nothing is said of fruit for God which will be of so much account in the day of harvest. It is not the Godward side of the kingdom which is brought forward in this instance, but the man-ward. The rapidly-growing tree is the aspect which the kingdom was to assume in human eyes speaking of man generally. For man, apart from any divine revelation, would be able to appreciate the outward development and marvelous expansion of what was originally as insignificant in appearance as a grain of mustard seed.

Though the interpretation of the parable given by the Lord to His disciples is not recorded in the Gospels, the general facts of the remarkable growth of the kingdom in the days of the apostles, through the spread of the word of the gospel, may be gathered from the later scriptures. And we need not, for our present purpose, refer to the testimony of other history as to subsequent times. At the time of the parable, it was truly the “day of small things,” and the disciples were but “a little flock,” yet it was the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom (Luke 12:32), and this divine purpose could not fail of accomplishment.

It seemed a small thing in the eyes of men when the Savior of the world was found as the Babe in Bethlehem's manger. It was asked with scorn whether any good tidings could come out of Nazareth. The labors of Jehovah's Servant appeared to the eye of flesh to be for naught. But the preaching of the gospel, at first restricted to the cities of Israel, was even in the days of the apostles carried into all the world to every creature under heaven (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15).

And, according to the Lord's own word, men came from the east and the west and the north and the south, and sat down in the kingdom. God chose the weak things of the world to the confusion of what was mighty. And the preaching which began at an obscure village of Galilee spread in a couple of generations to the confines of the known world (Col. 1:6, 23). Thus the tiny seed became the landmark of the countryside.

BIRDS FINDING SHELTER AND SHADOW

Branches of trees provide for birds a natural shade from the burning rays of an Eastern sun, as well as a suitable site for their nests. This simple phenomenon, familiar to all, is frequently alluded to in the Old Testament (Psalm 104; 12 Ezekiel 17:23; 31:6; Daniel 4:12, 21). It is also introduced in this parable of the mustard tree, which, it is said, “putteth out great branches, so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof.” The birds find a harbor of refuge among the leafy branches.

What is the signification of this part of the parable? It has already been noted that we do not possess a record of the interpretation given by the Lord to His disciples. It remains, therefore, in this case, as in some others, to seek what light may be afforded by other parts of the scripture, and especially by the immediate context.

Take then the two parables that immediately precede this one. In each of these seed-time and harvest constitute the beginning and the ending of the tableau. The seed is sown with the object that it may ultimately bear fruit. But in the third case the question of fruit bearing does not come into view in the parable. Here the salient feature is the degree of the tree's growth at its maturity when compared with its original size as a seed. In this stage it becomes the haunt of independent agents, which do not originate from the seed as fruit would do, but are altogether separate from the tree as an organism. The birds find protection in the tree, but in no sense do they form an integral part of it. As a seed, they were its natural enemies, and the first parable shows that the good seed was in certain instances devoured by the birds. This act of destruction the Lord interpreted to mean that the word of the gospel when preached was sometimes carried away by Satan. If then the birds of the air mentioned in the first parable represent the emissaries of the devil, we may, by easy analogy, regard them in the third of the same series as representing powers of evil.

This parabolic intimation of future greatness has passed out of prophecy and become a familiar item of ecclesiastical history. The powers of the political world persecuted the church in its infancy, but upon its astonishing development, numerically and geographically, they ceased to persecute, and sought, not in vain, to patronize the power that could no longer be despised for its insignificance. Thus Christendom became a great world-system, the resort, the lodging-place of the forces of evil. This apostate condition of the professing church is delineated in vivid colors at the close of inspired testimony, and the language there employed echoes the figure of the birds employed in this parable. The declaration made in vision concerning this great system is, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird” (Revelations 18:2, R.V.).

That the birds set forth agents of wickedness appears therefore to be the simple and unforced explanation of the parable. But such epithets cannot be applied to many of the interpretations offered of the passage. To say that it teaches how the gospel supplies shelter and protection from worldly oppression and the power of Satan is surely to distort the imagery in a manner that cannot be acceptable to the earnest student. Nor is Dean Alford's somewhat vague explanation of the parable more satisfactory. He says, “We must beware of imagining that the outward church-form is the kingdom. It has rather reversed the parable, and is the worldly power waxed to a great tree, and the churches taking refuge under the shadow of it." The Dean sees that the tree cannot display the true church of Christ, and he alleges that it does set forth the worldly power under which the churches take refuge. There is here a confusion of ideas which arises from assuming that the church and the kingdom are synonymous terms. The latter is the heterogeneous mass of professors, as depicted in several of the Lord's parables. In other words, Christendom, not the church, is the kingdom in its existing form, though the Dean would have us “beware of imagining” such a thing. The kingdom is not the incorruptible church but the mixed system which it became at a very early date, and which the Lord will finally cleanse by removing out of it all stumbling-blocks and persons that practice iniquity (Matthew 13:41).

We may conclude therefore that the most consistent explanation of the parable is that the tree is emblematical of the outward profession of Christianity, particularly in those vast proportions which the system has assumed among the various human institutions for many centuries, while within this extensive organization are harbored many evil persons and principles which are totally opposed to the spirit of its Founder.

MEASURES AND MANNERS

What a fund of truth accompanied the Prophet of Jehovah! There was truth concerning Old Testament mysteries, concerning the Messiah's mission, His ministry, His sufferings, and death, and concerning the kingdom-glories of a future day, as well as much beside concerning the Father and His love. And it was a part of the mission of the Servant of the Lord to communicate these things to His disciples. This He did, so that at the close of His public service He could say, addressing the Father, “The words which thou gavest me I have given them” (John 17:8).

But at this juncture in Mark's Gospel we learn an important principle regarding the manner in which these communications were made by our Lord, and at the same time we may recognize that the principle is the same as that which characterized divine revelations in former days. During the forty centuries preceding the coming of the Messiah God had spoken to His people in divers measures and divers manners (Hebrews 1:1). And these varying portions and methods of instruction throughout the ages were such as in the great wisdom of God were suited to the need of men at the respective epochs, and also such as prepared the hearts of men to expect with a growing intensity the advent of the Redeemer.

In accordance therefore with this principle of dispensational accommodation, the Heavenly Teacher, in speaking the word to His disciples, considered their capacity and the degree of their spiritual development, and adopted that succession of “measure and manner” in His teaching which was best suited for them. The parable and its interpretation was the medium employed by the Lord to impart the “word of the kingdom” in the proportion that their minds and hearts were ready to receive them, thus giving them “meat in due season.” “With many such parables spake he the word unto them as they were able to hear.” Their capacity for hearing was the measure.

We thus see that the Lord recognized spiritual growth in His hearers. On one occasion He had many things to say, but the apostles were then unable to bear them (John 16:12). When, however, the Spirit of truth came at Pentecost they were led forwards into all truth. But in the Epistles, as in the Gospels, we find that individual progress was considered in the ministration of the truth. Paul fed some with “milk,” and others with “meat” (1 Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12). Wisdom the same apostle spoke only among the perfect [full-grown] (1 Corinthians 2:6). And a believer's responsibility for walk is said to be in proportion to his individual measure of attainment (Philippians 3:16).

It may therefore be accepted that now, as then, there are progressive stages in the divine life, and the word of God is unfolded to the individual believer to suit the varying capacity. When the Lord by His Spirit teaches knowledge and makes men understand wisdom, He does not impart an ordered and codified system of divinity, but presents the truth by degrees, “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little” (Isaiah 28:9, 10).

To His disciples the Lord constituted Himself the sole judge of what and of how much it was best for them to know. And His mode of communicating the word of the kingdom was by parables, as Mark writes, “Without a parable spake he not unto them.” This style of discourse was after the manner of the ancient prophets of Israel, concerning whom Jehovah said, “I have also spoken unto the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and by the ministry of the prophets have I used similitudes” (Hosea 12:10, R.V.).

The people at large heard the parables, but lacking faith, they could not understand, and remained in darkness as to the divine purposes. But to His own immediate circle of followers, the Lord expounded everything in private. For to those who “had” more was given, according to His own word. Hence this section closes with the statement, “But privately to his own disciples he interpreted all things.” [W. J. H. ]

Notes on Luke 4

Chapter 4

We saw the Lord taking His place of servant with the excellent in Israel, and thereon the heavens opened, and Himself owned by the Father as His beloved Son. His delights were with the sons of men, and He is traced up, not to Abraham only, the root and depository of Jewish promises, but to Adam and God Himself. Independently of His proper divine glory as Son of the Father, Jesus should be called the Son of the Highest, the Son of God. As man on earth, He was sealed with the Holy Ghost. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. His entire perfectness now was to fulfill, as a servant, the will of Him who sent Him; for a servant doing his own will is a bad servant. Dependence, waiting, and obedience, were the characteristics of this place, and they are found in Him to the uttermost. Hence, as in the Psalms, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” He would not ask for power, but waits on God. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” Put thoroughly to the test, He would do nothing but His Father's will. He was to learn obedience. Having taken the place, He would go through it wholly, not in one act, but experiencing the force of that expression, learning obedience, without one comfort here, with enemies around, bulls of Bashan besetting, dogs compassing. He had to learn obedience where obedience was always suffering, even to the yielding up of life. Every single step was humiliation till the close came in the cross, where the wrath of God was borne in love to us. No doubt He found, in His rejection, fields white for harvest, and so shall we, in our measure, when walking in the same path. But the cross was always before Him—everything that could stop a man. Nevertheless He went on, patiently waiting, and not asking for deliverances. Thus He presented perfect God to man, and perfect man to God.

Verse 1. In this chapter He begins the walk of suffering obedience publicly. And the first thing to be remarked is that, being full of the Holy Ghost, He is led by Him into the wilderness, where He is tempted by the devil. There are two ways in which the enemy has power; first by allurements, and secondly by terror. In the one he works upon us through our lusts, presenting what is calculated to attract, and so he rules over us naturally. In the other he has the power of death. Thus, Judas being a covetous man and without the faith which purifies the heart, Satan suggested the occasion and gets him. He has no right to rule over men, but he acquires dominion through the lusts of the flesh. Another way is through the terror of death. In both he assailed the Lord, but found nothing in Him.

Here, then, we have the devil meeting man in the power of the Spirit of God—man tempted, not in paradise, but in the wilderness. Jesus does not say, “I am God, and you are Satan; go away.” That would not have glorified God, nor have helped us. But as the Lord was led into the wilderness, not by lust (God forbid the thought!) but by the Holy Ghost, so in His blessed grace He puts Himself in the place where man was. He has help from none, not even from John the Baptist. There was all that might have stumbled rather, had it been possible; through all He goes as man. He must be tempted, and must overcome where man not only had failed, but was lying under the power of wickedness.

Verses 2, 3. There was no harm in hunger: it was no sin. He could have commanded stones to be made bread, but to do so, save at His Father's word, would have been doing His own will, and then He had not been the perfect man. Satan tries to introduce into His heart a desire which was not in the word of God; He succeeded in insinuating a lust into the heart of Adam; he fails with Jesus, though He was for forty days exposed to his presence and power. Jesus had to know by experience what it was to have working at Him, without a single support, without a friend, in solitary dreariness (save indeed the wild beasts) with the devil! Thus He measured the power of Satan. The strong man was there, putting forth all his weapons, but the stronger than he overcame: Jesus binds the strong man. He was abstracted from human condition for forty days, not like Moses to be only with God, but as the one who was always with God, to be exposed to Satan. None other man needs to be abstracted in order to be tempted, he has only to go on along with men. In this case, this extraordinary separation was to be with the devil. To be with God He did not need anything out of His every-day path, for it was His natural place; but to be with Satan, He needed it. Others were strangers to God, and at home with Satan. He, in the most adverse things, is a stranger to Satan, and dwells in the bosom of the Father. But He emptied Himself as God to become a servant as man, and there he waits in dependence on the word of Him whom He served. The living Father had sent Him, and He lived by [because of] the Father. He was as man under His authority, and His meat was to do His will. “By the words of thy lips, I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.”

Verse 4. It is the written word He ever uses, and Satan is powerless! What amazing importance Jesus gives the scriptures! God now acts by the word, and Satan is resisted morally in this way. A man cannot be touched by Satan while the word is simply used in obedience. “He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.” It was not as an exercise of divine authority He dismissed Satan, but the enemy is proved unable to grapple with obedience to the word of God. If he cannot take out of the path of obedience, he has no power. What more simple? Every child of God has the Holy Ghost acting by the word to keep Him.

Jesus does not reason with Satan. A single text silences when used in the power of the Spirit. The whole secret of strength in conflict is using the word of God in the right way. One may say, I am not like this perfect Man: it might be so with Christ, but how can I expect the same result? True, we are ignorant, and the flesh is in us; but God is always behind, and He is faithful, and will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able. Temptation may be simply a trial of our obedience, as in Abraham's case, not a snare to lead us astray. Satan presents what has no appearance of evil. The evil would be—doing one's own will. Now it solves every difficulty to ask—not, what harm is there in doing this or that?—but, why am I doing it? Is it for God or myself? What! am I to be always under this restraint? Ah! there the secret of our nature comes out; we do not like the restraint of doing what God will approve. It is restraint to do God's will! We want to do our own will. To act merely because one must is law, and not the guidance of the Spirit. The word of God was the motive of Christ, and such is Christ's guidance. Not fencing the old man, but the new man living on the word is defense against Satan.

Verses 3-13. The first temptation is an appeal to the need of the body. The second in Luke (not in Matthew) is the inducement of the world's glory. The third in our Gospel is the religious temptation through the word of God, and therefore morally the hardest of all to one who values that word. And this is the reason why Luke departs from the actual order of the events, in order to group them morally, as is the habit of this Evangelist elsewhere also. Thus we have the tempter assailing the Lord Jesus, first, as to man's life; second, as to the power given to man; and third, as to the promises made to Christ Himself.

The Lord might have argued with the devil, but He does not even tell him that the dominion of the world would be His by and by. He takes His stand on that which settles everything, and is a perfect example for us. He stands to God's word, and God's worship. He awaits His word, He worships Him, He serves Him only. How simple and how blessed! It was the immediate link of an obedient heart with God. The question was one of relationship to God. So of old, Eliezer receives blessing, but before he begins to enjoy it, he gives thanks. He had the word first, then the blessing—and what follows forthwith? He bows his head and worships. God is the first thought of his heart. And so still more fully with the Lord here. The last and subtlest temptation was grounded on the promises to Messiah (vers. 9-11). If thou art the Son of God, why not try? But why should He try, who KNEW that God was for Him? Why should He be like presumptuous Israel of old, who would go up the hill in disobedience to prove whether the Lord was among them? Not even when Lazarus was sick would He stir, till it was the Father's will, though all nature would have moved: and He knew well the sorrow of that house which was His refuge; for “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.”

The Lord did not listen. Who would? you say. But you do listen to Satan, every day of your lives that you seek a very little bit of the world. But was there not a promise? Doubtless there was; yet why should He throw Himself down to see whether God would be as good as His word? Did He not know that God was with Him? And so with us: let us only have the word behind us, no matter what may be before us. Never should we raise a question whether God is with us. If He does not send, let us not move, but let us never question His presence. If we are in the simple path of His will, the Holy Ghost will act in us to guide, and not merely on us to correct.

Thus then, in the order of Luke, which, as we have seen, is not historical, but moral, we have the progressive exercises of a man. First, natural lusts; secondly, worldly lusts; and lastly, spiritual temptations. The Lord Jesus was tempted here, not in Eden, but in the great system where we are. He put Himself, by the will and wisdom of God, in the place of our difficulty in the world, where man is. He has gone through all the difficulties a saint is in. Who wants His help? Not a sinner, for he wants salvation: but a saint needs help and sympathy in his path. We have practically to keep our first estate, as renewed. Satan cannot touch the new man, but he tries to entice out of the path of godliness. We want succor to walk as obedient ones where Christ walked.

Verse 14. “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee; and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.” In all things His obedience is shown. Untouched by Satan, He goes forth in unhindered power: as we shall in a measure, if like Him we pass through temptation, so as not to be touched by Satan.

Verse 16. “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up” —the low, despised place, but just the place where spiritual power is found. Was it not ever thus? When was it found allied to the great things of this world?

Verse 18. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor,” &c. It was the characteristic of grace to come to such. The great business of Christ was to preach, that is to present God. The Holy Ghost gives the right word at the right time, and in the right way. “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (ver. 21). The Lord does not reason; He says, Here it is. The way of God is to present what we want. You want salvation, there it is; you want mercy, and there it is. God alone can thus come, by grace, into the place of a sinner. They wonder, for His were gracious words, but soon they ask, Is not this Joseph's son? Was He ashamed of being the carpenter? Grace goes down to the lowest need. But man will take occasion to despise grace, because it is clothed in humiliation: he cannot but see God, but he steps aside to look at the humiliation, and so shows out the hatred of his heart. God's grace is despised and His sovereignty is hated. God did not despise Nazareth, but man despises Jesus because He came out of Nazareth. Even the guileless Nathanael asks, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” How little appreciation of the way of grace there is even in the godly! Christ comes into man's misery, and finds him where he is. Could an angel? No: he stays in his proper position, doing the Lord's commandments, and hearkening to the voice of His word. An angel ought not to come down to me in my sins: God only can in His grace. And man despises the lowliness to which grace brought Him. Wretched man!

But Israel ever resisted grace, and yet it was ever the way of God's delight. Witness the widow of Sarepta in Sidon, and Naaman the Syrian leper. Grace over-leaped the bounds of Israel (vers. 25-27). They might be enraged, but grace does over-step their limits. They rose up to thrust Him down who had denied their privileges, but He passed through (ver. 30) to renew the work of grace elsewhere (vers. 31, 32). This does not move Jesus; it tries Him and breaks His heart, but it does not move Him. The reproach of man turns Him to God. His comfort in His rejection is His Father's will: “Even so, Father.” It was perfectness in the scene of grace, as before in the scene of temptation.

There was also the manifestation of power, and not merely promise. There was the accomplishment of promise for the deliverance of man in power as well as grace: and this remains true for us, who know Him as a man risen, and at the right hand of God. Mere promise does not give a center for the affections: Christ Himself is that—Christ to whom promise pointed. He awakens divine feelings and thoughts in us, which find no response or satisfaction from anything in this world. It is the special character of Christ: when He presents Himself, it is perfect peace and grace; and in fellowship with Him, the soul can praise and rejoice in what He is.

This grace adapts itself to all difficulties, so as to bring man into peace with God. The very demons knew who He was; man alone was dull and blind. The devil held captive, but a single word of Jesus sets the captive free. He was there, not a promise merely, but power accomplishing, the living power of the Lord Himself among men, the power of God in man overcoming Satan. Such was Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum, dealing with the unclean spirit (vers. 33-37). And it is the same when He goes out and enters Simon's house. Disease disappears, the weak is made strong. He ministers unto Simon's wife's mother, as she lay taken in a great fever, “and immediately she arose and ministered unto them” (vers. 38, 39). What can resist this delivering power in the person of the Lord Jesus? “Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them; and demons also came out of many.” He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Therefore when men stayed Him that He should not depart, He pleads His mission to preach elsewhere also. He is ever the obedient One.

[J.N.D.]

Notes on Romans 8:12-17

We have to do tonight chiefly with the last three verses. The fifteenth verse gives us a very impressive and instructive contrast between the spirit we have not received and the Spirit we have received. We can truly say we “have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” There was a time when we had grounds of fear—a certain fearful looking for of judgment that indeed distressed us. It is not so now. Are we not brought into perfect peace by that perfect sacrifice? “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So that we have not received the spirit of bondage and of fear. Terror and dread have disappeared. We have got to know something of that perfect love that casteth out fear. It is not such a simple thing after all to believe the great love of God; it is so utterly beyond our comprehension. There is not a single thing in ourselves to draw out His love. But He has loved us, and surely when He has shown such great love to us it is ingratitude indeed not to believe Him. His is the perfect love, not ours.

I am not quite sure but that there is a thought here of the contrast between the Jew and the believer. We can understand a Jew having fears and anxieties. A Jew might have peace on the day of atonement, but how soon that peace would be gone! “Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God.... For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” He hath obtained eternal redemption. He offered full satisfaction to God for the sum total of our sins, therefore we are delivered from fear.

But then we are exhorted to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Deliverance from fear is a very special blessing.

Then you see what we have received—the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Jew could never cry, “Abba, Father,” much less the Gentile, who was without hope and without God in the world. This is special; peculiar to those who are in Christ.

Now let us look into this matter of the Spirit of adoption. Adoption is a word occurring frequently in the New Testament and in one sense also in connection with Israel. They were an adopted people—and ourselves have received the adoption of sons—but what a difference between the two cases! “We are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” We have the Spirit now, but we are waiting for this redemption. When the Lord comes and we are fashioned like unto His body of glory, we shall know what this adoption is.

We need to go further down to feel the full force and enter into the reality of this. The most affecting scene that our eyes can rest on in the whole word is that scene in Gethsemane. There the Lord uses these words, “Abba, Father.” See how near we are brought. We only have these words three times in the whole of scripture—in Mark, in Romans, and in Galatians. One of our hymns says, “None but children Abba say.” Adopted children in the East never use this word. The spirit (of adoption) bears witness to a great fact, that is, we are the children of God. You may have noticed how very constantly the apostle John uses the word “children"; in fact we get nothing else there. I know our precious translation gives the word sons (ch. 3, vers. 1 and 2), but it should be children. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestow ed upon us that we should be called children of God.” Sonship brings in a different line of truth altogether. You may be sure the Spirit of God never uses a different word without a distinctive meaning. In the writings of the apostle Paul we get both words. They are used in this very chapter: “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” The children are to be manifested as sons before the world.

I want you really to see to-night that we are in reality horn into the family of God. This word “children” is intended to bring us into the reality and intimacy of our position with God. David adopted Mephibosheth, brought him into his own family, and he sat at the king's table, but you can all clearly see that Mephibosheth could never be David's child; he was Jonathan's son and must remain so. That is adoption, but here we have something much better than that— “born of God,” “quickened by his Spirit.” The thing for us to do is to believe it. Being born of God the sense of relationship is given to the soul, “and the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” The word “sons” implies heirship, but is there not something sweeter in being brought into the family of God? There is a blessedness in that that no one can describe. The witness of the Spirit comes in here just at the right place. It would be a valuable exercise to trace out the varied blessings given to us through the indwelling of the Spirit. We have the Spirit dwelling in us here, and an Advocate with the Father in the heavens. God, in His matchless love, has fully provided for us. Surely we shall be brought safely through when this is so.

“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” One believing is a different creature from what he was before. When you believe, there is the witness of your own spirit that you are changed. But the matter is of such supreme importance that it is not enough to have that witness, therefore “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit.” He gives and maintains in us the sense of this relationship into which we have been brought; that we are in very deed and truth children of God. He is our Father, loving us and caring for us. Many people have never got beyond “Almighty God.” That was very comforting to Abraham, but we are brought into the family of God. A young convert may be very ignorant of the truth, but in his simplicity he very soon cries, “Abba, Father.” And this is very beautiful. Somehow he naturally addresses the Father; it is the Spirit leading him unconsciously. Nothing delights Him more than for us to fully believe that He is our Father. And so “the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Do we really believe that tonight? Everyone must see that if this is true there is in it an immeasurable amount of blessing. Children of God. We have received this witness of the Spirit teaching and enabling us to cry, “Abba, Father.” The love of God flows to us in all this, and should be enjoyed by us. What a claim this gives us, you see, upon His love, His care, His watchful eye. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him.” Good things! all manner of good things! God will never give a bad thing to one of His children, you may rely upon that. Always good. Alas! how often we allow unbelief to keep us from opening our mouths wide to Him. It is a supreme privilege to be allowed to come to Him as our Father with our wants.

The matter does not end there. It necessarily follows, if children, then heirs. Look what it means. Heirs of God. God is our Father, we His heirs. What does that mean? Look further. “Joint heirs with Christ.” He hath given all things into His hands. He is the heir of all things. “That he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.” Not only will this world be in His possession, but the whole universe. And we are joint heirs with Christ. Do you see what that means? No, you do not. Of course, you do not. It goes beyond us completely—the breadth, the length, and depth, and height. If we really believed it, it would surely remove envy and jealousy. When we come to think how superior our inheritance is to anything the world has to offer us we should surely be above its petty things. They must all go, but all is secure that is laid up in the heavens for us. How this should cheer us, and how it should gladden us! If it were half believed as it should be it would fill us with joy. These are realities—realities. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It is revealed in the word, but we have not yet the experience. We are going to share the inheritance of the whole universe with Him.

Now bringing us down to our present condition: “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” The glory comes in again. Tribulation is the present thing, but the bright glorious future is coming. It seems to me impossible for a Christian not to suffer with Him. He suffered for righteousness' sake and for the sins and woes of the world. We suffer in sympathy with Him. It is impossible to pass through the world without feeling it in some measure. It only proves more clearly and fully that we are children of God. We have been given to Christ out of the world. Very few have the privilege now of suffering greatly for Him. Many have suffered for Him in the past and have laid down their lives for His sake. Just so. But this is almost lower ground, and takes in every child of God. What then? “That we may be also glorified together.” This goes beyond glorified bodies; that will be at the coming of the Lord, but this at His appearing. “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” We shall be glorified together before the eyes of the whole universe when He comes to be glorified in His saints. What a future opens up before us! Glory upon glory! It is a privilege to suffer with Him—all privilege. God grant His blessing. Amen.

R. K.

Published

LONDON

F. E. RACE, Publisher, 3 & 4, London House Yard,

Paternoster Row, E.C.

Lectures on 2 Kings 10

But of this dreadful work all was not over, for Ahab had seventy sons (chap. 10). It seemed utterly beyond the scope of man's thought that such a family could fall seventy sons. Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. Jehu has to deal with them, and he was just the man to do it without a feeling. So he sent to the elders of Samaria. Jezebel had written a letter to the elders on another errand to dispossess Naboth of his inheritance. Most solemnly does God judge the deed now. Jehu writes a letter to the elders of Samaria that there might be a complete extermination of the seed of Ahab. “As soon as this letter cometh to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and there are with you chariots and horses, a fenced city also, and armor, look even out the best and the meetest of your master's sons, and set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house. But they were exceedingly afraid, and said, Behold, two kings stood not before him: how then shall we stand?” So he wrote a letter the second time, and now his full and true meaning became evident. “If ye be mine, and if ye will hearken unto my voice, take ye the heads of the men your master's sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to-morrow this time.”

The deed was done. “It came to pass when the letter came to them, that they took the king's sons and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to Jezreel.” And there they were found, and Jehu goes to vindicate the bloody deed. “It came to pass in the morning that he went out and stood, and said to all the people, Ye be righteous; behold, I conspired against my master and slew him, but who slew all these? Know now that there shall fall unto the earth nothing of the word of Jehovah which Jehovah spake concerning the house of Ahab; for Jehovah hath done that which he spake by his servant Elijah. So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolk, and his priests, until he left him none remaining.” Thus the word of the Lord was most fully accomplished.

But Jehu was in the spirit of this unsparing vengeance, and as he goes there meets him the brethren of Ahaziah king of Judah. They, too, were not a few. When he asked who they were, they answered, “We are the brethren of Ahaziah, and we go down to salute the children of the king and the children of the queen.” How solemnly the hand of God was stretched out! Their father, brother of the king, had gone down with the king, and he had met his doom there. Now his brethren of the same seed royal had gone down to that house—evil communications corrupting good manners. They had “gone down to salute the children of the king and the children of the queen. And he said, Take them alive. And they took them alive and slew them at the pit of the shearing-house, even two and forty men.” How plainly was the hand of God stretched out in judgment. “Neither left he any of them.”

We see him next with Jehonadab, the son of Rechab. There was a certain measure of companionship between the two men, for Jehonadab was stern, according to his own principles, and Jehu, too, was carrying out in his way the work that he had been raised up of God for. But there was more than this in the mind of Jehu. It was not only the feeling of the need of judgment in the royal houses, but there was a worse evil against the name of Jehovah in Israel—the worship of Baal. To this, then, he applies his skill. He proposes a grand feast of all the worshippers of Baal, gives himself out as if he were the patron of the worship, calls for all the worshippers and priests of Baal, and in the most careful manner looks that there shall be none of the worshippers of Jehovah among them. Accordingly all were gathered together into the same building, their hearts as elated as the hearts of those that clave to Jehovah must have fallen and sunk within them—that one so bloodthirsty and so determined was the apparent patron of Baal and the enemy of Jehovah. But here, at least, Jehu could keep his own counsel. And Jehu brings into the house his soldiers, his captains, and men of war, and they smote them with the edge of the sword. “And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them. And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draft house unto this day. Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.”

So far although it might have seemed to be, and no doubt was, a most fearful evil the utter dishonor of God—which Jehu had laid his hands upon, still we see how little the heart of the man was according to God. “Howbeit, from the sins which Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Bethel, and that were in Dan.” There was a plague spot, and every unregenerate and unrenewed man manifests it. He that cares for the will of God will not care for this part of His will to the disparagement of that. And this is just exactly what the apostle James says so truly, that the man that fails in one point is guilty of all, because, if there were a conscience towards God, that one point would have its value. James is not speaking of a failure. He is not speaking of a person who, desiring to do the will of God, breaks down through carelessness or levity. That alas! is the portion of every soul who is off his guard. What James speaks of is willfulness and evil-willfulness, though it may be only shown in one particular way. But such is not a soul that is born of God. No man that is born of God will give himself up deliberately and willfully to sin, even though it may be in the least thing. He may have to mourn, he may have to be ashamed, he may have to judge himself and hate himself, but that very thing shows that it is not a thing done deliberately and systematically, and without conscience. On the contrary, where he fails he grieves over his failure before God.

Now James describes nothing of this kind, but the plain, positive and uncared-for infraction of the law of God. Here we see it in Jehu. Whatever might be the zeal of Jehu against the guilty king of Israel, the guilty king of Judah, and the worship of Baal, there was a reserve, there was an inner chamber of the heart that was not reached yet, and there was an idol there, and that idol was that old idolatry—the calves of gold. The reason is plain. Jehu cared for himself and not for God, and the golden calves were a political religion which it suited the policy of the ten tribes to maintain; for had the ten tribes had no calves of gold they had returned to the allegiance of Jehovah in Jerusalem. It was the grand means of having another center, for had Jerusalem been the one center for the ten tribes, as well as for the two, the twelve tribes of Israel had united, and had they united in worship of God they had united under the same king. But in order to make the breach, therefore, distinct and wide, and widening, between the two kingdoms, Jeroboam, the founder of the kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, had devised this most crafty scheme. In order to make a kingdom he must make a religion, for if there be the dissolution of a common bond so important as religion, and if men's minds are divided in religion, you cannot count upon them in politics. That is just one of the great causes of political weakness in the present state of the world, for there is no such thing as cohesion, and consequently all political foundations are breaking in every land and tongue. So it was seen that it must be then. Jeroboam began this, and Jehu had no intention of giving it up. He dearly loved the kingdom; he dearly loved his place. He loved it better than God—the man not born of God. Hence, therefore, whatever might be his apparent zeal, it had its limits.

Nay, further, it utterly failed, for the worship of the calves was still maintained by Jehu. Unbelief is never consistent. Faith may fail, but still faith desires consistency. Faith cannot be happy without consistency. Jehu had no conscience about it. Jehu took no care to walk in the law of the Jehovah God of Israel with all his heart, for he departed not from the sin of Jeroboam which made Israel to sin.

The consequence was that Jehovah pronounces upon him. His comparative fidelity would be met by God, and to the fourth generation there should sit upon the throne of Israel kings of Jehu's house. Israel had a short lived tenure given to it, but out of that tenure Jehu's house was to command for four generations. So God accomplished. But there was to be no real permanent line, for Jehu had shown no real conscience towards God. How different from David! David's heart was to build Jehovah a house, Jehovah must take the first place: Jehovah would build David a house. He would give it to David's son to build Him a house. Thus it was then that God laid the foundation in that very thing of a permanent line of Judah not of Israel.

But we have here a remarkable instance of God's government. The fidelity of Jehu, as far as it went, brought him a measure of blessing in this world from God. Even a bad man, if faithful in certain things, may be owned by God, and God will never allow Himself to be the debtor of any man. Therefore if the faithfulness be only for the world, in the world the man will be paid. Jehu had no thought for eternity. In these days, then, Jehovah began to cut Israel short. It was plain that there could not be a blessing—a real true blessing. Jehu still pursuing the road of Jeroboam made it impossible; and this accordingly is the way in which his reign closes.

[W. K.]

Lectures on 2 Kings 10

2 Kings 11-13

But in the eleventh chapter we have another scene of deep import and interest. There is a wicked woman—and when a woman is wicked there is no wickedness like hers. “And when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose, and destroyed all the seed royal. But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain; and they hid him (even him and his nurse) in the bed-chamber, from Athaliah, so that he was not slain” (11:1, 2).

We know what the love of a parent and of a grandparent is, but here in Athaliah was no right feeling. Her very blood was corrupted in her veins. And this wretched and selfish woman — this inheritress of the wickedness of Jezebel, now, alas! in the line of Judah has the opportunity, as she thinks, to stamp out the royal line of Judah. Both the desire of dominion and the hatred of the purpose of God—wicked allies—strove together to accomplish this nefarious purpose. Had the line of Ahab been extinguished? Had Ahaziah and his brethren fallen? The guilty purpose rose in her heart to put an end to the seed-royal of Judah, as that of Israel had been already extinguished. What interest had she? How did she care for it? The word of God had distinctly assured them that the line of Judah should never go out—the only real line that has remained unbroken from the beginning, and will throughout eternity. I speak now for the earth—up to eternity at least, for even if we only look at the earth under the government of God, that line, and that line alone, so abides.

And yet there never was a line so slender: there never was a line that hung so often upon a single thread. Just contrast it with Israel. Think of seventy sons of one family! and, I will not say the promise, but the apparent moral certainty that that line must be perpetuated forever! But no—it was put out in one day! Who could have thought of it beforehand? And this too in the royal city, and by the royal servants. Such is man; such is the world. The word of the Lord had said it. Oh! what foolishness is ours that could ever doubt a word of God! And what has God given us all this for, but that we may know that if that word stands in what is evil, how much more in what is good? If God accomplishes His threats to the letter, can His promises fail for an instant? I grant indeed that His promises continually seem to fail, just for the very purpose that our faith should not stand in appearances, but in the word of God. There would be no faith about it if all seemed to be easy and flowing; but it is precisely the contrary. All appearance is against it, but God watches still. If it were only one feeble scion of that house, it was enough. It was a scion of that house, and that house stands forever, because God has said it. And so we shall see in this chapter. Athaliah then, Joash's own grandparent —the one that ought most of all, from her sense of her relationship, to have been the guardian of that one only descendant of herself, who had her own blood in his veins—this very Athaliah seeks to destroy the one last remaining scion of the house of David. Well, it seemed impossible! For think you that when she thought to kill the seed royal she forgot the little boy? Not she. She knew well about him. It is not for me to say how the thing was covered over—how it was that Jehosheba knew how to guard the child from the suspicions and the inquisition that would naturally follow for one that was rescued, for if there was a woman that was crafty in what was evil it was Athaliah. I suppose it is not too much to imagine that there may have been a little conspiracy upon this good Jehosheba's part, also on the other side. At any rate, I have no wish to say anything to her disparagement, but I do say that, whatever the means, God employed the purpose of her heart for the shelter of the child. He was hidden then, and hidden where none could have expected—in the temple. Such a state of things calls for no common screen for a royal child, and surely God was with the shelter that was given him. And although that temple was built for priests and not for a king in distress, still the grace of the Lord rises over all such merely ritual circumstances. “And the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers over hundreds, with the captains and the guards, and brought them to him into the house of Jehovah, and made a covenant with them, and took an oath of them in the house of Jehovah.” Here again we see that mere ritualism cannot stand against what is moral—cannot stand against that which concerns the word of God in its accomplishment for him whom God had set over His people Israel. “He made a covenant with them and took an oath of them in the house of Jehovah, and showed them the king's son.” The king's son was but a little boy, but he was the lawful king of Israel—in fact only the king of Judah, but in title really of Israel. “And he commanded them, saying, This is the thing that ye shall do; a third part of you that enter in on the sabbath shall even be keepers of the watch of the king's house; and a third part shall be at the gate of Sur; and a third part at the gate behind the guard; so shall ye keep the watch of the house, that it be not broken down.”

All then is prepared. “And the captains over the hundreds did according to all things that Jehoiada the priest commanded: and they took every man his men that were to come in on the sabbath, with them that should go out on the sabbath, and came to Jehoiada the priest. And to the captains over hundreds did the priest give king David's spears and shields, that were in the temple of Jehovah. And the guard stood, every man with his weapons in his hand, round about the king, from the right corner of the temple to the left corner of the temple, along by the altar and the temple. And he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony; and they made him king, and anointed him; and they clapped their hands, and said, God save the king.”

Athaliah was not long without hearing the tumult. So she comes to the people and to the temple of Jehovah. A strange place for her, the hater of Jehovah and the patron of idolatry in its worst form! She comes, and looks, and behold, the king stood by a pillar. The king! And this was all that her murderous policy had led to and ended in. “The king stood by a pillar, as the manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king; and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets. And Athaliah rent her clothes and cried, Treason, treason;” The old voice—the voice of her mother, before her, and the voice too of her son after her, and now her own. But the truth was, it was she who was the traitor. It was she that had tried to blot out the king from the throne; and, accordingly, she meets with the just reward of a traitor, for “Jehoiada commanded the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth without the ranges; and him that followeth her kill with the sword. For the priest had said, Let her not be slain in the house of Jehovah.” There was no one to follow. She was alone, not alone in her evil, but now her evil had not one sympathizer. “So they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the which the horses came into the king's house; and there was she slain.

“And Jehoiada made a covenant between Jehovah and the king and the people, that they should be Jehovah's people; between the king also and the people. And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and brake it down.” And thus the worship of Baal was dealt with in Judah, as it had been before in Israel.

“In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign; and forty years reigned he in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Zibiah of Beer-sheba. And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of Jehovah all his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places” (12). Nevertheless, as long as Jehoiada was there, there was a measure of care outwardly for the things of God; and, as the priests had watched over Jehoash in his childhood, Jehoash now in his maturity watches over them and says to the priests, “All the money of the dedicated things that is brought into the house of Jehovah, even the money of every one that passeth the account, the money that every man is set at, and all the money that cometh into any man's heart to bring into the house of Jehovah, let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance; and let them repair the breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be found. But it was so, that in the three and twentieth year of king Jehoash, the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house.” That is, instead of applying the contributions for the house of Jehovah they had applied them to themselves.

“Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and the other priests, and said unto them, Why repair ye not the breaches of the house? Now therefore receive no more money of your acquaintance, but deliver it for the breaches of the house. And the priests consented to receive no more money of the people, neither to repair the breaches of the house. But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh into the house of the Jehovah: and the priests that kept the door put therein all the money that was brought into the house of Jehovah.” And so it was done: the work proceeded, Jehoiada watched over it, and the house of Jehovah was repaired.

But however this might be, the heart of Jehoash was not with the Lord, and the death of Jehoiada gave an occasion to display it. This, however, I need not dwell upon now. “In the three and twentieth year of Joash the son of Ahaziah king of Judah Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned seventeen years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom. And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-hadad the son of Hazael, all their days. And Jehoahaz besought Jehovah, and Jehovah hearkened unto him” (13). How gracious is the Lord! We see, alas! that the one who began so fair at last slips away from his original integrity. But we see that the man who hearkens and bows to the Lord is never without, at any rate, some measure of recognition on God's part. “And Jehovah gave Israel a savior, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians: and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents, as before-time. Nevertheless they departed not from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, who made Israel sin.”

But, after this, we find, “In the thirty and seventh year of Joash king of Judah began Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz to reign,” and he comes in contact with the prophet Elisha. This is a point that I wish to direct your attention to for a moment. Joash comes down, and weeps over Elisha's face, and says, “O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!” —the same words that Elisha himself had used when he saw the prophet going up to heaven—that is, he acknowledged him to be the strength of Israel. What makes it so touching is, that he was dying; all natural vigor was departing from him. But just as Elisha owned that the strength of Israel was not in horses or chariots, but that he was the one—that he was all their strength as far as God had employed him for that purpose—so here in the same way Joash the king of Israel owns the dying Elisha, and God owns the word. “And Elisha said to him, Take bow and arrows; and he took unto him bow and arrows. And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow; and he put his hand upon it.” But there was another and a mightier hand, although the hand of a dying man. “Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands,” and God saw, and God gave the power, the needed power. “And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of Jehovah's deliverance.” Truly dying Elisha was the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof; for God would show that the strength of his people does not lie in what man can see, but in the vigor that He himself imparts. “The arrow of Jehovah's deliverance,” said he, “and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice and stayed.”

Why did he stay? Did he not know what the prophet meant? Did he not apprehend the grace of God that was now at work? Why did he stay? Alas! a man never stays out the grace of God, even were it an Abraham who leaves off when he ought to go on! Yet the grace of God never fails of its purpose. Here, however, it was the judgment of God. The grace of God prevailed over the intercession of Abraham, for if Abraham dared not to ask for Sodom and Gomorrah to be spared for the sake of ten, and if God did better than simply spare the guilty cities for the sake of ten—if God delivered the one righteous man and delivered for the righteous man's sake more than one that were not righteous—if God's grace so abounded above the weakness of the interceding servant then, now in judgment God would hold strictly to the letter. Had he struck thrice to the ground with the arrows? Then thrice should the Syrians be smitten and no more. “And the man of God was wroth with him and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.” Truly Elisha was the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.

[W. K.]

(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 4:35-41: The Servant's Word Stilling the Wind and Sea

4:35-41

24-The Servant's Word Stilling the Wind and the Sea

“And on that day, when even was come, he saith unto them, Let us go over unto the other side. And leaving the multitude, they take him with them, even as he was, into the boat. And other boats were with him. And there ariseth a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the boat, insomuch that the boat was now filling.

And he himself was in the stern, asleep on a cushion: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?

And he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye fearful? have ye not yet faith? And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4:35-41, R.V.).

The general subject of the ministry of the kingdom is continued in this section. The parables and the sayings of the Lord narrated up to this point show the characteristic features of the new preaching, and what would be the effects of this preaching in the world. The account of the miracle that now follows shows, by illustration, to what insurmountable dangers the witnesses of the kingdom will be subject, and, moreover, what striking deliverance out of such dangers those that trust in the humble and lowly Messiah will experience. This incident with its painful impressiveness was a needed training for the twelve, and formed a part of what may be truly called their “education for the ministry.” The apostles had that day been alone with the Messiah in the house where they were privately inducted into the mysteries of the kingdom, but now they were called to accompany Him across the stormy sea, and in the course of the perilous journey to witness a demonstration of His omnipotence staying its “proud waves.” Ashore they were taught that the word of Christ would, in spite of thievish birds and scorching sun and choking thorns, and apart from human agency and aid, grow secretly, silently, slowly, but surely, until the time of its maturity and fruitfulness; at sea they learned that the same word was effectual to quell into instant submission the mightiest forces of nature. In the parables the newly-called “fishers of men” were instructed what dangers beset the service of the gospel of the kingdom; and in the miracle what dangers confront the servants themselves, though at the same time they learned what an all-powerful Deliverer was with them.

THE EVENING OF A LABORIOUS DAY

It was written in ancient time, “Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening” (Psalm 104:23). This indeed is the common lot of humanity, and the incarnate Lord accepted the conditions fully. Only His arduous and unremitting service in the days of His public activities was peculiar in this respect, that it consisted of the alleviation of man's physical and spiritual suffering. This beneficence comprised His healing works and His illuminating and quickening words. Of many busy days and weeks and months of the Lord's ministry we are given no record whatever in the Gospels (John 21:25). But the day of this narrative was a particularly busy one. So far as we are able to recognize the chronological sequence, its events included among other incidents elsewhere recorded, those contained in this Gospel from chap. 3:20 to the end of this chapter (4). To consider now no more than Mark's account, we have (1) the contest with the Pharisees which, Matthew tells us, arose out of His expulsion of a blind and dumb demon (Matthew 12:22-24); (2) the expostulatory visit of His mother and His brethren; and (3) the proclamation to the multitudes as He sat in the boat of the similitudes of the kingdom and their subsequent interpretation to His followers in the house.

After these things, when evening had come, the Lord said to His own disciples, Let us cross over to the other side of the lake. Many mighty things had been said and done in favored Capernaum that day. The good seed of the kingdom had been duly sown. That word was now left by the Sower to germinate and fructify. Previously in this same town the Lord had wrought many deeds of mercy in the evening shadows (Mark 1:32-34); but not so on this occasion. After the time of speech, the night drew on—the time to “keep silence,” as well as the time for rest, the time “when no man can work.” He therefore bade His disciples to sail across the lake in search of retirement on its more solitary shores.

The apostles, having dismissed the crowds who apparently were still waiting to see and hear more of the Great Prophet, obeyed His word and launched forth in their little boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, accompanied by other little boats.

The distance to the other side, as the crow flies, was but a few miles, and under ordinary circumstances the journey might have been quickly accomplished. But a great hurricane suddenly arose, and the waters of the lake were quickly agitated into furious and mighty waves which dashed over and heat into the little bark, so that it was rapidly being filled. Some of the disciples, as Simon and Andrew and James and John, were local fishermen accustomed to the navigation of the lake, and they had no doubt encountered many a tempestuous night in the pursuit of their calling. But this storm was of such severity that their strength and skill were alike baffled, and they, as well as their less experienced colleagues, were filled with alarm.

Their Master, wearied with the toils of the day, lay asleep on a cushion in the stern, amid all the turmoil and confusion of the terrified crew, and also amid the noise and discomfort of a tossing boat upon a billowy sea. Nothing is more illustrative of a state of peace than the sleep of the living. Here was such a spectacle, though in strange circumstances. The active faculties of divine beneficence were all quiescent, while the disciples were in a state of frenzied excitement. In the boat the prone Man of Sorrows was at rest; in the pitch darkness around was a scene of the wildest uproar and riotous contention between the forces of air and sea, threatening each moment to swamp the frail vessel and its precious burden.

The twelve were at their wits' end. Calmness and courage deserted them. They lost all confidence in their own seamanship, but what was more serious still, they lost faith in their sleeping Master. Why did He sleep in the hour of their need? They awoke Him therefore with querulous cries, an overpowering anxiety pervading every heart. Some said one thing and some another. But with them all there was the despairing refrain of selfish interest, “We perish.” Those whose words are reported by Matthew expressed the conviction that He had the power to help them, for they said, “Lord (κύριε), save us; we perish” (Matt. 8:25). Others complained of His indifference to their welfare, seeing He slept in the face of their peril; they said, “Teacher (διδάσκαλε), carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:39). Others again were apparently more completely overcome by their fears. These showed their intense importunity by repeating His title of address, “Master, Master (ἐπιστάτα), we perish” (Luke 8:24).

The first words of our Lord were a reproof to His disciples, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” (Matt.). He then arose, responsive to their cry of distress, and immediately alleviated their fears. Speaking in His own right as Lord of the sea and the land, He addressed both the winds and the waves; for “the sea is his, and he made it,” and He “walketh upon the wings of the wind.” There was no rod of delegated authority stretched towards the troubled elements, as in the case of Moses at the Red Sea. Neither was there a smiting of the waters with the mantle of the prophet's office, as in the case of Elijah at the Jordan. In the majesty of omnipotence He issued His brief but peremptory mandate—to the roaring hurricane, “Silence!” to the surging billows, “Cease, be at rest!” The response of both wind and sea was immediate and perfect. Man, nominal head of the earthly creation, for the most part, had no “ears to hear” the voice of the Son of God, but the inanimate forces of nature yielded their instant and implicit obedience. The rushing storm-blast became the soft zephyr, the mountainous wave sank to a gentle ripple. In the simple but sublime words of Matthew and Mark, “there was a great calm.”

But the service of the Lord did not end with the stilling of the tempest. There was a violent agitation in the breasts of those who formed the. ship's company. The Lord had a word for the mental conflict also.

This personal deliverance from imminent destruction afforded the apostles a profitable lesson in more than one particular. The incident revealed to them much concerning their Master; it also brought to light much concerning themselves. The former revelation the Lord had set before them in His miracle; the latter He proceeded to fasten upon their memories by His word.

Along with a lack of faith in Christ, the twelve exhibited a selfish concern for themselves which did not become the disciples of the lowly Nazarene. Moreover, they assumed that He was regardless of their danger, for they said, Dost Thou not care that we are perishing? The ungracious question arose, in point of fact, from a spirit of cowardice. This spirit He at once rebuked, even before silencing the winds and the waves, in the words already quoted, “Why are ye so cowardly, O ye of little faith?” He did not chide them for appealing to Him for help, but He would have them know that they were doubly wrong, (1) in being filled with fear, and (2) in being of little faith.

Hence when the calm ensued at His word, and the evidence of His interference was displayed to their senses, He reproached them by further questions, in which He repeated the charge of craven-heartedness, saying, “Why are ye cowardly? Have ye not yet faith?” Surely His ministry and His miracles in Galilee, of which they were chosen witnesses, afforded ample ground for their confidence. Yet in this crisis they had failed to trust Him.

From Luke we learn that the Lord put to them a further question which revealed another aspect of their failure. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were following Jesus because they professed to believe in Him; where then was their professed faith in Him on this occasion? Their faith should be ready for use in emergencies such as this. If they had ears to hear, let them hear; if they had faith, let them believe.

The apostles were dumbfounded at what they saw, and they had no reply to make to the questions of the Lord. They were awed into silence, as on a later occasion (John 21:12). Filled with great fear, they could only express their amazement one to another, saying, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

JESUS IN THE STORM

This miracle is one of the few which were wrought in the presence of the disciples only, most being public occurrences. But this case was for the especial benefit of the apostles, and in the record of it we are permitted to observe three things concerning our Lord—

(1) The Man sleeping

(2) God commanding

(3) The creature obeying

(1) The incident is remarkable by the fact that there is, beside this, no other specific reference in the Gospels to the sleep of Jesus. That the Lord did take rest is without doubt implied in such passages as Mark 1:35; but here the homeless Son of man, who Himself said He had not where to lay His head, is set before us asleep in an open boat during a raging tempest.

True manhood was there, and, moreover, the Man of perfect trust who, even in these singular circumstances of peril, exemplified the words of the Psalmist, “In peace will I both lay me down and sleep; for thou, LORD, alone makest me to dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8). As a man whose mind was stayed on Jehovah, He slept the sleep of absolute confidence in God, and was in this respect a contrast both with Jonah sleeping in guilty shame, and with the disciples sleeping for sorrow in the garden of Gethsemane.

(2) But while on the one hand we see the weariness of the Servant of Jehovah after the toils of the day, on the other we witness His instant readiness at a call for aid to serve yet more. And, again, we behold a further wonder: not only was the Servant of Jehovah in the boat, but Jehovah Himself was there. For He who spoke with such authority to the winds and the waves was indubitably God; and the One who spoke thus was He who slept and awaked at the cry of distress. This was indeed the God of Israel, for as the Psalmist said, none but Jehovah is “mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea” (Psalm 93:4). It was a great revelation. And, no doubt, in after years, as the disciples recalled the thrilling experiences of this night, as they looked again in memory from the tossing billows to the face of the placid Sleeper, from the fury of the creature to the repose of the Creator, they recalled also the later words of the Lord: “That in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Here also was the rare spectacle of the inanimate creature obeying the voice of its Creator (John 1:3). Such obedience is of course observable continually in the operation of what are known as the laws of nature, though these phenomena, by reason of their regular repetition from age to age, have diminished in wonder to the majority. But the sudden stilling of this storm was unmistakable evidence that there was a voice which was heard above the roar of the wind and the waves, and which was supreme in command. This divine Voice emanated from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, and was audible to His terrified disciples.

What a revelation was thus made to the followers of Jesus! What a Master was theirs!

What a One to love and follow, to reverence and adore—but not to doubt!

THE JEWISH REMNANT SAFE AMID THE STORM OF OPPRESSION

Many of the mighty works of Jesus are described as “signs.” Indeed, in the Gospel of John this term (σημειον) is invariably applied to the miracles, showing that the same work may be viewed as a sign as well as a miracle, and from yet another standpoint as a “wonder.” The term, “sign,” in the expression, “the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3), was used in the sense of a portent of what was in the future. And, employing the word in a similar signification, the disciples asked the Lord what was the sign of His coming (Matt. 24:3).

In view of these considerations, it is not altogether unwarrantable to seek for a didactical, as well as a historical, purpose in the record of this miracle, which would then, as a sign, depict some national or other deliverance of the future upon a larger scale than the actual incident on the lake.

Now, for example, we find in Isaiah prophecies of a promised deliverance from the crushing power of a national enemy, and the language of the prophet in its imagery contains striking allusions which are allied in character with the history of this miracle (Isaiah 8:5-18).

Jehovah warned of the power of the king of Assyria, whose aid Ahaz was seeking, and compared his oppressive inroads into the land of Israel to a flood of waters which should overflow, reaching even to the neck (vers. 7, 8). But while this overwhelming calamity would come upon the nation as a whole, there would be a faithful and godly remnant who would be delivered. And the pledge of this deliverance was that the virgin's Son, Immanuel, is with them (ver. 10). The land is Immanuel's, and He will be in the midst of His people as He was with the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and as Jesus was with His disciples on the sea. The pious are therefore exhorted not to fear with the fear of the ungodly, but to “sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary” (Isaiah 8:12-14).

Now what was taught in precept by Isaiah was exemplified by this practical exhibition of the Lord's power in the storm. In both the prophecy and the Gospels there is training for faith in view of a dark and cloudy day ahead, when to sight alone it would appear that inevitable destruction was before the little flock. Indeed many of the apostles who witnessed this miracle lived to see the Roman armies overwhelm the holy city in unutterable horrors, and to see their ungodly nation scattered to the four winds of heaven, while they and other believers were preserved amid all these calamities; for “the Lord was with them.”

But Isaiah did not refer to the Roman power but to the Assyrian, though the assurance of the protecting Christ for the pious and persecuted remnant is equally applicable in both cases. In a day yet to come the enmity of that northern foe of the people of God will break forth again, and his armies like an overflowing scourge will sweep through the “glorious land.” In that day of direst distress there will be the occasion for the little flock of godly ones to trust implicitly in Immanuel. He most truly will be with them, though His delivering power may seem to slumber. However, there will then be those who will cry out in the language of a prophetic Psalm, “Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off forever. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?... Rise up, for our help, and redeem us for thy lovingkindness' sake” (Psalm 44:22-26). In response to this appeal, the Man of Bethlehem, whose “goings forth have been of old, from everlasting,” will become their peace, and will deliver them from the Assyrian (Micah 5:1-6), whom He will destroy by the “breath of his lips,” and cast headlong into Tophet (Isaiah 30:31-33).

We also find the main features of this miraculous deliverance used figuratively in another place by Isaiah. He portrays the gathering together of many nations against the people of Israel to swallow her up like a mighty sea-storm. But God rebukes the enemies of His people, and, as it was upon the Galilean lake, what at eventide was trouble, in the morning was “not": “Ah, the uproar of many peoples which roar like the roaring of the seas, and the rushing of the nations that rush like the rushing of the mighty waters; but he shall rebuke them.... At eventide behold terror, and before the morning they are not” (Isaiah 17:12-14).

Other analogies occurring elsewhere may be recollected by the students of scripture, but those mentioned above are doubtless sufficient to suggest the line of comparison.

THE NEEDLESS FEAR OF THE DISCIPLES

The behavior of the disciples on this occasion was such as called forth the strictures of the loving and gracious Lord. The tenor of their complaining words showed that the coward's fear had seized upon them. Hence His sharp reprimand, “Why are ye cowardly, O ye of little faith?”

This reproof may seem to us stern and even excessive until we remember what the disciples, with little excuse, forgot—the power and love of the God of Israel, and also that this power and love was present in the boat in the person of Jesus. They, as alas, we too may do, overlooked the unanswerable reasoning of faith, “If God be for us, who (or, what) can be against us?*

To fear a foe much mightier than oneself is not reprehensible, but to fear without occasion—when one is invincible, is cowardice indeed, and such a spirit is stigmatized in scripture. It is solemn to learn that the “fearful” (cowardly) are classed with the “unbelieving” in the enumeration of those condemned to the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). An evil conscience makes a coward. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are as bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).

To fear God is well, and this is enjoined throughout Scripture; and in the sequel we read that the disciples “feared exceedingly,” when they beheld the effect of the word of Christ upon the stormy sea. This was a wise fear, for they were then conscious of what unworthy thoughts had possessed them in the immediate presence of Infinite Power and Goodness. It was the fear of reverence, not the cowardice of unbelief, which it had displaced in the hearts of the disciples.

Fear is opposed to the normal spirit of the follower of Christ, which is one of strength and courage and resolution. This bold and vigorous confidence is described in the well-known lines of T. Kelly—

“The cross—it took our guilt away,

It holds the fainting spirit up;

It cheers with hope the gloomy day,

And sweetens every bitter cup.

It makes the coward spirit brave,

And nerves the feeble arm for fight;

It takes its terror from the grave,

And gilds the bed of death with light.”

LITTLE FAITH

In addressing His disciples the Lord said, “O ye of little faith.” He recognized that they were not absolutely devoid of faith, for they appealed to the Master for help; it was, however, but a very little faith, for they conceived that they were perishing, although Jesus was with them. Faith must be feeble if it cannot trust until the cause of anxiety and alarm is removed. For them the storm was stilled that their apprehensions might be quieted, so that their faith did not rise to the level of that of Paul, who was confident of being brought safely through the storm. In the hour of peril, they lacked that strength of faith which could sit still in quietness and confidence, as the prophet enjoined (Isaiah 30:7, 15).

But their little faith which wrought this fear had a further evil consequence. In their selfish distress, they so far forgot themselves as to utter upbraiding words to their Master. Such language is always improper upon the lips of a servant to his master, but much more so when addressed to such a Master as He was. “Carest thou not that we perish?” Was He then like some hireling shepherd who abandons his charge and flees when the wolf comes, because he cares not for the sheep? Theirs was the selfish, petulant spirit of Martha of Bethany, who so rudely said to Him, “Carest thou not that my sister has left me to serve alone?”

This evil suspicion of the divine nature is directly descended from those doubts of God's goodness first insinuated into the heart of man by the serpent in Eden (Gen. 3:5). It is a sinful human failing to doubt the God who cares even for the oxen and the birds of the air, and who has expressly invited dependent men to cast their care upon Him who cares for them (1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Peter 5:7). And the disciples joined the common throng of humanity in suspecting the love of God; and in their unbelief they reproached the Servant of Jehovah, saying in the hour of trouble, “Carest thou not that we perish?*

In this event we may see that ancient scripture in course of fulfillment which anticipated the cry of the Messiah upon the earth, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me” (Psalm 69:9; Rom. 15:3). But how sad to observe that in this instance these reproaches emanate from His apostles! By this mistrust of their Master they were found among those who added to the sorrows of Him who had to say, “Reproach hath broken my heart” (Psalm 69:7, 20). Yet as to this phase of their complaint He “opened not his mouth,” making no mention of it for the ear of man, enduring this unmerited suspicion as part of the yoke of His servitude to Him that sent Him. And of this form of meek submission to the will of God, the Spirit of Christ had already spoken through the psalmist, “For thy sake I have borne reproach” (Psalm 69:7).

[W. J. H.]

Notes on Luke 5

Here we have a most weighty thing spoken of—the sabbath. It is a question that often agitates the minds of men, and it was then especially important as closing Jewish relations. And this, it will be borne in mind, was just where the Lord had morally arrived at the close of the preceding chapter. The rights of His person and His grace, now becoming more rejected by the religionists of Israel, reach out beyond the narrow bounds of that proud people. God thereon, by degrees, intimates the coming purpose of His mercy; His salvation in due time shall be sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear if the Jew judges himself unworthy of everlasting life. God will have His own joy of saving souls somewhere.

Now it is very evident that the incident of the cornfield (vers. 1-5), “on the second sabbath after the first,” thoroughly falls in with the object of the Spirit in hand. “The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” His person entitles Him to supremacy over that which was the sign of the covenant of the law. In the next case (vers. 6-10) He asserts the right to do good on the sabbath-days, as His adversaries on the same day show their disposition to destroy.

The sabbath, in any real sense, man had entirely lost; indeed he had never entered into God's thoughts of rest. It was His rest, and had not sin spoiled all, man should have enjoyed that which was the result not of his own, but of God's labor. This is the proper character of the rest which belongs to man distinctively; but sin having come in, the necessity has arisen that God should work afresh, if man is ever to share the rest of God. (Hebrews 4) Meanwhile Christ has appeared and finished the work which God gave Him to do. Hence, we who believe, find rest in Christ, as does God Himself. In Him, by virtue of the accomplished and accepted work of redemption, we have our sabbath spiritually.

The day was set apart and hallowed from the beginning (Genesis 2). Afterward it came in, first in grace to Israel, marked by the cessation of manna, and a double portion to provide for that holy day (Exodus 16): and, secondly, as a part of the law of Sinai, and incorporated with every new and special dealing of Jehovah (chap. 20; see also 31:13, 14; 33:14; 34:21; and 35:2). It was a memorial thenceforward of the deliverance out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15). Accordingly, the prophets expressly treat it as a sign of Israel's separation from all other nations unto God, and God's covenant with them (Ezekiel 20:12-20; 22:8; 23:38; 44:24; Isaiah 56, 58; Jeremiah 22:4). But then, in the past, Israel, a sinful people, had the sabbath as a legal ordinance, and consequently are condemned by it as by all else.

Where is this covenant with Israel? All gone because of their iniquity. Hence they were thrown into the hands of the Gentiles, and became slaves. “Behold we are servants this day; and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it; and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us, because of our sins; also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle at their pleasure, and we are in great distress” (Nehemiah 9:36, 37). If they had a temple after the captivity, it was only at the mercy of their Persian masters. The outward emblem lingered on, no doubt, and was especially made much to dishonor Him, of whom and whose work it was so significant; but where was its reality when Jesus was on earth? Alas! He lies in the grave all the day which His murderers kept as a day holy to Jehovah ("for that sabbath was a high day!"): awful testimony to the Jews of their position. Their own Messiah slain by His own people: such was the truth which that sabbath-day uttered to him who had ears to hear. Israel never had the rest of God. If Joshua had given them rest, &c. (Heb. 4) There remaineth therefore a rest. They must own Jesus first.

But the rejected Jesus was Son of man, and the Son of man was Lord of the sabbath (ver. 5)—a truth of the utmost gravity, to be asserted with all strength. Those who confound the Lord's day with the sabbath are in danger of forgetting this. It was the very point here in controversy with the Jews who maintained that the sabbath was superior to the Lord. But He shows that another new principle had come in, which wholly overleaped the old, and that to remain in the old was to have no deliverance. For there is no possibility for a lustful creature to be under a commandment that condemns lust, without being condemned. Grace, however has entered through a rejected Christ, and now there is rest for us who believe—not for those who are on the ground of law.

This is the reason why Christians keep the first day of the week, and not the seventh or sabbath day. The rest was acquired by the power of Christ's redemption, and the first day, when He arose from the dead, was that which proclaimed it to faith, spite of man's guilt and ruin. The seventh day will be the rest of man on earth; the first day celebrates Christ's taking us in Him to heaven. Then was life from the dead, life more abundantly, liberty from the law and every consequence of sin—in a word, the victory of grace. The Christian therefore has the first day distinctively, because it belongs to, and witnesses of, the perfect work of Christ, and consequently introduces heavenly rest. The first day is in contrast with the seventh, which appertained to the round of man's labor in nature and of the Jew's under the law, in which Adam and Israel utterly broke down. It is the Lord's day emphatically, and thus testifies of the triumph of Christ's work and the glory of His person—not the day which guilty unbelief would have perverted into the proof and means of His inferiority. It is positive, direct blessing to Him who owns and honors it—not because it is the close of legal toil, but the commencement of Christian hope—the resurrection-day when we begin our spiritual life; and look on for what will crown so precious a pledge.

Here, however, the grand thing is the maintenance of the rights and the authority of the Son of man. You never can, according to God, raise up the title of the sabbath against the Lord of the sabbath.

Verses 3-5. What did David, the anointed of the Lord, when Saul persecuted him and sought his life? Was it of God, then, to uphold the ritual and so starve the man after His heart? No; the foundations were out of course, and everything became common in Israel when the chosen king was thus iniquitously rejected. But a greater One, and graver sin, were now in their midst. The Son indeed, but the Root of David, God Himself was there; He who instituted the sabbath, its Lord, was there in the person of the Son of man.

Verses 6-10. But if God was there, would He deny His own goodness or restrain His power in presence of human misery, because “the scribes and Pharisees watched him whether he would heal on the sabbath-day?” Divine love must act and heal the withered hand, even if wretched man should seek to find therein an accusation. And they were filled with madness and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus (ver. 11); but Jesus in those days retired to a mountain to pray. He drew near to God, to commune with Him what He was to do for them (ver. 12). His was the activity of grace—of love displaying itself holily and mightily in the midst of evil.

Verses 13-16. “And when it was day he called his disciples,” &c. In this call He proves that He was the only One who could empower others to bear this testimony also: and yet here, as in all that passed before, He is the lowly dependent One —perfect man, as well as God. He was in perfect unbroken communion with His God and Father, though Himself God manifest in the flesh. How blessedly near us this brings Him, though so infinitely above us! What He did, we should aim at, whatever our measure and our little sphere. In Him we see man perfect in that place of power wherein He came.

He knew whom He chose. He knew that one of them had a devil; but He sent them out. Twelve He chose specially, whom also He called apostles “sent ones.” It was an important and significant word, as quite a distinct thing from both law and promises. No one was sent out by law. Now God is active; He is sending His Son, and the Son is sending out apostles. The love of God is active in gathering souls. This first sent One is a man, really and truly. God's work of His grace must be done by His Son; not by angels, but by His own Son, as the man Christ Jesus, and He sends men out from Himself. The gathering point is Man—Himself of course. To Man God has committed all things. While it must be God who shows grace, the Son of man it is who comes on the mission of love, and sends out men to men.

Verses 17-19. Whatever He attracts by, He gathers round Himself to worship, surrounds Himself with them, and then comes down and stands in the plain. The great multitude are attracted by His miracles and their wants, coming to hear and be healed. The company of the disciples were an inner circle. “The whole multitude sought to touch him.” It is not said that they were converted, which is another thing; but living power went out of Him, healing their bodily misery and delivering from the power of Satan.

Verse 20, etc. He now lifts up His eyes on His disciples and speaks to them, not as in Matt. 5 etc., giving them the developed principles of the kingdom; but distinguishing those before Him as the remnant. Hence it is “ye” here. He puts His seal and stamp on those actually gathered round Himself. They are to be like Him. He is at once their center and their pattern. He was God, but the fullness of the Holy Ghost dwelt in Him as man also; and so He could say, “I do always those things which please him.” So should it be with those around Him.

Verses 20-26. “Blessed [are] ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed [are] ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed [are] ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you,” etc. These words of the Savior give the contrast of those He pronounces blessed with all that are in ease in this world. Those who, if in this life only they had hope in Christ, would be of all men the most miserable, are the only happy few; they are severed from all others, and put in relationship with Him the source of blessing, to be blessed. If you can make yourselves happy and comfortable in this world which has rejected Jesus, count not on His blessing.

It is the poor, the despised with Jesus, who shall have the kingdom. He says, if we may so speak, “I am distinguishing you” (for there is no enunciation of abstract principles, as in the beginning of Matthew 5, but a speaking to the hearts of those gathered around Him). “I am come as the center of power and active love. There is but one sole place of blessing on earth. With Me you are blessed.” Others may be gay and cheerful where Christ has no place; but it is a time when a true spiritual soul can get no good save with Christ. It is a definite distinction of, and address to, the disciples who attached themselves to Him. This is made clear in verse 22, where the persecution for righteousness, which Matthew carefully records, is omitted. Here it is only a question of suffering “for the Son of man's sake.”

In the midst of a world of misery and selfishness there came One who displayed not law nor judgment, but grace. But the light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Like the adder that hears nothing, the world goes on as deaf as it is blind. No; you who are “full” now, Jesus has no charm for you! but you, disciples, are weeping now—the sorrow and the sin of man distress your spirit: you shall rejoice. When God has His way, you, who cannot be satisfied with the husks, shall be filled. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy; for, behold, your reward is great in heaven; for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. You have your portion with Christ here, you shall have it with Christ in heaven. You suffer with the suffering One, you shall have glory with the glorified One. But the others!—they shall have what they seek. For the full there shall be a famine by-and-by, for they have lost God. If you can laugh in such a world as this, you shall weep when God's time for blessing comes. They are of the world, and the world loves its own. “So did their fathers to the false prophets.” Are the times altered? Is Christ's character changed? It is not a whit more agreeable to the flesh. And if you can find your joy, ease, and pleasure in the world, Christ could not, and you have not His Spirit. He that will be its friend is the enemy of God. Can the disciple of Jesus be merry and gay in a world which has sin wrapped up in it? There is communion with Jesus, joy in the Spirit, while patient in tribulation; but this is quite another thing. It is a serious joy, though very' real and blessed.

From verse 27 He shows what must be the conduct of the disciples as such. They were to manifest God, to be the unfolding of what was displayed in Him. Grace which was in Him in fullness and perfection should be reproduced in them, sadly as we all fail in this—the principle of our path. “Love your enemies,” etc. God loved us when we were His enemies, and we have now to show practically what God is. Verse 29 brings us into entirely human circumstances, patiently learning in them: or, as in 1 Peter 2, doing well, suffering for it, and taking it patiently. This may seem poor comfort. But Jesus did so, and love must so manifest itself in an evil world. The time comes when God will judge, instead of bearing long as now; but now, at whatever cost to self, show love as Christ did. Flesh can love for love (vers. 32, 33), but the disciples of Christ are called to imitate God, and walk in love. “Love ye your enemies, and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest; for he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.”

What a blessed character of God comes out here! It is not righteousness, though surely there was that; but in the world where God had to do with the unthankful and evil, He shows grace. For the angels He has not grace, but love: but Christ in this world of sin is grace (that is, love to those who deserve it not). “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” It is not “with” but “as” your Father. As He loves His enemies, so do you; He is merciful, be ye also merciful. In all this, God's character is displayed—perfect love in a world of sinners. It must cost us something; it cost the life of Christ. His love was a stream, which, if it met with hindrances in its way, only went on flowing over, and leaving them behind till it reached the cross.

Verse 37. This is not certain things required in order to get life, but the result of certain conduct shown. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged,” etc. As though He had said, You will find the consequences of your conduct as Christ did. He took the lowest place, but He has got the highest now. He humbled Himself; “wherefore God also hath highly exalted him,” etc. He came not to judge, and now “all judgment is committed to the Son.” Thus we not only have the display of grace, but divine character meeting its consequences. It is a question of government—of walking with the Lord; it must cost a great deal in the path, but in the end it will be “full measure, pressed down,” etc. There will be God's blessing too in the way; though self is mortified. Grace will abound according to God's way.

Verse 39. See the contrast of those who are utter blindness, and the blind leading the blind. You must let them alone; leave them to go on their own way; but you have to take your place with Me; and the disciple is not above his master, but you shall be as your Master. If your Master suffers, you suffer; if it has cost your Master much, it may cost you much. If Christ teaches you, it is to make you possess the divine learning that He has Himself. And see what a place He gives us! When He gives, what does He give? The very same that He has Himself. “As he is, so are we in this world.” “Not as the world giveth,” which, if it gives a little, reserves the chief for itself; but as though He said, “I am putting you in the very same learning that is in my nature: the grace that I have, you are to have.” But people do not like to do those things that Jesus did.

Why is there so much argument about that one passage, “resist not evil?” It is because you like to resist evil. Your will is touched, your conscience is reached; for it is given you as matter-of-fact exhortation; but you do not like it, and you will get rid of it if you can. These things are given as tests for the conscience; they judge the eye, not the path only. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” The object is wrong, if you have not light for the step. There may be difficulties in going up a steep hill, but if the object before you is clear, you get over them as quickly as you can. This is what is meant by the expression, “This one thing I do,” etc. It is having one object, and the mind intent on accomplishing it. If it is so with you, there will be sure to be light in the path—light, not for ten years hence, but for this one step that is before you, and then for the next. It was said to Moses, “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward"; and when they were out in the wilderness, the pillar was given to be their constant guide. So with us; we are called out to go after Christ on the principle of obedience, and this puts us into connection with Him in the revelation of His will, not giving us to see all the path onwards. A man may see a wall, and say, “I cannot go that way: there is a wall,” while, if he but takes a single step, he will find that there is a path all down by the side of the wall.

Verse 44. “Every tree is known by its own fruit.” Not only bearing fruit, but fruit that Christ produces should be ours. There is fruit that an upright nature produces, such as that of the young man who came to Jesus, but this was not divine fruit “its own fruit"; and where Christ is the root and the stock, it is Christian fruit, that is, fruit that will remain (John 15:16). Two men may go together up to a certain point, and then some test for Christ comes; one goes on with Him, and the other turns aside. “Its own fruit” —fruit shows itself, springs of itself. There will not be the question, What harm is there in this or that? What harm in being rich? as a person once asked me. If it shuts you out of heaven, is there any harm in that? Oh, I did not think of that! But the secret is, that you like the things. The evil is not the things themselves dug out of the earth, but the love in the heart for them. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” An impatient word betrays the heart. A blow I may restrain and yet utter the word.

Verse 47. In the hearing of all the multitude the Lord speaks now about the house built upon the rock, etc. This is not a question about building upon Christ, the Rock, for the salvation of the sinner. It is the path of the saint. But where Christ's word does connect with Himself, see the result. The very thing people are called upon to do is to follow Him; and when I follow, it proves that the Master's words have taken such hold upon my soul that they have power to carry me over the difficulties. “My soul followeth hard after Thee.” A man's affections, heart, will, are taken and connected with Christ, instead of with himself. Is Christ sufficiently precious to make me leave all beside and follow Him, to do those things that please Him? “If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, but shall have the light of life.” “As when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.” Keeping close to Christ, the light shines upon us. If we have to get into the light, we may be dazzled by it.

Thus He has gathered round Himself in light and love, set out in those words, those whom He will have to enjoy Himself, and be as their Master, at length to be conformed to His image in glory.

[J. N. D.]

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Notes on 1 Thessalonians 2:13

No doubt most of you in reading these two Epistles have observed their singular charm. There is a peculiar freshness, warmth, and simplicity in these letters of the apostle Paul which we do not find elsewhere in the same degree, and the reason is not far to seek. These Epistles to the Thessalonians were addressed to very young believers. I would not say positively, but I think the First Epistle was written only about three months after their conversion. Paul's short stay in Thessalonica (only three Sabbaths are mentioned in the brief account in The Acts) had been brought to an abrupt conclusion by fierce persecution. So these Thessalonians were left, after such a little while, in the midst of fiery trial, not fully instructed in the faith, and exposed not only to the wiles of the devil but to his open power— “going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” It was therefore necessary that these epistles should be written for their instruction and comfort. The Second followed at no long interval after the First.

In both epistles much is said of the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the fourth chapter of the First Epistle we have the most remarkable statement concerning it in the whole of Scripture, and in each of the five short chapters of which the Epistle is composed, Christ's coming again is mentioned at least once. Some would think this too high truth for such young believers, but it is not so. Depend upon it, the Spirit of God is wiser than we are. The Thessalonians knew that they were beloved of God, they knew their election, that they had been in God's thoughts from eternity, and so they were waiting for His Son from heaven.

Now let us come to the 13th verse of our second chapter. There was matter for special thanksgiving—the beautiful simplicity in them and in their manner of receiving what was brought to them by God's servant. The apostle was conscious of bringing them nothing but the word of God—that was his one object. In this same chapter he speaks of being willing to impart “not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls.” Here came a man among them who brought the word of God to them.

We should bear in mind that all scripture is written by the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost, even to the very words. He not only supplied the truths to be imparted, but the words with which they were to be clothed. The more closely we look into God's word, the more we realize that the most appropriate expression has been used on every occasion. The more closely we investigate, the more satisfied are we that it is the word of God.

In his introduction to the Epistle to the Galatians the same apostle tells us that he did not receive the gospel from man, not even from a fellow apostle, but from the Lord Himself (chap. 1:11, 12). No human instrumentality was used even for its communication. It was a revelation direct from the Lord, and it is communicated in all the purity in which he received it.

I often think of an inscription on an old fountain in Aberdeen—

“As heaven gives me, so give I thee.”

The apostle might have said something like that. As the Lord gave the gospel to me, so give I it to thee. Ought we not to value it then?

There was a readiness on the part of the Thessalonians to receive God's word as such. This is the cause of much thanksgiving on the part of the apostle. They took it into their knowledge and intelligence, took it into their heart as an invaluable treasure. “Thy word have I hid in my heart.” That is the right place for it; it is safe there. We have need to be on our guard; the fowls of the air spoken of in The Parable of the Sower are figures of actual evil spirits hovering around us, seeking to rob us of the treasure which we have received.

How have we received the things communicated herein? I went once to see a man who was ill, and I quoted something from Paul. He said, “Oh, that is only Paul!” He evidently thought that only the words of the Lord were of weight and authority. If we have any thought like that it is time we were on our knees confessing our sin before God. I grant you that there is a special fullness and depth in the actual words of the Lord, a fullness which perhaps we may not find in any other part of scripture; but all bears the same stamp of divine authority, for, let us recollect, one Divine Person is the Author of the whole, though the writers may be many. The Old Testament and the New form one grand whole, and we must receive them as such. We could not do without a single portion. The Lord Jesus when here accredited the whole of the Old Testament, which was then just as it is now, the same books, the same contents, and the same general division into The Law, The Prophets, and The Psalms—all as from God. “Scripture” is a word which the Holy Ghost has appropriated to Himself. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto every good work.” Where will you find another book to do that for you?

In the memorable walk to Emmaus, the Lord, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” What was the effect on the two hearers? “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened unto us the scriptures?” He opened to them the scriptures, and then their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, if you remember. Observe the connection of things. He opened the scriptures (all the scriptures, mind you; scripture has weight from the beginning), but that was not sufficient; their understanding needed opening. The natural man has not spiritual discernment; he may have all wisdom concerning this world, and yet be utterly in the dark as far as any right understanding of the scriptures is concerned. Was it not so with all of ourselves until we were born again and received the Spirit? In the case of Nicodemus, the Lord had to rebuke him: “Art thou the teacher of Israel and knowest not these things?” Here was a man in a high place in Israel and yet he knew not the A B C of Christianity nor even of divine life.

But with the Thessalonians there was this great thing to thank God for—that they received the word of God not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God.

We should question ourselves as to how far we treat this book as the word of God. We know on the authority of the Lord that the Old Testament is inspired, but the New is inspired equally with the Old. We have this said especially of Paul's epistles (2 Peter 3:15, 16). If God speaks, what is becoming to us? Surely reverence, attention and faith. Abraham fell on his face when God spoke to him. He believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. How beautifully simple. And it was not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.

In Deut. 33 we read that at Sinai the people sat at God's feet. “Every one shall receive of thy words.” This is the right way. It reminds us of one in the New Testament who sat at His feet and heard His word.

The effectual working of God's word is in them that believe. Even when the Lord from heaven spoke, there were those that refused to believe. There is no promise to unbelief in the whole word from beginning to end. There are threatenings, but all the promises are to belief. Only those are blessed in hearing the word that believe it. It little matters how instructed we may be in the word unless the heart receives and believes it, and it is submitted to and welcomed to its rightful place in the soul. The apostle says, he is “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” —but what to him that believeth not? Belief opens the door at once into all manner of blessing. You might have heard the word many times before without being in the least touched by it, but you remember the time when light entered in and the word wrought effectually, filling with terror at first, and then the same word led you to trust Him. In my own case, over fifty years ago, one word of God brought light after months of despair —that was, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That one word “whosoever” wrought effectually in my heart, and led me to Christ.

All scripture leads to Him, as it is said that all roads lead to London. Christ is God's great center. He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” It is by Him that you have been brought to God; and how has it been since? By the guiding of His Spirit and His word has He not brought you on your way until now? The word that imparted life has been the means of sustaining that life (1 Peter 2:2). The word brings down life from God; that life must return to its source in love, faith, and adoration.

These dear people had been worshipping ugly, inanimate idols, and they turned from them to serve the living and true God. What came afterward? “Ye were ensamples to all them that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad.”

All this came of receiving the word of God. Having found this treasure they had to share it with others. Why, you cannot have a monopoly of God's word! If you impart something of the truth of God to a soul you retain it yourself as well; you are not impoverished thereby. “The word of God grew and multiplied.”

Oh, that there was the same zeal now to sound out the word of God! It is the only means of building up; it helps, strengthens and comforts saints. Where there is any real work now it is just through these two mighty provisions of God—the Spirit as the power, and the word as the instrument. Very well, let us pray that it may so work in us.

We cannot dwell on it now, but there is just one thing I should like to say about it. We read in 1 Peter 5, “The God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, himself shall perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” That is His purpose—we shall be perfected. He is going to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. And how is the work going on now? “By the washing of water by the word.” We have the figure of it in John 13 in the feet washing.

Let us then go on meditating on the word and giving it its controlling place, and He will sanctify and cleanse us by it, changing us from glory to glory.

“And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”

R. K.

A Purged Conscience, a Worshipping Heart, and a Contented Mind

A PURGED CONSCIENCE

Happy, truly happy, is the man whose conscience has been purged by the precious blood of Christ. Scripture speaks of many kinds of consciences—good and evil, pure and defiled, weak consciences, and others— “seared as with a hot iron,” convicted consciences, and others again, “void of offense toward God and man"; but a “purged conscience” belongs only to the one who has come into real, personal, touch with God Himself. Such an one, awakened from its carnal ease by God's “Where art thou?” has discovered its guilt, danger and sin, in the light of the cross on which Jesus died. There also has it learned the complete ruin and hopeless impotency of all that belongs to the old man, and with the sad discovery of its utter vileness in God's sight has found out that the terrible distance sin has made between the creature and the Creator can only be bridged by faith in the redeeming blood which has fully atoned for sins and put out of God's sight as an offense to His holiness.

Such an one has personally proved the power and sweetness of the words, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” The spotless Savior, having become for the sinner that believes, his divine Substitute, has made Himself responsible, Godward, for all that he was, as well as for all that he has done. Sin's guilt and judgment have thus been fully borne, and exhausted, by the One “who knew no sin,” and the believer's conscience is now purged through faith in that precious blood. What the, blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer could never accomplish, the blood of Jesus does; and every one who, in truth of heart, rests on the finished work of a dead and risen Christ is entitled to know and enjoy settled peace with God. Brought out of darkness into marvelous light, and from the shadows of a dead Judaism into the presence of the living God, the believer now rejoices in the Lord, and in quiet rest of soul is privileged to sing—

“Clean every whit, Thou saidst it, Lord,

Shall one suspicion lurk?

Thine surely is a faithful word,

And Thine a finished work.”

A WORSHIPPING HEART

All the types and shadows of the past were only figures of the true, but “the Holy Ghost signified that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.” Every claim of truth and justice having, however, been fully satisfied, there remaineth no more offering for sin; the veil is rent, a risen Christ sits at God's right hand, and an indwelling Spirit is the abiding power for the purged worshipper to draw near and worship the Father in spirit and truth, “for the Father seeketh such to worship him.” The new and living way is open into heaven itself, and the worshipper is now privileged to enter with a true heart and in full assurance of faith into the very presence of God. Apart from all the rites and ordinances of a bygone dispensation, and standing in the unsullied light of the glory of God that shines from the face of a risen and glorified Savior, the purged worshipper's heart is free to delight itself in all the peerless worth of Him at whose blessed feet all the heavenly hosts prostrate themselves in ceaseless praise and adoration.

As the countless glories of Him who sits upon the throne pass in spirit before the happy worshipper, the Spirit strikes the chord of praise to God's beloved Son, and the heavenly anthem rings out through heaven's courts from the whole of the redeemed family, “Unto him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto his God and Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Worship must needs flow without an effort from the heart that is really satisfied with Jesus, and that has found its true rest in sweet communion with the Father and the Son, by the power of the indwelling Spirit. Just in proportion as self is forgotten, and the never-ending glories of Christ ravish and captivate the heart, so is God magnified in His saints, and His heart refreshed and gladdened. The fragrance of that precious name that is above all others is as ointment poured forth, and its sweet savor ever abides before God in the heavenly sanctuary. This is but a foretaste, however, of that bright eternal day when,

“Heaven's vault with praise shall ring,

Louder, and yet more loud;

Millions of saints His worth shall sing,

Each heart in worship bowed.

“ The tide shall still roll on,

That tide of endless praise,

Till every creature to Thy throne

Its voice in blessing raise.”

A CONTENTED MIND

Scripture declares that “godliness with contentment is great gain,” but in passing through a world of constant unrest and ever increasing excitement, where God is forgotten and pleasure and carnal ease everywhere abound, how rare a thing is it to discover a contented mind. Yet, truth to tell, neither prison bars nor Nero's chains could rob the beloved apostle of the Gentiles of his own abiding joy in the Lord, nor could prison fare or his being cut off from active service for his Master produce in him a discontented mind. With Christ as his life, his pattern, his object, and his strength, he bursts forth into song: “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice.” Paul's preaching and his practice were in unison. The manner of his life, as well as the language of his lips, alike testified that he had learned, in whatever state he was, to be content. “I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.”

No change of circumstances moved his steadfast mind, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding kept both heart and mind through Christ Jesus. He who had been beaten with rods, and stoned, who had thrice suffered shipwreck, a night and a day had been in the deep, who had passed through all kinds of perils, yea, had suffered weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold, and nakedness, with, besides other things, the care of all the churches, was manifestly no ordinary traveler in “the path of sorrow and that path alone” which “leads to the land where sorrow is unknown"; yet had he learned through grace, in whatever state he was, to be content. With a mind fixed on heavenly things, nothing moved him, and hence he could send that sweet message to the Hebrew saints, “Be content with such things as ye have, for he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear; what shall man do unto me?”

The gold, seven times purified in the furnace of affliction, only shone all the brighter to the praise of God's glory, and he who had fought the good fight, who had finished his course, and kept the faith, could look forward with a contented mind to the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, should give him in the coming day. The storm may roar, the billows rage, but the divine anchor that steadies the ship is a living Christ in glory. The child of faith can surely sing, “My Father knows,” and whatever may cross our path, it is but the hand of love drawing us nearer and closer to Himself. Come storm, or come sunshine, prosperity or adversity, all, all is well with the believer. Soon will the Morning Star arise, the day break, and earth's shadows flee away; and how it will gladden the coming Bridegroom if we can meet Him with not only a purged conscience and a worshipping heart, but with a contented mind! In the “little while” that lies between, the pilgrim's song should surely be—

“The heart within us leapeth,

And cannot down be cast,

Since with our God it keepeth

Its never-ending feast.

The sun, which smiling, lights us,

Is Jesus Christ alone,

And what to song incites us

Is heaven on earth begun.”

S. T.

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Lectures on 2 Kings 11-17

2 Kings 13-17

But not merely this. “Elisha died and they buried him” (ver. 20). Was not Elisha gone then? Not so. There was to be even a more glorious witness in his death than in his life. In his life, no doubt, he had witnessed; but—with what great toil and anxiety and pains!—stretching himself over the dead youth, he had breathed, and put his face upon the child's face; and so it was, laboriously and with effort in appearance, that God raised him up. For God would show the magnitude of the deed that he was doing then, and although it was in no wise because of all the labor of the prophet, since God could have done it in an instant as truly at the beginning as at the end, yet still it was the way of God. But not so now. Even in death what a witness of the power of life, in Elisha, for, as we are told, “It came to pass as they were burying a man that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulcher of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood upon his feet.” And so will Israel another day—not more truly that dead man then, than Israel by-and-by, when all seems forgotten and Israel as good as dead, and buried-in response to the prophets, in answer to that voice which will never be truly extinguished, though it may be forgotten or despised, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and the hand of the Lord had written it. And according to the prophets Israel will rise again.

They may be, as now they are politically, in the dust of the earth, but they will rise again. This is the portion of Israel. There are those who suppose that nations shall not rise. Alas! it is a common error. And there is no error more common in this day than the denying the resurrection of the body, but we know that the resurrection of the body is the most essential truth of God and the most sacred truth and the peculiar one of the gospel. For if the dead rise not, then is Christ not risen, and God's testimony is denied, for God's testimony is that He raised Christ from the dead which He has not done if the dead rise not. But contrariwise He raised Him up, and so the dead will be raised; and as the dead man here undoubtedly rises, so truly Israel will rise again, and, in truth, it will be “life from the dead” for all the nations. Such is the clear voice of prophecy, and it will be accomplished.

But we find that Hazael still pursues his oppression. Such is the literal history; such is the fact, for the present; such it was then.

And then in the next chapter (14), whatever might be the measure of right, evil takes its way even in Judah. “And it came to pass, as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his hands, that he slew his servants which had slain the king his father. But the children of the murderers he slew not; according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein Jehovah commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin. He slew of Edom, in the valley of salt, ten thousand, and took Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day.” Amaziah thus shows a measure of righteousness, but his heart becomes, at last, lifted up within him, and he challenges the king of Israel; and the solemn fact appears that God will never sanction the presumption of a righteous man, that God will rather take the part of the bad man who is challenged presumptuously than of the righteous man that challenges him presumptuously. It is a solemn thing when the folly of God's people thus makes it necessary for God so to deal. It was so then, but the truth is, God will always be where righteousness is, and there is not a single failure in righteousness though it be in God's own people, where God does not set His face against it.

Does this then prove that the one is not a righteous man? Not so. But even where the unrighteous man may be righteous, and where the righteous man may be unrighteous, God will appear to change sides. The truth is, that God holds to righteousness wherever it exists. This is what we find, and to my own mind it is a most wholesome principle, and one that counts for a great deal in practical life, because often one sees the sad spectacle in one truly to be loved and valued, but a mistake is made never without its consequences. An error that is made always bears its fruit. Am I therefore to forget my love and esteem for him who has done it? Nay, I am to judge according to God the particular thing; but to let the heart and its affections flow in their proper channel. God would not have us to abandon, any more than He does Himself, the one who trusts Him, for swerving for a moment. God would not have us to sanction an unrighteous man because in a particular instance he may be right; nor, on the other hand, are we to sanction an unrighteous act because done by a righteous man. Well, all this shows us the nice and jealous care in details—in details for righteousness. And this is to my mind the great moral of the dealings of God regarding Amaziah and Joash, and the reason why the comparatively righteous Amaziah was allowed to fall before the certainly unrighteous Joash.

Then we find another remarkable dealing of God in the case of Azariah in the fifteenth chapter. We are told there that he was found smitten of the Lord. “And Jehovah smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a separate house.” The details of this are not given. He is called here Azariah. You must remember it is the same person who is called Uzziah in the book of Chronicles. But further, at this time evil was coming in more and more with a flood, and we have the sad and humbling history of Samaria. What brought in this terrible day was Ahaz—so it is that the Spirit of God speaks of him—for Ahaz was the worst king that had ever reigned in Judah up to this point. He it was that first brought in the Assyrian as a helper. At this time the Assyrian had come in in another way. We are told of Azariah king of Judah that “In the nine and thirtieth year of Azariah king of Judah began Menahem the son of Gadi to reign over Israel, and reigned ten years in Samaria. And he did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land.”

The solemn thing that appears in Ahaz that I have referred to was that the conspiracy of Israel with Syria led Judah to call in Assyria against Israel. That is the point. It is not merely the only course of enmity that the Assyrian would have against the land. This is the point of the fifteenth chapter; but in the sixteenth it is a still more solemn thing; it is the union of Judah with the Gentile against Israel. And, accordingly, God marks His deep displeasure of this terrible reign. Indeed in every point of view it was unboundedly evil. What did God do? What marked the way of God in that day? It was the time when God brought out prophecy with a greater brightness and distinctness than He had ever been pleased to give. This is of the greatest moment for our souls to consider.

Prophecy always comes in a time of ruin. When was the first prophecy? When man fell. When was the first continuous prophecy—prophecy not merely of a person that was coming, but of the character of him that was coming, and what was to be done—that which most of all looks like a prophecy? It was Enoch's, when the world was full of corruption and violence, and the flood was about to be sent upon it. Thus if we look either at the prophecy of the Son of man the woman's Seed, or look at the first form of prophecy, Enoch's, we see how clearly the time of ruin is the time when God gives prophecy. In the same way it is, when we come lower down the stream of time. The most magnificent burst of prophecy that God ever gave was through Isaiah, and Isaiah began his course under these very kings in the days of Azariah and Ahaz. It was continued, indeed, till the days of Hezekiah, but it was in these very times. And there was not Isaiah alone. We know there were other prophets, commonly called The Minor; but I refer to it now for the great moral principle. A time of evil is not necessarily a time of evil for the people of God. It is evil for those that are false; it is evil for those that would take advantage. But a time of evil is a time when God particularly works for the blessing of those that may have failed. Therefore let no one find an excuse because things are in a condition of ruin.

Take the present time. No man can look upon the face of Christendom without feeling that it is out of joint—that it is altogether anomalous—that the state of things is inexplicable except to the man who reads it in the light of the word of God—that it is confusion, and that the worst confusion is where the highest profession of order is found, and that the truest order is found where people would tax them with disorder; for I believe in point of fact, it really is so. You must remember that in an evil day the external order is always with the enemies of God; the true internal order is always found with those that have faith. Hence it is that now that which has the highest pretension to order is, as we know, the Eastern church—the Latin church; but of all the things under the sun in the form of religion, that which is most opposed to God is, surely, the Latin church. And therefore we see clearly how those who make the highest claim to order are precisely those that are most opposed to God's way, and the reason is plain because the great assumption, invariably, of those that stand to outward order is succession—a plain continued title from God!

But this is a thing which prophecy so rudely breaks—this dream of outward order which is a mere veil thrown over confusion, and every evil work. Hence the immense importance of prophecy in a time of ruin, and so it has been that since the ruin came into Christendom, prophecy has always been the grand support of those who have had faith; as, on the other hand, the Latin church has always been the deadly enemy of prophecy—always endeavored to extinguish the study of it and to destroy all faith in it, and to make people believe that it is impossible to have real light from it—that it is an illusion, as indeed they would make you believe the word of God generally is.

Now, then, in this very place I call your attention, beloved friends, to this grand point. When this evil became insupportable, God granted this precious light of His own word—the light of prophecy, and I would press this strongly upon all here who love the word of the Lord. Use the same thing, not by any means to make it a kind of study—a kind of exclusive occupation, for nothing can be more drying up to spiritual affections than making, what I may call, a hobby of prophecy or of anything else; but I do say that where Christ has the first place, where all the precious hopes of grace, where all our associations with the Lord have their true place and power, a most important part is filled up by the understanding of that light which God gives to judge the present by the future. This was the object of the prophecies of Isaiah, for it is a very important thing to remember that the object of prophecy is, and must be, moral—that it is not merely facts; and there is no greater mistake than to suppose that the prediction of events is what makes a prophet. Not so. I admit that prophets did predict events, but prophecy does not mean predicting. Prophecy is always bringing in God to deal with the conscience. If that is not done the grand object of prophecy has failed. And here you have a test, therefore, as to whether you understand and rightly use prophecy. Does it bring your conscience into the presence of God? Does it deal with what you are about? Does it judge the secrets of the heart? Does it shine upon your ways? Where this fails, God's object is not attained. I just draw attention, therefore, by the way, to this beautiful contrast to man's ways on the one hand—this flood of evil that was now rising to its height. Nevertheless God, astonishing to say, instead of meeting it by immediate judgment answers it by prophecy. The glorious light that He caused to shine through the prophet Isaiah was His answer. No doubt that made the wickedness of what was going on in the land more apparent, but it had another purpose; it bound up the hopes of every believing soul in Israel with the Messiah that was coming. That was God's great object. It dissociated them from present things, giving them a sound judgment, and means to form an estimate of it, but it bound up their hearts with the Lord.

Therefore I need not say much about the enormous wickedness of Ahaz, which is brought before us in the sixteenth chapter, nor will I do more than just refer to the seventeenth chapter. There the Assyrian comes, but he comes now as an avenger; he comes as a scourge. He sweeps the land, and the ten tribes are carried away never to return till Jesus returns. The ten tribes from that day disappeared from the land of Israel. What took their place—what formed the kingdom of Samaria —was a mere mass of heathen that took up the forms of Israel that had been left behind, for God in a remarkable way visited the land. When the Assyrians were planted in the devastated cities of Israel they set up their old Assyrian religion, and the Lord sent lions among them. They understood it. Man has a conscience. They understood it; they knew that it was a voice from the God of Israel. It was the God of Israel that claimed that land. No doubt they thought to propitiate Him by renewing the old worship of Israel, and in their folly they sent for a priest of Israel from the captivity, and the old religion, accordingly, was brought in—a most strange medley of the nominal worship of Jehovah and real idolatry. But so it was. Thus began not the Samaritan kingdom but the Samaritan religion—the mixture of Judaism and idolatry carried on by heathen.

On this I do not now say more than just refer to it. It was a sad succession for a sad people. The ten tribes now dispersed in Assyria awaiting the day when the Savior will awake them from the dust of the earth—when the Savior will call them back to the land of their inheritance.

But we must look at other scriptures before we reach that blessed point.

[W. K.]

Address on Psalm 84:9-12

If we but look at the whole of this psalm, we shall find treasures on the very surface, yet is there hidden wealth as well. Even the very reading of it can hardly be without some profit.

“Thine anointed” takes us at once beyond David. David certainly was the Lord's anointed, but the One really meant is the Lord Jesus Himself. There is sweet reflection arising out of this scripture. Jehovah could ever look upon the face of His Anointed with delight. Is there not something peculiarly sweet and precious in that thought?

But there is more in it than that. Why should He say, “Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed"? In Israel, when the king went wrong, all the people went wrong; when the head went right, all went right. The Lord Jesus is the Head of the new creation, and God looks on Him and sees all the rest in Him. It is in virtue of Him that all good comes to us.

“For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand.” It is singular to see how this follows on the last verse. You observe the opening of the psalm, “How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!” Why tabernacles? At this time, as you know, the temple was not built. When David brought the ark from Kirjath-jearim he pitched a tent for it. Where the ark, the symbol of Jehovah's presence, went, there went Jehovah. Jehovah's throne in Israel was the golden lid of the ark, and to come where the ark was, was to appear before God.

Why were the tabernacles so amiable? There is always a charm about that word—amiable, lovable. What made the tabernacles so lovely, so desirable? Was it the material of which they were formed? “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” This was what gave all the beauty and loveliness—God was there, the One who had done such great things for His people. That was why the psalmist delighted to be in the courts of the Lord. We must rejoice to be in His presence since He has done so much for us. So Paul says, “We also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And Peter, “Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.” “In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” To know yourself as the object of God's love and care, to know that He claims you for Himself, this gives exceeding joy, beyond anything else.

But how have these tabernacles to do with us? Just in this way. We know there is now no material building on earth, and it is well to know that. Men are continually speaking of the temple of God; they erect a costly, ornate building, they consecrate it, and call it the house of God. But are we not divinely told that He “dwelleth not in temples made with hands"? Still, God has His house here. In writing to Timothy Paul says, “That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” The church of the living God is composed of all the true saints of God, built of spiritual stones, “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Did the psalmist so delight in being where God was? Well, you see the application to ourselves. The Lord said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” How far do we really believe that? Do we love to be where He is? For there is something very special in that. The heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain Him, I know, but He gives this special promise to those gathered to His name. We should love to be there; it may be a poor company, for “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” When the Lord Jesus was on earth He was not found in palaces and in the mansions of the great. The home at Bethany was where He delighted to be. He stooped to the grave for us, and He deigns now to be with us. His love it is that brings Him there.

“I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

It is easy to see the force of that. The doorkeeper has to be first to admit others, and has to remain till the last; he is there longest of all. In the margin it reads, “I would choose rather to sit at the threshold.” We get a different thought in this; he is content with the threshold, the lowest place, so long as he is in God's presence. Was God there? He would be there too. He longed to be thus in communion with God, so consciously near. And this is what the new nature longs for. We delight to have it so, and to be searched out, so that there be nothing to hinder communion at all.

Let us read verses 10 and 11 together. “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Here we have a cluster of reasons—what He is, what He will give, and what He will not withhold. Surely these are comprehensive things.

“Jehovah God is a sun.” You remember in the account of the creation that God set two great lights in the heavens, the greater to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night. In the sun we have the most marvelous, gorgeous display of God's creative power.

“Th' unwearied sun, from day to day,

Does his Creator's power display;

And publishes to every land

The work of an almighty Hand.”

It is not surprising to find God described as a sun; indeed, it is most appropriate. But His name! Jehovah Elohim—the LORD God! As we read elsewhere, “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” What a description! There we have God proclaiming His own name, declaring what He Himself is. Hear what David says in 1 Chronicles 29:11-14, “Thine, O Jehovah, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Jehovah, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.” “All things come of Thee.” What a glorious ascription to our great God!

Then what great words we get in 1 Timothy 1:17: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” And again in the last chapter of the same Epistle, vers. 15, 16, “The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see; to whom be glory and power everlasting. Amen.”

The Lord God is indeed a sun, and He is thus set before us in His greatness. But He is the invisible God, remember, though there are glories belonging to Him that can be manifested. Moses had to be told that no man could see Him and live. But He who is the image of the invisible God, the only begotten Son, has declared Him. We all know something of what the sun does for us. If the sun were withdrawn this would be a world of ice. We get a faint idea in the winter of what it would be like. We are all led to feel the wonderful importance of the sun, and we ought to feel its influence and be impressed by it. Where should we be, indeed, but for light? —without the light-giving, health-giving, glorious, glorious sun? And the Lord is a sun, He gives life and breath to all things, He is good to all. Such is our God. What a world this would be had not sin come in to spoil and darken! What a world it will be when He comes to reign, when the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings!

The Lord God is also a shield. We need not dwell long upon that, though there is a vast store of meaning there as well. The ancient warriors used a shield to protect their person from the arrows, spears, darts, etc., used in battle. So our God is our shield. How little we know what numerous perils we escape every day of our lives because He Himself protects us. We should bear this in mind constantly. I dare say we have all often thought of Peter. Satan had desired to have him, that he might sift him as wheat, and Peter knew nothing about it. But the Lord's eye was upon him, the eye that never sleeps, and He said, “I have prayed for thee.”

Not one of His own can pass through death —not only without His permission, but — without His express will. He has all authority, remember. All the invisible realms of the universe are under His control. And it is indeed true that “Not a single shaft can hit, Till the God of love sees fit.” “O Israel, trust thou in Jehovah: he is their help and their shield” — an impenetrable shield. “O house of Aaron, trust in Jehovah: he is their help and their shield. Ye that fear Jehovah, trust in Jehovah: he is their help and their shield.” And certainly all who have come to Christ are exhorted to trust in the Lord.

So these two things tell us what He is in Himself. Then we come to what He gives. “He will give grace and glory.” The sun is always giving forth of its abundance of light and heat and fruit producing power. Just so is our Sun giving forth to His creatures. “The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” We are apt to lose sight of the fact that every living creature is dependent upon Him for existence during every moment of its life.

See what a Giver our God is! When we come to contemplate Him in that character we are soon overwhelmed. As the sun gives and gives and is never exhausted, so with our God. “I am Jehovah; I change not” — our unfailing God! Oh, that we were wise and trusted Him as He is worthy to be trusted — as He entreats us to trust Him! One of our hymns says: —

“Grace is the sweetest sound

That ever reached our ears.”

Certainly we come to think of it as being the free, unmerited favor of God. “The God of all grace” — what fullness there! What may we not expect from Him?

“By grace are ye saved” — a whole cluster of blessings lies in that simple statement.

“That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us by Christ Jesus.” Think of what the “riches of His grace” must be, and then not only that, but “exceeding riches.” He is going to make a display of all that in the ages to come.

Not only are we saved by grace, but we are kept by grace continually. “My grace is sufficient for thee.” The Lord had made known to Paul how great things he must suffer for His name's sake, and so, when starting on his work for the Lord, he goes with these two things in mind—the great suffering he was to endure and His sufficiency. Was the promise fulfilled? Did he not say towards the close of his career, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me"?

“God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” Do you not see how such a scripture should enlarge our hearts, and enlarge our idea of Him and of what He is able to do? Having all grace we should abound to every good work.

But it does not end there; the two are inseparable—grace and glory. He is going to conduct us into glory. “Now to him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”

There is much of New Testament teaching in this 11th verse of our Psalm. God is presented to us in this attractive, inspiring, strengthening way. We are led to feel that His giving is spontaneous. He gives because He delights to give. Is it not from His own Son that we have the words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive"? Would such words come from the natural heart of man? Its cry is, like the horse-leach's daughters, “Give! give!” To receive largely is the acme of blessedness to the natural man. God says, No, “it is more blessed to give"; and He constitutes Himself the supreme Giver.

“No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” You say, “Is not that limiting?” It ought not to be. But it is a very salutary word for us. Do you think it is excluding you? Let it search you. Let its light go through your innermost being. David could say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” We have in Nathanael a sample of an “upright” man— “an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.”

God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions. He is no longer upright, though he seeks to hide it. When the Spirit of God convicts of sin, and the cry goes up, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” then the man is beginning to straighten himself. And when we experience God's full forgiveness, what is there to hide—what need for guile? “Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.”

This has to do with the becoming attitude to God and to our fellow men. Is it not the aim of every true child of God to walk uprightly, so as to be pleasing to Him? “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”

Then what a grand outburst there is at the close: “O Jehovah of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.” This is the conclusion of the whole matter. Blessed are all they that trust in Him. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Oh, fear the LORD, ye his saints; for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.”

“My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” Do not put it in your mind, “how much less,” as we so often do in our folly, but, “how much more.”

These are wonderful words. God grant they may sink into our hearts.

R. K.

Notes on Luke 7

Chapter 7

We have seen the Lord, rejected by Israel, gradually, in virtue of His person and rights, breaking out beyond the ancient limits, and gathering the remnant round Himself, the new and only just object of God, the source of a mission in grace, and the full development and exemplification of holy love in an evil world; for, whatever the principles laid down in chapter 6, they are but the expression of God's character in grace, as displayed in Christ here below.

In accordance with this, we have now (vers. 1-10) the case of the centurion, and a very full and striking one it is. It is not merely an act of grace, but grace to a Gentile. Nor is this all. The principle on which the apostle rests this question is brought out. “It is of faith, that it might be by grace, that the promise might be sure to all the seed.” Faith, as the great turning-point, is introduced. It was no mere theory; it was living faith, and such faith as had not been seen in Israel. Neither was there presumption, but, on the contrary, remarkable humility. He recognized the honor God had put upon His people; he sees, holds to it, owns and acts upon it, spite of their low and debased, and, in every other respect, unworthy condition. Despised and failing as they might be, he loved the Jews as God's people, and for His sake, and he had built them a synagogue. Unfeigned lowliness was his, though (yea, rather, for) his faith was far beyond those he honored. Consequently he had a very high apprehension of the power and glory of the person of Christ as divine, reaching out beyond Jewish thoughts altogether. He does not refer to the Lord as Messiah, but recognized in Him the power of God in love. This was blessed faith, which forgets itself in the exaltation of its object. He had not seen Jesus, it would seem, but assuredly gathered from what he “heard,” that diseases were nothing to Him but occasions wherein to display His absolute authority and His sovereign mercy. He was a stranger, and the Jews were God's people; must not they or their elders be the fittest to bring this wonderful person? For he confided in His mercy as well as His power, and his servant, “dear unto him,” was sick and ready to die. He needed Jesus.

“Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof; wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee; but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.” There was surely the deepest personal respect and affection. Untaught as he might be in other things, he strongly felt the excellency of Christ's person, and here again with humility correspondent to the measure in which His glory was seen. This message of the centurion's friends admirably depicts his character and feeling. He told nothing to Jesus of his service to the Jews, spoke of nothing personal save his unworthiness, and this so consistently, that he begged Jesus not to come to his house, as unworthy to receive Him. There was in this soul the exact opposite of doing Christ an honor, by believing on Him, and far from him was the pretense of receiving Christ to set himself up; both alas! found often elsewhere. The simplicity of his heart is as apparent as his strong faith. There was none such in Israel, and yet it was in one who loved Israel. It was a lesson of grace, in every way, for the crowd that followed Jesus—for us too most surely.

Along with grace to the Gentiles came the evidence of power to raise the dead, but here it was manifested in human sympathies, in witness that God had visited His people (vers. 11-17). It was the power of resurrection, a power which was yet to be shown more gloriously, and to be the source of that which is new for man according to God the God who raiseth the dead. It was another and wondrous proof that He is here going, in the character of His action, without the sphere of the law and its ordinances. “For the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth": what can it avail for one who is dead? “But what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” etc. It was grace, indeed, and divine energy, but withal displayed in One who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And how astonishingly all the details bring this out! The dead man was “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not... And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.” How exquisitely human, and withal how unmistakably divine!

It is manifest that these two cases illustrate the change which the Spirit is attesting in this part of Luke. Nor is it otherwise with the scene that follows, which brings out in fact the hinge of the dispensation. The Lord bears witness to John Baptist, not John to the Lord. John sends two of his disciples, on the report of the Lord's miracles, to learn from Himself who He is. Are we surprised? He had preached and baptized in the confession of sins, and in faith of the coming Messiah. But now all was changed. John was in prison, not delivered, and it was no longer a people preparing for the Lord. Was it not strange? At any rate John sought a plain answer, and well could he trust the word of One who did such mighty and holy works. But what a comment upon the marvelous change was this very inquiry! It was a sort of turning over the disciples of John to the Lord. “And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities, and plagues, and evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way and tell John,” etc.

At the same time, if he receives no longer testimony from John, He hears it to him, owning John and his work. But they were owned from a higher ground where the Lord in grace and resurrection power had placed Himself; and this was based on entire rejection in and by the world, so that, though He was doing all good, still it was “blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.” Hence in the very verse where the Lord recognizes in the fullest way John the Baptist, He marks the change about to take place— “he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” Happy they who justified God in being baptized of John—wretched the self-righteous who rejected His counsel against themselves! Wisdom is justified of all her children. They understand the ways of God, whether in the servant or the Lord. The ways are quite different, but understood in grace. This generation, alas! understands none, finds fault with all. John is too righteous for them, Jesus is too gracious. The mourning of the one and the piping of the other are utterly distasteful. Such is man's wisdom before the ways of God. But the children of wisdom justify wisdom notwithstanding.

And in spite of the perverseness of men, our Lord did not stop manifesting Himself to the world. Accordingly a tale follows (vers. 36-50) which shows how God's wisdom is justified by and in those who own it in Jesus. It is a tale of grace, of pure, plenary, pardoning grace, which rests not till its object is dismissed in perfect peace. Jesus is in the Pharisee's house, who failed entirely in the essential point: Simon perceived not the glory of Christ. In this the Lord meets him, and shows, in contrast with the woman “which was a sinner,” the point where this Pharisee was exercising judgment to be precisely that wherein he failed. God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways as our ways. What if the despised Jesus were not a prophet only, but a Savior of poor lost sinners? Ah, God was unknown that was the secret. The converted soul sees the glory of the Lord as grace towards itself; he who is unconvinced, however interested humanly, judges according to his own thoughts, and therefore necessarily fails to see the glory which is not according to these thoughts. Man's judgment of the gospel must be wrong therefore; his reception of it, as grace, is alone right, and alone the way of coming to the knowledge of it.

This was, then, a direct and distinct example of God's ways. It was a forgiving of sins in grace, sovereignly and freely, to any poor sinner, manifesting and producing love in the forgiven, who loves God, because God is love, and this in respect of his sins, in Jesus the Lord. It was proper grace—the ground on which any one, a Gentile or not, would be received, and God manifested not in requirement from man (and so making man in the flesh of importance), but making God all, and His character in sovereign grace, so bringing in blessing and its blessed effect upon the heart, developing the fruits of grace in a heart restored to confidence in God by the sense of His goodness.

What a blessed picture! Goodness known not only in the act, but in Him who did it. The discernment of guilt in its gross forms by man was one thing, but the grace of God which could blot out and forgive all was quite another. It was not Christ there to judge, and to sanction Pharisees, but love to a sinner, manifesting God in this new character of grace, producing thankful holy love to God, and a blessed relationship, sovereign and beyond the reach of man. But how has God always to prove Himself right in His goodness to man! so hard is man's heart. But the Lord identifies Himself with the believer, and vindicates him against the haughty world, and this gives assurance. Perfectly regardless of comments, He applies Himself, not to unbelief, which were useless, but to those who have faith, and having communicated forgiveness, shows the soul his uprightness, that is, the right thoughts of God and self which faith has. The last word settles the whole question. The soul's love was a ground of evidence and reasoning—not, of course, the cause. “Thy faith hath saved thee,” said the Lord to the woman, “Go in peace.” All is discharged from the conscience, and the heart finds itself infinitely and everlastingly a debtor to the continual fountain of all grace.

[J. N. D. ]

Manifestation Before Whom?

2 Corinthians 5:10

I find nothing in scripture which speaks of manifestation to brethren. The question is apt to connect itself very closely with the state of the conscience. It presses on it when there is anything from which it is not entirely purged before God. There may be a conviction that God will not impute without the conscience being de facto pure or purged. When purged before God or practically pure in walk (though this, as the apostle says, does not justify), the soul is not anxious about being manifested at the judgment-seat, because it is manifested to God now. This is of great practical importance.

The passages on the subject are these. They will be seen to be of two classes.

Rom. 14:12. So then every one of us shall give an account of himself to God, connected with verse 10, we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10). For we must all be manifested (appear) before the judgment-seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body.

1 Corinthians 4:4, 5. For I know nothing by myself (no evil of myself), yet am I not hereby justified: he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who shall bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and shall make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Rom. 2:16. In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts according to my gospel.

This is one class of texts. The other here follows:-

Matt. 10:26. Fear them not, therefore, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known.

Mark 4:22. Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed, and not to be set on a candlestick? For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested, neither was anything kept secret, but that it should come abroad.

Luke 8:16, 17. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear, etc.

Chap. 12:1, 2. Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.

Three great principles are here presented. First, the great general truth, that man can keep nothing secret (though it may seem so), and can conceal nothing. All must be in light. God must have the upper hand and light shall prevail. Secondly, that we are to give an account of ourselves to God. And, thirdly, that we are not to fear the secret machinations of men, but to fear God and bear witness according to the light given to us. When I say man can conceal nothing, it is scarcely absolute enough. There is nothing secret but that it should be manifested.

This is a very important principle. It maintains the authority of God as light. For could anything be withdrawn from this, it would escape His power and judgment, and evil be maintained independent of Him. It maintains also integrity of conscience.

In the second point, our personal responsibility to God is maintained in everything. Each one shall give an account of himself. We may be helped by every vessel of grace and light in the church, but man cannot meddle with our individual responsibility to God. Each one shall give an account of himself.

The third point maintains confidence in God, in presence of what might seem otherwise a wickedness which was of a depth with which it was impossible to deal, and for which Christian truthfulness was no match.

All this is to maintain the conscience in the light before God. Where there is anxiety as to manifestation before the brethren, shame before men has still power over the heart, and will; self-love and character govern the mind. We are not in the light before God, nor has sin its right character in our eyes, because self has yet its power and place.

All is to be brought into the light, all thought of concealment rooted out and destroyed in the heart; but God will not maintain the influence of men and reputation by presenting a manifestation to them in the word, which is exactly what falsifies the moral judgment; and He does not. If the heart is comforting itself with the thought it will not be known, He breaks through the heart's deceit relentlessly, and says it will be known: everything hidden shall come to light. He does not neutralize His own authority and destroy the purity of moral principle, in saying it will be known before your brethren in that day.

Everything will be in the light, thank God; it is for the blessing, and for the joy, too, of every upright soul.

It is not necessarily simply in the day of judgment that this takes place: the Lord may deal with it now. “Thou hast done this thing secretly,” says God, by Nathan, to David, “but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.”

Thus the bringing of sin to light and judgment may be here from the hand of God. Men are chastened of the Lord that they may not be condemned with the world.

One passage remains, demanding more particular notice—2 Corinthians 5— “For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done by the body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.”

I would first say, to remove what obscures the passage, that I am satisfied that the passage is general, and embraces all men. I cannot conceive how the context can leave a shadow of doubt on this point in any mind. It ought not. It is not a question of the time of appearing, but of the fact. Secondly, it is very important to remark, that as regards the saints there is no calling in question their righteousness. The manner of their arrival before the judgment-seat, and their state in arriving clearly show this, as well as the declaration of the Lord (John 5), that they shall not come into judgment. But how do they arrive on high? “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” Christ comes Himself to complete His work of perfect grace in bringing us there. In that state we “wait for the Lord Jesus Christ [as] Savior, who shall change our vile body and fashion it like his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20). We shall be already like Christ; conformed to the image of God's Son, bearing the image of the heavenly. He who sits to judge according to His righteousness, according to what He is, is our righteousness.

The judgment of the saints begins when righteousness and glory are complete, when we are the same as Christ—Christ in them by grace.

What immense gain will our manifestation now be to ourselves! We shall know as we are known. If now, when perfect peace is possessed before God in a purged conscience, the Christian looks back at all his past life before and since his conversion, what a lesson of grace, patience, holy government for his good, that he may be partaker of His holiness—of care against unseen dangers, of instruction and of love, will his new history afford the Christian! How much more, when freed from the very nature which produced the evil in him, he knows as he is known, and can trace now the perfectness of God's ways with him! It will immensely increase and enhance his apprehension of what God has been for him, and of His patient perfect grace and purpose of love. It is surely a solemn thing, but of immense price and value to us. It is all wrought out in the conscience, as we learn from Rom. 14:12. Here it is the fact.

Remark the true effect on a right state of mind, as here described by the apostle. First, not a thought of judgment as to righteousness has any place whatever. The judgment-seat only awakens that love which thinks of those still exposed to it. “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” Secondly, it is realized so as to put him who realizes it responsibly in the presence of God. Now “we are manifested to God.” Oh, what a healthful and blessed thing this is for the soul! The rest is a mere effect readily hoped for— “I trust that we are manifested in your conscience.” The other considerations produced a conduct proper to have this effect; but if a man was before God, it was of little matter—did not affect the soul, save in the desire of others' good and Christ's glory. This double effect will certainly be produced in any such manifestation before others, and we then shall as certainly desire nothing else. The shame of a nature we have left will not be there then; the just judgment of evil will. I say this, however, in respect of the present condition of the soul. Anxiety on this point is a proof that the soul is not wholly in the sight of God. There it disappears because we are wholly there. Scripture never brings in the thought of brethren as concerned in this manifestation, and could not; but it does maintain, in the fullest way, manifestation in the light, so that if the heart reserves anything—has not brought it wholly out before God, it should be ill at ease. We are certainly perfectly manifested to the Lord, consciously I mean (for we always are so), and to ourselves. If it be for His glory that anything should be known to the saints also, we shall not regret it then; but our proper full manifestation is certainly to God, and in our own souls. All that is needed to verify the government of God will, I doubt not, be made manifest. All that has been, through evil, sought to be hidden, so that the heart was false, the counsel of the heart evil, will be brought to light; but where men have walked in the light, the counsels of the heart, however man may have judged them, will be made plain; for in that day God will judge the secrets of men's hearts. His grace and His government may have wrought all this in this world, and some men's sins and good works go before to judgment, but those that are otherwise cannot be hid. My answer then is, that the brethren are never, and can never be those, manifestation to or before whom can be the subject of the revelation of scripture—everything being brought into light is. God is light, and the light manifests everything; He will bring every secret work into judgment. Further, as to responsibility, our thoughts are directed to God and to the judgment-seat of Christ. But all that is needed to display God's ways and government, and His approval of His saints will surely be brought out, as the passages quoted clearly prove. The saint loves the light, as he loves and blesses God for the grace which enables him to stand in it, and makes him meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in it. This, though doubtless imperfect, is, I believe, the true scriptural answer to the question. Where the thought of shame is introduced, it is referred entirely to the presence of Christ, and regards the service and work done for Him (1 John 2:28).

J. N. D.

Published

LONDON

F. E. RACE, Publisher, 3 & 4, London House Yard,

Paternoster Row, E.C.

Notes on Exodus 16:4-18

Two distinct things are taught by this story—the literal providence of God in the affairs of this life, and also the spiritual significance of the way in which He met the needs of the Israelites in this barren land. The wilderness is always trying to the flesh. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed? These questions were filling them with fear. Is it not just the same at this present day? There is the same disposition to murmur, to find fault with God's ways—so especially objectionable in those under God's immediate care in the wilderness. God had given an unconditional promise to them which included all they could possibly need. He had taken them under His own special care and was leading them on into that good land flowing with milk and honey. But a need comes along; and what happens? There is an utter absence of faith in God. And yet what displays of God's power they had seen—the plagues in Egypt, the Red Sea, the pillar of fire going with them, the visible symbol of God's presence. But the flesh never will learn to trust in God; it has to be put down with a strong hand and not listened to. The people here were in the flesh—collectively that is—and they manifested themselves as a people without faith.

Until Sinai was reached, as you cannot fail to see, God was leading the people in wonderful grace. It was well understood by the One who searches the heart that the murmurings were not against Moses and Aaron, but against Him. What then? Were they followed by some fearful punishment? Just see. “Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.” What abounding grace! grace of the freest character imaginable. In spite of all, God speaks to them in the most gracious, gentle and kindly way, and manifests His unfailing care. He is always doing that with His people; nevertheless this is necessary—the faith of His people must be exercised. In all circumstances of trial of faith and patience God is putting these graces to the test in order to strengthen them. Love is the root and spring of all, as we know, and “as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee.” “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.”

All this manifests His love, and goodness, and faithfulness, and care. Our nature is of such an obstinate, obdurate character that it makes rough handling necessary to get us into shape. We do so love to have our own will, to go our own way, but that must not be if we are children of God. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

We should learn to trust God about things of this present life, because we have such assurance of His loving care as to temporal needs. But there is a far deeper meaning in the manna than this. You remember how the Lord interprets it in John 6, when the people came to Him and asked, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. They said therefore unto him, What sign showest thou then, that we may see and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Then you have the Lord's answer, “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven"; and He adds, “I am the bread of life.” He is the antitype of the manna—our God provides sustenance in this wilderness life. The wonder of it is such that men have never been able to fathom or comprehend it. “God manifest in the flesh!” —walking here for nearly thirty-four years. What a matchless truth! Here He gives us to enter into the secret of it all. “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” We get it all in this massive chapter.

Then look at Deuteronomy 8:3. “He humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live.” Oh, the power of that word proceeding out of the mouth of the living God! “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” “Desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby.” God uses the word to impart life to us and then to develop and strengthen it in us.

Now there is one word that needs a little careful explanation. The children of Israel go out in the morning and see this small round thing which they had never seen before, and they say, “It is manna” (ver. 15). It reads like a contradiction. The secret of it is this. When they saw the thing they said “Man-na” — “What is this?” —and it got the name through the question. But Moses knew what it was; he had not to ask any question. “This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.”

Are we not reminded of the question asked when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, “Who is this?” They did not recognize Him, though He had been three and a half years going up and down the country, teaching and working miracles among them. “He is despised and rejected of men.” “No beauty that we should desire him.” There is nothing very magnificent about the hoar frost to which the manna is likened; manna—a small round thing—speaking to us of the lowliness of the Lord. What the world admires is the great, the flashing, the powerful. What did the shepherds find at Bethlehem?— “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And this was the One who had come down from heaven. “Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor.” “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.”

“Cold mountains and the midnight air

Witnessed the fervor of His prayer.”

The last thing we find the people saying of Him is, “We will not have this man.” No, not a bit of it. He did not come up to their expectations, and so they would not have Him! And so the Israelites despised this small, round thing — “What is it?” The same nature is in us—not a bit improved, although I trust grace reigns in us.

Then the manna was round. Roundness always carries the idea of completeness and that you find in perfection in our Lord Jesus Christ. There was never such a life as His. You will find men in whom there is this or that excellent characteristic prominent. In Peter we may see boldness, in John love, and so right through with all the apostles. But in Him there is perfection everywhere, and that is just what we should expect. He came down from heaven, the place of perfection, and “in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

“White” is also significant. Why are we told that? White always stands for purity. These little particulars seem to be given thus carefully by the Spirit of God for the unveiling of some beauty and excellency of Christ. There was in Him a perfect, stainless, unsullied purity. The Spirit of God guards the purity of His life. “He made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” He “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.” “Such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.”

We are told even what the taste of the manna was. “The taste of it was like wafers made with honey.” What is sweeter than honey? We were singing just now—

“How sweet the name of Jesus sounds

In a believer's ear.”

There is that about the blessed Lord which surpasses all else in the estimation of those who love Him. Nothing is to be compared with communion with Himself. But, you see, the spiritual taste is needed.

The remarkable thing about it all was that in that small round thing there was everything to sustain them through their life in the wilderness; and it seems to have sustained them well. They were always fit for a journey, or for fighting, or whatever came along. The manna was always sufficient. Is it not so with the Lord Jesus Christ? What is there in the world to minister to the new life? But there is everything in Him. The world is in this sense indeed a wilderness; it does not think itself a wilderness, and there was a time when we did not think it so? But when we are drawn near to Christ we receive a new life. Christ living in us has wrought a revolution in our whole being—we are new creatures in Christ. “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven” —there you have it.

“Himself our life He bears us up

Right onward to our rest.”

“And in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost upon the ground.”

Now I want you to notice that there is a connection between these two things—dew and manna. What does dew signify? Dew is water, is it not? You may say, “Well, a special form of water.” Yes, water in suspension, nevertheless it is water. Now, water in scripture is figurative of the word of God in its cleansing or purifying power. The Israelites got manna in connection with dew—we receive Christ through the word.

If souls neglect the word of God they cannot prosper—it is impossible to get on. If you find a Christian who systematically absents himself from what the Lord has provided for our help along the road—the prayer meeting, the Bible reading, etc. —you will find on investigation that that man has no spiritual growth. I do not speak of those who are hindered, I speak only of those who can be present but are not, through indifference. But I say this, you will never find a soul to prosper without the word. And why? The Lord has provided this means, and if we neglect it how can we expect to get on?

The Psalmist says, “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” That is what God thinks about it. He has settled it in heaven and handed it down to us. It is an amazing book; as we study it, so surely we shall get profit from it.

Now I would refer to several portions in connection with the manna, and these, alas! sorrowful ones. “And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic.” Had they forgotten the slavery? “But now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.” Just listen to that! “And the people went about, and gathered it and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it” (Numbers 11:4-9).

Here, again, you get manna in connection with dew. You observe the taste of the manna seems to have altered very seriously. At first it was like wafers made with honey, now it is like fresh oil. There is a very considerable difference between the two. Had the manna deteriorated or was the taste of the people vitiated? They no longer relished it; there was a longing for flesh. “There is nothing beside this manna before our eyes” —and they despised it.

In chapter 21 it is worse still. “Our soul loatheth this light bread.” And immediately the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people—that was His answer. Oh, depend upon it, God is jealous of the honor due to His Christ! He may wait in long-suffering and patience, but judgment is sure to come sooner or later. Everything is popular in the present day except the preaching of Christ and Him crucified.

Now let us notice verse 35 of our chapter. “The children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan"; and in Joshua 5 we read that the manna ceased after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. The land represents the heavenly places (see Ephesians 1:2), and in the old corn we have Christ risen. Manna is Christ in humiliation, the old corn Christ in glory. We are looking for Him to put us in possession of that glory which we are to share with Him. It is the will of our glorious Lord that where He is there we should be also, and that will is sure to be carried out.

The great thing for us is to be going on with Him. “Of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.” You may go down to the great and wide sea and dip and dip and there will still be as much as before; and what treasures are ours, infallibly secured to us in our Lord Jesus Christ!

R.K.

Fragment: Words of Abraham

It has been said of some that they wrought, of others that they wrote or spoke better than they knew. Doubtless even Abraham only vaguely entered into the far-reaching, mysterious import of the words with which he calmed the anxiety of Isaac with regard to a sacrificial lamb. “God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:8).

How these words have echoed down the ages, and what a striking exemplification we have here of the admirable saying of Augustine that the Old Testament enfolds what the New unfolds! So do nicely adjusted mirrors with their opposing beams materially enhance each other's radiance.

Next, we may note the remarkable way in which the Patriarch enters into God's side of the question. “God will provide himself a lamb.” So Simeon, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” Sometimes we think too exclusively of our salvation, though doubtless the sinner must begin with the sin-offering. But God's portion, so to speak, must come first, as we learn in the opening of Leviticus. And in beautiful accord are these words of Abraham.

R. B.

Lectures on 2 Kings 18

2 Kings 18

The kingdom of Israel, or Samaria, was now closed, not forever, but for a season, and a season protracted long, even unto this day. There has been no restoration save in individuals. We know that Jehovah will set His hand a second time, and will recover them and bring them back with unexampled power and blessedness into their own land, for theirs was ever a sorrowful history. It was humiliating to think of them as the people of God from the very beginning of their separate existence unto its close. It began in self-will, and it ended in shame and sorrow. Truly, they “lay down in sorrow.” It must ever be so when men endeavor to kindle a fire of their own sparks. But not only this. The peculiar state of things that followed Israel in that land which they had vacated is brought before us—the mongrel population that the king of Assyria brought from the east and established in Samaria—mere pretenders to the name of Israel, who served their own gods but incorporated nominal allegiance to the Jehovah of Israel. This we have seen, and the Spirit of God leaves the matter before us without comment.

But now the grace of God works remarkably in Judah, for it was a serious time that was at hand. The same power of Assyria that destroyed Israel threatened the last portion of the people of God, and Judah at this time was extremely low —never so low. They had been weakened by the kingdom of Israel; one king having slain no fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand men. The Moabites had gained great advantages. So in Edom and in other ways, not to speak of internal dissolution, and all those influences which corrupt and destroy a nation's strength. For never does a nation fall by external power until it is undermined within. And so it was with Judah. But God, of His grace, saw fit in that dark and desolate day, to raise up a blessed man—not in the figure of David—neither so illustrious, on the one hand, nor stained with such sad spots of shame one therefore of whom the Holy Ghost could say, “He trusted in Jehovah the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him” (18:5). I do not think that by that it was meant to compare Hezekiah, the one here spoken of, with David, although in a certain sense that might be true, taking the evil as well as the good into account; but you observe He says, “The kings of Judah,” not “of Israel.” The Holy Ghost is not comparing him, therefore, with the day when the kingdom was unbroken, but with the times when Judah had a separate existence from the ten tribes, and in that case we can readily see how perfectly and accurately true it is. And it is a good thing to accustom our minds to see the perfect accuracy of the word of God.

Hezekiah was remarkable not merely for his fidelity in this respect. Indeed he had a goodly place in the roll of the kings of Judah, for he removed the high places, he brake the images, he cut down the groves, he broke even the brazen serpent which up to this time had become an object of idolatry to the children of Israel; so shamefully degraded were the people of the Lord. And it is very humbling to find that this is only discovered now. Had there not been kings—pious, devoted, faithful? What had Jehoshaphat been about? What had Asa? The truth is that there is nothing that more strikes us than the way in which we pass over either the good of scripture or the evil of practice. The children of God suddenly wake up to find that they have been doing something that will not bear the light of God. They have never seen it before. How dependent upon the word of God! Yet there it was; and when once the light is brought to bear upon it, it is indefensible nevertheless. God thus shows us that it is not only that we need the word, but we need God. We need Himself to apply and give force to His own word. As the apostle says, “Now I commend you” —not merely, “to the word of His grace” — “I commend you to God and to the word of his grace.”

So now Hezekiah proved. God had raised him up, and it was not only that he continued in the path of faithfulness as others before him, removing these unsightly abominations that were ever rising up afresh in Israel, and repeating themselves from generation to generation, so inveterate is the heart even among God's people in what is had; but further, the superior light of Hezekiah's soul, granted by the Spirit of God, detected the offense in the idolatry that was paid to what was once a most signal sign of divine power and blessing. For we know well that there was in the wilderness no way in which God marked His healing power more gloriously than in this very serpent of brass—the type of Christ made sin. This is the reason why it was a serpent of brass. It was not only Christ a sacrifice, but it was Christ made sin, and therefore He is shown under this emblem of the power of evil, not that there was any evil in our blessed Lord, but that He must come under all the consequences of it in judgment upon the cross, in order to deliver us from the effects of evil.

So this “piece of brass” —for so the pious king contemptuously calls it—must now be destroyed. Antiquity it had, but what was antiquity? The fact is that almost all the departures that we see around us now are far from novelties. They are ancient enough. The second century and the third saw most of the evil things that are now floating about in Christendom. They can therefore boast of antiquity; but what the Christian feasts on is apostolicity, not merely antiquity. Anything that is short of the apostles is too new for a Christian, and ought to be considered so. That is, we are built not merely upon the ancient church; we are built upon the foundation of Christ's holy apostles and prophets, and there is no stable foundation since then. It is in vain therefore to tell me that such a thing came in since the apostles. That is the very reason why I will not hear of it. It would be a little more to the purpose to show me what was during the apostles, or rather, to show me what was sanctioned by the apostles, for I do not doubt that even when they were on earth there were evil things to be found, as indeed the New Testament largely shows.

Well, then, Hezekiah shows us this great principle—that we must go back to first principles, and that we must judge everything even if it can boast of the most hoary head of antiquity, by the light of God—by God's word. So judged, the serpent of brass must perish! It might be ever so interesting as a relic, but Satan having turned it to an evil account, there must be no sparing. It is destroyed. “He brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made.” It was a bold act, and not more bold than faithful, and all this because “he trusted in the Jehovah God of Israel.” There is nothing that describes more accurately and powerfully the spiritual character of Hezekiah than trust in God. And trust in God is the root of all that is blessed, I may say, in a believing man. There may be other qualities. We shall find, if we look at Josiah, for instance, that there might be even greater energy against what was wrong, but nothing can make up for lack of trust, for trust is essentially what magnifies God and what keeps us in lowliness before God. It is the great expression of dependence, and for a man there is nothing more lovely than dependence upon God.

Hence, therefore, we find in Hezekiah the way in which this trust shows itself in all the practical details of his life. I shall note some of them as they come before us in the history that the Holy Ghost gives, but I now pursue the scripture before me. He was therefore more signalized by his trust in Jehovah than any of the kings of Judah either before or after. This was his distinguishing spiritual property. “For he clave to Jehovah and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments which Jehovah commanded Moses.” This is a very important thing to observe, for it is not the commandments that produce trust, but it is trust that enables the man to keep the commandments. The only persons who ever did the law in Israel were those who had faith in God, who hung upon Him. It was not looking at the law, or merely deferring to it. Of course they did, but even unconverted persons may defer to the law and be afraid of the consequences. But what produces obedience is always trust. No doubt love does the same thing, only trust is rather that which produces love, because even supposing I do not yet know all God's love, yet I can trust Him; I can confide in Him. As Job said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust” —a low condition it is true, a feeble apprehension of the great grace of God, but it was a very real and a holy one; a very holy one. That is, “At all costs I can trust Him.” But then as one learns Him more, so the trust grows, for we perceive His love more. And the result is this—unhesitating obedience to God's word.

Hezekiah “smote the Philistines,” we are told. Also, “he prospered whithersoever he went forth; and he rebelled against the king of Assyria.” Not only did he smite the Philistines, but, as if there were not enough upon his hands with his kingdom attenuated to so small a degree—for, as I have said, Judah was very low—yet this little kingdom, with its lowly, pious king, ventured to dispute the rights of the king of Assyria over him. He had been drawn into this position of subjection by his ungodly father. He had a deep sense that Judah ought not to be in subjection to Assyria. I do not pretend to say that he was quite right. There was a holy feeling at the bottom of it, but whether there was an intelligent perception of the chastening that God had put upon Judah is another thing. At any rate he came into no small trouble through his rebelling against the king of Assyria, though God showed Himself marvelously on his behalf, but not without great humiliation.

We shall see, therefore, that it had a mingled character, and I judge that it was mingled because the intervention of God, while it was real, was not without a permitted and a deep humiliation. And I think you will always find that where a soul is faithful, but where there is flesh mixed with it, God will honor that faithfulness, but He will rebuke the flesh. And this is too common a feature. It is a rare thing, beloved brethren, where we are enabled both to be faithful and be lowly, but very often in the desire to be faithful we lose a little our balance, and the very energy of faith that goes forward is sometimes connected with a little forgetfulness of our own proper place. I think that there was this mixture in Hezekiah, because of the way of God's dealing with it. There are two ways of judging, first the looking at a person's conduct, and secondly observing how God deals with it; and both, in my judgment, answer to each other in this case. However that may be, we have now the connection of Assyria not simply with Judah—the conqueror of Israel comes up against Jerusalem. God had permitted Assyria to sweep away the ten tribes. Was there not enough wickedness in Judah for God to deal with now? We shall see how God acts. We shall see how God answers fidelity of heart and trust in Himself.

“So it came to pass in the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it, even in the sixth year of Hezekiah (that is, the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel) Samaria was taken.” We have just a little connection with the destruction of the other kingdom before we find the attack upon Jerusalem. “And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel into Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed not the voice of Jehovah their God, but transgressed his covenant and all that Moses the servant of Jehovah commanded, and would not hear them, nor do them.”

Well now, his son, or at any rate his successor Sennacherib, came up against the fenced cities of Judah and took them. There was a permitted humiliation thus far. “Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended.” I judge, therefore, that we have his own confession to show that whatever might be the piety of the king, there was a mixture of offense along with it. I do not think that if Hezekiah had been thoroughly guided of God he would have said, “I have offended.” “I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear.” It looks like the sense that he had made a mistake, and that he had accepted his humiliation. “And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.” This was a very heavy tax; this was a war tax; this was a compensation for the trouble and expense to which the king of Judah had put him in compelling him to bring his army in order to reduce him to subjection. It was not the old tribute, but a great deal more. Such is the effect of an immature action even from a faithful man.

We never gain, beloved brethren, by hasty acts. We cannot deliver ourselves; we are not intended to do so. We have God to look to, and God will hold us to it. We need the guidance of God. Hezekiah, having acted before the Lord, that is, inopportunely, now meets with His rebuke and His chastening. “And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of Jehovah.” This was a sore trial to a pious man. It was not only that Hezekiah suffered, but God's house suffered—a grievous thing in his eyes. The treasures of the king's house were but small compared with Jehovah's house, I am sure, to Hezekiah. “At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of Jehovah, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid.” More hardly because it was he that had sought to bring them back to something like their pristine splendor, and now all was reversed.

Evidently, therefore, Hezekiah had acted in a measure without the Lord. The truest saint, then, the man most remarkable for trust, may fail in that very particular, and indeed it is precisely in whatever God gives us grace to be remarkable for, that we have to watch, for Satan has a spite against us, and will endeavor to break us down in the very thing in which God has given us grace. Take, for instance, a remarkably truthful person. Well, I am not altogether surprised when I hear that there has been a little failure in that very respect, and for this simple reason, that the effect of a character for truthfulness is apt to make a person off his guard, and the truth is, that the power of it is not human character in a saint. For I care not how truthful a man may be naturally, this will not enable him to be truthful spiritually. There is a higher and a deeper measure, and then he needs the direct power of God to keep him truthful. God will break him down in the very point of his pride if he is proud of it, and it is a hard thing—in fact, we know impossible to the flesh—not to be. So with anything else. Take a man remarkable for humility. Take a person striking for his grace. Well, you must not be surprised if there be a failure in these very particulars. So with David. Who would have expected that David would ever find himself in the army of the Philistines? Why there never was such a man for putting down the Philistines. It was the very thing that made him such a man. I may say, as far as the public knowledge of Israel was concerned, he was the choice champion of Jehovah against the vaunting Philistines, and yet that is the very man who, if he began his career against the Philistines, afterward finds himself through want of faith ranged with the Philistines, and it was only the Philistines' jealousy and distrust of David that hindered him from fighting against Israel instead of being their champion! Such was the painful reverse in the very point in which David was so conspicuous.

And the same thing you will find now if you take the New Testament. Was there one of the disciples more bold for confessing the Lord? Who was it that said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"? And who was it that was afraid of a servant girl, and stood to it, and swore to it, that he did not know the man? Such is man—such is even a saint—when he ceases to be dependent.

Returning, however, to the chapter before us, we find the king of Assyria was not to be put off. He liked his three hundred talents of silver and his thirty talents of gold well enough, and he saw that the stripping of the temple, too, was only an encouragement to make greater demands. He therefore pushes his advantages. He found lowliness, for there never was a man that told his faults out so plainly as Hezekiah. “I have offended.” It was a sort of encouragement for him to see whether he would not bear a little more pressure. “That which thou puttest on me will I bear.” And so he determines to try. “And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host"; not now against the fenced cities, but against Jerusalem.” And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fullers' field. And when they had called to the king there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah.” Rab-shakeh tells him to speak to the king. “Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? Thou sayest (but they are but vain words), I have counsel and strength for the war.”

How little does the natural man understand the ground of the trust of faith! “And have counsel and strength for the war.” Nothing of the sort. It was God that had counsel; it was God that had strength for the Assyrian. “Now on whom dost thou trust?” says this proud servant of a proud king, “that thou rebellest against me. Now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on which if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce it; so is Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him.” There is a great deal of truth in the world's talk. So far Rab-shakeh was very right. The king of Egypt was but a reed; and the Assyrian could see very well the vanity of trusting to Egypt, but the Assyrian could not see the wisdom of trusting in Jehovah. “But if ye say unto me, We trust in Jehovah our God” —now you see how the world's wisdom is folly whenever it draws near to God. Wise enough about Egypt: that was plain. But the moment that he thinks of God—foolishness.

“Is not that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?” Rab-shakeh could not distinguish between the idols and Jehovah. Jehovah to him was only an idol—one out of many idols, and inasmuch as Hezekiah had broken down all the idols, he fancied that they were different forms of Jehovah's worship, because that was the heathen idea of God—the philosophic idea—the idea of the higher classes. The lower classes, perhaps, regarded them as so many gods, but there were men a little above that who thought that it was God displaying himself in his various attributes. That was the philosophy of heathenism any way. And Rab-shakeh seems to have been a bit of a philosopher, and so he taunts the ministers of king Hezekiah with having destroyed the worship of Jehovah. “Now, therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?”

Now he takes another ground. He takes first the folly of trusting in Egypt, and there he was right; and secondly, the fact that they had only to look for Jehovah's vengeance inasmuch as they had been destroying Jehovah's altars; thirdly, that he was come up as a servant of Jehovah to accomplish His will and to avenge Himself upon Jerusalem. “Am I now come up without Jehovah against this place to destroy it? Jehovah said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it.” But it was not merely Eliakim and Shebna and Joah that heard; it was Jehovah. Little did Rab-shakeh believe that the Lord God was listening, and that the Lord God would speedily answer, for now he had dared to use that name for deliberate blasphemy. He had dared the authority of Jehovah where it was known. He had dared God! and God, as He dealt most severely with this in His church, so now He would deal with this boastful servant of the Assyrian.

It is true the servants of Hezekiah were rather feeble. Nothing was to be won by deprecating the enemies of the Lord. It is always well to remember that they are enemies. Ask no favors of them, and expect none. But these three men were alarmed; they were afraid of the effect upon the Jewish people, and therefore they begged him not to talk in the Jews' language in the ears of the people. And what could that do but call out from Rab-shakeh a more vehement appeal and more vaunting than ever. “But Rab-shakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words?” His object was to excite rebellion among the people of Jerusalem and Judah. “Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria: Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you.” It suggested an idea. It exactly gave him a new weapon, a new argument, a new ground of appealing to the people, which he might not have thought of if the fears of Hezekiah's servants had not put it into his head. The very thing which they feared and asked him not to do gave him the idea of doing it. At all events he acts upon it at once. “For he shall not be able to deliver you out of his hand. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah.” And so he asked him to come out and surrender to the king, and the king would give them a good land like their own, and then he spreads before them all the destruction of other cities and people greater than they, and how powerless their gods were against Assyria.

But now at last we find wisdom. If the ministers of the king were foolish, the people at least were wise, and the people were wise because the king was wise. The people held their peace. It was very provoking: it was exactly the time when nature would have led them to cry out for the king, and to answer the insults of Rab-shakeh with the strongest and the most vehement protestations of their loyalty to Jehovah and to Hezekiah. But no, “the people held their peace, and answered him not a word, for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not.” They then come to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and tell him the words of Rab-shakeh, and Hezekiah bows as a man that trusts in Jehovah. He heard it, and he rent his clothes, not because of the loss of his three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, not because even of the stripping of the house of Jehovah; but now that Jehovah was insulted, now that there were the appeals to the people in the Jews' tongue to weaken their confidence in Jehovah—this touches his heart and he rent his clothes and he went as a sorrowful suppliant before the Lord. [W. K.]

Fragment: The Ear, Mind, and Soul

The ear is the gateway, and the mind the avenue, but the soul is the dwelling-place of divine truth. J.G.B.

Notes on Luke 8

We have seen, in what has preceded, the Lord presenting Himself, by His words and His work, as a new center, to which and round which His people were gathered. Before this, Jehovah had been the center, when Israel was the gathering point; for Jehovah was among the Jews, and the temple the place where He met with the people. But now the Son is here, “God manifest in the flesh,” and He must be the center of everything. But Israel would not be gathered, as the Lord Himself said in Matthew 23:37, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,.... but ye would not.” Again in Isaiah 65:2, “I have spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people.”

Israel could not have the blessing, for the flesh could not hold it. The flesh, simply looked at as such, is “as grass” (Isaiah 40). “All flesh is grass.” We have these two great principles running through the latter chapters of Isaiah; first, that flesh, as flesh, could not hold the blessing, and be the depository for the promises. For when all grace came, in the person of the Lord, the people to whom He was sent He found withered down like grass. “Surely the people is grass: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever.” But God was not going to give up His purpose. Therefore in chapter 49, we find Jehovah says unto Christ, “Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Then Christ says, If God is to be glorified in Israel, “I have labored in vain, and spent my strength for naught, and in vain, yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my reward with my God.” Then saith Jehovah, “Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorified in the eyes of Jehovah. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

This is what Christ is becoming in Luke's Gospel— “a light to lighten the Gentiles,” etc. And afterward we find Paul quoting, with the perfect accuracy of the Spirit, this very scripture, so exactly fitted for them, to the Jews at Antioch. “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken unto you, but seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo! we turn to the Gentiles,” etc. (Acts 13:46, 47): and again, Acts 28:28). Israel will be gathered afterward, for Christ will hereafter raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved of Israel; but before this He turns to the Gentiles. All this the Lord pictures to us in Luke. In chapter 7, we see Israel refused both John the Baptist and Christ; but “wisdom is justified of her children.” The Pharisees and lawyers did not justify God at all, for they saw no beauty in Jesus, whereas the publicans did; and thus the poor woman, “who was a sinner,” whose heart was touched by the grace of God, is the true child of wisdom, and is brought in here as an illustration of Christ being the new center of blessing, “though Israel be not gathered.”

The Lord then goes on with His testimony, gathering by the word, first, by parables, as in chapter 8, and then in chapter 9 sending forth His disciples to preach, with this commission, to shake off the dust from their feet, if they are not received, a token of the last testimony being rendered, when they are given up.

Here are two classes of persons gathered round Christ. First, the twelve apostles were public witnesses, fitted by divine grace to be the vessels of testimony, manifesting the electing power of God in calling them, and sending them forth in all the energy of ministry; Christ's apostles, sent out by Himself— “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” —His chosen ones. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” etc. Then, secondly, there were others who were gathered by affection round Him, having no place of office in the church, but those whose hearts were touched and drawn round Him, not sent out like the first class, but not less devoted in heart than the apostles, for they followed Him and ministered to Him of their substance.

In verses 4-8 we have the parable of the sower; and here, as previously remarked, it is not the kingdom brought out as in Matthew, but the testimony as to what and whom Christ was gathering, and not as to the form the kingdom would take afterward. The very fact of Christ coming as the sower proved that Israel was set aside; for had it been now to Israel as His vineyard, He must have come seeking fruit from the vine He had long before planted. He had come to Israel previously, seeking fruit and finding none. He now comes in the new character of the Sower, which is quite another thing. He comes into a waste world, where there was nothing, and He begins a fresh work. God is not now looking for fruit from man in one sense, because man has been proved to be a bad tree: and the more you dig about and dung a bad tree, the more bad fruit it produces. “A tree is known by its fruits.” Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. God is now going to produce the fruit He requires. He is not now looking for man to produce anything, for John the Baptist said, “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Therefore the Lord now comes as sower, not looking for fruit, but doing that which will produce it.

He then goes on to describe the character and effect of the sowing, and the disciples ask the meaning of the parable (vers. 9-15). Israel, as such, had forfeited its place, and therefore was “a people of no understanding” (Isaiah 27:11). Long patience had waited on Israel. Seven hundred years had passed since the word was given to Isaiah, “Go tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not.” As individuals they might be drawn round the person of the Lord, but as a nation they were blinded. The disciples had an explanation of the parable, but as a nation the Lord speaks to them in parables (see ver. 10), thus fulfilling to the nation the very words spoken by the prophet so long before. Now the testimony is closed as to Israel, though not as to God's final purpose respecting them.

The seed is sown indiscriminately, and although man rejects it, because his will is opposed, nevertheless it is sown in his heart; for this parable shows how the word of God is perfectly adapted to the need of man, meeting his conscience and heart. “Never man spake like this man.” Christ's word came with a power that reached the heart and affections; the will is corrupt and therefore resists it. It is not abstract grace here, but the condition of man that is recognized; therefore we find the word so perfectly suited to the need, not claiming righteousness from man, but coming in with power to show him that he is a sinner, and laying open the thoughts and intents of the heart. When the heart is thus detected, the word comes, with all gentleness and comfort, for healing and rest, because there is grace to meet a soul in whatever state it may be found. The heart is spoken to, and therefore the gospel leaves man without excuse.

Some too received the word with joy (ver. 13). This was a proof that the conscience was untouched; for when that is reached it is anything but joy, until forgiveness is known. The feelings may be moved for a time, and the word be listened to with a joy which will give place to sorrow. The reason truth is thus flippantly taken up with joy is because there is no root, and so it is received in joy and given up in trouble.

Another class is where thorns spring up and choke the word. The understanding may be convinced and receive the truth; but the cares, pleasures, and riches of this world come in and choke the word. Now these “cares” are most subtle things, because they enter as necessary duties, and there is no sin in doing one's duty. Nay, it is right that a man should do his duty in his daily calling. But if these duties choke the word, and a man loses his soul through it, what then? The natural tendency of the heart often needs to be met with that word, “Take heed and beware of covetousness” (chap. 12). It is the love of possession. One came to the Lord, saying, “Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.” The heart wanted to keep it. If love of the world or covetousness gets in amongst the saints, it is an insidious thing and most difficult to meet, because it is often not open to discipline; and yet, if covetousness slips into the heart, it checks the power of Christ over the soul and conscience, and eats out the practical life of the Christian, and his soul is withered, withered, withered. It may be checked by the power of God coming in; but this covetous care about earthly things is so subtle that, while there is nothing on which to lay the hand, the practical power of Christian life in the soul is gone, though of course, I need hardly say, eternal life can never be lost in those who once had it.

“That on the good ground as they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” They may seem to the world to be fruits bright and blessed, but if people have not got Christ they tire. There will be no enduring, unless Christ has possession of the soul; but if He has, there will be an abiding motive, and people will go on, and “bring forth fruit with patience.” They that hear and keep it go steadily on, having their motive for action in the Lord. Trouble may come in, in the church; disappointment may arise, even from brethren; but they go on just the same, because they have got Christ before them: for the word they have heard and keep connects them with Christ, and He is more than anything else.

This is a question, not of eternal salvation, but of the practical effect of the word as seen in this world (vers. 16-18)—the growth of the word in the soul, and that will not be hidden under a bushel. “Ye are the light of the world” and “the salt of the earth.” In those who only appear to be Christians it soon comes to nothing. “Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.” But those in whom the word works effectually are to be as a “candle” set on a candlestick. Israel being set aside for a season, God sets up a new light in the world; a light lit up by God, because of the world's darkness. When Christ was here He was the light of the world, because of its darkness, and now we should be a light in the world, as we are “light in the Lord.” The light is here set up by Christ's word, and people are responsible for the word received. Suppose you have heard the word and bring forth no fruit, it will all come out, by-and-by, that you have heard the word and lost it, and the spiritual power accompanying it. For, even if you are saints, all that you have heard without fruit or power resulting therefrom, it will come out; for nothing is hid that shall not be known or come abroad. “Take heed how ye hear.”

Christ is looking for the results of His sowing. There must be not only the hearing, but the possessing, and in this rests the responsibility; for if you keep the word which you have heard, more shall be given you. If, on hearing, I possess that which I hear, not merely have joy in receiving it, but possess it as my own, then it becomes a part of the substance of my soul, and I shall get more; for when the truth has become a substance in my soul, there is a capacity for receiving more. Suppose, for example, you hear the truth of the Lord's second coming and see your portion as the bride of Christ, and you do not lay hold of it practically, so as to possess it (have communion with God about it, which is possession); you will presently lose the expectation of His coming and forget your place of separation from the world, and the truth will gradually slip away, because you are not holding it in your soul before God. Consequently your soul becomes dead and dull, and you lose the very truth you have received.

Thus, if one lives daily as waiting for the Lord from heaven, there will be no planning for the future, no laying up for the morrow; such a man will learn more and more, as other truths will open round this one grand central one, and he will be kept in the truth. If, on the other hand, he drops this center truth by saying, “He cannot come yet; so many things must happen first,” then is the progress of such an one's communion with God hindered, for, as we have said, it is according to what a man has heard and holds with God that there can be any growth; for what is the use of teaching me that the Lord may come tomorrow, if I am going on living as though He were not coming for a hundred years? Or where is the comfort and blessedness of the truth to my soul, if I am saying in my heart, “My Lord delayeth his coming?' Though I cannot lose my eternal life, yet if I am losing the truth and light I have had, I shall be merely floating on in the current of life, half world and half Christ, and all power of Christian life will be dimmed in my soul. If the truth is held in communion with God, it separates to Himself. Truth is to produce fruit, and you have no truth that does not bear fruit. Truth must build up the soul. “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.” Christ becomes precious in and by the truth that I learn; and if it has not that power, it all drops out, comes to nothing, and is taken away. If Christ is precious to me, I shall be waiting for Him with affection, and if it is not so, the bare truth will soon be given up.

Verses 19-21. Here He closes up His connection with Israel after the flesh; for the relations of mother and brethren put Him into connection with Israel after the flesh. Observe, He here distinguishes the remnant by the word “these,” as He did in chapter 6 by the word “ye.” His mother and His brethren came to Him on the ground of natural relationship only; and there was all natural affection in the Lord, as on the cross we find Him remembering His mother, and commending her to the care of John. But He replies here, as much as to say, “I am not on that ground now—my mother and my brethren are these, which hear the word of God and do it.” Israel was now given up as to that position, the Lord owning and acknowledging only those to be His relations on whose hearts and consciences the word of God had taken effect. It was not what was found in nature, but what was produced by grace, and, being thus produced by power through the word, the principle is hereby established, that it might go out to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews, although not fully brought out until after His resurrection. In these three verses we have a judicial sentence on Israel, which closes in verse 21.

[J.N.D.].

Fragment: Christian Ministry

What can be more valuable in its place, and for God's ends by it, than Christian ministry? It embraces rule as well as teaching, pastorship as well as preaching. There are those that can teach who have not the power of ruling; as, again, others who rule well, having great moral weight, who could not teach. Some again have the gift of preaching who themselves need teaching, and are not at all fit to lead on, clear, and establish the church of God. Nor does a gift for ministry in itself carry moral weight for rule. Thus scripture teaches, and so we see in the facts of every day.

Christian ministry was founded by the Lord who died for us; but the spring flowed when He went up to heaven. If He gave gifts to men, it was after He ascended on high (Ephesians 4:8-11).

W. K.

Thoughts on the Lord's Supper

The Lord's Supper is to be eaten as a memorial, or remembrance of Christ. This is His own interpretation of it. The bread sets forth His body— the cup His blood—accomplishing the remission of sins.

To eat and drink of this feast is to express our participation in the virtues of His sacrifice (1 Corinthians 10:18). And it is thus eaten in remembrance of Christ, in token of the soul's fellowship with what His sacrifice has accomplished for sinners; it is therefore to be eaten with thanksgiving. This remembrance of what the sacrifice of Christ has accomplished must be accompanied with that. No supplication is needed, because it is a finished work—a full remission—which the Table records.

To pray about the forgiveness of sins would be discordant with the voice of the table—it would be (quite unintended, it might be) a reproach upon the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. It would be a building again the things which Christ had destroyed; and in the language and sense of Galatians 2 making Him “the minister of sin—:” making His blood, like the blood of bulls and of goats, only the remembrancer and not the remitter of sins. But to surround it with thanksgiving— to wait on the feast with praise for redemption—this would be honoring the work of the Lamb of God, which the feast sets forth—and accordingly it is always as thus accompanied that the Scriptures present it to us. Jesus, on taking the bread and the cup, “gave thanks” (Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22). He did nothing else. The words “blessing” and “giving thanks” are, to all moral intent, used in the same sense. And in the like mind, the apostle calls it “the cup of blessing which we bless"—the cup at the taking of which we bless, or speak well of the Lord— because by that death and blood-shedding of Jesus, which it sets forth, He has richly entitled Himself to praise, or to have His name spoken well of. And again speaking of it, he says—that when the Lord parted the bread and the cup among His disciples, He simply “gave thanks” (1 Cor. 11:24). It may be accompanied with confession of sin because it implies our utter death in trespasses and sins—and therefore the confession of that would not be discordant with it. But still we do not find such confession either enjoined or observed in any of the passages which refer to the supper; but in them it takes the form of a simple eucharistic feast, or a season of thanksgiving for the remission of sins.

It says, as another has once observed, (at least the table has in it this voice) “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of heavy hearts: let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. (Proverbs 21:6, 7). This is so indeed—it is this precious “strong drink” which reminds us that our “misery” is gone, and that our “heavy hearts” have been lifted up: it tells us, not like the blood of bulls and of goats; that sin is remembered, but that sins are remitted—this is its peculiar characteristic voice. To give thanks in company with it, is harmony—to pray about our sins is discordance.

But the service of self-judging, or self-condemnation, may well wait on this feast, because we are, by the remission of our sins, called unto holiness—just as of old, the feast of unleavened bread accompanied the passover—the Israelites celebrated their redemption from Egypt—but they also searched the house for leaven, that they might put away all that offended Him who had redeemed them; this was most fitting, and indeed without this the Lord's passover was not kept.

And so with us, if we are not walking in a self-judging spirit, we are not behaving ourselves as the blood-redeemed people, we do not discern the Lord's body—in other words, I believe we do not keep the feast of the Lord aright, if we are not honestly and holily searching for, and removing all that would offend the Lord (1 Corinthians 10:11).

This is in as full harmony with the table, as thanksgiving. And the leaven should be put away both from the congregation (1 Corinthians 10), and from our own person (1 Corinthians 11); for the supper shows forth the Lord's death: and the death of Jesus has this two-fold sense—it publishes remission of sins, and also God's hatred of sin.—it releases the sinner, but condemns the sin—and the supper eaten, both with thanksgiving, and in the spirit of self-judging, will be accordant with this; eaten with prayer about our sins will be utterly discordant. It is to be a passover in union with the feast of unleavened bread, and therefore there is to be the expression of conscious rescue from Egypt, the place of death, or scene of judgment—and this is thanksgiving: and there is to be also the expression of our renouncing of that which brought in death—and this is self-judgment. Such, I believe to be the simple character which the scriptures put on the Supper of the Lord. Many, indeed, and various have been the additions which human religiousness has attached to it, but the word of God preserves them.

There is no warrant for the thought of consecrating the elements, or of separating them, by some process, to the service of the Lord's table— the bread and the wine are laid on the table as bread and wine; broken and poured out to figure the body and blood of Jesus, given and shed for us; but no form or process is needed to give them title to lie on the table for their use.

Neither, do I judge, have we warrant for asking God to bless us in the observance of this service; simply because it is rather our worship, or setting forth of His praise, than a waiting on Him for some benefit to ourselves, either in soul or body. We bless Him in this act, rather than expect Him to bless us. We speak good of His name in it, by setting out the memorials of what He has done: —and do not supplicate Him to bless us.

I believe that if the word were very simply attended to in this matter, this beautiful service would be relieved of much which now encumbers it, and the table would give forth no uncertain sound. Thus: 1st, supplication about sins would be silenced as utterly discordant with the voice of the table; 2nd, confession of sin might be made, but no necessity for it would be felt by the worshipping; 3rd, consecration of elements would be altogether refused; 4th, seeking for blessing would not be thought of. These things would be laid aside, and the service would be an act of worship, or giving the Lord the honor due to His name in this age, till He comes again, when He is to gather fresh honor from the lips and praises of His countless ransomed ones.

And it is this service, or worship, that ought to find us gathered to His Name every first or resurrection day; other things may then be given to us of the Lord, such as the word of exhortation, or of teaching, or the voice and spirit of supplication; but we should go there to give the Lord His praise, such as the table (which publishes through the riches of His grace the remission of our sins) does give Him. This is entering His presence duly, entering it with praise, because He has already blessed us, and not with supplication for a blessing—entering it in the spirit of conscious victory over our enemies, tearing asunder all bonds, and silencing every tongue that would charge or condemn us.

It would be entering His house—not of this building—in a way worthy of that house, where mercy has rejoiced against judgment—where the sword of the destroying angel has gloriously been stayed, where therefore the spirit of the worshipper sings as he enters, “In the time of trouble He shall hide me, He shall set me on a rock, and now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy, I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord” (Psalm 27:5, 6).

May His courts be thus entered in spirit now, for the bread and the cup are there, and the veil is gone. The memorials of the ransom have displaced those of sin, and at this altar it is “the sacrifice of praise” that we offer. J. G. B

Fragment: "Take, Eat"

He says to all His own, “Take, eat.” Not, Take thou; because this would bring in individuality, which is never the intent of the Lord's supper, but the body: communion in the remembrance of Christ, but of Christ in death. In this His love is everything to the heart, and the common blessing of all is in and with Christ. His death separates believers from the world, and as His body we are one with Him who is in heaven.

In the Lord's supper, therefore, so far from a person eating or drinking for himself alone, it is intended to contemplate the whole body of Christ, save those who may be outside through discipline or self-will, W. K.

John 16:28

While scripture as a whole forms a complete circle of truth, a single verse may present, as it were, a “perfect round.” Notably is it so with the passage under consideration.

After commending His disciples for having believed that He came forth from beside (παρά) God, or the Father, as some give it, our Lord enlarges the statement and utters the wondrous words, “I came out (ἐκ) from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go unto the Father.” The whole of the Savior's work on earth is thus divinely summarized, and the wheel, if I may be permitted the expression, comes full circle. Let us note one or two points of contrast. There is, to begin with, the well-known antithesis of the Father and the world, not less absolute and vivid than that of the Son and the devil, the Holy Spirit and the flesh. The Lord says, “I leave (ἀφίημι) the world,” a word that certainly suggests the abandoning of that which had so utterly failed to appreciate Him. So in John 14:19, the Lord says, “The world seeth me no more.”

Next, we have the identity of essence of the Father and the Son in the expression “out of the Father” (ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός) in marked contrast with the παρὰ τοὺ Πατρός or παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ of the previous verse. This last, of course, implies the session of the Son at God's right hand, to which He returns. “I go to the Father” (πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα). Again, the tense (ὲξῆλθον) employed to describe where our Lord came from, denotes the act of coming forth, while in the statement, “I have come” (ελήλυθα) abiding results are as clearly thrown into strong relief. The Lord has come into this world, and so the world can never be as if He had not come. Momentous are the consequences for believer and unbeliever. And, lastly, we have in “I go” (πορεύομαι) a word suggestive of solemn, ordered, and stately progress back to the Father.

R.B.

Scripture Queries and Answers

Q.-With reference to the Queries and Answers in the May issue of The Bible Treasury regarding Sheol or Hades, what are we to understand from the following scriptures—

“Who shall descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from among the dead” (Romans 10:7). Does this imply that our Lord was in the abyss?

“That through death he might annul him who has the might of death, that is, the devil; and might set free all those who through fear of death, through the whole of their life, were subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14, 15, New Translation). Is it that the setting free refers to Old Testament saints who had lived and died and went to Sheol?

“Though they dig into Sheol” (Amos 9:2). Would this teach that the locality of Sheol is in the heart of the earth?

J. C. B.

A.—1. Our Lord not only died, but was buried. His body lay in the grave (in the words of Matthew 12:40) “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” And of this the prophet Jonah was a sign, who himself confesses (2:5), “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth (or, abyss) closed me round about” (ἄβυσσος εκύκλωσέ με ἑσχἁτη, LXX.). Christ's “soul” was not left to Hades; and His “spirit” He committed into the hands of His Father.

The scripture quoted by the querist warns against saying in the heart, “Who shall descend into the abyss,” of which the signification is given, “that is, to bring up Christ again from amongst (ὲκ) the dead.” “God raised Him from amongst the dead.” Spirits and souls are not dead, for all live unto Him. “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” The inanimate “body” it is that is the subject of resurrection. It is raised, and by the union with it of “spirit” and “soul” —both immortal—becomes living, whether here or hereafter, whether for eternal felicity, or everlasting torment. Does scripture ever speak of the soul, or the spirits of men, having place in the abyss? Is it correct to say that the abyss is “the habitation of (Satan and his angels, and) the spirits of the wicked"?

Neither the metaphorical language of Ezekiel 31:15, nor the imagery of the latest prophecy, affords sufficient basis, it appears to us, for such an inference.

The “abyss” is a Greek word (ἄβυσσος), meaning, “bottomless,” which occurs in the New Testament nine times, and is rendered in our Authorized Version as follows— “deep,” in Luke 8:31; Romans 10:7; “bottomless,” in Revelation 9:1, 2; and “bottomless pit,” in Revelation 9:11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3. In the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, out of the thirty-four occurrences of its use it is the rendering, in thirty-one instances, of the Hebrew word t'hOhm— “the deep,” “deep places,” “the depth.” We give at the foot of this page all the references in the Old Testament, from which the general sense of the word is plain. And so also the New Testament gives no warrant whatever for such a thought as a descent of our Lord into the bottomless pit! Our Lord “descended into the lower parts of the earth.” He was buried, and He raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.

The setting free is not after death, but the deliverance from the fear of death in this life. Before redemption was accomplished, all was more or less dark to the pious Jew, and death had not been robbed of its terrors. Now even death is ours (1 Corinthians 3:22), for it is the gateway (if put to sleep) into the presence of the Lord. And, says the apostle, we are always confident—pleased rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

It is no question of locality. But we “dig” into the ground, as if we “climb,” we climb upwards. Whether man goes below or above therefore in his efforts to escape judgment when the lintel is smitten is alike futile (compare Psalm 139)

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Paternoster Row, E.C.

Lectures on 2 Kings 19-20

“And he sent Eliakim, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz” (19). He goes to Jehovah; they are sent to Jehovah's servant. This was right. He looks in prayer to God himself, and he expects an answer through His servant. “And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. It may be Jehovah thy God will hear all the words of Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God; and will reprove the words which Jehovah thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left. So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.” And the answer is immediate. “Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith Jehovah, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”

What a humiliation, and yet how simple! First a rumor in his own land after the blast that Jehovah would send in His land, and last of all himself reserved for a fate incomparably more humiliating in presence of his own subjects in his own land. “So Rab-shakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish. And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah” —a second, and, if possible, more insulting word. Hezekiah takes the letter and still goes to God. He “went up into the house of Jehovah and spread it before Jehovah. And Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah, and said, O Jehovah God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubim, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth. O Jehovah, bow down thine ear, and hear: open, O Jehovah, thine eyes, and see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God.”

And so the whole trial is cast into the bosom of Jehovah. Isaiah gives the answer: as before, so now. “Thus saith the Jehovah God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.” Trust in Jehovah is never in vain. Impossible to trust Him over much. “This is the word that Jehovah hath spoken concerning him: The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee.” How blessed and yet what an extraordinary word it was for these trembling Jews to hear. “The virgin, the daughter of Zion.” Was there not then fear? Was there not anguish of heart? How could it be truthfully said? Because God speaks according to His own thoughts. God looks at Zion as that which the Assyrian's foot had never defiled. It was a virgin daughter of Zion, and God never meant that the Assyrian should tread there. He had allowed him to ravage elsewhere, but Zion, even if Zion were ever so faithless, Zion was not reserved for the hand of the Assyrian. Zion might fall even under wars, but the Assyrian must fall himself.

Such was the decree of God, for even in the case of the enemies God is just as peremptory, and as thoroughly governs as among His friends. It is not man that governs in any case, but God. God is sovereign, and therefore does according to His own will. It is not a question of the party that has the most strength or the most wisdom. It is never so in the world, for God acts according to His own sovereignty. It was not because of their superior power that Babylon, or Persia, or Greece, or Rome achieved the empire of the world. Small beginnings in most of them. And in those too who made the longest and the most permanent conquest of the world, it was in no way a question of their own strength, but God was pleased so to work in His sovereignty. So here in this case this diminutive and reduced kingdom of Judah God meant to put honor upon, and now we may say Jerusalem scarcely had anything left. The fenced cities of Judah were taken, and here was Jerusalem, and it seemed as if a shovel of earth, so to speak, would be sufficient to bury Jerusalem in those days. But not so. The very fact that the Assyrian came full of his proud confidence was that which drew out the arm of Jehovah in defense of His despised city; but when He speaks by the prophet because of the Assyrian despising Zion, it is Zion that despises the Assyrian. For, as we have already observed, God speaks according to His thoughts.

“That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. This is the word that Jehovah hath spoken concerning him: The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.” We know right well that the Assyrian shook his hand at Zion, and quite expected to have an easy conquest. But God retorts now for His despised city. “The daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even again the Holy One of Israel.” The Assyrian little knew that. I do not doubt that there was a certain uneasiness. There always is. I care not how simple the Christian may be; I care not how great the man of the world may be; you will never find a man of the world, let him be ever so bold, or ever so great in the presence of a genuine trial of God without a certain anxiety, a certain uneasiness. He may despise; he may see things that draw out his scorn and contempt; but he is conscious, in spite of his will, of something strange, something that baffles him, something that he cannot understand. I have no doubt then that so it was with this great Assyrian, in presence of this contemptible city which stood out against him in a manner so unexampled. And so the Lord appears, and the prophet brings out, in the most grand and sublime terms, the manner in which He would deal with this haughty conqueror; and as he closes, he says, “For I will defend this city.” Jehovah would take it upon Himself: “I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.” He must return by the way he came. “And he shall not come into this city, saith Jehovah.”

Nor was the answer of God long delayed. “It came to pass that night, that the angel of Jehovah went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” The consequence was that the king retreats in dismay—returns and dwells in Nineveh—but as Jehovah had sent a blast upon him in Palestine, so now he must fall in his own land. “And it came to pass as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.” Thus every word of Jehovah was accomplished.

But now (chap. 20) we have the dealings of God, not with the Assyrian in defense of Jerusalem, but with Hezekiah. “In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live.” So, as his manner was, he bows; he turns his face to the wall. What had he now to do with anything outside? “He turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto Jehovah, saying, I beseech, O Jehovah, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.” Up to this time it could not be said that death was conquered, for indeed it was not. Even to a believer death was not without its terrors. Now it is stripped of its terrors, and death is no longer the king of terrors to a Christian, and for this simple reason, that death is now compelled to be the servant of the Christian, compelled to usher the departing Christian into the presence of the Lord. This is not loss, but gain. Who would weep sore at a great gain? Indeed, there might be some, but certainly they are souls who do not understand their privileges. However, it was not so then, and this is one of the great changes now effected by the mighty work of redemption. Hezekiah then wept sore.

“And it came to pass afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of Jehovah came to him saying, Turn again, and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer.” There again it was not long; it was immediate. If in the previous instance, it was that same night there came the destroying angel, so now I may say, that same minute came the prophet, or at any rate the word of Jehovah to the prophet. The answer was immediate. “I have heard thy prayer; I have seen thy tears” —for God did not despise them. “Behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of Jehovah. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.” And so a certain sign was given him—a sign that Hezekiah takes in remarkable contrast with his father. When the same prophet asked Ahaz to search for a sign in heaven or earth, Ahaz pretended that he could not do such a thing—that it was not for him to ask a sign. But there would have been far more real subjection of heart if he had asked. When God bids us ask, it is a serious thing to refuse. We ought to be bold in faith, and Hezekiah was; for whereas there was a double sign, either the dial going forward or going backward, he chooses the more difficult of the two. To advance the dial would be only, in a certain measure, natural, though it might be an extraordinary act of God, but to make the dial go back was a far more striking proof of the interference of Jehovah, and, accordingly, Hezekiah does ask; and Hezekiah was right. Hezekiah answers, “It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.” And so it was.

Immediately after this we find the Babylonian (ver. 12) “Berodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah; for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.” We know from elsewhere that it was not merely the sickness, but it was this very returning of the shadow ten degrees upon the dial that struck the Babylonians. They were great watchers of the heavens—watchers of such a sign as this—and they were quite right. It was traced to king Hezekiah; it was traced to a comparatively small kingdom and king, and this drew out the interest, more particularly as that king, it was well known, had resisted the proud king of Assyria, and in fact so effectually that he returned to his own land utterly frustrated in his purposes. Now, as the Babylonian wished to shake off the fetters of the king of Assyria, and in point of fact did—did destroy the kingdom of Assyria by a junction with the Medes or Persians in early days, so we find that now this embassy comes to the king.

And it would be a great mistake to suppose that all these circumstances have only an historical aspect. This very part of the book is strongly typical. Anyone who is familiar with the prophets is aware that these two kingdoms which were then about to contend for the sovereignty of the world, will have their representatives in the last days. The Assyrian, strange as it may sound, will reappear. Not only will there be an Assyrian in the last days, but he is the last national enemy of the Jewish people. When God shall have accomplished His whole work in mount Zion and Jerusalem, He is to deal with the Assyrian. And Babylon too will have also its representative in the last days quite distinct. And it is of very great importance to distinguish; for Babylon was the beginning of the great imperial system. The Assyrian was the last leader of the national system. These are two distinct systems which we find in the word of God. As long as Israel was owned as a nation for God, the Assyrian had power. When Israel received its first great humiliation and Judah was about to be destroyed, Babylon was allowed to come into supremacy on the fall of Assyria. The Assyrian therefore was the last holder of the great national power of the Gentiles. The Babylonian was the first that was allowed to become the sovereign of the world—to acquire an imperial authority. In the last days there will be the counterpart of these two powers, but in an inverse order. The Assyrian was before Babylon, viewed now in the manner which I have been describing. In the last days what answers to Babylon will be before the Assyrian. The reason is manifest. Babylon has to do with Judah, Assyrian with Israel. Now, in point of fact, Israel will only be brought back after God has dealt with Judah. It is the enemy of Judah that comes first in the last days, and the enemy of Israel will come up afterward. That is the reason of the inverse order in the last days.

What then is the typical aspect of Hezekiah's sickness? And I answer, The great secret is that here we have, in type, the true Son of David, the One on whom depend the deliverance of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Assyrian. Who that will be in the last days I need not tell you. You know right well it is no mere king of man, but the true King, the great King, that is, the Lord Jesus; that it is the Messiah, that it is the true and ever-living Son of David—not one that weeps sore to escape from death, but one who goes down into death and rises up again in power and glory, and that thus, and thus only, He will be the crusher of the Assyrian power after Babylon has been destroyed; for He, and He alone, will be the destroyer of what is represented by Babylon, as well as the destroyer of the Assyrian. It is the Lord Jesus, and His very first act when He comes from heaven, or in coming from heaven, is, He destroys antichrist. He has not come to the earth: it is a mere flash, so to speak, of lightning, and antichrist is destroyed—cast into the lake of fire.

When dealing with the Assyrian it is different. He puts himself at the head of Israel. He is pleased to use them as his battleaxe. He comes as the head of the armies of Israel—not as a mere human king, but nevertheless He is pleased to put honor upon them, and so He will fight for His people. So it is described in the fourteenth of Zechariah. There it is not the antichrist or the beast that is destroyed. It is not the Babylonish power, or the last holder of the Babylonish power. It is the Assyrian. The Assyrian is destroyed when the Lord is with Israel. The one that answers to Babylon is destroyed when the Lord is coming from heaven, before He is joined to His people Israel. It is then the inverse order. In the actual history the Assyrian was swept away first; but it will not be so when the Lord comes. The last holder of the image power of Babylon—and that is the reason why I call it Babylon—will be destroyed by the Lord Jesus coming from heaven; and then will remain the great Assyrian, the head of the nations who will make a conspiracy of the nations to destroy Israel, and the Lord will overthrow him forever. Such is the order of events in the future, so that the dead and risen Son of David has a most important place in the last days as the instrument of the deliverance from both the power of Babylon and also from the power of Assyria.

[W. K.]

Studies in Mark 5:1-9: The Pitiable Plight of Legion

5:1-9

25.—The Pitiable Plight of Legion

“And they came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes. And when he was come out of the boat, straightway there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling in the tombs and no man could any more bind him, no, not with a chain; because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been rent asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: and no man had strength to tame him And always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out, and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshipped him; and crying out with a loud voice, he saith, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most High God? I adjure thee by God, torment me not. For he said unto him, Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the man. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he saith unto him, My name is Legion; for we are many” (v. 1-9 R.V.).

After the supernatural calm of winds and waves that ensued upon the word of Jesus, the remainder of the night was most likely spent by the occupants of the boat upon the waters, and in the morning-light they landed upon the shore of what was called the country of the Gerasenes. If upon the sea they encountered the fury of the storm, they now encounter upon the land the mad and ungovernable fury of a man under the influence of a malign and demoniacal power. Satan, we know (Job 1) raised the storm of wind which slew the children of Job; and, though it is not so stated, Satan, who was to bruise the heel of the woman's Seed, may have brought about the tempest on the lake in one of his futile attempts to destroy the Son of man. But at any rate, here in the wilderness of Gadara was a sad example of the enthralling and debasing power of the devil over the sons of men. This diabolical influence was exemplified on both sides of the lake. In Capernaum, the town from which they sailed, a demoniac was found in the synagogue itself (Mark 1:23-27). Here one runs to meet them, whose dwelling was in the tombs, himself the abode of unclean spirits.

In Mark's account three main facts are specified about this man's state—

(1) He dwelt in the tombs;

(2) He exercised superhuman strength, so that it was impossible to restrain him by fetters and chains;

(3) He was a self-tormentor, inflicting injuries upon his own body. To these facts another may be added from Matthew's Gospel:-

(4) He was so excessively fierce that no one could pass that way. A further addition is made from the Gospel by Luke—

(5) He wore no clothes, and he had been “possessed” by demons for a long while.

These facts combine to show what an utter wreck this man had become through the malicious and uncontrollable power of evil by which he was ruled. He was an exceptional case; his whole tripartite nature—body, soul and spirit—was affected.

Body. The man tormented and injured himself physically. He gashed himself with stones. He had lost all the self-respect that nature itself teaches, wandering shamelessly in nakedness, finding shelter in the caves of the hillside, which were the sepulchers of the dead.

Soul. The language the demoniac used to the Lord showed that he had abandoned his own personality. His own will and his individual responsibility were lost, so that the demons speak and act in and by him: “My name is Legion; for we are many,” was his reply to the question of Jesus.

Spirit. The highest part of human nature within him was dethroned. That “inspiration of the Almighty,” the in-breathed spirit whereby man, as distinguished from the brutes, is capable of religious feeling, is shown to be debased also; so much so that there was an utter disregard for even the most ordinary and most easily-obeyed prohibitions of the law of Moses. According to that law in which without doubt he had been well instructed, even a momentary contact with that which was dead defiled (Numbers 19:16). This man was so lacking in the feelings of an Israelite, as well as in those of a man, that he made his abode in the sepulchers. His spirit ‘‘as in revolt against the divine will and paid no heed to the injunctions of God's word.

But the deplorable effects upon the Gadarene of his “possession” may be looked at in another way by viewing the maleficent influence of the demons from the five standpoints already named, the effects being practically identical, though differently arranged. This influence is shown by the Gospel narrative to be destructive

(1) of the religious sense. By dwelling among the tombs, he cut himself off entirely from the worship of Jehovah as enjoined by the law.

(2) of the sense of his duty to the laws of social and civil government. He would not, nor could not be restrained by chains or fetters, any more than by the love of home or of friends or of fellow-citizens.

(3) of the sense of his duty to himself physically. He voluntarily injured himself,

though he was responsible to care for the body as the servant of his higher nature.

(4) of the sense of his duty to others. Instead of loving his neighbors, he was “exceeding fierce,” and, like some ravening beast, terrified them by his savage aggressiveness.

(5) of the sense of decency and propriety. “He wore no clothes” is the significant description of his appearance. The gloom of this picture is deepened by the fact that it was the manner of the man's life which is portrayed here. This was no sudden outbreak of evil passion, but the symptoms had been such for “a long while.” They had become habitual. And he was wont night and day to express his forlorn and hopeless misery by loud, inarticulate cries.

WHAT THE DELIVERANCE OF LEGION PROVED

It is clear that in this case of Legion we have an impressive example of what a man may become when under the direct influence of the evil one. By his miraculous deliverance wrought before their eyes the apostles were instructed that the word of the kingdom of God (which they were about to preach) was directed to the emancipation of captives such as he from the kingdom of darkness. It was another stage in their education as servants of Christ. The Lord had now shown them by parable and miracle the various characters which the opposition of Satan to the ministry of the gospel would assume. In His parables He taught that his emissaries would steal away the good seed when sown, scatter tares among the wheat, and make the grown tree a habitation of evil. On the lake they had to learn how Satan would awaken the tempestuous passions of lawless men for the destruction of the servants of the kingdom of God. In all these cases, however, they were at the same time assured of the ultimate triumph of the word of the kingdom. Here the converse side of the invincible nature of the gospel is exemplified. An extreme instance of Satan's cruel power over men is seen to be amenable to the word of the Servant of Jehovah. With but a sentence He set the poor bond-slave free. So that the word of Christ is shown to conquer by its active power in deliverance from evil as well as by its passive resistance to the insidious corrupting forces of wickedness.

Further, this narrative displays how far removed the spirit of evil, rampant in the Gadarene, was from the Spirit of Christ. The character of the deeds of the possessed are stated in lurid detail, and they are opposed in nature to the deeds of the Servant of Jehovah. Works of darkness and destruction characterize the man indwelt by unclean spirits, while works of life and mercy characterize the One indwelt by the Spirit of God.

The Gadarene, dominated as he was by Satan, afforded a perfect contrast with the Prophet of Jehovah. The Son of man had come not “to destroy men's lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:56), but the demoniac was under the control of the Evil One who “cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy” (John 10:10). He was destroying himself, and his impulse was to destroy others of his kind also. This destructive tendency is the true Satanic nature, as Scripture reveals it. Saul, under the influence of an evil spirit, sought the death of David, the anointed of Jehovah (1 Samuel 19:9,10). In the Apocalypse, Satan, or one of his chief agents, is named Apollyon, that is, the Destroyer (Revelation 9:11)—a name in contrasted significance with that of Jesus the Savior of men. Satan is destructive of that which is good, but Jesus is destructive of nothing but what is evil. For the Son of God was manifested that He might annul both the devil and his works (Hebrews 2:11; 1 John 3:8). And the Servant-Prophet demonstrated this purpose of His in the country of the Gadarenes by the deliverance of this notorious victim of Satan.

Was this deliverance the action of one in league with Beelzebub? On the contrary the miracle, by its divine power and by its beneficent nature, was a perfect reply, in deed, not in word and argument, to the blasphemous cavils of the Pharisees and scribes who said, “He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils [demons] casteth he out devils [demons]” (Mark 3:22).

(To be continued) [W. J. H.]

Notes on Luke 8

In verses 22-26 is a parabolic display of what we may expect if we follow the Lord, and the opening out of what the Lord would be to those tried by such circumstances. The consequence of being the disciples and companions of Jesus is, that they get into jeopardy every hour—they are not on terra firma, but are tossed about on the troubled sea, and Christ Himself absent ("asleep"). There came down a storm of wind on the lake, the ship was filled with water, and they, filled with fear, were in jeopardy. But the fact was, Christ was in the same boat with them. He who made the worlds, the Son of God, was with them, and yet they are afraid! and cry out, “We perish"; as though He could be drowned, thus showing they had no sense of who He was that was with them in the boat. To us, now calmly reading the circumstances, what absurdity there seems in such unbelief; when, alas! is it not just the same with ourselves, spiritually? Have we no sense of jeopardy, when tossed about, and trouble is in the church? In truth we have, for there is many a heart saying, “Who will show us any good?” forgetting what God is acting and doing, though man is battling, to all appearance, against God's purposes; but God is not baffled, and He is calmly carrying on His purposes, through all the storms of men's or devil's raising.

In John 16 we find the disciples sorrowing because Jesus was going away; and the Lord had said to them (chap. 14), “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go to the Father.” In chap. 16, Jesus says, “Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? but because I have said these things, sorrow hath filled your hearts.” God was accomplishing His blessed purposes in redemption by Christ's going. You forget that God is acting in all this, for you cannot suppose that God is so baffled as to give up His purpose. The disciples thought, when Jesus was crucified, that all their hopes were disappointed; they say, “we thought it had been he that should have redeemed Israel.” In fact, in that very act and at that very moment, all was being accomplished for them. Where is the Lord going? should have been their question. It is not now that there seems no jeopardy, no confusion, no sorrow; but faith looks at and through it all to God, and asks, What is the Lord doing? Where is the Lord going?

In and through all the trouble the Lord has not turned a hair's-breadth out of His way. We may be in distress, but faith will not say the Lord is far away, but will know Him nigh at hand. The Lord let them be in jeopardy, the ship filled with water, and Himself asleep, on purpose to put their faith to the test, to prove if they were really trusting Him; and that it might be seen if such foolish thoughts would arise, when they were put into jeopardy. They say, “Lord, we perish “; but they were in the ship with Christ, and could they be drowned? He said to them, Where is your faith? Well might He say thus to them, for though the water was in the boat, He was there too, and could sleep through it all. It was not so much of Him they were thinking as of themselves. “We perish” (said they), and it is just the same now; for the fact of being in danger with Christ in the boat is the same at one time as at another—just as impossible now as then; and in truth Christ is much more with us now, being more perfectly revealed to us, and we are united to Him, one with Him, so that He is with us every moment in the power of the Spirit.

However high the waves may rise, there is no drowning His love and thoughts towards us. The test is to our faith. The question is, Have we that faith which so realizes Christ's presence as to keep us as calm and composed in the rough sea as the smooth? It was not really a question of the rough or the smooth sea, when Peter was sinking in the water, for he would have sunk without Christ, just as much in the smooth as in the rough sea. The fact was, the eye was off Jesus on the wave, and that made him sink. If we go on with Christ, we shall get into all kinds of difficulty, many a boisterous sea; but being one with Him, His safety is ours. The eye should be off events, although they be ever so solemn, and surely they are so at this present time, and I feel them to be so; for none perhaps has a deeper sense than I of the growth of evil, and of the solemn state of things; but I know all is as settled and secure as if the whole world were favorable. I quite dread the way many dear saints are looking at events, and not looking at Christ and for Christ. The Lord Himself is the security of His people, and, let the world go on as it may, no events can touch Christ. We are safe on the sea if only we have the eye off the waves, with the heart concentrated on Christ and on the interests of Christ. Then the devil himself cannot touch us.

Verse 26. We have a solemn picture of the consequence of Christ's rejection by the world! Christ comes and finds them utterly under the power of the devil. A man of the Gadarenes was possessed, but He delivers him, thus showing that the Lord had complete power over the enemy. With a word of Christ the demons were off. “The Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.” What was the effect of His thus casting out Satan? Why, the whole multitude of the country round about “besought him (Christ) to depart from them.” These Gadarenes, who had borne with the demons because they could not help it, will not bear with Christ, and they beg Him to depart! Man would be glad to bind Legion if he could, for he does not like the effects of the devil's power; but man's will is against Christ; he has a deliberate determined hatred to Christ. The Lord came to the world full of love and power, to deliver from the consequences of sin; but man rejected Him, cast Him out; and God will not stay where the will is determined against Him. When the Gadarenes request Christ to depart, He immediately went up into a ship and returned back again. And mark, the world in which we live is just going on as having quietly rejected Christ. But does God give them up, though Christ is gone away for a season? No, He did not give them up, but sent amongst them this man, whom He had healed, to tell them what great things God had done for him. This is what the disciples did in the world, and the delivered residue also are to tell the world what great things God has done for them.

The swine appear to represent the state of the Jews after their rejection of Christ. The Lord, doubtless, permitted the demons to enter the swine (as the swine having no passions of their own, it was their being possessed with these demons which made them run violently to destruction), showing it was not merely the evil passions of the men, but their being possessed by wicked spirits, which hurried them on to destruction. And we know historically, from Josephus and others, that one can hardly conceive the infatuation with which the Jews rushed on their own destruction, when those Gentile powers went and plowed up the holy city. This is just a consequence of Israel's rejecting the Lord.

Then the Lord gives us two other pictures, through the medium of real events, of His dealings in deliverance. In verse 41 we have Jairus' daughter, who lay a dying; and here is a picture (dispensationally) of Israel. The Lord was going to heal Israel, who was just like one dying, but while on the way the people throng Him. What He came to do He did, for the world crowded Him while on the way to heal the sick “daughter of my people"; whosoever could touch Him by faith got healing, the activities of grace going forth from Him.

Jairus' daughter “lay a dying.” Man was not pronounced to be dead until Christ was killed. Before Christ came, there was no healing for man. Abraham longed for the day of Christ. There were prophets who spoke of Christ as a healer; blessing was promised, but there was no physician. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” There was none; for no physician could be found to heal man's condition until Christ came, and Him they put to death. In Him there was living power, for when the people thronged Him, a woman does but touch the border of His garment, and virtue goes out of Him to heal her. Healing depended not on the condition of those who were healed, but in the power of the healer. Physicians might apply remedy after remedy, but it is of no avail, until One came who could impart life; then the case was changed.

When the multitude press upon Him, and He recognizes the touch of one to have been the touch of faith, He says, “Somebody has touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” And now, before the Lord comes forth in resurrection power and glory, to bring life from the dead in Israel, there is perfect healing where there is faith; for the Lord is always alive to the exercise of faith. The woman hid herself, for there was shame in her, because of the consciousness she felt of the disease which had needed to be healed. “But she could not be hid.” The heart always shrinks from opening itself, when within itself; but when it looks at Christ, it is opened to Him; for that is always the effect of being in the presence of Jesus. Shame, reputation, character, all give way before the sense of what He is. When grace gets to the bottom of the heart, all else is easily set aside. A link was formed between this woman's soul and Christ. “Thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace.” He brings perfect peace and comfort into her heart, for His way is not only to heal, but to make Himself known. She is not only to be cured, but to have the assurance of peace from His own mouth.

Meanwhile they come, saying that Jairus' daughter was dead; “Trouble not the master.” They thought He might possibly heal her while she was living; but now she is dead, they supposed He could do nothing. This is a picture of Israel, who are dead before God (as are Gentiles too, of course). But Jesus encourages them, and says, “Only believe, and she shall be made whole.” When He came to the house, He suffered no man to go in, save Peter and James and John (the pillars of the future glory, when He will come forth as the resurrection and the life to the dead nation), and the father and mother of the maiden.

In this chapter we get a picture of what was then doing, and what will come to pass. We have the seed, the word sown, and the effect of it, the use man made of it. We have God's explanation of all that was going on, as being all known and settled in His mind; and if a storm arise, and if Christ appear asleep and insensible to the danger —though “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” —as disciples we are in the same boat with Him. The Lord give us to rest on that with undivided, undistracted hearts! For Christ is in the boat, as well as the water. Only let the eye of faith rest on Christ, then come what may, we shall say, “Who shall separate us?” etc. —nay, in all, “more than conquerors.” Then the more the trouble, the more the blessing, because of the exercise of faith.

[J.N.D.]

Notes on Luke 11:5-13

This parable follows the Lord's instructions to His disciples with regard to prayer. In the first part of the chapter they had requested to be taught to pray, and the Lord had responded by giving them that matchless form of prayer so suited to their special needs at that time. It is evident that the disciples felt the importance and need of prayer. They had seen His ways and desired to follow Him in them. Our subject tonight is the question of how we can get answers to prayer. I am sure nothing can be more important for us to consider. If we fail in the matter of prayer, our lives as witnesses for God will also be failures. We must get on our knees. It is there that we get our strength, for we come to the end of ourselves. God can only help us as we are in the position of dependence upon Him. Realize, if you can for a moment, the wondrous privilege which we with all our shortcomings and infirmities have, the constant privilege of coming to the Lord in prayer. It is His desire to have us constantly dependent upon Himself.

We want to look at a few particulars. There are certain conditions upon which God answers prayer. We often ask for things which are not expedient for us. If a wrong thing is urgently asked from God, and it is at last given, it always ends in sorrow. “He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul” (Psa. 106:15). Our petitions must be in accordance with His will. His will is perfect, and when our prayers are in harmony with that will, in a line with it as it were, we know that we have our petitions. “Very well,” you say, “how am I to ascertain what is the will of God?” There are various ways of finding out. Take the promises that God has given— “exceeding great and precious promises.” I have never yet counted them, but it might be a profitable occupation for any who wish to do so. Anyhow, every promise that God has given us is a declaration of His will. He means that we should claim and have it. Therefore if you bring your request on the ground of a promise of God you have a sure foothold.

Even where we have no special promise God has given us broad promises, as in this passage, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you.” You are all familiar with Paul's words to the Philippians, “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” There is always some indication to be found, and where we know we are asking on the ground of a promise we may be certain our prayer will be answered, for all God's promises are sure and they are all confirmed in Christ Jesus. Even where He gives commands, does not the very fact of His giving them imply that He intends to give the help and strength needed to fulfill them? I do not, of course, refer here to the law, which we know to have been given for another purpose— “that the offense might abound.” You can always turn a command into an indication of God's will. Then, too, we have the help of the Holy Spirit, as is seen in Rom. 8:26, 27. When He prompts a petition it will come up acceptably before God. We know not what to pray for as we ought, but we have the Spirit to help our infirmities.

Enough has, perhaps, been said about the various ways of knowing the will of God. But there is another thing—do we deserve that God should respond to our appeals? Have we virtue in ourselves to call out His blessing? You all know well enough that we have nothing of the sort. Our need is met by Another. In the Lord's last words to His disciples before His death He says, “Whatever ye shall ask in my name that will I do.” Who but one—Himself God—could say that? And later on He brings in the Father, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.” Do we know how to make use of that Name? I remember hearing once in London a story of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. She intimated to a certain bishop her wish to give whatever sum he might name for the building of a church. She signed a blank check and handed it to him to fill in. He wrote ₤30,000. It was a great sum, but he had the name and that was sufficient. So with us. At the bank of heaven we must present all our checks in His name; it is solely in His name that we can expect them to be honored. The value of that Name on high is immeasurable. Beloved brethren, we want to count on that Name. Nothing is too great to ask in His name; the greater it is, the more glory it is to God to give it.

There is a third condition. God connects the bestowal of blessing with faith. We know that none can be saved apart from believing; so with all the blessings which are connected with salvation, there must be faith, always faith. “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, who believe on the name of the Son of God.”

If you come to look at the promises you will find that there is not one to unbelief. Doubt is no harmless kind of diffidence; it is actually sinful. Indeed I am afraid it often goes further than mere timidity—it is downright unbelief; and this will always hinder prayer. Have we not the words of James? “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.” He must have no uncertain feeling about it. How solemn! How calculated to make us ask, “Have I really believed His promises and acted upon them?” If God, in His condescending grace, deigns to give us promises, surely it is not unreasonable to expect us to believe them. Should we not take it as an insult if our word were doubted? If God, the God of truth, pledges us His word, we should believe it to be unmixed truth. A single doubt intruding will mar the prayer. On the other hand the promises to faith are larger than you can conceive. “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Have you ever got to this?—that when you have prayed, you believe that your prayer is heard, and you can accordingly give thanks, awaiting the answer in God's good time.

In Edinburgh, certain gospel meetings were being held, and two unconverted girls were sent to the city by their parents to attend the addresses, while the parents remained at home to pray. As they prayed they became certain that the answer was coming, and they offered thanks. Very soon afterward they heard news of the conversion of both daughters. There is something practical and very commendable in that, and what is greatly needed with us at times. Every one that asketh receiveth; two are better; twenty, if of one mind, better still; but whether one, two, or twenty, never doubt that God hears the prayer of faith. Whatever may come, He is true.

Very well, we are making progress. We have seen three things that are necessary for obtaining answers to prayer—(a) that it should be in accordance with the will of God, (b) asked in the name of the Lord Jesus, and (c) asked in faith. This oriental scene teaches us something more. This man's request seemed unreasonable. It was a strange hour for a guest to come, and the friend thought it was too much trouble to provide food for him. In friendship's name he would do nothing, he gave because of his importunity. He thought, “If I don't give him what he wants he will knock all night.” But it is not so with our Father, who ever delights to give. “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asks, receives; and he that seeks, finds; and to him that knocks, it shall be opened.” What an encouragement to us! and may we be as earnest as the man who would not take no for an answer. He kept knocking, knocking, knocking, pressing his friend until he was forced to give what he required. And so the Lord says, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The form of words increases in intensity in these three clauses—

“Ask” —every child knows how to do that. It is just a simple laying of the need before the Father. But suppose the answer does not come; there is a delay. What then? “Seek” —there is something more there. “Knock” —it grows in persistence and importunity. We have need to listen to these things from His lips.

There is a difference between prayer and supplication. “Prayer” is simply asking. Supplication is increasing intensity in prayer. “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” I have often thought of the words of Job. He had not the scriptures as we have, but he tells us what he would do if the way were open for him to come before God. “I would order my cause before him; I would fill my mouth with arguments” —just like a lawyer before the judge. Well, my brethren, we have not to do with a judge, but with our gracious Father. Still, there are times when we must knock and not simply ask. The Lord may keep us waiting ever so long and yet intend all the time to grant the request at last. Delay may be intended to make the blessing greater when it comes. We are inclined to think that delay means denial; it is not always so. Sometimes a need is urgent and receives an immediate answer, but when it is not so there are often times when He may seem to take no notice. I remember a good man and his wife who prayed twelve years for their unconverted son. At the end of that time he turned up, clothed and in his right mind, and that in answer to many prayers. Another woman told me she had prayed twenty-five years for her husband, and it turned out afterward that while she was speaking to me he was actually present in the same house a truly converted man.

“Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Our condition is never so utterly helpless but that God can come in and set things right. “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning.” We need to seek Him. Let us therefore take courage and have confidence in God in this great matter. The importunate man needed to use pressure.

Now there is a fifth condition, and that is the state of soul. You remember the words of the Psalmist, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me; but verily God hath heard me, he hath attended to the voice of my prayer.” So we get from the lips of the Lord Jesus, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Here it is connected with fruit-bearing. The apostle John says, “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” He knows the evil far better than you or I do. “But if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” And then he adds, so beautifully, “And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.” How simple and how full!

If you have got worldly, or into a state of spiritual sleepiness—Christians are apt to get like that—it may be that some trouble comes; but you have got out of touch, out of communion with the Lord. What are you to do then? Ah! the only thing to do is to make confession on your knees before God. There must be that before anything else, and after that you can get the help you need. If there is nothing of that kind in the way you can come like a child to its father. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” If we think of the best of earthly parents, how much more should we think of “Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think!”

God hears prayer, whether from individuals or companies. Nothing is more certain. Let us see to it that we are not negligent in this matter. See that it is not true of us, “Thou restrainest prayer before God.” These are things for us all to think of and to question ourselves individually about. I could keep you here all night with tales to illustrate the value of prayer, but I will just say this—there is nothing more certain in my own experience than that God hears and answers prayer. That being so, surely we shall not be held guiltless if we restrain prayer before God. If we are down on our knees before God, assuredly He will grant our requests if they fulfill His conditions. Whatever the matter may be, men ought always to pray.

If it come to this, that we have prayed, and yet receive no direct answer, we should question ourselves, and ask the Father why. God looks at the heart, and He may delay the answer to bring out something. There is always some reason for it. Never allow a doubt as to the faithfulness of God; unbelief is evil, and only evil, continually. If we doubt, we are robbing God of His glory. Can anything be more heart-breaking than that?

I leave this scripture with you, and I would have all bear in mind these five conditions:(1) Accordance with the will of God; (2) the name of Jesus; (3) faith; (4) importunity; (5) a right state of soul. God grant we may all enter into these things with more real zest and fervor, to His praise and glory!

R. K.

What Is the Church? 1

This is a question raised in many hearts by that which is passing around us—a question of the deepest interest in itself, even though circumstances did not make one feel the need of a clear and satisfactory answer. But the state of the professing world, now so much agitated on the question of church in every form, and in which a multiplicity of movements (in general only creating more perplexity and questions in most souls) present themselves as the reply to the need which is felt, of finding the truth on this point—this state of things, I say, will render a serious examination of what the word of God says on the subject useful to many. Enlightened by that only true light, they may, by learning at the fountain of light, while putting themselves in possession of the light itself, be able to judge calmly and soundly of all that presents itself as such, and, as a consequence, claims submission, or at least adherence, to the course which is proposed, as being according to it.

But this is not all. I doubt not but that God has not only permitted, but that it has been His will, that this question should be raised, in order that His children may learn what is the extent, and what are the thoughts of His love; and that they may take morally, and with true Christian devotedness, a position practically answering His infinite goodness. For the question of the church, seen as presented in the Bible, is one eminently practical. The position in which the Christian is placed, by the very fact that he is a member of the church of God, governs the affections, and forms the character. This consideration makes still more opportune, a work which views the church in the light of God's word. As a matter of fact, the question of the church is generally presented as a question of the organization of some new body amongst Christians—a question of which the heart gets wearied. Hence it follows, that many persons discard the subject altogether, as injurious to sanctification, and seek, and induce others to seek, spirituality by setting aside a point, of which, after all, it is evident that the New Testament is full, and of which it treats in terms which attach to such a point great practical importance. In fine, if, as many serious Christians think, we are in the last times—although circumstances can add nothing to the essential importance of truth, the fact that we find ourselves to be near the end of the age will add much further to its practical importance. The obligation under which the wise virgins were, to watch and to keep their lamps ready at all times, became an imperative duty, when the cry had gone forth at midnight, “Behold the Bridegroom; go ye out to meet Him.”

The considerations I have just presented will have clearly pointed out to the reader the object of this paper, viz., an examination as to what is the teaching of the word of God on the subject of the church, and of the practical results for our souls which flow thence. My aim is not to examine the basis of individual salvation, although the teaching of the word on the church throws much light on this point. It is even of consequence to understand that they are distinct things; for God never passes by our individual responsibility, whatever privileges may be conferred upon us by being joined to an assembly. We are saved as individuals, although God may, if He sees fit, gather into one body those whom He saves. Salvation is a thing, which, though complete in Christ, supposes in the heart of the person enjoying it, personal exercises, which go on necessarily and exclusively in his own conscience, and which bring his soul into immediate connection with God, and without which, all connection with Him —all happiness—the very existence of spiritual life —would be impossible. The intercourse between God and an intelligent and responsible soul, which before was in sin, necessarily supposes, that consequent on the establishment of this new relationship, many things pass within, which are for that soul alone. The special form which the relationship takes may add much—may give special character to it; and this is the case; but this does not do away with personal relationship.

This is one of the essential differences between the truth of the word, and the idea of the church as it is viewed by the Romanist; who, making ordinances a means of salvation, attaches salvation to being of the church, instead of making the church the assembly of those who are saved. If but one individual were saved, his salvation would be equally perfect and sure, but he would not be the church. This (the church) includes an additional thought—an additional relationship—to that of the saved individual. What is this thought? Let us lay aside human definitions, and cleave to the word.

(To be continued)

Coming for - Coming With

Was it ever more important than at the present to have clear views of the truth? Satan not only attacks by what is directly opposite to the truth, but also by the confounding of truths which differ, thereby hindering the believer's perception of what God has given in His word. Especially does the enemy do this in his attacks upon that which the Holy Spirit is bringing before the minds of God's children.

Now that the Lord's coming in person is a growing reality with many Christians, who have learned no longer to look for events to precede, but for Himself, the Bright and Morning Star, it is the enemy's design to confuse the passages that refer to Christ's coming with His people for the commencement of His reign on the earth, with those which speak of His coming to meet His people in the air, who thus leave the earth for the Father's house on high. If we choose to call the Lord's coming for, and with, His people one coming, yet it should be evident that His coming for His people must precede and be distinct from His coming with them, both as to time and purpose. We have first to meet Him before we can come with Him. There is clearly given in the word the coming of the Lord for the church and the raising of the sleeping bodies of the departed saints to meet Him in the air. There is also His coming to the earth with His previously caught up people to put down His enemies and to set up His reign for a thousand years, which in scripture is called His day. The “day of the Lord” always refers to His reign with its connected events; never to His coming for the church. If the reader will carefully observe he will see that wherever “the day of the Lord,” or, “the Son of man,” is used, they refer to Christ's reign on the earth, and not to His coming for His saints. If this is clearly borne in view it will materially help many who may be perplexed in their minds, and they will be able to look for Him with clearer faith and hope.

Let us look a little at 2 Thess. 2:1, 2, 3. Here the coming of the Lord is spoken of as distinct from the day of the Lord. We learn from the First Epistle (chap. 4) that the enemy had been busy troubling the saints with the thought that their departed ones, being no longer here, would lose their part in the kingdom to be established on the earth at His coming. The apostle therefore writes to undo the work of Satan — for when error is propagated we should always look beyond the instrument whom he may use, to Satan himself as the real author and energizer—and he tells them that they would not be losers; but that at the coming of the Lord the first thing that takes place will be the resurrection of those fallen asleep in Christ, and that those alive will be changed to join them in their ascent to meet the Lord. In the Second Epistle we see the enemy at work in distracting their minds and leading them to infer from their present troubles that “the day” had come. The apostle reasons from the fact of the Lord's coming and their being caught up to meet Him not having yet occurred, that His day could not be present; and this again, because the man of sin had not yet been manifested, as he must be before “the day” arrives.

The apostle, while with these Thessalonians, had laid before them these events, how that the Holy Spirit's presence on the earth in the church was a barrier to the appearance of the man of sin. After the church is gone from the earth the present restraint will be removed, and then will be seen the full development of this lawless one. When this takes place will come the day of the Lord, so that the present existence on earth of the church is positive proof that the day has not yet arrived.

Let me here give an illustration. A father says to his family, ‘I am going to find you a new home, and shall then pull this house down, but before I pull this house down I will come and take you to the new house.' While the father is away two enemies plan an attack to frighten the children. One goes inside to be with the children, the other remains outside. The one outside makes a disturbance as though the house was being pulled down. The intruder within says, ‘Your father is pulling the house down.' The children are terribly afraid. The mother goes to them and says, ‘My children, be not afraid. It is not your father. Your father always speaks the truth, and never acts contrary to his word. Did he not say that, before he should pull this house down he would come and take us to the new house he has gone to prepare? I beseech of you, therefore, by your father's word that he would come for us, not to believe this lying enemy who is in league with the one outside that is making all this commotion.' So the Thessalonians are besought by two things yet to appear first, not to think that the day of the Lord is present. The first is that they have not been caught up to meet the Lord; the second, that the man of sin has not appeared, nor can he so long as they are here, for the Holy Spirit who is with, and in, them hinders his appearance.

The man of sin cannot be fully revealed until Daniel's clock commences to tick the seventieth week. Daniel's clock had run sixty-nine weeks when Christ was crucified. It then stopped, and has not given another tick since, nor will it until after the resurrection of the holy dead, when the living saints—the church—are changed, and together meet the Lord in the air, to be forever with the Lord. The church must first be taken to heaven before the last week of Daniel's seventy can commence. We at present are not within the seventy weeks of Daniel, except parenthetically—that is, we are not in the count, but fill up the break after the sixty-ninth week when Messiah was “cut off” (crucified), and before the resumption of the last, or seventieth, week. The church is altogether outside the numeration. The seventy weeks—determined upon Daniel's people (the Jews) and city have relation to events earthly. Whereas the Christian—partaker of a heavenly calling—belongs to heaven, and is outside “times and seasons.” The not seeing this has given room for Satan to lead men into all kinds of confused and false calculations, causing the world to sneer and laugh, and making even believers afraid of looking into God's word to see what He has made known as to these things.

There is no data given from which to calculate as to the coming of the Lord for the church. It is when the church is gone, and Daniel's clock begins again to count the time, that calculations of future events may rightly and properly be made. No events are given for Christians to await before the Lord Jesus comes for us. It is His coming that is immediately set before us as the next event. Satan's work is to hide this from the minds of the Lord's people, or to confuse them about it, mixing passages of scripture that refer to His return with the church with those that tell of His coming for the church. Passages that mention the “day of the Lord,” or the coming of the “Son of man,” do not refer to the coming of Christ for the church.

When the Lord comes for the church He will come as the Morning Star; whereas His coming in His day will be “as the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven shineth unto the other part under heaven” (Luke 17:24). As Enoch was taken unobserved by the world, so will the church be taken. As the flood affected the whole world, God taking care of a few to re-people the earth, so the coming of the Son of man in His day will be judgment upon the whole world. A remnant of Jews and also of Gentiles will be preserved on the earth for the reign of righteousness. All His enemies will be either put to death, or held under restraint.

The Lord Jesus said, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” When the Lord comes for His people, He does not come to the earth, but into the air. We meet Him there. As the Son of man He comes to the earth and finds infidelity and idolatry supreme. When the Lord comes as Son of man He finds Satan has set up a man to be worshipped “the man of sin,” “the antichrist,” ''the king” in Jerusalem who “shall do according to his will.” All who will not worship Satan's man will be put to death, excepting those whom the Lord takes special care of. This “man of the earth” will declare himself to be God, and by the power of Satan he will perform miracles, by which he will deceive all who have heard the truth and had no love for it. But he shall be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord's coming—not at His coming for the church, for, as we have already shown, the man of sin will not be revealed until after the church has gone. His destruction will be by the brightness of the coming of the Son of man which shall shine from the east unto the west.

At this time, two shall be in the field; one shall be taken—not to meet the Lord in the air, but cut off by judgment—the other left to dwell on the earth during the millennium, or reign of a thousand years. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; one taken (by judgment), the other left for the millennium. The Son of man in His day will descend in sudden judgment upon His enemies as a thief in the night. He will then set up His reign on the earth for a thousand years. Those who are caught up to meet Him (Old Testament believers as well as New Testament saints), with also the martyrs who were put to death during Daniel's seventieth week, i.e., after the church's translation to heaven (for the Apocalyptic martyrs are included in “the first resurrection"), will descend and reign with Christ in His day.

I trust what has here been written may be helpful in delivering from false conceptions as to the coming of the Lord for, and His coming with, His people. Let us cleave to the Lord moment by moment that we may be kept from the delusions of the enemy. Our safety is not in knowledge or strength of our own, but in the Lord Himself. If we would be safe, we must abide in the place of safety, in communion with Him. Keeping the word of His patience, we shall be kept (not through, but) out of the hour of temptation which is to come on all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Our home is not on the earth, but in heaven. The god of this world knows how, under grand titles, it may be, to pave the way to his deadly caverns of error, by words smoother than butter; and as an angel of light he leads by the “threads of gold” to reject the name and word of Christ. Let us see that Christ is honored in His person and His work. His person—divine, eternal, the only begotten Son of God, God equally with the Father and the Holy Spirit. His death—the atonement for sins, as His resurrection is God's declaration of His justification of all who believe on Him. He is now and forever truly man, as He was ever, and is, the true God. May we hold to His word and name in all their revealed fullness! May our daily prayer unto our God and Father in the name of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, he for all the children of God, that they may be so filled with Christ and His word as to be quickly sensitive to everything that is not of Christ. Oh, that we may abide in Christ! in His bowels having a guardian concern for all who are His, firmly standing for His word and His glory, and watching in His interests against His, and our, great and subtle enemy. So too, may we remember that greater is He who is in us and for us than all satanical power that can be against us. Abide in Christ, for in Him is all our safety, and in Him all our strength.

I. C.

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Lectures on 2 Kings 21-25

2 Kings 21-25

Well, then, in the next portion of our book (chap. 21) we see how truly a pious father may be followed by an impious son. Manasseh, young as he was, did not only begin to reign, but “did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah after the abominations of the heathen, whom Jehovah cast out before the children of Israel. For he built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them. And he built altars in the house of Jehovah, which Jehovah said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Jehovah. And he made his son pass through the fire.” Burnt them to Moloch. Cruel king! “And observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of Jehovah to provoke him to anger. And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which Jehovah said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name forever: neither will I make the feet of Israel move any more out of the land which I gave their fathers; only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them. But they hearkened not.”

The consequence was that Manasseh not only did evil, but “seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom Jehovah destroyed.” How was it possible then for Judah to abide in the land of Jehovah? It became a moral impossibility. Hence therefore the message which Jehovah sends by His servants the prophets. After Manasseh, reigned Amon; and Amon follows in the steps of his wicked father, not of his pious grandfather. “He walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols that his father served, and worshipped them, and he forsook the Jehovah God of his fathers, and walked not in the way of Jehovah.”

But after him comes a truly godly prince—Josiah—younger, too, than either (chap. 12.). He was not too young to serve the Lord. “He was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of Jehovah, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left. And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, that the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of Jehovah, saying, Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may sum the silver which is brought into the house of Jehovah, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people: and let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work, that have the oversight of the house of Jehovah: and let them give it to the doers of the work,” and so on. But when we are in the path of duty we are in the place of blessing. And Hilkiah gives the glad message to Shaphan, “I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.” How strange! found the book of the law of Jehovah. So it was, and people wonder how that in Christendom men have so long departed, and so long forgotten the word of God.

According to the analogy of Israel, we ought rather to expect it. Here was a people still more bound by letter than we, still more dependent therefore upon a law, if possible, than we could be upon any outward observances. For the law was essentially outward, and the law was a thing that was not so dependent upon inner life and the Spirit of God as outward statutes and observances and ordinances of every kind. Yet even here the law had been lost all this time, and it was a great discovery to find it. God was faithful, and he that had a heart to observe the word of Jehovah found the law through His servant Hilkiah, the high priest. “And it came to pass when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, he rent his clothes.” He had a tender conscience. There is nothing more important in its place; for what is the good of knowledge if there is not a conscience? It appears to me that to grow in knowledge of the truth, if there be not simplicity in following it out, turns the knowledge into a curse, not a blessing. The one value of the truth of God—of the word of God—being better known is that we may be more faithful towards the Lord, and also in our relationships one with another in doing His will in this poor world. But the moment that you divorce the truth from conscience, it appears to me that the state of the soul is even worse. Far better to be simple in using aright the little that we know than to grow in knowledge where there is no corresponding fidelity. The king, however, was very different. When he heard the words, he rent his clothes, and the consequence was that there was a mighty work of real revival, in the true sense of the word; because I need not tell you that it is a great misapplication of the term “revival” to use it for the conversion of souls. Revival is rather a process of raising up the people of God to a better state or condition, so as most truly to follow what the Lord looks for among them where they have slipped into a lower, slumbering, condition. This is the true sense of it, and this is exactly the meaning of it here. So the king gave an impulse to the people, and they gathered to him, as we are told in the next chapter.

“The king went up into the house of Jehovah, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of Jehovah. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before Jehovah, to walk after Jehovah, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant” (chap. 23.). And we find, accordingly, the practical fruits at once, public and private, national and personal, for at this time you must remember it was not the church: it was a nation, and it is the greatest confusion of things that differ to confound an elect nation with the church of God. The church is a gathering out of all nations. The congregation of Israel was merely an assemblage of that nation. To talk, therefore, about the Jewish church is really nonsense. It is a common phrase, but there is no truth in it. It is only allowing ourselves phraseology that is altogether foreign to the word of God.

The account then of the great reformation that was wrought is fully gone into in the rest of the chapter, but I shall only add that although the king had been thus faithful, he slips out of the path of the Lord in opposing Pharaoh-nechoh. God had not called him to it, and if the Lord always blesses fidelity, and loves to bless wherever He can, on the other hand the Lord is righteous in His government; and if therefore the righteous man slips out of the path of fidelity he bears the consequences. What we sow to the flesh, we must reap in corruption. It matters not who. Converted or unconverted, it is always true. So with Josiah. There might be grace on the Lord's part to take him away from the evil to come, but I do not doubt it was a chastening upon his eagerness of spirit in opposing the king of Egypt without a word from the Lord.

However, the king of Egypt put Jehoahaz in bands. The people had made him king in Jerusalem in the stead of Josiah, and he made Eliakim his brother king, changing his name to Jehoiakim. And Jehoiakim, we are told, was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. But all this was only one sorrowful event after another.

In the next chapter (24) we have the mighty king of Babylon, who first comes before us—Nebuchadnezzar, the destined beginner of the great imperial system with which we have not done yet; for the world is yet to see the last phase of the imperial power that began at this very time, or shortly after. This gives deep interest to what we are now looking at. I am aware that men are not expecting it. This does not at all hinder its truth as the word of God, and His word alone can decide such questions. The first then who acquires the empire of the world—Nebuchadnezzar—comes up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. Afterward he rebels. The Lord puts him down, and Jehoiachin his son reigns in his stead, and the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land, because he was put down by Nebuchadnezzar. These are the steps by which he arrives at the throne of the world, according to the sovereign gift of Jehovah. And Jehoiachin does evil; and at that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar came up when he rebelled, and Nebuchadnezzar himself too besieges the city and carries away the treasures of the house as well as the princes and mighty men. Not only the king, but as we know also a man afterward most distinguished, and of such deep interest to us—Daniel, the prophet. Then follows another sorrowful state. Zedekiah having been made king provisionally in the land over a small remnant, he too is guilty of breaking the oath of Jehovah, and Nebuchadnezzar comes against him. Here we find the last phase of Jerusalem's sorrowful history of the last batch of the Jews that was carried down into captivity. And this is pursued to the end of the twenty-fifth chapter, and this closes the book.

Thus we have completed these two Books of the Kings—cursorily, I admit, but still I trust so as to give at any rate a general picture of this wonderful history of the Old Testament; the end being the great imperial power under which will take place the return of a little remnant of the Jews to find themselves in Jerusalem once more to set up a king who will be Satan's great instrument for deceiving men under the shelter of the last holder of the power that began with Babylon. But I enter no farther. This would take me out of history into prophecy.

W. K.

Studies in Mark 5:1-9: Legion's Homage to Jesus

5:1-9

Legion's Homage to Jesus

The primary effect of the presence of Jesus upon that desolate shore was to draw the demoniac to Him. When he saw the Lord at a distance he came running, with great cries. Did he come in a paroxysm of fury, intending to do Him a mischief? or did he come with eagerness to seek deliverance from his miserable condition? Whatever may have been his original impulse, in the presence of Jesus he prostrated himself before Him, doing Him homage, and saying with a loud voice, What have I, enslaved of Satan as I am, to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the Most High God? art Thou come to punish me before the time? I earnestly entreat Thee before God, do not torment me.

In these words of the demonized man we may recognize—

(1) a sense of his personal uncleanness

(2) an acknowledgment of the Incarnate Deity

(3) a knowledge and fear of future punishment

(4) the absence of any appeal for mercy. We will consider these points seriatim.

(1) In the first place, the demoniac, by the phrase, “What have I to do with thee?” expressed his own feeling of the incompatibility of darkness and light. He was conscious that there was nothing in common between himself and Jesus. This question occurs elsewhere in both the Old Testament and the New with a similar significance. For example, it was used by Jephthah to the king of Ammon, by David to the sons of Zeruiah, by Elisha to Jehoram, by the Lord to Mary at Cana of Galilee (Judg. 11:12 Sam. 16:10; 19:22; 2 Kings 3:13; John 2:4).

Here, however, the narrative at this period shows that unholiness recognized the Holy One; uncleanness confessed its contrariness to divine purity; deception and lying shrunk from the presence of Him who was the Truth. Belial could have no concord with Christ.

(2) The demoniac prostrated himself before Jesus and did Him homage (προσκυνέω). It is the only recorded instance of demons acknowledging the Lord Jesus in this way. (See also Mark 15:19; Luke 24:52; John 9:38).

Moreover, the Gadarene addressed Him aloud as Jesus, Son of the Mοst High God, condemning utterly by the use of this title the false charge of the Pharisees that Jesus was under the control of the prince of the demons. And it is striking to observe what was the particular divine title used by the demonized man. For the “Most High” occurs in special connections in the Scriptures. It is the title of supreme sovereignty in the earth, and is particularly associated with the promises of divine rule during the millennium when the evil agents of Satan will be removed from the earth and Beelzebub himself confined in the bottomless abyss.

We find this association early in Genesis. Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High God, met Abram returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him in the name of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth (Gen. 14:18-20). This event appears to prefigure the millennial day when the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess it forever (Dan. 7). Again, Balaam, through “the knowledge of the Most High,” prophesied of the same time (Num. 24:16). The prophetic Spirit in the psalmist employs the same title in songs the theme of which is the reign of Jehovah in the coming age (Psa. 91:1, 9; 92:1); and incidentally the subjection of the Evil One is alluded to in this scripture which declares that Messiah shall tread upon the lion and adder, and trample under foot the young lion and the serpent (Psa. 91:13).

The “Most High,” therefore, throughout the range of scripture, is an expressive title of God as the Sovereign Ruler in the kingdom of men (Dan. 4:17), and the demoniac confessed Jesus as the Son of the absolute Lord of the universe, even as the Pythoness owned Paul and Silas to be the servants of the Most High God (Acts 16:17). And they thus anticipate the divine decree that all infernal beings shall bow the knee to Jesus and confess Him Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9, 10).

(3) As in the case of the demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum there was a manifest dread of the judgment of God, and of the consequent punishment of evil: “I adjure thee by God, torment me not.” The unclean spirits knew that punishment must inevitably fall upon them, and, moreover, that the Father judgeth none, but that their sentence must come from the Son of the Most High, who is the appointed Judge of all.

Fear therefore characterized this utterance, not the fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, but that fear of the chastisement of evil with which Satan always inspires man. Fallen Adam said at once to God, “I was afraid, and hid myself.” Fear also is inseparable from idolatry, which is demon-worship (Deut. 32:17). And is this a matter of wonder when the demons themselves believe God and shudder? They who are the cause of torment to others, dread it for themselves (Matt. 18:34; Luke 16:23; Rev. 20:10).

(4) This confession made by the Gadarene was of the power but not of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ; for His mercy was not sought in it. It was the confession not of a contrite sinner but of an evil spirit. The apostle John wrote, “Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2, 3). To confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is to seek Him as the Savior of sinners, since this was the purpose of the incarnation. But no word fell from the lips of the prostrate man beseeching for mercy and forgiveness. The publican in the temple, and blind Bartimaeus, cried for mercy, and were heard; for grace and truth had come for the deliverance of such. But apostate spirits are already doomed and beyond the pale of mercy. They wait only for the execution of their just sentence. Nevertheless the gracious Lord extended His mercy to this miserable man though not to the unclean demons.

UNCLEAN SPIRITS

In the Gospel narratives the terms “unclean spirits” and “demons” are in many instances used with reference to the same case. Thus, we read that the daughter of the Syrophenician woman “had an unclean spirit,” and that she besought the Lord that He would “cast forth the demon out of her daughter” (Mark 7:25-30). Again, in the account of the boy at the foot of the mount of Transfiguration, we are told that when he was coming to Jesus “the demon dashed him down and tare him grievously. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the child” (Luke 9:42). Without citing other instances, these will suffice to show that the terms are used synonymously.

The unclean spirit, therefore, was a demon. In other words the form taken by the demons in the cases of possession recorded in the Gospels was that of unclean spirits. They exercised their evil influence upon their subjects as invisible agents. This will also occur in a coming day, as the prophet John foretells from the vision he saw. He says, “I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet three unclean spirits as it were frogs: for they are spirits of demons working signs which go forth unto the kings of the whole world to gather them together unto the war of the great day of God Almighty” (Rev. 16:13, 14). In a further vision he saw Babylon, the apostate church of the future, to be the “habitation of demons, and the hold of every unclean spirit” (Rev. 18:2).

TWO DEMONIACS, OR ONE?

The corresponding account in Matthew states that two persons afflicted by demons encountered the Lord on this occasion: “And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes there met him two possessed with devils, coming forth out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man could pass by that way” (Matt. 8:28).

It has been frequently observed by students of the Gospels that it is a peculiarity of the First Evangelist to note plurality in certain incidents which are narrated in the singular by others. For example, Matthew mentions two blind men (Matt. 20:29-34), while Mark and Luke only name one (Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43). He also mentions two cases in connection with the Lord's progress into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:1-5), where the other Evangelists speak of one only (Mark 11:17; Luke 19:29-35; John 12:14, 15).

The naming of one only in these cases is not a denial or contradiction of the record by the other Evangelists, the greater including the less; but it may fairly be taken to imply that in the cases of the two demoniacs in Gadara, and of the two blind men at Jericho, one of the two was more notable than the other, and on that account was selected for mention in Mark and Luke. At any rate the presence of two persons in these particular instances was an important feature in itself, since it established the fact that there was more than a single witness to the genuineness of the miracle. This form of corroboration was calculated to meet the prejudices of the Jews based upon their law of evidence which demanded two or three witnesses in a matter of valid testimony (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16).

The following instance out of many others shows this Jewish character of the First Gospel. In the record of the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, Matthew shows, by naming both the ass and the colt, how punctiliously the prophecy of Zechariah was fulfilled, “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and riding upon an ass and upon a colt the foal of an ass” (Zech. 9:9; Matt. 21:5). This is one of the points of detail we might very naturally expect, in accordance with its general scope, to find elaborated and emphasized in this Gospel, the purpose of which is to prove from the Scriptures that “Jesus is the Christ.” In the companion narratives a more general reference was sufficient.

The following quotation expresses the same view of the question. “We know from else-where there were two [demoniacs]. The Gospel of Matthew, not in this only, but in various other cases, speaks of two persons; as, I suppose, because this fact fell in with his object. It was a recognized principle in the law, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word should be established; and he among the Evangelists on whom, so to speak, the mantle of the circumcision fell—he it was who, speaking in view of the circumcision, gives the required testimony for the guidance of those in Israel that had ears to hear. Nothing of the kind was before Mark. He wrote not with any special aim of meeting Jewish saints and Jewish difficulties; but, in truth, rather for others that were not so circumscribed, and might rather need to have their peculiarities explained from time to time. He evidently had humanity before him as wide as the world, and therefore singles out, as we may fairly gather, the more remarkable of the two demoniacs.”

[W. J. H.]

Notes on Luke 9

CHAPTER 9.

After the Lord had given a picture, as it were, of all that was going on in chap. 8, He raises the question of chap. 9 as to who He was, and He tells His disciples some should see His glory; for the mount of transfiguration shows what the glory of the kingdom would be. Peter speaks of the power and coming, “when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory... when we were with him in the holy mount.” But it is a closing testimony at that time, though the glory would come; and as a signal that it was, the disciples were to shake off the dust from their feet, when they were not received. It is interesting to mark all the circumstances which bring out the fact of its being the Lord Himself there, and a test to Israel. He worked miracles, and could confer on others the power, as we have seen. Now we find another thing—He is committing the power to several together, giving to those men, a number of them together, power and authority over the demons, and not only entrusting it to whom He pleases individually.

Three things we have noticed in connection with the testimony of the Son of man: (1) the testimony of God to Him; (2) the misery of man set aside by Him; and (3) demons cast out, so proving that it was really the Lord visiting this world in grace and power. There will be the display of power by-and-by; but He was bringing in, in His own person, the manifestation of that which will be then full and perfect, so being an earnest of “the powers of the world to come,” alluded to in Hebrews. This was not redemption, but the exercise of power in dealing with the enmity of man against Himself, and they would not have Him in this way.

Verse 3, etc. He is sending out His disciples, and in so doing He disposes of all their circumstances. While He was with them, He supplied them with everything—they lacked nothing. The power of the Lord was there to take care of them, wherever they were. Afterward, when He was going to leave them, He tells them to take a sword. They would have to shift for themselves, as it were: but while He was with them He was their shelter, etc. As in the demand for the ass to ride into Jerusalem, He proves His authority royal and divine altogether— “the Lord hath need of him.” The disciples depart, preaching the gospel, and healing everywhere. Then comes the question of who He was: He would have the conscience awakened about Him. There are two things in man brought out by the question—curiosity is excited on the one hand, and perplexity and dismay on the other.

Verses 7-9. He goes on, and wherever there is an ear to hear, He ministers to them according to the grace of the kingdom.

Verses 11, 12. The disciples ask Him to send the multitude away. Let them go and get lodging. No, says the Lord, “give ye them to eat.” He does not now say He would feed them, but He is committing to others the same power as He had Himself, and He would exercise their faith in what He could do by them. This applies to the church now. Faith uses the power that is in the Head. “Give ye them to eat.” What He expected was for faith to exercise His divine power, that which they saw in Him. We should be so reckoning on the power in the Head. The Lord was trying their faith in Him, “Give ye them to eat.” But no; they had no faith; they began to reckon on their resources — “We have no more but five loaves and two fishes.” So it is with us. No faith! Memory is not faith. “He smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? “He gave us water, but can He give us food? We know He has done that one thing, but can He do this other thing today? We want to count on the energy of the Lord's love, and expect Him to be interested for us.

When He said, “Give ye them to eat,” they should have expected He would give them the power. Jehovah was amongst them, exercising His own power; but we see in their answer the horrid principle of unbelief. Unbelief shuts out God, and limits itself to what it sees — “except we go and buy meat,” etc. “He made them all sit down by fifties in a company. And they did eat and were filled.” It was said in Psalm 132, “I will satisfy her poor with bread,” and here He was doing it. This was said of their King, and He had chosen Zion; He had desired it for His habitation. He was here giving a sign that He was the One to accomplish this blessing, for He was feeding their poor with bread. He was not only sending out the power through His disciples, but Himself among them; not only as a man, a messenger, but as it is said in Hebrews, “the word began to be spoken by the Lord.” He was the Apostle. There were others sent afterward, but He Himself was there first as their Apostle. It is a solemn thing to think that the Lord has really visited this world! He has come and presented Himself first to His people Israel, but they would not have Him. It shows us what the world is we are in. God is now dealing with it in grace, though His Son has been rejected.

“Twelve baskets of fragments.” Just observe, in passing, that the number twelve is significant of power exercised in the way of government —twelve apostles, twelve gates to the city in Revelation, etc.

Hitherto we have been looking at Christ presenting Himself among the people as Jehovah, the Messiah; we now see Him as the dependent man praying. He was Immanuel, God with us; Son of David; Son of man. He was to be all. Then the question is started among the disciples, who He was. Some said one thing, and some another; but Peter said, “the Christ of God.” Upon this, He charges them to tell no man that thing. There was faith, however feeble, dictating this answer, and therefore there is no thinking about it. With perfect certainty, Peter says, “The Christ of God.” So it always is with faith. When the Spirit of God brings home the truth with power, there is no uncertainty about it. A man may not doubt whether Christ is the Son of God, or not; but the mind may work upon it, and think perhaps, I do not love Him enough to be saved? Then there is uncertainty. But when the Spirit, with power, shows whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him; then I believe it, and I see that my sins and my iniquities He will “remember no more.” It may set a man thinking about the consequences of a truth.

Verse 22. He now passes by the thing that has been already brought out, and He presents Himself to them as the Son of man, and He is going to suffer — to be crucified. They must therefore be content to take up their cross. A new thing was coming in; He was going to be rejected, and to be slain, and the third day rise again. It is no longer Messianic ground, but in another sphere altogether beyond this their hopes must lie. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his. cross daily.” “Daily” —this is the trial. A man might heroically do it once for all, and he would have plenty of people to honor him, and have books written about him; but it is terribly difficult to go on every day denying oneself, and no one knowing anything about it. It came to this that, if you spare the flesh in this life, you will lose your life in the next; and what if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul; what should a man give in exchange for his soul? It is not a question of bringing life down to the flesh; but if you lose your life here, you will get it elsewhere — above and beyond this world: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” It is giving up the world for eternal life, or, eternal misery, that is the real question. “What is a man advantaged?” You must give it up; you cannot keep it.

There is the glory of the kingdom; there is the manifestation of glory coming. Those tastes and dispositions which are attracted by Jesus cannot find their portion here. “They declare plainly that they seek a country; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God,” etc. “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me,” etc.,"of him shall the Son of man be ashamed,” when He comes in the display of His own glory (see Dan. 7:13). One like to the Son of man came to the Ancient of days, etc., and there was given Him dominion, etc. Then He comes too in the glory of the Son of God—His Father's glory, and in the glory of the angels. The angels are waiting upon Him who created them, for they were created for Him as well as by Him, and thus give glory to Him as Son of man; giving Him His proper glory, for He has not lost a tittle of His glory; “Thou hast set him over the works of thy hands.” “Let all the angels of God worship him.” There was the same thing at Sinai. “The law was ordained by angels.” “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels” (Psa. 68).

We are now finding the displayed glory in this triple character spoken of (ver. 26). It is that glory when He appears; and it is a question of His being ashamed of those who have been ashamed of Him; they could not deny themselves present advantage. I do not here allude to the Father's house, which, of course, has another character. Here it is the kingdom manifested in its glory to the earth.

Verse 28. “He went... to pray.” This is not mentioned in the other Gospels. He was going to show His disciples His glory, to give the declaration of His power and coming. From the other Gospels we find that, a week after this, He went up to Jerusalem where He was to be crucified. “The fashion of his countenance was changed.” An entire change of things is here. He talks of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem, where He ought to have been crowned; but there He is going to be crucified. There, where this horn of David was to bud, shall this root of David be taken, and by wicked hands be crucified and slain. This is the deep center of all the change.

“There talked two men with him, Moses and Elias.” This we may look at in two ways; dispensationally, as representing the law and the prophets; and in this way Moses held a very peculiar place, for it was through Him the law was given; Elijah had nearly as important a place also, for though the Jews were in a right position, they had failed in it, and he goes back to Horeb. The later prophets were not called to work miracles. Except the account of the dial of Ahaz, we hear of no miracle in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Habakkuk, etc. Those prophets, sent of God, gave proof that He was caring for Israel; but there was nothing like the calling back in Elijah, who stood as the maintainer of the law, when the people had departed from it most grossly, though all the prophets, even to Malachi, called back to law.

Moses and Elias were taken away, and Jesus is left alone. Law was gone, prophecy gone, and Christ is alone, and He was going to be crucified. All the fabric built up by law and prophets (not the testimony given by them, but law as given to man in the flesh) is broken up, because man ended by killing the Lord come in the flesh. Therefore all is gone. Peter would have had the three established together, taken all alike, “Let us build three tabernacles,” etc. But that moment Moses and Elias disappear, and the voice is heard, “This is my beloved Son, hear him.” It is now the righteousness of God, without law, in Jesus. Law did not send Christ. What law could have been put upon God to do it? Nothing but divine love could have originated such a thought. “Grace reigned through righteousness.” The law was good and perfect, but Christ was far beyond the law. Moses and Elias, therefore, were not to have any place with Him. God the Father put them aside, when Peter wishes to put them in connection. They disappear immediately. This is the important thing for us. Every word of law and prophets is the truth of God, but these were until John. Now the Son of God is the messenger of the Father's love, and the accomplisher of divine righteousness. When He is there, the voice says, “This is my beloved Son: hear him” —and He is left alone.

Mark, too, that they were occupied with His death, while talking with Him. One thing occupies the minds of heaven and earth. He was going to be crucified where He ought to have been King. Under such circumstances, there was nothing for heaven or earth to talk about but His death. And so for us, the great thing to talk about Messiah is, that He died. Though He could destroy all the evil that had come in, He must die —in grace of course. It must all end in death, because the carnal mind is not only under Satan's power, but enmity against God; therefore heaven has to speak.

Zion, the very place He had chosen, where He had been and is to be—the special place of God's favor, is to be the scene of His death. There they cast Him out of the world He came to save. The One in whom all human and divine righteousness and perfections were centered must die there. All man's nature, under the most advantageous circumstances: all man's wickedness, spite of the public and patient and varied ways of God in government: both are brought out here.

Moses could deal with man as man; and bring water from the rock for them, in answer to their murmurings; the prophet the same, “Plead with me,” “Put me in remembrance, let us plead together.” But now, all this was gone. God had cultivated the vineyard—done all that could be done for it. There was yet one thing; His Son —the best of all. Him He sent, and they cast Him out and slew Him. And now the testimony concerning man is, that he has “killed the Prince of life,” and “denied the Holy One and the Just.” We never can have peace then, till we get pardon through Christ on the cross. Then we see a true picture of heaven: but all the intermediate dealings of testimony are entirely short of what we have in Christ on the cross, because short of the ground of what man actually is, which fully came out only when he “killed the Prince of life.”

Scripture Query and Answer: Naaman's Cleansing

Q.-2 Kings 5 Would you kindly give me a reply in the Bible Treasury to the following: Am I right in saying that, in the matter of Naaman's cleansing, it was not a question of faith, but of practical obedience to the word of the prophet who told him to go and wash seven times in Jordan. Faith was not required at first, only obedience, and it was this—his obedience—on which his healing was made dependent. He had no idea that his soul was to be saved, what he found as a free gift of grace too.

F. W. G.

A.-The healing of Naaman's leprosy—his bodily disease—was contingent upon his acting on the declared word of Jehovah through Elisha. Thus would he know that there was a prophet in Israel. Unbelieving at first, “he went down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” Now he could say, “I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.” Divine life is not in question. Compare also 1 Kings 18:39.

Life and incorruptibility have been brought to light through the gospel. It is soul-salvation that we receive through faith of the gospel, in contrast with the bodily, or circumstantial, deliverances of the Old Testament. The day is coming when the forgiveness of iniquities will go along with the healing of diseases, and the executing of righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed (Psa. 103). It is not so now. We are called to suffering here, to glory hereafter. We may be in heaviness through manifold trials, but should be always rejoicing; and as our affliction is only here, so is it but momentary, whereas glory is eternal. How great the gain!

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 1

Modern criticism has ventured to undermine and assail almost all the books of holy scripture, but none with such boldness as the Pentateuch, unless it be the prophecy of Daniel. The incredulity of not a few theologians in our own day, abroad and at home, outstrips while it follows that of Celsus and Porphyry, of Spinosa and Hobbes, of Bolingbroke and Hume. The remote antiquity of Moses especially seemed to invite their unhappy efforts in the dark; for as the prowling birds of night shun the day, so the skeptics of all ages love darkness rather than light for a reason which is plain to every eye but their own—a reason on which the Judge of quick and dead has already pronounced, if not on themselves because of it.

We need not cite the heathen critics, nor the famous Rabbis outside Christianity, who rise up to rebuke such unconscionable doubts. We would not summon the whole nation of Israel, whose testimony is in this all the stronger, because from a date far earlier than the father of Grecian history it is given with double force to the law if not to the prophet. We would not glean from the widespread field of tradition, east, west, north, south, nor appeal even to the unwritten but emphatic records of Egypt itself, that once renowned mistress, but now, according to one of Jehovah's prophets, the basest of kingdoms; which hides no doubt the shame of its rulers, but confirms in the most minute way the nicest details of the Mosaic report of Israel's hard bondage before their triumph. Let us take our stand on the fact, broad, deep, and conclusive, that the authority of Christ has decided the question for all who own Him to be God as well as man. It is well that we should know with what sort of men we have to deal; for all have not faith. He who spoke of charity, and lived it as perhaps none other ever did since, saw no inconsistency (even if for a moment we leave his inspiration out of sight) in binding up with his salutation in the same Epistle the solemn warning — “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”

Our Lord then has spoken with particular care of Daniel as “the prophet” toward the close of the Old Testament canon, but of Moses at the beginning as the writer of the law. (Mark 10:5; 12:26; Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:46, 47; 7:19). It is not merely that He does not contest the position of the Jews as to Moses; He affirms it and insists on it repeatedly Himself in the plainest terms. Think of the coolness of a man, professedly not an infidel but a Christian and a Christian minister, who, after quoting Christ's words, “Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham,” etc., etc., can say, “Here the allusion is to Ex. 3:6, which was not written by Moses, as we suppose!"

Fully admitting the value of reasoning to convict gainsayers, and expose the futility of their captious arguments, I lay it down as an axiom that in revealed truth it is and must be simply a question of a divine testimony, which is given to be believed, and which binds the conscience even of him who rejects it through unbelief. If physics require patient induction and comprehensive grouping under general principles or laws, if mathematics demand a strict and necessary demonstration, if the mixed sciences admit of both, the written word of God claims faith in His testimony which tests the moral state of him who hears. The faith which receives it traditionally and with indifference is of no value, and will under pressure give it up with the same otiose facility in which it assented. Certainly to doubt is not to believe; yet one could almost allow the saying to pass, that there is more faith in some doubts than in such traditional faith as characterizes Christendom, save those in it who are born of God. For the soul which begins to be really in earnest is apt to hesitate till it has adequate motive to believe; while the flesh which so promptly offered to obey at Sinai is just as ready to say its Amen to the Athanasian creed.

Again, God does give sufficient evidence to render the unbelief of the objector inexcusable; but the faith which rests on such human motives is merely of nature, not of the Holy Spirit as its source. One may be arrested or attracted by such evidence; but God's testimony must be received because and as He gives it, with no other motive whatever; else we set up to judge Him and His word, instead of submitting, as divinely formed faith always does, to be judged by Him. If the testimony be of God, it is the truth; and if so, he who cavils and opposes is ipso facto proved to be in such a state morally that he has no congeniality with the truth of God, and, if pressed closely, his indisposition to receive it ripens into active hatred and scoffing unbelief. Whatever be the circumstances, he has so yielded to his own thoughts or those of other men, that he overlooks the motives adequate to win his confidence which God has given, and becomes at length settled down in such hardness of heart against His word, that it is enough to resist all testimony, and he can only he left to the judgment which he despises.

From this it will be plain to the reflecting mind why in the things of God it is a question of believing a divine testimony, while in pure science we have to do with necessary inference, and in applied science with observed fact also. Hence in these latter it is of course a question of knowledge or ignorance; they are not the subject of doubt or belief as is testimony. But it is a horrible and fatal error thence to infer that any conclusion of science is more certain than every word of God is in itself and so to the believer. There are measures of faith as of knowledge; but, though no Pyrrhonist in the domain either of the senses or of science, or even of honest and competent history, I maintain that (pure science apart, where the premises necessitate the conclusion) the word of God alone gives absolute certainty, and faith receives accordingly.

Revelation is the word of a God who cannot lie; and if man can with comparative ease convey his mind correctly, how much more can God His, infinite though it be? The human element is fully admitted; but the essence of inspiration is, that the power of the Holy Spirit excludes error in the writer. It is too much forgotten that there is ignorance in every reader; and that this ignorance as to divine truth is really and always, spite of appearances, in the ratio of our self-sufficiency.

Further, that there are difficulties, not only great but possibly insoluble by you, me, or any other man, is not only allowed but affirmed. It may well, not to say it must, he so in a system so immense as that of which revelation treats from the creation of all, and before it, till the new heavens and earth of eternity. But he is unwise who would surrender the positive proofs of revelation, or of the truths it contains, because of difficulties which perplex the human mind. There is no divinely formed province even in nature, and this in its least or lowest forms, where there are not enigmas beyond the wit of man; and these the wisest are the most ready to confess. If writings which professed to be a revelation had no depths beyond man's plummet, it would be a more just conclusion to infer that it could scarcely be a revelation of God.

Scripture claims to be the communication of the mind of God to man, not setting aside the character or circumstances of the writers, but giving the full and absolute truth of God in and through all. Such is the doctrine asserted in 1 Cor. 2; 2 Tim. 3; and with this agrees the uniform use of the passages cited for special purposes throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. So above all said He who spoke as never man spoke; and no wonder; for He was God as well as man, and man as truly as God. But it is to be feared that unbelief as to the written word bodes ill for the faith which is professed in the Word, the personal Word of life. In both cases it is the Infinite brought into the finite by grace; of which the ruinous speculations of unbelief would deprive us, as their authors have been themselves deprived of it by an enemy subtler than they are. Thus, if incarnation be the Word made flesh (a divine person yet a real man, “that Holy Thing” born of His mother, and this by the power of the Spirit), revelation is the mind of God in the language of man, but perfectly guided and guarded by the Spirit. It were to lose the truth in both respects, if we accepted the foolish cheat of Satan that the finite drags down the Infinite. Not so; both were given in God's love to meet the finite in its actual state of sin, degradation, and distance from God; and in both, the finite is so governed by the Infinite, which has joined it to itself in holy and perfect union, that grace and truth alone exist and appear without the smallest admixture of human evil or error.

Take the following decisive utterance of the Savior: “How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words” (John 5:44-47)? The Lord had been declaring Himself the object of faith, who as Son of God becomes the source of life to him that believes, but is the judge of him that believes not to his utter destruction. This leads Him to open out the various testimonies to Himself: first, John the Baptist; secondly, the works which the Father gave the Son to do; thirdly, the Father's own witness to the Son; and lastly, the Scriptures. Even the Jews owned their all-importance for their souls; yet did they testify concerning Christ. Self and the world were, and are, the true hindrances to the love and the glory of God, and hence also render faith impossible. Their accuser would be, not Jesus [who will judge all] but, the very Moses in whom they had their hope. If they had believed Moses, they would have believed Jesus; “for he wrote of me. For if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Thus the Lord puts the highest honor conceivable on the written word, if it were only the law, and not the latest and fullest communications of God. For scripture as a testimony has a permanence in this respect which can belong to no spoken words. Christ did not therefore expect them to receive His own words if they did not believe the writings of Moses.

It will be observed, however, how many modern questions are here by anticipation answered. The scriptures as a whole testify about Christ. He is the object continually before the inspiring Spirit, directly or indirectly. Good or evil is noticed relatively to Him, the brighter and only complete exemplar of the one, the absolute contradiction and finally the judge of the other. The Old Testament therefore is in the fullest sense prophetic. Christ is the end of the law: is He not of the Psalms also, as well as of the Prophets? So indeed He risen from the dead tells His disciples (Luke 24:27 and 44, 45). I know that these unhappy rationalists dare to think that in the days of His flesh He, the Lord God, was not above the prejudices of that time and place from which they, dupes of Satan, flatter themselves somewhat freed. Thus they conceive either that He did not know the truth, or that, knowing it, He deigned to—. No; I refuse to stain even this paper of mine with their infamy of the Lord of all.

Yet, earnestly desiring not their destruction but their edification, I entreat them to weigh the last citation, and the fact, to them surely as reasonable men most momentous, that Jesus is declared so to speak as risen from the dead. If they have failed so lamentably in faith and reverence for His personal glory during His earthly service, at least they must believe, if they believe anything divine, that no human prejudices survive the grave, that in the risen state even we shall know as we are known. If then they are pleased to accord also to Jesus that perfection, which it is to be supposed they hope for themselves, I call on them with me to denounce the shameful, nay shameless, notion, that He stooped to “a wise accommodation to popular views.”

Again, no one alleges that “Christ and His apostles came into the world to instruct the Jews in criticism." But does not faith in Christ bind us to accept His authority as superior to any criticism? He declares, both during His ministry and in the risen state, that Moses wrote of Him, that the books commonly called the law, the Pentateuch, are Moses' writings. Was He in this fostering an error of the day, and supporting it by His authority? Certainly it was no part of Christ's mission to prove that the Pentateuch did not proceed from Moses! But it is impossible to believe Christ's words and to deny that He declares those books to be written by Moses, which the rationalist declares are not, and distributes between Moses and perhaps earlier hands the primitive Elohist after the expulsion of the Canaanites, the junior Elohist in the days of Elisha, the Jehovist in the reign of Uzziah, the still later redactor who was not Ezra, and the unfortunate Deuteronomist in the reign of Manasseh who employed the “innocent fiction,” “which an uncritical age rendered easy,” of attributing to the legislator the utterance of the contents of Deuteronomy as well as the authorship of the first four books, in both of which Dr. Davidson (1:118) deliberately imputes to him what is a fraud.

I trust the pious reader will pardon my copying such views, which I may fairly call the Christian or unchristian mythology of the nineteenth century. They have found entrance and even taken root in certain quarters beyond their native soil; and I am sure that they will work to yet greater ungodliness, and contribute to the growing denial and rejection of divine authority in the world as well as in holy things, the counterpart of the haughty and effete superstition which has just pretended to claim the infallibility of God, which no apostle had nor all together, for its chief priest: two main streams of evil which will pour their impure waters into the stagnant pool of “the apostasy” that is at hand for ungrateful and self-vaunting Christendom.

But the Christian will turn with increasing confidence and singleness of purpose to the living oracles; and loving Christ he will keep His word, even as he who loves Him not keeps not His words, little thinking that the word he thus despises is the Father's who sent the Son, and will judge him at the last day.

(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 5:10-20: Legion Delivered and the Swine Destroyed

5:10-20

Legion Delivered and the Swine Sestroyed

“And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there on the mountain side a great herd of swine feeding. And they besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered into the swine: and the herd rushed down the steep into the sea, in number about two thousand; and they were choked in the sea. And they that fed them fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they came to see what it was that had come to pass. And they come to Jesus, and behold him that was possessed with devils sitting, clothed and in his right mind, even him that had the legion: and they were afraid. And they that saw it declared unto them how it befell him that was possessed with devils, and concerning the swine. And they began to beseech him to depart from their borders. And as he was entering into the boat he that had been possessed with devils besought him that he might be with him. And he suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go to thy house unto thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he had mercy on thee. And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel” (v. 10-20, R.V.).

In the conversations which took place on this occasion, especially as they are reported by Mark and Luke (who refer to one only of the two Gadarene demoniacs), there is evidence of the significant fact that the personality of the possessed man was overridden by the indwelling demons. It is not intended to investigate the psychological effects of this fact. The result, however, is noted because of its serious importance; and while this condition no doubt exists in every case of possession, it is here thrown into unusual prominence, since not a single demon but many had entered into this man. We have, therefore, alike in the dialog and the narrative, the use both of the singular number (indicating the man himself) and the plural (indicating the evil spirits). The phrases used and the speakers are shown in the following statement—

Singular Number:

(1) By the man to Jesus: “What have I to do with thee?” “Torment me not"; “My name is Legion.”

(2) By Jesus to the man: “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit “; “What is thy name?”

Plural Number:

(1) By the man to Jesus: “We are many.”

(2) By the demons to Jesus: “All the demons besought him, saying, Send us into the swine that we may enter into them.”

(3) By Jesus to the demons: “Jesus gave them leave.” He said unto them, “Go,” using the plural form of the verb (Matt. 8:32).

The two forms, singular and plural, are to be seen in close juxtaposition in verses 9 and 10: “And he asked him (sing.), What is thy (sing.) name? And he (sing.) answered, saying, My (sing.) name is Legion; for we (plur.) are many. And he (sing.) besought him much that he would not send them (plur.) away out of the country.”

The Lord addressed the man as the responsible person, asking him, “What is thy name?” and He also distinguished between the man who was oppressed and the evil powers which possessed him, saying, “Come forth out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” The man is regarded as tenanted by the evil spirit.

This distinction and identification is found in another connection of an opposite nature. As this case was one of a man indwelt by unclean spirits for purposes of evil, so we learn from the Epistles that those who believe the gospel of salvation (Eph. 1) are indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit of God, who is assuredly distinct in His personality from those whom He indwells, bearing witness indeed, as He does, with our spirit that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16). At the same time He, in a blessed way, identifies Himself with us, helping our infirmities, and making intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. The Lord Himself declared to His followers, referring to their testimony, “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you” (Matt. 10:20).

Such facts as these shed some light upon the higher part of man's complex nature, and show that it is subject to that comprehensive law enunciated by the apostle Paul, when he said, “Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness” (Rom. 6:16)?

INTO THE SWINE BUT NOT THE ABYSS

The demons who feared the time of future torment had their requests to prefer to Him whom they knew and addressed as the Son of the most high God. They acknowledged His supreme authority even as Satan did when he came before Jehovah in the matter of His servant Job (Job 1). Here they besought the Lord that He would not send them out of the country, and, as Luke states, that He would not command them to go into the deep, or the abyss (Luke 8:31).

The abyss is the Scriptural term for the place of confinement of evil spirits. The word in the original Greek is translated “bottomless pit” in the Apocalypse (Rev. 9:1, 2, 11). From thence the “beast” will arise who will make war upon the two witnesses and overcome them (Rev. 11:7; 17:8). According to the same series of prophecies, Satan will be imprisoned in the abyss during the thousand years of glorious peace under the reign of Christ (Rev. 20:1-3).

Possibly the abyss is the place of constraint, mentioned by Jude, in which certain evil angels have been already placed: “And the angels which kept not their first [proper] estate but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).

There was at any rate an evident fear on the part of these evil spirits, lest they should be forthwith condemned to confinement in the abyss, and thus be prevented “from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

They admitted that Jesus had authority to eject them, for, as Matthew reports, they said, “If thou cast us out” (Matt. 8:31); and their desire was to enter the unclean swine, as if to exhibit and gratify their love of destruction. As Satan disguised himself as the serpent for subtlety (Gen. 3), and, to deceive the unwary, now transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), also walking about as a roaring lion to devour the unresisting (1 Peter 5:8), so here the unclean spirits sought permission to enter the herd of unclean swine. “Suffer us,” they said, thus owning, like Satan of old (Job 1), their impotence apart from the Supreme Will.

The Lord acceded to their request, and immediately they abandoned their human prey, and took possession of the herd of swine, wherein to display their destructive aims and thus to inspire men with a fear and dread, apart from which they have no power over them. Their maleficent propensities were at once exemplified; for the whole herd of animals was irresistibly impelled down the steep cliffs and perished in the sea. This destruction of property by Satanic influence acting through secondary causes is not without its parallel in Old Testament times. In the history of the calamities which came upon Job we are permitted to see that the sudden losses of his flocks and herds and children were attributable to the malice of Satan. To outward seeming the Sabeans captured the oxen and sheep; the Chaldeans carried away his camels; the fire from heaven burned up his sheep; the hurricane slew his sons and daughters; but all these casualties arose, as we learn from the inspired narrative, from the evil plottings of Satan which were permitted by Jehovah, who, however, overruled them all for the eventual and enhanced blessing of the patriarch.

In the instance at Gadara the fate of the swine forms a plain and unmistakable example of the tendencies and objects of Satan and his demons. The violent end of the beasts was but an analogy of the ultimate end of those who are under the direction and power of darkness. Only in the absence of that superior nature which man possesses in contrast with the brutes, destruction followed immediately after the entrance of the demons into the swine. They at once rushed to their death. In the case of man the end is similar though it may be reached more slowly. Whatever men may be deceived to think, the object of the evil one is to destroy, while that of the Holy One of God is to deliver and save.

The question of the loss incurred by the keepers of the swine, who were probably faithless Jews, is not discussed in the Gospels, neither is the question whether this loss came upon them by way of retribution for keeping the unclean animals contrary to the law of Moses. Indeed the “utility” argument, sometimes used as an objection that this destruction of animal life should be permitted by the gracious Savior, is irrelevant; since the wholesale loss of property has ever been of frequent occurrence through those inexplicable catastrophes which form such noticeable features in the inscrutable ways of divine Providence. Until we know the ultimate intention of Sovereign Wisdom, we are not in a position to understand nor to discuss the righteousness of such events, or of the miracle in question. Without knowing, faith is confident that all is working for good.

It may be added that another point concerning this and analogous cases is made clear by this incident. Demon-possession has a specific character. It is not, as some would allege, a form of disease nor the result of overpowering sinful propensities; the behavior of the animals when possessed proved the contrary. They were not carried away suddenly by some disease nor as suddenly filled by a swinish perversity to compass their own destruction. The truth was that the power of Satan was acting in a special manner to destroy them.

THE DELIVERED MAN

Those who witnessed the mad rush of the swine over the precipice spread the news in town and country, and numbers ("the whole city,” Matt.) flocked to Jesus to see the Author of this thing. They beheld not only the Prophet of Nazareth but the wild untamable man of the hill-tombs. In the latter they could not but observe the pacific change wrought by the Lord's word. They found him sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and in his right mind. He now possessed that demeanor characteristic of the mental sobriety (σωφροσύνη) which is enjoined in the Epistles as a necessary element of Christian character (Rom. 12:3; 1 Peter 4:7; et al.). The inward influence of that hateful power for evil and self-destruction had been withdrawn. The man was now under the benign and gracious influence of the meek Man of sorrows whom demons fear and obey. The voice that had hushed the riotous elements the previous night had spoken peace to this troubled spirit. And he who had hitherto resisted all human efforts to curb his violence is seen to have succumbed to the word of the Master.

Thus the deliverance was complete; and this mental and physical emancipation is an illustration of the liberating effect which the gospel ever exercises upon the whole man who comes to the Savior. There is a spiritual liberty wherewith Christ makes men free. The Lord Jesus delivers the believer from the power of darkness (Col. 1:13), from the course of this age, from the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience (Eph. 2), bringing him from the power of Satan to God (Acts 26:18).

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Notes on Luke 9

Chapter 9. (Continued)

When the Lord's Messiah-ship was given up, we have seen He takes the place of translation from earth to heaven. He, being rejected, was no longer to be looked upon as the Head of Israel down here, but as the heavenly Christ; for He takes His place on high, when cast out by man, and this fact was to give a character to the path of those who follow Him. The two things go together—rejection on earth and a heavenly place. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (ver. 23). The Lord shows them that this heavenly calling involves the cross down here, as it was with Christ Himself. The peculiar place given Him in heaven was, in God's counsels, dependent on the cross which He bore as the Man. “He humbled himself and became obedient unto death,” etc.; “wherefore God hath highly exalted him,” etc. It was through the cross that He went there: and, if we are to have a place in heaven, we must have it too. The cross was for the destruction of sin and for the destruction of self, in which sin dwells. We have the same place; therefore He says, “Let these sayings sink deep into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.”

We want the heavenly calling to give power to take up the cross; and it is at the same time in proportion as we are dead to things down here, that the heavenly things are realized. When the blood was taken within the veil, the sacrifice was taken without the gate: so we are to go “without the camp, bearing his reproach"; and if we apprehend the value of the blood, and go within the veil, we get to the place of being where the burning outside the camp was; for while we are in spirit where His blood has been carried in, our bodies are where His body was burned. Judaism only put men between the two: for they did not go in within the veil, His blood not having been shed; and they never went outside the camp (vers. 18-22). He is going to take another place, and they are to follow Him in it; and then, in order to strengthen them for it, He shows them what the heavenly place was. “He took Peter, and James, and John, and went up into a mountain to pray,” etc. (ver. 28). The heavenly part of the kingdom is here represented by Christ, Moses and Elias—the earthly part by the disciples (and there is one part in which the church on earth is alluded to as down here). Peter speaks of this scene as the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, etc. Christ Himself, in the position of the dependent man (praying), takes them up into a mountain. “Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep"; asleep in the presence of the glory, just as in Gethsemane, showing what human nature is. There is no power in it, in suffering or glory, to fix the attention on Christ and His interests.

Moses and Elias were in the same glory (vers. 30-32), and we are made the associates of Christ in the same glory (the glory of the kingdom in its broad character), not, of course, the essential glory. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly,” even of God's Son in glory. “We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory.” The portion is not to be under Christ, but with Christ. “We shall appear with him in glory” —with Him in the same glory. We look for the Lord from heaven, “who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned,” etc. We shall be with Him and like Him, and this we shall all alike share, though there will be different degrees of glory for one and another: for example, Paul's measure will not be mine. What we speak of now is all the same glory, and we are predestinated “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” “The glory thou hast given me I have given them.”

The next thing that we see is the perfect familiarity in this glory. They are talking with Him—not presenting a petition—not at His feet (though this is our blessed place too); but this part of the scene represents communion, familiarity of intercourse, the same as that of the disciples on earth, though better of course. On the holy mount they had a higher understanding about it, but it was the same subject occupied them. This shows us the kind of intercourse we have with Jesus now, for we belong to the heavenly part of the kingdom.

A third point to mark is the subject they talked of. This is quite a new thing, for He ought to have been a king. But man was a sinner, and there was the determinate counsel of God to be fulfilled—redemption. Jerusalem was the place of royalty, and His decease was to be accomplished there, where He ought to have been acknowledged king. There was full intimacy on the theme which occupied His heart, for they talked on this, His decease. Then He told His disciples afterward the consequences of it to them. They must deny themselves. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears.” The great subject on God's heart should be that for us.

Another thing is, it is the glory which enables us to talk on this subject. We cannot talk of it until we have peace with God through the knowledge of sins forgiven. When a man has not this, he has to come in his need and get it: but when he is in it, he can contemplate and enjoy it. Besides this, God saw all that was passing in Christ's soul as to obedience unto death, etc. We shall never cease having interest in this subject: when with the Father in the glory, it will be the absorbing theme. He said Himself, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life.” How much more shall we not love Him for the same cause? Think what it must have been to be occupied with Christ about His decease! What His knowledge was, of what He was going to do! He knew what man was, what the counsel of God was. He came to “reconcile all things to himself.” It was so effectually done that the eye of God could only see the effect of that blood in what was washed away. The rejected Christ a Savior! and this the subject of intercourse with Christ Himself! “They spake of his decease.” Peter says,

“Master, it is good for us to be here,” etc. Then immediately there was a voice from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” The effect on Peter's mind is a wish to put Moses and Elias on a level with Christ.

We have spoken of this, viewing it dispensationally, law and prophecy mixed with Him; but there is another thing to be noticed in it, namely, that which characterized the Son was peculiar. Nothing could be put on a level with Him. There necessarily comes out, therefore, the Father's testimony to the Son. “This is my beloved Son,” etc. When a saint knows Jesus, though he also knows he will be like Him hereafter, and that all the saints will be like Him too, yet Christ has the supremacy in his heart. He is single and alone in blessedness, having supremacy in the heart, as well as being the object of faith. I delight in the saints, but Christ is the alone object of faith. Then I get into this fellowship with the Father. I have the Father's thoughts about the Son, as well as the Son's thoughts about the work. I have fellowship with the Father and the Son. We cannot have communion with the Father about redemption work because He had not been made a man. Notice, the Father does not say, This is the Son whom you ought to adore and admire, but He tells us His own thoughts about Him. “This is my beloved Son.” Wherefore “beloved"? “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life"; thus I know that I have one thought with the Father, in delighting in the Son and in His death. The Father communicates His own thoughts about the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost they are put into my heart, and I have fellowship; and as a consequence I know that he that hath everlasting life shall never come into judgment.

Mark, further, how they came into the excellent glory. There came a cloud and overshadowed them. The cloud is the Shechinah, the dwelling-place of God, which the people had to guide them through the wilderness, and they were to stay or move according to it. It was the divine presence, and “they feared as they entered into the cloud.” They were not protected by the cloud, as Israel were, and as they will be by-and-by. “Upon all the glory shall be a defense"; but here they enter into the cloud. The fact was, coming into the cloud was coming into the presence of the Father now, a dwelling-place for us. It was thence the Father's voice was heard, “This is my beloved Son,” etc. Thence they were told who this Son was. He had been with them as one of them. He was the Father's beloved Son, in a place worthy of adoration, but the companion of their hearts. He brought them to the Father, the only place into which redemption brings us (as to our relationship). Until a man knows redemption and is brought into His presence, he can never know the Father's love: but when there, he can never know the end of it. It is the kind of love the prodigal never knew till he was in his father's arms. He had doubts and fears as he went on, and thoughts about the hired servants, but none when he was in his father's house. It is known only by the teaching of the Holy Ghost in us—in the cloud—God in us. It is in the presence of the glory, realized by faith now, we know the power of redemption; and by its brightness and its truth, it blots out all other relationship.

Notice who are learning this glory. Saints walking on the earth—Peter, James, and John—and so with us. The truths written in this book are not for us to know in heaven. Is the Father's love not to be known till we are in heaven? Is redemption only to be known there? Was God less intimate with those on earth than with those in heaven? Not at all. It was to Peter, James, and John this was communicated, not to Moses and Elias. The Father's voice was to men on earth. We learn the rejection of man here and the grace which has brought us to share in the glory.

In what follows we find the Lord coming down into the crowd of this world, not remaining on the mount. We may listen and enjoy, but we have to come down and pass through this world. The Lord comes down and meets three things—a throng of men, Satan's power, and the disciples' unbelief. There was no seclusion here for Him, but He comes to a crowd. What a picture of distress this is! The son of one possessed with a devil (ver. 39); and the father's heart racked more than the son's body. The world will weep till they are tired of weeping, and then go on with the same thing again.

We have seen before how the Lord was come in the display of His power and bound the strong man. The disciples could not do it. The power of Satan remains the same unto this day. He is not literally cast out, but remains the “prince of this world,” the character he has gained, not lost, by Christianity. He will be bound; his power will be overthrown as a fact, and not to faith only. The question was to be settled about Satan's right, and what did the Lord say of him?

“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” His title is “cast out,” but Christ has not yet exerted this power. Therefore in the Epistles we find him spoken of as still ruling in this world. In Ephesians he is called, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh,” etc. Then we hear of the “rulers of the darkness of this world.” When “the powers of the world to come” are in their full display, Satan will be cast out entirely; but these instances and more show he was here then as he is still. “How long shall I be with you,” etc. (ver. 41). It was not because Satan was here that Christ said this, but because the disciples could not use the power He had brought in; and that closed the dispensation. So it will be in this. The power and goodness of God brought Christ into the world, but the incapacity of man to believe, so as to use that power, will close it. So we read in Rom. 11, “Toward thee [the professing body now], goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off"; but until His grace ceases, there is refuge for us to go to Him.

While He was here, the moment the father of the child sought to Him, He cast out the demon. As long as Christ's grace is at work, if there is only one saint on the earth and everything else failed around, he would find the power of Christ ready to be exercised on his behalf. There can be no failing in meeting the need of a soul, because as there is Christ to go to, there is help in Him. However dark the dispensation may be, there is exactly the grace that is needed for the position. Not that God would have our eyes blinded to the darkness around, for if we do not take heed to the ruinous state, conscience is not in its right place. If I am ready to say, Why should He not stay? when He says, How long shall I be with you? I am insensible to the state of things around me, and I am not awake to the response that Christ's love to the church demands; but, on the other hand, if I am not able to look up and count on the grace of Christ to meet that state, however bad it may be, I am powerless.

Verse 43. “They were amazed at the mighty power of God.” It is very humbling to see how amazed they were about this power. They did not wonder at the power of the evil. But they ought so to have counted on His power as to have been amazed if the power were not exerted. Christ brings them back to the cross. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men” (ver. 44). You ought to have been able to get this power; but you must now know not only the power of Christ, but the cross of the rejected One. “Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” We have more to be rejoiced at in this than if a miracle were to be performed tomorrow. It is more blessed to know the cross. It was as though He had said, “I had rather you should come now to own the rejected One than be looking for this power even.” Beloved friends, you are not thinking of what God is doing at this present time, if you do not see that now it is not power on the earth, but rejection.

(To be continued)

What Is the Church? 2

The church is something infinitely precious to Christ. He “loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” This is a revelation that makes us feel the importance which God attaches to what He calls the church. What an object of the affections of Christ—of His care; and how glorious will be the accomplishment of the counsels of God respecting this church! What a privilege to be part of it! This passage teaches us, moreover, that there is, in the union of Christ and the church, all the intimacy that exists between a husband and a wife beloved—a feeble figure after all of the reality of this great mystery —that we are thus members of His body [of His flesh, and of His bones]; that the church holds to Christ the place which Eve held with regard to Adam—the figure of Him that was to come; who was associated with Adam, in the enjoyment of all that had been conferred on him by God.

This last thought, it is true, is only suggested here by the analogy of the position of Eve, used by the apostle to represent that of the church; but it is taught as a doctrine elsewhere. It is natural to suppose, that what holds so prominent a place in the mind of God, should be found more than once in the word; and such we shall find to be the case, in passages, the hearing of which we will presently consider. At the same time, it will be easily understood, by the nature of the thing itself, that this position is quite peculiar; that such an association with Christ is a special object of the counsels and purposes of God; for the place of a bride, like that of Eve, is a very special one. She is not the inheritance; she is more than a child, however dear, as a child, she may be to the father. It is a higher thing than being God's people, though both may be true at the same time. It is difficult to imagine anything more closely linked with self than one's own wife, one's own body. “No man,” says the apostle, to express it, “ever yet hated his own flesh.” It is one's self. It must be evident to the reader, that from such a relationship must flow immensely practical consequences; because it is connected, at the same time, with the closest affections, and the most absolute duties. The Lord himself expresses the force of the position of His church, the first time He speaks of it in a formal manner after the commencement of its existence, when He says, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou ME?”

Let us notice the three chief points presented by Ephesians—chap. 5 of which has suggested these reflections. First—Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it. It is redeemed at the cost of His blood, of His life, of Himself. Having thus purchased it exclusively for Himself, He begins, secondly, to fashion it, to sanctify it, that it may be according to His own heart's desire; that He may, in the third place, present it to Himself a glorious church, without the least thing unbecoming the glory, or that might offend the eye, or the heart, of her divine Bridegroom. There is here a testimony to the divinity of Jesus, so much the more remarkable, as it is only by the way; and the allusion is made as to a known truth. God, having formed Eve, presented her to the first Adam; but Christ Himself presents the church to Himself; because if He be the last Adam, He is at the same time the One who can present it to Himself as being the author of its existence, of its beauty, and of the perfection in which it must appear in heaven, to be worthy of such a Bridegroom, and of the glory that is there.

We will consider its history further on; but we may already observe here, that whatever may be the circumstances through which the church is called to pass, she is always considered as a whole, as much as while she is being purified by the word upon earth, as when she is presented glorious to her Bridegroom in heaven. The redemption of this body on the cross has taken place upon earth. Her purification through the word, by the Spirit, also takes place on earth. The glorious result, al the return of Christ, will take place in heaven, for which place she will have been made ready. Although the marriage has not yet taken place, the relationship has always existed as to its rights. I do not speak merely as regards the eternal counsels of God, but in fact, as to the knowledge and the duties of those who were called. Since Christ purchased the church to Himself (I speak of the fact, and historically now; always allowing time for the communication of the truth as to this, by the Holy Ghost), the church has been His, as regards the conscience of those who were called to the enjoyment of this position. The relationship exists; and as Christ has always been faithful, the church ought also to have been so too. Her purification, on the part of Christ, had necessarily reference to this relationship; as this passage formally proves. It ought to have been viewed in the same light by Christians—by those who, alas! can fail in this relationship as in all others. But they are responsible for faithfulness to it.

The manner in which this truth must act upon the knowledge of an accomplished salvation, and upon sanctification, as well as upon the joy of hope, is plain. For with regard to the first, the existence of the church is based on the fact that Christ has loved it, and given Himself for it. So that its purchase, its salvation, and the gracious, perfect love of Him who redeemed it, with the end in view, which cannot fail, of presenting it in glory to Himself, form the basis of its whole life—of its everyday relations.

It is not a people put to the test, by a rule given. The church is the subject of a perfect work, through which Christ has purchased it to himself, when it was enslaved to Satan, defiled, and guilty. It has no other responsibility, as the church, but that which is based on its being the purchase of Christ. This tells her, no doubt, that she ought to be entirely His; but if she ought to be His, it is because she is so already.

The Christian, instructed of God in this doctrine, has the peaceful assurance (an assurance which gives a calmness that is the basis of the sweetest affections) that he belongs to Christ, according to God's perfect love, and the efficacy of a work in which Christ—that His heart might have satisfaction in the object which the Father had given Him—could not fail. The influence of this truth in the conscience is equally great as regards sanctification; for it is the purification of that which already belongs to Christ in an absolute manner, in order that it may be fit to live with Him forever—a purification which extends consequently to the thoughts, the affections, and the manner of viewing things in all respects. Being wholly His, the church has to do with Him in each movement of the heart, in each sentiment; if not, she fails in her relationship with Him, in every circumstance in which it is not so. As to the result which He has in view, He will certainly no more fail in that, thanks be unto God, than He has with regard to the redemption. He will present the church to Himself without spot or wrinkle. But the heart of the Christian ought to respond to that work.

Such is the position of the church, and her relationship with Christ. But there is a consequence resulting from these, the figure of which we have seen in the connection in which Eve was placed with the creation, but on which I will make a few more remarks by the way. Christ, says the apostle, at the end of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, is the Head of the church, “which is His body, the fullness of (or that which makes complete) Him that filleth all in all"; that is to say, Christ is the Head, and the church the body; and as the body is the complement of the head to make up a man, so it is with Christ and the church; He as Head directing, exercising all authority over the church, His body; but the church, as the body, rendering complete the mystical man, according to the eternal counsels of God. For it is evident that this is no question about the divine person of Christ. But in the counsels of God, Christ, as Head, would not have been complete without the church.

Let us remark by the way, that it is this thought which was completely hid (hid in God) under the old covenant; and which is not found in the whole of the Old Testament. The idea of a Christ not perfect, simply in His own person, as an individual, would have been unintelligible to the most advanced saint of the Old Testament. There was to be blessing under His government —but the being a part of the Christ, as a member of His body, would have been incomprehensible. The union between Jew and Gentile, which flows from it, will come before us afterward.

Now, the effect of such a union of the church with Christ, has been to associate the church in His dominion over all things—with all this glory, such as He received it as Mediator from His Father. And such is the force even of Eph. 1:21, 22, which we have just quoted. That is why he sets forth the members of the church as a new creation; as being the fruit of that same power which placed Christ there (chap. 1:19-2:7). And that is connected with the whole of chapter 1, where the apostle has revealed the fixed purpose of God, as to the administration of the fullness of times; which is, that He will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance. In the meantime, God has given us, who have believed before the manifestation of Christ, His Spirit, as the earnest until the redemption of the inheritance itself.

Therefore the apostle shows that, in order that we might enjoy the inheritance with Christ, we are the objects of the exercise of the same power which placed Him above all things, when He was, in grace, in our state; and that, in Him, we are in His state. If it be asked, how such things can be, chap. 2:7 tells us the reason. But numerous declarations confirm the consequences to us of this union. We speak here only of the consequences. “The glory,” says the Lord, “which thou gavest me, I have given them, that the world may know that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8). “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? Know ye not that we shall judge angels” (1 Cor. 6:2, 3)? I do not speak of these things, as being all exclusively characteristic of the church; but, as of things which, to us, are the consequences of our belonging to it.

(Continued from page 158)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 1

No doubt by putting together particular passages in an artful way it is very possible to impose on the ignorant, whether by a show of strength or by a concealment of weakness. I am giving the best conceivable evidence that such a suspicion need enter no man's mind in this case.

The first passage then that occurs to me as bearing directly on the subject before us is found in Jer. 30 There we read of a day of trouble, a time of sore distress, and we are told who are concerned in it. The seventh verse is express: “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.” There can be no doubt as to the force of the passage. This is a time of trouble, of special sorrow, and the one who is said to be involved in it is Jacob—a well-known designation of the Jewish people. They are thus called in their weakness, and trial, and suffering, and bitter experience of their own faults, but at the same time objects of God's faithful care; not looked at as Israel, a prince with God and men, but Jacob, as learning not a little of themselves.

Accordingly we may see how appropriately the term is used here. This time of trouble will come upon the Jews because of their unfaithfulness. God does not willingly afflict the children of men —never His people, but for higher and more blessed objects. Thus we find trouble referred to in these two ways—the loving discipline of a Father who seeks our better blessing, and along with that, in the Christian's case, as we know, the privilege of suffering for righteousness' sake, or, still more, suffering for Christ's sake. But such is not the character of this time of trouble. No scripture intimates it. It is never presented as being an honor: it is a time of judicial sorrow and affliction.

Again, the party here shown to suffer in that time of peculiar trouble is clearly a Jewish one—Jacob. At present I shall not, of course, enter into a detailed proof of the impropriety of applying the terms “Jacob,” etc., to the body of Christ, the church. Perhaps it may be assumed that most persons in this room have no question on this head at least. They know perfectly well that Jacob or Israel, in the Old Testament as well as the New, means the Jews. They know that the Christian church is otherwise characterized, and that the greatest care is taken to keep the new thing distinct from the old, and to mark the distinction. There are principles in common no doubt. There is a great deal of the truth of God in the Old Testament which applies with equal and sometimes with even increasing force to the Christian. No one need question this. For instance, holiness, obedience, submission to the will of God, delight in His ways, suffering for righteousness' sake—all these terms we get in the Old Testament, and they are found even more emphatically true in the case of the Christian and the church. Therefore none can fairly suppose that I weaken the exceeding value of the ancient oracles. If I am addressing my servant, it is quite right that my child should profit by what is said to the other. Again, supposing a wise father might give instruction to a child, it is all well for any other person to profit by it. But then we must not confound the relationships. In the Old Testament clearly the Jewish people are primarily the object of God's direct dealings. In the New Testament the great object, after the Jews had rejected their Messiah, is to bring out the church of God as a new building, characterized after another sort altogether, nevertheless surely bound to profit by all the ways of God, especially with Israel.

Without further notice I assume, therefore, as a thing beside the present mark, and not needing discussion just now, that where the Jews, Israel, Jacob, Zion, Jerusalem, etc., are referred to, these words really do refer to them, not to Christians. If so, the bearing of the word in Jer. 30 is plain enough. The Jews are expressly supposed to be exposed to some exceeding trouble, but with this comfort, that they are to be “saved out of it.” They are not to sink utterly in this time of trouble. Here then we have at least an analogy with one of the parties described at the beginning of this discourse. We have not persons kept from going into the time of trouble, but people that are brought through it. In short, we have the Jews saved out of their most dismal day.

If we turn to the prophecy of Daniel, we find, in the last chapter and first verse, an even stronger statement of the same fact: “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” By this of course the meaning of the passage in Jeremiah is strongly confirmed. There is the same time described, but in yet more emphatic terms. The trouble is to be not only “great,” but none before so great, and never any to be so great again. It is manifest and certain that there can be only one such time. This is important. There is an hour to come beyond all that has passed upon the earth, and no subsequent hour can equal it. It is this very time of which Jeremiah was speaking; for we find, first, Daniel's people; then, involved in that dreadful hour; and, yet more, delivered out of it. These are precisely the three points in the passage already extracted from the elder prophet.

Thus Daniel and Jeremiah do not merely confirm each other mutually, but add exceedingly to the force and clearness of the truth in question. Nothing can be plainer than this conclusion. It is true that the Jews who are brought out of this hour of trouble are supposed to be persons of whom God has a record. They have a real living relationship with Him. That is to say, it is implied that the mass of the Jews will not be brought out of that hour; but as all then alive are to pass through it, so all will be delivered from it who are “found written in the book.”

And this is the more interesting because it is from this same chapter that our Lord Jesus quotes in the discourse recorded in Matt. 24, as well as in Mark 13 In Matt. 24:15 we read thus: “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand),” etc. Now this is a citation from the latter part of Dan. 12. It is evidently implied that many who read it might not understand; at least our Lord particularly cautions those who read to see that they enter into His thought. “Whoso readeth, let him understand.” Never does He discourage from reading; but He would have understanding. His prescient eye foresaw the confusion that would pass over the minds of men, even of His own disciples. He knew well how much earthly objects of one kind and another obscure the spiritual vision. He knew well that there would be all sorts of notions afloat, more particularly about prophecy; so that many children of God mistake, and many more dread, the subject. They feel that there is gross confusion, too much of conjecture, and very little positive truth to build up the soul thereby, and thus they allow their minds often to be prejudiced. Instead of judging the thoughts of men and their systems, they turn aside from that precious word of God which certainly deserves better treatment. Surely it is to their own great loss; and it will be so increasingly; for as darkness sets in, and as all kinds of evil are brought up to the surface of the world, more and more as time goes on, the children of God will need to take heed to every word, and indeed especially to the word which casts divine light on the future.

In fact a man can no more avoid looking forward mentally than he can forbear ordinarily to look forward with his eye. It is the nature of man to do so. He ought to look up; but he certainly looks forward. But if you do not subject your mind to God's word, you will be sure to fill it with your own thoughts, or those of other people. That is, you must either be a student of divine prophecy, or you will be in danger of setting up to be more or less of a prophet yourself. Depend on it that to study believingly, earnestly, humbly, self-distrustingly, the word of God about the future, is exactly the way to keep oneself from being a prophet, and, let me also say, from being a false one. Nobody will turn out a false prophet who is content to be only a student of prophecy.

The word of God then, where Christ, not self, governs, is the truest preservative from all error. I admit there prevails great and strange misuse of scripture. I entreat my brethren, whoever they may be, to watch against this with all earnestness. There is no need of hurrying to a conclusion. It is better to acknowledge our own ignorance; it is much better to wait on God and His word, and meanwhile to confess we do not know this or that. Why should there be haste to form a fully and clearly-defined sketch of what is coming? Be content rather to get truth in a detached way; to let this matter that God reveals in His word fall into your soul, and then another matter, as He gives it. Almost all the mischief is done by forming, or attempting to form, a complete theory when we are but learning the elements. It is far wiser to take the revealed facts of the word of God, and gradually to link them together as we become matured. This is the right way with all truth. It is no otherwise even in science. It is the most serious hindrance to progress when men form a hasty hypothesis, instead of first collecting all the facts; that is to say, they thus foreclose the case, and take the place of being masters when they may be but scantily-taught disciples.

In the things of God, indeed, it is true and certain that there is One pre-eminently capable of teaching, even the Holy Ghost; and we may be perfectly sure that He takes the deepest interest in this; for He was given to show us not merely the things of Christ, but “things to come.” Let us then thankfully and humbly look up to God, that we may be led into all the truth.

Turning then to the words of our Lord Jesus, and the use that He makes of the prophet Daniel, we have the same elements as in the Old Testament, but with especial light and fullness. He was instructing His disciples, no doubt; but evidently a disciple in his then condition might represent either a godly Jew or a Christian. The reason is plain. The disciples were not on proper Christian ground until the death and resurrection of the Savior, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Everyone knows this who bows to scripture about the matter. The proof is very evident. Going up to the temple, attending Jewish feasts, keeping rigorously the traditions of the law and the ordinances of it—no one can say that all this is Christianity in its due form. But it was the condition of the disciples then, and for some time after.

Consequently the disciples were capable of being used, according to the intention of Christ, to represent those who would be raised up in a day that was coming, substantially similar in point of circumstances to themselves; that is, men converted but still connected with Jerusalem, the land, and the hopes of Israel. Such was their condition at this very time, and therefore they were even more fitting representatives of such a state than they could be of Christianity proper. At the same time the Lord does afterward give prophetic anticipations of what would belong to Christians, properly so called. It is entirely a question of the manner in which He was pleased to speak, and the subject of which He treats, which enables us to form a sound judgment in which relation the disciples are viewed.

(Continued from page 776) (To be continued)

Fragment: The Flood

In Enoch translated to heaven before the deluge, and in Noah preserved through it, we have typically the rapture to heaven of the church previous to the Apocalyptic judgments through which a people is preserved for the earth.

1 John 2:6

“He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked.” The italicized pronoun is in the original Greek a word of vivid force. The English reader naturally is unaware of any special emphasis. But it is there, and that in a marked degree. Several times indeed John uses it in this Epistle in reference to our Lord. And it has been beautifully observed by the late Archbishop Alexander that the thought of his Lord, and of the perfect life which he himself had portrayed in the Fourth Gospel, the scroll of which, may be, was beside him as he wrote, half hushes the apostle's voice, and so instead of mentioning the revered name, which all who loved it would easily supply, he consequently merely says “that One” (ἐκεῖνος), that great, that adorable One. This comment is as just and well-warranted as it is exquisitely beautiful.

“He that says he abides in him.” Have we not here in brief the concentrated doctrine of John 15:1-7? And then the tense in which the apostle refers to the Savior's walk sums it all up, as it were. It is the aorist (περιεπάτησε), and presents that spotless life as a perfect whole. Contrariwise, and most appropriately, in the admonition to the professor he enforces the necessity of ever walking as He walked. In short it is the present infinitive, περιπατεῖν.

What endless beauties, “lights and perfections” (may one not say?) are to be found by the reverent student of the holy word!

R. B.

Erratum

Page 171, col. 1, II. 9, 10, 11. Read, “the other two Evangelists suffices, according to the old ordinance cited in Matt. 20:19.

We learn that on the day of His,” etc.

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 2

Even the Jews who to their ruin refused Christ, because they did not hear Moses and the prophets, and who resisting them were not persuaded when He Himself rose from the dead—even they never went so far in presumptuous yet petty criticism as to shut their eyes to the most abundant evidence, external and internal, to the writings of Moses, never dared to deny (as rationalists do) the only light we have for more than half this world's obscure history, besides its highest function of bearing witness to Christ. Never did they presume to say that there is little external evidence for the Mosaic authorship; that what little there is does not stand the test of criticism; or that the succeeding writers of the Old Testament do not confirm it!—all this in the face of such evidence as neither Greek nor Latin classics possess; whose authorship none would dispute but vain or crazy dreamers. Again, no intelligent man questions the claims of Mahomet to writing the Koran, probably not alone, but by the help of an unprincipled Jew. The reason of the difference is plain: not that there is nearly such an amount or excellence of proofs for the authorship of the Koran as for Moses' writings, but that these, not that, appeal so loudly to conscience. The Koran flatters human nature, bribing its own party and bullying others; but the law brings in God, the true God, and testifies of Christ, which flesh fears and dislikes and therefore instinctively seeks to defame, unconscious too often of its sin and shame.

But if it is monstrous to deny the immense and unbroken chain of external evidence to the Pentateuch, were it only in the fact that the entire political and religious life of the Jewish nation turned on it in prosperity and adversity, captive and restored, for fifteen hundred years before Christ, not to speak of what goes on before our eyes till this day; if it is equally so to deny that from Joshua through the Psalms to Malachi the strongest links and the most express statements are given wherever they could be found naturally, what can we think of one who does not shrink from saying with the scripture before his eyes that “the venerable authority” of Christ has no proper bearing on the question? I should have thought that the effort to represent Moses as not the writer of the law as a whole, as lawgiver, not a historian, was manifestly and hopelessly at variance with His authority who condemned the unbelief of the Jews on the ground that Moses not only wrote the law, but wrote it concerning Himself. If there are (as alleged) various irreconcilable contradictions; if there are convincing traces of a later date (beyond such as an inspired editor put for the help of the reader after an immense change in the condition of the people as all admit, Jews and Christians); if the narratives are partly mythical and legendary and only usually trustworthy; if the miracles are exaggerations of a later age; if the voice of God cannot without profanity be said to have externally uttered all the precepts attributed to Him; if Moses' hand laid the foundation, but he was not even the first of those who penned parts, where is Christ's authority? Did He not mean, did not the Jew understand Him to mean, the five books of the law by the writings of Moses? Was He deceived? Does the Evangelist John deceive us (unwittingly it could not be, if the Holy Spirit inspired him) through Christ's words? Certainly, if Dr. D. be true, He who is the truth is not true; and the Gospels are as untrustworthy and misleading as it is possible to be. To state the blasphemy is to refute it; yet such is the inevitable issue if there be one word of reality in what is thus alleged against the Pentateuch.

But if the Lord is, and spoke, the truth, no real believer can fail, though with grief and amazement, to see that the, rationalist stands in the most deplorable and fatal hostility to Christ's authority and to God's word. For if Moses testified the truth of Christ some fifteen centuries before He lived and died, he was a prophet, and inspired of God in what he wrote; and if God gave him, according to the Lord Jesus, to prophesy truly of Him, is it credible that he has written falsely of that of which even an ordinary man might have written truly? If the rationalist speaks aright, the Pentateuch is not Moses' writing, but a bundle of tales true and false, and in not one word written really of Christ; else it would be bonâ fide prophetic, which the system denies in principle; because true prophecy implies God's supernatural communication, and this would be necessarily a deathblow to the criticism of the rationalist.

It is needless to say that the objections derived from internal structure are only conclusive proofs of the rash ignorance of those who make them, and lead us, when cleared away by the light of Christ, into (not mere evidence of the Mosaic authorship, which is ruled definitely to all who respect the word and authority of Christ, but) an increasing sense and enjoyment of the testimony which the honored servant bears to his Master, the Lord of all descried from far but most distinctly by the power of the inspiring Spirit.

If scripture itself gave the slightest information to that effect, there would be no difficulty in supposing ever so many writers contributing to the Pentateuch. The Psalms also consist of five books for an incomparably better reason than, as the Rabbis say, in order to correspond with the five books of the law. I have no doubt that their order is as divine as are the contents and character of each; and that they can be shown to have internal grounds for it of very great interest, instead of being a mere collocation of David's first, and of others afterward, which in no way accounts for some of David's in the last book, and for one of Moses himself the introduction of the fourth book. But we have the sons of Korah, Ethan, Asaph, perhaps Solomon, and others unnamed in addition to the writers already named. But then we know the authors as far as they are mentioned from the inspired account in each case; and the grouping will be found to carry along with it the self-evidencing light of God; for none but He, I am persuaded, could have distributed to each as He has done, or have so tempered them as a body together, securing a moral and prophetic progress in the greater divisions as well as in the unity of the entire collection.

No believer would refuse to the Pentateuch what he owns unhesitatingly in the Psalter, if there were similar grounds of faith. But the declarations of God are clearly and expressly opposed to any such conclusion, and the internal structure of the law too has nothing in common with that of the Psalms, but to my mind falls in so simply and naturally with the single authorship of Moses, that the real difficulty would have been to have supposed more than one if the question otherwise had been absolutely open. If the Lord and the apostles had not corroborated irrefragably the Mosaic authorship, both the style and the line of inspired Jewish witnesses, not to speak of the evident claim of Moses to all implied in Deuteronomy, would point to this conclusion.

If Moses had been led of God to use a quantity of earlier documents for the writing of Genesis, of contemporary records for Exodus or Numbers, I do not see how this could impair the inspiration of the Pentateuch. For we know little of the mode in which God wrought inspiration, though we are authoritatively taught the result; and we cannot but be sensible of its essential difference from all other writings in the working out of the divine purpose, and in the exclusion of human imperfections stamped on it. But even the more sober, who contend for the tessellated composition of the Pentateuch, have as yet presented no evidence but what can he better accounted for otherwise; especially as they confess “a unity of plan, a coherence of parts, a shapeliness, and an order” which satisfy them that, as e.g. Genesis stands, it is the creation of a single mind. Is it not forgotten that the opening chapters, for instance, largely at least, could not have been narrated by Adam himself any more than by Moses from personal knowledge? God necessarily must have communicated the account of creation, as also of the flood, two of the parts most attacked, and one might add with least reason, by infidel temerity.

On the peculiar use of the divine names, and a certain accompanying difference of style, we need not enter much, as this is noticed frequently in its place. I need only say that the Jehovah-Elohim section (Gen. 2:4-ch. 3) pre-supposes the so-called Elohistic one that precedes, as both are assumed in what follows; and the difference of motive truly and fully accounts for all; and that it is the very reverse of the fact that the name of Elohim almost ceases to be characteristic of whole sections after Ex. 6:2; 7:7. On the contrary, it holds good wherever similarly required throughout not the Pentateuch only, but the Psalms (compare books first and second) and the Prophets (see Jonah especially). It is impossible to account for all the facts (not to say for any of them) by the documentary or fragmentary hypothesis.

(Continued from page 180) (To be continued)

Studies in Mark

The Grossness of Gadara

When the inhabitants of the district beheld Jesus who had delivered the demoniac, but who was, in their estimation, the destroyer of their swine, they were unanimous in expressing their desire that He should leave the neighborhood immediately. It was an ungracious, and indeed an insolent, petition, but it was granted, as was that of the demons when they besought Him that they might enter the swine and not be consigned to the abyss. Like Legion, the besotted Gadarenes said, in effect, What have we to do with Thee? There was with them an utter absence of appreciation of either His power or His grace. And they preferred to remain undisturbed with their naked, howling, demonized men and with their filthy swine.

This callous spirit was really a gloomy but accurate reflection of the attitude of the whole nation towards the Messiah, who “came unto His own, but His own received Him not.” And the Lord expressed His sense of this refusal in His lamentation over Jerusalem, “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not” (Matt. 23:37). They did not desire His presence, and were ready enough to raise the cry, “Away with him, away with him; crucify him, crucify him.” It is happy, however, to remember that there were exceptions to this general feeling, While those at Gadara besought Him to depart, those at Capernaum, seeing His miracles, “stayed him that he should not depart from them” (Luke 4:42). And while at a certain village of Samaria the inhabitants refused to receive Jesus (Luke 9:53), at Sychar, another Samaritan town, they besought Him that He would tarry with them (John 4:40).

But whatever the attitude of the few, the spirit of Gadara prevailed throughout the favored land. The Lord had entered the domain of the strong man and spoiled his goods, as the people could not but admit. In spite of this, such was their obstinacy, that they did not desire that this Deliverer from the great and cruel oppressor should dwell in their midst. This rejection of absolute goodness in the person of Christ was the culminating feature of the sin of man. It proved that he not only did what was evil, but hated what was good. The will and the affections were equally alienated from God.

However debased man may become, he is still capable of pride. The degraded Gadarenes were well satisfied with themselves, and wished for no help. To overvalue self is to undervalue Christ. “He who thinks he hath no need of Christ hath too high thoughts of himself. He who thinks Christ cannot help him hath too low thoughts of Christ.”

THE WITNESS FOR DECAPOLIS

The delivered man, on seeing Jesus enter the boat to cross the sea and leave the country, besought the Lord that he might accompany Him. Who can wonder at this desire? The poor fellow owed everything to his Deliverer. And what a relief was his to be freed from the power of such tormentors. And how safe he would feel in the presence of Jesus from any further attacks of the demons. Now he had a pure heart and a right spirit, and nowhere could their renewed aspirations find such satisfaction as in the Person at whose feet he sat. He, like so many others then and since, was irresistibly attracted to the Prophet of Nazareth, and he was ready to leave everything to follow and be with him.

But the Lord had other duties for him. The Servant of Jehovah, in the spirit of omniscient wisdom, regarded the future of this delivered demoniac as it affected the service of the gospel, and not according to the personal inclination of the suppliant. Here was a district which prayed to be relieved of the ministrations of the incarnate Son of God. To this offensive request the lowly Nazarene acceded. But it was a feature of the divine plan for man's eternal blessing that when God's “Faithful and True Witness” was rejected and slain, the place of testimony in the world should be filled by those who, having received of His “fullness,” were His loving and loyal followers. Such a phase of divine service is indicated here by the post of duty which the Master assigned to this recipient of His mercy in Gadara. He was to remain as a witness. If the gross darkness of Decapolis comprehended not the shining of the Light of life, it should still have a light-bearer in the person of the healed demoniac. So the Lord said to him, “Go to thy home unto thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he had mercy on thee.” His home he had formerly abandoned for the charnel-house. His friends he had outraged by his violence. His domestic circle, including these friends and acquaintances, had witnessed his excesses under the demoniacal influence, and to these he was now bidden by the Lord to return that they might judge of the reality of the change wrought in him. As the Lord sent the cleansed lepers to the priest that the genuineness of their healing might be authoritatively attested, so the Lord sent this man to his house that his friends might have opportunity of judging by his conduct what a complete deliverance was his, and moreover that they might hear for themselves from his own lips, eloquent in the enthusiasm of his gratitude, what the Lord had done for him. He was to testify to the Lord's power and to His mercy. For it was a great thing for Jesus to deliver him from the power of Satan with a word, and it was also a merciful thing inasmuch as the man had willfully and wickedly abandoned himself to the power of the evil one.

Such a simple strain of gratitude is acceptable to God. For we find in the Psalms that “great things done” will be the keynote of the song of thanksgiving adopted by the blessed and delivered remnant of Israel when they enter into their millennial joys, as it also was when Jehovah brought back the exiles from Babylon: “When the LORD brought back the captivity of Zion we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for them. The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad” (Psa. 126:1-3).

The man owned the right of the Lord to direct his movements, and obeyed His commands. He thus became a preacher of Christ in ten cities (Decapolis), where he rendered a testimony which resembled the present preaching of the gospel. For while preaching is not itself a miracle, it is essentially a testimony founded upon a divine work.

The witness concerning the miracle created a sensation in the district, for we read “all men did marvel,” as it is the way of man to do at things he can neither comprehend nor imitate. But such an emotion does not affect either the heart or the conscience. This characteristic is several times recorded of the unthinking populace (Matt. 9:33; Luke 11:14; John 7:21), but not of them only, for it was true of the Pharisees and Herodians when they received the Lord's wise answers to their cunning questions (Mark 12:17), as well as of the apostles when they beheld the storm stilled at the word of Jesus (Matt. 8:27; Luke 8:25). On the other hand, the word is applied to our Lord, for we read that Jesus marveled at the obdurate unbelief of men's hearts (Mark 6:6), an application which may well form a topic for our meditation.

THE SIGN TO ISRAEL

There are elements in the narrative of the Gadarene miracle which appear to have a striking analogy to the future history of Israel, and this imparts to it the character of a sign. In scriptural teaching from early days, idolatry is considered a form of demon-rule and demon-worship (Deut. 32:17; Josh. 24:2, 15; Psa. 106:37). The apostle Paul thus speaks, “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God,” and going on to refer to the Corinthians eating that which had been offered in sacrifice to idols, he adds, “I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons” (1 Cor. 10:20). And what the Gentiles did as idol-worshippers, Israel had done (Ezek. 20:7, 8), and will yet do again. Idolatry, which had been intermittent in the chosen land, was established as a national rite by Jeroboam and continued as such until the captivity. From that time until the present the nation has preserved itself from the pollutions of idolatry. But according to prophecy the abomination of desolation shall yet stand in the holy place, and the apostate mass of the Jews shall yet unite in the worship of Antichrist and his image. Israel will again, become Gentile in religion.

The Lord set out this future lapse of the Jews into idolatry parabolically. He said, “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man it walketh through dry places, seeking rest and findeth none. Then it saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when it is come it findeth it empty, swept and garnished. Then goeth it and taketh with itself seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation” (Matt. 12:43-45). This prediction has not yet been fulfilled, but according to it, the unclean spirit of idolatry expelled from the nation some five centuries before the advent of Christ will return, and in a sevenfold greater degree defile and abase the people in the uncleanness of idol-worship.

Using, therefore, the language of this narrative, the herd of swine—the unclean majority or mass of the Jews—possessed by the powers of darkness, will be irresistibly impelled to their own perdition. “Wheresoever the [unclean] carcass is, thither will the eagles [of judgment] be gathered together” (Luke 17:37). Mary Magdalene, out of whom the Lord cast the seven demons, well represents the delivered remnant of that day. The undelivered ones perish in their uncleanness before the millennial dawn. For in the important prelude to the reign of peace, both mercy and judgment will be in exercise. And while the idolaters are swept away, the nation will be purged from the uncleanness of idolatry in accordance with the prophecy of Zechariah: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land” (Zech. 13:1, 2). With this a prophecy in Ezekiel agrees. There Jehovah promised the people: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you” (Ezek. 36:25; see also ver. 18).

The following extract has reference to this aspect of the narrative. “The world beseeches Jesus to depart, desiring their own ease, which is more disturbed by the presence and power of God than by a legion of devils. He goes away. The man who was healed—the remnant—would fain be with Him; but the Lord sends him back (into the world that He quitted Himself) to be a witness of the grace and power of which he had been the subject.

“The herd of swine, I doubt not, set before us the career of Israel towards their destruction, after the rejection of the Lord. The world accustoms itself to the power of Satan—painful as it may be to see it in certain cases—never to the power of God.”

[W. J. H. ]

Notes on Luke 9

CHAPTER 9.—(continued)

Verse 46. “There arose a reasoning which should be the greatest.” What a tale this tells! What a selfishness runs through and through! Even at the Lord's supper it was the same thing. In Luke we find it, where there is so much of what man is, brought out.

We see then, from what we have been tracing, that we need to come down from the hill; not to be without Jesus, but to learn what man is. It is not necessary to come down from the mount, as some people say, lest we should be puffed up there; for we shall, never be puffed up while on the mount. Like Peter we may be afraid, but we are never puffed up in the presence of God. It is when we quit it that we are in danger. Paul was not exalted above measure when in the third heaven; but after he came down, he needed the thorn in the flesh to prevent it.

Besides, there is an historical necessity for us to get through this world. But Jesus was as much with His disciples when they came down as while they were on the mount, and that is our comfort. Do not let us suppose we have lost Christ. We have to serve Him, walk with Him, learn from Him, and mark His patient grace towards us in and through all circumstances. The Lord give us to know, while passing through this world, what a Christ we have, taking our hearts clean out of the defiling circumstances around, so that, whether we get a taste of the glory, or are passing through the crowd of this world, He may be everything to us, as He is everything for us.

The Lord is now showing His disciples the place they are to take upon earth. They are not to be in a position connected with Hill as Messiah in earthly glory—heavenly glory they could not have till the end. In the meantime they have to take their place with Him in rejection, and this put them to the test, for they were to give up things right enough in themselves, for example, to hate father, mother, wife, etc., all which earthly relationships had a claim upon them, and especially so upon the Jew. “Honor thy father and mother,” etc. But all these relationships would not stand in association with the cross. Everything must be sacrificed, everything that linked man with the earth must be snapped asunder to faith, when Christ was rejected. The character of the world was fully manifested in His rejection: its deeds were evil and it rejected the light. The incarnation, which should have been the link to man's blessing, is rejected. He accomplishes redemption by His rejection on earth, and He has a place in heaven.

This alters the character of everything. It brings in the judging of self. There never would have been this if Christ had been crowned on earth. He was “delivered into the hands of men,” etc. He whose very name carried power and authority is to be delivered up. If Christ had had His place on earth, the heart of man would never have been put to the test. Why? Because if men had seen all the dignity and glory displayed on earth which was His right, it would have gratified their flesh with its greatness. But flesh cannot inherit heaven; and what place has it on the cross? There they go together so blessedly —the cross and heaven; and for the flesh there is no place in either. There was a terrible breach between man and God, and the One who would have healed it they crucified. Then every carnal thought that was in accordance with such an act must be judged. The disciples were disputing who should be the greatest—not greatest in the world, but the greatest in the glory. It is self after all. They have not to tell Him much, but their thoughts are judged. When in the light, everything is judged. Jacob had the word from God to go to Bethel (Gen. 35), and he immediately says to his household, “Put away the strange gods that are among you.” And why so? Everything is detected when getting into the presence of God. Jacob could get the blessing before he went to Bethel; but when he goes into God's presence, the idols are judged. When he has got rid of the idols, it is “El-bethel,” the God of Bethel. The disciples were reasoning which should be the greatest, and when He detected their thoughts He “took a child and set him by him,” etc. This shows us our place: we ought to seek the lowest place. We never can have this, because Christ has taken it. He went down under sin, wrath, death. He took the lowest place, because the servant of all. This is the truly happy place for us, but how it judges self! This is what the cross does. Not only are the idols judged, but self is judged.

It is a blessed, thing to have done with self. When there is room for God, we can be full of joy and happiness. We are not humble, even when we are occupied with our own nothingness, or how bad we are; but we are humble when we do not think of ourselves at all. When we have to learn our nothingness and badness, that is being humbled. If we get away from the Lord, we have to be brought back, and that is a humbling process. We want to judge the flesh in ourselves. It is pretty easy to judge it in another, but it is in ourselves we miss it (ver. 50) Things are brought to a crisis. “He that is not against us is for us.”

Mark how conscious the Lord was of His utter rejection by man; so utter that He said, he that is not against us is proved to be for us. Christ was perfect; therefore He was a perfect test to men's consciences; and, as far as He is manifested in us, we shall be so also. Paul could say, “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.” Why could he say so? Because it went out from him as pure as it went in John said, “We forbad him, because he followeth not with us.” That tells the whole tale. They were thinking of themselves, not of Christ; of their own importance, and not His honor. If it had been His importance, they would have thought how blessed it was to find the effect of His name, and rejoiced to know how His power was being exercised by man. But no; they were looking at themselves as well as at the Messiah. Even John was thus using Christ Himself to further his own importance. And is there not something in us of the same thing, a satisfaction at that which aggrandizes self as well as Christ, instead of seeking the honor of Christ alone? The Lord takes him up and answers him on the ground of His utter rejection, which was coming. “He that is not against us is for us.” And mark that the very selfishness of John brings out the grace of Christ. He says “us.” You do not know the lot you have with Me. If you find one who can use the power of My name, rejoice in it.

Verse 51. “It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” I am going to get a portion in heaven, and you are to have the same portion, but it must be through rejection here. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily,” etc. “When the time, was come that he should be received up, he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.” In Isaiah, “I set my face as a flint.” He was accomplishing His Father's will here, as in all His course. Redemption must be accomplished through the cross. He “learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” It was the same obedience as at the beginning, when He was coming amongst them with “Blessed are the poor,” etc.—more painful, and of course He felt the difference; but still He goes in the same blessed spirit and earnestness. Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, etc. He had found it His meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. There was joy to Him in this; but in the cup of wrath which He was going to drink there was no joy. He had met with scorn here, smiting there, rejection all through, but nothing like this cup, and therefore He cried, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” etc. Christ proved His perfectness; for He felt what it was to be “made sin,” etc. His holy nature shrank from it, yet there was the same quiet, steady, patient obedience, for, “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” as all through. He knows His Father's will and He does it. He sets His face there, where His Father’s will is to be done, not looking to this side or to that, but there—Jerusalem.

We, according to the measure we have of the single eye, shall be following in the same course, going to the cross steadily, with one purpose: and, in proportion as we do So, will those who do not so set their face oppose us. But the Lord says, “If any man serve me, let him follow me.” Service is not doing a great deal, but following the Master, and the world and half-hearted Christians do not like that. There is plenty of doing in the world, but “if any man serve me, let him follow me.” Paul wanted to serve every way, but we find the Spirit forbidding him to go into Bithynia or Troas, and yet two years afterward we read that “all Asia heard the word.” God's work was to be done, but it was to be in His time and of His ordering. His servant had only to follow in obedience. It was the same with Moses. Nature would say of him, Why not stay in Pharaoh's court that the people there may be converted, instead of leaving it? Flesh cannot understand what faith leads to. Afterward he goes out in all the earnestness of his spirit; natural energy comes in, but then there is no deliverance. Moses has to go and keep sheep for forty years, to be broken down and made nothing of; and what were Israel to do all that time? To wait. Then, when he comes back to serve them, how is it done? There is the flesh appearing in another way. “Lord, I am not eloquent.” Then Aaron is sent back with him, and the work is done in the power of God.

Verse 52. “They went and entered into a village of the Samaritans, etc. (ver. 53). We see the reason why they did not receive Him was because His face was set towards Jerusalem. His obedience and singleness of eye, going to do God's will without honor or attractiveness or repute, going to Jerusalem, is the very reason they would have nothing to do with Him (ver. 54). See the religious opposition of the disciples to them. The Samaritans would not submit to God's way: Christ did. That is the difference; and the disciples want to command fire to come out of heaven as Elias did, and at the very place where Elias worked the miracle. In fleshly reasoning they think Christ was as worthy as Elias to call down fire. This is a more subtle kind of self than the other. It seemed like direct zeal for Christ, but they did not understand the zeal of Christ. He was not come for judgment nor to destroy men's lives, but to suffer Himself for them. If they had known God's thoughts, they would have submitted quietly. Peter again understood not the Lord's mind when he drew his sword and smote the servant of the high priest. All the miracles of Elias were characterized by the spirit of judgment, not like Elisha who had his commission from heaven. Elijah stood in the place of judgment and righteousness, like John the Baptist who came in the spirit and power of Elias, saying, “Every tree that bringeth not forth fruit shall be hewn down,” etc., and “the ax is laid to the root of the trees.” Elisha had life-giving power, on the contrary, and was a type of grace. Elijah passed through Jordan (death in type), while Elisha starts from the other side of Jordan in resurrection.

Verse 56. He turned round and went to another village. It is not pleasant to be trodden upon in this world, but Christ was. To do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently, is what we have; and is it to end there? Yes, and that is “acceptable with God.” Christ came to suffer, to bear anything for the sake of others; and He would not have been doing this, if He had called down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans. We have to follow Christ in carrying the testimony of God's love into the world in all our walk through it. The world needs it. We must not be seeking for ourselves, but have Christ the object. At the end of the chapter He goes on to show how the links with this world are to be broken.

Verses 57, 58. One says, “Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest,” but Christ puts him to the test. You cannot go if you do not take up your lot with One who had not where to lay His head; for you may sooner go to the birds of the air for a nest, or to the foxes for a hole, than to the Son of man for a home in this world. They were not now to come to Him as the One who had the promises, etc., but to One whose portion was utter and entire rejection. Following Him could not be accompanied with ease and comfort here. He was to be delivered into the hands of men. At His birth we see the same thing. Every one found room in the inn save He, but any who wanted to find Him whom angels celebrate must go to the manger!

Verse 59. He says to one, “Follow me.” The first one wanted something with Christ; but here where He says, “Follow me,” then immediately a difficulty is started; and it is when He calls a man that difficulties are felt. There was no sense of the difficulties of the one who said, “Lord, I will follow thee,” without His call. But this man who is called says, “Let me first go and bury my father.” He is going presently, but there is a link felt. Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead"; you must leave them to follow Me. You may be ready to say, the things of the earth have no power over you; but just try what it is to leave them, and you will learn the extent of their power. A man may go to the length of his cord, but when he gets to the end he is checked. A father had the first claim in nature, and especially to a Jew, but Christ says, I am calling you out in the power of life; I am putting in My claim for the life I give you, and it breaks every bond here. It is a question of life in the midst of death. The word “first” (let me first go and bury my father) shows something put before Christ, as though the man said, There is something I put before Your calling. Death had come in, and this very plea told Christ they were all under death. It was quite a right thing for the man to bury his father; but if life has come in, and the question is one of redemption, to be lost or saved, you must give yourself up to it. In the divine light which is in the cross, He saw all dead, and therefore He said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The one thing to be done now is to follow Christ. The question is, Death in the world or life in Christ? Where are the affections?

Verse 61. “Another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house.” In the previous case it was just this: When my first affections are settled, then will I come and follow Thee. There is no good in that: the Lord says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” But this case shows that those at home were not left in heart. He felt he had to break with them, and yet his heart lingered. “No man looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” “Remember Lot's wife.” “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” If Christ be not first and last, He will always be last, for faith is not in exercise. The question is, whether we are walking as seeing what the cross tells us. The cross lifts the veil, showing the skeleton of the world, and when I see this sentence on all that is in the world, on self as well as what is outside, and our links of affection with it, I learn that all is to be given up: but there is Christ Himself and the love which is in Him to meet it. It will and must judge self: and it brings out the will too, for there is a great deal of will in all this shunning of the cross.

People may speak of the claims of affection, yet it is not really and only family affection, etc., but the end which connects with self is felt. Natural affection there should be—indeed it is one of the signs of the last days to be without it; but if you have power to judge yourselves, you will find that many an excuse you make has this secret at the end. So in affliction, bereavement, etc., it is not only the affection that is touched, but the will. There is sweetness in the sorrow, so long as we realize Christ in it, and affection only is sorrowing. But if the will is touched, there is rebellion, resistance, struggling; and all this the Lord must judge, for a mass of flesh and self can never follow Christ. What a wonderful detail all this is! It is God going through our hearts entering into every corner and crevice. Why? Because of the constant undeviating steadfastness of His love; and as a father loves his child when it is naughty, as well as when it is good, so our God takes pains, as it were, with us all, even when so bad.

The effect of all is not only to make us practically righteous, but happy— “imitators of God as dear children.” It is well, on the one hand, for us to judge ourselves and see what there is to detect in us, and, on the other, to see the fullness of His grace in Christ.

May the Lord give us to feel more and more that “the friendship of the world is enmity with God,” and that the energy of the flesh cannot accomplish the work of God, so that we may learn to work from God, for God, and with God.

Christ the Source of Life: Part 1

The General Character of John's Gospel

The subject of eternal life is peculiar to the fourth of the Gospels. And that this peculiarity should be found there will not be a matter for surprise when the character of this Gospel is remembered—a character which is easily observed on comparison with the others. For while the Synoptics, as the first three are often called by way of distinction, set out the varied glories of Christ as the One who was deputed, in mercy and righteousness, to establish God's order in a world of disorder and sin, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” was inspired to write upon a more exalted theme. To him was assigned the high and holy task of presenting, in His divine nature, the Person of Him who came forth from the Father. In other words, John gives us the Godhead side of the marvelous and mysterious Incarnation, not stated in the abstract terms of a philosophical disquisition, but exemplified for our spiritual apprehension in the words and actions of Jesus the Son of God.

In this Gospel, then, the children of God have the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, and receiving this by faith we receive Him, and receiving Him we receive Him that sent Him. Yet it is well to remember that this reception on our part must be in a progressive sense. Nathanael may exclaim in wondering rapture at a transient vision of His glory, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel"; and Simon Peter, illuminated by the revelation of the Father may confess, “Thou art the Son of the living God.” But this knowledge of theirs must deepen and develop before either the one or the other can attain to that stage of Christian growth at which a person is said to know Him who is from the beginning (1 John 2:14).

THE INFLUENCE OF THIS GOSPEL UPON THE NEW LIFE

It is a matter of common experience among the simplest of believers that the Gospel of John possesses an irresistible attraction above other parts of Scripture. And this attraction, apart from the recognition of the all-absorbing Personality who shines in radiant glories throughout its chapters, is inexplicable. The new nature turns instinctively to Him who is its source of light and life and love. Hence we always in the devout reading of this Gospel discover heights and depths altogether beyond our comprehension. We feel an inexpressible sweetness which is nowhere else. We recognize that its study brings us into a sphere of elevating and ennobling influence such as we love. Why is this so? Is it not because we have here the dignities and glories of the Lord Jesus Christ? The record of His majesty captivates our heart's affections. We cannot but rejoice to learn the greatness of Him who comes so near to us in His love. We delight in the knowledge of the glory of Him in whom we trust. We see that He is not one of ourselves, not one of the saintly personages of divine history, not one of the mighty angels from above, but the Son of God, the Word become flesh. And He is, therefore, One whom, in His ineffable love, we cannot but worship and adore.

The only-begotten Son has revealed the Father and His love. Clearly we could not have penetrated heaven to obtain the knowledge of this love. Neither is such a task now needful, since this love in its glory and heavenly perfection has been brought down to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. And to know Him and the Father who sent Him is eternal life.

This knowledge comes to us through the Scriptures. Hence it is that the Gospel of John which testifies of the Son as the Revealer of the Father exercises such a powerful influence upon the spiritual life. The perusal of it develops the essential quality of deep reverence. It is not sufficient to love, we should also honor a loved one. And for all believers there is need that the habit of reverence should be acquired and practiced. For we are exposed in a greater degree than we sometimes realize to the serious danger of undervaluing the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are liable to depreciate His work for us and His care for us. But the scriptural record affords a needful corrective of these natural tendencies, the Gospels and Epistles of John setting the Lord before us in the very atmosphere of heaven, as it is written, “The Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13). When we see Him we see the Father. When we hear Him, we hear the One who is in the bosom of the Father. And such experience as this cannot but affect the most deep-seated springs of our inner spiritual life.

THE NATURE OF LIFE UNKNOWN

We have seen that there is an intimate relation between the subject of eternal life and that aspect of the Incarnation revealed through the apostle John. It is clear that apart from the possession of eternal life there is no apprehension of the Father nor the Son. The sheep know the Shepherd, but then He gives them eternal life. The fact of this gift is declared plainly enough, but the nature of the life bestowed is, in its essence, unrevealed and therefore remains unknown. That portion of Holy Writ which is so full of references to life eternal as possessed by the family of God contains no definition of the nature of this subtle principle. What the new life is abides a mystery inscrutable to psychological and every scientific inquiry, just as physical life, that is, the life which is the common possession of mankind, baffles all research into its nature and origin. Nor can the enshrouding veil be lifted even in the case of the lowliest organism. God has reserved, to Himself the knowledge of the mystery of life, whether in man or in monad. This is true in the natural order of things, and it is certainly true in the matter of spiritual life.

However, we do not find that this ignorance of the nature of physical life in any way interferes with the faithful discharge of its duties and responsibilities. Were such knowledge necessary in spiritual things we may be sure it would have been revealed. And it is worthy of remark that the many references to this subject in scripture are made in terms which are addressed not so much to the intelligence as to the heart. The various statements are not susceptible to analysis and definition like the theme of a philosophical treatise.

Life itself—the fact of it, the truth of it—is the main thing. And the knowledge of this we receive on the authority of the word of God. We know we are born of God not only by the subjective evidence of our own love to God and to the brethren (1 John 3:14; 5:1), but by the objective testimony of the record that God has given of His Son.

The truth of eternal life is the truth of our present life. It is the basis of our being now children of God. And this life is in the Son. As to the old creation it is true that in God we live and move and have our being, and as to the new creation our life is hid with Christ in God.

THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF THE SON

We are now brought to the theme of the chapter before us. For in John 5 we learn that the origin—the source—of divine Life is the Lord Jesus Christ. This life may be and is utterly beyond our comprehension, but we may derive much comfort from the knowledge that it originates with the ever-living Son. And it is as the Quickener that He displays Himself in this connection. Moreover, in this act of quickening, which is essentially a divine one, He claims to exercise His own sovereign right— “the Son quickeneth whom he will.”

Now the sovereignty of our Lord is prominently displayed throughout this chapter, and indeed is especially noticeable in the incident of healing with which it opens. The person healed was one of a great company of afflicted folk, all of whom were desirous to avail themselves of what relief there was to be obtained at the troubling of the waters of Bethesda. But the Lord chose to go to this company, without any invitation, so far as the record goes. And He went among them as One who had His sovereign rights in this world, making a selection from the crowd according to the good pleasure of His own will.

We must remember that this man, desperate and pitiable as his case was after thirty-eight years' suffering, was not thereby entitled to demand relief from God. Neither had he physical strength to seek Him who came from heaven to render relief. But the Lord sought him where he was. In this He was exercising His right. So on another occasion He demanded the use of an ass with the simple statement of His paramount rights: “The Lord hath need of him.”

But this is altogether an exceptional instance; for throughout the Gospels we have many examples of individuals coming to Jesus and seeking some favor from Him, and when the case was stated the Lord readily gave more even than was asked. And if crowds came He would help and bless them all. There was mercy for any and for all.

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

What Is the Church? 3

After this short review of the position of the church, with regard to Christ, and the whole creation which will be subjected to Him; we will consider, in a more consecutive manner, the doctrine of the word respecting the church itself, and then the position it holds historically, in those ways of God, the course of which is given to us in detail in the Bible.

The fixed purpose of God, as it is expressly revealed to us in the first chapter of Ephesians, is to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. The church will be associated with Him, as His body—His bride—at that time (Eph. 1:22, 23, 27). But all things are not yet put under Him. God has not yet put them all, as a footstool, under His feet; nor is the church as yet presented in glory to Christ, who as yet is sitting on the right hand of God (Heb. 2:8). It is needless to quote passages to prove that the church is not yet glorified nor raised. We are, dear Christian reader (you and I), proofs of it—though happy to be so —waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

Whilst waiting, then, for the happy moment of our meeting with Jesus—is there still a church? Did it enter into the thoughts of God, that there should be a church upon earth, till the final accomplishment of His magnificent designs respecting her glory in heaven? There can be no doubt about it, to one that is subject to the word. Let us examine the word on this point. Christ Himself is the first to announce the commencement of the church “Upon this rock I will build my church.” The declaration that the gates of hell should not prevail against it, shows plainly that it is not a question of the church already presented in glory. It is upon earth. I would notice a few important points which are revealed by this passage. The church was yet to begin. Christ, recognized as Son of the living God, was to form the foundation of a new work upon the earth. The fact that there are believers upon the earth, and even believers acknowledging Jesus to be the Christ, does not constitute the church. It was so when Jesus spoke, and yet the church was still to be builded. This was a work to be done as regarded the children of God; which thought is confirmed by a declaration of John, respecting the involuntary prophecy of Caiaphas, that Jesus should die for the Jewish nation; “and not for that nation only,” adds the apostle, “but that he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.”

There were already children of God, but they were scattered abroad—isolated. Christ, by His death, was to gather them together; not merely to save them, so that they might be together in heaven (since they were children of God, that was done already), but He was to gather them together in one. They were believers already, but the church was yet to be builded, by the gathering together of these believers, and that upon the earth. We know that this has now taken place as a fact, through the word of Jesus, and through the power of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. We may cite here, the request of Jesus that not only those already manifested, but those also who should believe through their word, might be one, that the world might believe.

Before passing on to the Epistles, we may remark by the way that the Lord, besides the general idea of the church which He was about to build, gives us an insight into the practical operation of the assembly, in detail (Matt. 18); attaching to it, at the same time, the efficacy of this operation, and the authority of heaven itself —though but two or three should thus form the assembly—provided it was really in His name they were thus met. How precious the light that the word affords for times of darkness!

But, through the descent of the Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the church has received a much fuller development. The fact of her existence is declared in Acts 2 “All that believed were together, and had all things in common,” and “the number of them was” already “three thousand.” “And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." The union, and unity of the saved ones, were accomplished, as a fact, by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. They formed one body upon the earth; a visible body, owned of God, to which all whom He called to the knowledge of Himself joined themselves, and that as led of the Lord, who was working in their hearts. It was the church of God, so far composed of Jews only. The patience of God was yet waiting in Jerusalem; and if this city owed ten thousand talents, by the death of Jesus, He was still proposing repentance by the testimony of the Holy Ghost. God was remembering mercy, and declaring that on the repentance of the nation, guilty as they were, Jesus would return.

This is the subject of Acts 3. But Jerusalem turned a deaf ear to the call; and subsequently her rulers, resisting, as always, the Holy Ghost, stoned him through whom He was testifying. From that time, though the unity of the whole was preserved by the conversion of Cornelius, a new instrument of the sovereign grace of God appears on the scene. Saul, who had been himself consenting also unto the death of Stephen—Saul the persecutor—the expression of the hatred of the Jews against the Christ—becomes the zealous witness of the faith he had sought to destroy. But this sovereign grace, whilst still mindful of the Jews, no longer goes out from Jerusalem as its starting point. It was from Antioch, a city of the Gentiles, that Paul went forth to fulfill his apostolical work. But this event was accompanied by a very remarkable development of the doctrine of the church; or rather preceded by a revelation, which made not a new gospel (for the way of salvation is ever one and the same), but a new starting-point in the preaching of this gospel as regarded the person of Christ Himself.

Up to this time, although they had preached a Christ exalted, the only Savior; yet it was as a man known amongst the Jews by signs and miracles, as they knew; and whom God had raised and made both Lord and Christ. I need not say that this testimony was quite according to God, and in its proper place in the midst of the Jews. “Ye also,” the Lord had said, “shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” Peter and the other apostles, having accompanied Christ during the time of His ministry, followed Him up to the time that the cloud received Him out of their sight. They had received the testimony, that He should return in like manner. The consequence was that the relations of Christ with the Jews were always maintained on the ground of faith in Him—exalted to the right hand of God, no doubt, but—whose scepter was to go out from Sion, and who awaited the repentance of His people. But we have seen the testimony of the Holy Ghost to a glorified Christ rejected by the blinded nation; and the death of Stephen, in making this rejection signally manifest, reveals to us the Son of man, in the glory of heaven, receiving the spirit of His servant above, instead of returning to Israel here below. This transition from the character of the Christ, or Messiah, to that of Son of man (suffering, and inheriting all things in heaven and on earth) is often taught by Jesus in the Gospels. See, for instance, Luke 9 It is now being accomplished as a fact; the Lord, at the same time, not losing His rights as Christ. They are reserved for the age to come.

But here, Paul enters on the scene; and God, whilst continuing His work at Jerusalem, begins a new one; and that by a new revelation of His Son, to him who was not to know Him personally after the flesh. Saul sees Jesus for the first time in heavenly glory, too resplendent for human sight. It is not Jesus known upon earth, made Lord; but the Lord of glory who, as such, declares that He is Jesus. But for Paul and his ministry, where is He found on earth? In those who are His. Seen unequivocally as Lord in heaven, Saul asks, “Who art thou, Lord?” “I am — “replies the Lord, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” The saints were Himself—His body. The conversion of Paul identifies itself with the full revelation, of the union of the Lord in glory with the members of His body upon earth. His starting point, his knowledge of salvation, could not be separated from these two things. They are reproduced in his epistles. Thus (2 Cor. 4) he says, “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” This, whilst setting forth in a still more striking manner the worth of His sufferings, invested at the same time the preaching of the apostle with a peculiar character.

I will not enlarge on this part of the relations of Paul with Christ; in order that we may come to that which concerns more directly our subject, the church. Whatever God's ways upon earth might be, it is evident that all question of Jew and Gentile was at an end, when the question was about the Lord of glory and the members of His body. The relations became heavenly, and, in the unity of the body of a Christ thus known in heaven there was neither Jew nor Gentile. The church was upon earth according to this revelation of her position, for she was persecuted; but she was identical with the Lord in heaven; it was He (the Lord glorified) who was persecuted in His members.

To what precious ground does not this introduce the heart! We have, and that from the mouth and the heart of the Lord Himself, the strongest expression of our union with Him; that He considers the feeblest member of His body as a part of Himself. Let us pursue, however, our subject, that we may get the doctrine as a whole.

(Continued from page 174) (To be continued)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 2

Let us apply these principles to what we have here before us. What originated the discourse? The admiration expressed by some of the disciples at the beautiful stones of that splendid and wonderful fabric which was then the special adornment of Jerusalem. But the Lord told them that every stone should be thrown down, not one be left upon another. Is this Christianity? It was Christ predicting the downfall of Jerusalem, and the overthrow of their temple. Does this overthrow any of our hopes? It has nothing to do with our place and relationships. It had a vast deal to do with Jewish feeling and thought and expectation.

The Lord accordingly gives first various general warnings which dealt with them as they then were. In the 15th verse He comes to something much more precise. He launches out into the circumstances that surround the end of the age, and says, addressing them naturally as representatives of those faithful Jews who should be in those days “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand), then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains.” Who can be so bold (to say the least) as to affirm that this is a picture of the church at large? Do you suppose that Christians would ever be contemplated in the land of Judea alone? Clearly not. All is plain if He is speaking about Jews—godly ones no doubt, but Jews in that particular land. It is not at all a prophetic declaration as to the saints of God in different parts of the world. It is here nothing but a view of what would be in a future day in that land alone. We all understand that the mission of the gospel of the kingdom to all nations is to be from that land as from a center; but in verses 15, 16, etc., He speaks exclusively of those in that land. “Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.” Their flight was to be so immediate, that if a man was on the housetop, he was not to come down through the house; and if he was out, he was not to come back for what might seem ever so necessary.

I know there are many persons of old and to this day who apply this to the past siege of Jerusalem. But the proper prophecy of the past destruction of Jerusalem is a part of Luke 21, not Matt. 24. There our Lord speaks about Jerusalem as encompassed with armies; but there is no such sign as the setting up of the abomination of desolation, no such rapid flight called for; and, in point of fact, every one who knows history at all must know that there was neither one nor other as in Matthew, but exactly as Luke says in the past siege of Jerusalem. The Roman lieutenant who came and encompassed the city did not at all demand to be at once heeded after this peremptory sort. There were months that elapsed between the retirement of Cestius Gallus and the arrival of the still greater force under the emperor when the destruction of Jerusalem took place some years afterward. That is to say, there was plenty of time to get away, family, friends, baggage and all. There was no need, therefore, for so urgent a flight. All this is to me decisive, that our Lord did not in the first Gospel refer to the past historical siege of the city. There He says, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place.” This, we have seen, is never once referred to in Luke 21; but another fact, as follows— “And when ye shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.” There is not a word here about coming down from the housetop; not a word that forbids the man in the fields from coming back. In short, it is a different and more ordinary state of things, characterized as “the days of vengeance,” etc, “great distress in the land and wrath upon this people,” but not speaking of the tribulation, as Matthew and Mark do, and consequently without the citation from Daniel. The times of the Gentiles clearly run on after the siege in Luke, and as clearly not after the scenes of which Matthew and Mark speak. There is a flight enjoined, but no such instant flight as in Matthew. There is an analogy, and nothing more, between the past siege and the future of Jerusalem; but the past event, as Luke reports, admitted of a retreat from the city far more quietly, and with greater ease for their escape to Pella, etc. The future siege will demand a peremptory flight from Jerusalem, according to the word of God given by Matthew, who consequently (not Luke) speaks of the end of the age.

Coming back, then, to the earlier Gospel, the Lord says, “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day.” We see that it is not a question of the world at large. The winter would not affect all the earth at the same time; what is winter in one place is summer in another. It is not a universal picture. Again, there is “the sabbath day.” Everyone here, it is to be hoped, knows that such is not the name of the Lord's day. We as Christians very properly keep not the seventh day, but the first. A man who does not know thus much has a great deal to learn, it seems to me. Christians deny, and very rightly, that there would be any sin, in case of death, or sickness, or any peremptory call, to walk a mile and a half in order to do good to a neighbor, or to seek the blessing of an enemy. I suppose there are many here in this room who would feel perfectly ready to go twenty miles, if they could visit twenty sick persons in the course of a Lord's day. All Christians surely would not censure but value it. What do I infer from this? That the Lord is not speaking here of Christians at all. He contemplates godly Jews who are to be under the sabbatic law, and who would feel themselves in a grievous dilemma, therefore, if they had to flee on that day. He says to such, “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter” (when inclemency might hinder), “neither on the sabbath day” (when legally their flight could not be permitted). Then He gives as the reason for all— “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

The conclusion to be formed from these considerations is this, that our Lord was addressing the disciples as representing future godly Jews “every one that shall be found written in the book,” not Jew as such simply, but the godly remnant of the last days, those that shall be delivered out of the final and awful tribulation. He is referring, in short, to the very same period as Jeremiah in his chapter 30, and as Daniel in his chapter 12. Our Lord makes this to be still more manifest, from the fact that He quotes from this very twelfth chapter of Daniel. If there could be any doubt about it here, we have His discourse again in the corresponding passage of Mark (chapter 13), where it is said, “But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take anything out of his house: and let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment.” Thus we see Mark does not take up the same ground as Luke, but agrees with Matthew.

Remember, there is no discrepancy whatever. No more impudent belief can well be, than to set one part of the New Testament against another, or indeed any part of the Bible against another. Such a handling of scripture is not only dishonest, but profound ignorance. There is not in all the Bible one passage that really contradicts another. Of course, there are passages that may seem at variance; but then, as we begin to get a little more light, these diminish in their number; and hence modesty would feel, if there were but fuller light, all the appearances of inconsistency would vanish away. It is just the same thing in the moral world, nor is it otherwise in the natural world. There are everywhere apparent contradictions and exceptions, but a larger knowledge of things bring these under a deeper rule. So it is with the word of God. Greater spiritual wisdom causes these apparent anomalies to disappear. Sometimes they may be in the translation; sometimes they may be in faulty manuscripts of the original; sometimes, and most frequently, they are in our own understanding. But the great lesson learned throughout is, that the Bible becomes more manifestly the word of God in its every detail. No doubt the more ignorant people are, the more fault they find with the Bible; the wiser they become, the more they rejoice in it, and bless God for it.

(Continued from page 192) (To be continued)

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 3

But it is worthy of note that the Lord distinctly attributes to Moses not merely the substance but the writing of Deuteronomy (Mark 10:5). There can be no doubt that the Pharisees refer to the injunction in Deut. 24; on which the Lord declares that not “a later writer” but “Moses wrote you this precept.” How grievous the unbelief then which does not tremble to say after such an utterance, “it is certain that Moses himself could not have written the book of Deuteronomy, nor made such changes in the old legislation as are contained in the discourses of the book!” To say that the work was impossible to one whose eye was not dimmed nor his natural force fled till he died is unwise. Besides, had it been otherwise, or had he seen fit as it was, an amanuensis (one or more) would not detract any more from Moses' writing than Tertius did from Paul's.

As to the fact of changes, such as Num. 18:18, compared with Deut. 12:17, 18; 15:19, 20, they are due to the difference in the character and object of the books: the one having the wilderness in view; the other the settlement in the land, where we see not only the importance given to the central place of worship which Jehovah their God would choose, but also the joining of all, including the priests, the Levites, in the exulting joy of blessings already possessed. To infer, from the circumstance of Moses addressing the people in the affecting form of a homiletic recapitulation, that he of his own motion rescinded what Jehovah had ordained, is as wanton as to deny Jehovah's title to modify according to moral design in a changed state of things. Yet this puerility is made much of more than once.

It may be also observed that the Lord Jesus (Matt. 19:4, 5) attributes to God the words cited from Gen. 2:24: “He which made them... said, For this cause shall a man leave father,” &c. It was Moses that wrote; but it was God speaking none the less. Rationalism denies both through confiding in an ignis fatuus of criticism.

But the inspired apostles also are explicit. Thus Peter (Acts 3:22, 23) cites the famous passage as to the prophet from Deut. 18, and affirms that Moses said so. Rationalism shrinks neither from refusing the book to Moses nor from declaring that the correct interpretation rejects all but the one sense the succession of prophets or prophetic order in general, while it allows the adaptation to Jesus to be reasonable, or an argumentum ad hominem! To minds of this bias it adds no more weight that Stephen too quotes it as the language of Moses, and with evident reference to the Messiah (Acts 7:37).

Paul again cites freely from the law, and in the same chapter of Romans (10:5,19) cites twice from portions in a sense diametrically opposed to neological criticism: in the former, Lev. 18:5; in the latter, Deut. 32:21, which it relegates to two different and much later writers. It is not a question of Paul as a man, but of Paul writing in the Spirit. Did not He know the truth? Has He told it? We cannot speak of the Holy Spirit thinking this or that: He knew all. To suppose that He did not know is as false as that He kept up a fiction is impious. No, it is only man who has deceived himself again through trusting his own thoughts against the plain word of God.

1 Cor. 10:1-11 is a passage of much moment for the consideration and correction of those influenced against the theopneustic or inspired character of the history of Exodus and Numbers. The passage of the Red Sea is denied to be literal history. The cloud; the manna; the water from the smitten rock; the punishment of the murmurers, etc., are viewed as more or less legendary. The apostle affirms that all these things happened to them as types, and that they are written for our admonition. Thus he attaches a divinely prophetic character to the accounts which rationalism slights. Ought it to be a question whether the apostle or a neologian has the mind of God?

Heb. 11 is quite as weighty a test, and yet more comprehensive in its survey of the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament. The apostle (verse 3) accepts creation as a literal fact; the rationalist endeavors to show “its mythical character.” But both Prof. Powell and Dr. Davidson misstate the case in order to place Gen. 1 in opposition to facts. It is not correct that “the chapter can only convey the idea of one grand creative act, of a common and simultaneous origin of the whole material world, terrestrial and celestial, together with all its parts and appendages, as it now stands, accomplished in obedience to the divine fiat, in a certain order and by certain stages, in six equal successive periods,” etc. So the late Mr. P., in whose wake follows Dr. D., who says that “the first verse of Genesis is a summary account of the six days' work which follows in detail. On the first creative day God produced the matter of the world, and caused light to arise out of it. Hence it is implied that the world was created only about six thousand years ago. But geology teaches most incontrovertibly that the world must have existed during a long period prior to the races of organized beings now occupying its surface. Thus geology and scripture come into collision as to the age of the earth.

I affirm, on the contrary, that Moses was inspired so to write Gen. 1:1-3 as to avoid with the greatest precision and certainty the very error which these writers attribute to him. It is easy to see their desire to array geology against the Bible. But the incontrovertible fact is, that the usus loquendi proves that the first verse is not a summary of what follows in the six days' work, but an initiatory act sui generis, the groundwork of all that follows no doubt, and as distinct from verse 2 as both clearly are from verse 3, where the first day's work begins. The copulative vau connects each verse, but of itself in no way forbids an immense space, which depends on the nature of the case where no specification of time enters. In the first two verses there is no limitation whatever; and hence in these instances all is open indefinitely. Had the conjunction (which I translate “and” in all these cases, not “but”) been wanting, the idea of a summary heading would have naturally followed in accordance with the phraseology elsewhere, as at the beginning of chaps. 5; 6:9, etc.; 10:1, etc., passim; 11:10, etc., 27, etc.; 25:12-17, 19, etc.; 35: 22-26; 36:1, etc., passim; 46:8, etc., passim; Ex. 1, 6 etc. It is needless to pursue the proof. It is the necessary phraseology not of Hebrew only but of every conceivable language. In no tongue could one rightly prefix such a clause as Gen. 1:1 as “a summary account of the six days' work.”

The truth is that the first verse of the chapter states with noble simplicity the creation of the universe—not of matter on the first day, but of the heavens and the earth—without the smallest note of days. There is another and wholly different notation of time, “In the beginning,” reaching back to the farthest point when God caused (not crude matter, nor chaos, but) the heavens and the earth to be. The second verse coupled with it describes, as even Dr. D. admits, a state of chaos or destruction, but not universal; for the earth only, not the heavens, was the scene of utter confusion. I am surprised that a sensible man did not see the incongruity of this with his previous position, and still more with the admirably perfect statement of verse 1. Contrary to the style of Moses, and to the genius of Hebrew and indeed of universal grammar, he asserts the first verse to be a summary of the entire six days' work. But if so, such a summary cannot be the bare creation of matter. For matter is not said to be produced on any one of these days, but contrariwise its previous existence is assumed throughout their course from first to last. On the other hand, if he says that verse 1 means the production of matter, he abandons his own thesis that it is a synoptical view of the six days' work. Does he then take verse 2 as God producing the matter of the world? How, if so, can it also mean universal chaos or destruction? Perhaps he thinks that the first clause of verse 2 means this, and that the last points to the production of matter; but here again he is entangled in the strange conclusion that the universal chaos or destruction—destruction of what?—precedes the production of matter. If he concede, as I think he must on reconsideration, that God producing the matter of the world is not the meaning either of the first or of the last clause of verse 2, it follows that his exposition is fundamentally erroneous, and that matter must have been produced before, unless he fall back on the Aristotelian absurdity of eternal matter, which is a virtual denial of creation in the proper sense, and indeed betrays an atheistic root. From this he saves himself by the statement that “on the first creative day God produced the matter of the world, and caused light to arise out of it.” The reader, however, has only to read the record in order to see that Dr. D. interpolates here the production of matter without the least warrant from the inspired account of the first day, and contrary to the clear intimation of the verses that precede it. The production of matter is supposed before the chaos of verse 2, and is involved in the creation of verse 1.

Thus scripture is more exact than the natural philosophy of Mr. Baden Powell, or the system of Aristotle, or the exegesis of Dr. S. Davidson. It asserts the grave truth of the creation of the heavens and the earth, but expressly not “as it now stands,” nor with the “parts and appendages” which were formed in the days which preceded Adam. We have no connection of day or night in this earliest phase, any more than the state of disruption and ruin that is described so graphically in verse 2. Vast tracts of time may have passed ere verse 3—not “innumerable periods of past duration in one unbroken chain of regular changes." But Dr. D. is ill-informed in the facts which geology is slowly building up into a consistent science, if he ignores the proofs of repeated and extraordinary breaks and upheavals, when anarchy was again followed by fresh creative energy, and then by order. So it was, if M. D'Orbigny and other men of the highest reputation may be trusted, for some thirty successive and stupendous revolutions of this earth before the week when man stands at the head of a suited realm subjected to him by the Creator.

(Continued from page 195)(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 5:21-24: The Petition of Jairus

5:21-24

“And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat unto the other side, a great multitude was gathered unto him: and he was by the sea. And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and seeing him; he falleth at his feet, and beseecheth him much, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death: I pray thee, that thou come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be made whole, and live. And he went with him; and a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him” (v. 21-24, R.V.).

At this point in the course of the gospel narrative, events in Capernaum are introduced which illustrate yet another phase of the ministry of Jehovah's Servant, exercised in connection with Israel. It will be recalled from what precedes that (1) the parables in the fourth chapter, (2) the stilling of the storm in the presence of the apostles alone, and (3) the healing of the demoniac in Gadara beyond Jordan, all combined to instruct the followers of Christ concerning the singular nature of the ministry of the kingdom. Taking the three points as enumerated, it is shown (1) that the word of God as preached by the Lord would not be immediately and invariably successful in fruit bearing, (2) that the difficulties and opposition to the gospel would sometimes he so great that the servants of the kingdom would be in danger of complete destruction, (3) and that the witnesses of Christ may expect to be left alone in a world that had rid itself of the presence of the Servant of Jehovah Himself.

Evidence is now furnished by the raising of Jairus's daughter of the positive nature of the Lord's gracious mercy in His ministry which was then proceeding. Jesus was the Lord of life and death. And let Israel be so dead in all spiritual perception as to be oblivious to the advent of the Messiah, He would, in answer to faith, bestow life upon the dead. Moreover, if only touched in faith He was ready to respond in healing power to the weak and ailing. The Lord came to save Israel's life, though the condition of the nation in reality proved to be death when He came. But beside this main purpose such was the fullness of grace that wherever there was faith in the midst of the surrounding crowd, healing flowed forth from the Fountain of mercy present.

Another new feature of divine ministry is introduced in that the incident shows that the Lord was accessible on behalf of others. A person whose name (in contrast with the usual practice in the Gospels) is recorded, approached the Prophet to solicit mercy for his daughter. In the instances mentioned previously, the Lord dealt directly with the persons whom He blessed, and though it is recorded that the inhabitants of Capernaum brought their diseased to Jesus for healing (1:32), and that the sick of the palsy was borne to Him by four, nothing is stated of any intercession being made by the interested friends of the afflicted. Here the parental anxiety of Jairus for his only daughter who lay dying is manifest in the earnest solicitude of his petition for her recovery. We are shown how Jesus graciously responded to this request; but most striking of all is that part of the narrative which contains the words of comfort and assurance addressed to the agitated father upon the receipt of the news that his daughter had died before Jesus reached the house: “Be not afraid, only believe."

We thus have illustrated that feature of the ministry of the Servant of Jehovah which is of such value in a world of suffering and sorrow, still groaning beneath the distressing effects of the presence of sin. The previous portion of the Gospel demonstrated that the word of Jesus had power to heal disease, to deliver from Satan, and to still the storm. Here it is displayed that the Servant had come to administer the word of comfort which was suited to sustain the wounded spirit until the actual deliverance is effected. Such words of support and cheer are specially needed by those who walk by faith, and not by sight.

THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

It may be of some interest to inquire in what chronological order this miracle occurred; though it is admitted that as a general rule the exact order of occurrence is a point of subsidiary importance in the reading of the Gospels, and in many instances the notes of time given in the narratives are altogether inadequate as determining factors in settling the chronology. In examining such indications of relative order as exist in this case, it is found that by Mark and Luke the healing of Jairus's daughter is placed in immediate juxtaposition to the Lord's return from Gadara, while in the First Gospel the two events are separated by the healing of the sick of the palsy, the call of Levi, the feast in his house, and the conversations with the Pharisees and with the disciples of John the Baptist. Is it then possible to ascertain the exact sequence of these various events?

In the narrative of Matthew it is shown distinctly that the Lord's words to John's disciples about the piece of cloth and the wine-skins were immediately followed by the petition of Jairus. It is there stated that “while he yet spake these things unto them, behold, there came a ruler and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead” (Matt. 9:18). Now this interview with the disciples of the Baptist was held in Levi's house where the newly-called apostle had made a feast in honor of Jesus, inviting many publicans and sinners to be present. And it was the social standing of these guests which awakened the contempt of the Pharisees (Matt. 9:11-13). Now it is to be noticed further that the objection made by the Pharisees to the character of these guests immediately preceded the visit of John's disciples. This is determined by the connective phrase, “Then (τότε) come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?” (Matt. 9:4). At this juncture, therefore, while the conversation was proceeding in Levi's house, Jairus came, and in response to his request, Jesus left the “house of feasting” to visit the “house of mourning.”

The cure of the sick of the palsy and the call of Levi precede the feast, in Matthew's account.

They are there interpolated for topical reasons, since the strict order of occurrence (in the case of the first two events) is shown by Mark and Luke to have been before the Lord crossed the sea of Gadara. Although in all three Gospels the notice of the feast which Levi made immediately follows that of his call, this position in no way proves that the feast was arranged on the same day. Some time would be necessary to make preparations and to invite the guests. But though the call and the feast were not immediately consecutive in the happening of events in Capernaum, they are placed together in the narrative to show that one was the outcome of the other; the feast expressed the gratitude of the tax-gatherer to Him who had called him.

The Lord's journey across the sea to the country of the Gerasenes does not appear to have occupied more than twenty-four hours. He seems to have left Capernaum towards the evening of one day, and returned in the course of the next. And the sequence of the events that immediately ensued was probably as follows, the last four taking place in the house of Levi—

(1) The return from Gadara by boat

(2) The welcome of Jesus by crowds on landing

(3) The feast in the house of Levi

(4) The criticism of the Pharisees

(5) The question by the disciples of John the Baptist

(6) The application of Jairus concerning his child

DYING OR DEAD?

In comparing the three accounts of this incident it is observable that the words of Jairus to the Lord appear to be reported differently. In these reports Matthew and Mark give the language used by the ruler, while Luke records them in the third person: thus we read—

Matthew— “My daughter is even now dead” (9:18)

Mark— “My little daughter is at the point of death” (v. 23)

Luke— “She lay a-dying” (8:42).

The ostensible difference is that according to the first Evangelist Jairus told the Lord that his daughter was actually dead, but according to Mark and Luke it would seem that she was at death's door. This variation is in itself an unimportant one, especially as we learn from the Gospels that a messenger brought the news of the child's actual death, while Jesus was on the way to the ruler's house—a circumstance, be it observed, not named by Matthew who represents the daughter's death from the outset of his narrative.

Apart from an explanation, this difference is valuable inasmuch as it proves the absence of collusion between the several Evangelists; but the antagonists of the Gospels have made much of this, so-called discrepancy, alleging that their credibility is weakened if not destroyed thereby. But it is quite possible to justify both expressions, and to produce more than one reasonable explanation of the difference in phraseology.

As already remarked, the Synoptic Gospels were evidently not written in collaboration to satisfy the demands of critics that they should be in exact mechanical alignment. And indeed the remarkable brevity of these memoirs is such that difficulties like that now under consideration are inevitable. The severe compression of both matter and style is phenomenal. Consider the comparative length of the Gospels as biographies. In an ordinary octavo Bible, with double columns of references, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke occupy about forty pages each, John about thirty, and Mark about twenty-five pages only. And these slight pamphlets constitute the sole authentic memoirs of the life and ministry of the Incarnate Son of God whose public service was characterized by incessant activity. How insignificant these seem in point of size when compared with the ponderous biographical tomes of the world's nonentities! Confessedly, brevity is one of the striking features of the divine Gospels.

Bearing this characteristic in mind it will be admitted to be impossible, under such stringent restriction, that the whole of the minor details necessary to a complete picture of a given incident should be recorded. A selection must be made, subject, of course, to the purpose of the narrative; and the briefer the allotted space the more extensive the exclusion must become. Thus each Evangelist in his selection (under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit) was governed by the special object before him, and not by the details recorded by his fellow-evangelists, with whose compilation he may or may not have been familiar. In other words, each writer was, in this sense, independent.

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Notes on Luke 10

Chapter 10

The Lord pursues the subject we have been looking at in the preceding chapter, connected with the change that has taken place in His own position amongst them. It is no longer the Messiah on earth, but the heavenly Christ, they are to look to. There is another thing brought out here in the amazing importance attached to that moment, the last testimony being applied to them: and those who heard it would be more the subject of judgment than Tire and Sidon. Any among them would have repented with the truth you have, but they had it not. The blessing now was the Lord Himself being there; and he was so glorious and excellent that to hear Him was the prime source of blessing. All hung upon their reception or rejection of Him. In the sending out of these seventy, we see the same patient grace at work as when He sent out twelve. If they were not received, they were to shake off the dust from their feet, etc. God's love never stops, whatever the wickedness of man, until His work is done. His grace never fails. Christ looks at the power of grace in God, more than at the wickedness of men, and He went patiently on, and said, “the harvest is great,” though knowing what there was all around Him.

The Lord was not like Elijah, who needed to be reminded of the seven thousand, who, as God knew, had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. He came in by the door, and went through everything with God. Nothing stopped Him from seeking out His sheep, scattered on the dark mountains. He laid down His life to save His sheep, and not one should be lost. To gather them, He went on in the power of grace. Paul was of this spirit when he says, “I endure all things for the elect's sakes.”

Did Christ suffer nothing in it? Look at Him, weary with His journey, sitting at the well, and a poor wretched vile sinner coming to meet Him, to whom He gives the water of life! There He finds meat to eat that they know not of; and He says, “the fields are white unto harvest.” He was as fresh and happy in His testimony, while sitting at the well with this poor woman, as if all Jerusalem had received Him; because the fountain was within. In Him was “a well of water, springing up,” etc. So with us. If we are going on with Him, we shall be “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed.”

The testimony is in the earthen vessel, it is true, but the fountain is within; and they were to be perfectly dependent on God, and independent of everything else. They were to expect to meet enemies, wolves. “Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.” You cannot turn a lamb into a wolf to defend itself. Peter was for taking a sword to smite off the servant's right ear, but the Lord forbids him, and says, “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” It is difficult to receive everything and do nothing, to be a lamb among wolves —like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in prospect of the fiery furnace, saying, “We are not careful, O king, to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver,” etc.

“Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes; and salute no man by the way.” Not be uncourteous, but waste not time in useless ceremonies, etc. When in God's service, and among God's enemies, God must be everything. It needs concentration of heart in Him, as knowing that the world has rejected your Master, and will reject you, if you are faithful to Him. Faith knows this, and goes on, not with carnal prudence and worldly wisdom, but as knowing what to do and going on to do it. Faith always carries to the house peace; it produces enmity—two against three, and three against two—because some will receive it, and some not; but the thing brought is always peace (vers. 7-9). “The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” Not merely such and such a thing is God's will, but whatever you do, whether you receive or reject it, “the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” The condition of the world now is, that it has rejected Christ. The Son of God, the King, has come into the world, put it to the test, and it says, We will not have Him. This fact has not lost its solemnity now, for we are walking through the world that has rejected Christ; we bring the testimony of peace to it—peace that has been made, for the sacrifice has been offered. It is also true that the testimony has been rejected. “Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you” (vers. 10, 11).

Faith carries things in its own sphere, needing nothing but God's word. The sight of the eyes is constantly tending to dim the estimate which faith forms; and if faith is not nourished by the word, it sinks down and fades away. If I am not feeding on the word, faith is not fed, for it cannot be fed by sight of things all around. When the Lord spoke to Jerusalem, saying, Their house shall be left unto them desolate, and there should not be one stone left upon another, they could not actually see the stones then falling, but it was Christ's word for them to believe. Natural reasoning is fed by what we see, but faith is fed by what God has revealed to the soul.

Verse 15. “Thou, Capernaum, shalt be thrust down to hell” —in God's eye, not man's. In man's eye it might be exalted to heaven. So with this world. And what does that prove? That it may last as long as God permits, but that His word will be fulfilled, “the earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.” There is nothing stable here. When God comes in, where will it all be? though there are scoffers who say, “Where is the promise of his coming?”

Verse 16. “He that heareth you heareth me.” That is where faith has its resource. In hearing the word the disciples spoke, I am hearing Christ Himself. That is where faith walks. I know it must be true, for Christ has said it. Everything may go wrong, the world, Jews, the church, etc., but God's word never. And it has been given. It never changes, for it has been given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, etc. The church, as ground of confidence in testimony, is gone (though we know it is founded upon a rock, and as to its security, it can never be destroyed), but God's word will not fail. Whatever we see tends to weaken and deface faith, puts to the test what the affections of the soul are, because it is not to be what I like, but what God says.

Verses 17-20. “Rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” This shows the change of everything. Demons may be subject to you, but the Lord says, That is not the portion for you to rejoice in; I am now showing my power in another way. This word, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” alludes to the time when Satan the “accuser of the brethren” will be cast down. Now he is in heaven, not in God's presence, in light inaccessible, but before the throne of judgment—two different things. “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” It proves that when others came before the throne, Satan came also. Contrast verses 19 and 20. The one speaks of what can be seen, the other of what could be known only to faith. The unseen thoughts of your heart are much more important than what can be seen. The invisible is always more important than the visible.

In this world, it is not merely that man is a sinner, but there is the introduction into it of the power of evil. Satan has got hold of this world through man's sin. So in the case of the poor woman it is said, “whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years.” But when the church has been caught up, Satan will be cast down. There was war in heaven; but when he is on the earth, he will for three and a half years be raising up the man of the earth against the Lord from heaven. When He comes, Satan's power will be put away. He is not put into the “lake of fire” until the close of the thousand years, but into “the bottomless pit.” That is just what the demons asked to be saved from when cast out of the man whose name was Legion (chap. 8:31); “deep” meaning “bottomless pit.” The Lord did not cast them down to it, because the time was not then come.

This ability to cast out demons was a great thing. The communicating of the power by the Lord was a power above the immediate working of the miracles themselves. It required divine power, and none but that could give the power to others. In the millennium there will not be the power of good and evil together; the latter will be cast out. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee,” etc. The pit shall be digged for the wicked. Satan must be cast out. And when Christ was upon earth, He was presenting Himself in the power of God to bind the strong man, and spoil his goods, etc. It was a wonderful thing to meet a man under the power of Satan, and to cast Satan out. It was an earnest of the “powers of the world to come"; “the world to come” referring, not to heaven, but to this earth being renewed. He was then putting forth the same power that He will exercise fully in the coming kingdom.

(To be continued)

Christ the Source of Life: Part 2

The Man at the Pool

Here then we have the unique instance of the Lord singling out one from a number of sick folk, and putting to him the question, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Why is this case given? Because it is good for us to know that He possessed the right to help and to heal whomsoever He would. It is so still. In our prayers, for example, we have no rights before God. The rights are wholly His. He is gracious to hear and to answer, but He is supreme, and we have no valid claims upon His bounty.

The Lord's question awakened only surprise in the sick man. It was to him a strange question. From the countenance of the speaker he did not discern the Lord of glory. He only regarded Him as a man who might perhaps have kindness enough to stand by and put him into the pool at the proper moment. His thoughts rose no higher than this: “I have no man to put me into the pool,” he said in reply. There was thus no recognition of the Lord. The eyes were dull, the heart heavy, the sensibilities blunted. The Son of God was speaking in solicitude; but there were no ears to hear. There was no appreciation of the Person who addressed him. In short, there was no spiritual life there.

This deficiency however proved no hindrance, for the Lord had come to Bethesda to supply all that was lacking in this case, in contrast with the provisions of the law. “If there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law” (Gal. 3:21). While the law was “weak through the flesh” the Lord rose above such limitations. In spite of the man's dullness, debility, and deadness, He bestowed upon him the gift of healing. He was acting here in His own rights as the Son of God.

Thereupon the word of the Lord went forth to the prostrate sufferer, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” Now with that word went a supernatural power which wrought a stupendous change in the hearer. He no longer regarded Jesus as a man who might peradventure put him into the pool. He now recognized Him as One whom he was bound to obey. The word of the Lord imparted new life to him. He believed. He obeyed. He was confident that the word which bade him rise was not spoken in mockery and that the ability to respond which he lacked in himself would in some manner be supplied. He believed the Lord, and like millions beside, he was not made ashamed.

PERSECUTION BY THE JEWS

A great testimony for God was hereby rendered in the city of Zion. The Son acting in His Father's name avoids the temple which He had already pronounced to be no longer His Father's house, and visits the crowd of impotent folk waiting for one of their number to be benefited by the troubling of the pool. He selects an absolutely helpless and hopeless man who, in obedience to His command, carries his bed through Jerusalem on that very sabbath as a witness to the genuineness of the cure. But this was a witness to more than the power of Jesus; it testified also to the authority He possessed as the Son of God to abrogate the conventionalities of the law.

This act of grace by the Lord became a reason for His abuse and His persecution by the Jews. They repudiated altogether the claims He made. They sought to kill Him because He had broken the sabbath, and because He said that “God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”

This obstinate unbelief and opposition of the Jews gave occasion for the Lord to reveal further glories concerning Himself. Their blindness of understanding showed the desperateness of their case as a nation. Though they were well acquainted with the letter of the ancient oracles, they utterly failed to receive the Lord and His words, and this failure in the face of such exceptional testimony was because they were spiritually dead.

What then is the resource when there is such hopeless obduracy? What sort of a person can help in such circumstances where the powerlessness is that of death? Only One who can act for God without any compromise of the nature of God; and, more than this, only One who can act as God and with God. Hence the Lord said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Such a One then can only be God's own Son. He possesses more than a delegated authority, for in His own inherent right He can speak in His own authority. This He does, prefacing His words with the phrase characteristic of this Gospel, “Verily, verily, I say unto you” (verses 19, 24, 25).

THE SON CLAIMS EQUALITY WITH THE FATHER

The Lord in His answer to the Jewish cavils demonstrates His equality with the Father. This mode of reply is to be weighed. In respect of His work of mercy on the Sabbath, the Lord does not here refer, as in the other Gospels, to the case of David and the show-bread, nor to the priests in the temple, nor to the utilitarianism of the act justifying it, as when the life of a sheep was preserved. In this instance He calmly asserts His divine right as the Son of the Father.

The Lord then declared His glory as the Eternal Son, resting it upon three grounds. He showed that His Sonship appears—

(1) In His union and communion with the Father (verses 19, 20).

(2) In Himself as the Quickener of whom He will (ver. 21).

(3) In Himself as the appointed Judge of mankind (ver. 22).

In the first place then, the Son is seen to be acting in the Father's name. His competency to do this is shown by His union with the Father. And the union is implied in the statement, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” His adequacy is also further affirmed by the communion existing with the Father; “for the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.”

Had He not said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work"? To work in such partnership involves equality with the Father; for while not acting independently, i.e., “of Himself,” He is competent to do all the Father does, and to do it all in the same manner, that is, divinely. The Son does not only what He is told to do, but also what He sees the Father do. Consequently, in the life, the actions and the words of the Lord Jesus Christ we have the fullness of the Father's heart of love, otherwise inaccessible to man, brought into view in this world. It is indeed cause for marvel when we reflect that in that lowly Man passing patiently onwards through a path of obloquy we have a perfect exhibition of the Father's love on high. So that looking upon and studying Him we learn the essential features of God's ineffable grace and truth.

And this subject we can only learn in communion with the Father and the Son. There is a great difference between learning a thing from a companion and learning it from a book. Affection and regard play not a small part in the former process. This part of the New Testament, which from one standpoint may seem abstract and dreamy, enters into the very marrow of Christian life because the Person of Christ stands there revealed in His highest glory. Through and in Him the believer learns his most valuable lessons.

The Christian life is not a mere code of ritualistic obedience to a series of specified commands, the fulfillment of certain duties defined with precision. Such was the Mosaic method, where you have not the operations of a new life so much as the repression of the old life. The law came with the coldness of an “army order"; it lacked life. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life.

Eternal life brings us into relationship with the living Word—a Person to whom we may come and appeal directly, telling Him our sorrows and our joys, and find comfort and peace in the telling. For this privilege, true from the beginning, is not now obsolete, except so far as we make it so by our neglect.

We now come to the second point: the Son is the Giver of life. It has been observed that He is in no whit inferior to the Father. What God does, the Son does in like manner. What a Savior for sinful men! In addition, we are taught that the Son exercises the divine function of bestowing life. “As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” And this function He exercises in His lowliness as Son of man: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (ver. 26). This attribute was displayed in His ministry. Everywhere He went He had life in Himself. There could therefore be no death in His presence. He possessed a store of life-giving energy, to the power of which the daughter of Jairus, the widow's son of Nain, and the beloved Lazarus were monuments.

It is true that in all these vivifying acts, He was the subject One, but still in the place of subjection He had what no creature could have, His sovereign rights, and could give life when and where it pleased Him: “the Son quickeneth whom he will.”

In the third particular, also, the Son is said to exercise a divine function. Who but God can in the absolute sense (and this is the only possible sense here) judge men? And we read, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.”

This authority to judge mankind is conferred upon Him “because He is the Son of man.” But being Son of God He is at the same time competent in His own right to execute this high function. In the days of His flesh He was in this dark and evil world as Heaven's Light to expose, not to judge, sins, to forgive sins not to condemn the sinner. But we learn that He who was sent to atone for sin is He who will be sent as the Executor of divine judgment, all judgment being committed unto the Son.

Hence the call to honor the Son in His proper excellency. Those who do not by faith see His glory in His humiliation will be compelled to witness and acknowledge it when He is manifested in His own glory and in His Father's. This glory will be so transcendent in character that it will perforce bow all stubborn hearts and knees in reverent homage to the Son of man, the Father's fiat being that all should honor the Son even as they honor Him.

The believer recognizes this equality in worship and adoration. Whatever God is, the Son is also. This we freely and gladly acknowledge, and God is jealous of this, since it was the Son who suffered for sins. God was glorified in Him. And “if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself” (John 13:31,32).

[W. J. H.]

(Continued front page 203) (To be continued)

What Is the Church? 4

We will examine the Epistles of Paul. Of the Epistle to the Romans, the church is not the subject. Having convicted the Gentile without law, and the Jew under the law, of being both guilty before God; it shows the individual justified before God, not by the law, but through faith; introducing resurrection, as putting him in a position quite new, as regards justification, as regards life (that is, a new life, outside of the dominion of sin); and, as to the law, by grace the believer was justified, renewed, an heir of God, had the feelings of the Spirit, and was kept for glory by a love from which nothing could separate him. This well established, the apostle reconciles (9, 10, 11) the admission of Jew and Gentile, without distinction, to the enjoyment of these blessings, with the promises made to the Jews; and he shows that the Gentiles have been grafted in, to be a continuation of the line, as children of Abraham, in the enjoyment of the promises.

But, although the main subject of the Epistle to the Romans does not afford opportunity for teaching concerning the church, the exhortations at the end of the Epistle furnish us with an element which flows naturally from the revelation made on the way to Damascus. It is, that being members of the body of Christ, we are necessarily, for that reason, members one of another (12:4). “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing,” etc.

The church is absolutely one. It is evident, here also, that the apostle speaks of what is upon earth; and, even though there were members whose souls were with the Lord (thus being no longer able to glorify the Lord upon the earth, whence He had been rejected, and where Satan exercised his power), he refers to those only who were still down here. The body, in its practical and true sense, was composed of those only.

The First Epistle to the Corinthians furnishes us with precious instructions on the point now engaging our attention. This epistle gives us details of the interior of a local and particular church; being addressed, at the same time, to all who call on the Lord. It teaches us that the Christians of a locality, gathered in one body, are the realization, so far, of the unity of the whole body. The church at Jerusalem was, at the beginning, both these two things at once; and though there were many assemblies, yet the Christians of each locality gathered together in a body, and formed the church, or the assembly, of God in that locality: “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth.” There was but one. It was composed of those that were sanctified in Christ Jesus, of called saints who were at Corinth. The apostle reckoned on their being confirmed unto the end. They were outside the world; a body known as entirely separated from it, by their profession and common walk as a body. Their individual relations with the world are discussed, and go no further than the ordinary communications of life; but even in these, the most formal and complete distinction is marked between the brethren and the world. There were those without and those within; that is to say, it was not a moral difference in the individual walk alone, but a common walk as a body, and as a body formally, separated from the world. (See 5:7-13; 10:17, 21, 22; compare 2 Cor. 2; 6:16, 17). The Lord's Supper was the external sign that gathered them together (1 Cor. 10:17). Now, the presence of the Holy Ghost was found in the body—in the whole body of the church; but it was realized and manifested in the local body, according to its state.

This presence of the Holy Ghost in the body, is distinguished from the presence of the Holy Ghost in the individual. The body of the individual is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19). But the church was also the temple (3:16, 17), because the Spirit dwelt in it.

Having gathered this scattered information, we may examine the chapter which expressly treats of our subject, introduced by that of the spiritual powers which were manifested in the assembly. The demons are many. The Spirit of God is only one Spirit, whatever may be the manifestations of His presence. These manifestations of the Spirit were found in the gifts; and these were given for common use, the Holy Spirit dividing to every man severally as He will. These gifts were found very largely developed among the Corinthians. Having long been carried away by the craft of demons, they were in danger of confounding the energetic manifestations of these demons with those of the Holy Spirit; because they were looking for power rather than for grace. The apostle gives them, first, an absolute rule, for discerning between the Spirit of God and the demons, in the confession that Jesus was Lord—a confession which these demons would never make. Afterward, he takes pains to make the Corinthians understand the true doctrine of the presence of the Holy Ghost; the effect of which went much further than to produce the confession of the Lordship of Jesus; though this confession was the touchstone of it. The Holy Ghost united all Christians in one body; and Christian service, or the exercise of gifts, was nothing more than a member of the body exercising its functions for the good of the whole body. It was that one and self-same Spirit which divided to each: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ"—Christ; for the church is Himself —His body. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.” The unity of the body being thus established, all the gifts came under the idea of members of this body; that is, all exercise of ministry was the activity of the members of the body.

But other truths of the greatest moment are revealed to us in this chapter, and particularly the means God used to produce this unity, to form this body. “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." Christ having fully accomplished His work, and having ascended up on high, has received the promise of the Father; that is, the Holy Ghost; and has sent Him into this world to be, on the one hand, the witness of this accomplishment, and of the personal glory of Jesus at the right hand of God; and, on the other, to unite the members of this body to Himself, and at the same time to one another, whether Jews or Gentiles; who, all distinction being lost, form but one body, united to its Head in heaven; that is, to the Lord Jesus. Two truths clearly result from the teaching of this chapter; first, that the formation of the body is accomplished by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven; and, second, that this body is formed upon the earth; its unity, such as it is presented in the word, takes place essentially upon earth, since the Holy Ghost has come down here to accomplish it. The accessory circumstances confirm this truth; for it is most evident that the gifts in question are exercised upon the earth. The disciples were the body of Christ, by the union produced among them by the presence of one Spirit; who, being one, was found in them all, and at the same time in the whole of the united body. It is well to recall the passages already quoted, which teach us the difference between these last two points. While 1 Cor. 16, reveals to us that the whole is the temple of the Holy Ghost, chapter 6:19 shows us that each believer individually is the temple of God.

It is evident, that this unity will not be lost in heaven, when all the members of the body are reunited; and that God keeps the souls of the deceased for that day of glory; but the manifestation of the unity of the body of Christ is now exclusively upon earth, where the Holy Ghost has come down to establish this unity. Faith knows very well that souls are preserved with Jesus for that day; but thus disunited from the body, they do not, for the present, enter into the account; being in a position where communion with a body on earth is no longer a possibility, any more than manifestation of unity or service for the glory of Christ.

Where the Holy Ghost has come down, and where He abides, there is the manifestation of the church, whilst its Head is seated on the right hand of the Father. The Spirit, in speaking to the church, addresses Himself to Christians on the earth, and to them alone. Thus it is said— “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God has set some in the church; first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healing” etc.

I need not stop to prove that this applies to earth.

Here, then, we are taught by God that the church, which is the body of Christ, is formed in unity down here upon earth, by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, and manifesting Himself by gifts in the members of this body. Let me add, that this presence of the Holy Ghost is to be distinguished from the regeneration of souls, and even from His work in the hearts of the regenerate; it is His presence in the body, sent from above as truly and personally as the Son was sent of the Father, though not in the same manner. It is evident, from Acts 1:5, that the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the descent of the Holy Ghost.

The Epistle to the Galatians treats of the question of justification, and of the right to the enjoyment of the inheritance, through promise, as contrasted with the law; and only touches the doctrine of the church by the single declaration, that the Christians are all one in Christ Jesus (3:28).

But the Epistle to the Ephesians treats the subject at length, and requires special attention.

Chapter 1, after having laid the foundation of sovereign grace, declares (verse 10) the fixed purpose of God; which is to “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth"; and, having pointed out the children of God as sealed with the Holy Spirit for the inheritance in the end, shows us the church united, as His body, to Him who was constituted Head over all things.

Chapter 2 reveals the working of the power which has united the church to Christ and the manner of this union; and showing that the Jew, by nature, was a child of wrath quite as much as the Gentile, and that both were dead in trespasses and sins, presents both as quickened together with Christ raised up together and sealed together in heavenly places in Christ. Thus the distinction was lost; God having made of the two one new man; reconciling them both in one body by the cross. Now that was the church. That work had its accomplishment in the church. The Christian was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (of the New Testament, comp. 3:5), Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. The Gentiles were builded together with the Jews to be the habitation of God through the Spirit. This chapter teaches us, then (according to the Word in Matthew), that the church, by its union with its Head in heaven, was accounted as being there; and that its calling was absolutely heavenly. As Israel was separated from the nations, so was the church from the world—it was no longer of it. Its formation on earth began after the breaking down, by the cross, of the middle wall of partition It was as a new man; Jews and Gentiles being reconciled to God in one body. Besides, we find that, instead of a temple made with hands, Where Jehovah dwelt, this union of Jewish and Gentile believers in one body formed the habitation of God upon earth, and that this habitation was by the Spirit. This latter truth gives us the true character of the church upon earth—a character, it is evident, of the most important bearing—a character which involves the deepest responsibility; and, let me say it, a character most precious. For the responsibilities of Christians all flow from the grace which has been shown them. This character, in fine, thanks be unto God, in spite of its unfaithfulness to this responsibility, the church cannot lose; because it is made to depend on the grace and the promise of God that this other Comforter, the Spirit of truth, would not go away as Christ did, but abide forever with those that were His. It is also most plain that it is on the earth that all this takes place; though, being on earth, our special position is to be seated in the heavenly places in our Head, and to wait for the realization of our condition when we shall be gathered unto Him.

(Continued from page 189) (To be continued)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 3

This being so, Matt. 24 and Mark 13 will be found to coalesce with the Old Testament texts we have weighed. All these scriptures suppose godly Jews to be involved in this unparalleled time of trouble, and that they are at the same time to be saved out of it. Thus far then the Old Testament and the New Testament clearly confirm each other. Every Christian man ought to accept this, even if not thus demonstrated; but I trust that what has been alleged may help to prove it in the face of gainsayers.

But this is not all. We come now to the Revelation, where we find a passage or two of a different nature. First of all is the one with which we began to-night: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” What have we here? Jacob? Daniel's people? Not a trace of them. Every one knows—it cannot be questioned—that the Lord Jesus is here writing a letter by His servant John to the angel of the Christian assembly or church in Philadelphia. Here at once we find ourselves on different ground. Jews are not addressed, nor is it by a Jewish prophet, either before or during the captivity. It is now the Lord Jesus, who has a double relation. He is the Messiah, the hope of Israel, but at the same time the Head of the church. I have already shown that in the passages of Matthew and Mark He is instructing His disciples as to Jewish expectations connected with the land of Judea and the temple. It is clear that they had the sabbath-day, and the number of arguments might be largely increased in proof that Jewish disciples in the latter day are referred to, and such only. But now we find none of this. In all the scriptures that concern the Jews, they are supposed to go through this hour of temptation, but at the same time they are to be saved out of it. They go through that hour; they are protected of God; but none the less are they in the temptation, although they survive it, protected by divine power. Here, contrariwise, when the address is to Christians, the word is, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience.” The Jews were far from keeping this; they had rejected Himself; they despised the word of His patience. But one of the great distinguishing features of the Christian is, that he suffers with Christ, and, more than this, that he is content to wait, as Christ waits, for the great day. He is not anxious for the glory of the world now; his portion is not here; the Christian is waiting, as becomes the bride, for the exaltation of the Bridegroom over the earth. The bride knows that the Bridegroom is exalted in heaven, and her heart is where her treasure is. Christ is glorified at the right hand of God; and her present joy is to know well that He who is her Bridegroom is coming, and that He will first gather to Himself His bride, and that in due time He will display His bride with Himself in glory. “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory.” It is not merely that He shall take us away to be hidden in glory. He is hid in God now, and we shall be shortly. But when Christ appears in glory, those who are waiting, and are content to wait, keeping the word of His patience, will be displayed in the very same glory as the Lord Jesus. Such is the Christian's expectation. Christ is to come for us, and when Christ is manifested we shall be manifested with Him in glory.

Entirely falling in with this sketch of the difference between what a Jew expected and what we are now expecting, the Lord directs His servant to write thus to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience.” Christ is patiently waiting to come; He looks onward to the future as much in heaven as He did when He was on the earth. He has not left His manhood behind Him because He has risen from the grave; on the contrary, the resurrection is that which binds indissolubly His manhood with His person. He took manhood in His incarnation, but He has manhood bound up forever with His own eternal glory. As He retains manhood now in the glorified state, what a pledge this is of our blessedness with Christ when He comes again! We wait for that moment; and because we keep the word of His patience He says, “I also will keep thee,” not from the tribulation only, but “from the hour of temptation (or trial) which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” Mark, He does not say, “I will keep thee from a certain place of trouble, or from a given sphere where the tribulation is to fall.” We can understand that a man might be taken out of a particular locality under judgment. For instance, supposing Europe, or the Roman Empire, or the Holy Land, to be peculiarly the spot on which the tribulation is to fall, we can easily understand how persons outside the doomed limits would not suffer temptation in the same way. This has been a favorite theory; and I have heard of devotees who have gone east and west in order to get out of the scene of dreaded trial. But this is folly, and a total mistake as to the word of God. What the Lord Jesus says is not, “You are to go from the sphere,” but “I will keep thee from the hour.” Nay, it is a far greater promise, and infinitely more precise, than saying, “I will keep thee from the place of the temptation,” etc. Those who keep the word of His patience are not to be there when the hour comes; that is to say, it is a complete removal (not only from the circle but) from the time of the trouble. The church of God will be exempt; the faithful will be kept from it. By the faithful I mean all the children of God.

I beseech all that are here to guard against certain and self-complacent notions opposed to this, and too widely spread in America, and sometimes nearer home. They will have it that such exemption is a reward for believing in pre-millenarian views, and that those Christians who are not so instructed are to pass through the future hour of trouble—some going so far as to teach that they will be in torture for 1,000 years. I beseech you, brethren, treat these notions as they deserve; treat them as bad and base, as altogether opposed to revelation, and the greatest dishonor both to the person of Jesus whom they love, and above all to His work, on which their souls rest before God. Oh, is not this idolizing knowledge? It would not become us, assuredly, to slight the study of prophetic truth in which we have found, if one may speak about ourselves, not a little profit and enjoyment. But at the same time to suppose that those who may love Christ quite as well as we do, but who do not hold just views on prophetic truth, are to be tortured for it so many years, perhaps a thousand years—to suppose God will punish His children thus because they have not been pre-millennialists, let such thoughts be utterly condemned and banished!

I admit that the Lord Jesus is said to come for them that look for Him; but why? Because the Spirit of God assumes that all Christians look for Him; and so they do. Some do it, no doubt, more intelligently than others; some, no doubt, do interpose their opinions on the millennium, as well as others on the tribulation. I do not agree with either. I am sure that all such interferences with the constant hope of Christ are wrong; and men suffer loss through it. I believe that those who assume, contrary to scripture, that there is going to be a great and long reign of good over the earth before Jesus comes are under no small delusion. At the same time, while disapproving of that notion, I consider that the idea of torturing for a thousand years God's children, in order to punish them for not being pre-millennialists, is about as bad a notion as could be entertained by Christian men. I am not now speaking of those whose scheme directly lowers our Savior by clouding His Deity, or allowing the smallest spot of suspicion to rest upon His humanity or His relation to God, because one ought not to regard such as Christians at all. They cannot be acknowledged as such while anti-Christian. They may turn out Christians, carried away for a time, of course, just as a drunkard, or any other sinner. A person may fall into a desperate sin, and after all the Lord may bring him out of it. Neglect of prayer and of the word of God, tampering with the world, etc., may draw him into any evil, as grace can restore.

At the same time, if a man goes on in sin decidedly and deliberately, whatever you may hope and desire, you cannot, and ought not, to call him a Christian. It is the same with false doctrine: only I suppose that false doctrine is yet more evil and dangerous, because more deceptive than anything else; but no one can adequately judge of false doctrine, unless as taught by the Spirit of God.

This then may suffice to show how, so far as the Jews are concerned, the uniform testimony of the Old and the New Testaments is, that they are to go through this time of temptation, but that the godly ones are to be preserved. The word of our Lord Jesus in Rev. 3:10, is addressed clearly to Christian ears, representing the faithful that should be found waiting for His coming to receive them to Himself, which is the normal position of all Christians. Nor could the Spirit of God contemplate such an anomaly as those who loved Him not so looking for Him. This scripture holds out the blessed prospect of such association with Him as will exempt them from the time of predicted tribulation and the hour of temptation also. If I do not misunderstand the latter phrase it would seem to take in the preliminary sorrows, as well as later seductions and unparalleled final judgments. These do not all come at once. There will be deceits used as well as persecutions before the crash and the frightful crisis come. There is clearly defined in this very book a difference and progress in evil and trouble. This being so, the promise here given serves without constraint to comprehend and cover all, including the time of earlier trouble and deceit no less than the pressure of special affliction.

Accordingly the Lord declares that those that keep the word of His patience will be kept from that hour of temptation which shall come upon all the habitable world. And for what purpose is this hour sent? That others may be tried by it— “to try them that dwell upon the earth.” In the Epistle to the Philippians. the Holy Ghost brands the earthly-minded as being enemies of the cross of Christ, “whose end is destruction.” I hope no one will contend that this is said of a Christian, however it may be of those who had once taken that place. That a Christian may venture near the brink of evil, that he may tamper with the unclean thing, that he may be for a while drawn in more or less, is possible; but it is beyond dispute that the Spirit of God contemplates those who, professing the name of Christ, altogether abuse it; and their end is certainly and literally destruction.

(Continued from page 208) (To be continued)

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 4

It is granted that the Bible does not reveal these sequences of order and convulsion. But it shows us the principle of both in verses 1 and 2 anterior to the Adamic earth. This was enough for us to know; and this we know more clearly and certainly from these few words of scripture than science ever taught till very lately. In fact some geologists seem recently in danger of overlooking the best established facts of their own and all other science, and of drifting into that strange delusion—the Darwinian form of Lamarckian development which necessarily destroys faith in creation altogether.

But Genesis leaves room for all the changes, calm or violent, which passed over this earth before the race. Creation, and creation of the universe, verse 1 does state; how long it went on, and with what changes, till the state of chaos described in verse 2, we are not informed. Let science tell if she can. There is ample space here without danger of collision: God has effectually guarded against the mistakes of hasty expositors, friends or enemies. Verse 3 begins the account of the days; and here, after a chaos (we know not how long or often), we hear of light caused to be on the first day. The state of things is so contrasted in each of the verses that the conjunction which simply introduces each new statement can produce no difficulty whatever.

Far from contradicting the large bearing of verse 1, texts such as Gen. 14:19-22, Ex. 20:11; 31:17, 2 Peter 3:13, can in no way be restrained to “the earth itself.” It is careless to confound the making of heaven and earth in six days (which I grant is always for Adam) with the original creation of verse 1. Gen. 2:4 speaks of both. As to the objection founded on animals of previous states seeing, and plants too requiring light, before the work of the first day or of the fourth, it suffices to say that not a word implies that light was created, or the heavenly bodies either, on these days. Light was caused to act, as the luminaries later still. But of the geologic periods, after creation but antecedent to the earth made for man in six days, we have nothing either affirmed or denied, though in my opinion the strikingly guarded language leaves room for all. The statements of Dr. D. are as unfounded in science as they are careless in taking account of the exactitude of scripture.

That the sense just given to the inspired account of creation is unforced and exact, it would require hardihood to question; so it would to deny the looseness of the rationalistic interpretation, inconsistent as it also is with itself and with facts, and thus exhibiting the usual faults of what is wholly misunderstood. I advocate no stooping to a barely admissible meaning, nor call in the wisdom of the world to ascertain the force of scripture. The believer need neither court nor fear human science. Nowhere, however, has a single fact of geology been proved to be at variance with the words of Moses: those who affirm it have only exposed themselves, whether they attack or apologize for Gen. 1:1-3.

Further, from Gen. 2:4 we have the necessary complement of chapter 1. The terms of the fourth verse, though a most natural commencement of another aspect which follows with fresh particulars of the greatest moral weight, refer unmistakably to what had been already written. It is certainly not a summary of what is to come, for this does not describe the production of the heavens and the earth, but introduces us to the transitional state of things before rain fell or man was there to till the ground; it then gives us the specific difference which is the ground of human responsibility, and therefore forthwith describes the garden of Eden with its two trees, where the first Adam was about to be tried.

It is plain accordingly that Gen. 2:4, while it gives a retrospective glance at chapter i. with its orderly chart of the creation, leads us into the scene of relationships. Even according to the earlier outline, far from being lost in the graduated series of creative acts, the pre-eminent place of man in the scale of the creature is carefully guarded for male and female—of man made in the image of God, after His likeness, with dominion over the fish and birds and cattle and earth and reptiles, not worshipping them all like the sages of Egypt. But the detailed formation of man, in his body from the dust of the ground, in his soul from Jehovah-Elohim's breathing into his nostrils (alone of living creatures), the source of an immortal immaterial nature proper to him, is found in the later account only. Here too we have his various relations not only to the subordinate creatures to which he gave names as their lord, but to his wife (who was built up peculiarly out of Adam's body as he slept), and above all to Him who set the man in a position of such singular honor, though necessarily of commensurate responsibility.

In Gen. 3 accordingly the issue of the trial soon appears. Abruptly and mysteriously an enemy of God and man enters, and by his subtle insinuations deceives the woman, who in turn becomes the instrument of the man's disobedience. It is a simple but profound, and the only satisfactory, solution of the problem on which human philosophy and religion have labored in vain, on which all have made shipwreck who have not submitted to the word of God. It can surprise none that it is the same serpent playing his old deceits and destroying souls by the hope of knowing good and evil as God, yea better if they refuse His account for their own thoughts, even though they yield no more than that coldest and most irreverent of results, negative criticism. Satan, availing himself of “the serpent,” thus dragged down our first parents into sin and ruin not for themselves only but for the lower creation dependent on Adam's maintenance of his relation to God, as also for the race yet to be born.

Does not this approve itself as worthy of God? Is it not in harmony not only with all the Old Testament, but only more conspicuously with the New? The earliest inspired account reveals God creating and fashioning the universe in wisdom and goodness no less than omnipotent power, the earth in detail as man's abode to whom the world is given. But man is tried and fails irretrievably as far as original innocence and Eden are concerned, but not without righteous conviction, not without a judgment which accounts for the great present facts of humanity even to the difference of woman's lot from man's, yet with their common sentence of death and the sorrowful change which has passed over the creation now subjected to vanity and groans; but not without the gracious revelation of a Deliverer, who should be in some special sense Seed of the woman, yet (after suffering) conqueror of the enemy the serpent, who had done this foul and otherwise fatal dishonor to God as well as man.

Without this key what have the greatest wits of this world made of it all? I do not speak only of monstrous cosmogony, or the (if possible) still falser and less rational assertion of the world's eternity. But take the mental workings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; nay take the latest philosophic enemies, who have stolen all their best from the Bible but who have not learned its first lesson, without which all is vain—that fear of Jehovah which is the beginning of wisdom. But what have any ancients or moderns said up to this day to be named in comparison of the Mosaic account, which ungrateful rationalism would fain behead, draw, and quarter? Sin and ruin, suffering and death, are facts in God's earth as it is: inspiration did not make them; rationalism cannot unmake them. To suppose that a Being of infinite power and goodness made the race and the earth as they are is to imply an absurdity, which philosophy (where it admits God at all) accepts. But scripture is in no way responsible for a conclusion which is opposed not only to His word but to all right reason and sound morality, for mind and conscience cannot but own the truth when revealed, though superstition and philosophy essay to explain it away again. Such a Demiurge as every system supposes but scripture (or what follows scripture) would be a malicious demon, not the true God.

Bow to Gen. 1-3 and the difficulty is explained, yet even then just as it ought to be, in the measure of our faith. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light": the want of this is the real source of confusion, error, contradiction and every other fault which rationalists love to heap on the Bible. These exist in their own minds and system, not in God's word. It is impossible to understand scripture without seeing the divine design which accounts for distinct aspects, repetitions, and all the other peculiarities over which they ignorantly stumble. God, being love, is considerate of the poor, the lowly, the young, the old, while He puts down the haughty who count themselves learned and deep, wise and prudent. He has revealed Himself in writings whose unity of thought and moral purpose, is only and infinitely more striking because they consist of books in more than one language, and spread over the greatest variety of writers through fifteen centuries. Hence, whether dealing by law through Moses, or by grace in His Son, one-half in both Old Testament and New consists of facts profoundly instructive for the most reflective, but withal coming down to the level of a child. Only God could have done or thought of this beforehand: now that it is before us in the Bible, we can see that there is nothing like it (save in poor measure what is borrowed from it) for simplicity or for depth, for rising up to God or for coming down to the secrets of man's heart.

What reader can fail, for example, to see that God made all around and above Adam, and pronounced it all very good; that man (the chief and most favored of all in a paradise—not such as blind Mahometanism holds out, but of purity and innocence) disobeyed Him who gave him all and tried him by the least conceivable test, and thus brought in the vanity and death of all this lower creation? Who can be deaf to the solemn voice that searches out the truth from lips which, spite of deceit and insolence, cannot but condemn themselves? Who can forget the accents of grace implied even in the hopeless condemnation of the arch-foe, and assuring the guilty of a Savior who must suffer first but at last crush the serpent's head? None but the rationalist; none but the man who prefers his own reasonings to scripture—himself the first man to Christ the Second and last Adam.

(Continued from page 211) (To be continued)

Thou Art Peter

(Matthew 16:18)

There is no sublimer story in the scriptures than that presented in Matt. 16, beginning at verse 13; none fuller of rich and blessed meaning. The question concerning Himself, put by our Lord when He had come into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, led to a wonderful unfolding of His Person and His work. And first we may notice that while the Lord addressed each of His two questions to the disciples generally, with special appeal to their knowledge in the second—to their enlightenment already gained ("But whom do ye say that I am?"), yet it is Peter alone who is spokesman the second time, the other disciples having merely repeated what was common report, and derived its importance simply because of the Person whom it concerned.

We can understand the perplexity of the multitude. No doubt the occasional severity of our Lord (for, although, “when meekness became Him, He was meek,” yet “when severity, none could withstand His overwhelming and withering rebuke") led them to think of His forerunner, John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, or of the latter himself; at other times Jeremiah was naturally recalled, as they beheld Him who was the Man of Sorrows. Surely the disciples knew better than this, as is implied by the words already quoted: “But whom say ye that I am?” Yet doubtless their thoughts were vague, and Peter himself spoke prophetically, and probably with less realization of the awe-compelling truth than he afterward attained. But what a unique privilege it was thus to be singled out! and how prominent is Peter ever in the Evangel! It cannot be denied that administratively he was to be the chief of the apostles. Later on, in this very episode, we have the conferring of the keys, symbolic and prophetic of the fact that Simon Peter was to open to both Jew and Gentile.

But now let us consider more particularly the words we have taken for our text. “Thou art Peter.” It is most interesting to couple this utterance of our Lord to Simon Peter with words addressed by Him to the same apostle at an earlier date, and recorded in John 1:42, “Thou shalt be called Cephas,” i.e., Peter, a stone. In the latter case we have the Lord prophetically announcing the future greatness and strength of His servant, as with prescient eye He looked upon him (the word is a very energetic one—it is ἐμβλέψας—, literally, “having fixed a look upon"), and (may we not say?) “apprehended” him (see Phil. 3:12). In the former we find the Savior emphatically, as it were, sealing the rock-name upon him as now at last evidently and pre-eminently his. It was Simon Peter's in virtue of his great confession, as it has been justly called. Most true it was that Simon had not discovered the mystery of the Lord's Person; the Father in heaven had revealed it. Yet—and this is in beautiful accord with the ways of God's grace—the confessor was pronounced blessed. And this blessedness the Lord had anticipated when Andrew brought to Him his more famous brother, as we have already seen.

“Thou art Peter.” There is often a great deal in names, at any rate in Bible names. These are so often what logicians call connotative, i.e., they not merely denote persons (things too, but this is beside our present point we are dealing exclusively with personal names), but they imply qualities. Above all is this the case with appellations of God Himself. Think of the various names by which He is revealed in the Old Testament; then pass to the exceedingly great number of names of our Lord in both Old and New Testaments. And in a lesser degree we see the same principle strikingly at work in an Abraham, an Israel, a Joseph, a Solomon, etc. All these names are revelations of character or of office. Nor is this confined to the Old Testament, as we may see by considering the meaning of Barnabas, of Boanerges, of Stephen, and lastly of Peter.

Another interesting thing is that our Lord seems to have imposed such names in three cases only. He called James and John Boanerges, i.e., sons of thunder, and Simon He called Peter, a stone. Usually, however, it would appear that Christ addressed His disciples by names already theirs when He drew them to Himself (see Matt. 17:23). Such might or might not possess a meaning in keeping with their gifts or their character. At any rate, in the case of Peter, James, and John, the names Boanerges and Peter were conferred on account of what our Lord saw in them, and purposed to make of them. These names are, then, connotative in the highest degree, and are charged with great and significant meaning. Yet, as we have said, the three apostles so favored were habitually addressed by our Lord by their original names.

Next we must notice how the Lord, when pronouncing Simon blessed, called him by his full name, Simon Bar-jona. Was not this to emphasize his lowly estate as a man? Was he not, apart from the divine grace, merely Simon, son of Jonah, or Jonas? And does it not recall the mysterious scene by the lake of Tiberias, after the resurrection, when the Savior again called Peter “Simon, son of Jonas"? By his bitter fall he had made manifest that in himself he was but Simon, son of Jonas, and so the Lord has to remind him of it. Ever as such, grace was about to raise him morally and spiritually higher than ever he was before. May we not say that the reminder came to enhance the contrast? But here, at Caesarea Philippi, such contrast is rather between what man is by nature in his essential weakness (apart from the question of failure and sin perhaps) and the high privilege granted to the apostle of declaring, more adequately than ever before, the divine glory of his Master. Thus we see there is a most pointed antithesis between Simon, Bar-Jona, and Peter.

The next thing we have to note is how the divine glory of the Son appears in the same verse 18, where it is rather, “I also say,” than, “I say also.” In J.N.D.'s version it is given with full emphasis, but not more than the original warrants, “I also, I say unto thee.” Clearly here we have the personality of the Son answering to that of the Father in verse 17. While it was the Father who had revealed the wonderful truth to Simon Peter, and not mere “flesh and blood” (this phrase here probably denoting necessary human weakness apart from anything of corruption), we immediately after have the authority and dignity of the Son— “I also.” For the pronoun is in strong relief, so to speak, by a simple device of language familiar to even tyros in Greek, but which our English tongue, though possessed of so many excellencies, is unable to accomplish. As we know, it is common to note the emphasis of the pronoun by italics. But Greek requires no extraneous means. And while speaking of this matter, it will be convenient to point out that in the words, “I will build my church,” the emphasis is on the building; in other words there is no separate pronoun, the “I” being contained in the verb; and moreover it is a future building. How interesting to couple with it the several statements in Mark and the Acts respectively, “the Lord working with them,” and, “all that Jesus began both to do and teach!” How perfect are the Scriptures! How admirably every part dove-tails, as it were, with every other! We would confess how little we know, and yet thank God for all that He has revealed to those who seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who “go down on their knees,” as one has said, to receive instruction, so that the marvels of the divine oracles can be disclosed to them. If we go to the Bible believing our Lord to be what He claimed to be, how wonderfully everything falls into order. If we doubt, or disbelieve, then perplexities grow apace, and “from him that hath not is taken even what he seemed to have.”

Lastly, we may note that the blessed Lord condescends to “play” upon the word Peter. At any rate the paronomasia is distinctly there—in the Greek. Whether the Lord at Caesarea Philippi spoke in Aramaic or Greek may be a matter of doubt with students; and, if He spoke in Aramaic the antithesis present in the Greek words (πέτρος and πέτρα) may there be as non-existent as in the English equivalents. But, at any rate, in the inspired word we have a striking and most interesting case of what is known as “playing” on words. Nor is it a solitary instance in Holy Writ. Examples could be quoted from the writings of Paul. Some perhaps might not have looked for this in scripture. But there it is, and it need not be said how all is consistent with the deepest solemnity. The “play” on the words simply enhances the vivid force of the truth. “Thou art Peter (Πέτρος) and on this rock (πέτρα) I will build my church.” Mark, it is His church, and He is still building. No wonder then that “gates even of Hades shall not prevail against it.” They shall not “prevail"; the Lord does not say that His church will not receive heavy and grievous shocks, but that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. This should comfort us; for His church must stand.

R. B.

Studies in Mark 5:25-34: The Woman's Touch of Faith

5:25-34

27-Dying or Dead? (Continued)

Now in the incident under consideration, if we were in possession of the whole of the events of that day the particulars recorded would fall into their due chronological order, and the apparent discordance would disappear. However, without claiming that the following hypothesis has a historical basis, an examination of the various accounts will reveal phrases which afford strong probability to the explanation advanced. And this explanation, it is believed, will be sufficient to meet the demands of even this case, which has been described as “the most perplexing difficulty in the whole of the Gospel history.”

(1) In the accounts of Mark and Luke we read that Jairus came to the Lord after He had landed and while He was still near the lake: “And he was by the sea. And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, etc."; “And as Jesus returned, the multitudes welcomed him; for they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus,” etc. (Mark 5:21, 22; Luke 8:41). In the absence of direct proof to the contrary, it seems clear that before the Lord went to the feast of Levi He received the petition of the ruler who besought Him “much” to come and lay His hand upon his little daughter who was at the point of death.

(2) Matthew describes the Lord as seated in Levi's house and instructing the disciples of John the Baptist on the question of fasting when Jairus presented his request: “While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a ruler and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. And Jesus arose and followed him” (Matt. 9:18, 19). It has already been noted that this interrupted interview with the Baptist's disciples took place in the house of Levi, it would seem therefore that Matthew, in his account, is not referring to the occurrence chronicled by the other two Evangelists, but relates how the anxious ruler sought the Lord's presence a second time. If this was so, we must suppose that the Lord did not respond at once to the first prayer of Jairus, even as in His perfect wisdom He did not immediately respond to the urgent message of the sisters of Bethany concerning Lazarus. Therefore while Jesus was at the feast, Jairus renewed his petition in somewhat altered terms. He had become impatient at the seeming delay of the Master. She who at his first application was at her last gasp had by this time died. This he may have judged from her condition when he left her. At any rate he seems on the second occasion to have worded his request from this point of view."My daughter is even now dead,” was his plea this time. Yet even in this extremity there remained in his heart hope and trust in the Great Physician, for he added, “Come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.” The Lord tarried no longer, but “arose” (an expression not found in the parallel passages) and followed him.

The fact of the damsel's death was subsequently confirmed by the messenger. The child was dead, and the mourners were already in the house; why should the Master be troubled further? Thus ran the message.

Viewed in this light, the terms of the petition of Jairus as stated by Matthew are in perfect accord with those recorded by Mark and Luke, and no further remarks are necessary. But it may be added that some have questioned whether the precise meaning of the original phrase in Matthew is conveyed by the usual rendering, “My daughter is even now dead.” It is to be remarked that the verb used here is ἐτελεύτησεν and not the same as that employed by the messenger (ἀπέθανε); moreover, the adverb is not νῦν, but ἄρτι, which may be translated, “just about to happen” (Rev. 12:10). There is not the precision in the coincidence of time indicated by ἄρτι as by νῦν. Such a distinction between these adverbs may be observed in John 2. Speaking at Cana of the waterpots, the Lord said to the servants at the marriage feast, “Draw out now (νῦν),” i.e., draw out at this very moment. Later, the ruler of the feast, having tasted the wine, said to the bridegroom, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now (ἄρτι),” i.e., until the conclusion, as opposed to the commencement of the feast. There is less exactitude of time implied in the latter than in the former instance. But it is doubtful whether this distinction in usage is invariably observed in the New Testament, and it is only named here for the consideration of students.

Many translators have attributed this greater latitude of meaning to this adverb in the phrase in question, as if Jairus had said, My daughter by this time has come to her end. This is in agreement with Mr. Darby's rendering, “My daughter has by this died.” In a footnote to the Translation he adds, “ἄρτι is what comes up to νῦν, says Suidas, quoted by Wetstein in loco; as αὐτίκα, what in the future joins now. Mark has 'is at extremity'; Luke ‘was dying.' Nor has ‘now died' any other sense, only it is less clear. It is, however, quite possible that Matthew may give the result of the servant's message and all.

It may be translated, ‘has just now died,' or, ‘has even now died.' Chrysostom and others give it as in text” [that is, “has by this died"]. In another place Mr. Darby wrote: “ἄρτι ὲτελ, now at her end, 'dead by this.' We know that the father received the news that she was actually dead on the way. ἄρτι is the point up to which time reached, νῦν the thing exists already.”

THE FATHER'S PETITION

It is noticeable that the prominent person in this episode was not one of the common people, as was the case in the events narrated in the former part of this Gospel history. Jairus, the petitioner, was a man of social and religious eminence, and moreover of that class from which the active opposition to Jesus sprang. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were honorable exceptions, but of the rest, it was once scornfully asked, “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?” (John 7:48). Here then the Lord's mercy to the ruler shows that He is rich towards all who call upon Him, and that the testimony of good works which Capernaum was so obdurate in refusing (Matt. 11:23) ranged throughout all grades from the chiefs of the synagogue downwards.

Jairus, coming to Jesus in his distress, did him reverence by falling at His feet, a mark of respect the more striking, coming, as it did, from a person of local distinction such as a ruler of the synagogue was. The trouble of Jairus concerned his affections as a parent. He had one only daughter about twelve years of age, and she lay a-dying. He therefore kept beseeching the Lord that He would come to his house and lay His hand upon her and heal her. Did the ruler recollect that in that very town not so long before, Jesus had entered the house of Simon where his wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and taking her by the hand, lifted her up and healed her? At any rate such was the request he made. But Jesus did not immediately go to the sick child; for He was never swayed by secondary considerations. Personal friendship did not hurry Him to the sick man at Bethany, and his sorrowing sisters (John 11:3, 36). His movements then, as ever, were regulated as to time and place only by the glory of God which would accrue. In this case He who would pause in His progress at the cry of a blind beggar by the roadside was not to be induced to alter His plans because a chief of the synagogue knelt at His feet. The ruler might have supposed that the party of tax-gatherers at Levi's house might very well wait until his own case was dealt with. But Jehovah's perfect Servant was above all such motives of worldly policy. He Himself was learning obedience by the things He was suffering; here was an opportunity for Jairus also to learn a lesson of patience and submission to the will of God. And thus his sorrow and anxiety over his daughter would be turned to account in his spiritual development. He would become possessor of that inward peace which is the result of patient submission to the divine Will. For this priceless boon we shall all do well to pray:-

“Drop Thy still dews of quietness

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.”

Jesus then arose from the table of Levi, and accompanied the sorrow-stricken ruler. The disciples of the Lord went with Him, and a crowd of people also followed him and thronged Him as He passed through the narrow winding thoroughfares of Capernaum.

[W. J. H. ]

Notes on Luke 10

Chapter 10.. (continued)

Verse 19. “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents,” etc.; and it was at the point when He was rejected that He says this. He knew what was really going on, and though He said peace, they did not say peace to Him. “I give you power” over all the power of the enemy. “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” That is the church's place. When Christ was manifested on earth, it was a blessed thing; but it is better to be His companion in heaven, as we shall be when He comes to take us. Far better to be with Himself and as Himself in the Father's house. We have nothing to do with earth—our names are not written in the earth—kings in it indeed, but our portion is not in it. “He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.” We shall have the inheritance with Him, but it is below us; our hope is to be with Himself above it. The inheritance is the consequence of having this place with Him (Eph. 1). We are children of the Father, to be “holy and without blame before him in love.” Now we have our portion according to the riches of His grace, of poor sinners whom He has saved; and we shall be to the glory of His grace in the manifestation of it. The inheritance comes in afterward.

“Rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” As though He would say to them, Do not let your minds be filled with things down here, but think of what you have in Me and with Me. We find two things brought before us in God's ways; first, the government of this world—that which is still prophetic, connected with the kingdom; and then the church up in heaven. When the inheritance is spoken of, it is always future: but when our place is spoken of it is always up in heaven. The Lord saw that the present setting up of the kingdom would all fail, and He was bringing in a better thing than any kingdom, and He rejoiced in that; for when He gives joy to another, He cannot help having it also Himself. When the thief on the cross asked Him to remember him in His kingdom, He said, “This day shalt thou be with me,” etc. He was gratifying the thief and also Himself. So with these disciples. He would have them not be rejoicing in the good down here, for it is not good enough. Not only do not be troubled with the bad, but rejoice not in the best thing in this world.

“In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.” “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” He felt the circumstances deeply, but His soul was up to the source, and He would say, It is quite right that these proud and haughty ones should see they are nothing, and that these poor despised lambs should get the glory. “Even so, Father.” He must how to the evil, because the time to judge it was not yet come. Evil is going on; people are saying, Where is the God of the earth? We have to bear it—the Lord did. We must get our thoughts away from the expectation of having things better down here. The soul that enters into God's thoughts and purposes bows to His will. “Even so, Father.”

Then He, as it were, retires into the glory of His own person. The Son has to reveal the Father. The world rejects Him, and He submits to the rejection of the kingdom, and brings out, instead of it, the blessedness of the heavenly thing, and now speaks of Himself as the Son, and glories in that. The present result of His coming is the Son revealing the Father; and this is even better than the kingdom. The testimony is brighter as to what God is about, when I take things quietly and submit, not desiring to be a wolf among the wolves. It is exceedingly difficult for one's heart to bow and say, “I will be nothing but a lamb"; but that is our place, for the Lord says, “Vengeance is mine": “rather give place unto wrath” (Rom. 12); and “neither give place to the devil” (Eph. 4). But if you do not give place to wrath, you will give place to the devil. Shall we lose anything by being quiet, and taking things patiently? No, “all power,” he says, “is given unto me in heaven and on earth.” We must bow to what is, without, and be satisfied with what is written. If not, we shall be only wearying ourselves in the greatness of our way. May we be satisfied to have our “names written in heaven"!

Verses 23, 24. “He said to them privately.” These things could only be enjoyed by faith. He would have them in consciousness of present blessing.

Verse 25. Now that the Lord has shown out the dispensational change, He shows the moral change. A lawyer comes and asks how he is to get eternal life. The Lord brings him to the law —Keep the law, and you shall live. But he is stopped directly with the simplicity of this, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He does not love his neighbor as himself! He asks, “Who is my neighbor?” “This do and thou shalt live.” Who does love his neighbor as himself? The good Samaritan is the one who does not ask who the neighbor is, but acts in grace, without asking what title the other had. Christ has the title of doing good to him that is in need and misery. This is grace that gives without a title.

See how thoughtful this grace and love is. He went to him—did not send some one else, but went, bound up his wounds, poured in oil and wine, set him on his own beast, brought him to an inn, took care of him, gave him in charge to the host, and said, “When I come again I will repay thee.” How beautiful are all the details of the actings of this love which flows from what is within, and acts according to what is working there, and not according to the claims upon it!

In the closing part of this chapter (vers. 38-42), we see the one great thing was to hear Jesus' word. Hence the approval given to Mary above Martha, who, in a certain sense, was doing a very good work. She received Him into her house and served Him; but there is something better than this: “Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.” He wanted His words to enter and to have power in the heart. The only thing that endures forever is “the word of the Lord.” The wisdom of this world is against it, and so is human reasoning; but it is the only thing worth waiting upon diligently; and if Christians reason about the things of God instead of appealing to the word, they are sure to be going down. We want to have the word in our hearts, to sit at Christ's feet that we may understand and treasure it up. To hear Jesus is the “one thing” needful. No attention, even to Himself in the flesh, though it were from one who loved Him and whom He loved, could replace this. The “many things” end only in disappointment and death, instead of leading into life eternal, as did the words of Jesus, issuing from a heart broken, that it might let forth the stream of life. The hearing ear for His word delighted Him. He was bringing in truth to people's souls.

“Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” “Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth.” “Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken to you.” Truth sets everything to rights; it sets God and man in their place, or it is not truth. Sin, and righteousness, and love—these never came out fully by the law; but “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Everything was set morally in perfect light by Him: but men saw it not, because they knew Him not. The word now is the instrument of revealing truth. The law was perfect because it was of God, but it did not tell what man was, much less what God was—it told what man ought to be. Christ comes in as the light and says, You are all dead, but I can give you life. His coming into the world showed out everything exactly as it was. As the living Word He came and revealed, to those who could see, God—not at first in redemption, but in testimony. What value to Him was it that Martha cumbered herself about serving, in comparison of a soul listening to His word!

It is the same now to a Christian. When God's word comes with nothing else, it has a right to have power over the soul. It makes its way by its own authority and its attractive grace to the heart; and where received it gives life in Christ.

There is no living power in a miracle to quicken a soul, but there is living power in the word. It is by the word that any soul can get into heaven. We are begotten by the word. If the word cannot do it, it will never be done. There are three things constantly pressed in connection with the power of the word. (1) The words spoken will all come up against them another day (John 12, etc). (2) Though perilous times come (2 Tim. 3), the word is able to make wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. There is (3) another thing also; when a soul is quickened by the word, the moral effect is to make it dependent and obedient— “sanctified to obedience.” Such is the character of the new man, as the old man would be independent.

Fragment: 1 Corinthians 14:16-17

“Else when thou shalt ‘bless’ with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy ‘giving of thanks,’ seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? For thou verily 'givest thanks' well, but the other is not edified” (1 Cor. 14:16, 17).

Christ the Source of Life: Part 3

(Concluded from page 219)

The Charter of Life

The passage relating to the present possession of eternal life is familiar: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life.” This positive statement comes to us with an intensified force of conviction as we view its context. We recollect the glory of the Speaker. He who speaks of the possession of life is the One who quickens. Words carry weight in proportion to the dignity of Him who speaks, and to His ability to establish the truth of what He utters. Here the Son of God speaks, the divine Quickener, the Judge of all.

Our part is to receive His words by faith in spite of our feeble apprehension of their significance. The value of them is only to be measured by the Person of Christ. Their validity rests upon Omnipotence. When the Son of God says that a person shall not come into judgment He has the unchallengeable right to speak on such a matter. For the Judge is speaking, the One who will preside at that Great Assize. He has therefore the necessary authority to grant an exemption from the process of judgment. This He does in the solemn declaration, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and shall not come into judgment.” The word “condemnation” in the Authorized Version falls short of the meaning of the text. This may imply being judged but escaping punishment, whereas the Lord promised freedom from the judgment itself, that is, from arraignment at the trial.

This assurance is made to the hearer of Christ's word. Hearing, however, is not merely listening, but receiving in the heart the Son's word of grace and power. It was so with the man at the pool. If he received the word “Rise” as the word of a man he could only regard it as a mockery of his helplessness; but discerning it as the voice of One who spake as never man spake he received the power he otherwise lacked. Essaying to rise in obedience to the command, he rose in a strength bestowed by the Life-giver. So, hearing the word of the Son, and believing the Father who sent Him, are inseparable from the living water which the Son of God imparts to the needy.

Thus in this passage we have the assurance (1) from the Quickener that the hearer and believer possesses eternal life, and (2) from the Universal Judge that he is immune, from future judgment. These momentous questions are by this text answered definitely and finally, and placed once for all upon an immutable foundation.

SIGNS OF LIFE

The presence of life is determined by its action. An absolutely impassive life is unthinkable. This is true of physical life which invariably exhibits itself in motion; where there is none, death is assumed. And so, by analogy, it is spiritually; without motion Godward, there is spiritual death. But if a person possesses eternal life, he has passed “from death unto life.” Such a person has the consciousness of God as Father, of the Son as Savior and Lord. He has esteem, regard and reverence, as well as adoration and worship, for the Father and the Son.

Eternal life places a person in the right relationship of heart and will to the revealed Godhead. It must not be confounded with active philanthropy. A sense of duty towards one's fellow-creatures is not necessarily evidence of the possession of eternal life. Take the case of Judas Iscariot who had every symptom of such a regard for men. In this world of suffering and sin he did many wonderful works of healing and mercy in the name of the Lord; but there was no appreciation of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ upon his lips. He did not confess like Simon Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Judas betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. There was no life in him—no honoring the Son even as the Father.

Again: hearing the voice of the Son of God is evidence of eternal life; “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.” How can this be? Can a dead person hear? In a natural sense, it involves a contradiction of terms. Yet the testimony of Scripture is that Lazarus, and the widow's son, and Jairus' daughter heard that voice. So it is with dead souls according to the witness of the verse before us. The Speaker is the Son of God. And God in the Person of His Son quickens. He gives life—not notions, not creeds. Our part is that of faith. We miss the value of the words of Jesus if we seek to compass them by our own puny thoughts and ideas. Let us believe; for in this is life.

THE TWO HOURS

Moreover, life-giving is a present act. It is a process in progress. The “hour” for it “now is.” Spiritual life is bestowed on those who hear the word of the Son. But there is another “hour” of which the Lord goes on to speak. “The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” As the present hour has reference to the inner life of man, so the future one refers to the body. Light is here shed upon the darkness of the tomb into which the voice of the Life-giver will penetrate.

Resurrection is life for the dead body. The spirit of the departed believer is with Christ, which, as the apostle says, is a “far better” state than the present. This state is reached immediately upon falling asleep. Hence the Lord said to the robber, “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” There was, in consequence, for his spiritual nature, an instantaneous transfer to the highest heaven, while the mangled body waits in the dust of the earth for the awakening word of life in the coming hour. Then in the first resurrection the Lord's redemptive work will be completed for spirit, soul and body—for him and for all who had like faith.

But this resurrection of life is the resurrection of those who heard the voice of the Son of God in the first hour. The response to His voice at His coming is the response of those that are Christ's. It is the response of a previously formed, and a living, relationship. The Lord comes into the air and speaks, and a resurrection from among the dead is the immediate result. This is the secret rapture—secret because the voice of the Lord will be unperceived then as it is unperceived now by the world, and was formerly unperceived by ourselves.

The result then of hearing the Son's voice in that coming time for those who hear His voice now, is that life will then be known by them in fullness and glory. Now the new life is hindered and hampered by the influence of present things. The spirit is clogged. Then we shall rise unfettered to ascend into a sphere of uninterrupted communion with God the Father and God the Son. The life already imparted rises to its source—to Him who is the true God and eternal life.

But the wicked dead will not escape the power of that all-compelling voice—the summons from their Judge. They will subsequently (Rev. 20) rise too in the resurrection of judgment, from which the believer, as we have seen, is exempted.

In conclusion, we may observe that the possession of eternal life is not the result of a personal struggle. It is not consequent upon a successful career of morality and philanthropy. It is a divine gift— “the gift of God is eternal life.” There is therefore no adequate cause for self-satisfaction or boastfulness. The free gift is of grace. The Son quickens whom He will. He sought us when we were lying helpless in the folly and degradation of sin. He granted unto us a new life, breathed out from Himself. Let us, therefore, as Scripture teaches us to do, ascribe all praise and glory to Him who is the Bestower of life upon those who hear His word. W. J. H.

Thanksgiving at Meals

Why do so many Christians, on sitting down to meals, begin by praying? The appropriate thing on accepting a gift is to give thanks. The Christian recognizes God as the giver of his food, and therefore should render thanks to Him. This indeed is consonant with scripture: “meats” are “created to be received with thanksgiving of them who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. 4:3).

The man of the world regards his food as the product of a machine, or institution, which he calls Nature; but the Christian goes behind this, and recognizes the Creator of the entire system of nature. Further, he not only believes that there is such a Creator, but he knows Him; is actually in communion with Him “by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:5). Mr. Darby's translation of this phrase is, “by God's word and freely addressing [Him],” and his note on this rendering is illuminative of the whole subject. He says, “This I believe to be the sense here: ἔντευξις means ‘intercourse with a person,’ then ‘petitions and intercession’; one person speaking personally to another.... I believe the creature, fallen through Adam, belongs to the faithful, and those who know the truth, by God's speaking to us, and our freely speaking to Him. This has set all on a new footing, because we have met God again, the word of God having put us into communication by grace. And ‘the faithful and those who know the truth,’ have availed themselves of it, and come and enter into intercourse. It is no longer by nature, but by the word of God.”

Scripture says that “every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” The current idea is that each meal needs to be prayed about, before it can properly be partaken of. But the contrary is the truth: it is sanctified by the fact of the new position in which the Christian stands. “All things are yours... the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours” (1 Cor. 3:22). The action on our part which scripture enjoins is not prayer but thanksgiving. “If it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4). It is “created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:3). Thus the Christian's meal-table becomes an altar of praise; the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. How different from the dead formula which some of us have had to listen to with pain: “Sanctify, we beseech thee, O Lord, this food to our use, and us to Thy service, for Christ's sake. Amen.” Not a word here of thanks to the Giver of all good for His bounties spread upon the table before us; and the prayer which is made is out of place, it being that God would do something which He has already done, and for which He expects thanksgiving or praise from loving hearts which know Him.

And even where formulas have long been laid aside, one has often to hear what is really only an expansion of the gloomy one just quoted—prayer about the food, about ourselves, about our service, but never a note of praise to our God for His creature-gifts! Prayer is very, very blessed, but so also in its place is praise; not only does it re-act subjectively upon ourselves, but it glorifies God. “Whoso offereth praise (or, thanksgiving, marg.) glorifieth me” (Ps. 1:23). At a meal-table it is sometimes said, Will you ask a blessing? and the appropriate reply would be, “No; the food is already blessed; it is sanctified to our use; and for this food, thus already blessed, I will cheerfully give thanks.”

A precious thought in connection with the meal-table is that the thanksgiving is on the basis of redemption, for we do not receive God's gifts on the original ground of creation, but because of the cross of Christ. God could not, as righteous, bestow the smallest benefit upon a sinner, unless His righteousness in doing so were satisfied. Therefore it is on account of the propitiation of Christ that our daily mercies come to us; and indeed not only to us, but to the world. This is the basis on which God “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” The man of the world little dreams that he owes his food and raiment and every good that he enjoys to the despised atonement of Christ; but God would be exhibiting indulgence to sin if it were otherwise. It is in this regard that “Christ... is the propitiation... for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Men are continued in life upon the earth, and afforded the free use of God's magnificent creation (magnificent, though marred), because of the propitiation of Christ; and it is in this sense that God is Savior (Preserver) of all men, specially of those who believe (1 Tim. 4:10). Temporal salvation, not eternal, is what this text refers to.

If now the offering of thanksgiving glorifies God, shall we refrain from this when we are in public, say at a restaurant, or other public table? No doubt this is often a trial to the flesh; it is at once an open confession of Christ, which the natural heart would willingly evade; but we should recall to our minds the Lord's precious words, “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8). And again, “Them that honor me, I will honor” (1 Samuel 3:30). Paul, on board ship, “took bread and gave thanks to God, in presence of them all” (the ship's company) (Acts 27:35). Daniel kneeled upon his knees and prayed at his open window, as he had done aforetime, three times a day, although at the penalty of death.

Thus this slight matter of thanksgiving at meals may afford to us a test of where we really are, as to the power of God in our souls. “I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will,” says Paul, “and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Cor. 4:19, 20).

E. J. T.

What Is the Church? 5

Chapter 3, the whole of which is parenthetic, unfolds this mystery, hid through all ages, but now revealed; of which the apostle was the minister; viz., that the Gentiles should be of the same body with all saints. But I will reserve my remarks on this passage, till we come to the second part of our subject—the place which the church holds in the ways of God.

Chapter 4 is the application of the doctrine of the second; and the apostle beseeches the saints to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called; which vocation is, to be the habitation of God through the Spirit. The sense of the presence of God always produces humility; and the apostle, in pressing this point, exhorts them to keep the unity of the Spirit (that which has been set forth, chap. 2) in the bond of peace. For, the doctrine in question is this— “There is one body and one Spirit.” This leads the apostle to the subject of gifts in connection with the body. Christ, had gained a victory over. Satan, and could confer on the church He had redeemed the power which would be the testimony of that victory; for it was rescued from the slavery of the enemy, and could be the vessel of this power and this testimony. Christ, by means of these gifts, was nourishing and ministering to the growth of this body. The exercise of them was for the edification of the body of Christ.

It is worth while quoting the verses which follow what we have just examined “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head—even Christ—from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” Thus the unsearchable riches of Christ, by which He fills all things in the power of the redemption which He has accomplished—these riches, I say, form the basis of the edification of the church of Christ, who is no longer looked at as a mere Messiah fulfilling the prophecies and the promises, but in a greatness of which no prophet had any idea, and of which no prophecy had foretold the extent—each part supplying, according to the grace given, these riches of Christ to the body. The body itself, developed in its members, grows thereby into that fullness of which Christ is the measure (the truth which reveals this fullness being the means of making the body grow up into Him, whose fullness is revealed). Thus perfect stature of the fullness of Christ is always the ultimate point of attainment proposed.

What infinite grace! Yet it could not be otherwise; since the revelation of Christ—and of Christ as filling all things—is the means by which the church must grow; and Christ is such, filling all things, as descended from the Father to the lower parts of the earth, and ascended from the place of death up to the throne of God—having come down in love, and gone up in righteousness; expelling, for faith, from the universe which He has made His by redemption as well as by creation, the conquered enemy; as, in fact, He will expel him from it, when He accomplishes all the effects of His power. And where is this body found? Where are these gifts exercised? Where does this growth take place? Blessed be God! down here.

It is that which Christ does after the accomplishment of His work of redemption, and yet whilst He is seated on the right hand of God. It is through the Holy Ghost. It is the body—the church—that one body which is the vessel of this ministry, and of the Spirit which accomplishes it through the members of the body; and which causes the body to grow according to the mind of God in Christ, who is the Head of it; a body, the members of which are the members of Christ. Moreover the apostle has before him the whole body; and “the whole body” viewed upon earth. Charity necessarily embraces all the members of it, as being the members of Christ. The connection between all this and the church, seen in the whole extent of her privileges and of the thoughts of God, is shown in a striking manner at the end of the third chapter; where the apostle exclaims, “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”

I will not go over the infinitely precious teaching of the fifth chapter again, because I have already called the attention of the reader to this portion in beginning our thesis. But it is clear that the Epistle to the Ephesians treats the subject of a church which is one body, whose head is Christ—a body formed and developed upon earth, since the ascension of Jesus, by the Holy Ghost sent from above; and who makes it His habitation—a body in which the glory of God will be reflected throughout all ages—a body which is the vessel upon earth of the Spirit, which He who, having gained the victory over Satan, and established the glory of His redemption everywhere, from death up to God, has sent to be the testimony of the power through which He has overcome; and who associates the church with its Head in the heavens, giving it a heavenly calling, as being seated there in Him. This body, formed in perfectness at the beginning, was to grow by the energy of the Holy Spirit, which dwelt in it, just as a child, perfect in all its parts, grows through the power of the life which is in him, in order to attain to the state of manhood.

The Epistle to the Colossians brings before us some precious instructions on the subject we are considering. The Epistle to the Ephesians has taught us that God would gather together all things in Christ, and that the church was united to Him, as His body; associated with Him in His dominion over all things. The Epistle to the Colossians teaches us the same truth under another aspect. We shall also find, that the idea of Christ which is presented in the first chapter, contrasts with all that He was as the hope of the Jews, according to the testimony of the prophets, as much as that which is found in the Epistle to the Ephesians; but in a different manner.

Let us first look at what is said of the double glory of Christ—Head over all things, and Head of the church. In verses 15 and 16, He is presented as the first-born of every creature; and the reason of it is given He has created all things; He who had created all things, having taken His place as a man in the midst of the creation, must, at all events, be the Head of it. This thought is confirmed in verse 17. The second part of the glory of Christ is declared in verse 18. He is the Head of the body—the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead. These are the two truths presented in Eph. 1:22, 23; only the two things are considered separately here, as two diverse glories of Christ, in whom it has pleased all the fullness to dwell. The reconciliation of all things, and of the church, follows. Having made peace through the blood of His cross, the thought of God is to reconcile all things through Him, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. This answers to verse 16. Then the apostle, addressing the Christians called at Colosse, says to them, “And you, that were some time alienated, hath He now reconciled.” This answers to verse 18. They were part of the church of which Christ was the Head, and of which the reconciliation takes place now. Verses 24 and 25 present, as following this distinction as to this double glory of Christ and this double reconciliation, a double ministry; the ministry of the gospel to every creature under heaven, and the ministry of the church, which is the body of Christ! This ministry, completed the teaching of the word of God (verses 24-26).

The church was a mystery which had been hidden from ages and from generations; a mystery which admitted the Gentiles into all the privileges which it revealed, and spoke of a Christ, not the crown and the accomplishment of the glory of the Jews, but who, in the Gentiles, or in the midst of the Gentiles, in Spirit, was the hope of glory. The presence of the Messiah amongst the Jews was to have been, and will be, the accomplishment of the glory which had been promised to them. But the presence of Christ, in Spirit, among the Gentiles, was the hope of glory—of a more excellent glory—a heavenly glory. In Ephesians, Christ is considered as exalted at the right hand of God, whence He sent the Spirit to confer upon the church the gifts which were the testimony of His victory and the manifestation of His power, as man victorious over the enemy—a glorious Head of the church which was upon earth. In Colossians, He is considered as present in the church, securing to the Gentiles the possession of the heavenly glory into which He has Himself entered. This chapter, then, brings the church into prominence in a very interesting manner.

Christ raised is the Head—the church is His body; its practical reconciliation takes effect now, being founded on the peace made through the blood of the cross. Gentiles belong to it quite as much as Jews; and Christ, in Spirit, dwells in it, the hope of glory. This last expression teaches us, without controversy, that the church is contemplated as exclusively upon earth, though having the sure hope of a heavenly glory. Its unity is not declared, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians; but it is self-evident that the body of Christ can be only one.

I confine myself to the doctrine; adding that the Epistle, as a whole, shows that the Colossians were in danger of losing sight of their close union with the Head of the body—Christ—in whom everything was accomplished, and they complete in Him; and of seeking, by forgetting this truth, to add something else, which was nothing but the setting aside of Him. Consequently, the Epistle brings into prominence the riches and the perfection of Christ, to remind the Colossians of them; whilst the Ephesians, who held fast the faith of their union with Him, were able to profit by the teaching which revealed to them the whole extent of their own privileges. The faithfulness of the one, and the unfaithfulness of the other, have both turned, in the hand of our God, to the blessing of the church in all ages.

The First Epistle to Timothy furnishes us with some precious thoughts in a short sentence: “The house,” it is said (3:15) “of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” Here we stand on ground more connected with the practical character of the church upon earth. It is the house of God: it is there that truth is found, and nowhere else; there alone is it maintained in the world. Let us understand this declaration. The church does not create the truth, but has been created by it. It adds to it neither authority nor weight. The truth is of God, before it is received by the church; but the latter possesses it. It exists, because it possesses the truth, and it alone possesses it. Where, besides in the church, is the truth found? Nowhere.

The supposition that the truth is anywhere else would be the denial of the truthfulness and ways of God. The truth can be nothing but what God has said; it is the truth, independently of all church authority; of any but that of God, who is the source of it.

But where the truth is, there is the church; and the church, which possesses it, and subsists by possessing it, thereby manifests it to the world. The authority of the church cannot make that which it teaches to be truth. Truth alone does not constitute the church; that is, the meaning of the word church embraces other ideas. A single man holding the truth, is not the church; but the assembly of God is distinguished by the possession of the truth. An assembly which has not the truth, as the condition of its existence, is not the assembly of God. The passage under consideration, and the importance of this point, must be my excuse for this little digression, which is but indirectly connected with the subject of the church.

(To be continued)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 4

Here first, in the book of Revelation, the apostle John, at the command of our Lord, characterizes a class of persons who should be found just before the hour of temptation not only setting their minds upon earthly things, but if possible yet farther gone in that evil direction. They are called dwellers upon the earth. They had given up the blessed place of holy separateness as pilgrims and strangers in the world. Such is the uniform description of Christians; nay, in a measure, of the elders who obtained a good report by faith, as the Old Testament shows, although the light then vouchsafed was by no means so full as it is in the New. What intelligent soul would maintain that it was? If the Old Testament gave all the light needed now, where is the value and where the reason of the New? If it was the same thing, why not call it all the Old Testament? why the New Testament at all? The common faith of Christians knows this, if they do not frankly confess it. The one is divinely inspired no less than the other. There is no difference as to this; but there is the striking contrast that Israel's case is the history of a people under the law and government of God on the earth, while the church is a people led by faith out of all worldly connection to follow in the path of an earth-rejected Savior glorified in heaven, and to wait for His coming as those who know their portion with Him above. This is the calling of the Christian, properly speaking.

But whenever did God bring in a blessing without the enemy seeking to turn it to a corruption? If there had not been Christianity, there could not be Anti-christ. There is invariably with the light of God the shadow of the adversary. Accordingly scripture is most explicit that the falling away must come. The falling away from what? From Christianity, to be sure; and very likely from the divinely-inspired testimony in general—from that of the Old Testament as well as of the New. Nor do I conceive there will be long to wait for this. Time was when the only persons who used to attack the Bible were wicked men such as Bolingbroke and Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau. Now, I am grieved to say, it is fashionable for clergymen—university professors, ecclesiastical dignitaries—to be infidels. God forbid that I should single out invidiously any one individual, or any one denomination, because it is easy to see that it is found in all the nations and tongues by which Christianity is at all professed. Skepticism is confined to no class, and is as rampant in Popery, though perhaps more open in Protestantism. Honest I can call it nowhere. It professes anything, while it believes nothing. The hard thing would be to say where it has not penetrated. Not that all are as boldly bad as Bishop Colenso; not that all are infidel after so cowardly a sort as the Oxford Essayists and Reviewers. But it is plain that the spirit of infidelity reigns in quarters that yesterday, one may say, would have been ashamed and horrified; and one of the most alarming signs is the powerlessness of Christendom in meeting it. I feel often that the answers to infidelity are only less infidel, if always less, than the assaults on the faith. Witness the address of Dr. Raleigh on religion and science to which the Congregational Union of London have committed themselves. I desire only to use such facts for the warning of those exposed and for humbling ourselves before God, while cleaving to the word of His grace.

The devil is now making people bolder in the highest places, as for a good while in the lowest. You may depend on it that it is mainly in the middle classes is found the chief value for the revealed truth of God at the present moment. The higher classes are largely saturated with infidelity; the lower classes no less so. In modern times it has been seen that God, while never unmindful of the poor, has most used people between the highest and the lowest to stand for the truth, and to reject error. I believe it is so still, and that the extremes of society are those that go most rapidly to ruin. While this is no doubt true, it is patent that the extremes are advancing rapidly to a moral meeting-place, and that the number of those who are thoroughly devoted to Christ, and who have perfect confidence in the truth of all that is written, is by no means large in any land whatsoever. We may be thankful for what the mercy of God has done in our own country, but I am persuaded that the inroads of infidelity become gigantic at this present time, and that the strides it is taking everywhere are as rapid as they are vast.

If this be so, it is a deeply important matter for us to be on our guard, and so much the more as the moment hastens when these things are about to be realized. Remember, I do not venture to say a word as to defining that moment. God may prolong His patience. Man is apt to be hasty in his thoughts. Just as he procrastinates in his duties, so is he apt to be precipitate in his expectations. It is unwarrantable for any man to predict the day which no one knows, says the Lord. God has kept all this in His own authority. At the same time there are moral intimations; and as none ought to be blind to the signs of the times, so the church of God ought pre-eminently to heed the tokens of what is coming—to read them in the word first, of course, and to seize their living counterpart in what is working round about us. It is not difficult to see that it is the tendency of the present moment to obliterate ancient landmarks—to cast down established distinctions, especially where there is a high or exclusive claim to revealed truth—to put all things divine and human on a common level.

However this may be, here we have the clear promise, held out by the Savior, of a people that are to be kept from the coming hour of temptation. Observe, it is not merely a question of the place of tribulation. From elsewhere it is clear that the center of the worst tribulation is to be Jerusalem. So true is this, that even if the godly but escape to the mountains, they are out of the area of that burning fiery furnace then seven times heated. This is certain from our Lord's own words. They may escape in a very short time to a place where the tribulation cannot fall upon them. Therefore it is evident that the unparalleled tribulation for the Jews can only have a very contracted sphere indeed. I shall show presently that there will be a larger sphere also. But in the message to the church in Philadelphia we have a distinct assurance of exemption, not merely from the place, but even from the hour; and this not of tribulation only, but of temptation, which takes in, if I mistake not, the preliminary troubles and seductions as well as the tribulation that comes as a scourge for such flagrant apostasy and rebellion. Thus the promise is of the largest character, and at the same time of the utmost precision. It is a positive certainty to those that really wait for Christ. It is not a question of a mere doctrine. If the heart be not toward Him, what more value in seeing the pre-millennial advent than anything else? It is obvious that there are a great many souls who have the doctrine clearly enough, of whom none can say that it does them much good after all. I believe myself, that if Christ be not the personal object of the soul, anything else is comparatively powerless; but where Christ is in the heart as one believed in and loved, and hence patiently waited for, then, no doubt, His coming is no less sweet than purifying. Everything is seen to be precious that directs to Him, and the word of God about Him. Where truth is held apart from Him, there will be nothing to soften the spirit—nothing to maintain liberty, obedience, and a sanctifying object. (Continued from page 224) (To be continued)

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 5

The unreasonableness and utter poverty of the separate document-hypothesis is also plain by joining chapter 5 to the end of chapter 2:3. What can be more meager? The entrance of death is unaccounted for, the moral trial in Eden is lost, sin is left out, and God's ways as to it: the prophetic revelation of the Savior and of the destruction of Satan's power is gone; the solemn history of Cain and Abel disappears; also faith in a sacrifice, and this the index and accompaniment of righteousness, God testifying of the gifts; the suffering of the godly; the worldliness and progress in material things of those who are far from God. And Seth is introduced in a way which derives an immense accession of weight from the intervening chapters, if even it be really intelligible without them.

On the other hand, if the entire narrative be taken as a whole, consisting of distinct parts, each having its own definite character, yet only seen in their proper value as conspiring from different points to the one result, how immense the gain in beauty, force and harmony! Creation properly falls under Elohim; the relationship of man and his trial and fall, as well as the ruin and creation, under Jehovah-Elohim; the discrimination of the just from the unjust, both morally and above all in worship, with the issues here below, under Jehovah, the distinctive name of God in the government of man on the earth. Chapter v. returns naturally to Elohim since the perpetuation of the line from Adam is in question, but with Jehovah in verse 29 where we see special relationship.

Dr. Perowne thinks that the alleged design in the use of the divine names will not bear a close examination. Not so; it only seems to fail, I venture to say, for want of a searching analysis. He allows that it does suit the earlier chapters, but not Noah's history, on comparing chapter 6:7 with 8: why say, argues he, that “Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah,” yet that he “walked with Elohim"? Now he might have seen in chapter v. 23, 24, that the expression “walked with God” is not casual but designed. Not only is it appropriate to simple historical mention, but to moral contrast with those characterized by the violence and corruption of all flesh in the earth (11, 12). Jehovah is required where not nature but relative feelings and position are meant to be conveyed. The principle is true in the New Testament equally as in the Old. Thus our Lord Himself always says “Father” in His life or ministry; He says “God” on the cross when bearing the judgment of sin, against which all that God is in holy antagonism was arrayed; He says both when He arose from the dead and placed His disciples in His own place and relationship as far as this could be, now that sin was put away by the sacrifice of Himself, and He could take the place formally of a quickening Spirit in resurrection. So John's Epistles employ “God” and “Father” concerning the Christian with invariable distinctiveness and propriety. It is evident to me then that to “walk with God” is just the right phrase for moral character; while we may also see, by comparing verses 5 and 12, that the introduction of His special relationship applies a more severe and intimate test.

Again, the other cases Dr. P. has named (6:21, 22; 7:5, 9) are plain examples used from internal motives, while 7:16 exposes the futility of referring the matter to distinct documents. In the former Elohim speaks with authority of destroying creation, preserving as Creator only enough to perpetuate species. In the latter He reveals what became Him in special connection with Noah; but even there, where care of the creature only is in question, we read of “the male and the female as Elohim commanded Noah,” “male and female of all flesh as Elohim had commanded; and Jehovah shut him in.” The change in the last is plain and necessary, as in verse 5 also, closing the directions which provide for the exigencies of sacrifice in the “clean” beasts and birds preserved not by a pair but by sevens. The existence of both titles in the same verse is most unnatural on the document-hypothesis, but as explicable as elsewhere when we see that a divine design guides from internal reasons in every case.

Such then is the true explanation of the duplicate accounts, as they have been styled. If difference of authors or of documents had any real evidence, it in no way covers the facts; it really introduces mere imagination to set aside the positive declarations of the Lord and the apostles, who attribute to Moses expressly what a groundless fancy distributes among two, three, five, ten, or even more imaginary writers of the disjecta membra of the Pentateuch severed from each other by considerable intervals of time.

It would not be edifying to discuss too minutely the neology of Dr. Davidson's book, chiefly culled from German sources: a few specimens must suffice. To him the Fall, for instance, is a national mythus. The apostle repeatedly treats it as a fact of the gravest import, which none can slight with impunity (2 Cor. 11; 1 Tim. 2). But what of that? Paul knew nothing of the higher criticism, and must be condoned for his ignorance! The nature of the serpent, the manner in which he is said to have proceeded, the dialog between him and Eve, the sentence pronounced, militate against that mode, the apostolic mode, of interpretation! Thus, however plain the scriptures, these men are not ashamed to count it a vulgar error if one insist on their authority and sacredness. It has nothing, say they, to do with personal religion; it conduces in their judgment to a right view of inspiration if one accepts their word that the Bible abounds in almost every sort of error on the one hand, and on the other that all religious men were counted inspired. Talk no more of Paul in the first century: did not “the immortal De Wette” come to opposite conclusions so long ago as the year 1805? Paul, no doubt, treats the history as the origin of man's universal sinfulness (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21, 22); but why heed so antiquated an idea? The Anglo-German scribe had not yet appeared to expound aright the philosophical myth in which a reflecting Israelite sets forth his views on the origin of evil! Such, my reader, is the spirit of modern rationalism.

Of course the apostle's use of Gen. 4 in Heb. 11:4 is of no account. It is an accommodation! We are told by our new oracle that the “mythic view of the first three chapters is corroborated by the succeeding narrative.” Gen. 4 “presupposes a different theory of the origination of mankind” —this because of verse 14, and the supposed inconsistency of verses 2 and 20! The infatuation of this pseudo-criticism culminates in the judgment that the Sethite line in Gen. 5 and the Cainite one in chapter 4:17,18, “are parallel accounts resolvable into one and the same genealogy!”

The solemn account of antediluvian apostasy and corruption in Gen. 6 is naturally treated with levity; and the flood (chaps. 7, 8) affords the usual material for free handling. “What gave rise to the mythus was the yearly inundations which happen in most countries.... If the account of the deluge be a poetical myth, it is of no importance to inquire whether the catastrophe was partial or universal... Authentic (!) Egyptian history [for with these men Egyptian history (?) is authentic, scripture is not] ignores the existence of a general flood, to which there is no allusion in the annals from the epoch of Menes, the founder of the kingdom of Egypt, B.C. 3463 (!), till its conquest under Darius Ochus, B.C. 340; whereas the period of the Noachian deluge is said to be about 2348 B.C.” I presume that the writer is not much acquainted with these matters, and that he means Baron Bunsen's date for the accession of Menes, B.C. 3643. But the reader should know that in the same work the world's history before Christ is set down at twenty thousand years, and that Egypt is supposed to have been ruled provincially for more than five thousand years before Menes. On such a scale, in contempt of all that is known in or out of the Bible, one must consider that it is a moderate flight in this imaginative system to claim for Menes no more than a few centuries before the flood. It may be added that the basis of it is a passage of Syncellus, and a manifest error, as has been shown by others. But there is no need of learning or logic here; for the divine testimony of Christ has sealed the truth of the flood as an authentic fact, and a most solemn warning to unbelief. (See Matt. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26, 27). The apostles Paul (Heb. 11:7) and Peter (1 Epistle 3:20; 2 Epistle 2:5) have confirmed the witness to it, if this were wanted.

The freest thinker will not complain that, when I cite the testimony of Baron Bunsen, he is likely to give an opinion unfairly to the prejudice of Egyptian records as compared with the Old Testament. “The written character is prolix; the repetition of fixed phrases makes it still more so. Little is lost by occasional lacunæ; but comparatively little advance is made by what is preserved. There are few words in a line, and, what is still worse, little is said in a great many lines. Inscriptions on public buildings were not intended to convey historical information. They consist of panegyrics on the kings and praises of the gods, to each of whom all imaginable titles of honor are given. Historical facts are thrown into the shade as something paltry, casual, incidental, by the side of such pompous phraseology as Lords of the World, Conquerors of the North, Tamers of the South, Destroyers of all the Unclean, and all their enemies. The case of the papyri is certainly different. But written history, such as the historical books of the Old Testament, so far as our knowledge of their writings goes, was certainly unknown to the old Egyptians.”

Let us briefly review a quantity of smaller points. The unbelieving criticism on the earlier chapters of Genesis has been noticed the more, as being in fact the most confidently urged, and, if refuted, involving the rejection of much the greater part of the rest. Subsequent insertions, brief and rare as they are, are rather a confirmation than a weakening of the Mosaic authorship, and in no way an infringement of inspiration, which is a far more important thing; for all were equally inspired of God, whether Moses or Samuel, Ezra, Jeremiah, or any other prophet. The Book of Proverbs is a clear instance, where a large and important addition at a later epoch than that of its earlier portion is avowed. But it is not certain that some of the notices supposed to be of this kind were not original, as, for instance, Gen. 13:18, etc. One can easily understand the original name, for a time overlaid by the name of Arba, finally restored; and we can conceive a curious coincidence in the name of Dan, as it seems to have been an element in Jordan and Dan-jaan, apart from the tribe.

The passage in Gen. 36 (verse 31) on which most stress has been laid seems to be undoubtedly of Moses. To call the notice of kings that reigned in Edom “before there reigned any king over the land of Israel” a trifling proposition is not only irreverence, but evinces that fatal defect of all rationalists—the absence of moral perception. Israel had the promise of kings, which Esau had not; yet Esau had many successive kings long before a sign of royalty was seen in the object of that promise. Had the passage been written after Saul or David's line began to reign, the phraseology would have been different, not “any” or “a” king, but “the king” or “the kings.”

Again, Ex. 16:35, 36; 22:29; Lev. 26:34, 35, 43; Deut. 19:14, are only difficult to one who denies the essential claim of scripture. Lev. 18:28 is cleared in its true sense by simply reading verses 24, 25. Num. 15:32 is quite plain if written, as it probably was, in the plains of Moab. Gen. 40:15 is most natural on the lips of Joseph looking back on the land where his father and himself were once together, and designating it by “the Hebrews” —a name familiar among the Gentiles.

Nor do notices of ancient inhabitants or actual rulers and their history, as in Deut. 2; 3, present the smallest difficulty. They are of the highest interest in themselves, and Moses might well speak and write of them.

Ex. 6:26 has nothing to do with the lapse of a considerable time after Moses, but is due to the sense of God's condescension in using such men by the writer who was one of the two. This may seem trifling to a modern critic; what does the pettifoggery (and, as far as I have had leisure to sift, very incorrect minims) seem to those who rejoice in the divine truth of God's dealings with man for this world and for eternity? So, if the Bible were a human book, such texts as Ex. 11:3, Num. 12:7, might seem strange. Nevertheless the history proves their strict truth; and the language of Paul in 2 Cor. 11 may cause one to hesitate in counting them later additions by Ezra or some other authorized hand, as no one doubts of the formula “unto this day.” But none of these in the smallest degree touches the claim of Moses to have written the Pentateuch by inspiration.

(Continued from page 227)(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 5:25-34: The Reward of Confession

5:25-34

“And a woman which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, having heard the things concerning Jesus, came in the crowd behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I touch but his garments, I shall be made whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her plague. And straightway Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth, turned him about in the crowd, and said, Who touched my garments? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague“ (v. 25-34, R.V.).

On the way through Capernaum to the house of Jairus the Lord was approached by a weak and ailing woman who sought and found healing for her body by secretly touching the border of His garment. How plenteous and overflowing is the mercy found in Him! It is like the fruitful bough of Joseph, “whose branches run over the wall.” The Spirit of power and mercy in Him was “like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments: as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore” (Psa. 133:2, 3).

THE TOUCH AND THE PUSH

This woman came to Jesus, so far as the Gospel narratives inform us, without any intervention on the part of other persons, and she thus affords an instance of what simple, direct, personal faith in Christ may effect. Her case was sad and desperate, as well as distressing (Lev. 15:19-27). Her issue of blood had continued for twelve years without relief, though she had spent all her living upon physicians. They took their fees and she took their potions, yet she was nothing bettered but rather grew worse. The continual drain upon her life's blood weakened and dispirited her, but the news of the marvelous works of healing wrought by the Prophet of Nazareth awakened new hopes within her. She resolved to seek His face, and implore His mercy. But the crowds that beset Jesus and followed Him thwarted this purpose. Besides how inopportune the moment! Who was she to hinder the Master when upon such an urgent errand on behalf of the ruler of the synagogue?

There are usually difficulties and obstructions of some sort in the way of a needy person seeking the aid of the Savior. But faith is only quickened and strengthened by the presence of obstacles. And it was so in this case. Seeing that a formal interview with the Teacher was impracticable under the circumstances, surely something less would suffice. She believed that the plenitude of His power was such, that the slightest contact with Him would be sufficient for her recovery. So the woman kept on saying in her heart, “If I may but touch his clothes, I shall be made whole.” She knew that, according to the Mosaic prescription, when a sacrifice was brought to Jehovah for an unclean Israelite, the offerer laid his hands upon the animal, and it was acceptable and vicarious for him. In some inexplicable manner the virtue and efficacy of the sacrifice was communicated to him who touched it. She determined therefore to touch Jesus in order that the power of healing so abundant in Him might be communicated to her.

Thus faith wrought within the heart of this suffering woman, and she, weak as she was, struggled through the crowd, and, coming up behind Jesus, she contrived to touch the fringe of His garment, edged, as probably it was, with its riband of blue (Num. 15:37-41; Deut. 22:12). The heavenly mercy which had come down to earth at once responded to the touch of faith. Immediately she was healed and felt within herself an accession of new life and strength. And profiting by her example, many others were subsequently encouraged to seek to obtain blessing in a similar manner, and they, like her, did not seek in vain (Matt. 14:36). For it was the day of grace now, not of law. Sinai, the symbol of that great legal system instituted under Moses, affrighted the people of Israel. There was fire and darkness and tempest to deter any that would approach; and then there was death in a touch, for if so much as a beast touched the mount it was to be stoned (Ex. 19:10-13; Heb. 12:18-21). But Jehovah set no such bounds to mount Zion. Grace said, “Come unto me all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

WHO TOUCHED ME?

This miraculous recovery from a wasting disease obtained by the woman in a surreptitious manner did not, however, escape the perception of Jesus. He knew (as He knew [ἐπιγνοὺς] the unuttered thoughts of the Pharisees and scribes, and as He knew all things) that power had gone out of Him. His service, therefore, was not a blind mechanical distribution of merciful power. The power truly went forth from Him, but with it was blended love and interest and compassion. And this constituted a revelation of God to man, for it exemplifies in a striking manner the operation of the providential powers of God in the terrestrial creation. The mighty forces of nature in their silent and systematic movements do not form a gigantic mechanism merely but are directed and controlled by divine love and wisdom to the accomplishment of the purposes of divine beneficence.

The Lord who responded so readily to the touch of faith by an act of healing did not require for His own information the answer to His question, “Who touched my clothes?” He inquired primarily, we may suppose, for the instruction and enlightenment of the woman herself; secondarily, for the benefit of His disciples and the attendant crowd; and finally, for the profit of all readers of Holy Writ.

The disciples viewed the question of the Lord from the standpoint of “common sense,” which is always a source of deception in divine things. Faith, not common sense, was certainly required in this case where the whole of the circumstances were the reverse of “common.” They ignored the unique personality of the Questioner, or Peter and the others would not have said in that deprecatory manner, “Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?”

But Jesus distinguished between the touch of faith and the jostle of idle curiosity. It has been said, “Flesh presses; faith touches.” The multitude were there to hear or see some new thing. They were impelled by the common craze for novelty. Such a superficial desire could be satisfied for the moment by any unusual event—by the occult wonders of Simon Magus, by some strange natural phenomenon, by a fairy tale, by anything out of the common. But the touch of the woman was of a different order. The contact of her finger gave expression to a deeply-felt need for the interference of Jehovah's mercy on her behalf. It also expressed the confidence that the requisite mercy of Jehovah was available for her in the person of Jesus, and nowhere else in this sad and disappointing world.— The Lord recognized what motive impelled the woman to touch His robe, and He said with gentle gracious dignity in answer to the harsh ungracious remarks of His followers, “Someone did touch me; for I perceived that power went forth from me” (Luke 8:46). “This was not a result of His taking careful note of peculiarities of action and character manifested to the eye by those around Him, but of His ‘perceiving in His spirit' and ‘knowing in Himself' the unuttered reasonings and volitions which were taking shape, moment by moment, within the secret souls of men, just as clearly as He saw physical facts not ordinarily appreciated except by sensuous perception.”

The woman began now to enter upon the second stage of her lesson. She had learned the Savior's omnipotent mercy; she was now to learn His omniscient love. “She saw she was not hid.” In the language of the Psalmist—Whither should she flee from His Spirit? Adam and Eve under the trees of Eden learned the futility of seeking to conceal themselves from the divine eye, and so did Nathanael under the fig tree. David's psalm expresses the same experience in lofty diction (Psa. 139). The friends of Jesus learn His attribute of omniscience to their blessing, but His adversaries to their shame and confusion. Of the latter many will, in a coming day, call to the mountains and rocks in their terror, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16). But how salutary for the followers of Jesus to live habitually in the consciousness that His eye is ever upon them. It was in this consciousness that conscience-stricken Peter was ultimately brought to rest, when he confessed to the Lord, “Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:17).

The woman, flushed with the joy of a wondrous healing, saw now that Jesus was aware of her cure, and that His question, though couched in general terms such as might apply to any in that crowd, was addressed especially to her and indeed to no one else. She came therefore to the Lord to confess to Him what she had done, and she went “fearing and trembling.” For she now knew she had done a bold thing, and she feared what the consequences might be. In the fact of His knowledge of her secret act she had gained a glimpse of the divine majesty of Him whose garment she had touched. And while He was so holy and so mighty, how unworthy was she! Was she not, according to the prescription of Jehovah's sacred law, a polluted and defiled woman (Lev. 15:19)? Had not the stern prohibition gone forth that if either man or beast touch the mountain of Jehovah's holiness, it should be stoned (Ex. 19:12, 13)? Jehovah who came down on mount Sinai of old was now in Capernaum; and the woman, as she came to Jesus, feared and trembled, for though she had become the vessel of His power, she knew not, as yet, the word of His grace—that He was there in the midst of the poor of His land to heal and bless and save.

She who had stolen behind Him to gain her blessing, now fell down before Him and told Him all the truth. And the disciples of Jesus heard her declare “for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.” The faith in her heart was thus supplemented by the confession of her lips in the hearing of all present. And this combination of faith and confession, illustrated in this instance, is, in the Epistles, enforced doctrinally as the twofold requisite from man for his blessing through the gospel: “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Rom. 10:10, 11).

[W. J. H.]

(To be continued)

Notes on Luke 11

Chapter 11.

At the beginning of this chapter we have another instance of our Lord praying, the expression of dependence (verse 1). And there the disciples ask Him to teach them to pray. They had not learned the simple confidence in the Father that would go up naturally to Him and tell Him all. There may not always be wisdom in asking, but there should be confidence of communion by the Holy Ghost. Even Paul had not always intelligence of God's mind, or he would not have asked to have the thorn in the flesh taken away; but he was not afraid to make his request. The disciples had not this simple-hearted confidence. They understood not their place as children of the Father. He condescends to teach them when in this condition and gives them this prayer. The Lord teaches them to pray for things about which His own heart was occupied. “Father, glorify thy name,” was expressive of the grand desire of His heart.

“Hallowed be thy name.” He first tells them of Him with whom they are brought into relationship. Not that they had the present power of the Holy Ghost, giving them the consciousness of their relationship—this they did not get till the day of Pentecost; but He teaches them to say, “Father, hallowed be thy name.” There we have perfection. It is the desire for Him to be glorified, though I cannot tell what it may involve me in. There will be the desire not to sin, etc. This was the expression of the perfect desire that was in Christ Himself— “Hallowed be thy name.”

“Thy kingdom come.” There will be the removing of those things that are made, that, “those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” Are you quite sure that you would like Him to come in this kingdom that will involve the shaking out of everything that may not remain? Surely that will wrench the heart from a quantity of things that are attaching you to that which does not belong to the kingdom to come. There may be the desire for these things, with at the same time the consciousness that I have not the sense of the object, but a sense of distance from it which hinders my enjoyment, though I know Him to be “the chiefest among ten thousand,” and the “altogether lovely.” There are often complaining prayers, because there is not the present enjoyment of seeing Him in the sanctuary, though the remembrance of it.

We may have the hope of the Lord's coming, being glad to get to the end of this desert, because it is a desert; or we may long to get out, because Canaan is at the end. If it is not the latter, we shall be in danger of being tired with running, which is always wrong. We should be in the spirit of waiting pilgrims, not weary ones. We ought not to be weary; I do not say we are not, but we ought to be ever desiring His coming, because He is precious. In Rev. 22:17, the bride says “Come,” in answer to what He is, when He says, “I am the bright and morning star.” God does not reject the cry which comes to Him as “out of the depths"; but there is a difference between the cry of distress and the cry of desire.

When Christ was on earth, there was an answer in Him to all God's will, for He always did the things which pleased His Father. He did it as no angel ever could. Then He comes down to notice our daily need, and there is dependence, indeed, in this. “Give us day by day our daily bread.”

“Forgive us our sins,” etc. This chapter does not go into what we may call proper church privileges; the desires are perfect, but the place is not known. The Lord touches upon all the circumstances down here. Man is looking up from the earth; it is here he is walking and needs his feet washed. There are trespasses to be forgiven, and the spirit of grace is wanted. There is no sin imputed to us now; it is all put away. But will that make me hard when others fail? No; my seeing that Christ agonized on the cross for me will give me a sense of my freedom, but not indifference about sin. Instead of hardness, it will give us tenderness and softness of spirit.

“Lead us not into temptation.” Why should God ever lead us into temptation? it may be asked. Sometimes the Lord has need to put us through a certain process to make us learn our weakness. Look at Peter. The Lord saw he needed to be sifted, or He could have prayed for him to be saved from that fall. A soul would always desire that he may not have this sifting. Christ Himself, though it was a different thing for Him, desired to be delivered from it when bearing sin. Paul prayed for the thorn to be removed. But Paul did not get a fourth heaven —that would have made him worse, but a “thorn in the flesh"; something to make him despicable in preaching (otherwise people might have come to him and said, Paul, you must be better than anyone else, for you have been to the third heaven), to prevent his being puffed up, and to keep him even. It was a gracious provision for him, though it is a right thing for the soul to desire not to be led into temptation, but to be delivered from the evil.

Verse 5. “Which of you shall have a friend,” etc. This is another character of prayer—earnest waiting upon God. There is majesty in God's goodness, and yet He takes knowledge of all our wants, and we must await His will and pleasure. Suppose one asks his father for anything, and he says, “You must wait five minutes,” is the child to say, “No, I cannot; I must have it directly"? Meantime, while waiting, faith is exercised, and the spirit broken down in the sense of need. Look at Daniel, and see another thing. God gave him a deep sense of his identification with Himself in what he was doing; so He must make him pray three weeks before he has his request granted. This is a great privilege, for it is to have fellowship with God. In the case of this friend, there is a depth of interest excited in desire for the thing, and because of his importunity he gains it. There is a certainty of God's answering in blessing, though He delay.

Verses 9-13. This is prayer for the Holy Spirit, whom they, though believers, had not then received. In one sense a man may pray for this now, when he has not the spirit of adoption, like the disciples then. But now the Holy Ghost has been given, consequent upon the Lord's ascension to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:22). There could be no union with the man Christ on earth. It is as a heavenly people that there is union with Him. Christ was looked upon as alone until His work was done. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” The Holy Ghost was the seal of Christ's work, not of John's preaching righteousness. The second time He received the Holy Ghost was for the church. He received for Himself (Matt. 3) at His baptism, but for us when He ascended, having finished the work of our salvation. The fruits of the Spirit in us are the consequences of the grace and righteousness in Him, He being the only righteous man. The firstfruits of the Spirit in us are love, joy, peace—then come the practical fruits toward men. The first-named fruits are toward God, then patience, temperance, etc., towards men. The Holy Ghost cannot be the subject for the church, as such, to ask for now, seeing He has thus been given. Christ received Him for us. We pray by, or in, the Holy Ghost, not for Him now. We should pray for more of the working of the Spirit in us, and desire to be filled with the Spirit—poor little hearts indeed, but they may be filled. It does not at all follow that we are filled with the Spirit because sealed with the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit would keep out evil thoughts. It will not take away the evil nature, which ever remains, but thereby that will be kept down.

Verse 14, etc. See the dreadful opposition of man's heart against Him, which brings out a very important test. “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” When Christ is manifested, it is for or against Him that people take their stand. We have spiritual enemies to contend with, and Joshua leading the people in conflict was figurative of the Spirit leading the soul against our spiritual enemies. It is not Christians but Christ who is become God's center. We may gather Christians together, but if it is not Christ in one's own spirit, it is scattering. God knows no center of union but the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Himself the object, and nothing but Christ can be the center. Whatever is not gathering round that center, for Him and from Him, is scattering. There may be gathering, but if not “with Me,” it is scattering. We are by nature so essentially sectarian, that we have need to watch against this. I cannot make Christ the center of my efforts, if He is not the center of my thoughts. It is a great thing for a man to say, I have no other object but Christ, no other activity in my heart but for Christ; not only that He is the chief object at bottom—every Christian has that—but there may be a quantity of middle things in our hearts between the inside and the outside. These must be judged in the soul. Besides love to Christ, there may be love of company, etc.; and we must judge all that is between Christ, the root, and the offspring.

Verse 27, etc. “Blessed is the womb that bare thee,” etc. They speak of the honor of being His mother. No, we would say, that has nothing to do with it. The closest connection with the Son of man is not equal to keeping the word of God. Religionists make a great deal of natural affection, but though blessed in its way, it is nothing to the life of God in my soul. Of course it was a blessed thing to be the mother of the Lord; yet it was but a natural relationship, though a miracle; nor could it have been a light thing to her heart. Still, it was not equal to the blessing of the word of God bringing a soul to Himself. O beloved friends, if you will only let the pure word of God abide in your hearts, you will find that it will sweep away all the cobwebs of the flesh.

Verse 29. They are seeking a sign, another natural thing; but He says, “There shall no sign be given.” Jonah is a sign; he preached, and they repented. Now My word has come to you, and that is the test to you. “The queen of the south,” etc. The word of God is so perfectly suited to man's heart, even the natural feelings are touched by it. The word is sown in the heart, though it may bring forth no fruit.

Verses 33-36. Light is there, and the question is about the man's eye. If a man has bad eyes the light is painful. So the word—to one who has not clear eyesight or the eye single. This is a solemn word; but if a person was converted only yesterday it might he true of him; he might be full of light. It applies as much to the babe in Christ as to the grown man. Where God is in the soul His light is seen. “If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not.” “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, having no part dark,” etc. When the candle is there we see all around. It shows itself and thus shows all around. The eye receives the light; [it is] single or evil. It is not single or double, but single or evil. If Christ is not the object, there is some evil object. If the eye be single, it is all simple, though there will be difficulties in the path, as with Paul. The light is set on a candlestick that all who come in “may see the light.” The man is forced to the question, Do you see it or not? Christ has set up the light in the world. God has displayed Himself in Him, and the effect of that is to show your condition. Do you say, “Suffer me first to go and bury my father?” Ah, you have something first. If my body is not full of light, there is something not single in my eye—something has not given way before the power of Christ—something not given up. People say, I cannot see. No, of course you cannot; you have some other light. Further, what you do see now will presently be given up if you do not walk in the power of what you have. “Take heed that the light that is in thee be not darkness.” Our manner of judging may be wrong, because the standard is not Christ, and then the light becomes darkness: we are guided wrong and mistaken in our path. If the eye be full of Christ, and we judge everything by that light, when I see anything that would not glorify Christ, I say, That will not do for me. I may be a little vessel, but I must be wholly for Christ. May we be walking in the power of the Holy Ghost, and, by the divine teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, content to follow Him, and desire no other path, having the eye upon Him, and only upon Him, so that when other objects are put before us, we may be able to say, “This one thing I do!” While walking through the world, may we be occupied with Christ, not making it our business to judge evil, but simple concerning it.

From verse 37 we have the sure judgment of the Lord on the various forms which the lifeless religion of those who led the people took up, expressed in different ways, but His constant and unmingled judgment upon it all. The first ground of condemnation is the substitution of outward cleansings and services, which the flesh can render, for purity of heart and the spirit of love: where these last are, external things are clean. Thus money occupies the heart, where there is only a religious form, for it represents the world; and pre-eminence is another expression of the same thing. Next (ver. 45, etc.) the doctors of the law are sentenced, and with them the imposing of burdens on others, while they spared themselves from the trouble. It might not at first appear why building the sepulcher of the prophets showed approval of those who killed them; but the truth was that the lawyers sought in this their own honor, instead of receiving the testimony of the prophets, which would have humbled them, for the moral and utter ruin of the nation. But they were adorning, as if all were right, the tombs of the righteous and good. It was the spirit of the world, arrogating credit to itself for piety to the dead, not holy fear at the prophet's rebukes.

But a clearer proof should be in the wisdom of God that they sympathized not with the word of the prophets, but with the works of their fathers. Prophets and apostles would be sent, and once more be slain and persecuted. The Pharisees were hypocrites, and so judged; the expositors of the law perverted their nearness to scripture in their hatred of any real testimony to their own conscience. These could, least of all, bear what detected their evil. Hence, in pride and fear, they took to themselves all the springs of knowledge, neither entering themselves (for they must do that as learners, and needy, and lost), nor allowing those to enter who would (lest they should condemn themselves, and besides, their honor and characters go for nothing). The closing verses show us the invariable conduct of false religionists. Having no answer of moral truth to the evidence of deceit and evil exhibited in their ways, their effort was to perplex and to entrap. Convicted of sin, and incapable of truth, they sought to make void God's goodness in accusing even Christ of error. It was mercy toward others to be plain as to these false guides, and therefore the Lord denounced them unsparingly.

What Is the Church? 6

There is one more passage, which presents the church in so complete a manner as to its hope and its service, that I will quote it in closing this series of testimonies from the Bible. It is that of Rev. 22: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

In this passage we find the Spirit introduced in a very remarkable manner; somewhat analogous to Rom. 8 Both passages show how far the Holy Ghost is considered, in the word of God, as dwelling upon the earth since the day of Pentecost, and as identifying Himself either with the believer, or with the church. In Romans it is, “He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit; because,” it is added, “He maketh intercession for the saints according to God.” Now, it is our groanings, that are spoken of there. Here in Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say, Come. The Spirit so takes His place with the bride that the sentiment of the church is that which the Spirit Himself expresses. The Spirit is upon earth, and animates the church; being the true source of its thoughts. The church, animated by these very thoughts, expresses her own affections under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Had it been only an expression of affection, one might have questioned its legitimateness; and that also of the groan of Rom. 8; but since the Holy Spirit connects Himself with it, this desire of a feeble heart has the power and authority of a divine thought.

This then is what characterizes the church, in her desires and in her hope. She desires that her Bridegroom should come. It is not a question about prophecy. It is Christ, the communicator of the prophecy, who presents Himself: “I am the bright and morning star.” The church knows Him. She will be with Him, before the great day of His manifestation comes—she will appear with Him in glory. But when He is thus presented in His person, it awakens the earnest desire of the bride that He should come. But there is also a testimony to be borne. It is what follows. She calls upon those who hear, but who have not understood their privilege of being of the bride, to join this cry, and to say, Come. In the meantime, she already possesses the river of living water, and, turning towards those who are athirst she invites them to come and make a free use of it. How beautiful a position for the church —for our hearts! The first affection of her heart is towards her Head—her Bridegroom, who is to come like the morning star to receive her to Himself in heaven, before He is manifested to the world. Then she desires all believers to share this desire, and to reinforce her cry that He may come. In the meantime she is the vessel and herald of grace, according to the heart of Him who has shown grace to her.

What more blessed position could be thought of, for such poor worms as we are, than that which sovereign and creative grace has given us? If the reader examines chapter 17 of the Gospel of John he will find that the object of the chief part of the chapter is to place believers, beginning in a special manner with the apostles, in the same position as Jesus was; they taking His place. We well know that He alone, by His Spirit, can be the strength through which they can accomplish such a task.

This truth enables us to apprehend what the true position of the church is. Christ was upon earth, but at the same time one with His Father. He was manifesting Him upon the earth. He was a man upon earth, but He was a heavenly man, displaying upon earth the spirit and sentiments of heaven, where love and holiness reign, because God is love and holiness. He says, “The Son of man which is in heaven.” He was separate from sinners, and yet at the same time perfect in grace towards them. In His case, His person was the cause of it; He being, at the same time, true man, and acting by the power of the Holy Ghost in a dependence upon God, which constituted His perfection as man.

In the case of the church, it is clear that the question is no longer of a divine person; yet she is not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. United to her Head in heaven, by the Holy Ghost come down from it—dead and risen with Him, and seated in Him in heavenly places—her character is purely heavenly. She is upon the earth, where the Holy Ghost has come down to manifest here a heavenly walk—the motives and the mind of heaven. She lives above, in Christ, by the Spirit; her life is hid there with Christ in God; she seeks for nothing down here; declaring plainly that she is yet seeking her country. She is one, she knows it: it cannot be otherwise. Can her heart recognize that Christ has another bride as companion of His heavenly joys?

The manner of her being necessitates her unity, as well as the character of her Bridegroom, and the unity of the Spirit. She is upon earth, she sighs after her country, but still more after the Bridegroom, who will come to receive her unto Himself, that where He is there she may be with Him. In the meantime she hears testimony upon earth, as united into one body by the presence of the Holy Ghost. This is the place where God owns her, till Christ comes to take her to Himself. From that time she will bear testimony, in the glory and by the glory, to the love which has placed her there, and to the mighty redemption which has taken poor sinners and placed them in the same glory as the Son of God, and in the same relations with His Father, except that which is essentially divine— “that in the ages to come He [God] might show the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”

What we have already said leads us naturally to the second part of our subject—what place the church holds in the ways of God. The heavenly aspect of this question finds its answer in several passages which we have just examined; which treat the subject of the nature of the church. God has willed that His Son, Ruler of all things as Son of man, should have a bride to share His glory and His dominion. Glorious position! testimony of the infinite grace of God! Such is the church, the companion of Jesus in the heavenly glory. This will take place at the same time with the earthly glory, which will be the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament. God, for the dispensation of the fullness of times, will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him, as Head; whose bride and body the church is.

The Old Testament, which gives us the history of the ways of God upon earth, and in its prophetical part announces what the result will be, does not reveal to us this mystery. The church, as such, does not come in continuation of the ways of God upon earth. The object of the counsels of God from before the foundation of the world, she had been hid in the depths of these counsels, till Christ, having been rejected upon the earth, might become her heavenly Head; and the testimony to this glory, having also been rejected by the Jews, who, in a certain sense, had a right to the promises, the door was plainly opened for the revelation of this glorious mystery—hid in all ages.

In considering a little the facts, either with regard to man or with regard to the Jews, the suitableness of these ways of God will be understood without any difficulty. Until the rejection of Christ, man had been put to the test in every way—without law, under the law, and even under grace, presented in the person of Christ; for God was in Him reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Now man, by the death of Christ, has proved himself an enemy of God, an enemy who hated even His mercy, which was nevertheless his only resource, because it was of God. Christ, as new man, raised, glorified, at the right hand of God, outside the world, takes as man the place where man was to be in the counsels of God. There is a man at the right hand of God to whom the church can be united, as His body, by the Holy Ghost.

Such a heavenly standing of the saints could not possibly exist before. The body could not be, before the Head, to which it was to be united, had taken His place, such as it had been prepared for Him in the counsels of God. There was not a glorified man in heaven before to whom the church could have been united.

(Continued from page 222) (To be continued)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 5

I am speaking, of course, not merely of being screened from the judgment, but of the power of salvation and of joy in the Lord now. Plainly this promise is most full, and it is at the same time no less precise as to the exemption of a people from this hour of temptation. Need it be added who these are? They are Christians, and none others. None but Christians were here addressed by our Lord. To them distinctly is the pledge made, that those who keep the word of His patience, the Lord will keep—not during, nor through, nor in, but— “from (or “out of”) the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth"; to try such as may have borne the Christian name, baptized persons, but their heart not in heaven, nor with Christ; earthly-minded, earthly-dwellers, spite of the true light and the revelation of glory in the face of Christ.

But this is not all. In Rev. 7 we have another word, and here we have, as is well known, “the great tribulation.” I am giving the critical reading; for remember, in cleaving firmly to scripture—and I do not see there is anything else worth contending for in this world—it is a duty to ascertain, wherever a various reading exists, what has the weightiest claims to be received as the true: we have no need to shut our eyes to any representative of the mind of God. In short, the purest state of the text must be sought as well as the most faithful version. To perpetuate a traditional blunder is not faith, but mere ignorance or obstinate superstition. Therefore I accept, and exhort all my brethren to accept, every help that God affords for the elucidation of His word. To this end every discovery of an ancient Biblical manuscript, every help toward a more accurate version that can be gathered from the study of the languages in which God wrote His word, is most valuable. I do not say that everybody ought to set up for a judge in these matters.

In fact, very few scholars, or even Christian scholars, have this sort of competency. It is easy enough to suggest changes of scripture, and supposed emendations of text and translations. We have all heard of 20,000 corrections collected by a diligent physician. It might be a wholesome check if any competent person dealt with that magazine of misapprehensions, as Bode did with the errors made by Mill and Bengel through trusting the Latin renderings of the old Oriental versions. What a tiny residue would come out from the subjection of the 20,000 to a really critical ordeal! In general you may dismiss at least nineteen out of every twenty supposed corrections of our authorized Bible. They are merely the crude guesses of tyros, the suggestions of such as may be scholars in profane Greek or Latin, but who possessed little or no familiarity with the Bible.

Again, it is monstrous for persons to sit in judgment on such matters, unless they do so as Christians. I deny that genius or scholarship will enable a man to understand aright either the Hebrew or the Greek scriptures. The best of scholars have made the grossest of mistakes here. Take Dr. Richard Bentley. Did not he and the like commit very painful blunders in scripture?

I admit the scholarship of the famous Master of Trinity in his own sphere. He was, no doubt, a man of very unusual power, and of the largest attainments in the remains of Greek and Roman letters; but then, as a rule, no man is at home outside his own business. I do not trust people who speak confidently on what they have not made their own. I value the simplest artisan in his own craft more than the ablest philosopher who prattles about it. No doubt, if a shoemaker were to talk of philosophy, he would not be likely to throw much light on the subject. He might be a genius, undoubtedly, and to this you must give ample weight; but still, in general, one could not expect that men outside their own proper functions would be the most competent to give an opinion of value on matters foreign to them.

On doctrine I hold the opinion of a scholar to weigh about as much as that of a shoemaker. Not only is erudition in itself of no account in spiritual things, but scholarship in one branch does not give competence in another. The Attic nicety, which appreciates, Sophocles, may be at fault before the abrupt passes and parentheses of the apostle Paul. But the first of all requisites, even for those familiar with Greek, for understanding the word of God is unfeigned faith in the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the sole power of comprehending and alone gives qualification to judge of divine things; and He dwells only in those who have faith in Christ. At the same time let none suppose that I exclude the use of every aid that can be brought in really and honestly to enable a Christian to read the word of God as closely as possible approaching its original form. It is, to my mind, a positive duty to welcome and apply every such help, let it come from what quarter it may.

To those who accept this principle there can be no doubt that the true reading here is “They which come out of the great tribulation.” The omission of the article is wrong in the common text, and must he given in English to represent fairly the sense given by the best authorities. It is not always so; but it is needless to say that there are definite means of judging, and there is no question at all about its necessity here. To those who know these matters this is a ruled point, not without the effort of prejudice in some to resist the conclusion, but in vain. “These,” said the elder to John, “are they which come out of the great tribulation.” This is important, because if you read it simply “These are they which came out of great tribulation,” many a Christian might say, “You and I have known great tribulation. This is a choice scripture, and it evidently applies to you and me.” Alas! how often we are misled from the prime source of all mistakes—that is to say, interpreting the Bible by our own feelings, circumstances, and sphere. This is not the way to understand the word of God. You must look at it in connection with Christ, and not with self. Such is the only canon that will conduct a man in safety and light and joy right through the Bible by the grace of God; thus only can one he an intelligent disciple of the Lord Jesus.

Quite different is the way in which persons in general are apt to deal with the Bible; that is, they judge from their own things, and not from the things of Jesus Christ. Connect the word as well as facts with the Lord, and what a difference it makes! There may be Christians so unintelligent as to find in the Bible nothing but Christians and their enemies; but the man who reads scripture, looking at Christ, not at himself and his church, will say, “Well, there was once a people of Jehovah before the Christian and the church of God; the Lord had Israel then the object of His care, and they broke down utterly. Then He gave imperial authority to the Gentiles, and they turned it against Him, compelling the Jews, under pain of death, to worship their idols, and give up the true God. And now the Lord Jesus, having come, has been rejected by both; and having accomplished redemption, has sent out the gospel and set up the church; and what is the result?” We have before us in scripture the revelation of the end of all, and we have the working of these destructive principles in our own day. To leave room for all is of immense importance. It clears the way for understanding these and other scriptures. The fertile source of mistake is the desire to make all bear upon ourselves.

We have seen the Jewish portion; we have heard the promises to Christians; now we must be introduced to a third party. Nor is there the I least reason why we should be in the dark about it; for in the latter half of Rev. 7 we read as follows: “After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, he unto our God forever and ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

How many believers here and elsewhere I can hear asking if this be not a picture of the church. Let me assure you that it certainly is not so. With the utmost desire not to contradict any one flatly, we must feel that there are times when it is much better to be plain and short. I must therefore take the liberty of affirming that demonstrably a Gentile multitude is meant, and not the body of Christ, the church. The proofs are clear and decisive. Every intelligent reader of the book, whatever his view of its interpretation in other respects, agrees in this, that “the elders” and the “thing creatures,” one or other or both, are the symbol of the church in heaven. How then could one of these elders describe this multitude, if all, elders and Gentile multitude, formed part of the same church? How could the party described and the party describing be the same body? Surely they must set forth a quite distinct thing. The elders were seen long before the multitude.

The context too will make their difference still plainer; and this is not an unimportant key to understand scripture. Never take a passage without examining its context. What is its bearing here? A numbered multitude we first hear of from the twelve tribes of Israel. I know the fondness of many for what they call spiritualizing; but it is hard to spiritualize each of the twelve tribes of Israel; and the whole of these are brought before us distinctly and separately, as if on purpose to set aside such mysticising; for this is its true name and nature—not a spiritual but a mystical use of the scriptures. After the Holy Ghost has shown us the one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed out of the twelve tribes, the prophet then sees an innumerable multitude of Gentiles, distinct from both the elders and the four living creatures. If the elders mean the heavenly redeemed in chapters 4, 5, I suppose they must mean the same body till the last chapter in which the symbol occurs (Rev. 19). Wherever they appear, do they not mean the same thing?

I here take the lowest ground. Is it not a fair inference that, if a symbol is found in different passages in the same book, it is to be taken in the same sense consistently? That is to say, if the elders are the glorified saints in one passage, they are the same in all passages. How then could this multitude of Gentiles be so any more than the multitude of Israel? In short, therefore, Rev. 7 shows us a numbered company of Israel, and then a countless crowd of Gentiles, separate from each other as well as from the elders, and characterized as coming out of the great tribulation. There is not the semblance of truth that these Gentiles are composed of the successive generations of God's people throughout different ages of the world. On the contrary, they are not supposed to be risen but alive; to the prophet's eye a number numberless, gathered out by grace at a particular epoch, when the great tribulation comes here below. This, long known to a few scholars, is established now conclusively by the critical researches of all competent to speak, no matter what their bias.

And why should it seem incredible, or even strange, that God should begin to deal with Israel as such again? As to this, there really ought to be no question, if we believe the various scriptures read at the beginning of this discourse. And if God will keep them, why not the Gentiles too?

Nay, is it not certain that He means to bless the Gentiles as such? Is it asked what He purposes to do for the church of God? We have already seen about it. Those that keep the word of Christ's patience are promised to be taken out of the hour of trial, and those whose earthliness covers the Lord with their own shame are the persons on whom the severest judgments are destined to come. “The hour of temptation that shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth,” does not mean simply Jews or Gentiles, but rather such as have professed the name of the Lord falsely. That true members of Christ's body will be left here below is an idea not only without foundation, but contrary to the clearest principles of truth, and to express statements of scripture. The evil servant and the foolish virgins mean not the true but the false.

(Continued from page 240) (To be continued)

A Letter on Assembly Discipline and Unity of Action

From the “Messenger Evangelique,” 1872 (translated)

I begin by taking for granted what is admitted to be a common basis of action: that is, that every assembly of Christians gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the unity of His body, from the time it acts as the body, does so on its own responsibility to the Lord; as for instance, when it performs an act of discipline or when it carries out all other things of that nature, as it also does when it receives in the name of the Lord Jesus those who come among them to take part at His table. Each assembly, in such a case, acts on its own initiative and in its sphere in deciding matters purely local, but which have a hearing which extends to the whole church. The spiritual men who addict themselves to this work and are occupied with its details, before the case is brought before the assembly so that the consciences of all may be exercised in the case, may doubtless thoroughly explore the details with much profit and godly care. But if it comes to deciding anything apart from the assembly of the saints, even in the most ordinary things, their action would cease to be the assembly's action and it ought to be disowned.

When such local matters are thus treated by an assembly, acting in its sphere as an assembly, all the other assemblies of the saints are bound, as being in the unity of the body, to recognize what has been done by taking for granted (unless the contrary is shown) that everything has been carried out uprightly and in the fear of God, in the name of the Lord. Heaven will, I am sure, recognize and ratify that holy action, and the Lord has said that it shall be so (Matt. 18:18).

It has often been said and acknowledged that discipline which consists in putting away from among yourselves (1 Cor. 5:13) ought to be the last means to which we should have recourse, and only when all patience and all grace have been exhausted, and when allowing the evil a longer continuance would practically associate the evil with Him and with the profession of His name. On the other hand, the discipline of putting away is always done with a view of restoring the person who has been subjected to it, and never to get rid of him. So it is in God's ways with us. God has always in view the good of the soul, its restoration in fullness of joy and communion, and He never draws back His hand so long as this result remains unattained. Discipline, as God would have it, carried out in His fear, has the same thing in view, otherwise it is not of God.

But whilst a local assembly exists actually in a personal responsibility of its own, and while its acts, if they are of God, bind the other assemblies, as in the unity of the one body, this fact does not do away with another which is of the highest importance, and which many seem to forget, viz., that the voices of brethren in other localities have liberty, equally with those of the local brethren, to make themselves heard in their midst, when discussing the affairs of a meeting of the saints, although they are not locally members of that meeting. To deny this would, indeed, be a serious denial of the unity of the body of Christ.

And more than this, the conscience and moral condition of a local assembly may be such as to betray ignorance, or at least an imperfect comprehension of what is due to the glory of Christ and to Himself. All this renders the understanding so weak that there is no longer any spiritual power for discerning good and evil. Perhaps in an assembly, also, prejudices, haste, or, indeed, the bent of mind, and the influence of one or of many, may lead the assembly's judgment astray, and cause it to punish unjustly and do a serious wrong to a brother.

When such is the case, it is a real blessing that spiritual and wise men from other meetings should step in and seek to awaken the conscience of the assembly, as also, if they come at the request of the gathering or of those to whom the matter is the chief difficulty at the time. In such a case their stepping in, far from being looked upon as an intrusion, ought to be received and acknowledged in the name of the Lord. To act in any other way would be to sanction independency and to deny the unity of the body of Christ.

Nevertheless, those who come in and act thus ought not to act without the rest of the assembly, but with the conscience of all.

When an assembly has rejected every remonstrance, and refuses to accept the help and the judgment of other brethren, when patience has been exhausted, an assembly which has been in communion with it is justified in annulling its wrong act, and in accepting the person who was put out if they were mistaken as to him. But when we are driven to this extremity, the difficulty has become a question of the refusal of fellowship with the assembly which has acted wrongly, and which has thus of its own accord broken its fellowship with the rest of those who act in the unity of the body. Such measures can only be taken after much care and patience, in order that the conscience of all may go along with the action as being of God.

I call attention to these subjects because there might be a tendency to set up an independence of action in each local assembly by refusing to admit the intervention of those who being in fellowship might come from other places.

But all action, as I have acknowledged from the outset, primarily belongs to the local assembly.

J. N. D.

Published

F. E. RACE, Publisher, 3 & 4, London House yard.

Paternoster gow, F.C.

The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 6

It is not only that the “higher criticism” fails to explain justly the divine names, and does not pretend to any remark on their employment beyond the superficial and, as we have seen, unfounded notion of different dates, but another notable trait is its extreme carelessness, and, I must say, its misstatements as to alleged matter of fact. Thus even opponents of neology are too apt to repeat the assumption that the supposed Elohist always says çí or ôçàøí, not àãíðçéí like the supposed Jehovist. Now the fact is that Padan occurs but once (Gen. 48:7) in an address opened and therefore governed by the name El-Shaddai, the distinctive title of relationship to the patriarchs. Next the very first occurrence of Padan-aram is in Gen. 25:20, where it is severed from Elohim by seven verses (12-18), which set forth the generations of Ishmael and his sons, and where it has in its own immediate sequence and connection (ver. 21) the name of Jehovah. In Gen. 28:2 it is followed in the next verse not by Elohim but by El-Shaddai, though after that no doubt comes Elohim. But Jehovah appears repeatedly in the middle of the same short chapter, as does Elohim at the close. The only criticism therefore to which the new school can resort is the very mechanical device of the scissors, by which they divide these few verses, though bound up intimately, among at least three different writers—verses 1-9, the Elohist (which does not at all account for the quite distinct title of El-Shaddai); 10-12, 17-22, the junior Elohist (which overlooks the most emphatic use of Jehovah in the chapter, ver. 21); and 13-16, the radactor. Why the Jehovist should be discarded and the compiler or editor substituted where the Jehovah title is so prominent is not explained or apparent. But such is the artificial hypothesis which Dr. D. borrows from his German leaders.

Gen. 31:18 is the next occurrence of Padanaram, which here follows Jehovah's word to Jacob. Jacob calls him repeatedly God; but it is impossible to deny that the passage turns on what Jehovah said (ver. 3). The ground taken therefore is wholly false; and the attempt to cut out verse 18 for the Elohist, and to assign the rest of the chapter to the younger Elohist, the Jehovist, and the redactor, as Dr. D. does, only proves the desperation as well as the poverty of thought to which such criticism reduces its partisans. In Gen. 33:18 Padan-aram occurs again, but the title with which it stands most nearly connected is the remarkable compound El-elohe-Israel, which is certainly not purely Elohistic on their system. But singularly enough Dr. D. seems here to have forgotten his lesson himself (1: 59), for he distributes this verse 18 between the Jehovist and the redactor, giving the latter the clause containing the name, which in p. 27 he confines to the Elohist. And this is criticism! Gen. 35:9, 26 Dr. D. has mangled to the utmost limits of the hypothesis, for he cuts it up among all the four imaginary writers of this book. It is impossible, however, to deny the distinctive force in the chapter of El and El-Shaddai, which are not Elohistic: so exactly of Gen. 46:15, the last occurrence, save that El-Shaddai is not here.

On the other hand, the basis for pronouncing Aram-naharaim Jehovistic is of the weakest, as the reader will feel when assured that it occurs but twice in all the five books of Moses, Gen. 24:10, Deut. 23: 4. Even in this word the same fatality of error haunts the neologian; for one of the only three Occurrences of the word outside the Pentateuch is in the title to Psa. 60, one of the most intensely Elohistic compositions in the Bible. Besides, it is not at all proved that Padan-aram is identical with Aram-naharaim. The high land of the two rivers may well include the plowed high land or plateau of Syria, though both might with sufficient accuracy for ordinary use be translated Mesopotamia. Aram, simply, is the most comprehensive term of all, and occurs but once in the Pentateuch (Num. 23:7) distinctly in the sense of a country, and this in Balaam's speech, who uses Elohim, Jehovah, Elion, and Shaddai in such a way as puts to the rout the idea of a Jehovistic document.

I grant that, in general, terms expressive of natural species, distinctions of sex, generations (save in an exceptional case such as Gen. 2:4), historic specifications of time, etc., occur in scriptures where Elohim is used rather than Jehovah. But this flows from the nature of things, and must therefore be on the supposition that Moses wrote the five books. It is a question of propriety and exactness of speech, not of different documents. For in describing for instance natural production, or the perpetuation of the creature, or facts as such, Elohim is required, and the name of special relationship would be out of place.

Again, we are told that ç÷éñáøéú (or ðïä), “establish a covenant,” is the Elohistic expression, the Jehovistic ëãúëøéç, “to make (literally 'cut') a covenant.” Now, not to say more of Gen. 17:7, 19, the strongest evidence possible against the exclusive Elohism of the first formula is, that it is employed in immediate sequence after the formal revelation of the name of Jehovah (Ex. 6:2-4). I am aware that our scissors-critics never fail for want of boldness, and that Dr. D. ventures to bracket this very passage to the redactor in verse 1, and to the Elohist in verses 2-7, leaving verse 8 to the Jehovist. But to treat scripture thus, to represent the passage as such an ill-assorted farrago, is mere willfulness, and contrary to their own principle which professes to draw its proofs wholly from internal evidence. For if so, nothing can be more certain than the Jehovistic character of this chapter, though rare is taken, as we have seen elsewhere, to show that Elohim is Jehovah, as well as El-Shaddai, henceforward to be looked to nationally according to all that the name of Jehovah implies as their God. Ezek. 16:6, 62, cannot be pretended to be Elohistic. So as to the alternative form (ðäïáøéú), it occurs twice only in the Pentateuch, Gen. 9:12, Num. 25:12. Of this last chapter I am aware that Dr. D. calls verses 1-5 Jehovistic, 6-18 Elohistic. The best answer is to read verses 10-12, which open thus: “And Jehovah spake.” As to the exclusively Jehovistic phrase, the disproof is equally sure. (See Gen. 21:27, 32). Junior or senior, it is Elohistic, contrary to the alleged distinction. It occurs again in Gen. 31:44, which is certainly not Jehovistic; though I am not able to make out how Dr. D. (58, 59) tabulates verses 43-47. He assigns parts of 41 and 48 to his redactor. At any rate the use here contradicts the system. So the connection is Elohistic, not Jehovistic, in Ezra 10:3; Psa. 83:5. In short the reader has only to sift in order to prove how unfounded is the hypothesis and its conclusions.

I do not judge it to be called for just now to examine all the other phrases supposed to characterize the Elohistic or the Jehovistic passages respectively. But of this the reader may be assured, that it is wise in no case, were it the most immaterial statement, to trust the assertions of rationalism. Even where there may be a true element, it is invariably misapplied and in general exaggerated to the last degree. Thus much is made of àçïä “possession"; and àøõñâøéñ “land of sojournings,” as “peculiarly Elohistic.” Unfortunately for the theory, their first occurrence in the same chapter and in the same verse (Gen. 17:8) disproves the assertion, unless indeed one is weak enough to allow a chapter to be counted Elohistic which begins thus: “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El-Shaddai,” etc. How can this be Elohistic, either elder or younger? It begins with Jehovah revealing Himself to Abram by that special name in which he and the other fathers had to walk, and then showed Himself to be none other than Elohim (vers. 12, 15, 18, 19), which was of the utmost importance. One could hardly conceive of a more satisfactory disproof of distinct documents as well as of confining the phrases cited to Elohistic passages. Any good Hebrew concordance will multiply cases of it.

Another remark may be here made, and not without cause. The uncertainty of these speculations is such that hardly two rationalists agree tolerably, nay, hardly one agrees with himself for any length of time even, as to broad outlines and points of very great importanCe. Thus Dr. Davidson, in his contribution to the tenth edition of Horne's Introduction, contended for two documents, the Elohistic of Joshua's day, and the Jehovistic during the Judges, which he supposed to have been combined in one work under Saul's or David's reign. What is of still greater moment, he then ascribed the authorship of Deuteronomy to Moses. Traditional orthodoxy may have yet exercised a check on his mind; for one can hardly speak of faith, when in six years all was changed for the worse in his own Introduction to which reference has so often been made. I am far from insinuating that the author did not believe what he wrote in his second volume for the late Mr. Horne's work. But one can only save his honesty by blaming both the extreme want of judgment in questions of very great consequence (for the denial of this, 1:129, will satisfy none but the light-minded), and the instability which could make such a revolution in so short a space. Were it a stripling, allowance might be made for inexperience or the influence of stronger minds: as it is, even a heathen could say, facilis descensus Averni.

The pretentiousness which accompanies the worst insinuations against God's word, when these rest on the flimsiest of reasons, is deeply painful. Every one in the least familiar with the manner in which the Holy Spirit has deigned to instruct us in scripture knows that it is frequently by taking up the same subject and presenting another line of association, so as to give us the truth fully through viewing it on all sides. Not otherwise do the wisest men, as far as their small measure is capable of a method so exhaustive. Instances of this we may see frequently, not only in the five books of Moses, but in every part of the scriptures, and nowhere more conspicuously than in the inspired accounts of our Lord; for it is true of whole books, as well as of retracings of particular themes within them. One can easily understand the lack of spiritual perception which overlooks such a mode of instruction. But what can one think of those who fear not to sit in judgment on what, just because it is divine, must be beyond the natural mind; and who, instead of looking to God that the entrance of His words might give the needed light, venture to speak of an author, in such a case, stultifying himself by announcing an important distinction which he had uniformly observed in certain sections and as uniformly violated in others?

(To be continued)

Studies in Mark 5:35-43: The Reward of Confession

5:35-43

The Reward of Confession

It was not the purpose of the Lord Jesus that His mighty works should be done “in a corner,” but openly and before all the people. Accordingly the public confession of the woman was made. She then received the additional and inestimable benefit of the assuring words of the Lord addressed personally to her. She learned from His own lips that her application to Him for healing was not unwelcome, and that His gift of mercy was not made grudgingly but with His whole heart. Her fears were calmed and her soul set at rest. And the words spoken were such as would be her inward strength and stay when the Messiah was no longer present. The Lord said to her:

(1) Daughter, be of good comfort,

(2) Thy faith hath made thee whole (saved thee);

(3) Go in peace,

(4) Be whole from thy plague.

The last phrase occurs only in Mark. The tense (perfect) of the verb employed was a guarantee for the future. It indicated the thorough nature of the cure and precluded a recurrence of her trouble. The words implied, “Be permanently whole [hale, healthy] from thy plague.”

(1) The considerate words of comfort used by the Lord are illustrative of that tender compassion of His, ever in active exercise towards those who sought Him in their distress. He knew the intense mental depression which accompanies protracted physical suffering, and especially so when, as in this case, the disease repeatedly baffles human attempts to cure. The heart is sick with oft-deferred hope, and the debilitated frame is further weakened by the added burden of nervous anxiety and worry. But while “heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop, a good word maketh it glad” (Prov. 12:25).

There are many instances of the Lord removing such feelings of distress by His word. To the trembling woman before Him, whether her fears were the indirect result of the wasting disease from which she had now been freed, or whether they arose from her apprehension that she had offended the Great Physician, He addressed her with the words, both tender and strength-giving, “Daughter, be of good comfort.”

The term of address, “Daughter,” recalls His words to the weeping women who bewailed and lamented Him as He was led to the place of crucifixion. “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). To the bowed woman, He said, not “Daughter,” but, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,” though He also spoke of her, referring to her faith, as “a daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:12, 16). But this occasion is the only recorded one on which the Lord used this title of “Daughter” simply, and it soothed the woman's tremors and fears. She caught a glimpse of that “perfect love which casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).

(2) It is here recorded for the first time in the course of this Gospel that faith is the means of obtaining blessing. There is no encouragement of any superstitious veneration for the tassel of His robe which was touched. The Lord declared to the woman in the hearing of all that the faith within her had saved her, or made her whole. Her cure was not a right which she could have claimed as an Israelite, but the blessing was accorded to her because she had exercised faith in Jehovah's Servant. This faith of hers the Lord undoubtedly “saw,” as He did that of the paralytic and his friends (Mark 2:5); only in this case by His words to the woman, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” He made it clear to all concerned that faith on the part of the recipient is essential whether the salvation is physical, or moral as in the case of another woman (Luke 7:50).

The report of the sayings and doings of the Prophet of Nazareth had spread abroad throughout Galilee, but with little effect upon the people generally. Isaiah might well ask in prophetic view of this time, “Lord, who hath believed our report?” But this woman had believed the report, for we read, “having heard the things concerning Jesus she came in the crowd behind and touched his garment.” And having believed the report, the strength of the arm of Jehovah for healing was revealed to her and in her (Isai. 53:1).

Faith in the heart may express itself in a variety of ways—in importunate earnestness, like Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, or in patient endurance of suffering, as in the cases of Job and Joseph. Here the mute appeal of the woman's touch shows how eloquent before God the very silence of faith may be. In like manner the dumb posture of Hannah did not escape the pitying eye of Jehovah (1 Sam. 1). For it is with the heart man believes, whatever the mode in which faith expresses itself before man.

It is worth noticing that the word σώζω, usually translated in the New Testament “save,” is employed in its general sense of deliverance in regard to the healing of this woman in all three accounts: Matt. 9:21, 22; Mark 5:28, 34; Luke 8:48. It is also applied to the restoration of the daughter of Jairus, Mark 5:23; Luke 8:50; to the healing of Bartimus, Mark 10:52, Luke 18:42; of the Gadarene demoniac, Luke 8:36; of the Samaritan leper, Luke 17:19; of many that touched Jesus, Mark 6:56; of the impotent man at the temple gate, Acts 4:9; of the cripple at Lystra, Acts 14:9. In these instances the Greek word is translated “made whole,” or, “healed.” The disciples, speaking to the Lord concerning Lazarus, also made use of the word, and in this passage it is rendered “do well,” or, “recover “: “If he sleep he shall do well” (John 11:12).

The utterance by our Lord of this form of benediction, “Go in peace,” is only recorded in one other instance in the Gospels, and there, as on this occasion, it is associated with the faith that saved. To the woman who sought the Lord in Simon the Pharisee's house for the forgiveness of sins He said, as He did to this woman who came to Him for a temporal benefit, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace” (Luke 7:50). On account of this connection we are fairly entitled to regard these words as of greater significance than the ordinary farewell salutation of the East, such as we find in Ex. 4:18; Judg. 18:6 Sam. 1:17; 20:13, 42; 2 Kings 5:19; Acts 15:33. The Lord was infinitely above human conventionality in speech, such as James condemns (James 2:16). He had come to “ordain peace” for His people in the best and surest sense.

Peace, as it is here regarded, is an inward possession of the soul. It is the antithesis of fret, and anxiety which, in its gravest forms, may arise within a person from the sense of guilt before God or from the fear of death. Divine assurance alone can dispel this anxiety; hence peace is the sequel of faith, and is associated with the mind and heart. Confidence and calmness are connected in the oft-quoted promise, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isa. 26:3). And, in the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7).

Here the woman who came to the Lord in fear and trembling is bidden to depart in peace. The Prince of peace bestowed His royal boon upon her whose spirit had been broken by sorrow of heart (Prov. 15:13); while He, at the same time, proved Himself to be the Jehovah of prophecy giving first strength and then peace; “The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace” (Psa. 29:11).

In the phrase already noted as peculiar to Mark's Gospel, “Be permanently recovered from thy plague,” we observe another of those minute touches which emphasize the special object of this Evangelist. Mark was inspired of God to show how thoroughly the divine Servant did His work. And it is in his Gospel therefore that it is recorded that the people said of Him, “He hath done all things well” (7:37). The cure of this woman is an instance in point; hers was not a temporary relief but a complete deliverance from the disease which had afflicted her throughout the previous twelve years.

[W. J. H.]

Notes on Luke 12

Chapter 12.

The last section of this Gospel (chap. 10:38; 11) showed the two great means of blessing to the soul— namely the word of God and prayer, the precious gift of God, and the true need of man in the presence of a rejected Messiah. It showed withal the doom of the people who refused every testimony of God. Chapter 12 presents the disciples carrying on their testimony in the midst of hypocrisy and opposition, but in the power of the Holy Ghost. The Lord addressed His disciples first of all; but fearlessly, and without compromise, before a vast throng, as one who acted in the spirit of what He taught. He warns them against that religious formalism which consists of what could be presented to man, and insists strongly and explicitly upon the sure bringing of all things into the light (verses 1-3).

But just as the breaking down of forms and the revelation of the full light of God had its highest operation and effect in His own death, so the disciples must look for the world's hostility, must be prepared for it in their own case, it might be up to death itself. If Messiah were rejected and slain, what could they look for in, the same scene, while Satan's power is not set aside? Hence, also, in these chapters it is a question of the soul's relationship with God. It was not the unfolding of the church yet, but the kingdom in its Jewish application is set aside, and the consequence is that the disciples are to look for the Lord's coming again, and until then, trial and violence. His return would have two aspects: one for such as are in relationship with Himself, and the other for the world; and both are taken up here. They were to beware of hypocrisy, and to remember God's necessary determination to bring everything to light. “For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

Verses 4, 5. Next, as to the importance of walking in the light. They were not to fear them who kill the body, but God, who could cast into hell. Jesus perfectly feared God, and called on His friends to fear none but Him. “Yea, I say unto you, fear him.” But further (verses 6-8), not even a sparrow is forgotten before God; and the very hairs of their head were all numbered. Therefore they were not to fear. Our God has made it of faith to be assured that He cares much for us.

On the other hand, they were not to trust in themselves—in their own courage or their own wisdom, but to confess Christ. There was the result in relation with the humbled, but yet to be exalted, Son of man. There would be a return of love or shame before the angels of God, according as He should be confessed or denied before men. (verses 8, 9). He had hidden His glory to effect grace. He had come among men and into the midst of evil, that God might be fully glorified in His humiliation. This was the patience of God, for Christ claimed nothing. But the Holy Ghost would come asserting the glory of God, and claiming subjection to it, witnessing the grace, and proving the glory in power. Hence a word spoken against the Holy Ghost would not be forgiven. Wonderful to say, this is attached to the disciples (verse 10) to console and strengthen them in their weakness. The Son of man might be slighted, and yet there was forgiveness; but if He by whom they would speak was blasphemed, it would be unpardonable. Further (verses 11, 12), the Holy Ghost would speak by them, whatever the power, ecclesiastical or civil, that arraigned them.

Such were the principles, the warnings, the motives, and the encouragements the Lord attached to a mission which, rejected by and outside Judaism, was the introduction of light by grace into a world of sin and darkness.

Thereupon in verses 13, 14, the Lord, by positively refusing to adjudge in Israel, shows that Jewish blessing had lost its place. It was no longer a question of dividing the inheritance, but of the soul in its position before God. Only He warns against the folly of loving the things which gave occasion to such disputes. Righteousness on earth is not looked for now: Jesus declines the place of regulating it, and proceeds to show the inward principle of the kingdom in contrast with the world. Hence He told the multitude to beware of covetousness, for a man's life is not in what he possesses, adding a most solemn parable as to the doom of the rich man, who was not rich toward God. Whatever he might say to his soul, God required it that night. “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself” (verses 16-21).

Verses 22-31. If it be thus with the world, do you who have a father, even the Father, not be anxious for your soul or body? Food and clothing were not just objects for disciples' care, but rather to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Their thoughts should be in another channel, rising above a mere natural view of the life and the body. But He proceeds to assign positive grounds operative upon them as believers. Needful things were subsidiary which God provided, for they were His and under His ordering. He cared for much less than they were. The fowls of heaven and the grass of the field read them no uninstructive lesson, as interpreted of Christ. And if there was, on the one side, God's provident care for the least of His creatures, on the other side let them bear in mind the utter weakness of their anxieties. Whatever might be natural to those who knew not God, they were not to be seeking what to eat or drink: their Father knew they wanted such things. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and all the rest should be added.

Verses 32-40. The Lord now takes higher ground for them. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Therefore were they rather to get rid of what they had as men, and to provide things such as the Father gives to the heirs of the kingdom.

They were to act the part of kings called to and having a higher inheritance. The heart follows the treasure. Let them provide a treasure in the heavens, and their heart will be there also. To be great saints is not the value of what they gave meritoriously, but the effect internally suitable to their position and calling. God is not ashamed to be called their God. Further (verse 35, etc.), they were to wait for their Lord. This was especially to form their character, and to be continually and outwardly expressed—the habitual expectancy of the Lord. Their loins were to be girded, and their lights burning, as if Christ was actually on His way. And He that shall come will come; and “blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.”

They were now associated with the heavenly character of the kingdom. This world was naught; what they had of it they could turn into the privilege of doing good unselfishly, and have their treasure above, where there would be no losing it, and so their hearts would be kept there. Thus their character would be heavenly. Meanwhile they were to be as men who awaited their Lord returning from the wedding. The general aim of the heavenly effect of the calling is here in question. They were to be on the watch. It is not prophecy, but character and position. There are no signs or historical circumstances, as in chapters 17 and 21, for people on earth; here there is heavenly separation from it. For those who thus wait Jesus is still a servant. He will make them sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them. Girded to serve as man, His ear bored in death, in joy He comes forth delighting in disciples so walking. Gladly He releases them from their endurance and watching and service; He sets them at the feast, and honors their faithfulness thus. They were therefore left in uncertainty; and so the church, when formed, was left. The church is always to wait for Christ, having no special time: every moment is its time in desire and duty, as alas! it is the world's for negligence: The Jews have a time; days, years, and earthly computations belong to them, and therefore signs. To us it may be second watch or third watch; blessed only if we are found watching!

Verses 41-48. Peter puts the question of the application of what goes before, which brings out the portion of those who serve faithfully. They will be set over all the Lord's goods when He returns to take possession of all He made and will inherit; a very encouraging thought, though not the highest. On the other hand Christendom apostatizes by putting off in heart the Lord's coming. The great stay of heavenly-mindedness is lost thereby, and so our peculiar calling and hope. To expect the Lord detaches from the world; putting it off left the servant to his own will. It is not doctrinal denial; but he says in his heart, “My Lord delayeth his coming"; and then he acts with violence towards the fellow-servants, and his fellowship is with the world. But that servant has a Lord, let him act ever so independently; and He will come when not expected, and set that servant's portion with the unbelievers, whatever may have been his boasted rights and privileges. Further in detail there would be a righteous adjudgment (verses 47, 48); for here we have the principles of service, as before of position. The ignorance of heathenism, etc., will not be spared, but far more tremendous will be the doom of Christendom. Most righteous, but oh, how solemn!

Verse 49. There is another thing to be noted—the import of our Lord's coming then into the world. Had man been what he ought, peace would have been the result; but man saw no beauty in Christ to desire Him, and the effect was hatred—not peace, but a sword. The nearer the relation, the deeper the grievance. The will of man comes out, and is utterly opposed to God. They would not endure to be told that they were under God's judgment. But there is this peculiarity in the character of division which the entrance of grace makes. He who is converted in a family becomes generally, and at once, the slave of the rest. Nature even is subverted in such cases. How often thus a husband or parent loses his authority! There is a fire kindled before Christ comes again in judgment to kindle it. He was not then come to judge, but they, by their rejection of Him, kindled the fire of judgment.

Now look at the Lord's part. “I have a baptism,” etc. What could straiten the Lord's heart? The perfect infinite love of God in Him was, as it were, shut up. If He spoke to His disciples of His death, “That be far from thee, Lord,” was all the response He met with even in Peter. How painfully was He thus shut up into Himself! But on He went in His service of living love through the world, looking forward to the baptism of His death; and His being straitened showed the fullness and strength of His love. Till then there could be no letting out of heart; for who understood Him? The Jews said, “Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!” They were shut up within the walls of Judaism; so that, though One was there with a flowing river of blessing, they would not receive Him. Divine love was, we may say, pent up and driven back into the heart of God. But all is met. “How am I straitened till it be accomplished?” He is not straitened now. The barrier is broken in His death.

How could they as sinners have communion with Christ? There could be none. When He came to meet man's need, they hated and rejected Him. But on the cross He has put away sins, and now grace can flow out without hindrance or measure: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Man is not changed, but God can act in His own way through redemption. Christ's love and glory did come out in a measure before, for “He could not be hid.” But at the cross all overflowed; and looking back from that over His life, we see what infinite love, and sorrow, and suffering, filled it up.

In verses 54-57 the multitude are addressed on the principle of personal responsibility—first, upon the evident signs of God's dealing with the world, and next, from their moral judgment of what was right. The conclusion was, that God was in the way with the Jewish people; and if they did not agree with Him then, they would turn Him into a judge, and must incur the full penalty of their iniquities. In human affairs man would be prudent enough to come to terms with his adversary, knowing himself wrong and anticipating the judgment. If they did not submit and be reconciled to the Lord now in the way, they would soon be delivered to His judicial dealings and not cease from them till they had received of His hand double for all their sins.

The Sustenance of Life: Part 1

Notes of an Address on John 6:47-63

In the previous chapter of John's Gospel we have the subject of the source of life; in the one before us the subject is the sustenance of that life. In point of its origin eternal life is the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ; but after its reception by the believer, comes the question of its maintenance and development. Life eternal in its heavenly range is in contrast with our first life which has its sphere here, its purposes and functions being earthly.

Now we learn in this portion of Scripture that the Son who gives eternal life is also its preserver. There is, therefore, in this fact a strong contrast with the conditions of Eden. Adam was distinct in his life and image from the animals around him, having received his life by the direct inspiration of the Almighty. He was constituted the supreme ruler of terrestrial things, and had free access to the tree of life. The means of preserving his life was, so to speak, in his own hands. But by disobedience he forfeited that life for himself and for his posterity. In contrast with this precarious tenure of life at the beginning the Giver of eternal life is also its Preserver. He bestows eternal life upon His sheep, and He guarantees they shall never perish nor be plucked from His hands.

The believer receives a spark of heavenly life. By the operation of the Spirit of God through the word a new nature is begotten in him—a life not previously possessed. Through this life a link is forged between the man here and the Father in heaven. By its means he is enabled in the power of the Holy Spirit to have conscious dealings with the Father and the Son. The Father's love and interest and guidance and help become to him perpetual realities. These things are known in spite of the weary days, keen sorrows, stern difficulties, searching temptations which oppose the new life and tend to overwhelm it, “things present” threatening to swamp things spiritual.

POWER NEEDED TO SUSTAIN LIFE

How then are we to make progress when we are in possession of eternal life? How is it to be kept secure and active? A great enemy presents counter-attractions and influences from without. There are evil passions smoldering within. There is opposition from every quarter. But we are instructed in this connection that divine love has provided efficient means for the maintenance of this life.

Indeed the same gracious loving Person who imparts eternal life supports and sustains it. It is by Him that the new life grows and develops. By Him it becomes vigorous and displays new traits of a heavenly character. Through energy supplied by Him the believer rises triumphant over his old self. Like Paul he can say, “Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” For the believer is placed in possession of this divine life that it may manifest itself in thoughts, motives, words and deed, which resemble Christ's.

A person having life eternal walks through this world reflecting the life of Christ. How is this effected? Some say by a course of rigid self-discipline whereby a man may rid himself of his evil dispositions; having ground down the old nature, the new shines out. But it is not so stated here. It is by feeding upon Christ that the eternal life is developed into strength and activity.

THE PASCHAL LAMB ROAST WITH FIRE

In connection with the subject of the appropriation of the Person of Christ as a means of sustenance for the spiritual life of the believer, the Lord refers to the miraculous manner in which the children of Israel were fed in the wilderness by the manna which came down from heaven. But food was provided for them at the commencement of their journey as well as during its progress. There was the paschal lamb for the chosen people before the manna came down from heaven.

The ceremony at the Passover included more than the blood on the door-posts. This was essential for the security of the people, since “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” By the blood, therefore, Israel was protected from the judgment which fell upon Egypt. Though in the vicinity death was ravaging every household the blood of the lamb secured divine preservation wherever it was sprinkled. And during the night watches the saved people were invited to make a meal upon the carcass of the lamb roast with fire. By this means they were to acquire strength for setting out upon their new journey to the promised land. When they subsequently reached the desert and still required food God gave them manna. And both the lamb and the manna are types of Christ.

The lamb roast with fire typifies our Lord in His atoning death. Fire is a frequent emblem of judgment. And the Israelite was thereby reminded that the judgment of Jehovah which brought death to the Egyptians fell upon the sacrifice of which they were invited to partake. It was particularly specified that the paschal lamb was not to be eaten raw nor boiled; it was to be roasted. The reason for this stipulation is clearly because in this manner only could it set forth the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Victim who endured God's avenging judgment against sin.

The initial food prescribed for the Israelites as pilgrims was, therefore, the roast paschal lamb. The Christian should begin there also. Many persons affect a regard for the Lord Jesus Christ altogether apart from His atoning death. He is to them a great teacher, a martyr, a political sufferer, but not a Vicarious Victim. And those who degrade the Lord's death in this manner can never derive any soul-strength from it. They lack the faith which appropriates the lamb roast with fire.

Hence the only accession of strength for the new life is gained by first feeding upon the slain lamb. In Him sin as an evil principle was judged by the fire of God: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). And sin is the cause of the believer's weakness, so far as experience goes. From indwelling sin spring evil desires. But the Holy One was “made sin.” And in His death all that a believer was as a descendant of Adam was atoned for and judged. This is the secret of deliverance from its power.

We are not commanded to eradicate the inward sinful will. It has received its utter condemnation. This truth is foreshadowed in the type of the paschal lamb, and the apprehension of this aspect of the death of Christ is a source of spiritual strength.

THE MANNA

We may speak of the paschal lamb as the believer's food in a negative sense, since it shows us that the old nature is not a source of power for Christian walk, it being judged and set aside as irreparably evil. In a similar way, it may be said in typical language that the manna is a source of strength in a positive sense. For from the living Christ Himself we obtain direct supplies of energy for the pilgrim journey.

The manna represents the Lord who came into this world from above. He is the bread of God which came down from heaven. And while here He spoke of Himself as the “Son of man who is in heaven.” It is important to remember that in the life of the Lord we have what is different from the lives of all mankind besides. He only of all men came down from heaven. This fact gave a character to His humble and dependent conduct such as was never seen before. The governing principle of the most elevated human conduct is an aim to do what is becoming to man. The familiar expression, “Be a man,” embodies this idea. To be noble and dignified and truthful, to copy the salient characteristics of the world's successful men is the general ambition of the more thoughtful and earnest of mankind. But such aims, however laudable and proper they may be in themselves, are not essentially Christian conduct. Living the eternal life is the consequence of feeding upon the humbled Man in whom the life of heaven was displayed below.

The contemplation of Christ is the true inspiration for the walk of the faithful believer. In Him we have the Son of God incarnate in an evil world. Once and again the glory of the Godhead emerged momentarily through the veil of flesh. Upon the mount His countenance was transfigured before His disciples, and a Voice from the overshadowing cloud proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; hear him.”

We see that glory exhibited again in the sudden stilling of the tempest with a word. Further, there was a display of His essential glory at the grave of Lazarus, according to His own word to Martha, “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” (John 11:40).

From these incidents we learn that a divine Person was present, capable of exerting infinite power in His own right, yet withal meek, lowly, humble, gentle, to an incomparable degree. The voice that silenced the howling storm checked the widow's tears and blessed the helpless babe. This is the Christ upon whom we are to feed as the origin and the renewal of our spiritual strength. There is no need to seek the ideals of poetry and philosophy. We have the noblest of examples, a divine Exemplar. God Himself as Man shows us the ideal life. With Him before us our emulation will be rightly directed.

(To be continued)

What Is the Church? 7

If we consider the Jews, the thing is still more intelligible for other reasons. They had prophecies and promises. Christ was to be presented to them. Till they had rejected Him, God (ever faithful) could not set them aside to establish anything else which denied their privileges, blotting out all distinction between Jew and Gentile—a distinction which the Jew was bound carefully to maintain. The crucifixion of Jesus has put an end to all that. No one is a Jew, in heaven. But man having completely failed in his responsibility, and the Jews having rejected the One in whom the fulfillment of the promises had been presented to them, God, before fulfilling them, as He will do, has revealed the hidden mystery which was connected with the heavenly glory of the Son of man; that is, with the body united to Him, gathered during the rejection of Israel—a body which was to be manifested in glory with Him, when He should, in His sovereign grace, resume His dealings with Israel upon earth: “for blindness, in part, has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.”

Israel, unfaithful as men, have lost all title to the enjoyment of the promises by the rejection of Him in whom they were to have this enjoyment. They were, after all, children of wrath, as others; but that will not hinder God from fulfilling His promises. He cannot be unfaithful to His promise, whatever the unfaithfulness of man may be. His gifts and calling are without repentance; and the blindness of Israel is only temporary. This is what Rom. 11 teaches; as the Lord has said to them, “Your house is left unto you desolate... till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” But here is the perfect wisdom of God. Israel having rejected the Christ when He came to present Himself to the nation, they are without remedy. It will be the sovereign grace of God which will reinstate them in the enjoyment of the promises, according to the word, as poor sinners. Israel, under chastening, and kept for that day, abides without the true God, and without a false God, according to the prophecy of Hos. 3; and God, during this interval, brings in the fullness of the Gentiles; displaying His multiform wisdom in the calling of the church, a heavenly people, established not on promise, but on perfect, accomplished redemption; and accomplished through the act by which Israel placed themselves under condemnation.

But it was not only that man, and Israel, had been fully tried. God had also displayed His wisdom in His ways with both. His power, His patience, His mercy, His government in man, and according to the conditions of His holy law, by promises, and by miraculous interventions, by chastenings and blessings, by righteous judgments, by the most tender care and the most magnificent providences, had all been displayed. Even a world swallowed up in the mighty waters had borne witness, in disappearing before His judgments, to the ways of God with man upon earth.

Angels had seen these things; they had seen the wisdom and power of God in exercise, in His ways with men on the earth. The church was to supply quite a fresh manifestation of the depths of the counsels and wisdom of the infinite God whom it adores.

The demonstration of the inability in which man was found, to profit by the ways of God, furnished the occasion of it.

There remains yet one thing to which I would call the attention of my reader. It is, that, until Christ was glorified, the Holy Ghost could not come down to form the church upon earth; for the object of His testimony, the heavenly glory of Christ and the redemption accomplished by His means, were yet wanting. “The Holy Ghost was not yet [given], because Jesus was not yet glorified.” We shall see with what clearness the word of God presents the church to us, as quite a new revelation of that which had no existence before, save in the eternal counsels of God; and what these counsels of God predestinated for her existence, outside the course of ages.

The writings of Paul, who was chosen to bear this testimony and to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ—a ministry which was connected with these truths—are full of this doctrine; bringing into prominence this glory of Christ, which was beyond all that the prophets had said. Thus 1 Tim. 3:16. Having spoken of the church, in a passage already quoted, he naturally turns to the truth of which the church was the pillar—this mystery of godliness. A Messiah the fulfillment of the prophecies, was not a mystery; but a Christ such as the apostle presents Him in verse 16 had never been known before: “God manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” Certain elements found here were connected with Messiah upon earth; because this same Messiah, ascended up on high, must come down again to fulfill the promises made to the Jews; but such things, as a whole, had never been presented to faith.

As to the church, the thing is true in a still more absolute manner. This is what the apostle says of it, Eph. 3:9-11. “And to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ; to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is impossible to get anything more absolute than “hid in God.” This mystery of the church, hid in the depths of His counsels, did not get disclosed, nor did she exist in fact, till then. It is “now,” that unto the principalities and powers is made known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God. They had seen His patience, His power, His government; but never a heavenly body upon the earth, united to His Son in heaven. Thus God could set aside for the time the course of His earthly government, to enter into relationship with a heavenly people.

This passage is very clear on this point: that the church neither existed nor was revealed before. Up to that time it was a mystery hid in God; who, having established it in His counsels, was testing man under His government; before creating a heavenly system, based upon an accomplished redemption, in union with the second Adam in heaven. It is important that the reader should get very clearly in his mind the teaching of this passage. The object of the apostle is to show that the church is a new thing. There had been other means to show forth the wisdom and ways of God—earthly means. Now, heavenly powers saw, in the church, a kind of wisdom quite new. Not only the church had had, as yet, no existence; but it had not been revealed before its existence; it had been a mystery hid in God. This last point is confirmed by other passages which we will quote; but it is well to develop the first point by the teaching of the end of the second chapter.

The truth of the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body—the church—is established, as the consequence of the cross, in verses 14 and 15, in the most formal manner. The middle wall of partition, established by God Himself, and absolutely binding, had been broken down only by the cross; and by means of this also they were both reconciled in one body—those who were afar off and those who were nigh. Then they had been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets; that is the church could exist only after the cross had rendered possible the union of Jews and Gentiles. The enmity of man against God having been manifested, the enmity of his nature—Jew or Gentile—and the Jews having lost all title to the enjoyment of the promises, grace received in a sovereign manner both the one and the other, according to the eternal counsels of God, for a better inheritance. God having been manifested in the flesh, and having set things on the footing of eternal realities, outside all earthly economy or dispensation; and, received up into glory, having acquired a people which was associated to Himself according to the election of God; purposed, before the foundation of the world, to share this glory with His bride and His body.

(Continued from page 239) (To be continued)

The Coming Hour of Temptation: 6

(Concluded from page 255)

And let me add too another point of interest. We find in Rev. 12 one scripture more which gives a cause, and an occasion too, for this fearful time. All this needs to be duly taken into account. You are aware, no doubt, that the reason why the things of this world constantly appear to gain the victory over the truth, as far as what is bad triumphs, is the power of Satan, the great personal enemy of the Lord. Scripture affirms that the hour approaches when that power is about to be broken (not merely to faith, as ever since the death and resurrection of Christ, but) publicly in the world. Satan, according to the language of Rev. 12, will be cast out of heaven. From the seventh verse it is thus written, “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”

Manifestly this is a state of things at which we are not yet arrived. It would be false doctrine and practically serious to say that such is the fact.. A plain reason against it is, that Eph. 6 declares that the conflict in which the Christian is now engaged is with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, not with flesh and blood. As Israel had to fight with the Canaanites, so our special conflict is with spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. Anybody who intelligently reads the Greek Testament will know, and even those who can inquire of those who do will hear it confirmed, that the expression ὲπουρανίοις means not merely “high” but “heavenly” places. No matter where you examine elsewhere, it invariably means “heavenly places"; and, in point of fact, it never does bear the sense of “high” simply, nor do I believe it to be possible. Any man who knows the language will hardly deny that “high places” is a slip or an evasion. I suppose our translators did not know what to make of the passage. They may have supposed that it would sound strange to hear of wicked spirits in “heavenly places,” and so they thought to tone it down or to obscure it a little, and so put in “high places.”

However this may have been, it is far from my wish to fasten any unworthy motives on them.

They have erred occasionally, but were, many it not all, excellent men and able scholars, and I believe did their work with fidelity, though with a certain measure of hindrance, especially on the part of the king. We know he was superstitious on some points, and would not allow them to alter ecclesiastical terms which notoriously foster much misconception and prejudice. I do not mean to insinuate that James 1 had anything to do with the mistake alluded to in Eph. 6, nor does it particularly matter who it was that suggested or kept it up; but the fact is certain, that we are said by the Holy Spirit to battle “with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places,” as Israel with blood and flesh (that is, their Canaanite enemies).

It is certain then that Satan has an astonishing facility of wiles to hinder Christians from enjoying their proper heavenly privileges; but we know that, subtle as he is, it will all speedily come to an end; and this is in part what is described in Rev. 12. It cannot come to an end as long as we are committed to the conflicts spoken of in Eph. 6. None but Apocalyptic dreamers could sustain such a thesis for an instant. For, observe, what we read here is, that when that crisis comes there will be “a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” Has there ever been any time so striking for God's blessed intervention in the past history of the church that would answer to this? Is it really true that, when Constantine adopted Christianity, salvation came? Surely not. Who is so worldly-minded as to say this? Alas! such things have been said; but, after all, the idea only requires to be viewed in the light of scripture in order to feel that it is egregious and unfounded. To suppose that the downfall of Satan occurred in the fourth century, or that the coming of salvation was when Christendom began, or any such like scheme, is to draw largely on one's own fancy. Yet sober men, in other respects learned, sensible, and even godly, have put forth such views.

They were right good Protestants withal—a singular fact that Protestants should concede that in the days of many a dark superstition, afterward embodied in popery, salvation came, and the kingdom of our Lord and the authority of His Christ. But there is no incongruity too astonishing for the minds of men. However this may be, it is added that “The accuser of our brethren is cast down.” At this point Satan will have lost the power of calumniating as well as of hindering the people of God. Hence the call to joy— “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.” It is evident that there are dwellers in heaven then—saints who are no longer found here below on the earth—entirely agreeing with what we have remarked elsewhere. But further: “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” It is the time of great trouble; that is, the time of the unparalleled tribulation that has been already before our thoughts. Thus God will have accomplished His purpose of taking away men to be with Christ in heaven, having put away their sin and given them a nature capable of enjoying His own rest. They dwelt there in spirit when they were on earth; they looked to follow Christ to heaven when they were poor pilgrims here; they waited for Christ longingly, and they are at length to be with Him whom they loved. After this comes the downfall of Satan's power, and the putting forth of his wrath on earth for a short time. Who can pretend that this vast change has taken place? Surely if there had been a most fearful and unexampled raging of Satan here below, one would think that the world ought to know and feel it. It is a strange theory that such an immense change could have taken place without anybody being the wiser for it, and nobody particularly the worse. Be not deceived. The dread reality is yet to come. Accordingly we read of a tremendous persecution, and the rising up of the two beasts described in chapter 13.

There is no need to enter more into detail on this subject. I have endeavored to give a simple and unvarnished view of what the scriptures teach us of the hour of temptation as well as of the tribulation. It has been shown, I trust clearly, that the Jews are to be in the innermost circle of the trouble, though the godly are warned of the Lord to escape from it. Thus our Lord's words have the closest connection with the declaration of the prophet Jeremiah that, though so sorely tried, they are to be delivered; but how is not explained. Daniel mentions the intervention of Michael, but adds no more. Our Lord fully explains. He tells them that, when they see a certain sign, those in Judea must flee: what is that sign? The abomination of desolation. There need be no doubt what this means, according to analogy, a certain idol, the setting up of which in the sanctuary of Jerusalem will be the signal for the infliction of this unprecedented tribulation. An incident of the tribulation, or, at any rate, another element of trouble to man, and especially to Israel on earth, will be Satan's great wrath for a short time on his dejection from heaven. Antichrist will show himself openly; Satan will work by him, also by the great imperial power of the Roman empire, as he never did before; and God will send men a strong delusion, that they should believe what is false.

As men throughout Christendom will be misled deliberately and willfully to refuse the truth, God will allow evil to rise up beyond all precedent, and will let Satan have his destructive way, such of His people as are in Judea being saved from complete ruin by instant flight according to the word of the Lord. Jerusalem, therefore, is to be the center, not merely of the great tribulation, but of the greatest; as being guilty of abandoning law and gospel with Christ Himself, always resisting the Holy Ghost, as their fathers did, so shall fall there such retribution as never was. But the Gentiles, guilty in their measure, are not to escape the storm; they may not endure the worst of it, but they must taste the bitter fruit of their doings in “the great tribulation” of Rev. 7, whatever may be the grace of God in bringing out of it a countless throng to enjoy His tabernacle over them during the millennial reign of the Lord Jesus.

Thus God will cause a great and numberless crowd of Gentiles to come out of that tribulation as truly as He will save the godly Jews; but observe, not a word is said about the church in either. How are we to account for a silence otherwise so strange if the church were really there? If God bound Himself to save Jacob; if He is pledged to bring out a multitude of Gentiles, why not a word about the church? Nay, rather, how could He speak of His church then on earth; for you are aware that in the church there is neither Jew nor Gentile. One great feature of the church is the blotting out of such distinctions, and the formation of one new man, which is neither. Thus, whereas we were Jews or Gentiles before, we have put all this off, and as many as are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. We are baptized into one body—the body of Christ—such is the inspired description of the Christian; so that we who receive the Holy Ghost now abandon our Gentilism or our Judaism, as the case may be. Thus the key is given clearly and at once. The elders will have been—at a moment kept silent in the Apocalypse—translated to heaven, and they are seen there before the trouble comes, not only before the fury of the tribulation bursts, but before the preliminary judgments of God on earlier evils, and the efforts of the devil to ensnare the saints by deceit, and draw them into the final apostasy.

As to this it seems to me that the general bearing of the word of God is abundantly plain, without pretending of course, to enter into every minute point. We are only learners; and a great joy it is to learn of God and in His own way. May the Lord bless the testimony of His truth, and give every Christian to have not the least anxiety, but to cherish perfect confidence in His word and Spirit! The Thessalonians were troubled by a misuse of prophecy. Mischievous men, who knew not at all the grace of God, troubled and shook their souls by a false apprehension of the day of the Lord—the day of judgment for living men on the earth. It is a total mistake to suppose that their delusion sprang from a too eager or enthusiastic hope of the coming of Christ. The mischief was, that their hope had been displaced and practically annulled by terror from false doctrine about the day. Excited hope was not the delusion, but dread, as if the day of the Lord was present. It was not wrong to believe that the day was at hand; but this is not what the false teachers insinuated, nor what the apostle reproves. Our English version, unfortunately, is exceedingly to be regretted here; and I appeal to every scholar with an unbiased mind whether ἐνέστηκε does not mean “is present” (contrasted often with merely being “at hand,” and never really admitting of such a sense). They falsely taught, then, that the day of the Lord was actually come; and this was the delusion (for which they dared to allege a pretended letter of the apostle) that distressed the Thessalonian believers. 2 Thess. 2 dissipates the notion.

It is another instance of what our translators occasionally did. They could not make sense of the passage according to the plain meaning of the word, and so they ventured to do what no man ought to do; they gave up the real meaning of Scripture, and substituted another meaning, which they thought would make better sense, and must have been intended. Nobody is at liberty so to deal with God's word: it is not translating, but interpreting. Beloved friends, let us cleave to scripture, whether we understand it or not. If we do not, let us frankly confess our ignorance, but faithfully adhere to the words before us. What the Thessalonians were drawn into was the idea that the day of the Lord had already come. The false teachers seem to have construed the persecutions under which they were suffering as a proof that the day of the Lord was actually there. This the apostle treats as a falsehood, and the more as they claimed his authority for it. No one ought to listen to these men, nor were they to be troubled about such a rumor. He beseeches them, by their blessed hope of being gathered to the Lord at His coming, not to be frightened by the cry that the day was come.

Why indeed should a Christian be alarmed about anything? He is entitled to look death in the face, and to have boldness in the day of judgment, as John expressly says. And do you think that a man who can honestly and according to the truth and will of God thus contemplate the most solemn certainties of the eternal future should be justly alarmed at anything here below? A Jew or a Gentile ought to dread the tribulation if he faces the revelation of God about it ever so briefly; for the tribulation will be a retributive dealing with the unfaithfulness of the world, whether Jews or Gentiles, and especially of those who abuse the name of the Lord. But for this very reason it does not apply to the Christian at all. This is the moral truth of the case, and therefore I may well press it on all who have not duly weighed scripture as to it. I entreat you to cleave to the Lord's name and to His word. Value every help, and seek the best you can. If danger menaced your body, I daresay you would have recourse to those who, as you believe, could do you most good: I do not think you ought to do less, if the question is of your soul and God's own truth and glory.

May God bless you who believe, and give you hearts truly and humbly to cleave to Him and to the word of His grace, assured that He will exempt, according to His own word, those that keep the word of Christ's patience, and that He will also in the darkest days preserve Jews and Gentiles according to His word through the awful judgments that are coming upon the world.

W. K.

Scripture Queries and Answers: Comma; Taking Col. 1:24 Literally

Q.-1. Rom. 3:25. Is the R.V. grammatically correct in putting a comma after “through faith” instead of reading “through faith in his blood” as in our Authorized Version? H. N.

Amongst the innumerable editions of the Greek Testament from the first published text (Erasmus 1516) down to the Revisers' (Cambridge 1882), I have not been able to discover one that inserts the comma, so that in this the Revisers' would seem to stand alone. Not but that Erasmus in his last edition (1535) departs in his Latin translation from the rendering of his first edition and gives “reconciliatorem per fidem, interveniente ipsius sanguine” in place of “reconciliatorem, per fidem in ipsius sanguine” (1516). But this, as well as Beza's, Wetstein's, and Bowyer's comments on the clause is interpretation. The grammar is not at stake in either case, and these editors did not therefore venture to introduce the comma into their respective Greek texts.

As the Authorized Version and the margin of the Revisers' have it, the words “through faith in his blood” without a preceding comma seem rightly to connect with “propitiation” or “propitiatory.” For God's righteousness in “passing over” the sins of the Old Testament saints, and the justifying now of the believer in Jesus, could not be apart from “faith in his blood.” It is in His death that Christ is the “propitiatory” and this avails for those who have “faith in His blood.” This guards against Beza's notion of Christ's whole life being a propitiatory sacrifice.

Q.—2. In Colossians 1:24 the apostle speaks of filling up “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake which is the church.” Taking these words literally do they not seem to imply that our Lord did not suffer His full share of afflictions, but left a part to be filled up by His servant and follower after Him? R.C.

We must distinguish between Christ's sufferings in atonement, in which none can share, and His suffering for righteousness, where He is not alone. Matt. 20:22 gives the first, whilst the next verse reveals the latter. So Phil. 1:29, 1 Peter 4:13, 16, speak of our part. See also “Bible Treasury,” Vol. VII. (1908), 208.

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The Pentateuch and Its Critics: 7

(Concluded from page 259)

It is a joy on the other hand to learn on, I suppose, good authority that De Wette, speculative as he once was, I will not say led captive every thought to the obedience of Christ, but certainly turned to Him and His blood, with much simplicity some time before his decease; and that the late Baron Bunsen, after a career of theorizing on scripture almost wilder than Origen's, found rest at last in that Savior who alone can and does give it to the weary and heavy-laden.

On the whole, then, no support is given by any or all such passages to the scheme of Astruc, who deserves no credit for a critical eye, but rather reprobation for yielding to an unbridled imagination, which has already wrought no small mischief among his followers; and so much the more because, untaught and ill-established in divine truth, they sometimes expend great industry and ample erudition on the mere surface of the scriptures which they wrest to their own destruction, as ignorant of their object as of their scope and depth.

Another opportunity may offer to prove how far the minute philology applied to Deuteronomy really weakens Moses' title to have written it. I am satisfied myself that the phenomena supposed to be adverse are but a cover for the main object underneath all the muster of difficulties and objections—the desire to get rid of divine authoritative truth, which probes the conscience as nothing else can; and the more so, as not the prophets only but the Lord of glory also have affixed a seal, which profanity alone would think of breaking, to the Pentateuch as God's word written by Moses.

We have seen that the positive objections, when sifted, either fall to the ground, or become rather witnesses in favor of the Mosaic authorship and inspired character of the first five books of the Old Testament. The alleged omissions, rightly viewed, bear testimony to the same. An inspired character of the first five books of the Old Testament. The alleged omissions, rightly viewed, bear testimony to the same. An inspired writer can and does habitually leave such blanks as we find in the history of the sojourn in the wilderness, the journeys and stations, the desired particulars of Hur and Jethro, etc. This is never so, save by defect of information, in human annals; but it flows immediately from the moral design of scripture. Man loves to stimulate and indulge curiosity; God inspires for the communication of His mind, the link of connection being in the divine purpose and objects, not in the facts, which may often be partial and disjointed as a history.

Let me cite the competent opinion given entirely apart from controversy by Mr. H. F. Clinton, which may serve to illustrate more than one point. “The history contained in the Hebrew scriptures presents a remarkable and pleasing contrast to the early accounts of the Greeks. In the latter we trace with difficulty a few obscure facts preserved to us by the poets, who transmitted with all the embellishments of poetry and fable what they had received from oral tradition. In the annals of the Hebrew nation we have authentic narratives written by contemporaries, and these writing under the guidance of inspiration. What they have delivered to us comes accordingly under a double sanction. They were aided by divine inspiration in recording facts, upon which, as mere human witnesses, their evidence would be valid. But as the narrative comes with an authority, which no other writing can possess, so in the matters related it has a character of its own. The history of the Israelites is the history of miraculous interpositions. Their passage out of Egypt was miraculous. Their entrance into the Promised Land was miraculous. Their prosperous and their adverse fortunes in that land, their servitudes and their deliverances, their conquests and their captivities, were all miraculous. The entire history, from the call of Abraham to the building of the sacred temple, was a series of miracles. It is so much the object of the sacred historians to describe these that little else is recorded. The ordinary events and transactions, what constitutes the civil history of other states, are either very briefly told, or omitted altogether; the incidental mention of these facts being always subordinate to the main design of registering the extraordinary manifestations of divine power.

“For these reasons the history of the Hebrews cannot be treated like the history of any other nation [exactly what rationalism essays to do, to the dishonor of scripture, and to its own utter and ruinous confusion]; and he who should attempt to write their history, divesting it of its miraculous character, would find himself without materials. Conformably with this spirit there are no historians in the sacred volume of the period in which miraculous intervention was withdrawn. After the declaration by the mouth of Malachi that a messenger should be sent to prepare the way, the next event recorded by any inspired writer is the birth of that messenger. But of the interval of 400 years between the promise and the completion no account is given. And this period of more than 400 years between Malachi and the Baptist is properly the only portion, in the whole long series of ages from the birth of Abraham to the Christian era, which is capable of being treated like the history of any other nation.”

“From this spirit of the scripture history, the writer not designing to give a full account of all transactions, but only to dwell on that portion in which the divine character was marked, many things which we might desire to know are omitted, and on many occasions a mere outline of the history is preserved.” (Fasti Hellen. i. pp. 283-283).

These are in the main, without vouching for every thought or expression, words of truth and soberness. Not only were God's ways with Israel above mere nature, but His word as to the patriarchs and them has throughout a prophetic character. Even so ordinary a transaction as the domestic trouble of Sarah and Hagar as to Isaac and Ishmael we know on inspired authority to be an allegory of the two covenants, and the opposition of the flesh to promise and the Spirit. So we are taught that Melchisedec in Gen. 14 represents a higher priesthood than that of Aaron, verified now in Christ and to be displayed in His kingdom. In short everywhere God selected by the inspired writers such facts as were adequate to bring out fully what man is as morally judged of Himself, and what God is in grace or in government, of which Christ is the only complete expression. All scripture is the expansion of this as its central idea; not that the several writers knew the bearing of all they wrote, especially those before Christ, but that He did who inspired them all to write.

Hence there is a vast system of which the several books form part, filling up each place assigned in the purpose of God. While every book has an unity of its own, and certain books may supplement each other in a way evidently beyond the writers' thought, they all compose a divine whole.

Thus in Genesis, couched under the simplest forms of word or deed, are seen the great principles of divine action and relationship with man from the earliest days, which look on typically to the last: creation, human responsibility, sin, revelation of a Deliverer in grace, sacrifice in faith, the world in its worship and in its outward progress, translation to heaven, corruption and violence on earth, providential judgment and deliverance through it, covenant with the earth, human government ordained but of God, combination of men in pride, dispersion into nations, tribes, and tongues by divine judgment; calling by grace as a separate witness for the God of promise; the risen son and heir with the calling of the bride; the election for the earth cast out for a time, but after humbling experiences restored and blessed and a blessing; and this in connection with a holy sufferer rejected by his brethren, sold to the Gentiles, but by this very path of sorrow exalted over the world while unknown to Israel, and receiving a Gentile bride, but finally making himself known to his brethren preserved through their secret trouble, and now owning in him the grace and glory they had so long despised and hated.

In Exodus we see, not individuals or a family, but a people, God's people redeemed from the house of bondage and brought to God from the world which falls under His mighty hand, and inflictions in an ever-rising character till chastening slighted ends in exterminating judgment; but the people of God themselves failing to appreciate His grace which led them all the instructive way from Egypt to Sinai, and voluntarily accepting conditions of obeying the law as the means and tenure of divine privilege, yet even in the shadows of the tabernacle, etc., having His grace in Christ typified with striking variety and fullness.

Leviticus next presents God from the tabernacle laying down the means and character and consequences of access to Himself by sacrifice and priesthood and ordinances for food, birth, disease, infirmity, etc., and feasts for the people in the midst of whom He dwells, with the prophecy of their ruin and exile for rebellious and idolatrous unbelief, but of their restoration when they should repent by His grace, and so enjoy the promises made to their fathers.

The book of Numbers gives us the sojourn and march of the people through the desert, with the provisions of grace, the full account of their unbelief as to both the way and the end, the judgment of presumption and rebellion, and the effort of the enemy to hinder turned of God into the grandest vindication of His people and assurance of future glory when He judges the world, with facts and ordinances which look onward to their possession of the promised land.

Deuteronomy is not only a farewell moral rehearsal of the law, but also of God's ways with Israel, enforcing obedience as the way of blessing; as the last words of him who was the chief type of Messiah as Prophet, it urges on the people, just about to enter the land, a more direct relationship with Jehovah their God, and, while predicting their ruin through disobedience, points darkly to “secret things,” the resources of divine mercy in which He will more than retrieve all to their blessedness and His own glory in the latter day.

There is thus a deep inward connection as well as progress in the five books of Moses, and the reader who looks below the surface will find proofs of this multiplying on his prayerful study; but the same principle is true of the entire Bible from Genesis to the Revelation, the links between which are as strong, as they are numerous, and those comparatively indirect or latent so much the more undeniable a testimony to the One Divine Author of them all.

W.K.

Studies in Mark 5:35-43: The Dead Child Restored

5:35-43

The Dead Child Restored

“While he yet spake, they came from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? But Jesus, not heeding the word spoken, saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Fear not, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow with him, save Peter, and James and John the brother of James. And they come to the house of the ruler of the synagogue; and he beholdeth a tumult, and many weeping and wailing greatly. And when he was entered in, he saith unto them, Why make ye a tumult, and weep? the child is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But he, having put them all forth, taketh the father of the child and her mother and them that were with him, and goeth in where the child was. And taking the child by the hand, he saith unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. And straightway the damsel rose up, and walked; for she was twelve years old. And they were amazed straightway with a great amazement. And he charged them much that no man should know this; and he commanded that something should be given her to eat” (v. 35-43, R.V.).

There had been what appeared to the impatient and distressed ruler many vexatious delays to the visit of Jesus to his house where his sick daughter lay. It would seem, as already noted, that Jairus made two separate applications to Jesus before He acceded to the request and accompanied him. The crowd that gathered in the narrow streets—that multitude who, not knowing the law, were regarded by the rulers as accursed (John 7:49)—made progress slow and difficult. The episode of the healing of the woman appeared to be a further impediment in the way of the Master's mercy for him. And now while Jesus was pronouncing His final benison upon the woman (cp. Gen. 26:29) some arrived from the ruler's house with the sad tidings, anticipated but dreaded by him, that death had supervened. “Thy daughter is dead” was the message, closing, as he supposed, the last door of his hopes. He felt like Martha and Mary of Bethany, and might have expressed his feelings in their language, “Lord, if thou hadst been there, my daughter had not died.”

In the estimation of the messenger who delivered the message, the incident of the appeal to Jesus was of necessity closed. There now was no more to be done. “Thy daughter is dead: trouble not the Teacher” (Luke). And as if the distracted father was seeking to attract the attention of Jesus while He continued speaking to the woman, some said to Jairus, “Why art thou still troubling the Teacher?”

They gave expression to what would be the practical matter-of-fact opinion of the populace, if not of the apostles also, “What could the prophet of Nazareth do when death had seized its prey?” Believing He could do nothing, they would trouble Him no further. But, as an old writer quaintly puts it: “Here were more manners than faith; 'Trouble not the Master.' Infidelity is all for care, and thinks every good work tedious. That which nature accounts troublesome is pleasing and delightful to grace. Is it any pain for a hungry man to eat? O Savior, it was Thy meat and drink to do Thy Father's will; and His will was that Thou shouldest bear our griefs, and take away our sorrows. It cannot be Thy trouble which is our happiness that we must still sue to Thee.”

THE COMFORTING WORD TO JAIRUS

The rendering of the Revisers here, “But Jesus, not heeding the word spoken,” etc., has been justly questioned, since it is in direct conflict with the context. Jesus did heed the word spoken to Jairus and spoke in reply to counteract it, as the verse shows.

The verb, παρακούω, translated “hear” in the Authorized Version, occurs also in Matt. 18:17, where it is rendered “neglect to hear.” But in this connection (Mark 5:36) many scholars see sufficient ground for rendering it “over-hearing,” as the Revisers have done in their margin, and McClellan in his translation.

The general sense of the word seems to be that Jesus heard what the speaker did not intend He should hear, but He ignored the literal remark, and said what expressed His own purpose and allayed the anxiety of Jairus. Referring to this passage W. Kelly wrote, “It is doubtful whether the marginal 'overhearing ' should not rather have taken the place of the Revisers' text, ‘not heeding,' which would have suited if the Lord had said nothing. But He heeds the word spoken enough to bid the synagogue-ruler, “Fear not, only believe.' “

The Lord who prayed for Simon Peter that his faith might not fail in the hour of temptation and trial (Luke 22:32) also knew what untoward influence would be exercised upon Jairus by the tidings of the messengers and their abandonment of hope. “Perhaps the father's hope would have perished too and no room have been left for this miracle, faith, the necessary condition, being wanting, if a gracious Lord had not seen the danger, and prevented his rising unbelief. 'As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.' There is something very gracious in that 'as soon as.' The Lord spake upon the instant, not leaving any time for a thought of unbelief to insinuate itself into the father's mind, much less to utter itself from his lips, such as might have altogether stood in the way of a cure, but preoccupying him at once with words of encouragement and hope.” In like manner He said to another father, “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).

Thus He strengthened the wavering faith in the ruler's heart by His word of comfort and assurance, “Fear not, only believe,” adding, according to the narrative by Luke, “She shall be made whole.”

THE MOURNERS WHO SCOFFED

The Prince of Life passed onwards to the house of death. Mourners were already there, making a great tumult with their weeping and wailing. It is a divine injunction to “weep with those that weep,” and examples are not wanting in scriptural history. The house of Joseph and his brethren mourned for the death of Jacob with a “very great and sore lamentation” at Abel-mizraim (Gen. 1:10, 11). Job's three friends wept for him in his sorrow, with loud voices, rending their mantles and sprinkling dust on their heads, and then sat with him in silence for seven days (Job 2). Jeremiah lamented the death of king Josiah (2 Chron. 35:25), and also for the desolation of Jerusalem and of the temple in the book of his Lamentations.

These examples possessed sincerity, but genuine mourning which arises from neighborly sympathy became perverted into shallow professionalism. Lamentation degenerated into an art, in which some acquired eminence by reason of their skill (Amos 5:16). Mourning women held themselves in readiness to come and take up a wailing for the departed (Jer. 9:17, 18), sometimes expressing themselves in elegies (2 Chron. 35:25).

The Lord who was Himself ever tender and gracious to the distressed and afflicted rebuked the display of perfunctory grief over the daughter of Jairus. Entering the court of the ruler's house, He said to the hirelings, “Why make ye this tumult and weep? The damsel is not dead but sleepeth.” This severity of the Lord was directed against their hypocrisy and sham, for their sympathy was not sincere like that, for instance, of which the Psalmist wrote, when he says, “As for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I afflicted my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom. I behaved myself as though it had been my friend or my brother: I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother” (Psa. 35:13, 14, R.V.).

The words of the Lord drew forth only laughter and derision from the ignorant and insolent attendants. In the house of the ruler of the synagogue there would be an exceptional number of these owing to his rank, and the menials would be more insolent to the prophet of Nazareth because of the contrasted social position of their employer. His words, “The damsel is not dead,” came into direct conflict with their professional knowledge, and they had no faith in Him nor reverence for His sayings to counterbalance His seeming contradiction of fact. Hence the Lord's dignified reproof of their clamor only awakened in them a sense of the grotesque coupled with some malice at His interference; and they laughed Him to scorn. It was the laughter of folly, as that of Abraham and Sarah was the laughter of incredulity (Gen. 22:17; 18:12).

Alas, that it fell within the scope of the appointed sufferings of the Messiah to be exposed to such ridicule from man. But it was written of Him, “All they that see me laugh me to scorn” (Psa. 22:7), and the climax in the fulfillment of this scripture was reached at the cross. He was the Servant whom man despised and the nation abhorred (Isa. 49:7).

It is profitable to study in the New Testament records the variety of forms in which man exhibited his scorn and contempt for the patient and gentle Savior. Some passages are collected below. We read that men

(1) mocked (ὲμπαίζω) Him, Matt. 20:19; 27:29, 31, 41; Mark 10:34; 15:20, 31; Luke 18:32; 22:63; 23:11, 36.

(2) reviled Him (βλασφημέω), Matt. 12:31; 27:39; Mark 3:28; 15:29; Luke 22:65; 23:39.

(ὀνειδίζω), Matt. 27:44; Mark 15:32.

(λοιδορέω), John 9:28 Peter 2:23.

(3) derided Him (ἐκμυκτηρίζω), Luke 16:14; 23:35.

(4) spoke evil of Him (κακολογέω) Mark 9:39.

(5) spoke against Him (ἀντιλέγω; “contradiction"), Heb. 12:3.

(6) wagged the head at Him (κινέω T. K.), Matt. 27:39; Mark 15:29.

(7) laughed Him to scorn (καταγελάω) Matt. 9:24; Mark 5:10; Luke 8:53.

The perusal of the above passages will induce the sad and humbling reflection that divine goodness when manifested in the Incarnate Son of God became an object of malicious mirth and insensate mockery to all classes of men. As the Psalmist foretold, He was the song of the drunkards, and those that sat in the gate spoke against Him (Psa. 69:12). Yet Eternal Love triumphed over all such obduracy and hatred, and the testimony for God shone ever brightly, and never more so than amid the gross moral darkness displayed at Calvary.

“'Mid sin, and all corruption,

Where hatred did abound,

Thy path of true perfection

Shed light on all around.

O'er all, Thy perfect goodness

Rose blessedly divine;

Poor hearts oppressed with sadness

Found ever rest in Thine.”

THE WITNESSES

The multitude which had followed Jesus through the town were not allowed by Him to approach the house of Jairus, which indeed was already occupied by another crowd. The Lord having entered the house put forth the noisy mourners, as Peter afterward did in the case of Dorcas. They, accustomed through their ill-favored calling to the sight of the dead, knew that the damsel was certainly dead, and it was beyond them to understand that what was death to man was sleep to the Lord. They were quite out of place where the Quickener of the dead was, and accordingly they were ejected, like the chaffering traders from the temple-courts at Jerusalem. Not all the apostles even were admitted to the death-chamber; three only were selected-Peter, James and John. The raising of the widow's son and of Lazarus was done before the eyes of the public. In this case the dead child was within doors, and therefore the circumstances must necessarily be more private. The three disciples chosen were adequate to render testimony to the fact of the resurrection. For while two witnesses were sufficient to render evidence valid from a judicial standpoint, three ensured an amplitude. Two witnesses, according to the Apocalypse, will be raised up to testify of imminent judgment (Rev. 11), but there are now three that bear witness in the world to the gospel of the grace of God—the Spirit, the water, and the blood (1 John 5:8).

The father and mother were present also; for the Lord recognized the prior claims of natural affection. This feature is particularly prominent in connection with the miracles of the resurrection. Those raised by Him were this damsel, the only daughter of Jairus, twelve years old; the only son of his mother, and she a widow; and Lazarus the only brother of his two orphaned sisters. In each of these instances there were special reasons for the poignant grief of the bereaved.

And now with what tender compassionate solicitude did the Blessed Master lead the grief-stricken parents into the presence of the silent dead, accompanied by the three wondering apostles. The number of the company was six, but this was quickly increased to seven, for, to the astonishment of the spectators, the little maid was brought back to the “land of the living.”

THE DAMSEL RAISED

The Lord acted at once with simple directness. He took the child by the hand—a similar action is recorded in the restoration of Peter's mother-in-law. He then called to her, saying, “Damsel, arise,” Mark preserving the actual Aramaic words employed, “Talitha cumi.”

There was an immediate response from the spirit-world. In the words of Luke, “her spirit came again.” This is in accordance with the general phraseology of scripture wherein death connotes the departure of the soul and spirit from the body. Rachel, “as her soul was in departing,” named her son Ben-oni (Gen. 35:18). Elijah prayed concerning the dead son of the widow of Zarephath, “Let this child's soul come unto him again” (1 Kings 17:21). Stephen at his stoning said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59).

The re-animated body of the daughter of Jairus rose up instantaneously, strengthened as well as vivified, for she was able to walk about, as Mark states with the detail characteristic of his style. She was twelve years old, and therefore able to walk in the ordinary course of nature, but here the action demonstrated that her restoration was as perfect as it was immediate.

It is instructive to note that the Lord in this instance, as in others, recognized the identity of the person with the body. He took the child by the hand, and called to her, not to it, “Damsel, arise.” At Nain He said to the body on the bier, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” At the grave in Bethany, He said, “Lazarus, come forth.” This is also the scriptural usage elsewhere: thus in the Acts we read that “devout men carried Stephen to his burial” (Acts 8:2). And at the appointed moment the Lord will come with a shout (that is, a call of relationship) and the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thess. 4); according to the Lord's own words, those that are in their graves will hear His voice and come forth (John 5:28, 29).

The simple and dignified conduct of the Lord on this occasion is in striking contrast with that of the Old Testament prophets in the performance of similar miracles. The Lord spoke and acted in His own right, while the prophets had to look above with earnest fervor for the power that was not in themselves to raise the dead. Elijah stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD.... And the LORD hearkened unto the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived” (1 Kings 17:21, 22). So also Elisha, after prayer, “lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned and walked in the house once to and fro; and went up and stretched himself upon him; and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes” (2 Kings 4:34, 35). How different was the procedure of the Lord: taking the child by the hand, He said, “Talitha cumi,” and immediately she arose.

The Lord having restored the damsel's life by His own inherent power, directed the parents to give her food. For the life restored needed the usual means of sustenance, and it was in their power to supply this, no miracle being required. The Lord expects us to do what we are able of ourselves to do, and only exercises His own might where our impotence is displayed.

Eating a meal afforded, in a simple manner, further evidence of the reality of this resurrection, and such a test the Lord applied in His own case (Luke 24:41-43).

RETICENCE IMPOSED

The small company of beholders was amazed with a great amazement at this miracle. Giving life to the dead was a climax to the mighty miracles and wonders and signs wrought by Jesus. The public raising of the widow's son probably preceded this case in point of time, and with it constituted the two witnessing works of this kind in Galilee, the third of these miracles being performed at Bethany in Judea.

The Lord charged them (presumably those present in the room where the damsel was) that no one should know this. The injunction seems to be in the sense that they were not to set themselves to spread the news of the miracle. It could not imply that the raising of the child was to remain a secret; for the fact of the dead daughter of a public personage such as Jairus coming back to life could scarcely be hidden.

A similar injunction laid on the disciples by the Lord on another occasion is recorded in this Gospel, and in that case the context throws some light upon the reason for this prohibition. After the Transfiguration, speaking to the same three witnesses, the Lord “charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, save when the Son of man should have risen from the dead” (Mark 9:9). This restriction was removed after His own resurrection, for He said to them, “Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Accordingly at Pentecost Peter testified in Jerusalem to the Jews of “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you” (Acts 2:22). In like manner Peter testified to Cornelius of the same wonderful works (Acts 10:38).

Before the coming of the Holy Spirit the apostles had not learned the secondary value which miracles have in the dealings of God with men, as compared with the moral and spiritual power of the word of the gospel. The Lord had to rebuke the exhilaration of the Seventy because they found themselves able to work miracles (Luke 10:17-20). Here He restrained their natural impulse to spread the news of this marvelous work of His.

THE SIGN-CHARACTER OF THIS MIRACLE

The raising of the daughter of Jairus, together with the episode of the healing of the woman in the crowd, forms a further illustration of the character the service of the Messiah would and did assume in consequence of His rejection by the nation at large. In the fourth chapter He is set forth, by parables, as the Sower; in this as the Healer and Life-giver, by miracles. And while He demonstrated, in the country of the Gerasenes, His power over Satan who had the power of death, He showed, in the house of Jairus, that one actually dead was not beyond His salvation.

The dead damsel was a true figure of the daughter of Zion when her King came to her. A few “babes and sucklings” cried, Hosanna, when Messiah came to Jerusalem in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, but the nation, through the mouth of its leaders, solemnly denied Him in the presence of Pilate, and declared, “We have no king but Caesar.” Israel, knowing not the anointed Son of David, was like Nabal of old, whose “heart died within him, and he became as a stone.”

This figure of death applied to the Jews is a stronger metaphor than that of the unfruitful soil employed in the preceding parable. Indeed no more impressive term is used throughout scripture to describe the hopeless spiritual condition of the people, beyond all human remedy as it was. But the Lord was able to restore even in such a case as this. For this purpose He had come, and He was on His way to accomplish redemption for Israel. And during His progress to the house of death He was accessible to any needy person who had faith enough to touch Him as He passed by.

But in a coming day all Israel shall be saved in accordance with divine promise. The Lord will yet bless the daughter of Zion, and will give life to His people, even though they be not only dead like the daughter of Jairus but in the grave like Lazarus. This figure of resurrection was applied by the prophets to the national restoration of the chosen people. Daniel spoke of the day when “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake” (Dan. 12:2). And Ezekiel prophesied still more precisely of the time of Israel's future blessing, under the vision of the valley, full of dry bones which lived and stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. This vision was explained to be a token of what Jehovah meant to do. He: said to the people through the prophet, “I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel” (Ezek. 37:12).

In the New Testament the apostle Paul used the same figure in connection with the same subject. Writing, in the Epistle to the Romans, of the setting aside of the children of Israel, and of their future restoration, he says, “If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Rom. 11:15).

Notes on Luke 13

Chapter 13.

There are two great principles or subjects in connection with man on the earth—the church of God as such, and the government of God in the world; and these are very distinct. In the church the riches of His grace are manifested. In His governmental dealings we see the display of His justice, mercy, and goodness. An example of God's governmental power as to Israel we have in Ex. 34:5-7. This is not sovereign grace, bringing a soul to eternal life, but government of the same character as we may see every day around us. If a man wastes his fortune or ruins his health by intemperance of any kind, his children suffer for it. “What a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” See God's dealings with David, because of the matter of Uriah. “The sword shall never depart from thine house.... Thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel.... Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child that is born unto thee shall surely die.” And we know that this judgment for his sin was accomplished in David's after-history. This is not grace, but government. God deals in the same way with a saint now—that is, both in grace and righteousness.

In Luke 12 we see the Jews had this thought of government in their minds, nor was it wrong in itself. They thought that God could not let such a guilty fellow live as this Pilate, who had been mingling the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. But Christ brings them to a new principle by which to judge, and tells them judgment was coming upon themselves if impenitent. “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners,” etc? “I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It refers to judgment in the government of this world, which would overtake all who repented not. They had God's Son there, and they were practically rejecting Him; and how many of the Jews had their blood mingled. by Titus? Christ had said to the Jews at the close of chapter 12, “When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate... give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him, lest he hale thee to the judge,” etc.; this was the state of the Jews, who were under God's dealings and would not escape till the chastenings of the Lord upon them are complete. Thus it is very evident that this passage refers simply to God's government of His people. Natural conscience ought to have told these Jews not to reject the Messiah, for God was going all the way along with them to the magistrate, dealing with them in patient grace, and He would say to them, If you do not repent and be reconciled, judgment must come upon you, when it will be the same with you as with those whom ye think to be such sinners.

Verse 6. The Lord is dealing here with the same state of things. The fig-tree is Israel, and God comes seeking fruit in them and finding none. In the gospel there is this difference, that grace, instead of seeking, sows in order to produce fruit. He found none, and the sentence therefore upon it is, “Cut it down.” He not only found it useless, but His vineyard was encumbered by it. “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.” Then comes in Christ's mission. Last of all “He sent his Son.” God had planted a vineyard and pruned it, but there was no fruit. Then a new gardener comes in, and He says, “Spare it this year also, till I shall dig about it,” etc. It must bring forth fruit then, and be digged up. He has done as He said, but still there is no fruit.

Verse 11. The woman with an infirmity, whom Jesus heals on the sabbath day, brings out another thing that was working in their hearts, in the place of the law which left room for hypocrisy. They would lead an ox or an ass from the stall on the sabbath, but they would not bear that a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound these eighteen years, should be loosed on that day. One of the infirmities of man's mind is to use possessed truth to resist revealed truth. Paul was an example of this— “as touching the righteousness of the law, blameless"; still, he “thought he ought to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth.” So also Christ says of the Jews in John 16, “These things will they do unto you,” etc. They were using the name of the one true God, which had been given them ("Jehovah thy God is one God") to reject the Son; for when Christ came in humiliation, they would not receive Him. Orthodoxy is used to stop the reception of truth. When truth is the ground of a man's standing, it gains him credit; but when a new truth comes in, it puts faith to the test. Truth that requires faith to walk by is resisted by the natural heart; and the root of this is hypocrisy. The ruler of the synagogue said, “There are six days in which men ought to work; in them come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.” But he ought to have known that the Lord of the sabbath was there; for that single word “daughter of Abraham” ought to have told him who He was that stood there. The Lord answered him, “Thou hypocrite!” A solemn word this!

Verse 18. He goes on to show what the kingdom will be like when the king is rejected and gone away. A kingdom without a king! who is sitting on His father's throne, until He comes to take His own throne. The kingdom is like a little seed thrown into the ground, which springs up and becomes a great tree—just what we call Christendom. This fills up the gap between His rejection and His coming again. There is no power exercised while the King is away; as in Mark's Gospel it sprang up, men knew not how. When the harvest is ripe, He will come again. He sowed the first time, but He will put in the sickle the second time. He is looking for heavenly fruit now; but when He comes He will find Christendom a great tree with the fowls of the air lodging in its branches. Pharaoh was a great tree; Nebuchadnezzar a greater still; they were the high and mighty ones of the earth, representatives of worldly power. Even Israel, which had been planted a noble vine, wholly a right seed, was bearing no fruit. Therefore, as it is said in Ezek. 15, “what is the vine-tree more than any tree,” if it bears no fruit? It is only fit to be burned. Otherwise useless if it does not bear fruit, it only makes the best firewood.

Verse 21. Here the kingdom is likened unto leaven, and leaven is that which spreads throughout the whole mass, and also gives a character to that in which it works. It is nominal profession of Christianity which is spread into a vast system. There is not a word here about the Holy Ghost, but about the effect in the world. In Matt. 13, in the first parable, there is individual result, and not the kingdom spoken of. In the first three of the six similitudes, it is the public appearance; in the last three, the inward character is described.

Verse 23. “Are there few that be saved?” The word used here is the same word that through the LXX signifies a remnant, or “such as shall be saved.” The question really was as to whether this remnant would be few or many, who were to be spared when the judgment came; but, this being a mere idle question, the Lord does not answer it, but says to them—

Verse 24. “Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” The strait gate was receiving Christ at that time—the real but narrow entrance of faith in Him and conversion to God. There will be some to come and knock when the door is closed, to whom He will say, “I know you not whence ye are": you are not changed, Strive to enter in at the strait gate, through which Christ goes before you—that is, rejection. “Many shall seek to enter in [not at the strait gate] and shall not be able.”

It is most simple when we see the rejection of Christ. Those who reject Him in the day of His humiliation will themselves be rejected in the day of His glory; and, instead of being His companions in the kingdom, they will be thrust out. The unbelieving Jews will see the Gentiles come into the glory of the kingdom, while they, remaining in unbelief, will be cast out.

Verse 31. The Pharisees say to Him, “Get thee out and depart, for Herod will kill thee.” Now Herod was an Idumæan, and what right had such a stranger to be their king? What had he to do with the promises to Israel? Nothing. In Herod we have a figure of the willful king. He tried to kill Christ, and therefore the character of opposition-king belongs to him. He had no faith in God's purposes or in Christ's glory; and the Lord says, “Go and tell that fox.” I shall do My Father's will till the moment come for Me to be glorified. I am here as long as My Father wills, and then I shall be perfected. The power of God must be fully known. What divine contempt for the apostate king, but what perfect human obedience combined! “Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,” etc. After all, Jerusalem is the guilty place. Let the Edomite king do and say what he will, it is “the holy city” that is guilty, for it was nearest to Himself. The nearer I am to God, if I reject Him, the worse is the sin and the more dreadful the judgment. See Psa. 132 “The Lord hath chosen Zion,” etc., and Psa. 78:67, 68, the same election of Zion. Christ does not put the sin upon them till they have rejected both Him and His Father. He brings out a purpose of grace in these closing verses. The old man is condemned and profitless —Israel and all of us. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” The gospel begins with seeking and saving that which was lost. Here we see that, though they have rejected Him in responsibility, He has not rejected them in the day of His grace. Grace shines out in His yet choosing Judah.

Notice how the divine person of the Lord comes out here. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered,” etc. A prophet could not say this, and He was a prophet too, and more than a prophet: He was Jehovah, for none but Jehovah could gather Israel; as “He that scattereth Israel will gather him.” Israel had rejected Jehovah under responsibility; but Jehovah will own them when He comes in sovereign grace. How blessed is the way! The circumstances through which He passed in His path down here did bring out in a far brighter way WHO HE WAS than any text to prove it, important as that is in its place. For suppose you believed there was a God, yet if He were to come down by your very side and say “I am,” would not this be a very different thing? Christ was the humbled man all through His path down here, for He was ever the servant of all: yet when the service was done, and rejected as of no use, His glory shines out. “Before Abraham was, I am.” See in this chapter of Luke the connection between verses 33, 34, and 35 as illustrative of this. “How often would I have gathered thee.... desolate....until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

The complaint in the Psalms is, that there is none to say “How long” —none to count on the faithfulness of God to His people (see Psa. 74:9). This expression is often used in the Psalms and in Isa. 6, and refers to chastening; not retribution. How long is Israel to stumble and fall? (Rom. 11). In Isa. 6 the prophet, having uttered these words, “Make the heart of this people fat,” etc., taken up by the Lord in John 12, then says, “How long?” He waits in faith, and reckons upon God, and having God's mind, he cannot believe that God will give them up, and therefore asks, “how long” is the chastening to continue? To which the Lord answers, “There shall be a great forsaking in the midst of the land, but in it there shall be a tenth, and the holy seed shall be the substance therefore.” The sap is still there, though there are no leaves. So in Psalm 118, He “hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death.” In the same way the Lord does not say, “Your house is left unto you desolate, and therefore you shall not see me again.” No; but He says, “Ye shall not see me until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” He can give, as Jehovah, the answer in grace, and when He gives repentance to Israel, then He will send Jesus, whom until that day the heavens have received. Meanwhile our connection with Him comes in. The prophet spake only of earthly things, though divine; but to the church it is, “Holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling,” and “hath quickened us... together... in heavenly places in Christ Jesus": that gives security. How did I get there? By virtue. of Christ. He is my title. My desire is to be acquainted with this, that I am one with Christ in heaven—an everlasting portion. This the Holy Ghost seals upon my soul, and would have me enjoy more and more.

When Israel is brought to repentance, “the stone which the builders rejected” will be “the head of the corner,” and owned of them. They will say, “O give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever.” Alas! they will receive another first; but when their hearts are turned, and grace works, they will use the language of Psa. 119 and find the expression of the law within their hearts; and when faith is thus exercised, and their hearts are broken, and open to receive Him, then He Himself will come to them. If there is not a prophet to say “How long?” Jehovah will give the answer. He never changes; and though He executes judgment and righteousness, grace is found in Him still. “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Well, if there be not faith to be found, or a prophet to say “How long?” there is One who will lay up, in His treasures, something for faith to lay hold on, in the sovereignty of His own grace.

Thus we see Jehovah in that humbled One, and how He is able to rise above all iniquity. How precious does all this make Jesus to us! and we are one with Him. May we learn of Him, and so follow Him, remembering that all that is left outside the narrow way is the flesh and evil.

The Sustenance of Life: Part 2

(Concluded from page 266)

CHRIST IN DEATH

Without food we lose strength. Our food is Christ Himself. But we go on to observe that spiritual nutrition is obtained in more than one manner. We read of feeding upon Christ as the manna, that is, upon Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. But we are also called to partake of His flesh and His blood: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (ver. 53). This to the natural mind is a mysterious statement, as some said upon hearing it, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And to drink His blood was even more startling; for they knew this was an express prohibition under the law of Moses. Yet the Lord spoke definitely of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and moreover, was emphatic in stating its necessity. Apart from it, He said, “Ye have no life in you.”

Now it is evident that while manna, the bread from heaven, has special reference to the life of Christ, the flesh and the blood must refer to His death. Blood circulating in the body is essential to life, while apart from the body it offers evidence of death. Hence when the soldier pierced the side of the crucified Lord, the issuing blood and water proved that death was there. Upon this witness Roman justice concluded that the legal sentence had been satisfactorily executed, and the same evidence appealed, but differently, to the sorrowing apostles and those with them.

Sacrificially, it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. The sin of man constituted an impassable barrier between the perfect life of Jesus and the life of the best of men. But the sacrifice of Christ was the judicial end of the natural man, and therefore forms the means whereby the believer can enter into and appropriate the life of Christ which He displayed here below.

As a matter of history we find that not until the death of Christ was the characteristic life of Jesus in any sense reproduced in His followers. The incompatibility of the life of the disciples in its springs of action with that of their Master is frequently to be observed in the Gospels. In this chapter, for instance, we find that many were unable to walk with Him any longer. They were those who accompanied the Lord, heard His words, and witnessed His marvelous deeds, yet there was a strange lack of imbibing the Spirit of Christ. See, again, the case of James and John when the Lord sent messengers to a Samaritan village that the inhabitants might receive Him. Upon their refusal these two foremost apostles said, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). The Lord rebuked them, saying, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.” But their speech revealed the disparity between their thoughts and motives and those of the Master.

Even at the close of the Lord's ministry this partition wall between their souls and Him had not disappeared. At the last Supper, with all its solemn associations and intimations, it was made clear that the apostles had not taken their Master's yoke upon them. They were not, like Him, meek and lowly in heart; for they quarreled there among themselves who should be the greatest in the coming kingdom. They were seeking for the pre-eminence, and thus showed that they had not fed upon Him who “emptied himself and became a bond-servant.” They had not made His life their own.

The truth is that only through the death of Christ could His life be manifested in His disciples. He came to give His flesh for the life of the world. When His blood was shed, the way was thereby opened for their union and communion with Him. After His resurrection, He breathed upon them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, and be endued, in power, with that new life in the character peculiar to Himself.

It is thus taught that something more than mere acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary to become a faithful witness of Him. There was no union with Him in incarnation, but the link was in His death, and in the life which was beyond death,

THE DISPLAY OF LIFE

This important principle of conduct is not generally recognized. Perhaps the most common form of teaching is that Christian life consists in the study of the glorious example revealed in the Gospels and in meditation upon His words and deeds. But while this is true it is not the whole of the truth, and it is not the truth before us here. For we learn that it is by way of His death that we become associated with His life. And the display of that life is inseparable from eating His flesh and drinking His blood.

The contemplation of the perfections of Christ coupled with the knowledge that they were utterly beyond our attainment in any degree would but plunge us into the mire of dark despair. His perfect example would be but a mockery to us. And apart from His death we could but miserably fail to walk as He walked. But in the knowledge of His death for us and of our death with Him there follows in measure the practical incorporation of His life in ours, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith.

In the Epistle to the Philippians there is a practical exposition of this manner of life. Paul, the “prisoner of Jesus Christ,” pours forth the Christian experience of his heart. He sets before himself and others the embodiment of the mind of Christ as it was exhibited in this world (chap. 2). This is genuine Christian experience—not as some would have it, the realization of one's inward depravity, and of an ineradicable susceptibility to evil. The latter is the gloomy experience of self, true but not inspiring; it is in no sense the experience of Christ.

This life shining through the apostle's communications to the saints at Philippi takes the character of joy and peace and liberty and delight. This character is the more striking when we remember how all the energy of the writer in self-denying gospel service was frustrated by his protracted imprisonment, while his very chains alienated his fellow-believers from him. But in spite of this suffering and this spiritual privation his personal Christian joy beams forth with exceptional brilliance.

Why was this? It is evidently the result of his own communion with Christ at that time. He was then treading a pathway of suffering in close imitation of his Master who loved and served, and was hated for it.

During the ministry of Christ there was a heart here and there which recognized Him, but this was exceptional. The majority came to hear Him because there was something new, or they came to Him for healing, but there was no heart-exercise, no conscience-work. How did this astonishing apathy appear to the Lord Jesus Christ in whose heart there were supernatural energies of love and life? In His unparalleled service He was cramped and straitened by the obduracy of man, but there was no murmuring, no diminution in the intensity of His love and service for man. He was unchangeably the same. His was a voice, one would think, that would have commanded the fealty of all mankind; but this was not the result of His service. However, in spite of the repulse of His love, He went forward and administered the water of life to a single poor woman at the well. For the Son of God learned obedience in this way, “by the things which he suffered.” But the light of this divine testimony, so perfect in Him, was not extinguished at Calvary: after His resurrection, it shone afresh in the lives of His believing followers, as we may see from the Acts and the Epistles.

THE HABIT OF COMMUNION

But while the Christian pathway commences with the appropriation of Christ in His death, it is necessary for this appropriation to be continued to the end: “Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (ver. 54). This statement looks on to the end of the journey when the ideals of the believer's new life will be realized fully. But this involves the formation of the habit of eating and drinking continuously. There must be the bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal bodies (2 Cor. 4:10). So the Lord said here, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him” (ver. 56). This implies the practice of this habit.

Here we have two things: (1) our dwelling in Christ, and (2) Christ in us. First, there is dwelling in Christ, which involves unbroken communion with Him, and this it is the privilege of every believer to enjoy. The habit of it is implied by the phraseology—dwelling, abiding; it is not to be intermittent and spasmodic.

Christ Himself walked thus in connection with the Father who sent Him. All circumstances found Him in the fullest heavenly intercourse. It was His meat to do the will of Him who sent Him.

In a similar manner we are called to abide in Christ. Eating in scripture is a figure frequently employed for communion. The peace offering was the particular sacrifice which set forth the communion of Jehovah and of the priestly family and of the people of Israel. The sacrifice itself was dedicated to God, and the fat and the blood were Jehovah's exclusively, while the character of what constituted the portion of the priests and the people was based upon its being a sacrifice, agreeing thus in type with what we have here, viz., that Christian communion is founded upon the death of Christ.

In the New Testament, fellowship is enjoined as an essential feature of Christianity. And there exists a formal expression of this fellowship as well as the inner personal side, the latter being the subject of this chapter. The outward sign is the communion table which the Lord established as the central institution for His own. In meeting together for the purpose of eating bread and drinking wine in commemoration of His death, a visible expression of this fellowship is made by the church.

Again, in Luke 15, the father and the restored son are depicted at the same table, feasting together upon the fatted calf. They have found a common interest, a common joy, and the central feature of this communion is the slain calf, representing, of course, the Lord Jesus in His death, which is the meeting-place of God and the rescued sinner for the holy joy and rest of communion. “We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:11). Through Him we have constant access into the Father's presence, and have, therefore, fellowship with the Father and the Son.

CHRIST IN US

The necessary corollary to our dwelling in Christ is His abiding in us. If we are in Him for personal peace and joy, He is in us for testimony in the world. Here also we must look to Christ Himself to learn the meaning of the phrase. Let us refer to that occasion when the Lord told His disciples that they knew the Father and had seen Him. Philip expressed incredulous surprise at such a statement, saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” The Lord explained to the apostle His meaning: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.... The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (John 14:8-11).

In the life of Jesus Christ therefore the Father in His love was communicated to men. Looking at and through Him, so to speak, the realities of heaven were seen. This then was the wonder of that life, though but feebly recognized even by men of faith. For it was the glory of God that the Father should be thus amply displayed. In like manner the believer is called to live the new life, so that Christ, not self, is seen abiding in him.

The power to effect this testimony is obtained by feeding upon Christ. There is no reference in this chapter to the Lord's Supper, which had not been instituted, when the Lord said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” This cannot refer to partaking of bread and wine, since the possession of eternal life constitutes the antecedent claim to the commemoration of the Lord's death in the appointed way.

We have here not an occasional, but a continuous and habitual act. It is the quiet appropriation of the beauties and graces of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very contemplation of the Lord of glory is formative, and brings our lives into correspondence with Himself.

This effect is not the result of conscious effort. When food is eaten the necessary assimilation of it by the body is not an act of will. It is a natural process operating automatically. So it is spiritually; we look upon Christ by faith as revealed in the word, and we become like Him. In ordinary life the force of the living example is fully acknowledged. And in the spiritual world it has its powerful influence in molding the Christian character.

In conclusion: the Son who is the only source of life is also its support and maintenance. Our part is to realize by faith the continual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, and in proportion to the activity of this faith we shall be changed into the same image.

W. J. H.

1 John 5:20

It is most interesting to note that the Apostle in this wonderful verse uses two different words for knowing. The first is, as all scholars are aware, allied to the Greek verb for seeing. It therefore implies ("connotes” is the technical term) the latter act, and, in fact, literally and ultimately οἴδαμεν (the word with which the verse opens) means “we have seen.” It is the perfect tense, invariably, however, translated as at present ("we know") which gives the practical force of the expression. It is also the tense so habitually used by John, and exactly answers to the intention of the writer who, as guided by the Holy Spirit, loves to present in brief and telling phrase, and with the calm born of divine assurance, the great cardinal verities of our most holy faith. Again and again in his writings, pre-eminently in this Epistle (cf. chap. i.), we are struck by this wonderful reiteration.

But this “we know,” with which the verse opens, becomes even more striking as we read on, and are told of the understanding given to us “that we may know (γιγνώσκωμεν), where we have the growing knowledge that results from growing understanding. This second word means “to get to know.” Having had our spiritual vision illuminated (οἴδαμεν), we go on to know more and more. Our fathers know more than the young men, the young men than the babes, though the little children (παιδία as distinct from τεκνία which applies to all) know the Father. And here it is incumbent on me to point out that in chap. 2:13, the apostle uses the second word (γιγνώσκω) saying to the little children, “Ye have got to know” (ἐγνώκατε) —needless to say with perfect propriety. How beautiful to see that, short as had been their spiritual life, the babes had got to know the Father. But this is true on the lower plane of nature, is it not? The little child knows its father's heart. Thus all is divinely perfect. Talk of the precision of Plato or Aristotle. Here is what transcends all. And, blessed be God, it is neither the vain imaginings, beautiful as they often are, of Plato, nor the colder, if intellect-fortifying, logic of Aristotle; but, while based on the soundest, yea, on Divine logic, we have what feeds inexhaustibly the renewed heart and mind.

But there are other points to notice, and of weightiest moment. The general reader is naturally unaware that in the opulent tongue in which the New Testament was written there are two words for “true.” When the thought is merely of what is true in fact, the word is ἀληθής but there is a fuller term, frequently found in the Johannine writings, which, as the late Bishop Westcott lucidly points out, means ideally true, rising up to the highest conception of truth. In scripture, of course, it is a divinely-transfigured word, as far above what the loftiest imagination of the most gifted poets has conceived, as their genius towers above the capacity of the average mind; and a great deal more so. It is the divine ideal we have here. And we note that the same word is used by our Lord of Himself. “I am the true vine” (ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινή).

And, lastly, let us note the application, within the limits of a single verse, of the term ἀληθινός both to the Father and the Son. We are given an understanding that we may get to know Him that is true. Clearly we are to understand this of the Father whom the Son reveals. But immediately after, the apostle writes: “And we are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ.” I recollect years ago the late Mr. W. Kelly strikingly comparing (though in reference to an earlier passage in this same Epistle) this marvelous shading off from One Person of the Trinity to another with the baffling and somewhat bewildering nuances, beautiful though they be, of shot silk. Only the illustration must fall infinitely below the thing illustrated, and in the word of God there is no baffling and no bewilderment for him who simply believes. R. B.

A New Saying of Christ

Such is the heading of an article which appeared in the “Times” a few days ago giving an account of an Egyptian MS. of the Gospels in Greek which, discovered some six years ago, has now found its resting place in Washington.

From the facsimile given of a few verses at the close of Mark's Gospel, does it not seem somewhat singular to speak of it as dating “from the fourth or the fifth century,” or even as one “which probably belongs to the fifth or sixth century.”

No doubt there is a tendency to over-estimate the age and value of any new find; and when there is no settled belief in the inspired word of God as the complete revelation of His mind and will, we need not be surprised at the craving of the unbelieving mind, like the Athenians of old, for some “new thing.”

From the appearance of the MS. itself there would seem no just reason whatever to rank it (as attempted) with the three principal Codices of Europe—the Alexandrian, Vatican and Sinaitic. Nor does the (mistaken) rendering of the interpolated verse (between 14 and 15 of Mark 16) afford any sound confidence as to its text.

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Studies in Mark 6:1-6: Rejection at Nazareth

6:1-6

30.-Rejection at Nazareth

“And he went out from thence; and he cometh into his own country; and his disciples follow him. And when the sabbath was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, Whence hath this man these things? and, What is the wisdom that is given unto this man, and what mean such mighty works wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended in him. And Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (6:1-6 (R.V.).

HIS OWN COUNTRY

“And he went out from thence; and he cometh into his own country: and his disciples follow him.” Nazareth was His country, His fatherland (πατρίς), and is so called elsewhere in the Gospels (Matt. 13:54, 57; Luke 4:23, 24; John 4:44). And Nazareth was a despised town or village in the despised province of Galilee. Remote from Jerusalem and Judah, it was in the most northerly part of those tribal districts of Israel which in the days of idolatrous Jeroboam revolted from the rule of David's royal line. In the prophecies of Isaiah it is described as Galilee of the nations—the land of darkness and the shadow of death (Isa. 9:1, 2; Matt. 4:14-16).

There in the purpose of God Jesus was brought by Joseph. “Directed by God in a dream Joseph carries Him into Galilee whose inhabitants were objects of sovereign contempt to the Jews, as not being in habitual connection with Jerusalem and Judah—the land of Judea—the land of David, of the kings acknowledged by God, and of the temple, and where even the dialect of the language common to both betrayed (Matt. 26:73) their practical separation from that part of the nation which by the favor of God had returned from Babylon. Even in Galilee Joseph established himself in a place, the very name of which was a reproach to one who dwelt there, and a blot on his reputation.” While people of Judea looked down upon Galilee, the people of Galilee looked down upon Nazareth. The “guileless” Nathanael, who was himself a Galilean, said of Jesus in mild contempt, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

Men were loth to think that the northern province should be the scene of the ministry of the Prophet of Jehovah. Some said, “What! doth the Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet” (John 7:41, 42, 52). But the speakers forgot that another scripture definitely foretold concerning Galilee of the Gentiles that its people who walked in darkness should see a great light—upon them the Light should shine (Isa. 9:1, 2).

Many prophets had testified that Messiah would become an object of scorn to men when they saw Him. And their united witness to this character of the King of Israel in His first presentation to the nation was fulfilled by the Lord's residence in Nazareth, the village of Joseph and Mary (Luke 1:26; 2:39). This fulfillment is explicitly stated in the first Gospel: “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matt. 2:23).

There in the darkest corner of a benighted province, the Lord remained for some thirty years till the time of His manifestation to Israel, increasing “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Of the events of those years we are not permitted to know more than a fragment (Luke 2:39-62). But who can tell whether we may not learn the marvelous story in a day which is to come?

The Evangelist now records the visit of the Lord Jesus to His own “country” after a period of extended ministry in Capernaum and the neighborhood. Mark had at the commencement of this Gospel showed that the public life of Jesus began from Nazareth: “And it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan” (1:9). The history then recounts the manifold service of the Prophet of Jehovah throughout Galilee, but especially in the favored town of Capernaum, which was the scene of most of the Lord's miracles and parables mentioned in the early part of this Gospel.

And it was to Capernaum that His kinsfolk, His mother and His brethren came to expostulate with Him in reference to His service (3:21, 31-35). The Lord who on that occasion publicly repudiated the right of human relationship to interfere with Him as the Servant of Jehovah doing the will of Him that sent Him, now visits with His disciples the place where He was brought up. The former incident showed that He was above the human weakness that would swerve from perfect rectitude through the influence of natural ties. The latter proves the Lord's own consistency with His own instruction to the delivered demoniac in Gadara, “Go to thy house unto thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he had mercy on thee” (Mark 5:19).

The Lord did not neglect Nazareth, despised and debased though it was reputed among men to be. He went to His own, though His own received Him not.

Jesus of Nazareth (the Nazarene) is the term of reference to the Lord most frequently used by contemporary persons of all classes. He was so known not only in Galilee but also in Judea; for when the whole city of Jerusalem was stirred at His final visit, the multitude said, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (Matt. 21:11). This name too was the one used on the inscription placed in mockery by Pilate upon the cross: “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

But if this title is one of dishonor and disrepute among men, angels are not ashamed to use it. The angel at the tomb said to Mary Magdalene, “Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified; he is risen; he is not here; behold the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6). To Jesus of Nazareth the apostles in their preaching testified expressly under this designation as the crucified but risen and glorified Messiah and Lord (Acts 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 10:38). And more striking still, the exalted One Himself speaking from the glory to Saul of Tarsus, the bigoted Jew and haughty Pharisee, declared Himself under that name of reproach “I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest” (Acts 22:8).

WAS THIS A SECOND VISIT?

The Lord went to Nazareth on this occasion in His public capacity as the Prophet of Jehovah and the anointed King of Israel, accompanied by the apostles who had devoted themselves to His service. In this respect this official visit seems to be distinguished from the previous occasion when the Lord made the announcement of His Messiahship in the synagogue there (Luke 4:16-21).

The two accounts, however, are supposed by some to have reference to the same event. And there are undoubtedly points of resemblance between the narratives as given by (a) Matthew and Mark, and (b) by Luke. For instance,

(1) In both cases, the words of our Lord uttered in the synagogue excite the astonishment and envy of the townsfolk of Nazareth.

(2) In both cases the Lord cites the same proverb, viz., “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country.”

(3) In both cases allusion is made by the audience to the humble origin of the parentage of Jesus.

But there are differences certainly as striking as these resemblances, among which are the following—

(1) In one case the Lord is alone (Luke); in the other He is accompanied by His disciples (Matthew Mark).

(2) The proverb as recorded by Matthew and Mark has the added reference to His kindred and to His house: “No prophet is acceptable in his own country” (Luke 4:24); “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his own house” (Matt. 13:57); “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house” (Mark 6:4).

(3) In one case His life is threatened (Luke). In the other case, after marveling at the unbelief He heals a few persons before His departure (Matt., Mark).

(4) In one case He left Nazareth to go to Capernaum (Luke); in the other He left Nazareth to go round the villages teaching (Matt., Mark).

The exact chronology of events of the Gospels is a matter of minor importance, and in many cases must remain an open question. But here the records seem to point with sufficient distinctness to two separate visits to Nazareth. The similarities enumerated above are such as might naturally occur in connection with His ministry in the synagogue there on successive occasions. A parallel case in the Gospels is that of the cleansings of the temple-courts at Jerusalem by the Lord, John recording the one at the beginning and the Synoptics that at the close of His ministry.

(To be continued). [W.J.H.]

Notes on Luke 14

Chapter 14

This chapter shows out the distributive justice of God. First, it is toward His saints, the consequence of conduct with God, and the place a man will take in view of that. Next, we have responsibility connected with grace, the moral position of the soul, because of having grace presented to it. Slighting God's grace fills up the measure of man's sin. But here it is the presentation, which is a different thing from the possession, of grace. This is brought out in those who refused to come to the supper.

Verses 1-6. The Lord, in bringing the dispensation to a close, constantly brings before Israel the sabbath. The question was, Could man, as man, find rest with God? Could man ever enter into God's rest? We know man broke God's rest directly—how soon we are not told: but, perhaps, the very day he ought to have rested, he ate the forbidden fruit. Man never entered into God's rest; and now the question was, how to enter in—by his own work or Christ's? It was essential to the rest after creation, to have it at the end of the six days of work, and therefore it was on the seventh day. So afterward, when the legal ordinances were given, the sabbath became a sign of the covenant. The Lord, when here, constantly trenched on the sabbath, to show that, sin being unremoved, He must work. He could not rest, the sabbath being a sign of man's getting rest after work, and the law showing that man constantly broke that covenant. The Lord presses home to their consciences their sin, by showing them that He must work if they were to have rest. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” If man had kept the law, he was entitled to the rest, but he neither did nor could keep it. All that was the sign of God's rest, for man, after work done, failed; but “there remaineth a rest for the people of God.” The sabbath continued as a sign; and all through the prophets, we find it insisted on, but they did not get rest. Paul, reasoning upon it in Heb. 4, says, “We which have believed, do enter into rest.”

But Canaan, the nominal rest, they of old did not enter, save the few faithful ones, and these did not get rest, for if they had, another day would not have been spoken of; and so it is said by the Psalmist, and quoted in Hebrews, “If they shall enter into my rest.” “If” means “they shall not.” This being the sabbath was no rest to them. The sabbath was still the sign, but no real rest. The whole thing being therefore gone as to man's getting into God's rest, it must be now on an entirely new principle, by faith and not by works. When Messiah came, He would have been rest to the people, but man would not have Him, as we find it here. Man could not have God's rest by law, and They would not have it by grace, and this proves man has altogether broken with God. If I have got to God, I have rest, and need not journey farther for it. I have my rest in Himself; for grace, not law, has given me a capacity to enjoy what God is. But when the creature had broken the rest of his Creator, there could be no relationship between them. Sin has come in and caused God to be towards me as a judge, and there can be no link of heart between a judge and a criminal. If God judges me as a sinner, the only word I can have from Him is, “Depart from me, ye cursed.” Therefore all that man can say is, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord.” There is a link between a father and a child that brings them into relationship; but it is a new thing. All must be put on a new footing, for there is no rest in the old creation.

In chapter 15 we have grace at work to give rest, the Shepherd bringing the sheep home, etc.; and in this chapter we have a case of misery brought out in the man who had the dropsy. Christ said, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? But they held their peace.” He puts the case to themselves. “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit,... and they could not answer him.” There was no present rest, no hope of rest, no possibility of rest for man as a sinner, and there could be no rest for God, for God could not rest where sin, was. There was no sabbath for righteousness, for man had no righteousness. There was no sabbath for love, for love could not rest where judgment must be exercised. Love might come in and work, but work is not rest. Man has lost his communion with God, through his sin; and this is a solemn thing, for he has made God a judge through his sin. The very thought of judgment connected with God shows man a sinner, for there was no necessary association of judgment with God; but when sin came in, judgment must follow, for God is holy. If brought to the consciousness of there being no relationship between us as sinners and God, we learn what a place becomes us, when once we have faith in His grace.

Verses 7-11. “And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms.” It is just the place that nature likes. The world which has no relations with God delights in exalting self and shutting Him out. Self gets for self what it likes, and forgets God. Man is always setting up self, pushing for self, against God. He does not think so, for he says he is only using his faculties. But so Adam did to hide himself from God. Do not we use our faculties to please ourselves, rather than for God? While the master is away, the servants go on their own way and do their own will. A man is naturally hurt when he is put down in a corner and despised. Flesh does not relish being thrust aside, but this seeking for a place is to seek for it where Christ had none. “Therefore,” He says, “when thou art bidden to a wedding, sit down in the lowest room.”

The point of this parable is seen in verses 8-11: it refers the heart to the Master, to “him that bade thee.” If I am conscious of being a sinner, and therefore deserving no place, I shall take none, but wait till God bestows one on me. I shall have honor indeed, when God gives me a place. The point is, What does He bestow upon me? Having the eye upon God, and referring to Him, seek for the lowest place as Christ did. It will not do to say, I will not have a place in the world; the great thing is, the heart resting on God's place in the world. When the eye is thus upon God, self is forgotten; if not, I am thinking of the slights I receive, and neither faith nor grace is in exercise. If I could think nothing of myself, I should be perfect. The man who bade the guests has the right estimate of each and the honor due to them. The evangelist's place, the pastor's, the apostle's, etc., will all be appointed by God. When God gives me a place, it is one of power and nighness to Himself; but when a man takes a place for himself, it is one of weakness and alienation from God, because self is the object.

Then, again, we must guard against the mere refusing to take a place in the world, because we know it is wrong, as followers of Him who has been rejected. A mere legal estimate of what is right can never last. A thing may be very right; but there is no stability in pursuing it, because there is no power to subdue the flesh in merely doing what one knows to be right. There was the sense of obligation with the law, but the law did not set an object before me to attract my heart; it did not bring God to me, nor me to God. That lasts which feels that we are nothing, and that God is everything. Many have begun very energetically, and taken a certain place, right in itself; but if legality be the source of it, there will be no power of perseverance, for that which is taken up under law will be sure to be lost in the flesh. When God is the object, the low place here is sufficient. He Himself carries me on; and whatever it be, if the mind and affections are upon Him, what was hard at first is no effort as I proceed. His love, which attracted and gave me power at first to take such a position, becomes brighter and brighter when better and longer known; and what was done, at first tremblingly, is easy with increasing courage. The only thing which can enable me thus to go on is to have CHRIST the object before me, and just in proportion as it is so can I be happy. There may be a thousand and one things to vex me, if self is of importance; they will not vex me at all, if self is not there to be vexed. The passions of the flesh will not harass us, if we are walking with God. What rubs we get when not walking with God, and thinking only of self! There is no such deliverance as that of having no importance in one's own eyes. Then one may be happy indeed before God.

If we look at Christ, we learn two principles: first, that He humbled Himself, because of the sin of the world all around Him; second, the world did all they could to humble Him, for the more He went down, so much the more they sought to pull Him down.

No one cares for another; so that if a man does not care for himself, he will be sure to be pushed down low enough. Then again, so deceitful are our hearts that it is possible we should be willing to humble ourselves, if we could get anything by it, even the approbation of men. On the other hand, if we, in the usual sense of men, merely seek to imitate Christ in this, it will be but legal effort. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” He humbled Himself. First, “He made himself of no reputation"; that is, He emptied Himself of His glory to become a man. In doing this, He left the Father's glory to become a man. This was a great descent (though we think a great deal of ourselves). But was that all? No. He humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross. It is the same principle which is put before us in this chapter in Luke. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Real lowliness is being ready to serve any and everybody: and though it may to the eye of man look low, it is in reality very high, being the fruit of divine love working in our hearts. God, operating in our hearts, makes us unselfish. The only thing worth doing in the world is this service, except it be enjoying God. We should be ready to serve one's enemies. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” This is not only being humbled but humbling one's self, and not doing it before those who would honor us all the more for being humble. Paul could say of himself and others, “ourselves your servants for Christ's sake.” He felt they had a title to serve in grace; and in proportion as he took the humble place, he will be exalted in the day that is coming.

Verses 12-14. The next statement in the chapter goes on to speak of Him who bade. Before, it was about the guest; but here it is the principle on which feasts are made. “Call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.... and thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” Thus He takes them all out of the world again, to the time when they shall meet God, and makes it a present guide for action. They must not act on the principle of getting reward here, but must wait for the time when they are to meet the Lord, as it is not till the Master of the house returns that the servants receive their wages. This is not a question of salvation, but of reward for service. “Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

Mark how the Lord brings out “the just” as a separate class. The resurrection is not a common one; there is no such thing in scripture. There is no thought of confounding in another world what God has separated in this. Grace has separated the believer, so that he is risen in his soul now; but he does not get the reward of his service till “the resurrection of the just.” A sinner is quickened here, though not judicially manifested here; because we are in a dispensation of faith, and the portion is in glory. There is no “general” resurrection to good and bad alike; but there is the “first resurrection,” which is God separating in power those whom in grace He has made His own. It was the “resurrection from among” or “out of the dead” that awakened such wonder among the Jews. The Pharisees could teach resurrection though the Sadducees denied it. A resurrection was commonly believed, as Martha said, “I know that he shall rise again at the last day.” But they could not comprehend divine power coming in to Satan's house, and taking the righteous dead out from among the rest of the dead. Jesus replied to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life” speaking of the living power that visits a man when he is in a state of death, and takes him out of it. They knew nothing of the discriminating process of the one to life, and the other to judgment (John 5).

The Master of the house will show His approval of the faithful servant. There will be degrees of glory given according to the service done. Not that I shall be saved for what I have done; but my service will be rewarded, whatever may have been produced by the Holy Ghost answering the desire of Christ in working in me; for it is service of which I could not do an atom without His power. It is likewise the answer of God according to His counsels; as we may see in the reply to the mother of Zebedee's children, “It shall be given to those for whom it is prepared of my Father.” The service of love is never influenced by recompense. Reward is not set before the soul as the motive for doing anything; but when we find difficulties in treading the path of service, then the crown is set before us to encourage us to go on. So, even Christ, for the joy that was set before Him, “endured the cross, despising the shame.” So also Moses, while esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, had respect unto the recompense of the reward. If the recompense and not love be the spring of our service, it would just amount to this, “Take thy penny, and go thy way.” But if the world is broken with, no recompense can be looked for from that source, which is as great a deliverance as the deliverance from self.

Now (verses 15-24) see how grace, when brought in is rejected. The supper was ready; the guests were bidden, but they would not come. The Lord had before spoken of the kingdom, and here He shows what the reception of the kingdom would cost. All things are now ready; but they all make excuses. They do not care enough for the supper to leave their yoke of oxen, the piece of ground, etc. The supper was in God's thoughts from the beginning, and it was to be when He came to the Jews, as their Messiah, at the close of the day; but they rejected Him—they did not want Him. It does not say that their sins shut them out from the supper, for God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Neither was it the piece of ground, the oxen, or the wife that were in themselves the evil; but in their case they became so, because their minds were intent on them to the slighting of the supper.

And is it not just the same now? What harm is there in these things, do you say? If they have occupied your heart, and made you slight God, that is the harm. In the kingdom of God where are you? There was not one link of heart between Christ and the people He came to, and therefore they rejected the supper. This is also a test to our souls all through the day. It is not a question of whether a thing be right or wrong, but what savor have the things of Christ to our souls in it? It may be a very small thing. If we find the reading of a book makes the manifestation of Christ to become less precious to us, we have got away from God, and we cannot tell where the next step may take us. Satan often cheats us in this way. The soul is put to the test day by day, whether the things—that are revealed by God in Christ have so much power over us as to engage the heart; but if other things have come in between when we want the enjoyment of the things of Christ, we shall not have it, and this will show us how far we have got away. If anything comes in and takes the freshness of Christ from your soul, take heed! For if the oxen, etc., are thus catered for, when you have opportunity for the things of Christ, you will have no taste for them.

In verse 21 the Lord turns to “the poor of the flock,” those who have no yoke of oxen, and are glad of the feast. The priests and chiefs of the Jews had the first invitation, but, they rejecting it, the Master of the house sends out into the streets and lanes of the city, to bring in the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind of the people. Still the house is not filled; and then He sends outside the city, into the highways and hedges, and compels them to come in, that the house may be filled. These are the Gentiles. In this Gospel the poor of the flock and the Gentiles are distinguished from each other. But in Matthew, whose aim is Jewish, there is no mention made of both classes as distinct. “The wedding was furnished with guests” includes the Gentiles, gathered in after the Jews are brought into the blessing. Then mark the lowliness of the servant and the patient grace of the Master; that goes right on to the end. He cannot rest till He gets His house filled with guests.

What perseverance there is on the part of God! and we are called to go on in the same spirit. It does cost a great deal to go on, and on, and on, in spite of everybody and everything; and for us to do so, marks the presence of diviner power in us, for God's grace is unwearied. There is indeed judgment at the same time, for it is said, “Not one of those that were bidden shall taste of my supper.” But God's acting thus shows us what lowliness there should be in us, as regards self, and grace as regards everyone else, and all grounded on this one fact, that all man's relationships with God are morally broken; and if you are really going to take such a path as that of following Christ, you must count the cost. It is all very well to see such grace and admire it; but there is no power to persevere in it, without such love in the heart as the establishment of a new relationship with God gives. There must be a link in the heart with the new thing; and Christ must have such strength in the heart as to give power to break with old things.

Verses 25-33. Multitudes were attracted by the hearing of such grace: so in verse 26 He tells them what discipleship will involve. There may be an allusion here to Mic. 7:5, 6. Friends must be given up for Christ. A man may have to leave everything else, but the question is, Am I to leave God? What! life too? Yes—no matter. In that life you are linked with the world, and that must be given up too, if I am in question: you cannot have two hearts—a heart for the world, and a heart for me—Christ would say. I tremble when I see people who have not counted the cost, setting out in the profession of following Christ. It is God's way to put the barrier at the first start. If you can leap that, you will do. Legal obedience will not stand, but following Christ. If He is in the path, it is happy and easy; but it is a path between two hedges. If Christ is not with you in it, there will be nothing but trouble and difficulty.

Verses 34, 35. “Salt” is grace in spiritual energy; that is, the saints being witnesses in the world of the power of holy love, instead of selfishness. Salt is the consecrating principle of grace: if that is gone, what is to preserve? Salt is rather grace in the aspect of holy separateness unto God, than in that of kindness and meekness, though of course these are also inseparable from grace. If the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? If I have meat without salt, I can salt it; but if there is no saltiness in salt, what can I do? What a character we have here of an unspiritual church, or an unspiritual saint! Like the vine which represented Israel, good for nothing at all but to dishonor the Lord its owner and be destroyed. Mercy, it is true, may recover us; but as saints we should have the savor of Christ. Whatever enfeebles attachment to Christ destroys power. It is not gross sin that does it, which of course will be met and judged; but it is the little things of every-day life which are apt to be chosen before Christ. When the world creeps in, the salt has, lost its savor and we show that a rejected Christ has little power in our eyes.

The Lord keep us in the path with Christ, where all is bright and blessed. If the film of this world has been drawn over our spiritual vision, hiding Christ from us, He alone can remove it.

Christ the Door of the Sheep (Duplicate)

It is on the latter words of the Lord Jesus in the passage just read I wish to say a little at this time. What did He mean the souls who then heard, or those who afterward should hear, to gather from the remarkable clause, “I am the door of the sheep"?

There is a change in the employment of the words. In verse 2 He represents Himself as the Shepherd, but does not yet call Himself the good Shepherd. He takes up a well-known figure of the Old Testament in which the kings of Israel were frequently designated their shepherds, the Messiah of course pre-eminently.

In this part of the chapter accordingly He speaks of the sheepfold. There is not as yet an allusion, as in verse 16, to the sheep which do not belong to the Jewish nation: “Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock [not, as is familiarly known, “one fold"], one shepherd.” Those who conceive (and it is a general error) that there is now a “fold” go back in heart and mind to Judaism. The Lord has really a flock in immediate relationship to Himself. The Jewish sheep, as He tells us, He would lead out, others not of it He would join with them; and these should form not two companies, but one flock round the one Shepherd.

The chapter begins with telling us how the Lord first in the case of Israel showed He was really the Shepherd. He had come in by the door, in the appointed way, at the proper time, and subject to all divine ordinances. So when to be baptized by John He says, “Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” Afterward He performed the miracles and manifested that character of mission which the prophets had predicted. He had come in by the door as the Shepherd, He only; others might claim it, but they were thieves and robbers. Not that some before the Lord Jesus had not sought the good of Israel. Josiah, Hezekiah, Jehosaphat, David, were far from being thieves and robbers; but they were witnesses to the coming Messiah, not usurpers. But those who had claimed the sheep as their own while in truth they were God's, what could they be called but thieves and robbers? And the Messiah was very jealous, as was Jehovah, over Israel, His people reserved for His Shepherd.

But now Messiah was come, and they alas! refused Him. The blind man had been cast out, because he, no longer blind, confessed Him. Some in the same hatred had before this taken up stones to stone the Son of God. In spirit He, rejected Himself, was now leading His sheep out. That murderous prelude on the part of His people was but an anticipation of His own death; and as with him once blind who now saw, so it would be with all who worshipped Him. Jesus would lead His own outside the world's religion. It was no question of staying to improve or reform, as think the infidel school of progress in every age; grace was calling out from what is sentenced to judgment. He was not going to work now as they expected. Israel's blessing and the glory of the earth await another day. A yet deeper task was in hand to be sealed in His blood. Therefore He would lead the sheep out and go before them Himself. He shows Himself as the Shepherd come in the due and long-predicted manner which God's word had let them to expect, as the Seed of the woman and of Abraham, as the Son of David and of man. He had seen their hatred of Him and His Father, and this would be soon apparent in His cross. There was no course but one open to Him; and He was not only going outside the fold but about to lead His own out too. The blind man who now saw, was cast out by men blinder than himself, to be with Jesus.

The sheep follow Him; for they know His voice. A stranger will they not follow; for they know not the voice of strangers. The ears of Israel were heavy; they could not understand. Yet there is not a hard word in what the Lord uttered. Why is it that people, then as now, do not understand the Scriptures? Not really because of difficult expressions. It is the truth that grates on the reluctant will of man. This is the source of all unbelief. It is resistance of the will to face the terrible fact of man's ruin; it is the pride that rejects God's grace and will not bend to one's own need of it. Hence the guilt of unbelief, not because man has a feeble understanding, but because he fears not God and believes not His love. Yet is not the truth good in itself, and full of goodness to man, spite of his evil? Is it not the only means of blessing, or of salvation? Is it not by the word of God that he is begotten, and nourished, that he can serve, enjoy, or worship God? be happy with Him now and forever? Why then does not man love it? Because he has departed from God and refuses to return in God's way. He indulges himself in the fond delusion that he would like some time if not now to serve God; but he really likes nothing but His own will. Yet if God is to be served at all, it must be according to His will, which alone is holy and good.

But there is a deeper question than of his serving God. Some souls before me may flatter themselves that they would rejoice to serve God; but are they willing to take the place of having no good thing in them, of being lost and not merely in danger? Not merely that they have done evil in the sight of God, but that they are all wrong before Him? It is a serious thing when the heart of man bows to the solemn sentence of God, when one stands and confesses oneself lost before the God whose love and will have been slighted habitually. What then is to become of the soul? What of the body when resurrection to judgment comes?

Such then was the state of Israel, the fold; the Shepherd was obliged to go outside. The test that any were His own was that they heard and knew His voice. The crisis was at hand; when He has put forth all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him. It was the sentence of death on the best religion of the earth. The only persons who can boast of divine religion for their nation are the Jews; but here, solemn to say, the Lord virtually sentences the Jews and their religion. In the fullest love to them already had He gone into the fold, and they would not hear Him; so He goes out and leads His own out after Him. He always takes the first place, in sorrow as in all else; in the deepest of all He suffers for them, Just for unjust. Then He goes before His own sheep, whom He knows by name and leads out.

In truth all is in ruins, the world and man; the true Light has been put out, as far as man could. God Himself who came in love is gone. They felt not the sin. They believed neither His glory nor His grace. They could not understand His words; nay, how few did even the disciples then understand! It was not merely the Jews who were blind and deaf: the disciples were half Jews and half blind still. Men do not understand what they do not like, not because there is not adequate, yea, abundant light vouchsafed of God, but because their own will is at work, producing darkness in the heart. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” It is an unerring test; with Christ the object, our soul is full of light. Have I darkness as to this or that? If so, and so far, my eye is not single. Why do I say it but because it is the truth, and that you and I may look to Him who alone enlightens and makes us light? In vain look for divine light till you receive Him, and rest on Him, who will show what He is for you and to you in the smallest need of every day, as in the greatest for eternity.

But there is more than this that follows (ver. 7): the Lord Jesus takes an entirely new place now outside Israel. He introduces this truth in the same solemn manner, not the sentence of death on Judaism, but the opening out of life and salvation to sinners. “Verily, verily [says Jesus], I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.... by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” How blessed! He speaks to the same souls. What love! to the souls who could not understand Him! If the true Messiah was going outside His ancient people He would save sinners. Ah! they were sinners, and till the sinner feels that he is a sinner, he feels nothing aright, least of all as to God or His Son.

This is the beginning of wisdom. The first lesson of goodness is that I know and confess my badness. Nothing a man likes so little as to know and own that he is good for nothing before God; the grace that came by Him who is full of grace alone effects it in any. It is most true that I cannot have true faith in Christ unless I repent toward God. Never seek to divorce the one from the other. It is not only a human error but a snare of Satan for simple souls, where they are severed, for God has joined them in receiving the gospel. God would have souls feel and confess their sins. Repentance is when a soul no longer ignores God, cheating itself as to its own evil; he repents who by grace is willing to receive God's sentence on his own sinfulness in the sight of God. What a change! It is a man who abandons himself, because of his evil as judged by God, and looks with horror on himself as before Him.

Christ is the test of this as of all else. Thus in the case before us what could be worse in His sight than the self-will that refused to receive the Messiah? They did not like Him when they knew Him after a sort; they would have liked one to flatter them, and give them power and glory, making them the most exalted people on earth and crushing all their enemies. This will all come in due time from God, who will yet raise Israel from their fallen estate and put them on the pinnacle of greatness. But they, as we, must be put down first in their own eyes as sinners. By-and-by they will be brought to God; they will then own that they pierced Him, that it was their guilt though by lawless hands of others. In fact no man can have the blessedness of the truth or the grace of God unless he bows to Jesus as himself a sinner. This is the necessary controversy of God with every soul of man as he is. It is not faith to confess truth in an abstract manner, though in this way Satan often cheats souls. They own the forgiveness of sins in a creed, or as a dogma; but are they forgiven? They do not pretend to any such thing; it would be presumptuous on their part! O senseless souls in the face of God's express message! Faith feels the truth about itself more deeply than about others. Unless I believe the reality of God's grace and truth for my own soul, it is worse than a form. It is the hour when God will have reality (John 4). The Lord had come to the fold, the place of forms; but He has led His own out, and He must have them in the truth. True worshippers, they must worship God in spirit and in truth.

The reason souls are not really saved is that they are not in the truth for their own soul's need. I must meet God about my sins in this world or at the judgment-seat. No man can be saved in the day of judgment. It is in the place of my sins I must find salvation; where I am lost, I must be saved; where I have been an enemy of God, I must be reconciled to Him. The Savior is come, yea is gone again, and the work is done. What would not Israel give to know it! Their eyes are blinded and they see Him not. They are strangers to Him; not His sheep, they did not know His voice. There they remain outside, waiting for the Messiah who is come. They know not that the Victim has been offered, and is accepted on high. We by grace have believed without seeing, and know that, His blood having been shed for sin, He is gone into the holiest of all.

Thus, if the Lord opens a new figure, it is for a new truth. “I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” Whosoever pretends to bring man to God, to step between God and souls on earth, to claim Israel, the church or any souls as his own, as his people and his flock, is a thief and a robber. What! man stand between souls and God! Is he not himself a sinner? Does he not need salvation? “All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers.” Jesus is the door. He gives us to see what He was about to do after leaving the fold. He would save sinners. Now, accordingly the door is open to any. “By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. “Grace and truth came by Him; man has neither. And the law can only condemn, him; for he is a sinner. He needs salvation. It is no longer a question of being schooled even by the law of God; man is too far gone. As long as there is life, he will tell you, there is hope. But man has not life toward God. Earthly religion may try to remedy the disease by keeping up hopes before mankind; but it is all vain; for the patient is dead. There is no hope, no life, for man in his natural state; and he has proved it by rejecting the Son of God. But if His death be the great sin man has done, it is the infinite grace of God there to meet him in the gospel. “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” There is more than hope now, there is present salvation in Christ. There is in Him everlasting life. Those who believe, as He declares, shall never perish.

Do you draw back fearing this is too great grace? Who then, and what, are you to give God the lie? If you are a great sinner, is not the Son of God a far greater Savior? Are you afraid to trust Him? Afraid to trust your soul in the hands of Him who died for sinners and rose again? It is the express mission of the Son of man to seek and to save that which is lost. Granted that man is dead; but is not Jesus the quickener of the dead. By-and-by He will raise the body. Now it is the hour of quickening the dead who hear His voice. He quickens the soul, and brings salvation. When He comes again, He will change the body into the likeness of His glorious body; now He blesses the soul. How proper is the order! How blessed for those who repent and believe the gospel; but how dreadful for sinners to be raised sinners, raised for eternal judgment, raised to be cast into the lake of fire! But He is now come to save, having done the work needful for it.

Thus is Christ the door; and now, thanks be to God, you are invited to enter. Will you not come in? He is calling: do you not hear His voice? He may have much for you to do when you enter. He gives each of His servants his work. He leads even now into more and deeper blessing. But if you have not come in, this is not what you want. The sinner cannot serve the Lord till He has served the sinner—till He has saved him. Why then do you hesitate? To delay is most dangerous. It is now loss incalculable; it may be ruin irretrievable.

I do call on you to weigh with all seriousness these words of Jesus which evidently apply after He left the Jewish fold. He speaks as the rejected Son, He was going to the cross. He knew all that was coming, He required no prophecy about Himself, or God, or man. “Lord,” said Peter, “thou knowest all things"; and so He did—all things; excepting only, where as servant He waited for the word of His Father (Mark 13:32).

I invite and urge you then to believe in His name on God's testimony. He is the Savior, the only Savior of sinners; and you need a Savior. Believe Him to be what He is. Rest on the work He has done. The Savior and His work will perfectly suit your need, as they do the glory of God. Were He one hair's breadth less than He is, I could not trust Him for either. He could neither have glorified God nor save sinners. But the truth is that there is an infinite distance between Him and the highest of creatures, were it Gabriel and Michael themselves. For they are creatures and He is the Creator. He is God, even as the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead; whatever be the difference of person and of function, scripture is plain. Man is blind and unbelieving; and the worse, the less he suspects it.

Such then is the Savior: can you trust Him? Seeing that the Creator of all the world came to save from sin, yea became Himself a man to save them righteously by His death for their sins on the cross, do you hesitate? Had it been only man, there could be no salvation, as far as such an one was concerned; but He that was God became man in order to it. No doubt He was Messiah and rejected. But God turns His rejection to our salvation, and opens the door to sinners. It is no question now of a Messiah for the Jew, but of a Savior. And are there not some here awakening to His voice, some souls that answer to Jesus? Is He not now saying, “By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved"? For what is He as the door? Does He refuse any? Not one. “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” He invites you. “By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” He is not looking for qualities of which He approves, but for sinners that need Him to save them; and there is no man now who bears His voice and remains outside but because of the self-will that refuses to bow to His word. Salvation and every other needed blessing are in Him. The first call of God, the first obligation of man is to believe in Him; the first blessing for my soul is to have life in Him and be saved.

Shall I tell you why men say no man can know that he is saved? They think that God is such an one as themselves. They attenuate Christ's glory, seeing neither His person nor His work. When He bore God's judgment of sin on the cross, did He procure an uncertain salvation? Let none say so who fear God or honor Jesus. How could a divine person fail? It is His glory, at all cost to Himself, to bring in perfect salvation and this He now gives freely to the believer. To bless is what God loves. Only sin made Him a judge. He does not Judge His counsels, nor salvation, nor the saved. Judgment has been borne by Christ for the believer. And the Spirit seals them, instead of doubting them. Thus does He fill the heavens even now with due praise and adoration. God is love and light, not a judge, in His own nature; but He will deal with all that is contrary to His nature, and so much the more solemnly with those who prefer self and sin to Christ. Judgment will be Christ's vindication on the unbeliever and ungodly, whatever grace may do at the end of this age.

In point of fact, if you, an unconverted man, were brought to heaven, no place would be so irksome to you. It is so now to be where others sing of Christ and pray, and you are anxious above all to get away and have done with it. What would heaven be to you with not one feeling in harmony with Him whom all praise there? No place could be so unsuited to the sinner.

How can one then be fitted for heaven? “By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” What is implied in salvation? Two things at least, whatever more may be: a new and eternal life, and a propitiation for my sins. That life you cannot win, and no creature can give it you. Shame on those besotted enough to say, even if they do not believe, that water sprinkled on one can give life? Do they not accept a fiction as baseless, and if it be rested on quite as ruinous, as his wafer-god is to the poor papist? If the one trifles with the Lord Jesus, the other surely does with the Holy Spirit. But no: in Christ is life. Here is the Shepherd, here is the door, here is salvation. The only boast then is in Him and His cross. And no wonder; for He is the alone worthy One and your Savior. We hear and know His voice; we know not the voice of strangers, nor follow them. The propitiation too is once for all in the Savior's blood. The mass, or anything equivalent, is Satan's cheat for it.

Oh, fear not, doubting one, to trust in what He has shed to blot out very sin. Are you not hindered by those around you who believe not? Do you not slip into their thoughts and words? To have the dead with the living is dreadful combination. It was so in the Jewish fold; but Jesus led His own out. Go not back to that which He has left forever. You that have come out to Him, cleave to Him; know that the only security is Himself, the one joy of saints is to be with Him. He not only has life in His own person, but He died that He might give that life to sinners. Sin must have been an everlasting barrier, but He died for it. Here is the One to look to and confide in; and He invites you. “By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” There is no question as to the result: you have the positive word of Jesus for it. Do you believe in Him? Can you not trust the testimony of God who sent Him and raised Him from the dead? This is the One I commend to you. Rest all your weight on what He is; you may trust Him. He has suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust (without this all were vain), that He might bring us to God. This blessing comes not when we die but now in this world when we believe the gospel.

Ineffable blessedness—to be brought to the God I dreaded, left, and was cast out from! And is every barrier removed? It is. God says so, and who knows as He? But again, if I believe, there is nobody that I know like God, not even my wife or my child. He alone has told me all His heart; and I am sure of God, not of any other: my best friend may fail me, He never will. And Christ makes Him known. He is the One God calls me to confide all to. He gives life to me; He died for me; the moment you believe, life in Him is yours. It is altogether wrong to think life-giving is a process, though the conviction of it may be. But to have life eternal is the simple consequence of faith in Christ. How do I know? He says it Himself, and there is nothing so good or true or sure as the word of Jesus. It is most humbling too, for it makes everything of Him and nothing of me or of any other child of Adam. Is not this as it should be? Or are you not prepared for it? Beware of dishonoring Him.

Man likes to be occupied with himself. If I receive life, propitiation, salvation, yea, all in Christ, is it not the annihilation of self? He is faithful too, and will make all real and living in the soul of the believer. Let your heart then be occupied with Him. It is a false gospel that sends you to look at yourself for proof of life. If God tells me to look at myself, it is to humble me. It is reversing the gospel to judge of His grace or of my standing by myself. If God gives blessing, He wishes it to be enjoyed. People in this world seem to grudge what they do for others. Indeed it was the Greek or heathen idea of God, that He was jealous of man's happiness. The true God delights in the happiness of those He has called; and though men have sinned irreparably in the death of Christ by their lawless hands, it is by that death He blesses any in His own mercy, and this righteously. The moment I look to Jesus and His blood, at God's word, my sins are gone. And this is only the beginning of the Christian's career.

But, besides salvation, there is another rich blessing— “he shall go in and out.” The truth makes free, the Son makes free. It is the essence of Christianity—liberty to do as God likes. It supposes responsibility to Christ. I am Christ's bondsman, but free to serve Him. You who look to Jesus, are not you at liberty also? Do you say that you are still tied and bound with the chain of your sins? Such is not the Christian state but rather a denial of it. “He shall go in and out.” This is the liberty in which we ought to stand fast: so says the apostle to the Galatians who had let it slip. Anything short of it is not Christianity, though it may be the state of souls born of God. It is not merely your gain or loss that is in question, but the Lord's glory. For God has Christ before Him, and He blesses you by leading you to think of Christ as He does. Nor can you duly serve as Christ's bondsman unless you know what it is to be His freedman. It is liberty to please the Lord, no longer like the Israelite under law, still less bound to the world or its conventionalities, its hopes or its fears, its pursuits or its pleasures. We are free to serve Christ, delighting in Him now. Having heard His voice, we shall serve Him in a changed body on high, as well as here in these bodies made the temple of God by the Spirit dwelling in them.

But the Lord adds that the believer shall “find pasture.” He will feed us according to His own heart. “For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” We need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But He will surely see to it and does. What a blessing to have such an One to care for us! This is the Savior I call on you to believe in and to confess. You that confide in the Christ of God, will you not confess Him? There is not for a starting-point a sound from a man's heart so sweet as a poor sinner's confession of the Savior when he casts himself upon His grace and God's free justification through His blood.

May the Lord make it yours even now. His forever, may we serve Him, seeking only to do His will: He will show you how, for you will hear His voice, as you follow Him. He will care for you, as He binds Himself to give not only salvation but liberty and pasture. “He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” “Therefore let no man glory in men; for all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.”

W. K.

The Resurrection and the Life: Part 1

Notes of an Address on John 11:19-46

In this chapter we have set before us another view of the comprehensive subject of life which runs throughout this Gospel. We shall notice also that the profoundest teaching with respect to resurrection and to life (the latter being intrinsically of even superior importance to the former) is developed in connection with a common event of human history.

This feature, too, is a characteristic one in the Gospel of John. The heavenly is here closely linked with the earthly. The common events of daily life, such as hunger, sickness, bereavement and the like, are associated with some of the profoundest truths of revelation, showing that the scriptures are intended to be a source of heavenly light for the practical uses of man's life. However they may be abused, they were not given to provide the readers with subjects for vague theorizing or with matter for formulating religious creeds, but to enable persons to meet bravely, and to understand, the hard facts of daily existence. For life is full of facts which seem cruel and inexplicable apart from the light afforded by God's word. It behooves us, therefore, to study the scriptures with the object of discovering the clue for unraveling the many baffling circumstances in which we so often find ourselves.

When God in heaven looks down upon this world so full of tangles, as it seems to us, all things are clear to Him. He has a definite scheme. But it is only His word that will enable us in any measure to catch His purpose, to get some glimpse of His plans. Failing this, however, we may be assured that His eventual aim is good. All earthly events are converging to a final goal of beneficence. And the revelation which offers this assurance is the antidote to the great lie current in the world that all things are working together for evil. This lie emanated from Satan in Eden, and its effect remains among men today. Even pious persons, when things seem to go athwart, are apt to think so. Many Christians, when hardly treated, are inclined to think so. Hence the value of God's word in its assurances to the contrary, for by believing its statements on this head we may be spared much needless anxiety and sorrow.

THE BEREAVEMENT

The story in this chapter is a pathetic one, and its details, while of common occurrence, contain those perplexing elements to which allusion has been made. And it is most interesting and instructive to observe how the subject of eternal life is interwoven with that of the bereavement.

In the previous chapter the Lord presented Himself as the Good Shepherd. He spoke of His sheep who were called to cut themselves adrift from the old associations of Judaism and to follow Him. Now to the Jew the ordinances and the institutions of Moses seemed of all earthly things the most stable. But the Shepherd called His sheep by name to follow Him outside the Jewish fold, and thus to leave all the ordinances in which they trusted. In exchange He gave them His word and His promise. And His solemn promise to every sheep was eternal life, and complete immunity from destruction: “I give unto them [His sheep] eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

This gift was superior to anything the legal enclosure could offer. The Jewish fold was not so secure as the Good Shepherd's hand. He who holds the universe has strength to hold His sheep in the face of every foe. And His promise assures the possession of eternal life to every sheep and protects them equally from corruption within and from foes without.

In this chapter we have the case of one of Christ's sheep visited by death. This was a startling calamity in the eyes of the pious Jewish sisters, because the legitimate hope of the godly Israelite was length of days. The reward of godliness according to divine promise was long life in the land,

Hence from the point of view of Mary and Martha, it seemed inexplicable that their brother should be cut off in the prime of life from the happy home of Bethany. Why had death come up “into their windows,” and ruthlessly plunged: the devout God—fearing sisters into bereavement and mourning? Though Lazarus was one of Christ's favored sheep, the king of terrors, the foul enemy of mankind, had despoiled them of their beloved brother. It was a sorrowful trial to them; and it is one incessantly repeated before our eyes, perhaps in our homes. How often the godly seem selected to be stricken down! Consider indeed that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself was cut off in the midst of His days.

How were the sisters to understand this calamity? How were they to reconcile the death of Lazarus with the Lord's promise with respect to eternal life? Lazarus, so much beloved by them, so needed in the family circle, their earthly source of comfort and joy, was suddenly taken away. And the Shepherd, though appealed to, did not interfere to save His sheep from an untimely death. They had expressed their allegiance to Him, yet He did not hasten to save the sick man. They could see nothing before them but a life of mourning and sadness for one loved and irretrievably lost.

The Lord came to these broken and bleeding hearts, and in His beautiful manner disclosed to them a new and profounder view of eternal life, while at the same time He restored to them their lost one. He showed them that in spite of appearances death cannot touch eternal life. He, in fact, revealed Himself as the Resurrection and the Life, not only by way of doctrine but by a practical demonstration at the graveside.

ITS PRACTICAL VALUE

It is helpful to observe how this great truth is here associated with circumstances of sorrow and bereavement in such a manner as to exercise a beneficial effect upon all the redeemed. As the grief-stricken hearts of the sisters were comforted, so all who are similarly situated may be soothed, encouraged and strengthened by the details recorded here.

In this chapter another precious feature of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ is made prominent. We see His perfect and matchless sympathy with the tried and suffering women. The Lord performed an act of infinite power, but He did so in the gentle and sympathetic manner which was characteristic of Him. And His demeanor in this respect stands out the more markedly in this Gospel where He is presented as, the Eternal Son. We do not find Him entering abruptly into this scene of sorrow and restoring the dead man with a word, as when He quelled the stormy forces of nature on the lake of Galilee.

Here we see irresistible might breaking down the prison-bars of death, but with it is coupled the wondrous force of sympathy. The Lord in the gentleness of His infinite power comes to the weeping women, enters into their sorrow, weeping with them as He wipes away their tears. How marvelous the sight to behold the Son of God shedding tears!

THE HOME AT BETHANY

The subjects of this narrative formed a particularly-favored trio. Their home had become, if we may so say it, the Lord's home in Judea. In the other Gospels His ministry in Galilee is prominent, even as that in Judea is the main topic of John. And it is recorded that while He taught in Jerusalem He sought rest and refreshment in Bethany at the house of Lazarus and Mary and Martha. This was the circle into which death entered.

At the commencement of this chapter a parenthesis referring especially to Mary is introduced in the narrative. We read in the second verse, “It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair whose brother Lazarus was sick.” So that the event fully described in the following chapter is here historically anticipated. Why is this? The reference seems to be something more than a note of identification of Mary of Bethany. And I would suggest that the sentence is placed here because it was the sad experience related immediately afterward in this chapter which supplied the circumstances under which Mary learned how to act as she did at the feast in Simon the leper's house.

That Mary had learned something from the Lord even previously to this bereavement we may gather from references made elsewhere to His former visit to Bethany. Mary then sat at His feet and heard His word. She was then taught something concerning the true nature of Messiah's mission, and on this occasion she learned something further concerning the greatness and grandeur of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mary possessed a different temperament from her sister. She was a quiet, meditative person, and, while Martha rushed at once to meet the Lord at His coming, she remained in the house. We cannot always anticipate what these quiet, self-restrained persons will do, but they frequently act rightly because they have received the needful training in seeking to learn the mind of Christ.

Martha had a more active disposition than her sister, and. was naturally in a great hurry, a busy person with no time for reflection. When the Lord first came to Bethany she prepared things for His reception and His becoming entertainment. This was good service, and was not reproved. But Mary was conscious that it was the event of a lifetime for the Messiah to visit the house where she was Such moments therefore were so precious in her eyes that she desired to utilize them in hearing the many things He might choose to tell her. She sat down at His feet to listen.

Now in her sorrow Mary felt that it would be best for her to wait for her Master's word. She sat still till He called for her. Then she went, and saw, as Martha did, His power over death as the Resurrection and the Life.

Six days before the passover the fruit of Mary's training at the feet of Jesus and at the opened grave of her brother was made visible: Then it was that in the midst of the feast at Bethany she anointed the Lord beforehand to His burial. She was not one of those who subsequently sought the body of Jesus at the rich man's tomb. She knew He had risen. By the restoration of her brother she saw that He was the Resurrection and the Life. How could the grave hold Him who had said, “Lazarus, come forth.” If she would anoint Him, she must do so before His burial, for she was persuaded she would never find Him in the sepulcher. She acted becomingly therefore at the feast, and all the world is now aware of the fitness of what she did.

MISTAKEN THOUGHTS

If time permitted we might profitably consider the mistakes of various persons recorded in this chapter. Not that these blunders are presented for the entertainment of other persons, but that it may be seen how graciously the Lord Jesus corrected the errors of those about Him, giving them at the same time credit for what they intended to do. The knowledge of this is a great comfort to a person who is acting in sincerity before the Lord, honestly seeking to do His will. It is only a self-satisfied person who supposes that any act of his is in itself worthy of the Lord's acceptance. The person doing a perfect action and offering it to the Lord for His acceptance is yet to be found. However, though after our best service we are all “unprofitable” servants, the Lord accepts according to the intention of the heart.

When the Lord spoke of going to Bethany, blundering Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (verse 16). Regarded in the light of the previous revelations which he and others had received concerning the Son as the Giver and Sustainer of life, the apostle's remark was foolish and unbelieving. But he was sincere in his desire to accompany his Master at all risks, and the Lord did not upbraid him.

Similarly the Lord knew the impulsive character of Peter, but He also knew his ardent love and devotion. Outwardly there was an incrustation of self upon which Satan worked, but inwardly there was an intense affection for the Lord. Peter meant what he said in his passionate outburst, “Lord, I am ready to go with thee both into prison and to death” (Luke 22:33), but he did not know his own strength. And the Lord arranged that in due time he should lay down his life for his Master according to his own expressed desire.

By W. KELLY

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The Blessings of Jacob and of Moses

Brief Remarks on Genesis 49, Deuteronomy 33.

In the first of these two portions of scripture we have the general prophetic blessing of Jacob's sons, on which we may say a few words. As the blessings allude to the history of the twelve heads of the nations, so naturally we have the future that awaits the tribes of Israel. But, as this is a matter of tolerably widespread knowledge amongst Christians, there is no need for much to be said about it.

“Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it; he went up to my couch. Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; into their assembly, mine honor, he not thou united; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Gen. 49:3-7).

Reuben is the starting-point, and alas! it is, like man always, corruption. It was the first mark of evil in the creature. The second is no better—rather worse it may be in some respects—violence. Simeon and Levi were remarkable for the latter, as Reuben for the former—a sorrowful vision for Jacob's heart—to feel that this not only had been, but was going to be; for undoubtedly he knew, as he says, that what he then uttered would sweep onward and befall the people “in the last days.” This did not hinder his beginning with the history of Israel from his own days. Corruption and violence, as they had been the two fatal characteristics of his three eldest sons, so would stamp the people in their early history. Israel under law broke the law, and was ever leaving Jehovah for Baalim; yet the sons would be no better, rather worse, than the father; but the grace of God would interfere for the generations to come, as it had for their father Jacob, and the last day would be bright for them as in truth for him.

Then Judah comes before us. It might be thought, that surely there will be full blessing now. “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up; he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes; his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk” (vers. 8-12).

Yes, Jacob speaks of Shiloh. But Shiloh was presented to the responsibility of the Jew first; and consequently all seemed to break down, and in one sense all really did. “To him shall the gathering of the peoples be"; and so certainly it will be, but not yet. Shiloh came; but Israel were not ready, and refused Him. Consequently the gathering (or the obedience) of the peoples, however sure, is yet in the future. The counsel of God seemed to be abortive, but was really established in the blood or the cross, which unbelief deems its ruin. It is postponed, not lost.

Zebulon gives us the next picture of the history of Israel. Now that they have had Shiloh presented but have refused Him, the Jews find their comforts in intercourse with the Gentiles. This is what they do now—seeking to make themselves happy, when, if they weigh their own prophets, they must suspect fatal error somewhere in their history. They have lost their Messiah, and they court the world. “Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon” (ver 13).

The consequence is that the Jews sink under the burden, falling completely under the influence of the nations. This is shown by Issachar— “a strong ass couching down between two burdens. And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute” (vers. 14, 15).

Then we come to the crisis of sorrows for the Jew. In Dan we hear of that which is far more dreadful than burdens inflicted by the Gentiles, and their own subjection, instead of cleaving to their proper and distinctive hopes. In the case of Dan there is set forth the power of Satan. “Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah” (vers. 16-18). We see here the enemy in the serpent that bites, and the consequent disaster to the horseman. It is the moment of total ruin among the Jews, but exactly the point of change for blessing. It is then accordingly we hear the cry coming forth— “I have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah.” It is the sudden change from the energy of Satan to the heart looking up and out to Jehovah Himself.

From that point all is changed. “Gad, a troop shall overcome him; but he shall overcome at the last” (ver. 19). Now we have victory on the side of Israel.

This is not all. There is abundance too. “Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties” (ver. 20).

Again, there will be liberty unknown under law —impossible when merely dealt with under the governing hand of God because of their faults. “Naphtali is a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words” (ver. 21). What a difference from him who was bearing like an ass two burdens! But more than that, we have Joseph. “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the bands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel), even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb, The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren. Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil” (vers. 22-27). Here then, we have the glory in connection with Israel; and finally power in the earth: Joseph and Benjamin are now, as it were, found together. What was realized in the facts of the history at last terminates in the blessedness—the predicted blessedness—of Israel. “All these are the twelve tribes of Israel; and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them.” In Deut. 33 the blessing is altogether in reference to the land which the people were on the point of entering. This is perhaps the chief difference as compared with Jacob's blessing. In the latter case notice was taken of the tribes from the beginning of their history to the end, and apart from their possessing the land or not; whereas the blessing that Moses pronounces here is in the strictest subordination to the great object of Deuteronomy. From first to last the point of the book is God's bringing His people into the land, and putting them into a relationship as immediate with Himself as was consistent with “the first man.” This we have systematically and always; so the blessing here is suitable to it. Moses does not therefore show us historically the course of things as when Jacob prophesied, but a more specific benediction of the people in view of their place in relation to Jehovah in the land.

“And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. And he said...” “Let Reuben live and not die, and his men be few'' (vers. 1, 6).

The next, though a singular choice in appearance, is ordered in divine wisdom, was to bring forward that tribe which would take the place of Reuben, politically soon, but eventually according to the counsels of God. For of Judah Christ was to be born after the flesh. “And this is for Judah; and he said, Hear, O Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people; let his hands be numerous for him, and be thou an help from his adversaries” (ver. 7). We know that the Jews have long had a separate place; but the day is coming when Judah and Israel shall be joined in one people according to the expressive symbol of Ezekiel, which may illustrate the language of Moses.

His own tribe has then his blessing. “And of Levi he said, Thy Thummim and thy Urim are for thy holy [i.e., pious] one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah; who said of his father and of his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor know his own children; for they kept thy word, and guarded thy covenant. They shall teach thy judgments to Jacob, and thy law to Israel; they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt-offering upon thine altar. Bless Jehovah, his force, and accept the work of his hands; strike through the loins of those that rise up against him, and of those that hate him, that they rise not again” (vers. 8-11). Thus, if Simeon disappear, Levi gains a good degree by fidelity at the severest crisis in the desert history of Israel.

The blessing of Benjamin alludes to Jehovah's dwelling there; for Jerusalem was within the limits of that tribe which Judah just skirted. “Of Benjamin he said, The beloved of Jehovah shall dwell in safety by him; he shall harbor him all the day, and he shall dwell between his shoulders” (ver. 12). Joseph has his full twofold portion in the land. “And of Joseph he said, Blessed of Jehovah be his land for the precious things of the heavens, for the dew and for the deep couching beneath, and for the precious things brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things driven out by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and the good pleasure of him that dwelt in the bush; let it come on the head of Joseph, and on the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. The firstborn of his herd is honor to him, and his horns the horns of a buffalo; with them he shall push peoples together to the ends of the earth; and they are the myriads of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh” (vers. 13-17). Zebulun's blessing is rather without, Issachar's within. “And of Zebulun he said, Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out; and, Issachar, in thy tents. They shall call the peoples to the mountain; there they shall sacrifice sacrifices of righteousness; for they shall suck the abundance of the seas, even treasures hidden in the sand” (vers. 18, 19). Gad's haste to get rich appears, though he shared the trials of the people. “And of Gad he said, Blessed is he that enlargeth Gad; he dwelleth as a lioness, and teareth the arm, also the crown of the head. And he provideth the first part for himself, for there is the portion covered by the lawgiver; and he came with the heads of the people; he did the righteousness of Jehovah, and his judgments with Israel” (vers. 20, 21). Dan's warlike impetuosity is noted; Naphtali's peaceful satisfaction with his portion! and Asher's acceptance among his brethren, and abundant resources and vigor. “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp; he shall leap from Bashan. And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satisfied with good will, and full of the blessing of Jehovah, possess thou the west and the south. And of Asher he said, Asher, blessed among sons, let him be acceptable to his brethren, and dip his foot in oil; thy shoes iron and copper; and thy strength as thy days” (vers. 22-25). W.K.

Studies in Mark 6:1-6: Rejection at Nazareth

6:1-6

30. Sabbath Service in Nazareth

It was the practice of the Lord to teach and to preach the word in the synagogues where the Jews habitually assembled (John 18:20) upon the sabbath. The fact of the people coming together in this manner afforded an opportunity of placing the truth before many at once, and of this opportunity the Lord continually availed Himself (Matt. 4:23; 12:9; Mark 1:39; Luke 4:44). It was His “custom” to do so (Luke 4:16).

By this service in the word of Jehovah on the seventh day the Servant-Prophet most truly did the will of Him that sent Him, and most effectually honored and observed the sabbath. Such a spirit was enjoined in the prophecies of Isaiah: “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, and honorable, and shalt honor it, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD” (Isa. 58:13, 14).

In none was this fulfilled in the degree that it was in Him who said, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.” His ministry to others in word as here and in deed as elsewhere was a perfect observance of the holy day and also the occasion of His own ineffable joy arising from the accomplishment of the Father's will in spite of the unbelief with which His service was received by man.

The audience in the synagogue at Nazareth was “astonished.” Apparently the amazement was not only at what the Lord Jesus taught but also at the manner in which He taught it; for He “taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28, 29). Those who were present knew Joseph and Mary, and Jesus was to them as “a root out of a dry ground.” They had observed Jesus as He grew from boyhood to manhood. And they would not suffer one they knew so well to teach them. Where was His authority? Who made Him a teacher? How knoweth this man letters? (cp. John 7:15; Matt. 21:23; Mark 11:28). What was the wisdom given to Him? Why were such mighty works wrought by His hands? Was He not the carpenter, and the son of a carpenter? They knew His brothers, and were not His sisters in their midst?

THE STONE OF STUMBLING

The inhabitants of Nazareth were destitute of belief in the Lord. The evangelist says, “They were stumbled in him.” It had come upon them already as it was quickly coming upon both the houses of Israel, for the national stumbling had been foretold. The Lord of hosts was in the midst of the nation even then, in accordance with Isaiah's prediction, as a sanctuary for those who would come to Him. But He was there also “for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” And many would “stumble thereon and fall and be broken and be snared and be taken” (Isa. 8:13-15). The Stone of Israel was in lowly form then, and the proud Pharisees stumbled at Him and His sayings (Matt. 15:12), but He was soon to be exalted and to become the headstone of the corner (Psa. 118:22). In the day of His glory Messiah will be “marvelous” in the eyes of His people, though in His humiliation they saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him. They will be a humble people then and the stumbling-block will be removed, and they will find that the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity dwells also with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit (Isa. 57:14, 15). And then will be brought about the full accomplishment of the prophecy of aged Simeon spoken to Mary, “Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising up of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34).

The unbelief at Nazareth was therefore the precursor of the unbelief of the nation which delivered Him to the Gentiles to be crucified. The builders thought they knew the Stone well, and it did not please them, and they rejected it.

We may find this hostile spirit foreshadowed in the historical types of Messiah. Was it not so foreshadowed in the house of Jacob? God communicated visions of his coming power and wisdom to the elder son of Rachel. This was offensive to his brethren. “Shalt thou,” they said, “reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?” And they envied Joseph, and hated him for his dreams and his words.

Did not the same evil spirit animate the hearts of the brethren of David when he spoke of the dishonor which the name of Jehovah was suffering from the vaunts of Goliath the idol-worshipper? They hated him, and their anger was kindled against him for his words: “Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness?” The sons of Jesse stumbled at the stumbling-stone; they were not prepared to accept that their shepherd brother was the anointed of Jehovah though, the prophet Samuel had declared it. Thus the proverb was true then also: neither a king nor a prophet is accepted in his own country and among his own kin.

MARY'S UNBELIEVING HOUSEHOLD

The human imagination in poetry and art has in its retrospect woven many sensuous legends around the private life of our Lord. But scripture is strikingly reticent upon this subject. Where so many holy mysteries are thrown open for our learning, such a reservation should be regarded as a warning to us to avoid any intrusion into what is thus guarded. The Spirit of God makes some few but brief references in the Gospels to the early days of our Lord which “were spent in the physical and mental growth of the true humanity which He had assumed.”

But the general tone of the allusions throughout the Gospels to Mary and her family suggests that their attitude towards Jesus as the Messianic King and Savior was one of incredulity if not of actual hostility. Mary in her canticle of praise as we have it in Luke (1:46-55) expressed her confidence in the immediate coming of Him who was God her Savior, but this seems subsequently to have been overshadowed somewhat. Her faith diminished like that of the austere prophet of the Highest who testified, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world,” but afterward sent from prison to Jesus his depressed inquiry, “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?”

The humble guise and ways of the Lord Jesus seem to have been to Mary and to John the Baptist as well as to the mass the stumbling-block, and their early visions of His majesty and dominion and earthly power all faded into dimness, if not into obscurity.

On this occasion the lack of interest on the part of Mary and her household appears to have been cited by the men of Nazareth as evidence against the divine claims of the Master. They said, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Jude and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?” And in another connection we are told definitely that His brethren, whose names are all so strikingly patriarchal, did not believe on Him (John 7:5). The Lord's words in the synagogue therefore created great astonishment among the audience by their wisdom, but His lowly origin and His poor relations confounded them, and they “fell backward into a deadly snare.”

Their inconsistency illustrates how ill men reason when they lack faith. They could see there was nothing in the household of Mary, with all of whom they were well acquainted, to account for the extraordinary nature of the ministry of Jesus, but they failed to seek a divine origin. They could see His power was not derived from man, but they would not see it was derived from heaven.

Such misunderstanding arising among His own and developing into hatred and persecution was foretold by the Spirit of prophecy: “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zech. 13:6). But though this detraction sprang not from strangers, but from those who might rank as “familiar friends” the pain of it was borne by our Lord with the utmost patience and without retaliation. He looked not to men, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously, as it was written again: “A man's enemies are the men of his own house. Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me” (Mic. 7:6, 7).

But Jesus had come to bless men, and unbelief could not altogether prevent the accomplishment of this work. It might diminish the stream of blessing for a time or divert its channels, because faith is essential to its outflow. “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.” In a future day the righteousness which is by faith will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea; for the just shall live by faith. But now the unbelief of Nazareth was as phenomenal in its nature as the faith of the Roman centurion, and Jesus marveled at both (Matt. 8:10).

(continued from page 291).

Notes on Luke 15-16

Chapters 15, 16.

We have seen the Lord showing out His own rejection, in grace, followed by an entirely new order of things. The church, brought in subsequently, is not an age, properly so called, but a heavenly episode between the ages. There are three ages spoken of in scripture: the age before the law; the age under the law; and the millennial age. Christ was “made under the law,” and that age is not finished yet. The disciples said to Him, “What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age?” That was the age when He was there, but when they rejected Him, the age was suspended. As He straitly charged Peter to tell no man He was the Christ, saying, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected,” etc. Therefore He says to them, “Ye shall not see me, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” We, who form a part of the church of God, and not having anything to do with the earth, are in no sense an age, but are a heavenly people united to Christ above, during the suspension of this age, filling up the gap between the Lord's leaving the Jews, and His return to them again. So in Rom. 11 we have the olive tree with some of the branches broken off, and others grafted in. This is the tree with its root in the earth, and consequently it could have nothing directly to do with the church in heaven. Some of the branches were broken off, and some left; but this could never be said of the church, the body united to its Head, at the right hand of God. The church, of course, does fill up a certain place and time, but it is during the suspension of the age to which Christ came. Characteristically we belong to that which is above and beyond anything connected with this world. It is grace that has set us there, and that is not of earth but of heaven.

In chapter 15, we find the Lord rising above Jewish dispensation altogether, to the full display of God's own nature—love—in the gospel. At the close of chapter 14, He takes up the professing system in its responsibility. “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its savor,” it is good for nothing. Thus He shows what man is. Then in chapter 15 come publicans and sinners, and we have the display of what God is. Here God is dealing with lost man, in grace. Sinners, who owned their sins and came to repentance, were those who justified God. “Wisdom is justified of her children.” God is vindicated in His ways, whether in the condemnation or salvation of a sinner. The publicans and sinners justified God, being baptized of John, while the Pharisees rejected His counsel against themselves. All that is wanted to justify God is that He should show Himself; and this is what the Lord now does. He manifests what God is in grace, and this it is which makes the chapter ever so fresh and full to our souls; the heart that has been awakened never tires of such a chapter.

Then, in chapter 16, He shows the responsibility of those who are thus dealt with. The earth was given to the children of men, and God looked for fruit. He first dealt with man as to what he ought to have been on the earth, but there was entire failure. Now there comes out another thing, entire grace, which is irrespective of all that man was, and takes an absolutely heavenly character. Divine love is its source, and its character is heavenly. Revealing heaven, it puts man into connection with it; and the people so put must be a heavenly people. Why so? Because this world is all gone wrong; it has fallen from God, and is become the “far country.” Hence, its riches are of no value, but a great hindrance, unless used in a heavenly way; and chapter 16 shows how they should be used. Chapter 15 shows the sinner called out by grace; that which follows shows what he, who is so called out, is to be as a heavenly man. This world is a scene of evil, and that which attaches to it is now ruin and not blessedness (see the rich man and Lazarus). Adam had a place in this world, and Israel had a place in it; but now that is all gone, and grace has come in, lifting those who are the subjects of it into another state of things altogether. Christ is justifying God. His nature being love, it was His joy to manifest grace to sinners. It is not here the joy of those brought back, but God's own joy in bringing the sinner back to Himself. This gives the tone to heaven. “There is joy” above in the poor wretched sinner brought back.

I have no doubt we have, in these three parables, the unfolding of the ways of the Trinity. In the first is shown the Son, as the Good Shepherd, going after the sheep. In the second, the woman lighting a candle, and searching diligently till she find the piece of silver, we have the painstaking work of the Holy Ghost, lighting up a testimony in this dark world. The third is the Father's reception of the returning sinner, when brought back. In this, the prodigal son, we find the work in the sinner; but in the two previous ones, it is the sovereignty and the activity of grace, which goes out in love to find that which was lost, and brings the sinner back without his having anything to do in it. This persevering energy of love is in the Shepherd Himself—the Good Shepherd cares for the sheep, and gives it no trouble in getting home; He carries it on His shoulders. Herein is seen the perfect grace in which the Lord Jesus has so charged Himself with bearing our every burden, our every trial and difficulty all along the road. Christ is thus the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. Then mark, in verse 6, the peculiar character of this joy. “He calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” There could not be a more genuine picture, or a fuller expression of a person being happy than this. Joy always speaks out.

In the second parable we have the same general principle. The painstaking of the Holy Ghost is shown in the acting of the woman who sought the lost piece of silver; the piece of silver could have neither trouble nor joy itself. The difference in the two is, that in the first, the Shepherd bears all the burden; in the second, it is the pains taken in finding the lost piece, proving the woman cared enough for it to take all this trouble to search it out. Thus does God's love act towards us, to bring us out of the dark world to Himself. What a work it is to bring man's heart back to God!

“'Twas great to speak a world from naught;

'Twas greater to redeem.”

If we look at man, as he is in himself, he could never get back to God. But look at what God is in Himself, and who or what can resist His grace! Still, it is the joy of the finder, and not of the thing found: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep—my piece—that was lost.” And in the case of the returning prodigal, who made the feast? Not the young man, but the father, saying to those in the house, “Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” All caught the joy of the father's heart, the servants, etc., all except the unhappy self-righteous elder brother (the Pharisee, the Jew), to whom the father replied, “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again,” etc. It is the joy God has in receiving a sinner back to Himself. In the parable of the prodigal son, by itself, the full glory of grace is not seen, as these three parables set it forth together. The case of the sheep is the Shepherd charging Himself with the whole burden of the sheep; the silver is the painstaking of the Holy Ghost. Before actual departure there was moral departure. When the young man left his father's house, it was but a display of the evil in his heart. He was just as wicked when he asked for his portion of goods, and crossed his father's threshold, as when he ate husks with the swine in the far country; he was, doubtless, more miserable then, but his heart was gone before. One man may run farther into riot than another, but if we have turned our backs upon God, we are utterly bad. In this sense there is no difference.

The moral evil was just the same with Eve. She gave up God for an apple. She virtually thought the devil a much better friend to her than God, and took his word instead of God's. Satan is a liar from the beginning, and at the cross the Lord proved this. It cost the Lord His life to prove that God was good. Christ came to contradict the devil's lie, which man believed, and under which the whole world is lying. Grace and truth came by Christ, and at all cost were set up by Him on the cross. Man can do without God, and from the beginning the whole world has been a public lie against God. Who could unriddle it? Look at creation, how it groans under the bondage of corruption. Look at providence—how can I account for the goodness of God when I see an infant writhing with pain? How can I reconcile the two things? The villain prospers—the good man suffers. When I see Christ on the cross, I see what God is. Death came on man by reason of sin. But Christ takes my sin, on His own sinless person, bows His head in death upon the cross, and thus sets aside that lie of Satan, “Ye shall not surely die.” Thus was God's truth re-established here below in the work and person of the Lord Jesus, and nowhere else. In Him I see holiness, truth, and love, no matter at what cost.

The natural man is just like this prodigal, he spends his substance in the far country and ruins himself. A man having £5,000 a year, and spending ₤20,000, will seem very rich for the time; but look at the results. He is a ruined man. The moment man departed from God, he sold himself to Satan, and is spending his soul, his heart, away from God; he even spends what God has given him against God, and when he is thoroughly spent, and has nothing to live on, he begins to be in want. “There arose a mighty famine in that land,” and all the world feels that. Every sinner does not go to the same lengths of eating the swine husks, but all are in the same condition of ruin. Every man has turned his back upon God, though all have not run to the same excess of riot, nor fallen into the same degradation. The famine never draws back to the Father's house.

The prodigal joined himself to a citizen of that country—not his father's country. “He would fain have filled his belly,” etc., and “no man gave to him.” Satan never gives; that is found where God's love is, who spared not His own Son. When the prodigal thinks of his father's house, the whole work is morally done, though he is not back there yet. He turns, his heart was changed, and thus his whole desire was to get back to his father's house, from whence he had departed. He was not yet in the full liberty of grace, so as to have peace and happiness, and he says to himself, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” He is brought to a sense of his guilt; and what was it? Feeding with the swine? No, this was the fruit of it; but his guilt was in leaving his father's house, turning away from God. When he came to himself, he desired to return. This was truly a right wish, but the form it took in his mind, from his not yet knowing grace, was a legal one. “I am no more worthy to be called thy son! make me as one of thy hired servants.” But the father does not give him time for that. We hear nothing more about hired servants; for when he was “yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion on him, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” He could not have been a servant with the father's arms round his neck. It would have spoiled the father's feelings, if not the son's.

It was the joy of Him who was receiving back the sinner to Himself; and it is the knowledge of this which gives peace to the soul: nothing else does. If a man does not know love, he does not know God, for God is love. The full revelation of God is what we have in Christ. “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” God acts from the joy and delight He has in Himself, in receiving back the sinner, and therefore He does not think of the rags but of the child He has got back again. What right has man to call God in question, when He indulges His own heart in the outflow of love to the sinner? You will never get peace by the mere act of coming back, but by learning the Father's mind about you.

Could the prodigal get peace as he was coming back if the father had not met him? No, all along the road he would be questioning, how will he receive me?—will he be angry with me? will he spurn me from his presence? And if he does, what will become of me? “But when he was yet a great way off his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” If not so, he would have trembled even to knock at the door.

When the father's arms were on the son's neck, was he defiled by the rags? No; and he will not have the son bring rags into the house, but orders the best robe to be brought out of it. God sends His own Son out of heaven, and clothes the sinner; and, thus arrayed, the young man could bring credit to his father's house. And, surely, if we are so clothed with Christ, we shall do credit to God; and, in the ages to come, He will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.

“Let us eat and be merry.” It is not, Let him eat and be merry. Again, he says, “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad.” There was but one exception to the delight in the house. The elder brother (the self-righteous person) was angry, and would not go in. God had shown what He was in Himself, by His Son, in thus receiving the prodigal; and now He would show what they were in themselves. We know the Pharisees murmured from the beginning, and the elder brother had no communion with his father; for if the father was happy, why was not he happy too? “He was angry, and would not go in.” If such a vile person as the publican gets in, this makes my righteousness go for nothing! It is truly so; for where God's happiness is, there self-righteousness cannot come. If God is good to the sinner, what avails my righteousness? He had no sympathy with his father. He ought to have said, “My father is happy, so I must be.” There should have been communion in the joy. “Thy brother is back.” That ought to have rung on his heart, but no.

Then see the perfect patience of God's grace: the father goes out and entreats him. And do we not, all through the Acts, see God entreating the Jews to be reconciled, although they had crucified His Son? So Paul, in 1 Thess. 2:15, 16, says that the Jews filled up the measure of their sins by forbidding the apostles to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved. It is all selfishness in the elder son. “Thou never gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my friends.” To which the father replies, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” The oracles of God, the covenants, the promises, God gave to the Jews; but He will not give up the right to show His grace to sinners, because of the self-righteous selfishness of the Jews, or of any one else.

CHAPTER 16.

“There was a certain rich man which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods.” Man, generally, is God's steward: and in another sense and in another way, Israel was God's steward, put into God's vineyard, and entrusted with law, promises, covenants, worship, etc. But in all, Israel was found to have wasted His goods. Man, looked at as a steward, has been found to be entirely unfaithful. Now, what is to be done? God appears, and in the sovereignty of His grace, turns that which man has abused on the earth, into a means of heavenly fruit. The things of this world being in the hands of man, he is not to be using them for the present enjoyment of this world, which is altogether apart from God, but with a view to the future. We are not to seek to possess the things now, but, by the right use of these things, to make a provision for other times. “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” etc. It is better to turn all into a friend for another day than to have money now. Man here is gone to destruction. Therefore now man is a steward out of place. “Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.” He is discharged from stewardship—has lost his place, but not the things of which he has the administration. Here is something far better than the alchemy which would turn all into gold. For this is grace, turning even gold itself, that vile thing which enslaves men's hearts, into a means of sheaving love and getting riches for heaven.

To Israel, God is saying, You have failed in the stewardship; therefore now I am going to put you out. In chapter 15, the elder brother, the Jew, would not go in; and here, in chapter 16, God is putting the Jew out of the stewardship. With Adam, all is over; but we have a title in grace to use, in a heavenly way, that to which we have no title at all as man. “If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?” Our own things are the heavenly things; the earthly things are another's; and if you do not use your title in grace in devoting in love these earthly, temporal goods, which are not your own, how can God trust you with the spiritual things which are “your own?” Our own things are all the glories of Christ—all that is Christ's is ours, for “we are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold,” etc. We were bought with a price, it is true, not with money, but “with the precious blood of Christ,” etc. God has not given us eternal life in order that we might be getting money. “No man can serve two masters,” and if you want to be rich, you cannot be seeking to serve God. We may have to do our duty in this world, but it is never our duty to serve mammon and desire riches.

Now He goes on to show that there are these everlasting habitations, when the grand results will appear of what has been done here. The old thing is fleeting away, and the new coming in. The Jew, who refused to come to the feast, is loosening the law, while rejecting grace (see chap. 15:18, 19).

Verse 19. “A certain rich man, clothed in purple,” etc. The thought here is Jewish, and the great principle is that all God's dealings, as to the distributive justice on the earth, were no longer in force, and that now He only deals in grace. He draws aside the veil to show the result in another world. The rich man had his good things here—he belonged to the earth, and the basket and the store belonged to him—his treasure was on earth, and his heart there too. But look into the other world and see the result— “torment.” The good things have changed now. “The rich man died and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment.” “And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, etc... and the beggar died.” Was he buried? Not a word about it, for he belonged not to the earth. “He was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.” He who had the “evil things” down here, “was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.” He who had the “evil things” down here, was carried to the best place in heaven. Then mark, it was not the affliction, sores, etc., of Lazarus made him righteous, any more than the riches of the rich man made him unrighteous. God having done with the earthly things, no earthly circumstances are a mark of God's present favor, or the reverse: though, no doubt, God's dealings with Lazarus were the means of bringing down his pride, breaking the will, etc., and so preparing him for the place he was going to take him to.

Verse 31. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets,” etc. Here this solemn truth comes out, that even the resurrection of Christ will not convince them; for if they refuse to hear God's word as they have it, they will not hear the testimony of God, even though one rose from the dead; and we know they did not.

This chapter 16 is to let in the light of another world upon God's ways and dealings in this. The whole world is bankrupt before God; so that man is now trading with another's goods. When man rejected Christ he was turned out of his stewardship. This is man's position. We should, therefore, dispose of everything now, in reference to the world to come, according to this permission in grace revealed in chapter 16, to use the things of which we have the administration. If we are serving mammon, we shall not get the blessing of serving God, in the sense of God's gifts; for it is retributive justice here, in a sense. If you are not faithful in another man's, who will give you that which is your own? If you have not been faithful to the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? If you are loving money, you cannot have your heart filled with Christ. We are not to be “slothful in business,” but “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord"; and for this He opens heaven to us. Not as He said to Abraham, “Unto a land that I will show thee.” He has shown heaven unto us, having opened it to us in grace. It is the revelation of grace that gives power over earthly things. May the Lord keep before us a living Christ, as our light for guidance and salvation to walk and trust in!

Fragment: Scripture Inspired

“It is not all the truth that the Scriptures contain the Word of God, but everything that is Scripture is inspired, and profitable for all needed to make the man of God perfect."... all he wants “to complete his state and competency for service, he finds in the Scripture.”

The Resurrection and the Life: Part 2

Notes of an Address on John 11:19-46

(Concluded from page 304)

THE WORD OF HOPE

Before the Lord's arrival at Bethany four long days had passed, and during those days the anxious, sorrowing women had one source of consolation. The Lord sent them a word of assurance. He told their messenger, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” This word was therefore carried to the weeping anxious women—the sickness was not unto death, but for the glory of God.

The faith of the women was tried by this delay. The Lord waited in apparent indifference, and did not go to the comfort and help of these distressed ones; though He sent them His word of assurance. And after all was not His word a sufficient basis for trust? He gave them His guarantee that the glory of God would be the final result of their brother's sickness. However unable they were to understand how this could be, the promise was given to sustain their hearts until the moment of deliverance came.

This history represents a condition of things which still recurs. And our great solace in the hour of trial is the word of the Lord. Some do not exercise faith until they are well out of their difficulties and sorrows. Then they are apt to exclaim, “Ah, I knew all would be well.” But up to the moment of deliverance they had been torn with doubts and fears. Yet there is the plain, general promise, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose"; though we seldom, if ever, see at the time how they are working together for good, any more than the sisters at Bethany saw how their brother's sickness and death could be to the glory of God.

God's word then is given us for the strengthening of our faith. It is a sure means of comfort, for comfort signifies making the heart strong to endure. It enables the believer to lay hold upon his resources in God and to trust in them, the result being the possession of peace of heart in the midst of the most trying circumstances.

The disciples in the storm saw the winds and the waves stilled by the word of Jesus. Their agitated minds were then set at rest, but they might have been so before, for they were equally safe when the waves were raging. Our great difficulty is to view such matters in the abstract, and see the future result in the present. Confidence seems easy when we consider either the troubles that are past or that are to come; but when we are face to face with them it is not so simple. However it is during the trial of our faith that the fine gold is brought to view upon the surface (1 Peter 1:7).

In due time the Lord arrived at Bethany, and the truth of resurrection was demonstrated in the case of Lazarus, and death was robbed of its prey. Martha ran to meet Him, saying, “Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died. But I know that even now whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give it thee” (verses 21, 22). She believed Jesus was the Messiah, and she associated His personal presence in the chosen land with long life for the righteous. The Lord said to her, “Thy brother shall rise again.” But Martha's answer was, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (verses 23, 24).

In each of Martha's replies she stated what was absolutely true, but she found no comfort. She lacked the knowledge of the right truth. True comfort is based upon the particular truth suited to the circumstances of the moment. For this purpose the word of truth must be rightly divided. It is no question of rule or routine, but the Lord Himself in our trials and difficulties brings out of the Scriptures what shall be for our immediate benefit.

Clearly from what Martha said she did not realize that the Son of God was able to give life, to abolish death, to overcome him that had the power of death. So when the Lord spoke of her brother rising again, she said, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

This was a view that only tended to intensify her sorrow. Resurrection seemed so far off; it seemed long to wait until the last day. But the Lord had something to reveal which would suit her present need. In effect, the Lord showed that the key to her difficulty was with Himself. She was looking at the resurrection as an act of power at the end of all things. But Life was there before her. Life had come into the world, for “in him was life.” The Son was the source of it, the bestower of it; He possessed it as truly as He was a Man from Nazareth. He was the Resurrection and the Life; and it was not at all a question of God answering prayer as in the case of Elisha and the Shunammite's son.

But though what the Lord stated was a recondite doctrine, He gave it what perhaps may be called a personal form. He simply set Himself before her as the object for her heart. If it were a question of resurrection He was competent to undertake it and carry it through. Death introduced no difficulty to Him. One greater than all the universe beside said to Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

The Lord Jesus Christ therefore at the graveside issued His command, “Lazarus, come forth,” and the dead man came forth at that word. Previously He had declared, “The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice [the Son of man's] and shall come forth.” He was then speaking of a day that is yet to come. But here at Bethany He demonstrated that His power was then present, and the bystanders witnessed the dead brother of Mary and Martha respond to the voice of Him who was the Resurrection and the Life.

THE GENERAL APPLICATION

The Lord in this revelation communicated a great truth, but one which is of general application. It was the habit of His ministry not to confine the scope of His words and deeds to the particular case in hand. Here the Lord came to restore by resurrection Lazarus to his sorrowing sisters, but the words He spoke have a far wider range than that domestic circle. The fact that He was the Resurrection and the Life was spoken not only for Martha and Mary, but for all who should believe in Him.

In His presence a dead person should live since He was the Resurrection, and in His presence a living person should never die, since He bestowed what is called “life more abundantly,” that is, a life that death cannot touch. Hence He said, “He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die” (verses 25, 26, R.V.).

The doctrine of this passage is more fully expanded in the Epistles, where the effect of the coming of the Lord upon those who believe is set forth in greater detail. When He comes for His saints it will be in connection with the redemption of the body. If a believer is dead or “asleep” as scripture terms it, His resurrection-power will be exercised. The Lord will speak; and the effect of His call will be that the dead in Christ will rise and come forth from their graves.

Thus Lazarus is a type of the saints who will be “asleep” when Christ comes. Others beside Lazarus were dead and lying in their sepulchers at Bethany, but the Lord only addressed the one whom He knew and loved. He made a selection among those who were in the grave. And when the Lord descends from heaven with a shout, only those who know that voice will respond. Those whom the Shepherd knows and who know Him will hear His voice and will issue from their graves in the glory of the first resurrection.

Believers who will then be alive will likewise be affected by His coming. Only the order will be that which is indicated by the Lord's words—the Resurrection and the Life. First the dead will be raised; then the living will be changed, for those living and believing in Him will never die according to His promise. Those therefore who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord will not have the precedence of those that have fallen asleep in Christ.

The apostle dwells upon this theme when writing to the Thessalonian assembly (1 Thess. 4:13-18). It was a great concern of theirs that some of their number had “gone before” into the grave; and they feared that they would, in consequence, miss the joys of Christ's coming. But the reverse was the case. The departed would gain and not lose. They would rise first and then the living would be changed. The victors over the grave would have the precedence of the victors over death. And this order is in perfect correspondence with that of the Fourth Gospel.

At first sight we might imagine that Life and Resurrection is a preferable sequence, since the Son speaks of giving eternal life to the believer now. And this of course is true. Only a different line of things is before us here. The Lord is dealing with man's body—the corporeal nature. Therefore the exercise of His power is first of all in the way of resurrection.

But there was a greater wonder than resurrection, and this the Lord unfolded when He said, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believeth thou this?” Martha was a believer truly, but she did not understand the Lord's meaning in this revelation. However she did trust the Lord, and this trust she expressed in her reply, “Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world” (ver. 27). Though she failed to penetrate the depths of meaning in this truth, her great safeguard was her faith in the Lord which indeed qualified her to participate in the great blessing when He comes.

The Lord passed on to exemplify the truth of what He had uttered concerning Himself as the Resurrection. He raised Lazarus, but before He did so He showed sympathy to the full with those who were suffering in this sore trial. He felt the sorrow of this havoc which death had wrought at Bethany. Here were two sensitive sisters bowed down and broken-hearted by their brother's untimely decease. Death had robbed them of their loved one. And the Lord entered fully into the intense sadness of this bereavement. In His groans and tears He displayed such feelings of agitation that even the Jews said, “Behold how he loved him” (verse 36).

Some might possibly conceive that such manifestations of sorrow on the part of our Lord were needless, seeing He was about to raise Lazarus. But think what we should have missed if there were no record of His groaning and shedding tears. Now we may see how He knows “our frame.” As the prophet said of Him, “He bare our sorrows, and carried our infirmities.” He not only ministered to the sick and afflicted, but He did so with the truest and most effective sympathy.

If we seek to sympathize with the suffering it is needful that we should take their sorrows to ourselves. Merely to speak a word of condolence to others is not genuine sympathy. We must appropriate the trials of others and carry them upon the spirit. For such a service we need to have the Spirit of the Master within us, learning first His comfort for ourselves as displayed here, and then ministering the same to others.

In the consideration of this passage we have seen some glimpses of its beauty and instruction, but we may be sure that in every further contemplation of it we shall behold something fresh and something comforting. W.J.H.

The Use and Misuse of Truth

Truth may be used in an untruthful way; it may also be used truthfully, but in such a manner as to negative the real object of its revelation. against the truth, our arch-enemy, who is a liar from the beginning, is unceasingly active in his efforts to hinder the development of its legitimate fruit; either by altogether preventing its entrance in the heart of man, or perverting it should an entrance have been made. These are the tactics uniformly pursued, and, unhappily, often with a signal measure of success. Paul affirms the former in 2 Cor. 4:4, where, describing the policy of the god of this age, he writes regarding those who are lost that he “hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” This is the initial effort of Satan—a policy of prevention. His secondary effort is that of perversion; and, in proportion as this is successful, the real end for which revealed truth was permitted to us, is frustrated, usually from one of two-causes. It is a human instinct to make truth either a means of satisfying curiosity, or of extending the boundary of one's knowledge, as an end in itself. But neither of these is the object for which truth has been revealed. Yet one age—long evil has been this tendency to use divine truth for the satisfaction of spiritual curiosity—a mere mental exercise. Hence have arisen multitudes of ingenious theories based upon certain passages of holy scripture. Men led away by imaginary discoveries, inflated by self-importance and governed by an insubject spirit, have drawn away unstable souls, striving about words to no profit, but tending, as the apostle says, to the subverting of the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14); and effectually playing into the hands of the enemy by wasting invaluable time and starving souls through making speculation and not Christ the object of the heart. As surely as He is the Way, so emphatically is He the Truth, and such speculations as make unfulfilled prophecy, ecclesiastical order, or even distinctive dogmas such as predestination and election, or baptism, an end in themselves to which the mind constantly reverts, lamentably miss the mark, because the objective is, as we have said, not Christ, but the satisfaction of curiosity, even though it be of a spiritual kind.

Yet even cursory observation reveals the undeniable fact of the possibility of such a state through a failure to apprehend the reason of revelation. Any use of the written word which fails to bring the soul into the immediate presence of Him who is the Word incarnate, either to worship or for encouragement, instruction or reproof, is a perversion of the divine intention, and a misuse of truth, however gratifying to a pseudo-spiritual curiosity. A second, and apparently far more innocent method of the misuse or perversion of truth needs to be specially guarded against, namely, the modern craze in some circles for Bible study, and Bible analysis, or—as one divine has unhappily phrased it—a “mastering of the Bible"!

The exponents of this method are professedly accepters of the divine inspiration of scripture, but the apparent outcome of all these analyzes and so-called masterings of the Bible, is but the extension of the borders of individual knowledge of the sacred writings. This would be both desirable and delightful, were the end in view a more perfect acquaintance with the revealed mind of God for the purpose of translating it into practice. But so subtly does the enemy of souls labor for the perversion of that which was given for the purpose of forming the conduct and shaping the course of the believer, that it has now become possible to quite satisfactorily master, say the church epistles and yet to remain sectarian; to hold and teach the truth of the one body of Christ because it is so obviously revealed in the written word, and yet to recognize no practical obligation to carry it out; to hold and teach the absolute lordship of the Lord Jesus in the assembly, and yet to cheerfully submit to man-made regulations in the conduct of worship and service; in short, to so misuse the truth that, while intellectually assenting thereto and admiring the beauty of its proportion, to remain quite at liberty to ignore its practical implications and applications. This is certainly an anomalous state of things, and a total misuse and even perversion of God's intention.

To study to know the will of the Lord more accurately, that one may do it more perfectly is far removed from using truth merely as a means of enlarging the range of one's Biblical knowledge. The former is consonant with the mind of the Lord; the latter is risky and deceitful, akin to handling the word of God deceitfully, for knowledge is privilege, and privilege entails responsibility. We read of those servants who knew their Lord's will and did it not. “And to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

Satan's end is gained, if by any means souls are deterred from carrying out in every day life and duty the word of the Lord, and the clearly defined trend of much of the present day orthodoxy, popular, pleasing, and palatable, is that one may be a loyal student of revealed truth, accepting the scriptures as the inspired, infallible word of God from cover to cover, evading no difficulty, welcoming all the truth which normally has a separating effect from evil, and yet remain equally loyal, amidst all the conflicting creeds and theories of church government with which Christendom's Babel city of religious confusion is cursed, to one's own denomination and theological opinions. But truth, because it is truth, is incorrigibly intolerant of, and refuses to accommodate itself to, human theory.

“If ye know these things happy are ye if ye practice them.” Another point needing emphasis is that even believers unfettered by any ecclesiastical system need the reminder, that as was indicated to Joshua, and by the Psalmist in Psa. 1, and by James in the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit the pathway of true spiritual prosperity, so today if the written word of God is pondered with a view to actually and practically carrying it out, in conduct, character, and conversation, then will the vitality, virtue and adaptability of the truth be increasingly evident to the soul. The best Christian evidence is the Christian in evidence. “Sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is truth.”

May we then see to it that we give such attendance to reading and meditation upon these things that our real profiting may appear to all.

For the word of God reverently read, with an ever-growing sense of need of dependence upon the Holy Spirit for true insight into its meaning, will lead to such self-searching and comparison of the actual practice with the holy precept therein contained, as will effectually guard the believer against the misuse of revealed truth; and, at the same time will assuredly lead to a right us of that which is divinely declared to be to the obedient soul “a lamp unto the feet, and a light unto the path.” We need increasingly to be girded to serve our Lord; girt about the loins with truth, while in the day of conflict we seek to cleave to His name and word.

W.G.T.

Church - Where and What Is It?

In these days, when Christians are ranged under so many different names, it behooves us to consider well whether there is a visible church on this earth, and if not, whether the children of God can meet together as the early Christians did.

Now it must be evident to any thoughtful student of scripture that in the apostles' days there was a church—visibly united. “And the Lord added to the church (or together) daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47). It was composed of those who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no thought then of believers and unbelievers joining together in worshipping God.

Again there will be a church when the Lord Jesus comes, for He will take the church to be with Himself. But now you will find a few members here, a few there—scattered, divided: members of the body of Christ it is true, but not gathered as the one body, the church.

When Christ ascended into heaven, He sent the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, to gather together the children of God that were scattered abroad (John 11:52). God is still seeking worshippers, who shall worship Him in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him (John 4:23, 24). It is children, yea, sons of God by faith of Jesus who are called to worship their Father.

In the Lord's well-known intercessory prayer (John 17) He prays, “that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they all may be one in us.” And why? “That the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” Is it God's mind that the members of Christ's body should be scattered? No; “that they all may be one,” etc. He would have all His children worshipping as one family. Nothing will suit God but what is of divine authority.

In Eph. 2:20-22, Paul says, “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

We have Christ, the chief corner stone, on which the building rests. Take away Christ, and, the building is gone; but give Him His own proper place, as the only Center, round whom the Holy Ghost is drawing the children of God, and there God can dwell. If there are but two or three even gathered to His name, He is in their midst. This was the only ground on which the early Christians met for worship, and this is the true ground of the church of God now. See 1 Cor. 12:12-27; 14; Eph. 4:3-16; 2 Thess. 2:1.

I admit there are a few, who by God's grace do meet together, led by His Spirit, to worship Him in spirit and in truth. But is this the church? The church, being composed of all believers, it cannot be; but then these few are meeting on the ground laid down in scripture, and acted on by the apostles.

Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, etc. (Eph. 5:27).

And now, in closing these few lines, I would affectionately entreat any who read this, to consider on what ground you meet to worship God. Will your worship stand the test of scripture: Will it stand the test of that day when every man's work will be made manifest? (1 Cor. 3:10-17)

The First Resurrection

Revelation 20:5.

The First Resurrection does not mean all rising exactly at the same moment. This is a mistake. We know that the change of all those caught up takes place in the twinkling of an eye; but it does not follow that various bodies are not raised at different times. For certain there are two great acts of resurrection—one when the Old Testament saints and the church are caught up to heaven, the other when Satan was bound after the beast and false prophet were thrown into the lake of fire, as well as Babylon judged. Thus (without speaking of the resurrection of the wicked at the close) there were certainly more acts than one, not to speak of the two witnesses put to death and caused to rise after three days and a half, when the spirit of life entered them, and they not only arose, but went up to heaven, as we know (Rev. 11). I speak not of anything that might be deemed exceptional or peculiar, but of two acts of raising saints.

From the manner in which resurrection is referred to in Scripture, does not God leave room for this? “I will raise him up at the last day.” “At the last day” does not mean merely an instant of time. Whether it were the Old Testament saints and the church, or the Apocalyptic saints, if I may so distinguish them, it was in an instant that each were raised, but there was some space of time between them. What is there to hinder it? There is no expression in the word of God which binds all to rise at the same instant. Those that do rise at the same time rise, no doubt, in a moment; but that there are to be various acts of resurrection is not only not contrary to scripture, but required by its own descriptions. This verse declares it, and there is no other interpretation that can stand even a moment's fair discussion.

W. K.

Fragment: The First Resurrection

“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”

By W. KELLY

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A Letter to a Friend on Alleged Inaccuracies of Scripture: Part 1

Dear Mr.-

I am at last sitting down to give you in writing a few thoughts relative to the book, “Problems of the Future,” you gave me so long ago. I do not propose to attempt a detailed “reply” to the book. My main purpose is to examine Chapter 9 dealing with the Gospels, for this I judge to be the center of the attack on Christianity. If these Gospels could be proved to lack divine authority, to be incorrect or misleading, then indeed Christianity had a poor basis to rest upon, so that for the purpose of the present argument it seems to me to be of the greatest importance to inquire whether our author's statements as to these records are reliable.

I proceed to consider the passage on p. 117 relative to the birth and infancy of the Lord. It is as follows:-"The two accounts of Matthew and Luke are contradictory. The second admits that Nazareth was the abode of Joseph and Mary, and accounts for the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem by the supposed necessity of Joseph's going there to be taxed, as being of the family of David; while the first assumes that Bethlehem was the abode of the parents, and says that they only went to Nazareth some years later from fear of Archelaus, who had succeeded to his father Herod. Matthew describes the Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem, and says that Jesus escaped it by flying into Egypt, while Luke omits all mention of the massacre, the miraculous star, and the wise men of the East, and says that the parents took the babe straight to Jerusalem.” I quote the passage in full so that you may have it before you, should you not have a copy of the book at hand.

Let us look first at chapter 2 of Luke's Gospel. Here we read (verses 4, 5) that, in consequence of the decree of Augustus, Joseph and Mary went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be taxed (or registered). While they were there, the Child was born, and because there was no room in the inn, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, both these circumstances indicating a stable as the place where the shepherds found “Mary and Joseph and the babe” (verse 16). In the twenty-second and following verses we find that when the days of Mary's purification were accomplished, the parents took the Child to Jerusalem. This must have been about a month after the Child's birth (see Lev. 12:4). The 39th verse states that “when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.”

Turning to Matthew, we find a marked contrast in the whole structure, but I hope to show that there is no “contradiction.” Minute details as to the circumstances surrounding the birth are not given, because Matthew's purpose is to present Christ as the King of the Jews—the Messiah. Whereas Luke presents Him in the wider aspect of the Son of Man, and we are given the intensely interesting human details so perfect in their place. They would be out of place in Matthew.

It is of importance, I think, to the question in hand, to determine—at any rate approximately—at what time the visit of the wise men from the East took place. In Matt. 1:25 we get the simple fact of the birth; and in the next chapter we find “there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him.”

To begin with, it is to be remarked that the expression “when Jesus was born” (in chap. 2:1) does not strictly answer to the force of the original, which would be more correctly rendered “Jesus having been born,” and you will see it is simply added “in the days of Herod the king.” The time at which the wise men's visit took place is thus not given in verse 1. This we must gather from the remainder of the chapter.

There can be little doubt from the text that these wise men had come some distance— “from the East.” From the time they first saw the star, until the time they set out from Jerusalem to find the child, we have at least to allow (1) for preparations for the start, (2) for the journey to Jerusalem, and (3) for the time spent at Jerusalem, remembering that traveling at that time was very slow, as indeed to this day it is in the East, where modern methods of transit are not available.

Now verses 3-7 of our chapter show us that Herod (fearful of the consequences to him, a usurper, of the birth of the true King) inquires where Christ should be born, and is informed by the leaders of the Jews—from their scriptures—that the appointed place is Bethlehem. He then privately calls the wise men and inquires what time the star appeared. When he has ascertained these things, he sends the wise men to Bethlehem to search for the child. In the 9th verse, the star which they saw, or had seen, in the east, appears (that is to say, re-appears) and now guides them to the place “where the young child was.” Having presented their gifts and done homage, being warned of God, they depart into their own country another way. After the wise men were departed, the parents, at God's bidding by the angel, take the young child into Egypt.

Mark the next phase. You will remember that Herod had diligently inquired what time the star appeared. Now he is enraged, and commands that all the children, or more correctly male children, in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof are to be slain, from TWO YEARS OLD AND UNDER, “according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men” (verse 16).

The conclusion to me is inevitable, that at the time of the visit of the Magi and the massacre of the infants, Christ was at any rate approaching two years of age, for it seems unreasonable to suppose that Herod gave the command to kill all the children from two years old and under, knowing that the Child whose death he desired was only a few weeks old.

Now the events we have looked at in Luke occurred very shortly after the Child's birth, so that there is ample room for them all between the last verse of the 1st chapter of Matthew and the 1st verse of the 2nd chapter.

I ask, in what point are the two accounts of Matthew and Luke contradictory?

In connection with it, I would point out that Matt. 2:11 speaks of the wise men coming into “the house,” and that they opened out their treasures. No hint of a stable. Herod sent them to Bethlehem, and the star went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. Matthew does not say that the parents “only went to Nazareth some years after the birth,” but simply mentions the fact that they came and dwelt there (chap. 2:23), all that was necessary. Luke tells us it was “their own city.” It is helpful to remember that the parents of Christ were in humble circumstances (as many other descendants of kings have been), and further, that it was only a faithful few who were looking for Christ and who owned Him when He came (see the early chapters of Luke). The unbelieving leaders, and I suppose the mass of the Jewish nation, did not know of the mighty event that had taken place. But the visit of the wise men awoke Herod and the Jewish leaders to inquire into a matter that so closely concerned them.

I pray you not to cast all this aside because you have previously come to another conclusion, for I am assured that if you honestly and thoroughly examine the case, you must agree that Samuel Laing, in this instance at least, is not justified in making the charge of inconsistency.

I have gone into this case thus fully, as I take it to be a typical instance of the superficial way in which the Bible is read by its critics. Because the same events are not recorded alike in the two Gospels, they are alleged to be contradictory. Why so? Does it not strike you as remarkable that the two narratives we have examined, though strikingly different in, their main argument, should fit in so perfectly with one another?

Take again the statement on page 116 that “the two accounts and genealogies in Matthew and Luke do not agree,” etc.

The “accounts” we have already looked at sufficiently, I think, for the purpose in hand.

With regard to the genealogies, I see no difficulty. Of course there is a difference, as the different designs of the two Gospels required, but both are true genealogies. In Matthew the legal title—through Joseph—of Christ to the throne of David is traced. In Luke (where, as we have already noticed, He is looked at as Son of man more particularly) we have His line up to Adam, and God, not down from Abraham, as in Matthew; consequently I believe that the line in Luke is through Mary, not Joseph. With this the text is quite consistent, if (as I believe it should be, in order to more faithfully represent the original) the 23rd verse of the 3rd chapter of Luke, et seqq., be read— “Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed, son of Joseph,) of Heli, of Matthat, of Levi,” etc.

I understand that the Talmud admits that Heli was the father of Mary. So that if one genealogy is that through Joseph, the legal father, and the other that through Mary, the real mother, where is the disagreement?

With regard to the statement on page 117 (following on the statement as to the supposed discrepancy between Matthew and Luke as to the nativity, etc.) that “The other two Evangelists, Mark and John, make no mention of any such occurrences, and begin their biographies with the visit of Jesus, when a grown-up man, to John the Baptist,” where is the necessity for another recital of the details of the Lord's early days, after what we have in Matthew and Luke, especially in view of the fact that the designs of Mark and John are so different from those of Matthew and Luke? As I understand it, Mark presents Christ as the Divine Servant (though withal the Eternal Son), while in John we see His glory as Son of God shining forth pre-eminently. What need for genealogies, etc., here?

It seems to me to be simple enough, except to hearts hardened and minds blinded by self-will. I am assured that if human books were in question, there would not be so much difficulty. Do you not agree that if, for instance, two works on King Edward were written, one relating to his official life as king, and the other to his private life as a man, the contents of the two books would be decidedly different? Would you expect to find in the public history minute details of his private life? or would it be consistent to burden the record of his private life with detailed accounts of State ceremonies? This is only an illustration, I admit, but is not the analogy a true one?

I turn now to another question of fact, on page 122, where the author—after referring to the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” recorded by Matthew as uttered by the Lord when on the cross—ventures to state that “the author of Luke transforms the expression into ‘My God, into thy hands I commend my spirit,' and inserts 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do,' which words are not found in any other record,” etc.

Where is the author's authority for this statement? In Luke 23:46 I read— “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” and in the 34th verse, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Well, you may say, “What of that?” Just this, that our author has misquoted the statements in Luke's Gospel, which, if rightly taken, are so beautiful, and quite consistent with the other Gospels.

There is deep and solemn reason for the difference in the utterances of the Lord on, the cross. Oh, that Samuel Laing had possessed the wondrous key to the right understanding of it! None but a pardoned sinner can rightly apprehend. I can only pray that I may be enabled so to present the case that you may be constrained to say, like the centurion and others, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Let us turn then to the accounts of those solemn hours. It appears evident from Luke 23:34 that the words “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” were spoken about the third hour, when, as we learn from Mark's Gospel (15:25) “they crucified him,” while it was about the ninth hour (Matt. 27:46), that “Jesus cried with a loud voice... My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Then in the 50th verse of the same chapter we are told that “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.” Turning now again to Luke we read, “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and having said this, he gave up the ghost” (23:46). Clearly then, this second utterance addressed to the “Father” was spoken just at the close, as the first was at the beginning, of the blessed Lord's hours of suffering on the cross. What the second loud cry was I believe we get in John's Gospel (chapter 19:30), viz., “It is finished,” these words being spoken after He had received the vinegar (i.e., about the ninth hour, see Matthew and Mark) just before He committed His spirit to the Father in the words recorded in Luke 23:46.

I would also point out, with regard to the hours given in the different Gospels, that it is important to see that John (as throughout his Gospel) gives Roman time, reckoned from midday and midnight as we do, while the Synoptic Gospels give Jewish time, which was reckoned from six o'clock. Thus we have the following times connected with the Crucifixion—

6 a.m.-Pilate sits down “in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement” (John 19:13).

9 a.m.-(The “third hour"-Mark 15:25).

The Lord was crucified.

12 midday to 3 p.m.-(The “sixth” to the “ninth” hour). The three hours of darkness (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44).

3 p.m.-Jesus died, i.e., at the ninth hour of Matthew, Mark and Luke, or the “third” hour after noon according to John's time.

I have brought the facts together from the different Gospels, so that you may see that there is no contradiction. Though the differences are striking, yet how beautifully do the accounts agree.

And now let me ask you to “hear me patiently” while I seek to point out as far as I have learned, something of the meaning of these cries from the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can anything be plainer in all the Gospels than the fact that that Blessed One—God and Man wondrously united in one Person—was always, from the beginning to the end of His life here below, the object of the Father's delight? John speaks of Him as “the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). A voice from heaven on two occasions (at His baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration) attested the fact that here was One in whom God was well pleased (Matt. 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:11; 9:7; Luke 3:22; 9:35). Never for one moment in all that blessed life was it otherwise. Here was one who, unlike any other that has lived in this world, did always the things that pleased the Father (John 8:29).

Yes, He was pleasing the Father in those solemn hours on Calvary 's cross. Why, then, those words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There is only one explanation. Christ was there meeting God in all His holy nature and its righteous requirements in the judgment of SIN. Then was “He who knew no sin made sin” (see 2 Cor. 5:21); then He took up as His own the guilt that belonged alone to others, for He not only “did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22), but in Him is no sin (1 John 3:5). Then indeed He bore the whole weight of God's wrath against sin, suffering as only an infinite Being could suffer, yet as man and for man; and, thank God, at the end of those three hours of darkness over the whole earth (or land), He could say “It is finished,” and deliver up His spirit to the Father. Can you wonder that the very earth was convulsed at such a moment? There is much of the soul experience of Christ at that awful time, to be found in the 22nd Psalm, in the 1st verse of which we read the very words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Can you not now see that the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are needed to give us a complete picture of the cross? They show us how the One who hung there was perfect through all—praying for His very murderers (Luke 23:34), caring for His mother (John 19:27), blessing a dying robber (Luke 23:43), but, beyond all, perfectly meeting God's righteous demands (involving as it did the hiding of God's face from Him when bearing sins), and laying a righteous basis on which the vilest sinner, who will but repent and believe in Him, may be fully and freely forgiven, and live forever in blessedness with Himself in glory.

[F.T.T. ]

(To be continued)

Notes on Luke 17

Chapter 17.

We have seen the great principle of divine grace in contrast with self-righteousness, and the Jewish economy, which refused its Messiah, the Son of God, set aside to make way for bringing to light life and incorruption through the gospel. “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offenses will come; but woe unto him through whom they come” (verse 1). We enter here on the spirit and way of serving, now that the world to come was let in upon the conduct and faith of the disciples in this world, for none could serve two masters. God is carrying on a work—in a little child perhaps—but it is His own work and individual faith is needed in the path of a rejected Christ. Among those who professed to follow Him and His glory on the principles of faith, there would be, alas! many scandals. It was not now, nor yet, to be a reign of judicial power when the Son of man would gather out of His kingdom all scandals and them which do iniquity. Satan's power is permitted, the exercise of faith is required. It is a time of proving, by the prevalence of evil, that which lasts because of God. The cross must be taken and self denied. It is a hard lesson, but blessed when learned. The cross and the glory are always connected. The cross must be on the natural man, not on sin merely, so as to break the will. Christ had no will, showing perfectness; but we need the cross practically, as the means of communion by breaking down that which hinders.

Then, again, the whole system of the world is a stumbling-block: there is not one thing in it which is not calculated to turn the heart from God. Take the merest trifle—dress, vanities in the street, flattery of man, of brethren perhaps, etc.—all tend to elevate the flesh. What a different thing is heaven opening on a rejected Savior! And this is our light and pathway through the world, for now the heavens are open to faith, as we pass through it to Him whom we see in glory. There is an active energetic flow of God's love in carrying on souls. Is our walk a witness? Take care you are not a stumbling-block. You may say, “A person must be very weak to feel such or such a thing,” but it is the very reason why he is to be cared for. The Lord give us never to hinder but to help the weak! These things are the stumblingblock of the enemy, and the man by whom they come is so far an instrument of Satan. The Lord loves His little ones. Better for that man that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of them.

Verse 3. But suppose a person does something to stumble you, what then? “Take heed to yourselves.” Your part is to forgive. Take heed to yourselves, jealous and self-judging. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” What! if he trespass often— “seven times in a day?” Yes, if he “seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him.” Watch incessantly yourselves and see to it that the spirit of love (the power of unity and the bond of perfectness, as we know from elsewhere) be not broken, nor the spirit of holiness, that the peace be not false. Blessed path! what condescension to our weakness and danger in the introduction of grace, and the moral judgment of present things, which are the aliment of the flesh and the domain of the world! Watchfulness against self and grace to others bring us through, rising like a lifeboat above all breakers.

Verses 5-10. In such a position there would be need of faith and the energy proper to it. The apostles (led of God, though perhaps seeing but a petty part of the difficulty and with a confused sense of this new position) pray for an increase of faith. The Lord answers by setting forth the fullness of its energy: for faith realizes a power which is not in the person and thus acts without limit. He applies it also, though in general terms, to the removal of the obstacles of a system, which might present the form of what was good and great, but fruitless. In every need we may draw upon God. All consists in looking simply to Him. All things are possible to him that believes. For it is God accomplishing His will, and He has willed to accomplish it by man and to honor Himself in man, after being dishonored of Satan in and by man; but this in faith according to His will, till the Lord Jesus returns in power and glory. God is at work, and if you are co-workers under Him, you could believe that He is and say, “Let this be done and this.” Is it nothing to wield God's power? If you know not what it is to be opposed by Satan, you will feel how blessed it is to call in the power of God. Your place and work may be very humble outside—no matter what: still you need God's power to be little. What the Lord says in verses 7-10 is not applicable to a careless servant. If he has neglected his work, he is a slothful one. But I am an unprofitable servant when I have done all that I am commanded. Am I neglected? It is to try me. Something needs it. Perhaps I want to learn that God can do without me. Now that Christ is rejected, God is at work. If He uses me, it is a great honor; if He lays me by because self was elated, it is a great mercy. He is saying, as it were, “Be satisfied with Myself, be content to know I love thee.” Are you content with His love? Do you want man's honor or your own? Remember that when you have done all, it is the time to say, “unprofitable servant!”

Verses 11-19. The history which follows shows that when God brings in new power, those who have had the previous privileges are the last to rise above them into what is better. But there is a faith wrought of God in the heart which sets free from the subsidiary forms thrown around God's will in the past economy. Thus, recognizing God in Jesus, it carries the soul beyond the law of a carnal commandment and associates with Him in whom is the power of an endless life. It occupies us with His person who is above all, planting us not in dishonor of the law ("yea, we establish the law” through faith), but in the liberty wherewith the truth—the Son—makes free. All were cleansed by the word of divine power. The nine went on to show themselves to the priests, acting on the word of Jesus and thus far in faith. But the Samaritan stranger perceived God's glory in what had taken place, and so turned back to Jesus and aloud glorified God. The others owned the power which had come, but remained in their religious habits and associations. He, less preoccupied with outward institutions, returned to the source of power, not to its shadow and witness, which nature always uses to hide God. He had experienced divine power in Jesus, and instead of merely enjoying the gift, he most humbly, but in the boldness and propriety of faith, went back to own the Giver. “He fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks.”

He wanted no priest. The priest did not, could not cleanse, but only discern and pronounce a man clean. Evil had leveled the Jew and the Samaritan. They were alike cast out of the presence of divine communion by the leprosy which afflicted them. But He who healed lepers under the law was He who gave the law, and the word of Jesus at once recognized the law and manifested the Jehovah who gave it. The gratitude of faith was a readier reasoner than the instruction of the law; for the blessing afforded by the work and presence of Jesus was to the nine the means of keeping up Jewish distinction, to the tenth it was the evidence of divine goodness. To him, therefore, it was complete deliverance. He was by faith arrived in grace at the fountain-head from which the law itself proceeded, and was let go in peace, made whole by his faith, having liberty from God and with God, giving thanks and glorifying Him, and withal knowing how acceptable it was in His sight.

How many reasons might have been pleaded for going on and not returning to Jesus! How might the nine Jews have said, “You are ordered to go and show yourself to the priest"! But faith goes straight to the heart of God, and there finds all grace and a dismissal in the liberty of grace. To him who returned to Jesus, cleansed and with heart-felt thanks, the priests were left behind. In spirit and figure the healed Samaritan was passed into another system by faith—the grace and liberty of the gospel. It is blessed thus to be at the source of power and goodness, and there only does God now put those who believe. If under the law before, we are become dead to it by the body of Christ that we should belong to another—to Him who is raised from the dead. It is this way alone that glorifies God, however men may plead the letter. Thus only can we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received (not the law, but) the reconciliation. In Him, thus known and enjoyed, we have all and more than all that the priests ever conceived. We have communion with the Father and the Son by faith in God fully revealed. We have to do with Him in heaven now, not with a temple and priests on earth. “Arise, go thy way.” You have found the person and glory of the Lord. You are beyond the priests and the temple, your faith has pierced the veil and found One greater than both. The rest went their way, cleansed, to be under the law. Stupefied by Judaism, they did not return to glorify God. All this, at the point of the Gospel we are arrived at, is full of importance. It is another light thrown on the passing away of the law and of that dispensation.

In the next verses (20 et seqq.) the question was actually raised as to the coming of God's kingdom. The Pharisees asked when it should come, and the Lord places them on their plain responsibility. “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” or outward show. It should not be said, “Lo here!” or “Lo there!” for that kingdom then was there among them. The king was speaking to them. Ought they not to have known Him because He came in grace? If He had humbled Himself to know their sorrows and to die for their sins, was that a reason for not discerning His greatness and moral perfection manifested in ten thousand ways? Did not His holy love to the poor and guilty prove, plainly enough, who He was? If man's heart had not been opposed to all that was the delight of God in the kingdom, if his eye had not been blind to all that was lovely and of good report, he would have felt that the lower Christ stooped, the more wonderful were His works.

To His disciples He had other things to say. He was rejected and leaving them. Suffering awaited them. Trying as their position might now be as the companions of His rejection, the days would come when they would long in vain for one of those days when they had enjoyed blessed and sweet intercourse with the Son of man. They would, as Jews in the land, feel the difference. Then Satan, to allure and deceive in that day, would lead men to say, “Lo here,” or “Lo there"; but the disciples would know its falsehood. There was no hope for the nation which rejected Christ. The King had been there but refused; He was no longer “here” or “there.” This day the Son of man would be as the lightning flashing from one quarter under heaven to another. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected of this generation, that is, the unbelieving Jews.

It is evident that while the Lord takes this name of Son of man to His disciples as revealing a relation higher and wider than that of Messiah (the link of which was broken and gone in the nation's ruinous rejection of Him), the whole of this instruction is Jewish and shall find its accomplishment properly in, a godly remnant of the latter day. The Christian part is not spoken of here, for that is association after a heavenly sort with Christ, and we have its great moral outlines, at least in Luke 12. Here we are on the ground of responsibility, not of heavenly grace. We must separate the church's place with Christ from the government of the world by Christ. The very character of the predicted delusion confirms this distinction. For if men said to the Christian, “Here is Christ,” he would instantly know that it was of Satan, because we are to meet Him, not here or there on earth, but in the air (1 Thess. 4). But this is not the case when you come to the government of the world. There the hope rests on Jewish ground, and then the witnesses for God must go through tribulation such as has never been. Now, unless expressly forewarned, they would naturally look here or there for the Deliverer: for in that character His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, and He shall come to Zion and shall come out of it. “Jehovah shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion; rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.” All this differs from the Christian's hope and his desire meanwhile; for we do not want our enemies destroyed, but converted, and we are looking to be taken from them all to heaven with the Savior, instead of waiting for Him to join and exalt us under His reign upon the earth.

But, again, the subject here is neither the past siege of Jerusalem nor the future judgment of the dead. Titus's capture of the city was not like the lightning, but a long, fierce, hardly-contested struggle. Nor were the Jews, up to the moment of the final stroke, in a state of ease and carnal security, resting on the continuance of things as they were, as in the days of Noah and Lot. Suddenness of judgment is its first feature, certainty is the next, discriminating certainty, neither of which things could be fairly, said of the Romans. Without or within, at rest or at work, men or women, it mattered not, God would burn up the chaff and preserve the wheat: the one should be taken, and the other be left. Next, there is a local and earthly stamp, which excludes the scene from that of the great white-throne judgment. For there is no resemblance between the judgment of the dead and the deluge or the fate of Sodom. It is the end of the age, not of the world, and is a judgment on a temporal people, and more especially on their city; for they were not to return into the house, if on the housetop; and if in the field, they were not to turn back. None of these things could be said of the dead, any more than the bed or the mill. It would be no time for human motives, artifices, or concessions (ver. 33). Faithfulness to the Lord and His testimony would be the true and saving wisdom. The day of the Son of man's revelation was in question—His judgment of the quick, and especially of a generation which has rejected and caused Him to suffer. If they asked “Where?” the solemn word for conscience was, where the body, the corpse, was, the swift inevitable judgments of God would fall.

Sabbath and the Lord's Day: 1

“And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight” (Acts 20:6,7).

We are about to consider at this time, as most of you know, the testimony of scripture to “the Lord's-day,” a term which is no invention of man. Indeed, that very phrase of itself, given as it is by the Holy Ghost, to one who has an adequate sense of the force of scripture, would be conclusive for the object now in view; which is to assert its authority, to explain its special place in God's word, and to enforce its claims on every Christian heart. It is scarcely needful to say that I am not about to present it as having anything to do with the sabbath. Such a reference must always weaken and obscure the Lord's-day. In fact, it tends to destroy the character of an institution which those who love the Lord desire to hold firmly and enjoy with all their hearts.

Of course I am aware that there are many pious men who think that there must be a sensible loss, if we exclude from the Lord's-day the place which the sabbath possessed of old; and this indeed justly in the minds of those saints of God who had peculiar associations with Israel before our Lord came, and all through His earthly ministry. It is not, again, as in the least degree denying the importance of the sabbath that this distinctness of character is asserted; for it will fall within the scope of what I am now about to open if I a little draw out the contrast between the two days. But I say “contrast” advisedly. It will be my place to show that it is not simply a question of what is expedient, or what the church has inaugurated, or what the world acknowledges in the codes of law. I claim for it divine authority, although that authority be exercised in a characteristic manner. This may strike the minds of some Christians as singular, for the simple reason, that they have been habitually accustomed to regard the law as the only expression of divine will.

One understands that such should be the thought of an infidel. I remember sometime ago reading —an unhappy task, but still it did come within the scope of my duty to read—the essay of a well-known freethinker of our day, who takes this very ground—that the only thing which is authoritative, definite, and even positive, is the law. This we can understand of course in an unbeliever, for the sad and sufficient reason that Christ is no more than a blank to him. He may admire this or that in Christ, but he sees neither His personal glory nor the perfection of His ways as displaying God and man here below. Still it does seem an egregious thing that any person looking at the Ten Commandments should say that there alone, not in Christ, we find what is positive, and that what the New Testament furnishes is only negative. For any one to read, “Thou shalt not do this,” and “Thou shalt not do that,” and then declare that this is positive, on the one hand, and on the other to behold the revelation of God in Christ in the New Testament, and then tell me that this is negative, is certainly strong. Yet one can understand an infidel saying so; but it is no less singular than painful that children of God in our day should be found on the same platform as far as this is concerned. They at least ought to know that Christ alone, not the law, is the perfect expression of God in man. It does not become the saint of God to be thus blind to His moral glory.

I hope to show at this time, then, that there is not the smallest need of endeavoring to supplement what the New Testament lays down as to the Lord's-day. There is a clear and ample intimation of God's mind and will as to it; for though it may come in a way which to minds accustomed to the law, and owning no other rule, must certainly seem strange, it will be their great gain if disabused of so serious an error. The truth is that the manner in which the Spirit of God has brought out the Lord's-day in the later revelation is in exact keeping with the fullest unfoldings of divine grace and truth. It is bound up with Christ Himself, and yet more manifestly with His work. Hence, it is lack of faith and of spiritual intelligence, as well as a slight of revelation, to rest it on abstract grounds, especially on one so low and foreign to Christianity as the law of nature. It is in striking contrast with a perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages. It is not true that one day in seven is the sabbath, but the seventh day, any more than the dream of a change in the sabbath to the first day to constitute the Lord's-day.

I shall proceed to show that the Lord's-day is an essential part of Christianity for the believer while here below. It is not a human or ecclesiastical arrangement that comes in, desirable in its way, and to be accepted with thankfulness but destitute of a divine claim. I believe, on the contrary, that, while given of the Lord no less than the sabbath, its nature, association, and object are far higher. No Christian man can intelligently put a slight on the Lord's-day. I know there are those who, affecting a kind of ultra-spirituality, will tell you that, for their part, all days are alike the Lord's-day to them. My answer is, that it would be more true to say that to such no day is the Lord's-day. Such is the effect of not owning the Lord's-day as pre-eminently His. The theory of making every day to be His ends in the practice that no day is really so. It is want of faith as a starting-point; and where faith is lacking, all else fails. By little degrees, perhaps with rapid steps if they are bold, such men will begin to treat every day as being theoretically the Lord's; but they will soon allow themselves such a latitude on the Lord's-day as is, in my judgment, disgraceful to the Christian, and a dishonor to the Lord Jesus.

It will be apparent, on the contrary, that, though the day was brought out as a fact, just as with other characteristics of the New Testament, there was light enough for faith to act on and understand from the very birthday of Christianity. From that moment when Christianity had its proper being and impress, the Lord's-day was marked out by the Lord Himself, and all through from beginning to end the Lord's-day has assigned to it, by the distinct sanction of the Spirit of God, a clear and distinctive and momentous place for the heart and conscience of every Christian. Further, it is well to press the grave observation, that those who confound the Lord's-day with the sabbath invariably and necessarily lose the true idea of the latter, if not of the former also. Certainly the height of the truth that is connected with the Lord's-day is never appreciated under that confession, whereby you descend from its heavenly character to an earthly one. Again, to put it on sabbatical ground is to forfeit the light which shines so richly in it when duly understood. For what people call “the Christian sabbath," as it is a term entirely unknown to the scripture, so also it is a plain confusion of the law of God with His grace.

But let none suppose that I mean by this that the sabbath was not a most important institution. A large part of scripture refutes such a notion. confessedly sets forth the gathering of a heavenly Further, I wish to guard all from the mistaken thought, that what God instituted with such solemnity as the sabbath, from the beginning of man's earth, is really done with. Not so. Scripture is distinct that the sabbath will have a place in, the earth; that it is associated with the blessing that is coming upon all the creation; that, in short, it will not be the Lord's-day but the sabbath, when Jehovah shall fill the world with the goodness that is natural to Himself. When evil has been put down, when Satan has been dealt with, when the Lord will have His way manifestly from sea to sea —at that glorious period the sabbath will have its own proper and honored place. Hence we find, in the book of Ezekiel, for instance (which gives us most interesting glimpses into the future that is reserved for the people of God, and for their land here below), that the sabbath comes forward once more into prominence. So also one may see in the prophet Isaiah. There is no need of accumulating such scriptures now; but those referred to plainly prove that, not in some figurative sense, but in all strictness, the day is at hand when God will vindicate His people for Himself—when Israel will be no longer a remnant of deceitful tongue, abandoned to the groveling acquisition of gold and silver, but when, contrariwise, they will be Jehovah's witnesses. Poor alas! has been their testimony hitherto—false witnesses against the only True and Faithful! But they are yet to be bright witnesses of divine mercy in the reign of Messiah's glory. And when that age comes, the sabbath, I repeat, will resume its place for the earth.

Israel shall then observe their new moons also, and, as we are told, they will celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, as well as Passover, but, remarkably enough, not Pentecost. Look at the book of Ezekiel, and you will find a striking absence of the latter feast in the picture of the future. If his visions had been a figure of what God is doing at this present time, Pentecost must have been, I do not say, the exclusive but assuredly the most prominent feast. Instead of this, the prophecy of Ezekiel shows us conspicuously the absence of Pentecost, the reason of which seems to me as manifest as it is beautiful. The types that were given under the law had a bearing on the heavenly people as well as on the earthly. Pentecost in particular and people; and that heavenly people, now in process of gathering, has, if I may say it, so absorbed the feast to itself, that Israel will have no Pentecost in the day that is coming. They will have the Passover; none can do without that sign of Christ sacrificed. It does not matter whether it be earthly people or heavenly, the Lamb and the Lamb's blood are essential for any to be in living relationship with God. “Christ our passover is sacrificed” not merely “for us,” but for them also. They accordingly will have the great foundation feast of Passover. But the distinctive feast for them in that day will be the feast of Tabernacles, as we have seen, because it is the day when glory shall dwell in the land, not merely be seen in heaven, but descend and dwell in the land—when God therefore is accomplishing His glorious thoughts and plans for this long groaning but then delivered earth. In that day then, along with all this, there are naturally the new moons. She that, ruling the night, had given her light, and had long faded away, will shine out once more with renewed brightness. Israel will again become the great vessel of reflected glory here below.

But we, Christians, in that day shall enter into the glory itself. We have to do with Him whom we are permitted to see with unveiled face even now; for meanwhile the power of the Spirit of God has brought us into this nearness, and has made true the feast of Pentecost so completely in the heavenly people, that there is no place by-and-by for earthly people to keep it suitably. Such is the way in which God has arranged with the utmost skill these remarkable shadows of good things to come.

In that day the sabbath too will resume its place on the seventh day as of old. Meanwhile a new creation in Christ has come in, and I will presently show how this has linked itself with the Lord's-day, and in what its character essentially differs from the sabbath.

The sabbath was instituted, as we know, at the beginning. It formed the close of the week devoted by God to making the heavens and the earth which now are. It set forth the precious truth, that He who had deigned to work in forming the earth for man always looked onward to a rest which the renewed creature should share; not merely a rest for us, but for Him and us together, when there will be no more working. The sign of this was the sabbath or seventh day.

Nevertheless it is not exactly true that the sabbath was made a command at first. God sanctified it, but no man can prove that the sabbath was taken up and acted on in any formal manner. Scripture is silent about it, and it is wise for us not to go beyond scripture. But this we do know, that the Lord sanctified the sabbath, and there are tokens here and there that it was known by men. Even the very heathen were not without some traces of it. But the word of God bears the remembrance of the six days of creation and of the sabbath in the institution of weeks. This we find appearing every now and then (as at and after the flood, for instance); so that it is plain that, more or less, the sabbath was known from the beginning. But here it was connected with creation. And what was the state of creation? Man had fallen, and all placed under him was ruined before God. I am aware that man tries to cover that ruin, not daring to face the solemnity of such a fact. Even godly men sometimes try to patch it up. But the way of truth is always to own the havoc that sin has brought in, confessing it to God, and looking for His deliverance, not men's effort to conceal, deny, or remedy it.

But now we must open another book; we come down to Exodus. There is a change. A people in flesh are called out by and to God; everything accordingly is regulated by His law. Their whole life—private, public, social, religious—everything comes under His legislation and authority.

This then gives occasion to another step on God's part as to the sabbath. It is not only the sanctifying of it as the pledge of His rest for creation, but, further, God imposed the keeping of the sabbath on His people, binding it up as an essential part even of His ten words. Even before this He had marked its importance when the manna was given distinctly and solemnly. There was a direct infraction of that which God made so apparent, that His people were without excuse if they did not heed it, not that there was a command even then, we may notice.

But if there be a true way of learning God's mind, it is in weighing what He does as well as what He says. And the God who had given Israel the manna gave them a double portion on the sixth day, but none on the seventh. Was this in vain? Was it not for the express purpose of guarding against any activity on His people's part, even in gathering manna on the seventh day? The sabbath, and the people's rest on it, were thus made sufficiently apparent to any who wished to learn what God's will was about the matter. All the rulers came and told Moses that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread; but they are told that this is that which Jehovah had said, “To-morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto Jehovah,” when the manna, though kept, did not stink or breed worms. Yet were some bold enough to despise His ways and words; but the Lord as yet contented Himself with a solemn reproof, without as yet making His people to be the executioners of His judgment because of those that regarded not the works of Jehovah nor the operation of His hand.

Soon after, however, it was not left to a sound judgment formed on what God did, nor to such words as we have heard, but He blended it with the law, and indeed made it to be the one special exception to its general character, for all the rest of the law is moral. The sabbath has another nature quite distinct. The very heathen would acknowledge that no man should steal, do murder, or commit adultery. Every human conscience, unconverted or not, recognizes these and the like. Indeed it may be mentioned here, that a great enemy of Christianity, the Emperor Julian, in speaking about the law, acquiesced in all the rest but the denunciation of idols and the keeping of the sabbath. He owned that the moral commandments were perfectly right, but tried to make out that they had all known them before. And if he classed along with the sabbatical law the command against idols, he need not; for there were not a few Gentiles who knew the wrongness of such objects of worship. Heathen conscience could easily feel the absurdity of an idol; but the sabbath is purely prescriptive, owes its existence to the revealed facts of creation, and hence derives all its authority from God's word. This is what gives its particular importance.

If there is any commandment of the ten, therefore, that rests on God's claim simply, it is the sabbath. Thus because the child does the will of his father, and shows far more the spirit of obedience, if he obeys him, not merely abstaining from or hating what his own conscience knows to be wrong, so the Jew proved it much more by simply bowing to God's command about it. If one were merely to cleave to the moral commandments, it might be no more than honoring one's own conscience. If I bow to God's command, where my own conscience says nothing apart from His word, it is evident that His authority is dear to me. Therefore this was what gave the sabbatical law such immense force, and justly so, to an Israelite. For this reason the sabbath acted as a test, rather than the other nine commandments; so it was the special sign between Jehovah and Israel. None of the other commandments could have been, or was, such a sign as the sabbath-day. It was the peculiar and easily recognized badge that distinguished the Jewish people from all others, and hence in the law and prophets it is thus referred to. But you see it, in fact, constantly brought forward by God, and attached to all other things—what it did not matter. We have already noticed how with the giving of the manna the sabbath was marked for the observation of Israel; so, if God set up a tabernacle, the sabbath came in afresh. Indeed, as has been remarked by another, it followed, no matter what the dealing or institution might be. If He appointed feasts, the sabbath stands in the very front of them, the first and foremost of them all, as it points to the crowning result for God and man. It differed essentially from all the others, in that all the other feasts came but once a year, whilst the sabbath was recurring every week. Nevertheless, if God was giving His people an account of the feasts, not only did the sabbath come within the list of the feasts, but it came as the foremost of them.

There was nothing therefore in the legal system that had a more pointed and constant importance in the mind of God for His people Israel than the sabbath, and accordingly by this day they were tried peculiarly. (Comp. Lev. 26:34, 35). They were surrounded by jealous neighbors; but who ever dared to take advantage of the sabbath as long as Israel walked in any measure with God? When they fell away from Him, when they had broken down in every particular in which His honor was concerned, when they had been swept away into captivity because of their idolatry, God did not sustain them in the sabbath. It is remarkable that, when they returned from captivity, and when they had enemies to contend with, the Gentiles took advantage of the sabbath, and pressed it craftily against the Jews by attacking them on that day because they knew that there would be scruples on their part to fight on such a day. While under the direct government of God it never was attempted.

[W.K.]

(To be continued)

Death With Christ

Notes of an Address On Romans 6:1-11

The verses which I have now read give us instruction with regard to our manner of life as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. It will at once be noticed that this instruction is not set out in the form of a detailed code which we are required to observe. There is no list here specifying the various conditions of our conduct. Indeed we shall look in vain in the New Testament for such particulars.

This feature of the New Testament is in contrast with the Old Testament where we find the duties of life specified perfectly and precisely, and the Jew could with comparatively little difficulty discover what religious ordinances he was required to observe. But in the later and the last revelation the will of God in respect of His worshippers is differently expressed. The duties of a believer are not now furnished to him in definitely prescribed formula. In other words, he is not, like the Israelite in regard to his sacrifices, commanded to do this in the morning, that in the afternoon, and something else in the evening.

The followers of Christ are now provided with principles of action in lieu of precise rules. These principles enter more deeply into the marrow of our lives than the Mosaic regime did. They are matters of consideration for the heart and for the conscience, and they make it necessary that we should pay careful heed to our ways if we desire, as we surely ought to do, to comport ourselves in a manner well-pleasing to God.

INDWELLING SIN

Here in this sixth chapter of Romans we have one particular principle with regard to the life of the believer and with regard to that part of the sincere believer which sooner or later causes him serious anxiety by its undesirable activity. The fact which underlies this portion of the Epistle is the continuous presence of sin within the believer. For that is but a foolish dream which supposes that the child of God may in this world arrive at a state of “no sin.” It is merely a baseless notion to imagine that there are some persons who live in this world as if they were in heaven, and who are altogether, unaffected by any evil influences from without or from within. Any persons who assume to be in such a condition of perfection grossly deceive themselves (1 John 1:8-10).

The subject of this chapter therefore comprehends a great practical question, and one which for its vital importance should be fully faced. The apostle brings forward the evil principle of sin within the believer under the figure of a tyrant who seeks to exercise supreme control over the person in antagonism to righteousness and divine holiness. Alongside the description of the tendencies of this opposing power, the truth of the mastership and authority of God is developed.

For help in the exposition of this section we may conveniently entitle this chapter “The Two Masters,” just as a suitable title for the latter part of the previous chapter would be “The Two Heads.” There we have set out, in the way of contrast, that which, as to origin, is Christ's and also that which is Adam's. From our first parents we derive our sinful nature as an inalienable inheritance. This is the first family, the family of human nature; but there is another family, of which Christ is the head; and as a matter of actual experience the honest and enlightened believer discovers that in spite of his new position in the second family, sin itself as an active force is still present within him.

SIN AND SINS

In the former part of this Epistle (Rom. Ch. 1-5:11), the effects of sin in debasing the human family are expatiated upon, and the means, divinely introduced, of justification for the guilty. This portion deals with sinful deeds, overt actions, the specific acts which are offensive before a holy God; and from such offenses none are exempt. But peace with God is shown to be the possession of the believer since the Lord Jesus Christ has secured justification for those who believe God—those who “believe on him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification” (4:24, 25).

But in the sixth chapter the subject of offenses, the evil things done, is not treated, but rather the question how these things arise in the history and experience of the child of God. Why are there evil tendencies present in the heart of an earnest Christian? How is it that sin springs up contrary to desire within such a person?

That such distressing anomalies do occur is the practical experience of every person who follows Christ, devotedly follows Him perhaps through persecution and tribulation. In spite of our sorrow that such things should arise, and of our earnest desire to be preserved therefrom, evil obtrudes itself even into our most solemn occupations. We find that unholy thoughts spring up, uninvited and unwelcome, apart from any conscious influence around us. They arise from within, from indwelling sin.

How strange this condition of things appears in a person who has tasted of the grace of God and who is persuaded that Christ died for his sins, and who has confessed His name before the world! Many Christians are confronted with this difficulty in their own experience to their own consternation and grief. Often the person fails to find a satisfactory solution of this problem. He seeks perhaps an explanation in the literature and philosophies of the world, or in the wisdom and experience of his friends, but he is unable to discover any clue to the mystery why he finds himself perpetually doing what he hates to do.

It seems only natural and right to assume that if a person loves the Lord he will also love to do His will. And in seeking to do that will, if he does not at first succeed, he will by perseverance improve on the second and third attempts, and so eventually overcome the susceptibilities of his heart to evil.

But such is not the experience of those who are faithful before Him who searches the hearts, as to the results of their efforts at self-conquest. The light of God manifests themselves to themselves. Even in their prayers and in their praises the inward evil intrudes. Some thereupon resort to stern measures to eradicate these unholy tendencies; they seek to choke them, to overcome them, to live them down. But in this self-imposed contest with the sinful nature they find themselves worsted again and again.

Such struggles with self therefore will in practice prove to be in vain. If there should seem sometimes to be a victory it is only a momentary one. The root of sin has not been extirpated nor even weakened. And all efforts to destroy it by fasting or by rigorous torture of the body also fail. Seclusion within four walls and regular series of protracted devotional exercises are likewise ineffectual to expel the inward evil.

INDIFFERENCE TO SIN

Such an experience of failure, sometimes, when the doctrine of scripture on this subject is ignored, leads to a reaction—to a dangerous acquiescence in this state of things as if it were both inevitable and unavoidable. It is then assumed that the presence and activity of sin is not to be regarded as a serious matter. A man argues thus: “If I cannot rid myself of the sin within me it cannot be helped, and I need not be anxious; God is gracious; His love is infinite; the sacrifice of Christ is efficacious for all things; my conduct as a believer is not a subject of grave concern; everything will be righted in the end.”

Now this Epistle utterly condemns such a spirit of license, and at the same time affords the real solution of this practical problem of Christian life. Here it is declared that where sin abounded so profusely there grace exceeded in abundance: “Where sin abounded there did grace much more abound, that even as sin reigned unto death, even so grace reigned through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So that inasmuch as sin overwhelms man in direst disaster, grace more than meets this condition of abject servitude, since it exceeds all the sum of evil in the whole world. We are to believe therefore that God's grace is superior to all sinful influences that assail the believer, and must therefore lead to triumph. Only the practical victory may not be gained except by warfare on lines approved by scripture.

The fact, however, is made clear that this eventual triumph of grace must not be abused to condone present license. The apostle asks the question: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Let it not be. How shall we that are dead to sin continue any longer therein?” (vers. 1, 2). The habitual practice of sin by a believer is an utter denial of the delivering power of God. The concurrent reign of sin and grace is incompatible with the divine nature. And the fact that a man, cannot deliver himself from the power of indwelling sin is no evidence that God will not deliver him.

The apostle here condemns the evil suggestion that would seek in the abounding grace of God an excuse for sinful indulgence. Such a thought is unholy, and it is sufficient to state it to expose its self-condemnation. Can grace reigning through righteousness permit a sinful course to be pursued? And this evil thought to which we are subject is held up before us that we may see how wretched and unworthy it is and flee from it.

SELF

But it is needful to be aware of the diverse forms of sin; and perhaps no form of it is more common or more subtle than that of pleasing oneself. Continuing in sin may not necessarily imply walking in forbidden paths of flagrant unholiness, but simply living for self without any reference to God and His will.

This subtle character of evil was manifested from the beginning. The first sin was not one that at first sight appeared loathsome in its nature, as some offenses do. To have eaten of desirable fruit would not be regarded as an abominable crime, if judged from a human code of ethics. But Eve consulted her own interest or inclination or pleasure, in complete disregard and even defiance of God's express prohibition. In short, she pleased herself. And such a selfish motive is the essence of sin. The description of the sinless Man is that He pleased not Himself (Rom. 15:3). And the believer is called to imitate the life not of the First but of the Second man, by living not for self but for the praise and glory of God.

HOW WE ARE DELIVERED

Now we are taught in this chapter that by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ we are delivered from that bondage to sin wherein we were held. This redemption from slavery is as definite as the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt. They were under the power of a despot in a strange land where it was impossible for them to serve God. But the nation was first of all preserved by bloodshedding in the hour of judgment, and then rescued from slavery. Jehovah brought them miraculously through the Red Sea, and they were able to look back and see the dead bodies of their oppressors upon the sea shore. They thus became Jehovah's freed men.

Now the freed men of grace are those to whom this chapter is addressed. Sin is represented under the figure of a tyrannical master who carries away the heart and motives in pursuit of passionate desires, whether purely carnal or mental. Under the rule of sin these desires or delights are characterized by an absence of regard for the will of God in the matter. The delight may be in poetry or philosophy or pure science, but the natural heart only finds satisfaction in these things so far as the will of God is excluded from consideration. But the apostle declares that the believer is delivered by death from this order of things. He argues, “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” (ver. 2).

DEATH WITH CHRIST

It is important to observe that there is here no injunction to put oneself to death. The fact is announced that the members of the family of faith have died to sin. This is a judicial pronouncement with regard to the whole question. And we learn that the act whereby we become dead to sin was perfected in the death of Christ.

The apprehension of this fact is a matter of faith in the declaration of the word of God. It could not be otherwise. Just as we learn that God laid our sins upon Jesus our Substitute, and believing we rejoice in the knowledge of this mercy, so it is necessary to believe in order to know that we were associated with Christ in His death for our deliverance from sin. The apostle says, “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?” (ver. 3).

BURIAL WITH CHRIST

In these terms a judicial association with Christ is predicated of all believers. We are regarded as having gone down with Him into death, leaving thus the place of bondage, to emerge into the place of life and liberty. For this identification applies to the burial as well as to the death of Christ: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that, like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (ver. 4).

An illustration of this passage of the believer through death may be found in the Old Testament. I refer now to the crossing of the Jordan by the children of Israel. The general analogy of this historical incident is no doubt more with the aspect of truth revealed in Colossians and Ephesians than with that in Romans; but I make the reference now solely to the manner in which the tribes passed the barrier to their goal.

By divine direction the ark of God was borne to the edge of the swiftly-flowing river, and when the feet of the priests touched the waters, the current stayed. The priests went forward, bearing the ark, until they stood in the midst of the river-bed. There they remained upon dry, ground, and the Israelites were enabled to make their way across the stream upon dry ground. The ark maintained its position until the last person had crossed over, then upon its removal the waters resumed their normal course.

Thus, the supernatural power associated with the ark prevented the floods of Jordan from overwhelming the people of God. So we learn in the New Testament that Christ Himself went down into death, and while we went through it with Him, He as it were held back its waters from us, and we passed through “dry-shod” with Him. He died and rose again in the power of an endless life, and because of our intimate association with Christ we are now called to walk in “newness of life.”

What are we to understand by these things? The facts are here stated in order that we may see how to gain the victory and how to live and walk in communion with the Lord after a new fashion of holiness. This result is not to be attained by any personal determination to overcome all the inward and outward forces which oppose holiness. The divine method is not to do, but to accept what has been done for us—not to conquer self by pure effort, but to live in the new, the Christ-life bestowed upon each believer.

THE OLD MAN CRUCIFIED

We find from this scripture that the believer is taught to find that in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ there is for him not only deliverance from the guilt of sins but also deliverance from the power of sin. We died with Christ, but are also alive again, even as He is. We have passed through what is here regarded as the judicial extinction of ourselves as sinful persons with irremediably sinful natures. The apostle, speaking of the child of God in. his natural condition, declares that the “old man” was crucified with Christ: “Knowing this that our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin” (verse 4). There are many forms of death, but crucifixion is a form associated with shame and ignominy, and under the Mosaic law with curse. And the “old man” because of its evil propensities, was, in the language of the text, worthy not only of death but of the death of the cross. It was man's injustice and malignity that assigned the Son of man to the death of crucifixion, but it was the justice and grace of God that sentenced our “old man” to be crucified with Christ. The purpose of this judicial act is declared to have been that the body of sin might be destroyed or annulled.

But it may be asked how this deliverance is effected. And nothing can be added to the words of this text. The illustration employed is a most forcible one. What can be a more complete deliverance from slavery than death? If an Israelite died in Egypt he was thereby most effectually delivered from bondage to Pharaoh. The whip of the taskmaster at once became unavailing. In like manner the believer is rescued from his slavish service to sin by death. Only he has, unlike the Israelite, died unto sin in the person of Another. He is moreover alive to a new order of things entirely.

It follows therefore that the attempt to eradicate the evil principle of sin by pure self-discipline is a virtual denial of the truth before us which asserts that the believer has already died to sin in the death of Christ. Much confusion sometimes arises in this connection from not observing that the scripture does not say that sin is dead, but that we are dead to it. The two statements are totally different. Some finding evil rampant in inward activity argue from this fact against the plain declaration of God's word. But the latter can never be wrong. The word of God is truth, and no lie is of the truth.

A believer is bound to believe that we died with Christ, and, moreover that we also “live with Him,” and that we live to God. Further, by His death we are freed from bondage to sin, for according to scripture this is an accomplished fact.

The conclusion of this portion before us is a practical exhortation founded upon this great judicial transaction. Let us meditate upon its full significance in the light of the preceding verses: “Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (verse 11). W.J.H.

Published

LONDON

F. E. RACE. Publisher, 3 & 4, London House Yard.

Paternoster Row. E.C.

A Letter to a Friend on Alleged Inaccuracies of Scripture: Part 2

(Concluded from page 325)

Ponder it, I beg of you, and see how you stand in relation to it all. The guilt of the murder of the Son of God lies upon the world still. True, He laid down His life (John 10:17, 18)—witness the loud, not feeble, cry just before He expired—yet the guilt of putting Him to death is man's. The Jews and Gentiles who joined in nailing Christ to the cross but express what man in his sin thinks of Him. Is it not so? Yet He was the expression (and on the cross pre-eminently) of God's love to man who has rebelled against Him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Alas! men would rather perish everlastingly than bow to the blessed Son of God, who now sits at God's right hand ready to receive and pardon all who come to Him. True, the day is coming when He will sit as Judge and Executor of God's righteous judgment on this habitable world (Acts 17:31); but it is not so as yet. Now He waits to save and bless. Will you not then bow to Him here? He died for you, and is He not worthy that you should fall at His feet in repentance and own Him Lord? God has decreed (Isa. 45:23; Phil. 2:10) that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow (heavenly, earthly, infernal); but how infinite the blessing for the one who now bows to Him believingly and follows His footsteps in this scene where He is rejected. “If we endure [with him], we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12).

I have examined these passages as test cases—touchstones for the reliability of the author's reasoning. I should much like to go into others, as, for instance, those relating to the resurrection, but I refrain, as my time is limited, and I think the cases taken up should suffice for the present purpose. I may say here that should you wish to go further into other points in the spirit of inquiry (not of controversy) I should be happy to assist you as I may be able.

Before passing on to notice one or two of the author's general statements of principle, I would say that I am including with this letter a little work (by one far better able to deal with the matter than I am) entitled, The Lord's Prophecy on Olivet. This in connection with our author's statement on p. 118 (based partly on a false conception of the meaning of the word “generation") that the Lord's predictions have been “refuted.” I do not therefore myself enter into it here except to point out, as I have already done in conversation, that the word “generation” (see Psa. 12:7; Prov. 30:11-14) has a moral significance, apart from the sense in which it is generally used now.

Now as to some of the author's statements regarding the principles which have guided him to his conclusions. I do not enter into all the details of his reasonings; it will be more to the point to look at the bases on which they rest.

First then, it seems to me to be contrary to reason to build such a structure as the author does on pages 109 to 111 on the statement of one man —Papias—who foolishly preferred oral tradition to written documents, simply because of the antiquity of the statement. Supposing Papias to have been an untrustworthy witness, the whole argument collapses. The evidence for the antiquity, genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures is far too strong to be overthrown by such a statement as that of Papias. In this connection I would recommend to your notice a work by Isaac Taylor, The Transmission of Ancient Books, setting this out in detail. If this be settled, the evidence of the Scriptures themselves is surely to be listened to rather than that of Papias.

Next, as to the argument with which pages 111 to 115 are largely occupied, and the conclusions reached on p. 115 that “of different biographies of the same person, that which contains the fewest miraculous legends (!) is almost certain to be the earliest and most authentic"; and consequently that the “minimum of miracle” is one of the main principles by which to test the relative value of the Gospels.

It all comes of shutting God out of the question. To one who believes in a living God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, miracles are no difficulty. How unreasonable to talk about the “minimum of miracle” when God is in question! If I acknowledge that there is One whose power upholds the universe, why should I doubt that He has been pleased to give special manifestations of His power, for special reasons, in raising the dead, healing the sick, or casting out demons? True, faith is needed; but thank God I am not called to have faith in what is unworthy of my trust, but in that of which God has been pleased to give me the surest proof. Besides, the author seems to me to refute his own argument, for the Gospel by Mark abounds with miracles, while the Gospel by John has very few; yet Mark is considered “the most authentic record.” Why? This denial of God in any real sense very simply accounts for the author's utter inability to understand that which should be plain to the youngest believer in Christ. It blinds him to the wondrous moral beauty and perfection of scripture, and leads him to make unreasonable statements which he would not have made had he believed in God.

This leads me to notice the statements, on p. 94 and elsewhere, that God is “unknowable.” I ask, is that a reasonable statement? A supreme Being, infinite in power and wisdom, unable to make Himself known! If the author had spoken, like the Athenians (Acts 17:23) of the Unknown God, I should have understood him better, but to deny that God can be known seems to me exceeding presumption.

Thank God, Christianity is infinitely beyond Agnosticism. The Christian knows God, the God who has revealed Himself in Christ, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The Christian is given by the Holy Spirit an inward conscious knowledge of, and joy in, the God whom he has first come to know by reception of the testimony of Holy Scripture. It is easy to assume that persons who possess this blessed knowledge are only self-deceived. I can only point to the fact. The epistles of Paul, of Peter, and of John are full of that quiet confidence that knows no uncertainty, confidence that I am assured comes of nothing but belief of the truth. What right has anyone to say that these men were either deceivers or else poor foolish persons who deluded themselves into this state? The whole tenor of their writings gives the lie to such statements. Once establish that what they speak of is true, and everything is beautifully consistent. There is no effort, no exaggeration, no needless coloring, but all is majestic in its simplicity and straightforwardness, worthy of the God who inspired them to write.

This divine certainty, this “love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 5:5), is what has enabled the martyrs from Stephen downwards to calmly face torture and death, and pray for their enemies in the midst of it. You may reason about it as you will, but can you produce anything like it as the fruit of Agnosticism, that seems almost to glory in not knowing? The glory of Christianity is that “we know” (1 John 5:20). And, just for a moment to return to our author's chapter 9, it is this wondrous confidence and strength, through the indwelling Holy Spirit sent down at Pentecost as the fruit of redemption, which explains the extraordinary change in the disciples which the author observes (p. 128) is recorded in the Acts; when those who were so feeble and trembling before boldly announce the name of Jesus at Jerusalem, and charge upon the Jews the sin of putting that One to death (Acts 2:36; 3:13; 4:10-12). That of which the Acts is a record is something far different from “a phase of religious controversies and metaphysical speculations"; it is the acting of a living, mighty power working in the hearts and consciences of men. Bitter enmity indeed was aroused in the hearts of those who refused the testimony, but wonderful results were produced in those who believed (Acts 2:44, etc.). Where is there another power that could so transform men? And observe, that same power is at work today. I could give you particulars of many cases of persons who have been completely turned round, and whose whole lives have been changed as the result of this same working of the Spirit of God producing in their souls repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. The case of the apostle Paul is but a sample—a striking one it is true—of what God has been doing ever since. It is not at all a question of mere assent to certain dogmas or creeds, but of a real inward change, resulting in living faith in, and love to, Christ, where before there was the opposite. No man is a Christian merely because he has been brought up to believe certain things, but he is one who has been brought to own himself a sinner and has turned to the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, finding in Him the blessed answer to every need of the soul. Agnosticism is a barren wilderness to the hungry and thirsty soul.

As an instance of this “conversion,” I would like to bring to your notice the well-known case of William Hone, who carried his opposition to Christ and the Bible so far that he was thrice prosecuted for blasphemy (see brief notice in the Harmsworth Encyclopædia). Well, this man was “converted” in his closing years, partly, I understand, through the instrumentality of a little child, and here are some lines written by him afterward:-

“The proudest heart that ever beat

Hath been subdued in me;

The wildest will that ever rose

To scorn Thy word or aid Thy foes,

Is quelled, my God, by Thee!

Thy will, and not my will, be done;

My heart be ever Thine!

Confessing Thee, the mighty ‘Word,'

I hail Thee, Christ, my God, my Lord,

And make Thy name my sign.”

Was not that a change? I should thank God from the bottom of my heart if a fresh facing of the question on your part resulted in a similar change in your case. Harden not your heart against Him, I beseech you.

I add the testimony of another—a Christian man of great learning—taken from a letter— “The more I look into infidelity, the more firmly, by grace, I am attached to the simple truth: the more I love it in its simplicity, the more I value this revelation, as revelation, and the goodness of God which has given it to us. But I value yet more than any means of receiving the truth, the Precious Savior of whom it speaks, and that in all its simplicity. Receiving Him as a little child, the more I desire to be a little child, and I see more and more that that is what we ought to be when God speaks. It is my joy to be a little child, and to hear Him speak. I may add, that the perfection of the word, its divinity, are ever more opened to my heart and understanding.”

To this, as far as my little experience enables me, I can add my “Amen.” Difficulties indeed arise, but one by one they are cleared, and I see that they have been the result of my own ignorance, not of mistake in God's word.

And now my task is almost done. The scientific part of the book I do not enter on. You have already a little book on the creation which deals with some of the questions at issue. I have no quarrel with scientific facts, but I do ask this: If I cannot trust an author to give me the right conclusions from the Gospel evidence, how can I trust him to do so from scientific evidence?

Here I close. I cherish the hope that enough has been set down to show that Christianity (that is, vital Christianity, not mere outward profession) is far different from what you have judged it to be. I shall be indeed thankful if it lead you to look afresh into that Book which you have long looked upon as worthless, to find it what millions before you have found it—a priceless treasure, because it reveals God to us, and lays bare to the believing soul those blessed yet solemn realities which to Samuel Laing were “behind the veil.”

I remain,

Faithfully yours for Christ's sake,

F. T. T.

Notes on Luke 18

Chapter 18.

We saw in the last chapter (17.), from verse 20 to the end, that the kingdom of God was presented, first, in the person of Jesus, as a question of faith, not of outward show, nor of a “Lo, here!” or “Lo, there!” and, secondly, in the way of judgment, which should deliver the remnant by the execution of divine vengeance on their enemies.

Verses 1-8. The first eight verses of our chapter complete the prophetic warning, and show that the resource of the righteous in the last days will be prayer. Nevertheless, though the parable has the special application to the future oppression of God's witnesses who will then be found in Jerusalem, the instruction, as usual with this Gospel, is made general so as to suit any or all kinds of difficulty by which men might be tried. “And he spake a parable unto them, to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.” Faith would be put to the test. If God were looked to, and not merely the blessing, men would not faint, though there was no answer. They would go on, always looking up, though all seemed against them. The widow represents those who have no human resource: their resource would be constancy in prayer. Such will be the godly seed in Israel, for it is the remnant, not the church, which is here meant. They will plead with the judge to avenge them of their adversary. Their patience and confidence may be sorely tried, but they will not cry in vain. “And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him.” He may be slow in taking up their cause; but when once He shall rise up, a short work will He make on the earth. Meanwhile, patience must have its perfect work. In Jesus it had its full perfection. There was the rejection and the reproach of men, the forsaking of disciples, the power of Satan, the cup of God's wrath; but He went through all to the glory of God.

In detail we too have to be sifted, and to find all circumstances against us but God for us, yet more than if we had outward help, miraculous power, the church all right, etc. Even joy may hinder our entire dependence on God, making us forget, practically, that the flesh profits nothing. When no circumstances lead you to have any hope, is your hope then in Him? The flesh may get on for a long while, as in Saul; but faith only can wait with all against it. It is then the divine life depending on divine power. Thus it was in Christ pre-eminently. “I believed, therefore have I spoken.” He went down into the dust of death, and has introduced a wholly new order of things. And we, having the same spirit of faith—we also believe, and therefore speak. “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” Christ is dead, risen, and now set down at the right hand of God. Having this life, we are put to the test practically to learn the lesson of death and resurrection, where nothing but God can sustain.

In the parable there are two considerations. If the unjust judge hear and act for the defenseless, be the motive what it may, will not God? But this is far from all. God has His affections, not only His character, but objects of His delight. “And shall not God avenge His own elect?” etc. It never can become the righteous God who taketh vengeance, to make light of evil or let the wicked go unpunished. For then how shall He judge the world? He notices the cry from the oppressed day and night, and it is the cry of His own elect. “I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.” But will there be the faith that expects His interference? They will cry from distress and God will hear. Nevertheless, the question is raised, Will there be, when the Son of man cometh, that faith on the earth, which is founded on God known in peaceful communion? Will it not rather be the cry of the righteous, in bitterness of spirit, a cry forced out of them, and not the cry of desire?

Verse 9. We have next, the moral features of, and suited to, the kingdom, the characters which are in harmony or discord with the state of things introduced by grace. The Pharisee and publican set forth, not the doctrine of atonement or of justification by faith, but the certainty that self-righteousness is displeasing to God, and that lowliness because of our sin is most acceptable in His sight. The Pharisee does not set God aside. He stood and prayed thus with himself: “God, I thank thee.” But then he thanks God for what he is, not for what God is. The only hope of the publican was in God Himself. He was very ignorant, no doubt, but he had the right spirit to get at God. Light had broken in and shown he was a sinner, and he submitted to the painful conviction, and confessed the truth of his state to God. He was cast on God's mercy to his soul. He dared not appeal to justice, he did not ask indifference, but that mercy which measures the sin and forgives it. The revelation of grace had not yet come in, the work of reconciliation was not yet done, so that the publican stood “afar off,” but his heart was touched, and God was what he wanted. If a soul is brought to a sense of sin now, it need not, and ought not, to stand afar off. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. Nevertheless, though he did and could not thus know grace, the publican gives God and himself their true character. It was not full knowledge, but the knowledge, as far as it went, was true. “I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Universal truth! but where so shown as in Jesus? For if the first man, exalting himself, was abased to hell, He who was God, made Himself of no reputation, humbled Himself to the death of the cross. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.” etc.

In one sense men cannot humble themselves, because they are sinners already, and cannot go lower; a saint may. True humility is forgetfulness, of self.

This is illustrated yet more by the incident that follows (vers. 15-17), where they brought infants to Jesus, that He would touch them. It is the lowliness of real insignificance, as the former was because of sinfulness. Who would be troubled with beings of such little consequence? Not the disciples, but Jesus. The Lord delighted in them, and that is the spirit of the kingdom of God. And here too a general moral maxim comes out. If a man is to enter that kingdom, all confidence in self must be broken down, and the truth be received simply, as a little child hears its mother. If it is not so, God and man have not their place. When He speaks, all I have to do is to listen. This is the humility of nothingness, as the other was on account of sin.

Next (ver. 18 et seqq.) comes the question of doing in order to eternal life, not salvation for a lost one, but that which searches the heart to the bottom. The young man was a lovely character, looked at as a creature. For if there are the ravages of sin in the world, there are traces of God there too. This ruler did not see God in Christ. Morally attracted, he came to learn to do good, without a doubt of his own competence. In Jesus he only saw a perfectly good man, and one therefore eminently able to advise and direct him in the same path. Sin, on the one hand, and grace, on the other, were altogether ignored by him. He knew neither himself nor God. There is no man good. All are gone astray. Man is a sinner, and needs God to be good to him: he is incompetent to do the good which satisfies God. The Lord took up the young ruler on his own assumption that he could do good, for the purpose of bringing out what he was. The Good Master that he had appealed to puts to the test what his heart really is. “Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast... and come, follow me.” Would he give up self-importance? After all, he loved his riches too well. “He was very sorrowful; for he was very rich.” Had not such things been promised as a blessing to the Jews? Christ shows them to be a snare. But then they do much good! Nay, are they good for your heart? It is not that they may not be used in grace; but the man did not know his own heart. Good is not there, nor the strength to produce it. Every motive which governs man is rooted up by the cross. But all within is bad, and I can never work a thing fit for God out of bad material. I need God therefore, who can give me a new and holy nature, who can be merciful to me because He is above all sin. The spring of all good is, that it flows from God and not man.

It is an impossibility, as far as man is concerned, that any should be saved. Sin has ruined man and all his hopes. If one looks at the means he can avail himself of, they are wholly useless to save him. But “the things which are impossible with men,” said the Savior, “are possible with God.” Such is the sole foundation for the sinner.

On the other hand (vers. 28-30), if Peter is quick to speak of the devotedness of the disciples, in leaving all and following Jesus, the Lord shows the certainty that every loss, for the kingdom's sake, will turn into manifold gain, both now and in the world to come.

But He binds it all up (vers. 31-33) with what was coming on His own person. They were going up to Jerusalem; but for what? “He,” the Messiah, “shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on; and they shall scourge him, and put him to death.” All hopes must end here: “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” Even He, if He is to deliver the lost, must come down to the dust of death. Christ has no association with sinful man. How then can He deliver? He must die for us; He cannot take corruption into union with Himself. A living Christ, we may reverently say, could not deliver us, consistently with God's nature and character; redemption was a necessity. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

But it was the only means of a holy salvation: man's full wickedness came out in the rejection and death of Christ. He hated what is in God and Him who is God—hated both the Son and the Father. All question of human justice is settled and negatived forever.

Alas! the disciples understood none of these things, neither His shame and death, nor His resurrection. It was the accomplishment of what the prophets had written concerning the Son of man. But they knew not what He said nor what they wrote. The death of Christ would manifest what man was, and what God was; His resurrection would evince the power of life that can deliver the dead. But He was not understood.

Verse 34 closed that part of our Gospel which shows the bringing in of the new and heavenly dispensation. With verse 35 we enter on the historical account of the Lord's final intercourse with the Jews. “Son of man” was the general character of the Gospel, but now, in the midst of Israel, He takes up that of Son of David. Jericho was the first place Israel had to say to when they crossed the Jordan, and a special curse was pronounced against it. But Israel had not walked in obedience, and the Messiah enters, not as the king in outward glory, but as the rejected Jesus of Nazareth, with blessing for the remnant that received Him in faith.

“And it came to pass that as he was nigh unto Jericho,” etc. It is not “come nigh,” as if it were necessarily His first approach, but a general expression, just as applicable to His being nigh on His leaving the city. (Compare Matt. and Mark). “A certain blind man sat by the way side, begging.... and he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” He was rebuked by many, but there was the perseverance of faith, and he cried so much the more, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” Here was a sample of the power of the name that Israel rejected. The eye of the blind was opened then, as it will be in the remnant by-and-by.

CHAPTER 19.

Next, we have the account of Zacchaeus (chap. 19:1-10), for the Spirit of God did not tie Luke to the mere order of time; and morally, it was the fitting sequel to the healing of the blind man. Found only in this Gospel, it is a striking illustration of the grace which receives a man, no matter how low, and in the face of Jewish prejudices. For a publican, a rich chief of the publicans, was justly an object of abhorrence to those who regarded him as the expression of Gentile dominion. All was wrong through sin, and Israel was not humbled. Still it was a sad position for an Israelite, however honest and conscientious Zaccheus might be in it. But it was the day of grace, and “he sought to see Jesus.” There were difficulties, hindrances in him and around; but faith perseveres in spite of opposition. As the blind man was bent on his object, so was the rich publican set on seeing Jesus. This marks the working of God's Spirit—the apprehension of the worth of the object. We want it and more of it; we know enough to want more. It is an appetite produced by the Holy Spirit. It is a terrible thing, if we, as Christians, have not this craving, this hungering and thirsting after a greater enjoyment of God; for where this is not, deadness and apathy of soul have come tn.

Jesus came to the place, and saw him and said unto him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for today I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.” He had not yet the full knowledge of Jesus, but his desire had been met, and he had joy. It was neither law nor glory, but a hidden Messiah come in full grace. There was abundant evidence who He was, but in grace He was come down where they were. No matter what people thought. Finding Jesus is everything. Zaccheus had the answer to the want which divine grace had created. Grace does not give at first the knowledge of Christ's work: there may be little or no understanding that we are made the righteousness of God in Him. Hence the first joy often wanes; because when conscience is accused, I want the consciousness of that righteousness. The first joy is constantly that of discovering that we possess the felt need of the soul for Christ; but the full question as to righteousness may still have to be met in the conscience, though of course every believer in possessing Christ does possess divine righteousness. Nevertheless, much as there is to learn, there is joy. New interests are awakened, new desires arise, a new insight is obtained into good and evil. When there is a deep sense of what it is to be lost and saved, the world (man) is a light matter. But when the pressure on the conscience is removed, too often nature resumes a sort of place, and Christ is not all and everything to the saint.

Zacchaeus' heart is opened. There is confidence, which tells itself out. There might be ever so much honest effort to satisfy conscience in his false position; but after all what a place it was! Men murmured. The Lord passed all over. Self-defense was needless. The Lord did not accuse, and speaks of nothing but the salvation which was that day come to the house. Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham, and the Son of man was come to seek and to save that which was lost. What, could a Pharisee object? There had been a work with the conscience of Zacchaeus, but the Son of man was come and salvation was the word. He brings it. He gave what Zacchaeus had little thought of. He was come to meet the need He had created. He was come to seek, that is, to produce the desire; and to save, that is, to meet the desire.

The Lord was now nigh to Jerusalem, and so He added a parable to correct the thought that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear; for Jerusalem is the city of the great King, and the question of His rejection would be closed there. He shows, on the contrary, that He was going away—going to a far country, to heaven, where He was to receive the kingdom and to return. The time was not come to set up the kingdom on earth. Meanwhile, the business of His servants was to trade with the money He delivered them. When returned, having received the kingdom, He assigns them places according to their faithfulness; for in Luke it is a question of man's responsibility; in the corresponding parable of Matthew, God's sovereignty is the point. Difference of gifts appears in Matthew, difference of rewards in Luke. In Luke each servant receives a mina from the Lord; in Matthew all who gained in trading enter alike the joy of their Lord. Here the whole force is, Occupy. “Occupy till I come.” Our position is serving a rejected Savior till He comes again. We are not yet to share in the glory of the kingdom. When He returns, all will be disposed of impartially, and there will be that which answers to authority over ten cities and over five. The righteousness of God is the same for us as for Paul; but as there is very different service, and different measures of fidelity, so there will be specialty of reward. No doubt it is grace that works, still here there is reward of faithful service. The secret of all service is the due appreciation of the Master's grace. If one fears him as “an austere man,” there is unfaithfulness too, even on one's own principles.

Verse 26 is a universal principle. When through grace there is the realization in our souls of the truth presented to us, we are of those “who have.” But if a truth comes before a man, and he talks about it without it being mixed with faith in the heart, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. Truth, if it reveals Christ, humbles me and deals with the evil within. Then it is not only Christ as an object outside me, but a living Christ in my soul. Knowledge, which has not power over the conscience, only puffs up. If truth be not acted on, it troubles the conscience. But how often one sees a conscience, having lost the light, quite easy at a lower standard than before, rejoicing that it has lost its trouble, though the light of truth be lost with it! The soul has sunk below that which had exercised the conscience, and thus the whole standard, principle, and life are lowered, and opportunities of winning Christ lost forever. Holding fast the truth—Christ—I have Him as it were a part of myself, and learn to hate the evil and to delight in the good; so that I get more, till I grow up into Christ, into the measure of the stature of His fullness. Common duties do not rob us of Him; from these the heart returns with fresh delight into its own center. It is the heart clinging to vanity that spoils our joy; it is anything which exalts self and lowers Christ—an idle thought even, if allowed in the heart.

As to the citizens, the Jews on whom He had rights as king, their will was against Him, not only hating Him there while among them, but above all, sending the message after Him,"We will not have this man to reign over us.” Unsparing vengeance must take its course on them in His presence.

Verse 28. Jesus enters Jerusalem as Messiah. His rights as Lord of all were to be asserted and acted on (vers. 29-36). He presents Himself for the last time to Israel, in the lowliness of grace, which was of far greater importance than the kingdom. This gives rise to the most marked contrast between the disciples and the Pharisees. The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with loud voice, saying “Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” Some of the Pharisees appeal to Him to rebuke the disciples, but learn from His lips that if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. There must be a testimony to His glory (vers. 37-40).

When Jesus was born, angels announced it to the Poor of the flock, and the heavenly host praised. God, saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace—good pleasure in men. Such will be the result, and the angels anticipate it, without reference to the hindrances, or to the means. But Christ was rejected here below; and now the disciples say, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” When the question of power is raised, in order to establish the kingdom, there will be war then (Rev. 12). In fact there can be no peace in heaven till Satan and his host are cast out. Then will the King be established in power, when the obstacles shall be taken out of the way. Psa. 118 celebrates this, His mercy enduring forever, spite of all the people's sins. It is the song of the latter day. If God sends peace to the earth in the person of His Son, it is in vain, not as to the accomplishment, but as to present effect. Meanwhile, to faith there is peace in heaven, and when this is asserted in power against the evil spirits in the heavenly places, there will be blessing indeed. Oh, what a time will it be! What a relief to the working of God's grace! For now it is ever toil and watching. What, always? Yes, always; and that is not the rest. But then it will be, as sure as God takes His great power and reigns. “The Lord shall hear the heavens,” etc. (Hos. 2) There will be an unbroken chain of blessing and that too on earth. It will not be one “building, and another inhabiting,” but blessing flowing down and around to the lowest and the least. Till then, as now, the word is, suffering in grace, not victorious power. Never fear persecution: it will make our face shine as an angel's. But God could not be silent if His own Son were cast out. He might leave Him to suffer, but not without a testimony. If there were no others, the stones would speak. And so if we are faithful and near to Christ, this will turn for a testimony.

Next (vers. 41-44) we have, not the cursing of the fig-tree, but the spirit of grace in the Lord's weeping over the city. The counsels of God will surely be accomplished, but we ought also to know His real tenderness in Jesus. Those tears were not in vain, whatever the appearances. It was the time of Jerusalem's visitation, but she knew it not. We ought, as having the mind of Christ, to know when and how to interfere spiritually. We are the epistle of Christ, whereby the world should be able to read what God is. Christ manifested Him perfectly. But what did He find in the people? Sec verses 45, 46. God declares His house to be one of prayer: men—the Jews—had made it a den of thieves. It was a terrible moral estimate, but this is the true way to judge; that is; having God's word, to take facts as they are. We are ignorant and morally incapable of judging without the word of God. Let the eye be fixed on Christ and our judgment be formed on things around by the word.

Sabbath and the Lord's Day: 2

(Continued from page 332)

All this is surely striking enough, as showing the ways of God and His modes of dealing with His ancient people. But we come now to a still more solemn crisis, when our Lord came into their midst; for never do we get the truth fully about anything until we connect it with Christ. How did He then act as to the sabbath? And how did the Jews use the sabbath-day as to Christ? The answer will be fully and clearly found in the Gospels.

First, how did Christ use the sabbath as to men? He pointedly wrought miracles upon it. He walked with His disciples through the corn-fields; and they in their hunger rubbed the ears of corn to satisfy it. But there were watchful and jealous eyes, which viewed it not so much with hatred against them as with suspicion against Him; for He it was that bore all reproaches. As the reproaches that fell on Jehovah fell on Him, so on Him came all the reproaches that fell on the disciples. He was the constant butt and object of all attacks, yet was He the ever-present shield for the faithful in their weakness and exposure. So He pleads for the guiltless, reminding them how little their own law was understood by those who wrested it against His disciples.

Did the Pharisees talk about this act of His hungry followers as an infraction of the sabbath? They had better turn to their temple, and look a little more closely at their priests. Did they not bring their sin-offerings on the sabbath? For if sin were known, it could not be put off till another day. The Israelite that was burthened with the sense of a wrong to the Lord or his neighbor must own it at once, if he feared God. The priests might be in a bad state; the sabbath was holy; but to put off was perilous; for to slight sin is to ensure worse sin. Therefore he that had a defiled conscience, brought his offering, and thus owned his sin. And the priests that offered, as well as the person that brought the offering, were all guiltless before God. Why then did not those zealous sabbatarians find fault with God's provision on the part of the priests and the people when offering for sin on the sabbath?

But, further, our Lord refers to a most remarkable case in the past, a type of Himself. David, the beloved of God, when he too was cast out with his hungry followers, did once on a time partake with them of the bread set apart for the priests alone. Was this a sin? It was Saul's and the people's sin that there was no bread for David. It was their sin that the true anointed was an outcast. And the bread that was holy at a holy time was profaned in the hour of their wickedness. If it had no sanctity in the presence of a rejected David, how much less in the presence of a rejected Christ? This was the argument; for assuredly a greater than the priests and a greater than David was there. Hence a greater sin was done than in the ordinary days of Israel, or even in the special days of David. Thus the Lord retorted the conviction of sin on the heads of those that would have condemned the disciples.

But on the very next sabbath after, the Lord Himself acts; it is not merely that He defends His disciples. He goes into the synagogue, and in full congregation singles out a man with a withered hand. And there He not only heals the man in the presence of them all, convicting the hypocrites that would have condemned Him once more, hating Him for the grace that ever flowed out to the miserable; but, further, He told the man to do an act which, had there not been a divine object in view, could have been dispensed with readily. He particularly marked it therefore in such a fashion as to show that it is no question of God's having complacency in their sabbath-keeping, but of His acting for His own glory in a ruined world. The work of love is what God deigns to be about. Now this was exactly what they resented. So the Gospel of John gives just the same truth, and with yet fuller evidence. A man that lay impotent in the presence of Bethesda, waiting for an angel to come down, found that a greater than all angels was there, who needed not to trouble the waters. A word was enough; for power accompanied it, and the man was healed. But Jesus directed him to arise, take up his bed, and walk, sabbath though it was. Could he not have left his bed there, or at least then? Yes; but so to act at His word who healed him was a plain and much galling testimony that God had no communion with their sabbaths.

Was not God thereby showing that, if there was to be the blessing the sinner needed as he is, He must work, and this on the sabbath; for man was waiting in sin and misery without His blessing? What folly to talk punctiliously about the sabbath from amidst the ruins of sin! If sinners were to be saved, there was no time to be lost. If the Blesser came, would He not give the blessing at once? So grace reckons, even as Christ then wrought. But what so offensive to self-satisfied man? Accordingly therefore the Jews were filled with hatred against Him who thus judged their thoughts and ways, bringing in God in this full opposition of His own grace to man in his selfish hypocrisy. Thus the Lord showed how He used the sabbath against Israel in their pride.

I have now to speak of a darker page: what indeed more solemn? How did the Jews use their sabbath against Jesus?

The sabbath, sad to say it, was the only day right through, evening and morning, that the Lord Jesus spent in the grave. Yes, and that sabbath was a high day! Thus over the grave of the crucified Christ did unbelieving, guilty, rebellious Israel keep holiday. They had to their own rejection rejected the Son of God. He lay in the grave; and they kept their sabbath. And where was God? and what were His thoughts? Where His affections and His glory? In that grave that they had made for His Son. They had cast Him down into death, and He had taken all from His Father's hand—the worst and most ignominious of deaths.

But God was there in the cross accomplishing forever His greatest work. No sabbath was He keeping, but working in the depths of His grace, that salvation might flow not from His mercy only but in His righteousness.

“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” The counsel of peace was between them both. The work of the Father and the work of the Son had testified to man's sin and God's grace all through His ministry. We now look on the deepest point of all—not only the Christ, the Son, abandoning Himself to do God's will, but abandoned of God because He was bearing the judgment of sin on the cross; and this in order that God might be forever vindicated and glorified even in respect of sin. And now the work is done. “It is finished.” The hour then was for the Son of man to be glorified. God was glorified in Him; but if glorified in Him, God would glorify the Son of man in Himself, and would glorify Him straightway. Instead of waiting for the kingdom, and for Israel to be gathered for the millennial day, God would glorify Him at once. The people were not ready, nor the land either. What in short on the creature's part was ready as it should be? On God's part, however, all things were ready. But new counsels come in when Israel still rejects and God carries out His great heavenly work. The efficacy of Christ's work is first of all applied to what was unseen. Only faith sees the heavens opened and the Son of man at God's right hand. For Son of man He went up, as He came down Son of God (as He is now, and was from eternity to eternity). Then it was in perfect grace; now He goes up in accomplished righteousness, and sits on the right hand of God. In due time follow the glorious consequences of that work. And grace forms in Saul of Tarsus a suited witness: but I will not anticipate further.

On the day, however, that Jesus burst the bonds of death and rose from the grave, He first of all sends out a message by Mary Magdalene, whom He had previously delivered from the complete power of demons. She is now sent to the disciples with the message of the risen conqueror of Satan. He that had the power of death was conquered forever. Accordingly on the day that speaks of light and life from the grave—that proclaims the mighty work of redemption accomplished forever —the Lord Jesus sends a message to His own, who thereon are gathered together, and in the midst of them Jesus finds Himself. It was the first day of the week, the day of His resurrection. Such beyond doubt is its character. It was no longer creation-rest: for this had been broken. Nor was it any longer legal rest. For where was this now? Man ought to have learned from the ways of God; for he might be commanded as he was in the law; but the very aim of all was to prove that sin had made him altogether incapable of doing God's will or of answering to His nature. The dealings of God were as excellent as His commands were all righteous. It is man that is all wrong. Here lay the real difficulty and the constant dead-lock in Israel. It was from no fault of the law. The failure is entirely from the sin of man, not excepting the chosen and favored people; and the divine object in the law was to bring this out distinctly in Israel's history, and make all that have ears to hear feel their sins and confess them to God—the very last thing the Jews (like any other self-complacent men now) thought of doing. What they themselves used the law for was simply to make out an appearance of righteousness of theirs; what God gave them the law for was to demonstrate that they had none of their own.

But now the gospel shows and proclaims another thing—the righteousness of God; for it is He who in Christ has interposed now. The law demanded man's duty to God and man, compelling those who are thus convicted of sin to own their ruin and cry to Him for remedy. Alas! Israel were hardened. Yet under the law man had done his worst. Instead of really producing fruit for God, according to the parable in which the Lord set out their history, they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill Him,” and slew and cast out the righteous One. Thus had man not only broken the law, but rejected utterly and absolutely God come in goodness in the person of Jesus. Man had put the Son of God to death on the cross; and what does God next? He interposed, and from that lowest abasement to which His Son become a man could be subjected, God raised Him up and set Him at His own right hand, far above every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.

Thereon comes in Christianity. Evidently it is based on the rejection by man of the Lord Jesus, in which God has accomplished atonement. For in the cross sin has been judged. It may not be put away in fact; but it all is to be, and on the basis of that mighty work. But sin is judged before God in the cross, and those who believe are entitled to know all its consequences gone for their souls; that is, their sins are forgiven, and sin itself is already dealt with to faith. But, as we know, none of this great deliverance as a matter of fact appears outwardly yet. That is to say, the evil of the world goes on as badly or worse than ever; nay, in the saint the old nature is there, and will surely break out if unjudged; and Satan, instead of being dethroned, is still the god of this world; and this was manifested at the cross of the Lord Jesus. Christianity does not mean in the slightest degree that the world, or human nature, still less that Satan, is better since then. I need not say that the truth is far from that. It is not even that Satan is put down from his access as an accuser before God (for this awaits another dealing at a future day), but that God is glorified, and has accepted meanwhile an infinitely efficacious work for the believer. Not only has a divine person been manifested full of grace and truth, but before God is that accomplished work, whereby the believer stands in the acceptance of Christ. It is no longer a mere hope grounded on a divine promise; but the work is done, and the present efficacy is perfect before God, so that the Holy Ghost is come down to be the witness of this to the soul of the believer, the seal of redemption, and the earnest of the coming inheritance when we shall appear with Christ in glory.

Such is Christianity; and the consequence is therefore that God at once inaugurates a new day. It is no longer the last day of the week; for they speak not truly who say that the sabbath is a seventh day; that is, any day of the seven. There might be rest for man all the same, but in that no memorial of God at all. A seventh day blots out all record of God's past, and all hope of God's future. The very idea of it destroys from the sabbath every atom of what is divine. Such tampering with scripture, and in particular with the sabbath, makes it to be no more than a human thing. Those that think that any day would do equally well, show that they know nothing, heed nothing, of God's intention in the sabbath. They are alive to the human need and boon. Its place in the mind of God, and for man's highest welfare, is lost to them. On the contrary, I maintain that it is of the very essence of the truth as to the sabbath that it is the last of the week, or seventh day; not a, but the, seventh day, and no other. This is the day that God sanctified, the remembrance of creation and the type of His rest. But then the rest was not yet. Creation-rest was ruined; law-rest, though commanded, never had a real footing for sinful man. What is the consequence? On the ground of creation or law there is no hope for man, because of sin. But grace, God's grace, enters; and now it is a question of God's giving rest for the soul, if not vet for the body, in Christ the Lord.

There is no rest from labor, yet, as we see in Heb. 4; the rest of glory is of course future. It will all come, but only when Christ comes. There is rest given in Christ to the weary; there is rest which the Christian finds who takes Christ's yoke, and learns of Him who is meek and lowly of heart. These are respectively suited to the Christian and to the heavy laden; but what rest can rightly be as yet from the labor of love in such a world as this? For the spirit there is perfect rest in Christ and peace before God, but at the same time no rest from toil or sorrow, no settling down in the world which cast out Christ save to the selfish and unbelieving.

And here I may observe that it is a mischievous thing to apply Heb. 4 to the question of the soul's present rest by faith. This is not at all the point that the apostle Paul is there discussing, but rather the danger for the believer of seeking present rest, seeing that we are passing through the wilderness and have not yet reached Canaan. We are as yet pilgrims and strangers. He is warning the Hebrew believers of their danger in valuing present ease. This is not our rest. Some might take things quietly because they knew themselves justified. But the believer is really redeemed to serve and suffer for a, season here. Every one knows that there is a danger of turning to the folly of present ease for souls when relieved from fear; and a very particular danger it is for those that have gone through a great deal of sifting at their conversion, lest they forget that this is but the beginning of a course of trial and testimony on earth. No had thing either for any one so to judge self; but the danger is that there is apt to follow a kind of reaction, unless grace keeps one simply looking to Christ. When persons have gone through much trouble of conscience, and have found themselves saved by nothing but grace, they enjoy peace thankfully; but it is very possible for them to think that after this they are free to take all else easily. Not so. It is after this that they are set in freedom of heart to labor for the Lord, as those who are still in the desert. Far am I from saying that they are not to enjoy His love more and more. They are free, and need, to draw near in thanksgiving and praise surely; for there are two distinct ways in which divine life works the one is upward toward God in worship, the other is downward toward man in love; and grace gives us both now. But we, if wise, wait for rest when God rests in the scene and day of glory. Now is the time to fear and to labor.

Hence therefore, as the apostle exhorts, he who believes in the Lord Jesus now is called into this blessed participation of the mind of God. Having been set free in virtue of the work of Christ from guilty fears (most just and real), being delivered from that sense of condemnation which the Spirit of God had lately pressed on his conscience, he has peace with God, and rests in our Lord Jesus Christ. But he is only for that very reason guarded against taking his ease in the world. And this belongs to the very nature of Christianity and to God's object in it. A Jew naturally expected That, when Christ came, he would himself have ease and rest. There would be neither evil to avoid nor enemies to contend with, all being put down for him at least at the beginning of Messiah's reign. Then would every kind of blessing be brought in for his enjoyment. For danger will not then lurk in the earth and the things of the earth; but men, Israel especially, take all good freely from God. And so it will be; for the millennial kingdom will ensue a time of ease and joy here below, when good will be at peace and evil must hide its face, banished from the scene by the power of God, then manifestly the possessor of heaven and earth. But this is not the experience which Christianity is now forming, while we await Christ from heaven and suffer with Him on earth.

(Continued from page 332) (To be continued)

Alive Unto God

Notes of an Address on Romans 6:11-23

I commenced to read this evening at the eleventh verse, because the practical application of the truth communicated in the early part of the chapter begins there: “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

On a former occasion we saw that the apostle treats of the manner in which the believer is delivered from the power of sin as a principle of action, and the whole question of his conduct was seen to rest, like all such questions, on Christ Jesus and His work.

We have to look to Him for the solution of all the problems of practical moment that arise day by day in our lives, and one of our most difficult problems is how to regard the uprising of the evil nature in our hearts. This nature asserts itself in spite of the sense of God's love within us. We may have cherished the vain hope of growing out of such tendencies, and year by year of approaching nearer a state of holiness and perfection.

If so, honesty must compel us to admit that so far as our hearts are concerned, little or no real progress is made towards the extinction of inward evil. This chapter, however, sheds light on this problem. It shows that the evil nature whose presence and action we mourn received its utter condemnation in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin itself (speaking now not of sinful acts but of that which is the origin of them) was judged at the cross when He who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). And we learn that in the mind of God we are associated with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, and thus, as descendants of the first Adam, we have passed into nonexistence, but have also partaken of the risen life of Christ beyond the judicial death. And this instruction brings us to the exhortation with which we opened this evening.

RECKONING OURSELVES DEAD TO SIN

The apostle had spoken of the death of the Lord Jesus, and that He now lives to God in a state altogether apart from sin. The Lord passed through this evil world uncontaminated by sin within and without. He went to the cross absolutely pure, but was there made vicariously the abhorrent thing, and judged on account of it. But rising from the dead and being exalted by the right hand of God, a new state of things ensued—a new creation—of which Christ is the Head. And in this newness of life sin is a past thing.

The apostle therefore directs believers to regard themselves as having already passed from death to life where Christ is: “Likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (ver. 11).

This verb “reckon” carries us back to the fourth chapter of this Epistle, where we read of God reckoning Abraham righteous because of his faith. The patriarch believed God in a matter which seemed in itself most improbable. For in the ordinary course of nature it seemed an incredible thing that blessing should flow to the earth through the unborn seed of an old man and woman. But Abraham believed the LORD and His promises, and this was counted to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6). God looking down from heaven regarded Abraham as a righteous man. His faith was in connection with the seed which was to come, that is, Christ; and indeed this confidence was true also of all the Old Testament saints. There might be and was failure, as there were faults; but wheresoever there was faith in the Coming One it was reckoned for righteousness.

Here we are exhorted to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. It must be carefully observed that this is an exercise of faith. If we consider ourselves conscientiously we shall find ourselves capable of sinning, if not actually sinning. We fail to find inward or subjective evidence that we are dead to sin. But faith accepts the testimony of the word of God that I am associated with Christ in both death and resurrection. Hence I am dead to the dominant power of sin and alive heavenward. This status I must accept if I believe God rather than self.

TO GOD OR TO SELF?

We must broaden our views of what sin really means. Taken comprehensively it includes all that lacks due reference to God. Actions precisely similar in outward appearance may nevertheless differ in essential quality and value according as they are done to self or to God.

An instance of this is recorded in the Gospels. It occurred in the temple courts at the time when the offerings were being placed in the treasury chest. Here was an opportunity of making a sacrifice to God by depositing a sum of money for the use of the temple service. Many rich and influential persons gave substantial amounts, doing so in an ostentatious manner to attract the attention and admiration of their neighbors. Thus the offertory became to them a means of self-advertisement, and they gained as their reward the notice of their fellows.

But the Lord observed among the offerers a person of another order. There was a poor widowed heart in the company overwhelmed with gratitude and praise to God. Something had happened in her experience which caused her to be full of thanksgiving to God who had granted her some special fullness of blessing. She was therefore impelled to offer some sacrifice of her goods to His service (Luke 21:1-4)

What should she render to the Lord for all His benefits? Two mites constituted her sole livelihood. Under such circumstances should she not divide the small pittance, giving a part and reserving a part? From the point of view of what is called practical economics this course would seem the more reasonable. But the widow did not regard the matter from the standpoint of her own present or future needs, for she was full of a sense of the great kindness of Jehovah to her. She resolved she would not hold back anything, being a contrast with Ananias and Sapphira of a later day. She placed her all in the box—not the widow's mite, but her two mites. Her gift was to God. She gained the victory over self, and everything being offered to God, the gift was appraised by the heavenly standard. Her motives gave the sacrifice of her goods a value above that of all the rest.

Another example of this truth is to be gathered from the Epistle to the Philippians. Paul, by reference to himself, shows how worthless, though moral in themselves, acts become when the will of God is contravened. In the third chapter he speaks of himself and of what he was before he knew the Lord. He enumerates the privileges he possessed at that time only to pronounce them to be not only valueless but even offensive. His circumcision and law-keeping were quite proper matters for satisfaction until he learned the super-excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

The qualities he names are not such as are sinful in themselves, but such as might reasonably give him confidence in the flesh. And the flesh is not necessarily the evil principle. It is the natural way of doing things, that is, always acting from the individual's own standpoint, without looking above and seeking the will of God.

Saul of Tarsus before his conversion had a position of pre-eminence. If any one might have confidence in the flesh, he most surely might have done so. Did he not contend zealously for the law? Was he not desirous of keeping it to its most minute particular? Yet at the very time during which he supposed he was doing God service he was persecuting the church of God.

Touching the righteousness of the law, he was blameless. Can you imagine anything more desirable in a man? In outward demeanor he was perfect and upright so far as the eye could see. But having learned the truth of the person of the Christ in glory, he counted the whole of his own attainments in this respect as nothing and worse than that.

He wrote then quietly in prison, looking back upon his past life in the light he had received through advancing years, without a warped imagination and without self-deception, and he describes his early days as blameless. The statement is a remarkable one; but whatever gain this unblemished character might have been to him he counted it but loss for Christ. He reckoned himself to be dead indeed to those things and alive to God through Jesus Christ the Lord. The things he mentions had no more effect upon him than upon a dead person.

This piece of autobiography is an illustration of our text. What Paul wrote by way of doctrine in Romans, he exemplified from his own life in Philippians. In the earlier Epistle he spoke of being alive to God through Christ Jesus the Lord. In the later we see the activities of that life expressing themselves in intensity of desire and earnestness of effort.

There was therefore a continuity in the life of the apostle. He did not depart from the self-renunciation of his early days. His enthusiasm did not wane as trials and persecutions multiplied. Neither did self assume a Christian garb. Christ was the dominating object before him, as the Epistle to the Philippians reveals. In practice he was still reckoning himself dead to sin, but alive to God.

THE REIGN OF SIN

We now come to a further exhortation: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof” (ver. 12). The truth underlying this command is that in our natural state the inward evil principle lords it over us completely. The whole person is carried away by selfish pursuits and pleasures, and from this bondage the gospel delivers us, bringing us tinder a new Master, even Jesus the Lord.

To Him we are called to yield ourselves as those who are alive from the dead. We are not free agents in the sense of being “our own,” but we are His who died for us and rose again. We cannot plan to serve the Lord to-day or to-morrow as it may suit us. In such matters self has no right to rule or to decide. We are delivered from its reign, and Christian service is but to give Christ His own.

YIELDING OURSELVES AND OUR MEMBERS

From verse 13 we gather that there are two divisions in the act of surrender. The act is to apply to the person as a whole, and to the various separate powers he possesses. “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

We have then to present self, that is, to present the entire being, spirit, soul and body. This we offer to Him as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, our reasonable service. The whole entity is His, and we “yield ourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead.”

This act may be called consecration or dedication, or whatever you please. But in fact it constitutes the heart's response to the living Lord, from the initial stage of its history. Saul of Tarsus from the dust said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” In self-abnegation he placed himself unreservedly at the Master's disposal. This surrender was, of course, in principle at first, but he followed on in that attitude of heart, schooling and educating himself physically and morally to do the will of God in all things, all his members subjugated and working together harmoniously to this common end.

JUSTIFICATION OF LIFE

The apostle brings in practical righteousness as the outcome of such service as this, “Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” “Being then made free from sin ye became the servants of righteousness.” “Now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”

In the previous chapters of this Epistle the apostle treats of that judicial righteousness which we receive through faith. But the concomitant effect upon the believer is to make his conduct righteous also. Righteous actions or “works” are the evidence of inward faith. So James instructs us. He says, “Faith without works is dead,” and he refers to the case of Abraham. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” (James 2:20, 21).

Now the patriarch believed God some forty years before the sacrifice of Isaac. It was a settled thing between God and him. God promised; Abraham believed God; and He counted it to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6). But this righteousness of faith was to be demonstrated before men, and on mount Moriah Abraham's life was justified by his actions.

FRUIT UNTO HOLINESS

“But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (ver. 22). Holiness implies separation to the service of God. The vessels of the tabernacle and of the temple were holy, for they were used exclusively in the worship of Jehovah. When Belshazzar used them at his revels, the judgment of God fell upon the impious king.

Believers are holy vessels belonging to God, and placed here in the world for His service. Filled with Christ, what use may we not be to thirsty souls? The result of our yielding ourselves up as bondslaves to God will be “fruit unto holiness.”

It involves an error to think of holiness only from its negative side; for it implies much more than the absence of sin. Consideration of this aspect alone leads to a morbid state in which there is often a long and unavailing struggle to attain to this condition. The whole truth is that holiness is positive as well as negative. It expresses itself in an absolute devotion to God. The holy are His instruments. When God takes hold of a man, the divine touch makes him holy.

We are therefore to yield ourselves to God as those that are alive to Him, not keeping back a part like Ananias and Sapphira, whose devotion was a pretense and abomination to God. Such fruit was not unto holiness.

SIN'S WAGES AND GOD'S GIFT

The apostle concludes this section with the weighty declaration, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (ver. 23). This is one of the few instances of the mention of eternal life in the writings of Paul. In John the subject abounds both in his Gospel and in his Epistles. The two apostles, however, are in no sense in opposition to one another, but were inspired to record different views of the same blessing of God for man through His grace.

Paul shows us eternal life in its activities in the justified person — the new life which is in a risen Savior. Instead of corruption and death which are the emoluments of a life of sin, God bestows eternal life through Jesus Christ. Through the grace of God, we are justified by faith, for Jesus the Lord was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification; and that great sacrifice made way for us to be delivered from the thralldom in which we were once held to the evil propensities of our nature.

This then is the new life which God gives. He has made us free to live to Him and to serve Him in the name of Jesus Christ. W. J. H.

Bearing Twelve Fruits

Revelation 22:2

Although the precise force of the original be doubtful, i.e., whether we should interpret the words that literally signify “bearing twelve fruits,” as meaning merely fresh fruits, or, as we would Fain take it, if not too precarious a conclusion, twelve manner of fruits, as the Authorized Version gives it, in either case a wonderful richness of Divine blessing is promised for the millennial day. Undoubtedly there will be perennial freshness, but it would be only in keeping with what we know, each in our measure, of God's lavish largess, may we say, to His children, if the words (ποιοῦνκαρποὺς δώδεκα) point to a full circle, as it were—a most opulent variety in the spiritual food that will be administered on the renovated earth. And, if so, or, rather, since it is so, how much greater will be the fullness of fruition in the heavenly scene Truly, as one has said, it will be, “Taste after taste, upheld with kindlier change.” But indeed the very fact of the almost bewildering variety of flower and fruit, with which the goodness of Providence has blest even this transitory scene of human life, points to at least as great bounty for the millennium, and, as we have said, how much more for the consummation of that which is heavenly. R.B.

Erratum

ERRATA Page 317, The Use and Misuse of Truth. line 7 should begin with capital A.

Page 318, col. 2, sixth line from bottom, read “That as in the case of Joshua and by the Psalmist in Psalm i., and by James in the New Testament,' the Holy Spirit indicated the pathway.”

Page 319, col. 1, line 17, read” will assuredly lead to a right use.”

Page 330, col. i, delete line 7 and insert in next column between lines 10 and 11.

Published

LONDON

F. E. RACE, Publisher; 3 & 4, London House Yard, Paternoster Row, E.C.

Studies in Mark 6:6-13: The Twelve Commissioned

6:6-13

THE TWELVE COMMISSIONED

“And he went round about the villages teaching. And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits; and he charged them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no bread, no wallet, no money in their purse; but to go shod with sandals: and, said he, put not on two coats. And he said unto them, Wheresoever ye enter into a house, there abide till ye depart thence. And whatsoever place shall not receive you, and they hear you not, as ye go forth thence, shake off the dust that is under your feet for a testimony unto them. And they went out, and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (vi. 6-13, R.V.).

The re-iterated rebuff which the Lord received at Nazareth did not deter Him from continuing His service. In unabated diligence He went on with His work, going round the Galilean towns and villages teaching. This Gospel throws into special prominence the zealous activities of the Servant of Jehovah. At the same time it shows that the end of His labor, judged from the common standpoint of human life, was not such as is usually seen in the careers of busy public men. “Seest thou a man diligent in business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men” (Prov. 22:29). The Lord stood before kings truly, but He stood before them not for reward, but for unjust condemnation. From the outset He knew that He was going on to be “numbered with the transgressors"; but He shunned no man, standing in lowly submission before the obscure men of Nazareth to serve even them—only they could not endure Him.

These men of Nazareth were full of unbelief, and “where there was this unbelief, our Lord would not remove it by dazzling feats of power, because there would have been no moral worth in a result so produced. He had given already abundant signs to unbelief; but men had not profited by them, neither was the word that He spake mixed with faith in them that heard it. The consequence was that He ‘could there do no mighty work’; as here only it is recorded—yes, of the Man before whom no power of Satan, no disease of man, nothing above or around or beneath could prove the smallest difficulty. But God's glory, God's will governed all; and the display of perfect power was in perfect lowliness of obedience. “Therefore this Blessed One could there do no mighty work. It is needless to say that it was no question of power as to Himself. It was not in any wise that His saving arm was shortened; not that there was no virtue in Him any longer, but there was the lovely blending of the moral glorifying of God with all that was wrought for man.

“In other words, we have not here the mere setting forth of the power of Jesus, but the gospel of His ministry. Therefore it is a weighty part of this, that because of unbelief He could do no mighty work there. He was really serving God; and if man only is seen, not God, we may wonder that He could do no mighty work there. But what at first sight seems strange, the moment you take it in connection with the object of God in what He is revealing, becomes striking, plain and instructive.”

THE TWELVE SUMMONED FOR ACTIVE SERVICE

During, or at the conclusion of this Galilean circuit, the Lord called the twelve to Him, and formally despatched them in various directions for the work of preaching. They had hitherto been “with Him” to learn from His own lips the nature and character of His teaching. Thus we read that He “went about through the cities and villages preaching and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God; and with him the twelve” (Luke 8:1). This companionship with the Master was specified in the original terms of their apostolate. The record of their call is that the Lord “appointed twelve that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to cast out demons” (Mark 3:14, 15).

Mark accordingly shows how the chosen band accompanied the Master and how they were instructed by Him in the things of the kingdom of God, set out in parables which He afterward expounded to them (chap. 4), while they were also made witnesses of His power over the elements of nature (4:35-41) and over unclean spirits and disease, and even over death (chap. 5). This comprised their training for service. At the fountain-head they learned what they were to preach, and, more important still, what a transcendent power was behind the ministry of the kingdom to make it effectual.

The discipline of the inward man for days of suffering and disappointment is not noted here as elsewhere. The immediate object of their mission on this occasion was to announce the gospel of the kingdom of God—to make known what they had seen and what they had heard. And this feature of personal acquaintance must, of necessity, characterize all divine testimony (1 John 1:1).

The twelve disciples were now sent forth by the Lord in twos, Mark alone recording this arrangement. The lists of the names of the apostles are arranged in pairs (Matt. 10:2-4; Luke 6:14-16), and this dual arrangement may therefore indicate the order adopted by the Lord in sending them to preach. At any rate two ensured mutual help and adequate testimony.

As the Lord's purpose was to send them to preach, so it was to bestow upon them power over demons (3:15). They were able to exhibit the credentials of apostles— “signs and wonders and mighty works” (2 Cor. 12:12). They were able to produce marvelous acts which were samples of the “powers of the age to come.” They were sent into the domain of the prince of this world to announce the imminence of the kingdom of Jehovah and His anointed; and in the commission for this service the Lord showed His divine power and Godhead by bestowing upon His followers authority over the demon-servants of Satan. A mere man could never delegate to others such power over unclean spirits; but Jesus possessed this authority Himself (1:27), and moreover imparted it to the twelve.

PERSONAL DIRECTIONS

The Lord gave the apostles precise directions with regard to their outfit for this traveling mission. Their preparations were to be marked by lowliness and simplicity. How incongruous any appearance of luxury and pomp would have been in the emissaries of the poor and despised Nazarene. Accordingly the apostles were to take nothing for their journey, save a staff only. This article was essential to the poorest traveler. Jacob, referring to his poverty when fleeing to Padan-aram, and contrastedly to the riches he possessed on his return, said, “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two companies” (Gen. 32:10).

Further, the apostles were prohibited from taking with them any bread, or any bag to carry provisions, or any money in their girdle to purchase necessaries even. They were to use ordinary footwear, and not to put on two coats. Though invested with inimitable power over unclean demons, they were to be in circumstances which would make them outwardly dependent upon the “cold charities” of a selfish world.

By these directions the apostles were prepared to learn by experience the elementary but fundamentally important lesson of spiritual service, viz., dependence upon God for those things after which the Gentiles habitually seek (Matt. 6:32). They would find during their mission that their Master had the control of providence as well as of winds and waves and demons. And we know historically from their own confession that the Lord did care for them without fail. He Himself said to them on the night of His betrayal, “When I sent you forth without purse and wallet and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing.” But from that time onward their circumstances would alter, for He said, intimating the approaching change, “But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it and likewise a wallet; and he that hath none, let him sell his cloak and buy a sword” (Luke 22:35, 36).

These instructions of the Lord all point to the simplicity which, it was His will, should mark them as His servants. So Paul wrote to Timothy, “No soldier on service entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath enrolled him as a soldier” (2 Tim. 2:4). The absence of luggage would enable them to be more expeditious in their traveling. Their work was among the simple peasantry of Galilee where signs of affluence would hinder the reception of their preaching. Besides, if they possessed two coats, for instance, would it not have been their duty to have imparted one to him that had none (Luke 3:11)?

The following remarks on the subject were made by a traveler in the East. “The entire ‘outfit' of these first missionaries shows that they were plain fishermen, farmers or shepherds; and to such men there was no extraordinary self-denial in the matter or the mode of their mission. We may expound the ‘instructions ' given to these primitive evangelists somewhat after the following manner: “Provide neither silver, nor gold, nor brass in your purses. You are going to your brethren in the neighboring villages, and the best way to get to their hearts and their confidence is to throw yourself upon their hospitality. Nor was there any departure from the simple manners of the country in this. At this day the farmer sets out on excursions quite as extensive, without a para in his purse; and the modern Moslem prophet of Tarshiha thus sends forth his apostles over this identical region. Neither do they encumber themselves with two coats. They are accustomed to sleep in the garments they have on during the day, and in this climate such plain people experience no inconvenience from it. They wear a coarse shoe, answering to the sandal of the ancients, but never take two pairs of them; and although the staff is an invariable companion of all wayfarers, they are content with one.”

THE PREACHING OF REPENTANCE

These twelve men went forth therefore in six different directions, and the burden of their message wherever they went was that men should repent. The verb “repent,” and its related noun, “repentance,” only occur three times in the Gospel of Mark; for the words, “to repentance,” in 2:17, are omitted in critical editions of the New Testament. The occurrences, however, illustrate the unity of purpose in the Gospel. They are the following:

(1) “John came who baptized in the wilderness, and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins” (1:4).

(2) “Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel” (1:15).

(3) “And they [the twelve apostles] went out, and preached that men should repent” (6:12).

The continuity of the testimony to the fundamental necessity for man's repentance in view of the coming kingdom is strikingly shown by this sequence. What John the Baptist declared, the Lord emphasized, and the twelve echoed: Except men repented they would all perish. But should one sinner only repent on earth, this would become an occasion of rejoicing in heaven, as the Lord Himself declared (Luke 15).

But scripture is clear that repentance was and is a necessity for men—not only in the land of Israel but in all the world. It is therein placed on record that the Lord before His departure instructed the apostles that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Paul also, “the apostle of the uncircumcision,” in harmony with this commission to the twelve, announced in Athens that now, in contrast with the former times, God “commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

There is therefore a necessity, and an urgent necessity, enforced by divine command, and laid upon men without exception for that radical change which is implied by the scriptural term “repentance.” It is, however, outside our present purpose to discuss whether this change is one (1) of heart or disposition, (2) of mind or thought, (3) of aim or purpose, or (4) of life or conduct. The essential fact to note is that repentance involves change, and that of the most Momentous nature. Inwardly, this change extends to the deepest springs of a man's conduct; outwardly, it corrects his attitude Godward, for repentance is primarily “toward God” (Acts 20:21), being also manward by inevitable consequence.

This need for repentance was insisted upon in view of the earthly kingdom as it was presented in the days of our Lord, and it was no less pressed in the preaching of the heavenly kingdom in the days of the apostles. Paul himself declared how he testified to Jews and Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God and do works worthy of repentance (Acts 26:20), the last phrase being an echo of the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt. 3:8).

This necessity rests, not upon the avowedly impenitent only, but upon those who bear the name of Christ. Witness the messages of the Lord Himself to the seven churches of Asia. Five of them, Ephesus, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis and Laodicea, are definitely exhorted to repentance (Rev. 2:5, 16, 22; 3:3, 19). Judgment will begin with the unrepentant in the house of God, therefore let every man beware lest he cherish the vain delusion that he is one of the “ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”

STAFF AND STAVES

The prohibition of the Lord having reference to a staff shows some variation in the records of the first three Evangelists. The passages are as follows—

(1) Matt.. 10:9, 10: “Provide neither gold, nor silver... nor yet staves.” The Revised Version reads, “Get you no gold nor silver... nor staff.”

(2)Mark 6:8: He charged “them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only." The R.V. and the A.V. are in agreement here.

(3) Luke 9:3: “He said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip.” The R.V. reads “staff” not “staves.”

The variation in the phrase, taking the readings adopted by the Revisers, may thus be set out—

(1) MATT.: Do not get a staff.

(2) MARK: Take a staff only.

(3) LUKE: Do not take a staff.

Thus, the critics allege that according to both Matthew and Luke, the apostles were forbidden to take a staff, while according to Mark they were permitted to do so. It is true also that Matthew and Mark differ in their phraseology. The former forbids the apostles to get or to provide a staff, that is, in addition to the usual one, while the latter grants permission to them to take a “staff only,” but not one additional to the ordinary one. Understood in this sense, the difference in the phrases does not constitute any essential disagreement between the two statements.

The expression in Luke at first sight raises a difficulty, since it seems to say, Do not take a staff at all, in opposition to Mark. But the “discrepancy” is only an apparent one, for it will be observed that the prohibition is directed entirely to the preparation for the journey contemplated, and the staff is included with the scrip and bread and money: “Take nothing for your journey, neither staff nor scrip nor bread nor money.” The very commonest article was not to be procured by the twelve in view of their mission. They might make use of the ordinary walking staff, but they might not provide one specially for their new enterprise.

This seems to be the simple and unstrained solution of the problem, and preferable to the elaborate and forced hypothesis of McClellan, who supposes that the word staff is used in these passages in a double sense, viz., (1) the staff for traveling, and (2) the staff of apostolic office. The latter they were enjoined to take, but not the former. This is pure assumption, and is altogether unnecessary for adequate explanation of the passages; for the plain import of the phrases in all three evangelists is that the apostles were not to make any special preparation for the journey.

ANOINTING WITH OIL

The apostles in the course of their ministry “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them.” The circumstance of the anointing is only mentioned in Mark, but the healing of the sick is also associated with oil in the Epistle of James: “Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:14).

It is known that oil was used throughout the East as a remedial agent. Not to make reference beyond the Bible, the Good Samaritan administered oil as well as wine to the wounded man (Luke 10:34). Isaiah refers to the mollification of wounds with oil (Isa. 1:6). Is it not therefore reasonable to suppose that the disciples and the elders of the church applied oil to sick persons, as a natural remedy, this being a simple specific within the power of those lacking medical knowledge and skill? And they did so, relying on the power and blessing of the Lord to make the means efficacious. Further than this we have no warrant for imitating their example in these days.

THE WORDS OMITTED IN VERSE 11 BY THE REVISERS

The latter part of verse 11 in the Authorized Version (161.1) contains the solemn warning by our Lord against such as refused the preaching of the apostles: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. [Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city].”

The Revisers (1882) substitute “whatsoever place” for “whosoever,” and omit, without any marginal comment, the whole of the words placed between the brackets []. It is true that the words thus deleted in this Gospel are found in substance in two others, viz., in Matthew (10:15) and in Luke (10:12), so that the general truth of the warning clause expunged in Mark is still maintained by these passages; but the question may well be asked on what grounds the omission is made in the Second Gospel.

It is not, however, proposed to discuss in these notes the adequacy or otherwise of the evidence upon which these words are denied a place in Mark's Gospel, but it may sufficiently serve a useful purpose to point to this passage as one among many others in the New Testament where, in the opinion of scholars competent to judge in matters of textual authority, the Revisers were unduly influenced by the testimony of a few ancient witnesses to disregard that of the more numerous documents.

The late Mr. Kelly, writing in July, 1881, on the “Revised New Testament," a month or two after its publication, said in reference to this passage, “The latter half of chapter 6:11 seems an accommodation from Matthew 11 and Luke 10 with changes. Yet the ancient testimony is so ample (eleven uncials, nearly all the cursives, and some of the best versions) that it surprises one to see no remark in the margin on such a difference,” that is, on such an extensive omission in the face of weighty evidence for its retention.

The summary treatment of this passage by the Revisers is adversely criticized, but more decisively than by Mr. Kelly, in a posthumous work of Dean Burg-on, arranged and edited by Prebendary Miller. He rightly points out how destructive of the individuality of the Gospels such unwarranted excision becomes. These are his words: “The value—may I not say the use?—of these delicate differences of detail becomes apparent whenever the genuineness of the text is called in question.” He then goes on to refer to the words withdrawn from Mark. “It is pretended,” he says, “that this [passage] is nothing else but an importation from the parallel place of Matthew's Gospel (10:15). But that is impossible for, as the reader sees at a glance, a delicate but decisive note of discrimination has been set on the two places. Mark writes, Σοδὁμοις ἢ Γομόρροις; Matthew, γη Σοδόμων καὶ Γομὸρρων. And this threefold, or rather fourfold, diversity of expression has existed from the beginning; for it has been faithfully retained all down the ages; it exists to this hour in every known copy of the Gospel, except of course those nine which omit the sentence altogether. There can be therefore no doubt about its genuineness. The critics of the modern school (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort) seek in vain to put upon us a mutilated text by omitting those fifteen words. The two places are clearly independent of one another.

“It does but remain to point out that the exclusion of these fifteen words from the text of Mark has merely resulted from the influence of the parallel place in Luke's Gospel (9:5), where nothing whatever is found corresponding with Matt. 10:15, [or] Mark 6:11."

The passage in Luke 9:5 refers to the rejection of the apostles' preaching, but has no warning based on the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrha. The Revisers have made Mark agree with Luke by omitting the clause. It must be noted, however, that the warning occurs in the following chapter of Luke, though in slightly different terms, being applied to the city rejecting the witness of the Seventy: “It shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city” (Luke 10:11, 12).

It will be gathered from the above criticism that the internal evidence for the exclusion of this passage is very weak, just as the external evidence is very scanty. The assumption that the words were inserted in the Gospel of Mark by some scribes in order to agree with either Matthew or Luke rests upon a most slender basis.

(1) If the words were taken from Matthew, why is there such diversity still remaining? Matthew reads “for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah,” but Mark reads “for Sodom and Gomorrah.” In the Greek the distinction in the words is more apparent still, because the proper names have different case—endings in the two Gospels—in Matthew the genitive case is used, and in Mark the dative. The conjunction differs also: in Matthew καὶ (and), in Mark ἢ (or). These points of difference are not likely to have occurred if the phrase in question was copied into Mark from Matthew, as the critics allege.

(2) Neither does it appear that Mark copied from Luke, for the latter names only Sodom, but Mark both Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, Luke has “in that day,” but Mark has “in the day of judgment.” These verbal distinctions make it most improbable that the sentence was added from Luke. Besides, it has already been noted that the Lord's warning is given in Luke in connection with the preaching of the Seventy and not with that of the Twelve as in Mark.

It seems therefore incredible that the received text in Mark 6:11 should possess so many indications of originality if of spurious origin. And we may still reflect upon the significant fact that all three Gospels unite to show that not temporal only but eternal issues hung upon the acceptance or rejection of the apostles' preaching.

W. J. H.

Notes on Luke 20-22

CHAPTER 20.

The first question raised was by the scribes, as to the authority of Christ and its source. Jesus questions them about the baptism of John: Was it from heaven or of men? They reasoned without conscience. They owned their incompetency, rather than acknowledge His Messiahship. The simple child of God receives the word as certainly as Christ gives it. Reliance on God's word is the only sure ground. How can you be certain? God has said it. If God's speaking requires proof, I must have something more sure and true than God. Is the church? Alas! alas!... If God cannot speak so as to claim authority, without another to accredit what He says, there is no such thing as faith.

The parable of the husbandmen (vers. 9-16) sets forth the Lord's dealings with Israel, to whom the vineyard was first let, and, upon the rejection of “the Heir,” the gift of it to others. Nor was this all. The rejected stone becomes the head of the corner. Whosoever fell on that stone should be broken; but on whomsoever it fell, utter destruction would be the result. The past sins of Jerusalem illustrate the first; for the second we must wait for the execution of judgment when the Lord appears.

Verse 19. The question of tribute to Cesar was very subtle. They used the effect of their own wickedness to tempt the Lord. Abstractedly the Jews ought not to have been subject to the Gentiles. And, moreover, the Messiah was come, the Deliverer of Israel. If He said, “Obey the Gentiles,” where was His delivering power? If He said, “Rebel,” they would have had an excuse to deliver Him to Pilate. Because of Israel's sin, God has broken down the key-stone of nations, and given power to the Gentile. The Jew has been rebellious under the sentence, and ever craving deliverance from their thralldom. But the Lord answered with divine wisdom. He put them exactly in the place where their sin had put them: Caesar's things are to be rendered to Caesar, and God's things to God.

After settling the question as to this world between God and the people, He next meets the Sadducean or skeptical difficulty as to the next world (vers. 27-38). The Lord shows the place of the risen saints in entire contrast with the world. The idea of a general resurrection is set aside. If all rise together, there is uncertainty, a common judgment, etc.; but if the saints are raised by themselves because they are children of God, leaving the rest of the dead for another and distinctive resurrection—a resurrection of judgment, all is changed. No passage of scripture speaks of both rising together. The resurrection is that which most of all distinguishes, and this forever. It is the grand testimony to the difference between good and bad. The saint will be raised because of the Spirit of Christ that dwells in him the application to his body of that power of life in Christ which has already quickened his soul. It is a resurrection from among the dead, as was Christ's. So here, “they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that age,” for such it is, “and the resurrection from the dead"..."they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God.” Luke adds another characteristic point omitted elsewhere; “all live unto him.” It is the present blessed living unto God of those who have died, and await the resurrection from among the dead.

Then in verses 41-44 the Lord puts His question, “How is David's Son, David's Lord? This was just what the Jews could not understand. It was the hinge on which turned the change in the whole moral system. He had taken the place of the holy dependent One, a pilgrim as others, and He had drunk of the brook by the way. He was going on in meekness and quietness, but living by the refreshments which came from God His Father. Thus having emptied Himself, humbled Himself, He is now exalted by God. This great universal principle, “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he that exalteth himself shall be abased,” is fully exemplified in the two Adams. The first Adam, man's nature, would exalt itself to be “as God,” until in its full ripeness Antichrist will exalt himself above that is called God, or that is worshipped.

Satan tempted man at the beginning to make himself like God, and at the end God shall send them strong delusion to believe a lie. Satan, not being able to exalt himself in heaven, will attempt to do it through the seed of man; but in the end shall be abased (Isa. 14:12-15). In the “last Adam” we have Him who was God humbling, going down, becoming obedient unto death, even the vilest, and then we see that humbled One going back to the place of power at God's right hand, but as man as well as God. God highly exalted Him, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow. Having been obedient all through, in humiliation, He is exalted to be David's Lord. This took Him out of the line of Jewish promises, though as David's Son of course He had them.

The Jews did not understand the scriptures, and fulfilled them though not understanding them. God's ways have gone on through all, manifesting His grace and patience towards man. He placed man on the earth, and then sent law, prophets, etc., until man gets to the end in rejecting all. God tries man and then brings in the new man, who is the fulfillment of all His blessed counsels—the second Man. Then He takes up the last Adam as the heavenly man into a heavenly place and all now depends not on the responsibility of man, but on the stability of God. Life, righteousness, and glory descend from heaven. Is it life that is needed? God gives the life of Christ in resurrection. Is it righteousness? It is a divine righteousness that God gives. Is it a kingdom? It is the kingdom of heaven. All flows down not simply from God in grace, but from the place which man has in glory, from the counsels of God about the heavenly man in glory. He has first taken Him up, and thence the blessing flows down. The man Christ Jesus has fully met all man's responsibilities. This is the reason of the fullness of the blessing of the gospel, and also that of the kingdom to come. The gospel is the power of God, and the kingdom is to be set up in heaven. The King is gone into the far country; and when He returns, it will be to bring in the kingdom of heaven. All the counsels of God now take their center and seat in heaven. Thus, in the largest way, the turning-point in all the plans and counsels of God is Jesus being set at the right hand of God. All the character, the stability, and the perfectness of our blessing takes its source from the exalted Jesus. The character of it is heavenly; the stability is what God has done; and the righteousness that fits me for it is God's.

The Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, has come down to bear witness to Him, on whom the peace of the soul rests, even on the accomplished righteousness of Him who is taken up into glory. His office is to work within, and make us down here manifest what God is. All this we have as the result of Christ—instead of accomplishing the promises as David's Son—bringing them in as David's Lord.

Mark the moral blessedness of this general principle: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Christ humbled Himself—not was humbled, that is another thing. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” That is what we are to do—take the lowest place. We cannot do this till we are Christians; but it is our glory to take the lowest, and hear Him say, “Come up higher.” “He hath left us an example that we should follow his steps.” The Lord Jesus has been rejected as David's Son; He will come forth as David's Lord.

Now, while He is thus hidden, we sec the church's place. We are “hid with Christ in God,” and have our portion by faith, as united to Him, while He is out of sight. The Holy Ghost, having come down, gives us a place as associated with Him in all the blessedness of the Father's house, and in all the glory which He has to be displayed by-and-by.

The place of Eve was one of union with Adam in the dominion over all things (Gen. 1:26-28; 5:2). We find the church in the display of Christ's glory only as by grace, the bride and companion of Christ; never as part of the inheritance. Viewed even, individually, we are “joint-heirs with Christ.” It is of the last importance to the saints in these days to apprehend the distinct place which we have, as one with Christ, the heavenly Man.

CHAPTER 21.

At the close of chapter 20 and the beginning of chapter 21 we have a most instructive, though painful, contrast between the selfish hypocrisy of the scribes, whom He condemns before the people, and the real devoted love of the widow, whom He singles out for honor. Remark also that the Lord knows how, to separate the intention of a sincere soul from the system that surrounds it, judging the whole state of that with which the individual is associated. Observe, further, the difference of giving one's living and one's superfluity. It is easy to compliment God with presents, and thus really minister to self; but she who gives her living gives herself in devotedness to God, and proves her dependence on God. Thus, the two mites of her who had these only expressed all this perfectly: for there was need and everything else to hinder, while the applause of men and the pride of the donor found no place here. For Jewish splendor the act had little worth; but the Lord saw, and bore witness of, the poor widow, blessed in her deed.

Verses 5-24. The account which the Lord gives in this Gospel of the sorrows of Jerusalem is also, like the preceding, much more allied to the simple fact of the judgment on the nation and the change of dispensation. It differs much from Matt. 24, which fully refers to what is to arrive at the end; while our Gospel bears, more than the first two, on the then present time and setting aside of Jerusalem. Hence, Luke plainly sets forth the siege and destruction by Titus, and the times of the Gentiles.

Let it be observed also that the question in verse 7 extends only to the predicted destruction. Consequently, in what follows, we have the judgment on the nation taken as a whole, from its then destruction till the times of the Gentiles (with whose economy this Gospel is so much occupied) be fulfilled. Nation should rise against nation, signs from heaven and sorrows on earth follow. And before all these the disciples would be objects of hostility, but this would turn for a testimony instead of destroying theirs. They were to go on testifying, while the unhappy devoted city, where they were, filled up its iniquity. The Lord would permit trial, but not a hair of their head would be lost. But this would close. The sign given here is in no wise the abomination of desolation, but an historical fact—Jerusalem encompassed with armies. Its desolation now approached. They were then to flee, not to return. These were days of vengeance (it is not said of the unprecedented tribulation, as in Matthew, which is only in the latter day). All that was written was to be fulfilled. Great distress there was in the land, and wrath on this people. Slaughter first and captivity afterward wrought their cruel work of devastation, and Jerusalem till this hour abides the boast and prey of Gentile lords; and so must it be till their day is over.

In these earlier verses (8-19) the Lord dwells on the dangers, duties, and trials of the disciples before the sack of Titus. Specially were they to beware of a pretended deliverer, and of the cry that the time (that is, of deliverance) was at hand. Neither were they to be terrified by wars or commotions, any more than seduced by fair promises. These things must first be but the end not immediately. Besides, it was not only confusion, and woes and signs of coming change and evil outside; before all these they themselves were to be in affliction and persecution for Christ's sake.

Then in verses 20-94, comes the actual judgment of the city and people, already judged virtually by His rejection. This extends down, to our own days in principle. But all is not yet fulfilled. For in verse 25 begins the Lord's description of the closing scene—a judgment not on the Jews merely, but on the Gentiles also; for the powers of the heavens, the source of authority, shall be shaken, as in Hag. 2 and Heb. 12. This is not said to be immediately after the siege of Titus; but on the contrary, room is left for the long course of treading down of Jerusalem under Gentiles, till their times are run out. It is in Matthew that we must look for the great tribulation of the last days, occupied as the first Evangelist is with the consequences of Messiah's rejection, especially to Israel. Therefore it is said there, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days,” that is, the short crisis of “Jacob's trouble” yet to come. Here, however, after mention of the times of the Gentiles, it is said that “there shall be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and waves roaring, men's hearts failing them,” etc. Men were astounded because they saw not the end, and trembled as they were dragged along to some unknown awful conclusion. For principles were at work, they knew not how, dragging them along whether or no.

The coming of the Son of man disclosed all the scene to the disciples. But it is clear from the circumstances, and especially from the character of the redemption spoken of (ver. 28), that it is a question, not of Christians, but of earthly disciples, and of an earthly deliverance by judgment here below. The Lord in mercy turns the terror of man into a sign of deliverance for the remnant of that day.

Verses 31, 32 are interesting in this point of view here, because they furnish remarkable evidence, first, that the kingdom of God does not mean the gospel of His grace; and, secondly, that this generation cannot refer to the space of time from the prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem. 1. For when they see these things coming to pass (and He had spoken of the final, universal trouble for the whole habitable earth, and not merely of what has befallen the Jews), they are to conclude that the kingdom of God is nigh. Now, even if it were only the Romans taking away their place and nation, and still more if it include the latter-day trouble, it is undeniable that the gospel had extended far and wide before the first. In fact, the manifestation of its influence was declining rather before that time, as we see in the later Epistles. But the things here seen were signs like the budding of the trees, and the kingdom of God is evidently to be at the coming of the King, when the Lord God Almighty takes His great power and reigns. That there was a partial analogous judgment when Jerusalem fell, is true, but verses 25-28 ought to leave no doubt of a wider subsequent judgment, with signs which introduce, not the sorrows of the Jews, but the Son of man coming in His kingdom. 2. For a similar reason, “this generation” does not apply to a mere lifetime, but is viewed morally, as in Deut. 32, Psa. 12, and many other scriptures. It is here expressly put at the close, after not only the fall of Jerusalem, but the totally distinct scene of Christ's coming in power and glory.

The expression in verse 33 is very solemn. Deeper interests were involved than a casual change as to Jerusalem. The time was wrapped up in purposed obscurity, but nothing more sure than the facts predicted.

The Lord provided for His then disciples what was needful, but has also, in the written word, for the like times to come. Still, though the principle be always true, verse 34 clearly applies to a day to come on the earth. The privilege is to escape the judgments, and stand before the Son of man. This again is earthly, not the rapture to heaven. The great moral principles, of course, remain true for all; specially indeed for those who, by virtue of a higher calling, can enjoy them in a more excellent way.

Verses 37, 38. The Lord yet returned to give testimony, walking and working in the day; but His resting-place was there, whence He did depart, and where His feet shall stand in that day. Patient in service, He taught daily and early in the temple; at night He was separate from the judged city. His time was now come.

CHAPTER 22.

How was the carnal mind shown to be enmity against God in the rejection of Christ! Wickedness was summed up and brought out in all-people, priests, rulers. If a friend, he is a traitor; if disciples, they either fled when danger approached, or denied Him when near. The religious chiefs who ought to have owned the Messiah took Him to the infidel power of the world. He who was in the place of judgment washed his hands, owning His innocence, but gave Him up to man's will and rage. Thus man's evil was brought into complete juxtaposition with that which was perfect, and this in putting Him to death. It is no use to look for good in man. Not that there are no amiable traits of nature, but God has no place at all if man is put to the test.

Along with this is the picture of the Lord's perfect patience through it all. Not man only, but Satan, was there in temptation. It was the power of darkness, as well as man's hour. And the Lord Jesus passes through this scene of men's wickedness and Satan's power; His heart melted like wax, but the effect always being the manifestation of perfectness. An angel strengthens Him; for He was really man, but perfect man, enduring all that could try Him, and nothing brought out but perfect grace and perfect obedience. Whenever there was sorrow, His love surmounts the suffering to help and comfort others.

Verses 3-6. It is a solemn thought that the nearer to Jesus, if there is not spiritual life, the more a man resists God, and the more sure and sad an instrument of the enemy he becomes. If truth has been presented and not received, nowhere has Satan so much power. Covetousness was the means used; but though they plotted to betray and crucify Him in a corner, this could not be; they were obliged to accomplish it according to God's purposes.

Then the light from behind the scene (vers. 8-13) makes a passage. It is the Lord; and no matter what He suffers, or what is before Him, yet we find the divine knowledge and power. There is the chamber! What calm and peaceful dignity! It is no effort, nothing to display a character. All yields before the unwitnessed authority of this rejected Savior—all but that to which it had been most manifested, the unrenewed heart of man. To the householder, unknown it seems to every eye but one, it is enough to hear, “The Master saith to thee.”

Verse 14, etc. How blessed to see such perfect human affections combined with His divine knowledge of all things! “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” —like one leaving his family and first desiring a farewell meeting. When we see the divine glory in the person of Christ, we find the human affections shining out. (compare Matt. 17:27). It is this which gives Him a power and charm which no object else has: so that God can delight in man and man can delight in God. The Lord breaks every link with the old thing (ver. 16). It is not setting up the kingdom here, but setting up man with God when the old connection was impossible. He was taking a new place where flesh and blood could not enter. His death and resurrection introduce a new relation with God.

The Lord distinguishes here between the paschal lamb and the wine, and both from the institution of His supper. He entered in the fullest way into all the feelings of Israel—the Israel of God, into the interests of the people as such, till His rejection put them on other ground, and divine favor passed into another scene by the resurrection, becoming Himself the Substitute, the true Paschal Lamb. His disciples held the foremost rank as to this fellowship, as we have Hushai the king's friend. With them He desired the last testimony of parting and love. But while thus expressing His affection to them, He assumes manifestly (ver. 18) the Nazarite character, which was always His morally, but now externally and painfully: “I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God come.” He postpones His joy with them as in the common enjoyment of the kingdom, till then.

Then (vers. 19, 20) He institutes the memorial of His better redemption, of His self-sacrificing dying love. If He separated Himself now to God in His joy, it was not want of love to His disciples, but its fullest display. It was to be done “in remembrance” of Him. We remember Him suffering, dead, absent; we know Him as a present living Savior. The new covenant is established in His blood. We cannot, in all the joy of fellowship with Christ above, forget what brought us into it. On one side, it is a body broken and blood shed; on the other, it is Himself and all the perfectness of love in dying for us. We are united to Him as a risen Christ, but He calls us to remember Him as a dead Christ. The blessedness of this last is in the work He did alone, by virtue of which I am put in union with Himself, alive again for evermore. As to man's part in it (vers. 21, 23), it was treachery and wickedness.

The Lord then distinctly sets forth this calling to walk in His own lowliness and not as the world. Earthly grandeur was recognized among the Jews, but now it was sentenced, like all their system, as the rudiments of the world. All other greatness, though under the form of being benefactors, was worldly. He was one that served. The grace of His heart sets them right without a reproach. He lets them know that whatever high place they sought, He took a low one. He might have said, “Nothing will break down this horrid selfishness;” yet says He, “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.” And He is the same now. What we should seek is to have as much of the burden of the church as we can. Suffering thus with Him, His heart goes on with us.

Verse 31. Peter was bold enough in the flesh to enter temptation. But it is impossible for man to stand where it is a question of good and evil. He is a sinner and cannot go through that trial. If God judges, flesh comes to nothing. There is the weakness of human nature, but, besides, Satan's title and power over man, who had brought out his own condition in God's presence, and come under death as the judgment of God. I may have learned in grace that the flesh is thus profitless, but it must be learned by intercourse with the enemy, if not with God. For Simon, the Lord prayed that his faith should not fail; all his self-confidence must perish. Nor did he distrust Christ like Judas, who had no faith. What enabled him afterward to strengthen his brethren? He discovered that there is a perfect grace in Christ even when he did worst.

Verses 35-38 show an entire change of circumstances. Previously He had protected them and supplied all, as Messiah disposing of everything here. That was now gone, since the Righteous One was being more and more rejected. He had come, able to destroy Satan's power, but it was the Lord, and man would not have Him; that is the condition the world is in. He must be reckoned among the transgressors! What link could there be between God and man? Humanity is a condemned thing, because it refused Christ. You may find a scrupulous conscience as to putting the money in the treasury, but no conscience in betraying and crucifying Him. But it is in a rejected, dead Christ that faith delights. The Christ that man scorns, it requires faith and grace to own. But the disciples still rested on man's strength, not on Messiah crucified in weakness, and said, “Here are two swords.” The Lord in saying “It is enough,” alludes to their words, and implies that they did not enter into His mind. He did not want to say more.

Verses 39-46. There are siftings needed to exercise us and to judge flesh. Christ, of course, did not need this, but dealt with all in communion with His Father. To Him it was a path of obedience, a blessed opportunity of doing God's will; to Peter it was Satan's power. Christ did not speak of the wickedness of the priests, the will of the people, or the injustice of Pilate, but of the cup His Father gave Him. There was positive intercourse with God about the trial, before the time came. And so it must ever be. It is late to put the armor on when we ought to be in the battle. A man living with God, when he gets into trial, goes through it, in measure, as Christ did. He stands in the evil day, because he has been with God when there was no evil day. On the cross it was not a question of communion; in the garden Christ is in communion with the Father, as to Satan's power, which was about to fall on Him. He felt all, but succumbed under nothing. Thus, instead of entering into temptation, He was in the highest exercise of spirituality, accomplishing the will of God in the most difficult circumstances, and the most perfect submission where it cost everything. Our Father never can lead us into sin, but He may into temptation, that is, into the place of sifting, where the flesh is exposed, when that is needful, because hardness, or levity, or inattention to His patient warnings, has come in. It is the last, and often necessary, means of self-knowledge and discipline. Though it is great grace that He should take such pains, yet seeing our weakness, and the terribleness of the conflict with the enemy, it well becomes us to pray that we may not be cast into the furnace. In such times a bad conscience drives to despair. The flesh, in its undiscerning carelessness, meets the trial in uncertainty, or carnal opposition, and falls. If, on the other hand, trial comes we learn our position before God—watching, prayer, entreaty, spreading all before Him in child-like confidence, but submissive desire that His will be done.

The Lord was thoroughly man in this, for an angel appears and ministers, strengthening Him; for the conflict of His soul was great; but it urged Him, in the realization of the trial, to pray more earnestly. The effect of this is to see more clearly the power of evil and the sorrow; and that so as to act on the very body. He was in agony Himself, but always says, “Father.” He is, and speaks, in His relationship as Son; not yet the victim before God, but the sufferer in spirit, feeling all the depths of the waters He is passing through, but crying out of them to His Father. Satan tried to stop Christ with the difficulty, when he could not beguile Him with the pleasure. But He went through all with His Father. At the cross was another thing—the power of God against sin.

Verses 47-53. It is blessed to see these two things brought together—patience with men, and yet power to stop everything. Having been in an agony with God, He is calm before man. When the servant's ear was cut off, He puts forth His hand to heal. What a picture of man, what a picture of God, if we look here at Christ!

Verses 54-62. When we tremble before men, it is when we have not been with God. Peter breaks down, proving the deceitfulness of the flesh. In Jesus suffering as He was, there was naught to disable the perfect and simple action of grace at each moment required. When the cock crew, He turned and looked on Peter, who remembered His word, went out and wept bitterly.

Verses 63-71. The Lord spent the night, not before His judges, who took their ease till morning, before they judged the Lord of glory, but with the men whom they employed, the object of all injury and insult. Then, when it suited the convenience of the Jewish rulers, they brought Him to their council; but the Lord knew it was not the time of testimony, and left them to their weakness. The presenting of Messiah to the Jews was finished; from this the Son of man was to be seated at the right hand of God. All was settled with God—they could go on. They draw the right conclusion, and He conceals nothing. He was the Son of God. They must be guilty, not of mistake, but of condemning Him because He was the Son of God and owned it.

Sabbath and the Lord's Day: 3

Now, on the contrary, the Spirit brings in what is heavenly and unseen into the midst of a visible state of things where all is contrary to God, and faith has to make its way against the current, living by the word of God. It is now a state of things characterized (let us not forget it) on the one hand by the utter rejection and cross of God's own Son, on the other by His exaltation at God's right hand on high. The cross was the expression of the world's extreme hatred to God, Christ's session above of God's perfect satisfaction in the work of redemption. Christianity is based on the one and displayed to faith in the other. There is for the sinner the cross of Christ; but there is more for the believer. Christ is risen: what is the meaning of it? Has His resurrection no voice to the Christian? It is not simply that He who brought all grace and manifested all righteousness was ignominiously and in hatred rejected; but that in His death and resurrection my sins are forgiven, sin is judged, righteousness is established, and a new and intimate relationship (His own) with His God and Father are given me by faith in Him. He is coming soon to have me with Himself in the Father's house; but meanwhile He has for a season left me in this world while He is gone out of it into heaven. Consequently He has given a heavenly character to me, to my standing, worship, walk, testimony, conflict, and hope—to everything in short with which grace puts me in present communion. For this is not our home or abiding-place; here for the Christian is where Satan reigns. Am I then to have communion with things that are around me here? If a Christian, through the grace of God my communion is with the things that belong to Christ at His right hand. All that is of the world is not of the Father. Christ, and where He now is on high, is the test of everything. But it is there that the secret lies; it is in Him who is gone to the right hand of God. Hence therefore Christianity is essentially heavenly. It is built on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Hence the first day of the week at once becomes the characteristic day for the Christian, and whenever this is not kept in view, a man always tends to slide down into Judaism. Such is the effect of talking about a Christian sabbath, especially if it is a sober judgment, and not idle talk. People who so think and speak have a distinct view neither of Judaism on the one hand nor of Christianity on the other—little more than a wretched medley of the two systems. Is not this too sadly and surely just what we find in Christendom at the present moment? Hence therefore not unnaturally the prevalent confusion—I was about to say the unholy, but one may call it without exaggeration the unhappy alliance—between the law and the gospel.

Do not, however, mistake my mind as to this grave subject. The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good. Every whit of God's requirements in the Old Testament is worthy of the utmost reverence on the part of the believer. No godly man of intelligence that values grace will ever disparage law. But it is one thing to give each its place and application, quite another to confound them. For this there is no warrant whatever in the word of God. The law has its own function, and its due application is to deal with man fallen and wicked. It was a wholly different thing when He who had no sin, the Son of God, deigned to be born of woman and to come under law, and made it honorable, glorifying Him who gave it by His servant Moses. And a different thing there will be in the day of Jehovah when it is written on the heart of Israel according to the new covenant. Then will His mighty hand maintain His own when Satan is bound, and a new heart is given to His people, the heart of stone being taken away. Indeed, they are happy if only unhappy, for I confess that in too many cases this misuse of the law is associated with positive unholiness, and this not merely personal failure but in principle. For when they know they have sinned, they fly to Christ's blood as a Jew to his sin-offering, and thus by fresh application to His sacrifice try to maintain an intermittent peace, thus proving how little they, though believers, really know the gospel. Their standard of practice is proportionately low. They do not understand what it is to walk in the Spirit. They have not submitted to the truth that they are dead, nor entered thus into the deliverance of Christ.

But now that man is dealt with as lost, and the believer as saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, what is it for the righteous to take up the law as their rule? As far as my experience goes, darkness ensues, and with it weakness and failure. Sense of grace comes to ruin for the soul. For it is invariably found that, when God's children take up the law as the rule of walk, it cannot but gender bondage.

I daresay many remember as well as myself what it was to be endeavoring to keep the sabbath in olden time. What was the consequence? Holy, happy peace? Not so; but the soul anxious, self-condemned, and unhappy. The most solemn and grievous result of all was, that under this mistaken system, the more righteous people were, the less happy they found themselves. What a strange conclusion if it were God's will and word I most simple if it is not. Those who took things easily (I may call them free and easy, perhaps without offense) got through the sabbath pretty well, as far as they themselves thought, doubtless; but it was a grave and sorrowful matter for such as strove to keep this law in the midst of the inconsistencies of Christendom, and with such conscience towards God as the law and the prophets inspired. They might fast and pray, but the more they strove, the more miserable they were. They might endeavor and try to guard it in the simplest things, but it always ended in failure; and therefore they never were happy under it, but often, if not always, ill at ease; and no wonder, for the whole principle was a mistake for the Christian.

But now comes the positive side; and a very important question practically arises: What does scripture connect with the Lord's-day?

I answer, first of all, let us see its true character. It is not the day that was sanctified by creation rest. It is not the day of law which the law commanded Israel to keep, the main test amongst them of God's authority. What is it then? What is emphatically connected with the first day? I answer, resurrection-life in Christ and the grace of God. In contrast with creation, the Lord's-day tells of the new creation; in contrast with law, it speaks of the grace which has brought salvation. Christians therefore have no reason to be ashamed in comparing the first day of the week which God has given them with the sabbath which He imposed on Israel. On the contrary, I claim for the Lord's-day a higher sanctity, deeper principles, and the strongest, yea, an immutable, foundation. If the sabbath can boast much, the Lord's-day incomparably more; for as the one is connected with the first Adam, the other is with the last Adam; and as much as the heavens are higher than the earth, so is the Lord's-day higher than the sabbath. The sabbath, I repeat, was for man—for man in the flesh—for man as he was under probation—for man dealt with as living under the law of God. Undoubtedly there are many who think that man is under probation still, and that the Christian is under the law of God, just as a Jew used to be; though they may add that the law is not to justify him but to rule the walk—that we are under it for the latter, and not for the former. Well, it may be convenient for you to say what the law is to do; but let me tell you this, that if you are under the law, God does not allow you to say what the law is to do, and what it is not. If you are under the law, and you fail, what can the law do to you? It can do nothing in justice but condemn, curse, and kill you. This is its declared object—this its necessary function. If you are under the law, and you fail to meet the law, what can, what ought, the law to do but punish you? And what is its punishment but death? Are you to alter all this too?

But theology is bold—demurs, and says, “Oh, I am not under the law to be punished” But the question is not what you say about the law, but what the law says to you. Theory, or theology, cannot stand against scripture. The truth is, your thought is an imagination of men, and a mere attempt to get out of a difficulty. They see in the gospel that the believer in our Lord Jesus is justified, and then, though they put him under the law as a rule of life, they try to get out of the dilemma this throws them into by pleading that they are only under the law for walk, and not for condemnation. Do they not mean that the Christian is under the law to break it with impunity? What sort of a rule of life is this? It is not the gospel but a mitigated, emasculated, sanctionless law. It is not Christ and the truth. Where do they get such a thought in the word of God? Nowhere.

There I do find the question raised and answered in one of the most important and simple and withal comprehensive epistles of the New Testament. I am not speaking now of those to the Ephesians or the Colossians—it is no wonder that such men do not understand Ephesians or Colossians—nor yet of the Book of Revelation. But let us take Romans; and surely every Christian of moderate light ought to be familiar with that epistle at any rate, and to rejoice in the truth the Holy Spirit has there furnished for every day's need. Now what is there laid down as to the law? Where it is a question of the life exercised in the walk of the Christian, he is formally declared not to be under the law but under grace. Such is expressly the doctrine of the apostle Paul. In the sixth chapter of Romans the discussion is not how a sinner is to be justified, but how he, being justified, is to walk. Does the mercy of God in the gospel leave the soul free to live in sin? The answer is, Not so; for he is dead with Christ to sin, and he is not under the law, but under grace. It is substantially the same truth everywhere else, as in 1 Cor. 9:20, 21; 2 Cor. 3; Gal. 5:18: 1 Timothy 1:7-10. Never do we hear the theological or at least the Puritan fiction, that the Christian is freed from the condemning power of the law as a question of justification only, but under the law as a rule to live by. Such a notion is clean contrary to the apostle's teaching, who declares that we are dead with Christ to the law as well as to sin. These theologians do not know what death with Christ means; they do not understand their own baptism in His name.

Now the Lord's-day is the day of grace, and not of law; and this is manifestly consistent with the power and ways of grace. The reason why no Christian is absolved from what is due to God is illustrated by that day when grace triumphed in a new creation through our Lord Jesus.

And look at the beautiful way in which the Lord Jesus introduced it. There is no command in the New Testament such as, “Thou shalt keep the Lord's-day.” Why should the sabbath be in the Old Testament, not in the New? Why the Lord's-day in the New, and not in the Old? If you look over the Ten Commandments, you will find that the principle of prohibition runs through them generally. The people to whom they were uttered had no inclination to keep them. Hence the command ran in these terms—Thou shalt not do this, Thou shalt do that—because they wanted to do the contrary. Is this the case with the Christian? Has it come to this pass, that children of God do not really desire to keep the Lord's-day? I should be sorry to think one counted it a burden. They are sanctified to obedience; they are called to the law of liberty. If it were a question of imposing the first day of the week on the world, I can understand a command given to keep the first day; for it is and must be irksome to all who know not His grace. But this is not at all the intention of the Lord as to those who know Him not.

With the sabbath the ground, nature, and end were altogether different. It must be repeated that it formed part of the law, and was distinctively a sign between God and Israel. The sabbath was never given to the Gentile as such, whatever may be the reasonings of men. If a Gentile came and put himself under the wing of Israel, of course he kept the sabbath; but as a Gentile he had nothing to do with it. The sabbath was Jehovah's sign to Israel; and the effort to prove that it was imposed on all alike does no less in principle than deny that fact, and the scripture which declares it. It could be no longer a sign to His elect people: if it was equally binding on all, it was not peculiar to Israel. How could it be a sign to one if it was the common duty of all? But the fact is, that the Lord has decided that question clearly, and so do the law and the prophets. “Verily, my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am Jehovah that doth sanctify you."... “It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (Ex. 31:13, 17). “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctify them” (Ezek. 20:12).

Now look at the Lord's-day. How different from the sabbath! The latter was a day that involved yourself, your family, your servants, even your very cattle, your ox and your ass. As to them all, Jehovah the God of Israel and the Creator had a care, and brought them within the beneficent scope of the seventh day; and no wonder, for it was the sign of the rest of creation; and man, and all animals subject to him, were a part of creation. It might be the lower part; but still it was a part which God did not forget in His law. But what has an ox or an ass to do with the new creation?

This radical distinction of the sabbath as expressive of creation and law, and of the Lord's-day as expressing resurrection and grace, is what people do not seem to see, and hence they are apt to make mistakes in practice. The ground of the difference is evident. The moment one gets hold of the principle of the Lord's-day, not only must all the inferior part of the creation be left out but those that are unconverted also. These beyond doubt are not overlooked by God, who sends them the gospel; but He does not place converted and unconverted on the same footing of relationship, nor consequently require the same duties. What do unconverted men with grace and the new creation, but pervert or despise them? I do not deny their obligation in presence of the great facts and truth of the gospel. They have, and read, the word of God; they own the duty of prayer and praise. This may all be, while the believer must know that it cannot be such prayer and praise as faith presents in the Spirit. But if the question be the true principle of the Lord's-day, and the intended scope of its application, the answer is, that the Lord's-day essentially is for the Lord's people. May I not go farther, and question whether a Jew could understand its meaning? Certainly even in the days of the kingdom he is not called to its observance. Of course I am speaking of him who not only is a Jew but abides in his unbelief of the gospel. The Lord's-day is naturally unintelligible to the unconverted now. Nor will it be a question even for Israel in the millennium; for they will never have it as we have now. There will be an arrangement altogether different for them. Of course they will see it in the New Testament, and will understand that there were saints before them who kept that day, and how they kept it; that they gathered together on it, and remembered the Lord's death, worshipping their God and Father, edifying each other. They may understand all this; but as to the deep principles involved in it, I doubt much whether they will ever enter into them, at any rate with any real intelligence; whereas to understand the truth of them in Christ, and walk faithfully in accordance with it, should be the distinctive characteristic of the Christian. (Continued from page 340) (To be continued)

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Notes on Luke 23

Chapter 23.

Verses 1-25. Religious iniquity had now only to lead on the world to finish the wickedness in which itself had taken the lead. The civil power must give in to the willful evil of the apostate people of God. This is the history of the world; and of the two, the religious side is always nearest to Satan. The chief priests manifested their enmity by their accusation, which was calculated to arouse the jealousy of the governor; charging on Christ what was entirely false as to Cæsar, but with the subtle groundwork of that which they knew (reckoning on His truth) He could not deny. The guilt of the Jews was complete, as was also that of the Gentiles, for Pontius Pilate declared Him innocent, and desired to release Him. Cruel enough himself, the Roman governor disliked cruelty in others, but he would not go so far as to save Him from the malice of His enemies: it would have cost something to do this; it threatened his interest, and Pilate gave way. The one thing that is strong in the world is enmity against Christ.

But there was another form of evil to be introduced, to wit, Herod, the apostate king of apostate Israel; —and in rejecting Jesus all are friends, however jealous and divided. How terrible the union between the fourth beast and God's external people! But if the Gentiles failed shamefully in protecting the just and hence fell into basely unrighteous judgment, the activity of an evil will was with the Jews. Three times the opportunity of a relenting voice was given; but while the governor's indifference was as plain as the disappointed insolence of Herod, every time the cry of the people increased in ardor for the death of the Messiah. Pilate, therefore, released the guilty Barabbas, whom they desired, to appease the Jews, and delivered Jesus to their will.

Verses 26-31. It was a terrible time and full of violence. It mattered little whom they met, if they could only force them to help in their iniquity. Their hour was struck, and all fell into the same mass of rejection and insult of Christ, save that the Jews acted with more knowledge. The forms of privilege became sorrows and harbingers of terror; they must be laid low, for all was untrue now. The natural feelings, touched by affecting circumstances, as we see in the weeping daughters of Jerusalem, did not change this. They understood neither the cross of Christ nor the ruin which awaited themselves. One may be affected with compassion, as if one were superior to Christ, and fall under the judgment consequent on His rejection and death. No humiliation of Jesus put Him out of His place of perfect capability of dealing with all others from God. Alas! it was not only on Pilate and Herod, nor on the chief priests, that judgment was coming, but on the women that lamented Him, unconscious of their own state, which was under condemnation. Neither natural conscience, nor natural religiousness, nor natural feelings will do—nothing short of the glory of God in Jesus. And if He, the living and true vine, who indeed bore fruit to God, was thus dealt with, what must be the lot of the fruitless and unprofitable, for such branches —were they? Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Man rejects the green tree, and God rejects the dry. Life was there in the person of Jesus, and they would not have it, and are therefore given up; it cannot be had now but through a dead and risen Christ.

Verses 32-43. There is the setting aside of all they looked for here in present deliverance, for Christ must die. But if we are also to see how low man can go morally, we learn, at the same time, that Christ in His grace can go lower still. “Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” Therefore, whenever you see an attempt (and it is the attempt of man's religion) to connect a living Christ, before death and resurrection, with living sinners, be sure there is error. It unites sin with the Lord from heaven, and it denies that its wages is death. Had Christ delivered Himself, as the rulers, with the people, said in derision, He would not have delivered us. He must pass through death, and take a higher place, even in resurrection, and there He takes us. Per se, the incarnation cannot bring life and redemption to those who are dead in trespasses and sins. We need to be set beyond all in resurrection-life in Christ.

Thus, then, in spite of the grace of Jesus in intercession, Jews and Gentiles joined in mockery of the Crucified; yet God had prepared, even here, the consolation of His mercy for Jesus in a poor sinner. But no sorrow, no shame, no sufferings bring the heart too low to scorn Jesus; a gibbeted robber despises Him! There is an instinct, so to speak, in every unrenewed heart, against Jesus, which was not quelled even by that power of love in which He was going down into the deepest humiliation, to suffer the wrath due to sin. Say not that you are one whit better than this wretched man. “There is none righteous, no, not one: none that understandeth; none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become unprofitable.” In two words, there is no difference. You are as bad, in God's sight, as the railing impenitent thief. See now the fruit of grace in the other. Grace works in a man who was in as low a condition as he who, notwithstanding his own dying agony and disgrace, had pleasure in outraging the Lord of glory; indeed both had done it (Mark 15:32). But what more blessed and certain than the salvation of this thief, now that he bows to the name of Jesus? He is going to Paradise in companionship with the Lord whom he owned.

It is often idly said, that there was one saved in this way, that none might despair, and but one, that none might presume. The truth is, that this is the only way whereby any poor sinner can be saved. There is but one and the same salvation for all. There was evidently no time for him to do anything, had this been the way; but all is done for him. That very day his knees were to be broken. But how could he get into Paradise! Christ wrought his deliverance through His own death, and his eye was opened in faith of what Christ was doing.

Nor was it only that Christ's work was wrought for him—the ground on which his soul rested for salvation. There was a mighty moral work wrought in him through the revelation of Christ to his soul by the Spirit who convinced him of his utter sinfulness. “Dost not thou fear God,” is his rebuke to his railing fellow, “seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we, indeed, justly.” It was not all joy. Conscience had its place. There is a real sense of good and evil; for he has got in spirit into God's presence, and this, making him forget circumstances, elevates him into a preacher of righteousness. And if he owns the rightness of his own punishment in honest confession of sin, what a wonderful testimony he bears to Christ! “This man hath done nothing amiss.” It was just as if he had known Christ all his life. He had a divine perception of His character; and so with the Christian now. Have you such jealousy about the spotlessness and glory of Christ, that you cannot help crying out when you hear Him slighted? He believed that He was the Lord, the Son of God, and so could answer with assurance for what He had been as a man. As completely a man as any other, the holy obedience of Christ was divine. “This man hath done nothing amiss.” What a response in the renewed heart to the delight of sinlessness! His eye glances, as it were, over the whole life of Christ; he could answer for Christ anywhere, because he has learned to know Himself.

Then he says, turning to Jesus, “Lord, remember me, when thou comest in thy kingdom.” As soon as he can get rid of what was sad, when he has done with his testimony to the other thief, his heart turns to Christ instinctively. How undistracted he was! Was he thinking of his pain? or of the people around the cross? As is always the case, where God's presence is realized, he was absorbed. In the extremity of helplessness, as to outward appearance, he hears the Shepherd's voice, and recognized Him as the Savior and King. He wants Christ to think of him. The judgment of men was that Christ was a malefactor. The weeping women saw not who He was. But no degradation of circumstances could hide the glory of His person who hung by his side. He owned Jesus as the Lord, and knows that His kingdom will certainly come. The other malefactor thought only, if he thought at all, of present deliverance; but this one saw the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. His mind was set, not on being free from bodily pain, but on the loving recognition of Christ in glory. He looks not to earth, nor nature, but to another kingdom, where death could not come. There was not a cloud, not a doubt, but the peaceful settled assurance that the Lord would come in His kingdom.

And the Lord gave him more than his faith asked. There was the answer of present peace. It was not only the kingdom by-and-by, but “Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” As if He said, You shall have the kingdom when it comes, but I am giving now soul-salvation; you are to be associated at once with Me in a way far better and more than the kingdom, blessed and true as it is. For indeed the work was accomplished on the cross, which could transport a soul into Paradise. If the Savior had taken the sinner's place, the sinner is by grace entitled to take the place of the Savior. The poor thief might know but little of Christ's work and its effect, but the Holy Spirit had fixed his heart on the person of Christ. The words of the Lord (ver. 43) imply the atonement, by virtue of which we are made fit to be His companions in the presence of God. The work of Christ is as perfect now for us, as then for him; it is as much accomplished for us as if we were already caught up into Paradise. How distinct this is from anything like progress of the soul to fit it for heaven! And how wonderful that such a soul should be a comfort to the Savior! He had come into the condemnation; yea, and wrath was on Him to the uttermost. And now the converted thief was a bright witness of perfect grace and eternal salvation through His blood.

Verses 44-49. The scene was closed which let in the light beyond through the portals of a heart now purged by faith, and the darkness proper to the hour took now its suited course—specially over Israel, it would seem; “and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.” Thus the way into the holiest was made manifest by the act which had its place in this darkness, and God in the grace of Christ's sacrifice shone forth upon the world. Darkness of judgment as it was to one, the light broke through, and access was opened within the veil. All was finished, and the Lord, with no hesitating voice but aloud, cried, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” This was not Jewish blessing, (for “the living, the living, he shall praise Thee"), but it was much higher; it was sonship, death overcome, and the occasion merely of presenting the spirit, safe, happy, confident, notwithstanding death, into the Father's care and presence. This is an immense principle, and, short of resurrection, of the highest possible importance. Death in the hands of Jesus —what a fact! The centurion, in the course of duty, struck at least in natural conscience, glorified God and owned a righteous man on the cross. The masses were troubled and went away, auguring no good. Those who knew Him, and the women from Galilee, were more nearly interested, but in fear stood afar off.

Verses 50-56. But the providence and operation of God, the righteous Judge, took measures for the body of the Holy One. If the more prominent witnesses were set aside, others feeble in the faith are found active and faithful in the post of danger, confession, and attachment to the Lord. How often the difficulties which frighten those force these forward! So was it with Joseph of Arimathea, for Jesus must be “with the rich in his death.” The women too, in true but ignorant affection, make useless preparation, awaiting the just Jewish time for a Lord who had passed far beyond their faith. The resurrection was soon to usher in the dawn of a bright morrow: for the honor of the grave, like the intentions of the women from Galilee, was of a Jewish character, and all this was now closed in death.

CHAPTER 24.

What now occupies our Evangelist is the Risen Man again with His disciples and the testimony to the world founded on the resurrection—this new truth and power above all the principles of natural life. The door of the cross is shut on all that man in the flesh is, and the new thing is introduced in this risen Christ. Resurrection is an entirely new condition; but even the Jew could not have the sure mercies of David without it. Man, lawless and under law, has had the sentence of death pronounced on him. He may pride himself on his natural powers, but he is without God. He has rejected the One who came to him, a man in perfect divine grace, and in so doing has fully shown what he is. Therefore says the Lord, “Now is the judgment of this world.”

An entirely new ground appears, and this is here brought out in Christ Himself. Our bodies are still the same, but the life, character, motive, means, end are altogether new in the Christian. “Old things are passed away, and all things are become new.” The women, pre-occupied with their own thoughts and affections, come with their spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus, while He was already living in the perfume of His work and offering before God, having effected all which placed man anew before God the Father, the last Adam in living acceptance. Then they were thrown into an unlooked-for difficulty at first, for they did not find the Lord's body. Neither did they know He was risen. They understood not that there was neither judgment nor sin remaining. There may be real and great love to Jesus without understanding this. But soon the question was put which involved the answer to all. “Why seek ye the living One among the dead?” These women, faithful if ignorant, were not forgotten of the Lord; and He whose ways are grace has preserved their memorial and their early seeking of the Lord, thence to bear the message to the apostles themselves. But to them they were as idle tales. Peter's heart, broken and contrite, was the more affected by what he heard, and he ran to the sepulcher, and having seen the linen clothes laid aside there, went away wondering. Surely it was a marvelous secret, baffling and rising above all human thought! (vers. 1-12).

Luke's statements of circumstances are always general. In John we have more details, especially developing Mary Magdalene's devoted affection to His person, but showing also how little she as yet knew of the power of God in resurrection.

Verses 13-27. The touchingness of this interview with the Lord on the journey to Emmaus need not be spoken of. How the Lord draws out all their thoughts! But He is here altogether as a man, and presenting the truth they speak Jewishly. How naturally their minds rested always in the same circle! He was a prophet, and they hoped He might redeem Israel. The fact of the resurrection occupied their attention, but it had no link with the counsels of God. They were astonished, and, like others before them, there they rested. Christ takes up quite other ground, though it was only in the way of intelligence and not yet the power of the Holy Ghost. “O fools,” says He, “and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written.” These He expounds, and opens their understanding to them; for though viewed completely as man, He operates divinely and spiritually on their mind. “Ought not,” said He —was it not the counsel of God plainly revealed in His word? What He presses is the mind of God in the scriptures relative to the Christ. This was an immense step; it took them out of their egotism and the egoistical character of Judaism. Their thought was of the redemption of Israel by power. They had no idea of a new and heavenly life, though of course they had it. Even as to the Christ, death must come in if God were to be vindicated and man really blessed, and so Moses and all the prophets had taught. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” —not set up His kingdom down here, but “enter into his glory.”

Verses 28-35. Then we have a most graphic account of the scene at Emmaus. “He made as though he would have gone further.” Why should He, to their eye “a stranger,” intrude? “But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And it came to pass as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight.”

This was not celebrating the Lord's supper with them; yet was it taking up that part of it—the act of breaking the bread—which was the sign of His death. He was not now merely as the living Bread that came down from heaven, but as He had said, “this is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” —not which I will take, but give. He did take flesh, of course, in order to give it; but it was His death that became the life of the world. For Jew or Gentile there was no other way. The condition of man was such that he could be quickened only in connection with the cross. All that was in man, as a child of Adam, was under sentence of death and judgment. Christ, by grace, entered into the place of man—came where I am, that I might be on equal terms with Him, as far as acceptance with God; His broken body shows me that I have got that which brings me to God. A dead sinner can find life and divine favor only in a dead Christ. So the Lord had taught in John 6. To eat His flesh and drink His blood must be in order to have life.

It was not any longer a question of His bodily presence merely as incarnate. Redemption was absolutely necessary, and faith in it. Christ is to be fed upon, not alone as a living Messiah, nor only as One alive again for evermore in resurrection; but, besides that, as He who died, His body broken and blood shed in atonement. Thus it was the Lord was known to the disciples at Emmaus, though it was not the Lord's Supper. Their hearts had been opened by what encouraged them in connecting the truth of God with the facts of human unbelief and Christ's rejection, and thus turning the cause of their despair into joy and peace by the sight of the counsels of God in it. But His actual revelation was by the affecting circumstance of personal association in the breaking of bread. It was Himself who broke the bread. There could be no mistake. He was gone in a moment— “vanished out of their sight.” But His object was gained. They had life through His death.

And He was risen. The body was a spiritual body, and had flesh and bones, which a spirit has not. He had shown them not only the fact, but its necessity. Why does He not say, “did,” but “must rise from the dead?” Because all the sentence must be passed on the first Adam. All that I have now is in the last Adam: I am not only quickened, but quickened together with Christ, having all trespasses forgiven. Christ, by His death, put them away for all who believe, and for such, all that belonged to the first Adam is clean gone. This is power over the principle of sin, which as a fact is still within us. And hence the apostle bids the believers reckon themselves dead to sin. In the power of the Holy Ghost, giving me the consciousness of new life in Christ, I am to mortify my members here below, because I have to apply the death of Christ to my old nature. The monkish principle tries to kill sin in order to get life, but the apostle shows that we must have life by faith in Christ in order to treat sin as a dead thing (Rom. 6; 7; 8).

The holding of the disciples' eye was of importance. To have recognized Jesus would have been in their state to have satisfied their thoughts. The Lord, on the other hand, engaging their hearts by all God said of Him, furnished them with scriptural intelligence; and then in the act of intimate friendship, which recalled the great truth of His death, brought to mind His great deliverance. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Filled with the concentrating event which began a new world, they hastened back to Jerusalem, where the eleven and others were occupied. “The Lord,” said the latter, “is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.” Then the two told the tale of their wondrous journey, and still more wondrous recognition of Jesus in breaking of bread. The Lord was proving that there should be independent witnesses.

Verses 36-53. Thus their hearts were prepared. Yet in the fact of this new thing, “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,” there was that to which earthly hearts could ill assort themselves. The Lord presents Himself as the very same man, all through and in every way. In His intercourse with the two, it had been just the same; all was human, though what no man ever was, and what none but God could be, was shown in and through it. Here also His hands, His feet, His previous wounds are presented. He takes of fish and of an honeycomb, and eats before them. Two sentiments had overpowering possession of the disciples —joy to see Himself again, and astonishment. The Lord presents the truth of resurrection, not as a doctrine, but in living reality, thus restoring their souls and making them know Him most familiarly, risen indeed, but yet a man properly and truly. “And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.”

This showed the standing before God in justification of life and liberty. But another thing was wanted before men—power. This is not the question before God, where the Christian stands as Christ stands, “accepted in the beloved.” But the testimony of the Christian here below, whether preaching or anything else, needs power to be given. This power was promised to the disciples, but even yet they must wait for it. We must not confound service of any kind with standing. The power of the Spirit is requisite to live before men—power over and above the new birth, and distinct from spiritual understanding. This last is needed to give us the apprehension of our standing in Christ; and when He opens our understandings to understand the scriptures, it does not puff up. It is a revelation of Himself and leads to communion with Him. Yet the other want still remains. Even this knowledge is not necessarily power. The testimony and purpose of God in the word has to be fulfilled.

The great truth of a suffering and risen Christ reaches out to the Gentiles. In Matthew His association with the Jewish remnant is taken up. Consequently He meets them in Galilee after, as before, His resurrection; and thence flows the commission to go and disciple all the Gentiles. But all this is dropped in Luke. Jerusalem, Emmaus, and Bethany, above all, are prominent; for thence He ascends to heaven, where He has to do with poor sinners. The testimony was to begin at Jerusalem expressly: the riches of His grace must be shown first where there was the deepest guilt. The cross broke this link with the Jews as a Jewish Messiah, but opened the door of repentance and remission of sins, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. “And ye are witnesses.” Here came in the need of power. “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” This all-important index of Christ's exaltation could only be obtained for man by the reception of Jesus in heaven when redemption was effected. The Holy Ghost had ever acted in creation, in providence, in revelation, in regeneration, and in every good thing, but He had never been given before. It hung on the glory of Jesus: to this the Holy Ghost could become a servant in man; for it was the divine counsel and the perfection of love.

Meanwhile, before this endowment, they returned with great joy to the city which their Lord had left. Their hearts were filled with the influence of the great fact, that their Master was glorified, though it was still associated with Jewish thoughts. And these two elements reproduce themselves in the Acts of the Apostles, particularly in the earlier part.

J. N. D.

Sabbath and the Lord's Day: 4

(Concluded from page 368)

It may have been noticed, for instance, in the verses read at the beginning (Acts 20), how the apostle Paul loved to spend seven days in a place. Can there be a doubt what was in his heart? Was it not to cover the Lord's-day? He loved to spend at least one such day with the saints; so we see in more than one passage. It was the great day of assemblage for the children of God. Not that they never assembled on other days; but there might be no small difficulties in those early times.

It may have been so indeed sometimes even for the Lord's-day. Still this was the day that commanded the hearts of the disciples. It is evident that, if there had been no distinctive day, the brethren could not be so justly blamed for forsaking the assembling of themselves; but such a fault would at once be felt if there was a known day, and a day not merely chosen by the church, or sanctioned by all, but one that the Lord had stamped with His own resurrection-image. Such certainly is this day; and so marked is it by the presence of our Lord Jesus, that I will just refer to the point for a moment before we touch on the statements of the apostle Paul.

Our Lord is shown to have revealed Himself repeatedly during the course of the resurrection-day to disciple after disciple, from His appearance to Mary Magdalene first of all until He stood in the assembly of the saints on the evening of that day. Thus there was a succession of manifestations throughout. Nor do I doubt that a Christian is entitled to know an especial presence and enjoyment of the Lord Jesus on the same day of the week that is not vouchsafed on any other day. If his faith does not take this in, so far there will be loss for his soul. The word of God must be the ground of it, and to make this the more marked, what do we find there? Does the Lord appear on the Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, etc., as we call them? Not a word about it. He passes over all the intervening days, but the next first day following He appears again. What could more significantly mark that day to all who remember Him and delight in His ways?

This to me is most expressive of the mind of the Lord, not in the shape of a command or even a promise which would have called one back to the relationship of Israel. At any rate a formal pledge might suppose a kind of unwillingness or want of intelligence on the part of the saints of God. What the Lord looks for is love that understands Him. A single eye gives entrance into His mind. He rose on that day: we understand it. He comes again and again on that day: we understand it all. That day remains fixed for us as “the Lord's-day," even as the Holy Ghost designated it expressly in the closing book of the New Testament (Rev. 1:10). The time was come so to stamp that day long familiar to the Christian heart, now designated as pertaining to the Lord no less than His supper. From first to last there is no command, nothing like a legal claim; but the more, not the less, do both appeal to the faith and devotedness of all who love Him. As the supper is His, distinct in character and aim from all others, so is His day to the Christian.

Let us now consult once more the Book of Acts. When the disciples were brought into their blessed place as the church of God, the Holy Ghost came down, and they were so filled with joy and gladness that they could hardly keep away from one another. So we find them meeting every day; and I have no doubt from Acts 2:46 that they then partook of the Lord's-supper every day. It was not merely what people call, and indeed what scripture calls, a love-feast. They did this too. But a love-feast meant nothing more than that the saints united in partaking of a meal with the word of God and prayer. They did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people, even as the Lord at first (Luke 2:52). That is, they enjoyed every sort and measure of communion with one another as fully as they could. But the Lord's-supper was far more than this, since it is the communion of Christ's body and of His blood. It was not a mere token of brotherly intercourse, but the most solemn though joyful act of Christian worship. They also broke bread at home. This is the Lord's-supper.

Accordingly, at first, they used to break bread together day by day. And so far, is there anything contrary to scripture in taking the Lord's-supper on any day whatever? There is a principle laid down which justifies it whenever circumstances of an extraordinary kind call for it. Acts 2:46 is the clearest proof that under such a claim (of which spirituality alone can judge aright) it is no unauthorized thing to take the Lord's-supper every day.

But from Acts 20:7 we may assuredly gather a little more. We learn thence that there is one day above all others appropriated to the supper of the Lord. No doubt other acts of worship or divine service may accompany it, such as prayers and praises; and if there be present any that need a word from the Lord in the way of a discourse on the grace of Christ or the truth of God, there is the fullest openness for it. The assembly of God is free to receive not only all that falls in with her own thanksgiving, but also everything that might contribute to the real edification of the saints of God. And therefore, as we find in 1 Cor. 14, all these different elements are in exercise there, singing, prayer, thanksgiving, and blessing, but also speaking to edification and comfort. Yet the central object and chief motive for the heart in thus coming together is the remembrance of Christ in the breaking of bread. So we find it here: “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread.”

I am sorry to be obliged to point out a necessary correction here. But you will understand that the change has already been made front the truth. I am only seeking to bring souls back to the truth. The real words of the Holy Spirit here were: “When we came together.” Now no doubt at first sight it seems a little harsh. I will read to you how it runs, and you will see that it is a little difficult. In the most authoritative text of this verse, according to the oldest and best MSS., it reads thus: “Upon the first day of the week, when we came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them.” One can readily conjecture how the change took place. The copyists, seeing “preached unto them,” thought that “when we came together” did not well harmonize, that there must be some mistake, and that “we” had probably slipped in instead of “the disciples.” The truth, however, is, that “we” is right, and that the real intruder is “the disciples.” It was the apparent jar of which the Correction sought to get rid. This was wrong. Always accept this, my beloved brethren, as a true canon in such questions as to the word of God: never cut the knot of a difficulty in scripture, but wait till God untie it for you. There are difficulties in His word. What is to be done with them? Submit to them; own that you do not understand; pray to God till, in the use of all right means, He clears them up. But never force the word of God. That appears to have been done here. Some of the scribes cut the knot of the difficulty by changing “we came together” into “the disciples came together"; thus they thought that the latter would agree better with “them.”

But now let us simply take the clause as God wrote it; for there cannot be a legitimate doubt, to any competent person who has examined the matter, that I am giving the true form of the verse. Thus it will be found in every critical text of value, no matter whose it may be; and so you will find it in every correct version of the critical text— “Upon the first day of the week, when we came together.” Why we? Because all had a common interest. Had it been said, “when the disciples came together,” it might possibly have been thought that it meant no more than the disciples in that place, who had the habit of meeting together on the first day of the week. But as it is “when we came together to break bread,” the principle takes in all saints. All are found here in a common character. The family word, “we,” so familiar to the Spirit, is used— “when we came together.” It is not merely the mode adopted by the disciples in the Troad. It is the habit of the saints wherever they might be—of Paul, and Luke, and every one else. The only question that could be raised is, whether the writer does not mean by this to put himself along with the rest when he says, “When we came together to break bread.” This I doubt not he does; but that the phrase goes farther we see from the context, which implies the fixed and regular habit of all the saints of God, wherever they had the opportunity, to meet together for the Lord's-supper on the first day of the week.

Thus we have a by no means unimportant truth, with historic simplicity, conveyed in this verse. There had been a time when every day, under the peculiar circumstances of the Pentecostal assembly, was devoted amongst other things to breaking bread together; but that state of things soon passed. The saints were scattered. Persecution drove them from Jerusalem, some here, some there, to other lands. We see no more the meeting to break bread day by day among the Jewish Christians; but we do hear among the Gentiles of an established fact to which the apostle puts his seal as one of those that had authority to order and arrange things in the name of our Lord Jesus. To meet and break bread was the settled habit of the saints then for the first day (not of the month or quarter, but) of the week.

Further, take notice, that Paul preached. It is not “unto us” —this is not said—but “unto them.” The propriety appears at once on reflection. Paul did not exactly preach (ἐκήρυσσεν, or εὐηγγελίζετο); for it is a totally different expression from that of preaching, and had no reference at all to proclaiming the gospel. It is simply “discoursed” (διελέγετο); no doubt it was upon profitable truth for any servants of God that might accompany him; but it was particularly addressed to the disciples that were in Troas. This seems the reason why it is said “to them,” rather than “to us.” Of course all the rest profited; but it would at this time have been a less appropriate word to say that Paul preached to us. It would not have so correctly expressed the address of Paul to the saints there. When it is said, “We came together to break bread,” Paul, etc., are included. When the writer says “Paul preached unto them,” he points to the apostle discoursing to these saints who rarely enjoyed such a privilege. Thus, I think, the propriety of the change is sufficiently manifest, though at first sight it might seem a little difficult. Indeed it is always the truest and wisest way to accept scripture according to the best authorities, and to wait on Him till we gradually see the beauty and fitness of every word of the living God.

It appears to me then that from these scriptures we have gained some very important points as to the Lord's-day. We see that the Lord did not leave His saints isolated. By His will is the gathering of the members of His body to worship. So it was the Lord had begun with the disciples; so it is the Holy Ghost continues now that the assembly is formed in unity. How beautifully harmonious is the truth! We do not find that the risen Lord met with them every day during the forty days before He ascended. The Spirit records at any rate His meeting with them on two successive first days. So when the day of Pentecost was now accomplishing, they were all together in one place. It was the Lord's-day again. Then if in the joy and fellowship of Pentecostal blessing we hear among other peculiar but suited effects how they broke bread day by day, we learn that things afterward recurred to the Lord's institution. He Himself had met with them, not merely with one or more, but “with the disciples"; and again on that day of the week following He stood in their midst (John 20:19, 26). The same thing becomes the regularized method which the Spirit of God records for us, sanctioned by an apostle's presence, and this too among the Gentiles. There might be other gatherings together; for it is in no way meant that the wants of the saints of God could be satisfied with simply gathering together to break bread on the Lord's-day, weighty as this may be. Still it is presented so as pre-eminently to include the heavenly family; even as the Lord's-supper is what appeals to all Christians, and no wonder; because His death brings before us that which is of all things the most momentous before God, humbling for man, and affecting to those who remember Him. In the Lord's death what is there for the heart! What there is some of us perhaps know a little—all of us, I am sure, far too little. Yea, rather what is not there? I might challenge the universe to say what there is not in the Lord's death; and sure I am that heaven would only bring out the answer to the call with incomparably greater appreciation of it than by earth. For the Spirit, though here, is sadly hindered by our feeble faith.

But still the Holy Spirit is here to give us power in the face of all hindrances. And it is precisely while we are passing through the wilderness, whilst we prove what the world, flesh, and Satan are in their enmity to God, that grace gives us this day as a witness of Christ's resurrection and the pledge of our own. It is not now a command to rest on the sabbath with the consequence of death for those who despise it. This is law. Far different is the way of grace. Now that through our Lord Jesus we are brought out of death by His death, we have entered into life. We stand on wholly new ground in Him risen. We are put on no probationary trial to see whether we shall stand or fail. The grace of God has delivered us. Already saved, we are in Him blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And as of old visibly, not less truly does the Lord now deign to be in our midst. The Holy Ghost is come down to give us, among other privileges, the enjoyment of Christ's presence; and this is what pre-eminently is our portion when we assemble in His name. How precious to read God's word together! What a mercy to have liberty and opportunities for proclaiming the good news! How many ways of serving the Lord with old and young, the sick and the poor, in which Christian life may express itself and be exercised!

But the first day of the week has a character of its own, a blessed and constant call for every saint, where Christ is all; and here it is accordingly where, if it were an apostle, he finds himself one of God's family. It is “we,” not I and you. “When we came together to break bread.” Doubtless, the Lord's-supper apart, the apostle had his special place. Having the first of all gifts in the church, he exercised it as the Lord guided. A blight is on the assembly that would silence any gift which the grace of God has given for common profit. A blight is on all the individuals that say or feel so satisfied with what they are and have attained that they want nothing more. Those who know so well in their own conceit, be assured, know nothing as they ought. Whatever edifies is most appropriate for us when gathered together. The Lord would soon blow on the self-complacency that declines what He is pleased to give.

Here we find the apostle not only discoursing freely to the saints, but using his liberty to so great a length that it proved indeed a danger to one present that was heavy. Yet it furnished an occasion for the display of the power which the Lord had given, not for destruction, but for His own tender mercy and gracious power.

I have already shown the main object of the Lord's-supper; but it is not the only one. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians there is another connection with the Lord's-day which must not be passed by. It occurs in the last chapter. The apostle says, “Concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the assemblies of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him [or, at home] in store whatsoever he may be prospered in, that there be not gatherings then when I come” (16:1, 2). Here again is a duty of love associated with the first day of the week. If it were a mere question of the saints remembering their poor brethren, there seems no reason why the collections might not have been from time to time as need was made known. Nor is it certainly a bare question of laying by at home, though it is well known that some learned commentators declare this to be the meaning of “by him.” As if it were some great matter, they tell us that “laying by him,” as a phrase taken by itself, means nothing more.

Supposing this to be certain, and I am not going to dispute with them about it, is this all? Did the apostle mean nothing more? It does seem to me that the truth greatly supplements what they say; for one may justly ask the question, Why, if so, stress should be laid on the first day of the week? Why not on any other day? Why was the collection (for this it was) on that day above all others? Beyond a doubt it is good and wholesome for a Christian to lay by at home for the need of others. It is well that he should consider gravely, and not on mere impulse or when he is on the spot, what he is going to give in the Lord's name. It is evident that the Lord meant each believer to challenge his heart in view of any prosperity he may have had in the course of the week. But that each was to accumulate a separate store in his own house from week to week appears to me the merest assumption, and indeed mistake. The apostle would have it to be a grave matter of inquiry before the Lord, and of course therefore rather a question raised at home than, as is common in modern times, an emulous act when people flock together, or perhaps at haphazard, whether they be duly provided or not, and often under moving appeals to act on their feelings. All these are but poor ways of giving, and by no means answer to the intention of the Spirit of God here for His saints on the first day of the week.

The apostle wished giving to be a grave habit, and one that should be settled, as we have been prospered, with one's self or at home. He wished to avoid a special collection at the time of his visit, not merely, as it seems to us, because his time could be better employed than in such diaconal work, but because he felt it to be an affair for the Christian conscience and heart, not for influence of his own, still less for emulation, nor yet the gusts of some passing impulse. What a contrast is the getting a popular man to come and preach a moving sermon in order to work upon people's feelings! Far different is the principle laid down here. He urges on the saints to consider gravely before the Lord, and each by himself to lay by at home, not to act on impulse, but conscientiously, according as he had been that week prospered.

Accordingly the saints at Corinth, as elsewhere, are called in the name of the Lord to give on the first day of the week. “Let every one of you,” i.e. each of them. Is this always remembered? It is not the rich alone. Is there not sometimes the thought that they are to give that can out of their abundance? Is Christ in this thought, or self? Not a word about wealth is breathed here, but “as he may have been prospered.” The poor man may be prospered just as really, in proportion, as the rich; perhaps it might be even more sensibly. Many a rich man has nothing in particular different one week from another, but the poor man may often have; and the Lord thinks about the poor. The Spirit of God takes care to give a living and personal interest in everything that is connected with the name and saints of the Lord. Certainly it is not meant that those who are always in prosperity, and may not have any special abundance, should think themselves absolved from their duty of gravely considering with a view to giving. God forbid! Thus did the Lord ordain, that the poorest might not conceive himself left out, that the simplest might know that he has an integral interest in all that concerns the glory of God. There is too the gracious wisdom that connects all with Christ and His resurrection, and thus with the joy and the deliverance and the eternal blessing into which we are brought and know we are brought, and which we are intended to manifest in gathering together to His name, breaking bread in the remembrance of Him. What an association for our little contribution to the poor saints!

This then is the meaning of the first day of the week as here introduced, showing plainly that, as in the verse stated, there is a laying-up by each at home, so on the first day of the week they contributed when they came together; for we have already seen they always met on that day. Be it so, then, that the laying-by was at home, the day on which it was done implies that whatever might be thus separated to the need of the saints was not to be kept there. As they came together then, so they had fellowship in casting their offerings into the common treasury of the church in the name of the Lord. This appears to me the point here in connecting all together. Where would be the force of pressing the collection for the saints on the first day of the week, if it went no farther than each laying by at home? Why might it not be as well done on any other day? We can see its importance if they contributed on that day what each laid by at home, when they came together to break bread. Thus was communion best maintained among those that belonged to Christ; especially as it was also for the express purpose of avoiding collections when the apostle came. He would not mix it up with personal feeling. He desired not that money should be drawn out because Paul was there. He would have souls exercised in love and liberty but withal conscientious care, and the motive—Christ for the needy that are His. And He is always there; and this especially let me repeat, on the first day of the week. No doubt withal there is liberty for every holy service in prayer, preaching, and visiting; and we may well thank God for all. But these are not confined to the Lord's-day, having their place as God gives opportunity on any if not on every day; whereas the breaking of bread is the standing institution of the church's communion; and the Lord's-day is the standing day for it, though it might be every day. The Lord's-supper and the Lord's-day answer to each other, being mutual complements in the witness of Christianity; and as the one is especially the expression of Christ's death, so is the other especially of His resurrection.

Thus too is all duly kept in its place and tone. For we are not meant to come together in sadness, in a spirit of mourning, or with garments of heaviness. There is set forth then the most affecting sign of our Savior's humiliation in unfathomable love, the most solemn witness of our sin and shame and ruin. How overwhelming the evidence in His death that we were sinners, and what sinners we! But no less is it a demonstration of our blessedness, through His infinite work, as believers. God is not only satisfied as to sin and our sins, but glorified, and ourselves by grace washed, sanctified, justified, in the name of our Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. And our Lord, though on high, deigns to be with us till He come again and take us to be with Him.

Meanwhile the Lord's-day, where the grace and truth expressed in it is understood, and the Lord's-supper, observed as it should be in its original integrity as the central institution for the gathered worshippers in spirit and in truth, have their own appointed and appropriate aim—the best means according to God's wisdom—for the testimony and enjoyment of Christian privilege here below in His assembly to His glory. May our part, if indeed we are Christ's, be holily and happily in it all evermore. Amen.

W. K.

Fragment: Living to Please Him

We need intense grace not only to be ecclesiastically right and sound in doctrine, which is possible with worldliness; but we need also to remember that word— “whoso is minded to be the friend of the world, is constituted the enemy of God,” and we so forget the undying love of Him who died for us, and for us lives again. If all goes, there is one object worth living for, and one ambition worth having—to be pleasing to Him: this abides. Is not what Peter says a rest— “That God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever"? And then the only one who ought to be glorified, so links up our blessing with His glory.

W. N. T.

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Bible Treasury: Volume N9

Table of Contents

The Son of My Right Hand

The Dealings of God With Peter: 14. In the Acts of the Apostles

Fragment

Fragment

Fragment

Fragment

Jesus Christ Come in Flesh 1 John 4:2

Notes on Luke: 2. Chapter 3

Notes on Luke: 4. Chapter 5

I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life*

The Test of Love

The Coming Hour of Temptation

Notes of an Address on 1 Corinthians 15:12-23

Attainment

A False Christ and Falsehood

Studies in Mark: 31. Shining in Public: Growing in Secret

Studies in Mark: 32. Shining in Public: Growing in Secret

Bruising.

The Red Heifer — Numbers 19.

The Third and Seventh Days — Numbers 19.

Scripture Query and Answer.

Scripture Queries and Answers.

What Is the Church? 8.

Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings 19

Studies in Mark 4:13-20: The First Parable Interpreted

The Lord Jesus a Servant for Ever: Part 1

The Dealings of God With Peter in the Acts

Joying in God, and God Joying in Us

Scripture Query and Answer: King Saul Chosen by the People or the Lord

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Lectures Introductory to 1 Kings 20-22

Studies in Mark 4:13-20: The First Parable Interpreted, Concluded

The Lord Jesus a Servant for Ever: Part 2

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Lectures on 2 Kings 1-2

After All This

Notes on Luke 1-2

Fragment: God Becoming a Man

Luke 12:50 and John 19:30

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Lectures on 2 Kings 3-9

Notes on Ephesians 3:20

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Lectures on 2 Kings 9

Studies in Mark 4:30-34: Surprising Growth of a Tiny Seed

Notes on Luke 4

Notes on Romans 8:12-17

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Lectures on 2 Kings 10

Lectures on 2 Kings 10

Studies in Mark 4:35-41: The Servant's Word Stilling the Wind and Sea

Notes on Luke 5

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Notes on 1 Thessalonians 2:13

A Purged Conscience, a Worshipping Heart, and a Contented Mind

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Lectures on 2 Kings 11-17

Address on Psalm 84:9-12

Notes on Luke 7

Manifestation Before Whom?

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Notes on Exodus 16:4-18

Fragment: Words of Abraham

Lectures on 2 Kings 18

Fragment: The Ear, Mind, and Soul

Notes on Luke 8

Fragment: Christian Ministry

Thoughts on the Lord's Supper

Fragment: "Take, Eat"

John 16:28

Scripture Queries and Answers

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Lectures on 2 Kings 19-20

Studies in Mark 5:1-9: The Pitiable Plight of Legion