Incidents and Illustrations of the Gospel: Sought and Brought

IN a quiet parlor in the south of England two persons I might have been seen one afternoon this year in close conversation. One of them was a servant of the Lord, the other a youth not twenty years of age, but as anxious about his soul as he well could be. He had just dropped in for a little conversation about the one absorbing theme, viz. “peace with God, and how to get it.” After a quiet talk, and before separating, both knelt down together, and both spoke to God audibly. The youth said at the close of his prayer, “O God, don’t stop working in me till I get peace.” The Lord’s servant immediately followed by saying, “And, O God, don’t let him think that any amount of working in him will give him peace.”
It seemed very evident that, like thousands of others in similar anxiety, this dear youth was expecting that the longed-for blessing, “peace with God,” would in some way be produced by the work of God’s Spirit within him, instead of seeing that it depended entirely upon the finished and accepted work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. It is through faith in Him, whom God raised from the dead after He had been “delivered for our offenses,” that we have peace with God― “PEACE WITH GOD THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.” It is through Him who bore sin’s judgment for us, and not directly through Him who produces conviction within us, that our souls find solid peace. The latter creates soul-thirst, the former quenches it.

Are You Disappointed?

YOU are sure to be disappointed if you look for that in yourself which can only be found in Another; if you look for that in the law which can only be found in the gospel; if you look for that on earth which is only to be found in heaven.

It is IN CHRIST, and in the place where Christ is, that true joy and satisfaction are to be found. It is on the principle of grace, and not on the principle of merit, that this satisfaction can be reached. The law of God claimed a love from you that was worthy of Him who claimed it. The gospel of God brings the story of a love to you that is worthy of Him in whose heart it originates, and from whose bosom it springs. The blessing of the gospel flows from heaven, and will only have its full fruition in heaven.

Learn, then, what God’s heart is; see that heart expressed in view of all your badness; turn to Him (Christ) who expressed it, and dark disappointment will give place to fullest satisfaction, deepest distress to sweetest praise.

“NOT I, BUT CHRIST”; NOT MERIT, BUT GRACE; NOT EARTH, BUT HEAVEN.

At His Wit's End, Singing.

THE steamship―was on her return voyage from the Mediterranean, and had reached the Bay of Biscay, when she was overtaken by a terrific gale. The raging tempest continued until, to use a common expression, the waves rolled “mountains high.” Heavy seas broke upon and swept over her, causing her to shiver from stem to stern, and with their fierce violence carried from her deck everything that was movable. At last came one mighty billow, which so deluged her that the boiler fires were extinguished. As a matter of course, the engines stopped working. This serious accident left the ship pretty much to the mercy of the raging storm. The little sail they were able to set in such weather seemed as nothing, while the launching of a small boat under such circumstances was altogether out of the question. In short, to all appearance, it looked as though every fresh sea which she shipped would send her, with all hands, to the bottom.

What a solemn crisis it must have been! And all on board, from the captain to the youngest of his crew, were made to feel it.

What was worldly gain, and what were earthly pleasures worth then? Eternity, with all its realities, and the lost opportunities of a misspent life, must doubtless have risen before them―as terrible and as overwhelming to the soul as the angry billows were to the disabled ship. Men who just before had been foully blaspheming were now upon their knees wringing their hands and crying to the Lord for mercy. Others sat with their faces buried in their hands, trembling in the fear of death.

Only one in that vessel was known as a truly converted soul. This was the third engineer, a young man who had only been brought to the Lord a few months before. Hitherto he had been scoffed at and persecuted by the godless crew; but God was going to give him the opportunity of proving, in a practical way, the reality of his faith in Christ.

When matters were nearly at their worst, and when he, like the rest, was at his wit’s end, a verse of a hymn flashed into his mind, and, in the presence of that awestricken company, he commenced singing aloud―

“What a Friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!”

The eyes of most there were wonderingly directed toward this happy young convert, and all were awed into silence. There was no scoffing, no persecution now. They needed no one to tell them then who had the best of it. The joy of the Lord, with happy confidence in His loving care, filled this young man’s heart even to overflowing while the despairing countenances of the rest made it only too manifest that the terrors of death filled theirs.

To cut short our story, that Christian’s prayer was heard; for in the mercy of God the storm was weathered and their destination reached. But who knows how much that Christless crew owed to the fact that the third engineer had found a Friend in Jesus?

No wonder that the strongest and hardest of men have trembled with fear in the presence of death; for it is a solemn thing to have to meet a holy God, especially where there has been a willful slighting of His offers of mercy, determined disregard of the warnings of His gracious Spirit, with even cold contempt for the very name of His beloved Son.

Dear reader, you are ready to meet God or you are not. If unsaved, your ship will surely sink someday―even now it may be disabled. I mean that your body, the vessel in which you have sailed through life’s little voyage, will surely go down―down to a Christless grave, down to a hopeless hell! Oh, beware of trifling! While your soul is out of hell, and the Spirit is here to strive, let your cry of need enter His holy ear. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But “how then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” (Rom. 10:13, 14).

Thrice happy is he who, in the day of God’s long-suffering, finds a “Friend in Jesus”; and friendless will he be―friendless for eternity―who misses the opportunity.

Between a Last Opportunity and a Lost Eternity.

THE brakes on the railway freight-wagons in the United States are worked in a different way from those in Great Britain. When the brakesman wishes to put the brake on he mounts to the top of the wagon; and as the wagons are usually very large and high, there is a measure of danger in connection with the working of them. This is specially the case when the train passes beneath a bridge, as, usually, there is not room enough between the bridge and the wagon for a man to stand upright. Unless he bows down he comes into collision with the masonry of the bridge, and certain destruction is the result.
This accounts for a simple but wisely planned arrangement which is common in the States. About fifty or sixty yards on both sides of the bridges near the Chicago railway station the writer noticed long wires stretched right across the various railway tracks. Hanging from these wires were thin strips of rope, about a yard in length, and having the appearance of a deep fringe. He found, upon inquiry, that this arrangement is for giving warning to the brakesman, should he happen to be on the top of the wagon in the dark, unable to see the danger immediately ahead of him. Standing there he suddenly finds his face lashed with these strips of rope. Then, of course, his wisdom is to bow himself immediately. For should he fail to take heed to the timely warning a violent death would certainly be his doom.
But who would be so foolish as to disregard such a warning? Men generally count life to be so “sweet” that they find no difficulty in condemning the one who, through recklessness and foolhardiness, shortens his brief history here below. Yet what is being robbed of a few years of earthly toil and pleasure compared with the loss of an eternity of heavenly rest, and of “pleasures for evermore”?
Dear reader, if unsaved, God has, no doubt, often warned you. Though hitherto His warnings have been in vain, He would warn you once more. “Warn them from Me,” was His word to the prophet of old (Ezek. 33:7). “Flee from the wrath to come,” is still His gracious command. Unless you bow to Jesus as your Lord, and submit to His authority, an eternal hell is before you― “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord,” with remorse unbearable. “He that is not subject to the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him” (John 3:36, New Trans.). I know it is not pleasant to be faced with these solemn truths, but you will find it still less pleasant to be faced with that against which they warn your careless soul. It is not pleasant for the American brakeman to have his face lashed with those strips of rope, but does he stand quarreling with the unceremonious lashing of this silent monitor? No. He bows his head at once, and escapes the threatened destruction.
What a sad thing it would be to see a man standing upright between the lashes and the bridge! But how much more sad to see a sinner refusing to bow when God’s voice commands him to do so! “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven” (Heb. 12:25).
Reader, there is a space, long or short, in the history of every lost soul, between his last warning and opening his eyes beyond the reach of mercy. What a position to occupy! ―between A LAST OPPORTUNITY and A LOST ETERNITY Can you say, as you lay down this book, that you do not now occupy that position? Oh, let me entreat you at once to bow and be blest, rather than linger and be lost. “God... now commandeth all men everywhere to repent”―He willeth not the death of a sinner. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
“If ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” If ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; and then between eternity and your last opportunity you will find “A GREAT GULF FIXED.”

Can we Keep it from Them?

IT is said that a converted Indian was once heard to make use of words, in prayer, something to this effect: “Lord, do not let my confession of Christ be like the cloak I wear, which can be put on or thrown off as occasion may serve, but like the tattoo on my cheek, let it be seen under all circumstances―wherever I go, and whatever I do―seen through life, and till death.”

What a voice is this to many a heart in this land of gospel light and Christian privilege! This little paper may possibly be dropped into the hand of one who is acting in a way the very opposite of this, one who is seeking to be a kind of secret believer. He may, perhaps, be persuading himself that it is wiser to say nothing about either his exercises, or his faith in Christ, to anyone; for that he might not, in the long run, be able to maintain his profession; that he might again fall into sin; and that, in such a case, it would be far better, for the cause of Christianity, not to have made public profession of Christ’s name at all.

How sadly deceitful is the heart of man! Is it not possible, think you, for a man to deceive himself with such plausible reasoning as this, and to console himself’ with having great jealousy for the honor of Christ’s cause, whereas at the bottom it is nothing but cowardly self-consideration; nothing but one of the worst forms of human pride, dressed up though it may be in the garb of religious humility? The fact is, that old worldly friendships are clung to; the frowns or jeers of companions are feared; or it may be that these timid believers protested once loudly enough against the glaring inconsistencies of professing Christians, and now, remembering this, and conscious of their own weakness, they are not quite certain whether they might not actually be as bad themselves. Thus does Satan effectually close their mouths.

But how distinct and unmistakable are the words of the Saviour: “Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God: but he that denieth Me before men shall be denied before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8,9). And again the Holy Ghost testifies: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:9, 10).

Now if being saved were a matter of a man’s own merit one could well understand his shrinking from making a profession; nay, more, it would either be presumptive ignorance or barefaced hypocrisy to do it. But to confess unto salvation in a scriptural way is simply to own that, though I was bad enough to be lost forever, Christ was good enough to come from heaven, as sent of God, to do all the work to save me. What a comfort it is, therefore, that in confessing Christ I have not to say one single good thing of myself―and for the best of reasons, that naturally there is not one single good thing to say―but only to magnify His name “who loved me and gave Himself for me” And is He not worthy?

“Who would hush the heaven-sent story

Of the One who came to die?”

But we must rise to heaven’s thoughts of the blessed Saviour if we would have power to confess Him, and not be mouth-stopped before the world; for as a mutinous crew would hate to hear the name of the captain they had murdered, so the world hates the very mention of Christ’s name. But the question comes, Shall we be silent? Can we? Shall not we who have tasted the sweetness of His love “tell to sinners round what a blest Saviour we have found”?―not in legal bondage, but by His constraining love; not by fleshly effort, but in a felt helplessness which hangs upon Him, and upon Him alone.

“This day is a day of good tidings,” said the Samaritan lepers, and “we do not well” to “hold our peace” (2 Kings 7:9).

Can we say less, fellow-believer?

“The fowler’s snare is broken,

And loosed my captive wing,

And shall the bird be silent

Which Thou East taught to sing?”

Christ, not Self.

(Letter to an anxious inquirer.)

I AM sorry to hear, through your niece’s letter, that you are still in distress about your soul. One line or two in her letter touched me very much, in which she quotes your words to her, “Oh, Betsy, I am so bad. I must die, and I am not prepared!”

Now, if you could just turn your eye away from yourself to Christ, and say, “Lord Jesus, though I am so bad, yet Thou hast died, and I can trust Thee,” how different it would be with you!

I once saw a little child in its nurse’s arms. I did my best to induce him to come to me. Just as I began to think I should be successful, the little one’s mother came in view, and then, instead of coming to me, his tiny arms were instantly stretched out to their utmost reach toward the mother, although not a word was uttered.

Now here was a picture of simple confidence. There were two persons before the child―one whom he could not trust, the other whom he could―and those stretched-out arms left no question as to what he felt about both.

Now, there are two persons whom you have to do with―self and Christ. To which does your eye turn, your confidence cling? To whom do you stretch forth your hand?

The mother of the little one was busy just then, and did not want to take the child, and this brought forth a cry.

Now, you could not have seen and heard that child, and said, He has no trust in his mother. No. The longing look proved it, the outstretched arms proved it, and if it needed any other proof, the cry of disappointment would have been sufficient.

Yet the child was not thinking of his own trust, nor wondering if it could trust, nor if its trust was of the right sort. It was only thinking of the trustworthy object that had come before it.

I feel I need not speak to you of the work of Christ. You have long known that that work was finished on the cross. What you really need is to have your heart conducted to Christ Himself―to the living Saviour, risen from the dead, and now enthroned in glory. Turn, I beseech you, to Him, and if He is really worthy of your heart’s confidence, do not talk about Him to others as though He were not, for this would only please Satan and dishonor the Lord.

Remember, it is Christ, and not self, you must be engaged with to get comfort; and therefore, for every thought you have of what kind of sinner, or even what kind of believer you are, think a hundred times of what kind of Saviour He is, and I have no doubt as to the happy result.

The Coachman's Extremity.

IT has been often said that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” and perhaps it was never more strikingly illustrated than in the conversion of Lady W― ‘s coachman.
Taken seriously ill, his kind mistress had him removed to one of the London hospitals. Fearing that he was at death’s door, she asked a city missionary to visit him, and told her coachman that he might expect a call from him. The poor sick servant was glad enough of this, for he realized something of his own critical condition. Beside this, he knew that he was not prepared for death, still less for judgment.
It is true he had been warned and entreated before this to think of his precious soul; but all had proved fruitless. He felt it now. More than once God’s Spirit had spoken to him, and once in the pit of a theater, very loudly. While waiting for the rise of the curtain he suddenly recollected that he had a note in his possession not yet read, nor even opened. On taking it from his pocket and opening it, he found it was from a Christian he knew, inviting him that evening to a gospel preaching, and accompanied, in all probability, with some word of loving entreaty also, for the incident seems to have made a strong impression on his mind. He pictured the two scenes—the quiet gospel-preaching-room where he might have been; the theater where he actually was.
All this would no doubt come back with terrible force to his mind now, as the cold hand of death seemed to be stretched out toward him, eternity full in view. Death had, indeed, come near enough already to make him tremble at the consequences of leaving this world in his present state.
Long, oh, how long I seemed the hours as he waited for the promised visit, but no missionary came. Perhaps he had other and more pressing claims upon his time, or the matter had slipped his memory.
However, when his mistress discovered that no one had called, she named the case to a lady visitor in the district.
Then another period of anxious waiting, but with no better result. The poor fellow’s disappointment was only more intensified, for the lady never called. How alarmed he became! Had God left him alone to his idols, left him to die comfortless, because Christless, away from home and friends on that strange hospital bed? Not so, as the reader will presently see.
Once more the lady discovered that no visitor had yet been to the bedside of her apparently dying servant, and so she repaired to a ritualistic clergyman, and no doubt pressed the urgency of her coachman’s case upon him, for shortly afterward this gentleman reached the bedside of the poor sufferer. He seems to have spoken to him kindly and solemnly of his apparent danger, asked several questions, and ended by the inquiry, “Have you been confirmed?”
“Well, no, sir, I have not.”
“Then I am very sorry for you,” responded this so-called spiritual adviser, and shortly afterward took his departure.
He seemed to have no word of hope or comfort for him.
After the clergyman had gone, an agony too deep for words filled the poor coachman’s mind. When he might have listened to the gospel he was at the theater, and now there seemed to be no vestige of hope. The missionary had not come; the lady visitor, for some unknown reason, had failed to reach him; and now the one who had come seemed to wither up all hope because he head not been confirmed by the bishop! Sick and sad at heart, he turned restlessly round upon his pillow to weep, when suddenly a text on the wall of the ward arrested his attention.
It was this: ―
“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
(Matt. 11:28.)
It seemed just as if the blessed Lord Himself had met him face to face with His own gracious welcome; as though He had said, “You have been trusting to broken reeds, and a storm of distress, a flood of disappointment, has been the consequence. COME UNTO ME... I will give you REST.’”
And, blessed be God, he came at once, was welcomed, and found rest. How well able he was now to sing―
“I came to Jesus as I was―
Weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad.

Bodily healing shortly followed the soul’s salvation, and in the freshness and bloom of restored health he told his own story to the writer.
Has our reader ever made a personal acquaintance with that gracious Saviour, that living Man in the glory of God? Has his need as a guilty offender brought him down, as a penitent at His blessed feet? Oh, remember it is with Christ Himself you must have to do! You must, by faith, personally meet Him now, or personally have to do with Him in judgment hereafter. Which?
Oh that you would come! that you would do so now! He calls you, and He will be as good as His word, He will welcome you. Don’t occupy yourself with the way you should come, but rather with the Person you are coming to. He died for sinners like yourself, and He will not only give you rest about your sins, because He bore sin’s heavy load upon the tree, but He will reveal to your heart the Father’s name. He will fill it with sweetest rest and peace here, and give you to rest where He rests there. “Rise; He calleth thee.”
“Haste! haste! haste!
Tomorrow too late may be!
Oh, wherefore the moments in madness waste,
Since Jesus is calling thee?”

Death a Friend, and Death a Terror.

THAT there is an end to every man’s history here no one will dream of denying. Death is doing its work too surely for that; doing it daily, spite of all that wit and wealth may do to ward it off. The poor slave of sin has good reason to dread its approaches, and shrink in terror from its chilling grip. Indeed, his only chance of what he calls happiness is to forget that it is on his track, so he vainly tries to hide the unpalatable fact even from himself. But though he may succeed in turning his funerals into flower shows, and his cemeteries into lovely gardens, the same unwelcome truth faces him everywhere. Amid all this poor world’s shams he knows that death is an inevitable reality, and that his own turn will surely come.

Job describes the murderer and the adulterer (chap. 24:14-17) as evading the light to pursue their wicked course, and then adds, “If one knew them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.” How true! A servant of Christ once spoiled an evening for a dancing party by a simple two-paged tract entitled “Your Dying Hour.” He had each tract placed in an envelope, and offered to the different couples as they entered the ballroom. Thinking they were programs for the ball, they willingly received them, but only to find a reminder of the last thing in the world they cared to think of, “YOUR DYING HOUR.” Yes, “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,” and an unconverted soul may well recoil from the thought of both.

But for the divinely instructed believer death and judgment have no terrors. He knows that Christ has, once for all, conquered death. He knows that the judgment righteously due for his sins has completely spent itself upon the holy Substitute; that death at its worst is but a putting to sleep, but a severing of the strings that bind him to this place, that his happy spirit may find itself with the Lord.

“Jemmie―” who lived a few years since in the north of Scotland, was visited one evening by two Christian neighbors. They found him nearing his end. Jemmie had long known the Lord, long lived in the enjoyment of His love, and now that he was dying all was calm within as to the future. His title to glory was unquestionable. All was well with his soul.

Yet Jemmie had just one thing pressing upon his mind that night of his departure, and his two visitors were anxious to discover the nature of this one trouble, if perchance they might in some way help him out of it. And what do you think it was, my reader? The thought of death alarmed him not. The grave had no terrors. He knew that the question of his guilt in the past had all been settled on the cross, that the future was all secured in the Father’s house. Was it, then, because he had neglected till the last moment to make his will? His will! Old Jemmie make a will! He had nothing to leave but circumstances of the deepest poverty. The neighbors discovered after he was gone that even his last penny had been spent, and nothing left in the cupboard but a few scraps of oatcake!

What, then, was Jemmie’s last anxious care? It was this: “I fear,” said he, “that I shall have to be beholden to the parish for a coffin!”

“No, Jemmie, not so,” said his kind visitors, who were both carpenters. “The parish shall not have the chance of doing that for you. We’ll promise to make the coffin for you when you need it.”

“Then I shall want no more in this world. I shall be gone before the morning.”

They pressed to have the privilege of sitting up with him, but Jemmie would not hear of it. “Oh, no, thank you; I want nobody to sit up with me. Just leave me alone with the Lord. I shall be gone before morning.”

The master carpenter now drew out his rule, and, as though to sweep away at one stroke any tittle of anxiety that might remain on his old friend’s mind as to the parish coffin, he carefully measured his length from foot to head!

Strangely premature as this may seem to the reader, it suited this dying pilgrim well, for it looked like putting the welcome promise into practice in good earnest, and no doubt his visitor knew that this would be a comfort to the dear old man, or he would never have done it.

No boarding-school boy could see the railway porter labeling his luggage for home with greater satisfaction than Jemmie witnessed the measuring of his poor worn-out earthly frame.

The carpenter soon left, and Jemmie might have heard during the night the sound of busy hands in the workshop close by; for, believing that his neighbor was really dying, the master tradesman was determined to do all in his power to remove completely the cause of Jemmie’s last trouble.

Next morning, when the neighbors peeped into his cottage, they found no response to their kindly inquiries; the silence of death was there; the familiar voice would greet them here below no more. He had, as he said he should, departed during the night.

“Jesus can make a dying bed

As soft as downy pillows are,

While on His breast I lay my head,

And breathe my life out sweetly there.”

Now for the other side of our subject. A gentleman of wealth and position, residing in the north of Ireland, was unwell. His great fear was that he might die in his sleep: So he paid a special attendant to wake him three times during each night, lest his fears should be realized. But with all his precaution he passed away in his sleep after all1 After spending the evening at the billiard-table he had retired to bed, and between the hours of special waking his soul was summoned away. Another hand woke him up to the solemn circumstances of eternity. Don’t ask whither, my reader; for if he died as he lived, that is, in his sins, and it is to be greatly feared he did, you know where.

What a contrast is presented in the end of those two men. It is well worth your while to consider it, my reader, for both left behind them something for you. One, a legacy more valuable than any other that could possibly be left you, a bright testimony to the fact that neither “death” nor what comes “after death” has any terrors for the one who knows Christ; the other the solemn warning (oh that you would take heed to it!) that without Christ there is neither solid comfort for the present nor anything but the most gloomy outlook for the future. To such, Death is indeed the “king of terrors,” and neither wealth nor paid watchers can keep him at arm’s length when once the summons goes forth. “There is no discharge in that war.” That King is sure to conquer.

How is it with your soul, dear reader? If unsaved, be not so mad as to delay such a matter another hour, fraught as it is with eternal issues. With the judgment of God resting upon you, how dare you trifle? Oh, repent of your sins! Come to the blessed Saviour. His grace will welcome. His blood will cleanse your soul. His love will captivate your heart. With Him on your side you need not fear. He has the keys of death and Hades in His hand. He assumed human form, “that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:14, 15).

May that blessed deliverance be yours! It certainly will if the great Deliverer be bowed to and trusted. Still He lingers for you. Bow to Him now.

Deeper Enjoyment of Christ.

(Letter to a Perplexed Believer.)

THANK God for your longings after Christ. Only don’t get occupied with the “living” and the “leaning,” but rather with the love that faith leans upon― “the love of Christ which passeth knowledge”!
The Holy Ghost is the One that ministers of His love to us, and therefore we have to take diligent heed that nothing in us, or in our ways, shall be allowed to grieve Him. It is negligence as to this which hinders the apprehension and enjoyment of divine love in our souls.
I quite agree with you, and believe the verse you quote. The crushing of an idol that only leaves a bitter smarting, or an aching void, is of little value. Yet, surrender is surrender, notwithstanding. Only you must see that if surrender is to be worth anything it must be to make room for that which you value more than the thing surrendered.
Get with HIM, dear friend. Reach Him in the place where He now is. Tell out the tale of your coldness in His ear. Make known all your exercises at His feet.
Keep your mouth, and heart, and ears open to Him, and all that you wish for will surely flow in. The empty shell, dropped into the ocean, has no need to cry, Fill me.

A Detective and His Prisoner.

ON the platform of a small junction station on the London and North-Western Railway a little crowd had collected. This being no unusual occurrence, especially toward evening, it attracted but little attention. The writer sat in a carriage by himself, when two men entered, and quietly took their seats close together at the far side. There would have been nothing noteworthy in this either had not the group, just referred to, come crowding round the carriage door, peering in with apparent interest. What could all this mean? The writer looked at his two fellow-passengers, and again at the crowd outside, without discovering any clue. Then an elderly man from the company came close to the window, and beckoned one of the newly arrived passengers to him. Both rose Something was whispered between them, and once more the two sat down as near to each other as before. Another glance, and the secret was out. A link of bright steel could now be seen; and though they were both evidently doing their best to cover the chain from view, it was now plain enough that they were handcuffed together—a detective and his prisoner.
Feelings of pity filled one’s heart to see a respectable—looking young fellow of about twenty-four in such a position, and almost involuntarily I said aloud, “ ‘The way of transgressors is hard,’ but wisdom’s ways are ‘ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.’” “That is true,” said the detective, while the prisoner, by a sorrowful shake of the head, seemed to give his mournful assent. A little more conversation, and I found to my surprise that neither the constable nor his poor prisoner was a stranger to the gracious work of the Spirit of God.
As far as memory will carry I will seek to give separately the substance of each man’s testimony.

THE DETECTIVE’S CONVERSION.

“I had a Christian mother, but left home unconverted, and somewhat earlier than most. I earned good wages in connection with the Midland locomotive works at D―, but soon fell in with bad company, and spent all my earnings in wickedness. Things got from bad to worse, until one day I quarreled with my uncle, with whom I was lodging, struck him in the face with my fist, and offered to fight him. Soon after this I left my work at D―, returned to N —, where my mother lived, and joined the police force. This, however, did not curb me in my wicked course, for I went deeper into sin than ever, though perhaps in a more covert way. One day, alas! my poor mother had to fetch me out of a public-house. On our road home she stumbled in some way on the pavement, and said as I was helping her up again, ‘You’ve broken my heart, my boy; you’ve broken my heart.’ This certainly touched me a little, but still I persisted in the downward path. Shortly after this, while on duty, I was seriously bitten by a dog, and for several days after had a dreadfully painful finger. Then it was that the possibility of the near approach of the end came before me. The agony of mind with which I walked the streets, on my usual beat, I could never describe. I said to myself, holding my finger as I walked along, ‘Death! Death! eternal death! DEATH! DEATH! ETERNAL DEATH!’ The dreaded hereafter was constantly before me, and I felt as though the very paving-stones would open under my feet and I should drop into hell. I then tasted something of the awful reality of the torments of the lost, and I knew how richly I deserved it. At last I went to show my swollen, blackened hand to the doctor, who called me a ‘brave fellow’ to have been on duty with such a finger. [Little did the doctor dream of the fear and dread that, even then, filled his quailing heart; but God knew it, and deliverance was at hand.]
“After tossing on my bed one evening, before going on my beat, I suggested to my wife, whom I believed to be unconverted, and therefore unconcerned about eternal things, that she should take a small article of domestic use into the town to be repaired. She was no sooner clear of the house than I sprang off the bed and cast myself on my knees before God, saying, ‘Lord, I want no sham religion, no deception; I want to know that I as saved in reality. I come to Thee! I make full surrender of heart to Thee.’ Then suddenly, like a flash of light from heaven, the sense of pardon filled my soul. I rose to my feet―almost seemed lifted up―and couldn’t help calling aloud, ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’ The policemen below thought I must have gone mad.
“Then thought I, All the neighbors must be told; and from house to house I went with the news, that ‘I had got it.’ Got it! Got what? ‘Salvation!’”
Now, reader, let me pause here and ask, Have you, like this policeman, ever honestly faced the end? Have you faced the reality of death? and beyond that, the, second death― ETERNAL DEATH? Do not, if unsaved, deceive yourself by imagining that the “second death” means ceasing to exist. The second death is no more ceasing to exist than is the first. The circumstances of your existence will be changed both by the first and the second death, but you will live on and on forever. At your first death your natural body will be laid aside, and you in the prison-house without it; but if you reach the “second death,” your body will have been raised, and you will be in the lake of fire with it (Rev. 20:12-15). God grant that your spiritual awakening may come before Death shall place his cold, withering hand upon you, and leave nothing for you but the misery and remorse of a hopeless eternity. And to this end, while God shall give us opportunity, we will both plead with you and pray for you May the Spirit disturb your deadly slumber even now.
Has He already awakened you? Then come to the Saviour today. Delay not another hour! Make full surrender to Him, as the policeman did, and “joy and peace in believing” shall be yours.
Now for

THE PRISONER’S STORY.

A word of loving appeal (judging him to be unconverted) brought from him the acknowledgment that he, too, was once happy about his soul’s salvation, and that a few years before he had, he believed, been truly converted to God.
“Well,” I remarked, “then your breakdown did not commence with the offense that places you today in a painful position as this?”
“No,” he replied; “my downfall began with cricket and football. These led me into godless company, and from that I got to drinking, and into deeper sin. But lay father is a Christian, and I myself once helped in the work of the Lord; indeed, the Lord used me in rather a remarkable way to the conversion of my brother who is now in heaven. After my own conversion I had great longings for his salvation, and often tried to reach his conscience, but in vain. He laughed it off, sometimes even with mockery. But God had His own way of reaching him, and this was bow it took place. My brother’s favorite dog had died, and it fell to my lot to bury it, which I did at the far end of the garden. I found an old piece of stone in the yard (probably part of an old gravestone), which I thought would do well to mark the dog’s grave, and accordingly placed it there. Shortly afterward my brother walked down the garden-path, but after going as far as the grave he came back looking greatly agitated and deadly pale. ‘What is the matter?’ I inquired. ‘Are you ill?’ ‘No,’ he said, but the words on that dog’s gravestone gave me such a turn just now. What a strange feeling came over me as I read upon it,

‘PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD!’

“These solemn words must have reached his soul in the quickening power of the Spirit, and brought him as a convicted sinner into the presence of a holy God, for from that moment he never rested until he knew for certain that his own soul was saved.”
As I parted with the detective and his prisoner at the D―station the latter said, with apparent deep emotion, poor fellow, “Do, please, pray for me.” May the blessed Advocate have restored His wandering sheep ere this, and given him to walk more softly, and to distrust himself more thoroughly for the future.
Take warning by this, young believer, and beware of association with the world. For “what communion hath light with darkness?” (see 2 Cor. 6:14-18). If we unite with the world for a common object we not only dishonor the Lord, and rob our own souls of the enjoyment of their heavenly portion, but we also become stumbling-blocks to the unconverted, if not laughing-stocks for the enemy. Have you already been tripped up or drawn aside? His love, be assured, would win you back today. Get low before Him; confess all to Him; and never rest until you have the renewed sense of His gracious smile upon you. Depend upon it, He will never rest until that moment. He who gave up His precious life to make you His own will never rest content till you are happily restored in heart to Him. Oh, how He loves!

A Double Triumph.

THE gospel narrative furnishes two vivid pictures of man’s position Godward―the leper (Luke 17:12) and the demoniac (Luke 8:28). One is a figure of his uncleanness, the other of his enmity. On the ground of Levitical restriction, laid down by God Himself, the leper could not come near if he would, and because of man’s enmity through the devil’s deception the demoniac would not come near if he could. Yet how blessed the result of that almighty grace which was seen in the person of Jesus here below― grace which came down to reach man at his lowest, cleanse away his defilement, remove his bitter enmity, and set him down at perfect rest in the presence of his Deliverer! Behold that once devil-possessed sinner who cried, “What have I to do with Thee?” now “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind,” his one desire being now to be with Him. See that once filthy leper falling down at the feet of Him who had cleansed him, a grateful worshipper. What a triumph―a double triumph!

Thank God, His enemies are still being reconciled to Him by the death of His Son, and the filthy washed from their sins in the Saviour’s precious blood.

Reader, has your heart been set right with God? Has the conscious removal of your sins from before His all-seeing eye left you a cleansed worshipper in His holy presence? If not, look to it, lest that “certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries,” overtake you unawares, and you be branded as the foe of God and His Christ for eternity. Think of unforgiven Cain, driven out as a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth with God’s “mark” upon him, and as you hear his bitter cry, “My punishment is greater than I can bear,” ask yourself, If conscious expulsion from God’s presence on earth involved so much anguish, what will it be to be driven into hell? That such a doom may never be yours, we plead with you to resist no longer but be reconciled to God.

The Empty Sepulcher.

1. Is He Dead or Risen?

THERE was no small stir in Jerusalem on the third morning after the crucifixion of Jesus. Elders and priests were in close consultation, for the report brought by the Roman soldiers from the sepulcher had been the source of more than ordinary uneasiness. The body of Jesus gone! Could it be possible? Alas! for them it was but too true. What, then, could be done in the matter? Was Jesus risen, and their worst fears realized? No; they would never allow their proud hearts to bow to such an unwelcome fact. Risen? Never! But His body was missing from the sepulcher. What could be said? With the arch-deceiver at their side, himself as much foiled and disappointed as they, an explanation is soon arrived at. The soldiers must be bribed, their lives protected, and a report set afloat through the city, as a fitting answer to all inquirers.

Now let us remember that eternal issues are at stake in this question, and let us calmly and carefully consider what their report was worth. For “if Christ be not raised... ye are yet in your sins,” says the apostle (1 Cor. 15:17).

Here it is, then: “His disciples came by night, and stole, Him away while we slept” (Matt. 28:13).

Now, upon the face of it, if this story be true, another thing must be taken along with it, viz. that of all the dwellers in Jerusalem at the time none knew so well as the disciples that Jesus was still dead, and that He was a dead “Deceiver.” Had He not repeatedly told them that He should rise again from the dead the third day? (see Matthew 17:9; 26:32; Mark 9:31; Luke 18:33). Indeed, this fact had become so notorious that the Lord’s enemies, whose perceptions were quickened by malice and fear, seem to have laid hold of it more firmly than His attached disciples had done. None, therefore, we repeat, knew so well as His disciples, if they had stolen His dead body, that He had dashed all their hopes as to His Messiahship, and entirely forfeited their confidence in His truthfulness. What, then, could have followed but the effectual scattering of this feeble few had it been so? Was it not so when Theudas was slain (Acts 5:36,37) and when Judas of Galilee was cut off?

But what do we find in the case of the disciples! Why, never before the cross had the Lord such bold and persistent followers as He had after. The handful of men who fled for fear from the side of their living Master were afterward prepared to go to prison and to death for Him, and to go joyfully. And all this for whom? For a dead Impostor? Yes, even so, if they were but midnight body-snatchers, and their Master not risen from the dead. But let us look at this story more closely.

“His disciples came by night, and stole Him away” (Matt. 28:13). Alas for these heads of the nation! their very determination to keep the body of Jesus in the tomb until after the third day turned out to be one of the strongest links in the chain of testimony against them. Pilate seems to have fallen in with their wishes by granting a special guard of soldiers to watch the tomb, and added further, “Make it as sure as ye can.” This they certainly did; and it is easy to picture their self-satisfied faces as they look again and again at the huge stone at the door, at the secure fastening and the official seal. Who dare tamper with it? Surrounded as it was with their military watch, who could? All that was now left would be to wait quietly until the third day, and then to open the sepulcher and reveal the dead body of Jesus. This would be the crowning day for their hatred and pride.

But had these precautions not been taken, there might have been at first; perhaps, an appearance of truth in this concocted story.

Here was a “great stone,” so heavy, indeed, that the devoted women (who had doubtless seen it) despaired of being, by their combined strength, able to roll it away. What, then, must the difficulty have been when, in addition to the usual fastening, it was securely and officially sealed? For we may rest assured that when these chief priests had, to their own satisfaction, “made the sepulcher sure,” by no ordinary wrench would anyone be able to cast the stone aside and enter. And yet, to their own showing, all this was done without even waking the Roman guards, who, instead of watching, lay sleeping on the spot. Was it credible?

But look at the rest of the story: “While we slept.” Now it is well known that for a man in the Roman army to fall asleep while on guard was to incur the penalty of death, so that it was a rare occurrence for any soldier on watch to do it. But here was a number of them, with more than ordinary charges of vigilance, and yet they all go fast asleep. Indeed, so soundly do they slumber that a sealed sepulcher could be broken into, the ponderous stone rolled away, and a dead body carried safely out without one of their number being awakened. Neither trampling of footsteps nor the wrenching of official fastenings could arouse these sound sleepers. And yet they could actually tell who it was that came and stole away the body!

Was a more clumsy, threadbare lie ever told? Well might the chief priests have deemed it necessary to pay “large money” to the soldiers to adopt and repeat such a story. Yet this was the only way the Lord’s absence from the tomb could be accounted for by them.

No wonder, then, that all the enemies of Christ should be astir in Jerusalem, as miracle after miracle was performed in the name and power of the risen Jesus!

But could they not stamp out this new doctrine? Well, at any rate they would try. A hot zealot was soon found in the person of a young man of promise and energy―Saul of Tarsus. He would carry their cause to certain victory. Exceedingly mad against the poor followers of the despised Nazarene, he set to his work in real earnest. He had undertaken to superintend the stoning of Stephen, and having made havoc of the disciples in Jerusalem, he was now determined to do the same in Damascus.

But even the hottest enemy to the truth of the resurrection is to become one of its boldest witnesses. On the road thither, he is suddenly arrested by the voice of the ascended Jesus. The glorified One speaks to him, “I am... Jesus whom thou persecutest”; and the champion persecutor is turned forthwith into a willing servant, and “Jesus and the resurrection” becomes his lifelong theme.

What a testimony was this! Writing to the Corinthians afterward (1 Cor. 15:5-8), and speaking of the various witnesses of the resurrection, he says, “He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, He was seen of James; then of all the apostles; and last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” And who shall dare to gainsay the witness which he bore, or question the motives which actuated him in bearing it?

Was it for personal or pecuniary gain he did it? Listen to his words as they come from the walls of a foreign prison, a place he reached, moreover, because of this very testimony: “I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Phil. 3:8).

Did an ambitious desire for worldly glory influence him? He was accounted the very “filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things,” and he knew it (1 Cor. 4:13).

Was it for social or religious applause? His confession of Christ simply meant the sacrifice of every religious friend he had. New companions he found, it is true, but they were among those he once so bitterly hated, the poor and despised among men.

Had he remained the fierce persecutor of the humble followers of the “Nazarene,” the learned, and religious, and respectable in Jerusalem would have honored and applauded him still; but by becoming a bold witness of Jesus and the resurrection he is imprisoned here, half murdered there, hated everywhere. Read that long catalog of ills in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, and you will see the recompense Paul got for bearing testimony to a risen Saviour. Nor was life itself so dear to him as the joy of finishing his course of labor and suffering in the interests of the One who had awakened his sleepy conscience and won his rebel heart.

God has taken great care, then, that there should be an abundant witness to the truth of His resurrection. Angels and men, friend and foe alike, are called in to give their testimony. And even those who denied it at the beginning, and those who willfully do so still, are certainly divested of every tittle of proof to the contrary.

Reader, do you believe that the glory of the Father visited that dark sepulcher and raised up Jesus from the dead? Do you believe, that the highest place in heaven is now occupied by that very Man—that God bas not only raised Him, but made Him Lord of all? Believe it or not, it is so, and we would earnestly call upon you to bow to Him now. If you remain unsaved you must, sooner or later, bow before a throne of judgment, and be damned. Thank God, you may bow before a throne of grace, and be saved. Oh, turn to Him now in true repentance “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

If God, in righteousness, forsook Him on the cross as a Sin-bearer, in righteousness He has glorified Him as the Sin-purger, i.e. as having done the work of sin-purging (Heb. 1:3). And He is equally righteous in clearing from all charge of sin the guiltiest sinner who believes in Jesus (Rom. 3:25). But beware of indecision. Your eternity may hang upon this moment. The risen One is coming again, and coming quickly. Bow to the Man of power now, and you will find Him the most blessed of friends forever.

2. What is Believing in Vain?

1 Cor. 15:2.

Untold gladness must have filled the hearts of the disciples as they discovered, beyond any possibility of doubt, that their Lord was risen from the dead. At first it seemed too good to be true, as one witness after another proclaimed the welcome news, “He is risen! He is risen!” Even when they saw Him standing in their midst we are told that, until He “did eat before them,” they “believed not for joy.” But there could be no mistake about those wounded hands and that pierced side of His. The most doubting one is fully convinced, and each and all go forth prepared henceforth to stake all they had in this world and all they hoped for in the next—nay, even life itself upon the truth of it. “He is risen! He is risen!” was their simple testimony, and their souls went with it. “With great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4:33).

Years rolled on, and the restless enemy still continued busy. He had signally failed in his direct attack from without; he would now try what he could do by an indirect attack from within. Accordingly we find that at Corinth he managed that false teachers should creep into the assembly, teaching that “there is no resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15:12). But with what moral force and transparent simplicity does the apostle cause the light to be focused upon this crafty design of Satan! How thoroughly he exposes it! He shows a sevenfold consequence to believers if this “no-resurrection” theory were true. The whole gospel arch would give way if this keystone were removed. Seven important links would necessarily fall if that one link were severed. Let us look at these in order.

1. “If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen” (vs. 13).

2. “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain” (vs. 14).

3. If our preaching is vain, “your faith is also vain... ye have believed in vain” (vv. 2, 14).

4. “We are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ” (vs. 15), which was a lie, if there was no such thing as resurrection.

5. “Ye are yet in your sins”; i.e. if Christ be not raised (vs. 17).

6. “Then they also which are faller asleep in Christ are perished”; for if living believers are still in their sins, those who had departed had died in their sins, and consequently “perished” (vs. 18).

7. “We [the apostles] are of all men most miserable” (vs. 19), for “we stand in jeopardy” of our lives “every hour” because of preaching this very doctrine.

How crafty of the devil to aim this kind of backhanded blow at the truth of Christ’s resurrection Little do professing Christians know what they are doing when they willfully depart, in the least degree, from the plaid doctrine of God’s Word. But now comes the question―

WHAT IS MEANT BY BELIEVING IN VAIN?

Take a simple illustration. A London tradesman owes to a manufacturer in the North the sum of £50. Repeated demands are made for a settlement of the account, but in vain. The poor tradesman has well-nigh come to a deadlock in his affairs, and is quite unable to meet this claim on the part of his creditor.

One morning, among his business letters, he finds a short but very important note. It is from a friendly man of business living in the town next to that of the manufacturer, saying that, on hearing of his serious difficulties, he had been to the creditor’s office and laid down a check for the full amount, and that a receipt would be sent in due course. The poor tradesman’s mind is forthwith set at rest about the debt, for he fully believes the word of his correspondent.

By a later post the same day comes another letter in the well-known handwriting of his creditor. “Ah,” thinks he, “this is doubtless the receipt for my longstanding account,” as with good courage he breaks the seal and begins to read. But, alas! no such thing. With regret the manufacturer writes to tell him that the check paid on his behalf yesterday had been dishonored at the bank, and that consequently the £50 is still owing.

Now, you see, it was not that the check had not been paid, and not that the poor debtor did not fully believe its but Hint since the creditor could not accept the dishonored cheque as payment, the debtor had believed in vain, and was still in debt to the manufacturer.

Now may the Spirit of grace apply this to the help of some anxious reader of these pages. Is it not clear that if a settlement is to be made with God on account of sin, it is the One against whom we have sinned that must accept the satisfaction when offered? It is He who must be satisfied with that which makes the settlement. Now such was made when upon the cross the dying Saviour said, “It is finished.” As a Sin-bearer He had been, under the judgment of God, “forsaken,” as His own blessed lips proclaimed. But what proof should we have had of God’s acceptance of that work, or His good pleasure in it, if the One who did it were still in the grave, having never been raised? None whatever. Plenty of evidence we should have had that He had undertaken the settlement of that awful question, or why the sinless One there at all? Why that bitter cry in the darkness? Why forsaken? But where the proof that in God’s account He had not failed in the attempt? Even though we had believed, and ever so firmly believed, that He had died for us, we should still be in our sins. If God had not raised Him from the dead, we should have believed in vain.

Now this is what the apostle is seeking to press upon the Corinthians when he says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).

But Christ is risen, “risen indeed”; and the blessed consequence is that the believer is no longer in his sins before God, but out of them forever. He who bore our sins is out of them, or God could not righteously have raised and glorified Him, and therefore those for whom He suffered must be out of them also.

A little Irish boy was once asked the question, “How do you know that your sins have been put away?” His answer was a clear proof that he had got hold of God’s side of the gospel, heaven’s side of the cross. It was simply this, “Because they’re not on Jesus now.”

“Of course they are not. But what has that to do with it?”

“Everything. Because if He actually bore my sins in His own body on the cross―and He did―and is now in heaven without them, He must certainly have put them away.”

How beautiful, how heart-cheering, such an answer! The Lord fill my reader’s heart with the joy of such an answer―God’s own answer to every question of the enemy as to the sins of all who believe in Jesus.

3. The Surety Set Free.

How ready we are to turn in upon ourselves for some proof in our feelings that the momentous question of our soul’s salvation is settled! How slow in turning to Christ, the risen Surety! To hear many an anxious soul speak you might think that instead of the Lord saying, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved,” He had said, “Look at yourself till you feel you are saved.” And thus it is that many a troubled seeker is kept in doubt and darkness for years. Oh, what a relief it is to turn from self, with all its defeats and vain struggles, and rest the eye upon a risen. Saviour, knowing that in God’s account His victory is our own!

“We triumph in Thy triumphs, Lord.”

We wish to bring this blessed risen Surety before your heart, dear reader, and we long for your blessing in doing so. Should heart and conscience still be anxious and unsettled, we beg of you to look up to God before reading further, and seek His blessing upon this little paper. He alone can give the truth a peace-speaking entrance.

Let us first take a simple illustration. A kind-hearted traveler has occasion to spend a few days in a small country village. He is himself strictly punctual in all his business concerns, and owes not a single penny to any man. During his short stay he hears that the poor widow who keeps the village shop is deeply in debt, and likely to be sold up on that account. His kind heart is so touched that, in order to save her from “distress,” he signs his name as surety for the whole of her responsibilities. Now from that very moment, until every farthing is paid, he is in debt. To what amount? To the exact amount of the widow’s debts―no more, no less.

Now suppose you knew for certain that during the following week this gentleman had left the village, and as to debt, left it as he came into it, owing not a single penny, what would you say of the poor widow’s affairs? She would certainly be out of debt also. Exactly. And it is even so with believers in connection with their Surety. To use our figure, He came into this world and passed through it “out of debt.” He, the perfectly sinless One, had not the shadow of a righteous charge against Him. But when He offered Himself without spot to God as our Surety, then could He call our sins His sins; and hence the fierce wrath, the dark forsaking, the undiminished judgment which overtook and overwhelmed Him as He hung upon the tree as our Substitute. As it is written: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [or the chastisement whereby our peace was effected] was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). And again, in verse 7, which some read thus: “It was exacted, and He was made answerable, and He opened not His mouth.”

But He has left this poor world again, and returned to heavenly glory. Did He go out as He came in? Were the charges of the Surety still binding upon Him, or lied He satisfied the righteous claims for which He made Himself answerable? There can be but one answer―He went out chargeless. How could the glory of God and the unsettled question of sin be found together in one person? Hear the testimony of God’s Word: “Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4). He was “received up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16), and then “crowned with glory” (Heb. 2:9).

God had justified the guilty sinner’s Surety. In prophetic language, after speaking of His sufferings, the blessed Saviour could say, “He is near that justifieth Me; who will contend with Me? let us stand together: who is Mine adversary? let him come near to Me. Behold, the Lord God will help Me; who is he that shall condemn Me?” (Isa. 1:8, 9).

And if the Surety is beyond charge, so are those for whom He stood responsible. Indeed, so clear are they that the Holy Ghost takes up, in Romans 8, this very language of the Lord Jesus just quoted, and boldly asks, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” And this happy position of “no condemnation” is in God’s account the indisputable portion of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Is the Surety free—free from even the slightest charge? So are they. Is He beyond and forever clear of condemnation? So are they. Their place is determined by His, henceforward forever.

For proof of this settlement, therefore, do not look into the restless heart of the poor debtor, but behold the glory-crowned brow of the risen Surety, and lift up heart and voice in His praise. He, He alone is worthy. Trust Him, trust Him.

“He bore on the tree the sentence for me,

And now both the Surety and the sinner are free.”

Faith's Window, Hope's Door, Love's Feast.

FAITH looks out of her window and sees the work of redemption accomplished. She needs no door backward, for she has not to go back to settle anything, even if she could. All the past has been settled in sin’s judgment. All was done by Jesus on the tree.

“My soul looks back to see

The burden Thou didst bear

When hanging on the cursed tree,

For all my guilt was there.”

Hope keeps the door open forward; for she has bright expectations, and any moment she may be asked to step forward and lose herself in glorified realizations―

“To find each hope of glory gained,

Fulfilled each precious word;

And fully all to have attained

The image of our Lord.”

Love spreads her table even now, spreads it here on the spot. She knows how to value both Faith’s window and Hope’s door. She could not do without either. But she has a present portion. We cannot go backward to the cross except by faith; we can only, in hope, anticipate the glory; but we can enjoy His love now, and so get a present foretaste of the very feast of heaven.

“And now my famished soul is fed,

A feast of love for me is spread;

I feed upon the children’s bread,

O Lamb of God, through Thee.”

Now notice how the blessed Spirit of God is bound up with all these―faith, hope, love.

Is it the sacrifice that through faith perfects the conscience forever? It is written: “Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness to us” (Heb. 10:15).

Is it hope that is set before us? We “abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 15:13).

Is it our present portion? “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

For Love's Sake.

STRANGE that the truth of the eternal security of the believer should be regarded by some, as a “dangerous doctrine.” They maintain that it leads to carelessness of walk; and if this were true it would be serious indeed. But let us soberly weigh the matter, and see if it is so.

There can be no doubt that a self-deceived professor may make sad use of this as of any other doctrine. Where there is no genuine work of grace in the soul, no real inward change, there will sure to be self-confidence instead of that self-distrust and self-loathing which ever mark the divinely exercised soul; and in such a state―i.e. without the grace of God in the heart―it will be easy for a man to presume upon the knowledge he has in his head, and eventually be found guilty of “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness” (Jude 4.).

But not so with the true believer. The Spirit of God has wrought in the soul of such a one through faith in the living, abiding word of God. A new moral being has thereby been produced, and not only so, but a wondrous object presented to the soul which it can and does delight in, even the person of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ in all His love and grace.

He has found One who has met his soul’s deep need, and turned his misery into joy unspeakable. His heart’s confidence in Christ Himself has been won. He can point to the glorified Son of God upon the Father’s throne, and say, with overflowing gratitude, “HE LOVED ME, AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME.”

Now, it is only in the enjoyment of this love that the Saviour is rightly served by any. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” says the apostle. And with what result? That we should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us, and rose again (2 Cor. 5:15). Mark this well. The motive spring of this devotedness is not the legal, slavish fear of losing our souls if we do not thus serve Him. It is “the love of Christ” that “constraineth us.” We serve in the ready response of loving gratitude. Instead, therefore, of the knowledge of His unchanging love crippling our service or stunting our devotedness, it is the very heart and soul of it.

Ask any thoughtful father into whose hands he can most safely trust his darling child, the nursemaid’s or the mother’s. Inquire which he considers will serve the little one the better. And if his wife is worthy of the sacred name of “mother,” he will tell you that the question needs no answering. The mother would have the preference, of course. And why? Because these two persons must necessarily serve the child from different motives. The nursemaid serves for wages, and knows that she may get her discharge any day that she misbehaves herself, or fails to serve acceptably. But how different with the mother! She has no fear of discharge, and yet she serves the child better; for she serves with all the instincts and untiring energies of a mother’s love. Her very nature, as a mother, constrains her to loving diligence in the little one’s behalf, and nothing would grieve her more than to discover she had served her precious child badly.

Now, just as the mother’s nature finds an object which she delights to serve, so the renewed nature in the believer finds such an attraction in Christ that he takes pleasure in serving Him, and shrinks from grieving Him. He has not only been saved by Christ from coming judgment, and given to know it, but, as born of God, he has been made partaker of a “divine nature”―a nature which “loves righteousness” and “hates iniquity”; indeed, he has a nature which in itself “CANNOT SIN” because it is “BORN OF GOD” (see 1 John 3:9; vs. 18).

The evil nature, however, still exists in every Christian, so that, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

But what, it may be asked, if, in forgetfulness or unwatchfulness, this indwelling sin is allowed to act? The answer is plain, and simple, and full of comfort― “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). The same love that died for me will now give itself no rest until I am restored once more to happy communion with the Father. Oh, how He loves! He saves to the uttermost them that come to God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1) He ever liveth. He ever loveth. There is nothing that breaks, down the heart like the knowledge of His changeless love.

It was the Saviour’s look of love that broke Peter’s heart after his shameful denial of Him. And it is the same love that breaks ours.

How sad it is, then, that so many truly converted souls, instead of serving in that happy liberty with which the mother serves the one she loves, are, to all appearance, serving the Lord with all the bondage and restraint of the hired nurse; and even thinking that it would be a deathblow to devotedness to serve otherwise I May the reader be able to say―

“I would not work my soul to save―

That work my Lord has done;

But I would work like any slave,

From love to God’s dear Son.”

Hardness of Heart.

“HOW hard I have become!” was the thought that suddenly seemed to dart into the mind of a Sheffield butcher as he was preparing to leave his shop and slaughter-house for the night. The longer that thought remained in his heart―for, no doubt, the Spirit of God had placed it there―the more alarmed did that godless, drinking butcher become. It was, as he told thy writer, his very hardness that alarmed him.
He thought of his long years of recklessness and sin, for he was past middle age at the time; he thought of God, and of the awful state of hardness which he had reached. Hard indeed he must have become to be able to continue in such a course so utterly unconcerned!

Thank God, his eyes were now opened, and his soul graciously reached by power divine. Later on his conscience was set at rest through the precious blood, while his heart found a satisfying object in a living, glorified. Christ. For a few years he was allowed the privilege of serving Him below: now he has the higher privilege of resting with Him above.
Reader, have you never been alarmed by your hardness? Have you never paused to inquire the stage you have actually reached?
Carefully consider the steps down. Do any of them describe your condition?
A careless mind,
A rebellious will,
A hardened heart,
A seared conscience,
(And just one step more)
A SOUL LOST FOREVER.

Thank God, your soul is not damned forever. But be assured, there is nothing you need fear more than a hardened heart and a seared conscience. They are certainly next door to damnation. On which step do you stand this moment?
At first the devil supports a man in his rebellious position by the apparent bright offers of self-gratification in the pleasures of sin. “Do as you like” is his gospel. “Take your happiness into your own hand. Enjoy life; forget death.” Like the wooden frame, set under an arch to support it in its position during construction, the devil at first props up the soul with the offer of worldly pleasures and fleshly lusts; then when the soul has become hard enough he can actually afford to remove the pleasures of sin, and give his victim a taste of the bitterness of sin, and this without any fear of losing him. It was thus he propped up Judas by the prospect of money, and just mark what followed. When the ill-gotten gain had been thrown down, when its possessor despaired of finding the smallest satisfaction in it, the “old serpent” still held his victim in his cruel grip. Judas went and hanged himself, and was numbered with the lost.
But what is it that subdues a man’s will, softens his heart, changes his mind, purges his conscience, saves his soul? It is the knowledge of Christ. Read in Acts. 16. of the jailer’s conversion, and then refer still further back to the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (ch. 9); and you will see, that whether it is by a light direct from heaven, and Christ personally presented to a religious Pharisee, or by a midnight earthquake and Christ preached to a heathen jailer, it is the same gracious interference of the blessed God, bringing about a personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ, that alone accounts for such a marvelous change.
May God grant that such a change may be realized by every reader of these pages, for His own name’s sake.

Hope.

“ARE you hoping for the enlistment shilling?” I say to a sick soldier in the hospital.

“No. I enlisted five years ago.”

“Are you hoping for your regimental uniform?”

“No. Though I am not wearing my uniform here in the hospital, I have already received my regimentals.”

“Then have you nothing to hope for as a soldier?”

“Indeed I have. But not for the enlistment shilling―that is a past thing. Nor for my uniform―that is a present thing. But I am hoping for the pensioning—off day; and hoping for it does not mean that I am the least uncertain about it―the King’s word for that.”

So with us. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God (Rom. 5:2). It is a God-given hope. But hoping for glory does not invest the expectation with any uncertainty. We hope because it is yet future. But inasmuch as His promise is the ground of it, we are as certain of it as if it were an accomplished fact. We rejoice in it.

How wonderful that we are to be in that glory, to form part of the display of what God Himself is! We are called to it, fitted for it, and well may we rejoice in the hope of it.

As sure as you are justified by faith you will be glorified by power―they go together. “Whom He justified, them He also glorified”: therefore we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. It is because there is the promise of glory on His side that there is hope of glory on mine.

An aged Christian in Lincolnshire was dying. His wife and he had lived many years happily together. One day, as she saw him growing weaker, she said to him, “Well, John, the storm will soon be over.” “That is a mistake,” he said. It was not that he did not know he was going, and that quickly. But he said, “The storm has been over eighteen hundred years; that is a thing of the past. There’s no storm now: nothing but bright glory for John!”

Yes. John had got the truth of it. For believers in Christ the storm is over; that is a thing of the past; for the present we have peace, we stand in favor. But what about the future? “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

Many years ago I went to see a man in a workhouse hospital who had found peace on his sick-bed. His wife was a Roman Catholic, and apparently a hard, unfeeling woman. One day while visiting him she said, “Well, James, Death must have his own.” “Not so,” he said. “Oh, yes, James, Death must have his own.” “No,” he said, “Death has had his own already, now Christ shall have His own.” He could look back and see that the death-penalty had been received by Christ upon the cross, and he could look forward to the day of glory when Christ will have His own, yea every one of them, himself included. Has the death-penalty question been settled for you, my reader? Can you rejoice in that hope of glory?

Do you forget that every tick of the clock, every beat of your heart, brings you nearer to that glory, or nearer to the darkness that will never be reached by one ray of hope? Put your hand on your heart, feel its pulsations. Every beat is sending you, if unconverted, nearer and nearer to an eternity of woe, or to the pleasures for evermore. As you lie down at night every pulse-beat brings you nearer somewhere. Tomorrow, if you should awake, still nearer will you be. Where? Forever where?

Two boys occupy the same room at night―one believes in Christ, the other does not. They fall asleep, and the night unconsciously wears away; but see where morning finds them. The house takes fire, and they are suffocated by the smoke.

When I was crossing the ocean some years ago it was a comfort, when I awoke in the morning, to know that I was one night nearer to the end of my journey. When night came again and I laid my head on my pillow, a new comfort was mine—I was still nearer home. This continued till at last we got to port with its joyful greetings.

And you too will reach the end of your voyage, my reader. Every day is bringing you nearer. For you who believe on Him who was delivered for your offenses, and raised again for your justification, each moment brings eternal glory nearer. “Whom He justified, them He also glorified.” What a wonderful prospect!

But that is not all. We have something, for the present. Look at verse 5 and read, “Hope maketh not ashamed: because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.” He would not only manifest His love by giving His Son to die for us, He would have us know it and enjoy it even here.

Take an illustration. Here is a widow. She has saved a little competence for her declining days. She has lost her husband, and all her children except James. One day she hears that he has absconded. He had, through bad company, got deeply into debt, and in order to extricate himself from his difficulties, had been tempted to take his employer’s money. Then, afraid of the consequences, he had fled the country. What sorrow for his mother! But she never rests till she finds out how much James owes his master. She gets the assurance from him that if the sum is paid he will not prosecute. It is a large sum. But in the bank she has her savings, and there is just enough to pay all.

But she is never going to take from the bank the money she has worked so hard for, and leave herself destitute for a worthless fellow like James! Yes, she is. “Never mind me,” she says, “it shall all go for James.” So it does. She completely clears him. But is she satisfied? Oh, no. What is the next thing? “James must know it,” she says. “Who will go and search him out and tell him? I’ll never rest till he knows it. It is only this knowledge that can give him a solid hope of returning home.”

That is how God acts. He wants you to know how much He cares for you. He does not send Gabriel to search you out and tell you. He could not be entrusted with that mission. He sends the Holy Spirit.

At Calvary Jesus paid our liabilities. At Pentecost God sent down His Holy Spirit, that poor, dying sinners might know that Christ had died for them, and that believing on Him, His love might be shed abroad in their hearts, and that they might rejoice in hope of the glory to come.

Perhaps you say, “I have been longing to have this love in my heart, for then I should have peace.” My friend, you have begun at the wrong end. It is the Spirit’s love-shedding that will give you comfort and joy; but it is the Saviour’s blood-shedding that will give you peace. You must have peace in order to hope for glory.

How a Romanist Found Peace.

M― was brought up in a Roman Catholic country. From very early years he seemed to have a sense of his own sinfulness, coupled with the fear of having one day to meet God. As he grew up his hope was that by performing all that the Church demanded he should be all right in the end. Yet not only did he never find solid satisfaction for his uneasy conscience in all this, but found himself actually questioning different portions of the Church’s teaching, such as the doctrine relating to the Virgin Mary, etc.
Up to his nineteenth year his soul was enshrouded in the darkness of Roman superstition, for he had no one to take him by the hand and guide his wandering feet into the way of peace. He never dreamed that there was any such thing as the knowledge of salvation or the eternal forgiveness of his sins.
About that time he made a change in his employment, and went to lodge at the house of two Christian women, Strange as it may seem to those who live in a land flooded with gospel light, it was here, for the first time in his life, that he saw a Bible! A desire at once sprang up in his heart to read the precious volume, but only when alone in the room where it was lying dare he venture to do so. In his ignorance of how matters really stood he imagined that the couple with whom he was staying might raise an objection to a Roman Catholic reading their Bible! Many a stealthy peep into its blessed pages did he take, until one day they came into the room and found him reading it. Expecting some sort of rebuke or remonstrance, he humbly apologized for the liberty he had taken. But it need hardly be said that they expressed their joyful willingness to his reading it as often and as much as he pleased. Thus was he set free from all restraint in the matter, and read it he did. What most struck him was the wonderful clearness and simplicity of the Scriptures, and the more he read the more his soul was convinced that it was indeed the Word of God.
Hundreds of questioning thoughts now began to cross his mind. “Surely he had not been brought up to care for other people’s religion. He had had no opportunity of reading the Bible in his own church. Why should he trouble therefore about matters which he had not hitherto been taught? It was not his fault that his parents were Roman Catholics, and he brought up in that faith!” But all this kind of reasoning failed to yield relief to his troubled conscience. With a burden of guilt upon his soul the question was ever before him, “How can I stand justified before a holy God?”
He still continued to go to “confession,” and as he was residing eight miles from the chapel he felt a sort of secret satisfaction in having to walk the eight miles through snow and rain. Surely this was a work of merit! But even all this, together with priestly absolution, and the periodical assurances on the part of his confessor that he was once more a child of God, failed to bring him into the longed-for rest and peace. On the contrary his misery continued, and grew in intensity. The more he read the Bible the more uncomfortable he felt in the Romish Church, while Satan was increasingly busy in trying to alarm him by bringing before him the consequences of leaving it.
Then he thought he would try to pray; but the only prayer he knew, which he, thought would be proper to say, was the one commonly known as the “Lord’s Prayer.” But even in using this he was pulled up; yes, by the very first sentence in it. To call God his “Father” he felt would be to tell a mocking lie, for he did not personally know Him as such; and, reader, you know it is sorry work trying to deceive the all-seeing God! Alas! how many are doing it!
Day and night for weeks the thought was constantly before his mind, “Oh, if I could only call God my Father!”
He now mustered courage to tell the two Christians with whom he lodged that he should be thankful to have a little talk with one of their teachers. Accordingly, one Sunday evening shortly afterward, a servant of Christ went to the house to see him, and then, for the first time in his life, the simple gospel of the grace of God was preached to him. Romans 3, had a most overpowering effect upon him, and left him without the shadow of an excuse, especially when he carne to that sentence, “That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (vs. 19). He was now troubled more deeply than ever. But he must pass through deeper exercises still.
Shortly after this his anxiety was considerably increased through a dream. He thought he saw the moon coming down toward the earth, and upon it was written, in all languages, “The Lord is coming!” He awoke in fearful anguish of mind, knowing he was not prepared for that solemn event.
He now consented to attend a gospel preaching. Luke 15 was the subject chosen, and to use his own words, “I felt that he was preaching all the time about me, for I knew I was the prodigal, far, far from God, and perishing in my sins.”
Many days and nights of still keener anguish followed this, until at last the Lord was pleased to come in for his deliverance.
A little book had been put into his hand by the Christian who visited him, entitled How to get Peace. One evening he was reading it aloud to those with whom he was staying, and when he came to the part which speaks of God’s acceptance of the work done in our behalf, he fairly broke down. He could read no more. All he could do was to lift up his heart in silent thanksgiving to God. But we will let him tell his own story. “I read the pages of the little book with growing interest, but when I came to pages 23, 24 the light of God filled my soul. I saw clearly that God was satisfied by the work done for me on the cross! I could read no more. What I had found filled my soul with a joy unspeakable, and I had peace with God. No language can describe the joy and blessedness of that moment, when the heavy burden was rolled away from my heart and conscience, and I knew that the love and favor of God was resting upon me.”

As many of our readers may not have seen the valuable little book referred to, it will be as well perhaps to quote that portion of it which the Spirit used to the blessing of the young Romanist.
“‘But must not I accept Christ?’...
“Would you not be glad to have Him?’
“Surely I should.’
“Then your real question is not about accepting Him, but whether God has really presented Him to you, and eternal life in Him. A simple soul would say, “Accept! I am only too thankful to have Him!” But as all are not simple, one word as to this also. If you have offended someone grievously, and a friend seeks to offer him satisfaction, who is to accept it?’
“Why, the offended person, of course.’
“Surely. And who was offended by your sins?’
“ ‘Why, God, of course.’
And who must accept the satisfaction?’
“ ‘Why, God must.’
“ ‘That is it. Do you believe He has accepted it?’
“‘Undoubtedly I do.’
“ ‘And is―’
“ ‘Satisfied.’
“ ‘And are not you?’
“ ‘Oh, I see it now! Christ has done the whole work, and God has accepted it, and there can be no question as to my guilt or righteousness. He is the latter for me before God.”
Dear reader, this fresh witness of the triumphs of God’s grace is thus brought in all simplicity before you, in the earnest hope that the same grace may reach your soul also. Mark this. An unsaved Protestant, let him be High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, or dissenter, is as sure of damnation, if he remain unconverted, as the unsaved Romanist. Let neither deceive himself by any fair religious show. You must be born again, OR PERISH.

How Can I be Sure?

WE have a word to say to those who, though they have been taught to consider the assurance of salvation an impossibility, yet really long to know the certainty of their blessing. Their language is, How can I be sure?

Our answer is simply this, If God has plainly expressed His mind about the matter (and God has spoken, as we shall seek to show), how can you be otherwise than sure, unless, indeed, you do not give Him credit for speaking the truth?

If you turn to Acts 13 you will there see that it is God’s desire that believers should have the certainty of their justification; not a certain class of believers, but all that believe. Examine the passage carefully for yourself, especially verse 38 and 39 See how, by the Holy Ghost, the apostle of the Gentiles addresses the God-fearing ones at Antioch, for the Spirit has been pleased to record it for the comfort of our hearts today.

“BE IT KNOWN UNTO YOU

therefore, men and brethren, that through this man

is preached unto you

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS,

and BY HIM

ALL THAT BELIEVE ARE JUSTIFIED

FROM ALL THINGS.”

Does this leave the question of the believer’s present blessing in the least degree doubtful? Nay, the very opposite.

A dying believer, in the town of S—, was once asked about his prospect for eternity. Taking a bit of ice from his mouth, and holding it up to the light, he calmly and joyfully replied, “My title is as clear as that!” And no wonder, with such evidence as this in Acts 13 to rest upon.

But this is not all that the believer is assured of, for we read, in Romans 8:30,

“WHOM HE JUSTIFIED,

THEM HE ALSO GLORIFIED.”

So that if the God of grace has justified us through Christ, He has pledged Himself to glorify us also with Christ. He has “called us” and “justified” us for that very purpose. Thus we read, in 1 Peter 5:10, “The God of all grace... hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.”

“Grace begun shall end in glory.”

But look at the believer’s assurance from another standpoint. Turn to 1 John 5:13, and you will read these words: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” If this teaches that the believer may have this conscious knowledge, now, what becomes of the teaching of those who will tell you that you cannot know it?

But more. There is another great fact to consider; and remember He who is Himself the very source and spring of eternal life is responsible for this statement. Speaking of His sheep (John 10:28) He says, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall NEVER PERISH, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.”

Now don’t think that we intend to convey that there is no more in the thought of “eternal life” than that the one who has it will “never perish,” for we are fully persuaded that it includes far, far more; but it certainly includes this. We could not have eternal life and not be saved from the wrath to come. But there is more in it than salvation from coming judgment. It involves for us a state of untold blessedness in the Father’s house; it introduces us to the most unclouded intimacy with the Father and the Son―the fullness of heavenly joy. The King of England might save a rebel from the gibbet without introducing him to the princely society of the palace. And God might have made us sure of not perishing without introducing us to the innermost circle of His own delights. But how could we be thus introduced without being made sure of not perishing? Our title for glory assumes our escape from the pit, and leaves no question about it. Therefore we read, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall NEVER PERISH.” When God says―

“BE IT KNOWN,”

be sure therefore that

“YE MAY KNOW,”

and everyone who denies it raises a serious controversy both with the word of God and its holy Author. Better be Paul the prisoner on a foundering ship, saying, “I believe God,” than the most popular theologian of the twentieth century, casting a doubt upon what God has said. “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).

If you continue in sin and unbelief, be sure of what the end will be— “Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Make no mistake. God will keep His word.

If you repent and believe the gospel—Be it known unto you that instead of being judged hereafter and missing the glory, you shall be justified now and fitted for the glory.

“Hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?” (Num. 23:19).

"How Can I Face Eternity?"

DEAR reader, your years are fleeing apace. Think of last year. Its pleasures are past like a midnight dream, its sins recorded for a future hearing. Many who commenced it in apparent buoyancy and vigor have ended it in the silent tomb. The restless sea, or the hungry earth, covers their bodies. Their souls—where? Who can say that the eye that follows these lines from side to side will not be closed in death before the dawn of next year? Who can say that the long-looked-for day of the Lord’s return for His saints will not be a thing of the past before then? Are you awake to these tremendous possibilities, or are you as one who walks in his sleep? It will be an appalling moment for you, be sure of it, should you wake up some morning to say, “God has filled heaven and done without me!” May He deliver you from the untold agony of such a moment by saving you even now. It is not a few short years that are at stake only, but an endless eternity.

Years ago a gentlewoman had been spending an afternoon at cards, and the evening at a ball and suchlike amusements. She came home very late, and found that her maidservant, who was sitting up waiting for her, was reading a book. “Ah,” said she, “you are still poring over your dull books. They make you mopish and melancholy.” But she was not in the secret of her servant’s calm joy, and misjudged her completely.

The lady retired to her chamber, but she slept not. In the night she was troubled, and fell a-weeping. Sleep forsook her. She tossed to and fro, and at length she called her maid, who said, “Madam, what ails you? I thought I left you very merry and well.”

“Oh, yes,” said she, “but I looked over your book, and though I only saw one word, THAT WORD STINGS ME. I cannot sleep. I cannot bear it.”

“What word was it, madam?”

“It was that word ‘ETERNITY!’ Oh, maid,” said she, “it is all very well for me to sport, and play, and waste my time as I have done, but oh, ETERNITY! ETERNITY! ETERNITY! HOW CAN I FACE ETERNITY?” And so that night of careless frivolity was turned to weeping and to prayer.

Would that the like might happen to you, my reader; for you will never seek the boon of forgiveness till you feel the burden of sin.

Perhaps you have felt something of that heavy burden, something of the weight of the judgment that rests upon the ungodly. Turn, then, to Christ at once. He is a living Saviour, ready to pardon.

“Thousands have fled to His spear-pierced side,

Welcome they all have been, none are denied;

Weary and laden, they all have been blessed,

Joyfully now in the Saviour they rest.”

Years ago He welcomed the writer. May He this day welcome the reader.

How May I Know That Christ Died for Me?

IN the south of England the writer once met a woman, who was for some time in great trouble of mind, because someone had told her that her son, a soldier on foreign service, was dead; they had seen his name in the newspaper. The clergyman of the parish was kind enough to write to headquarters to inquire if it was true. And it turned out that a soldier of the same name had met his death, but it was not her son.
Now, if God had published the names of all whose sins Christ bore, how long would it take you to examine all those names to see if your own was enrolled? A lifetime would be far too short to accomplish such a task, and should you happen to drop accidentally upon your own name, how would you be sure that it did not refer to another person of the same name?
Thank God, He has not done so. He sets before us His own blessed, worthy Son. He presents Christ in the glory of His Person, the tenderness of His love, the value of His blood, the power of His resurrection, and believing on Him, He assures us, we shall “not perish, but have everlasting life.” But how could I possibly have escaped perishing? What could have saved me from eternal death, if Christ had not died for me? Nothing.
But more than this. I find in God’s own word this blessed declaration: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” If the Son of God is so worthy that I may safely rely upon Him, here is the word of God, equally worthy of my trust—a “faithful saying,” and “worthy of all acceptation”―and what is it? It is this, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Has the Holy Spirit, therefore, discovered to me that I am a sinner? Before God, then, this “faithful saying” gives me a divine right to say that Christ came into the world to save me, for I know that I belong to the class for whom He died, and only by His death could He save any. I know that I believe on Him.

"I did not Consider"

OFTEN, before now, the sight of a stranded ship has proved a timely warning to other vessels, even when neither lighthouse nor any other beacon has marked the treacherous hidden reef.
The following extracts have been sent to the writer, and are here inserted in hope that some young man, in like danger, may be warned in time. It is too late to consider the course of your vessel when her keel is grating on some sunken rock, too late when she is shivering from stem to stern as though afraid of the consequences of the dead stand she is about to make.
A little further in the course which you are pursuing, my reader, though all is fair to the outward eye, may find you shivering on the brink of a lost eternity. Is it not time to consider what such a “DEAD STAND” will involve? Here is a beacon for you. Pause and consider.
“A black felt hat and several articles of clothing were discovered yesterday afternoon on the banks of the Thames, near Isleworth, together with the following letter, written in pencil, in a good, bold hand:

“‘Good-bye to friends and enemies. I have come to the end of my journey at last, and life has no further charms for me. Before I go let me give one word of warning, especially to young men. Avoid betting and the race-course as you would avoid poison. Four years ago I was a rich man, possessed of something like £20,000 from one source alone. My fortune reverted to me suddenly, and I lost my head over so much gold, and immediately launched into a fast life. The company of bad women and low and illiterate men was my delight almost as soon as I set foot in London, coming straight from the peaceful village of Upway, in Dorsetshire, where I had resided for years amid good surroundings. My gay companions quickly introduced me to the gambling-table and the turf. Intoxicated with pleasure, I did not consider for one moment whither they were leading me. Every race-meeting I attended; and seldom won as the result of my friends’” (?) advice.
“‘There are thousands of low, cunning blackguards, frequenting the race-course, who live by the stupidity of men like myself. They live to lie, and cheat, and blaspheme, utterly regardless of a hereafter. I have lunched with princes, dukes, and lords, and have assisted to swell their ill-gotten gains. The race-course is a veritable hell upon earth, and betting is England’s curse, and will ruin her in the end.
“ ‘I am about to do as scores of others, in their desperation, have done before me. Poverty and starvation have taken the place of affluence and comfort. My friends have forsaken me, and life is no longer worth living. Please communicate with― Durden Street, Bristol. He knows all. When I am picked up, perhaps― and his pals’ (here the name of a well-known sporting man is mentioned) ‘will subscribe towards giving poor Jack S―a decent burial. Farewell.’”
“The principal room at Monte Carlo Casino was crowded on Thursday night by a throng of fashionable men and women, most of whom were eagerly following the play of an English doctor named S―, who was having an extraordinary turn of luck. The doctor finally accumulated an enormous sum, and was in the act of rising to leave With his winnings, when his pent-up excitement brought on an attack of apoplexy, and he fell dead across the gaming-table. The event caused some sensation, but as soon as the body had been removed, play was resumed as though nothing had happened.”
So much for the world they both seemed to love! “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit” (Prov. 18:11). But what is the use of his “high wall” if it is not high enough to keep death outside? Of what avail is it that he lives in a “strong city,” if he cannot resist the siege of the “king of terrors”? He may seem safe for the moment, but the believer is safe. Read the previous verse, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.”
“Poor Jack S―” found very soon, yet sadly late, the mocking emptiness of everything in this world. Its riches did not satisfy, and its poverty only drove him to desperation. Sorely oppressed, and utterly disappointed, he found “no comforter.” All he could hope for from the world he had served was a “decent burial”!

Are you serving such a world as this, my reader? Outwardly the course of Dr. S―was a contrast to that of poor Jack S―. Yet, when the end was reached, there was not much to choose between the brilliant winner and the disheartened loser. That fine “run of luck” only proved a blind rush to ruin. What shall it profit a man who has ninety-nine successful throws of the dice, or makes a fortune by as many successful bets, if, at the hundredth throw, or by the last wager, his all is staked and lost? And “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what, shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Think, my reader, think seriously of this. Had these two young men foreseen the sad end of their sinful course, how they would have recoiled with a shudder from the first step in it!
But they did not consider. And you will do well to remember, my reader, that you cannot enter the devil’s coach and stop just when you think fit, or go to sleep on his couch and fix your own hour for waking. An alarm clock would not serve the enemy’s destructive ends. Should his victim awake, through other means, he either soothingly whispers, “Too soon, sleep on,” or roars defiantly, “Too late, too late. Face the worst; there is no hope now: God will not receive you.”
Is my reader pursuing a path that only seems right? Let me entreat you then not to trust your own understanding in such a vital matter. The world’s best offers are but the devil’s best baits. The fatal barb lies hidden beneath the tempting exterior, and, once “caught,” you will find that the real enjoyment of the bait only existed in your own imagination. Truly, “there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 16:25). Again we say, Pause and consider.

But how vastly different the portion of those who are brought to taste the love of Christ Love takes a delight in blessing and honoring its object: and “the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it” (Prov. 10:22). “In His favor is life” (Psa. 30:5). His “lovingkindness is better than life” (Psa. 63:3). Think of the apostle Paul, as he writes from a foreign prison to the believers in Philippi. What content, what joy, what triumph! (read Philippians 1:21-26; 4:4-12). To him life was indeed well worth living, since Christ and His saints were well worth serving.
Would you be the possessor of real good? “Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee” (Job 22:21).

“Were the vast world our own,

With all its varied store,

And Thou, Lord Jesus, wort unknown―

We still were poor.

But how can I make God’s acquaintance? He is making Himself known in the gospel of His grace—the gospel “concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:1-3). He has declared the love of His heart in the gift of Jesus as a Saviour for sinners. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Believe on Him of whom the gospel testifies, and all that is worth having will be yours. Turn to God from the world’s best offers. Christ alone can satisfy an aching heart, and give peace to a guilty conscience. Thank God, tens of thousands of the worst of sinners have been turned to God from their evil ways, and among the number many betting men, and not a few are this day standing as living witnesses to the saving power of the blood of Christ, the satisfying power of His love. Come to the same Saviour. Come now, and you will surely find that life is worth living, for Christ is worth serving.

"I won't Listen."

“I KNOW what you would like,” said a tall, high spirited lad to his Christian father and mother, who had been speaking to him for his eternal welfare. “You would like me to put a Bible under my arm and go and preach from the 14th chapter of John and the 13th and 14th verses!”

Though these verses were referred to in this offhand and apparently haphazard way, the speaker little knew what a comfort to his parents’ hearts they would be, for years afterward, in connection with their earnest longings for his soul’s blessing.

“Wait,” said his mother, “and let me read those verses for you.”

“No, mother, don’t read them; I won’t listen if you do.”

He was evidently very much averse to being spoken to about his soul, and used the best means he could think of to induce his mother not to do so. One day, when they were alone in the house together, and she was speaking personally and earnestly to him, he said:

“Mother, if I was saved and had sons, and had prayed for them, I should have faith in Him about it, and should leave it with Him, instead of talking so much to them! You don’t seem to have a bit of faith, mother.”

Hearing this she just bowed her head and wept, and even the lad, when he saw the effect of his remark, could not help doing the same.

Well, at an early age he enlisted, and shortly after was drafted with his regiment to Hong Kong.

More ardently than ever did his mother now pray for his blessing. A Christian who knew the family, hearing that he was in Hong Kong, sent his name and particulars of his whereabouts to Dr. E―. On the 1st of June, 1892, Dr. E―went to look him up, and thus describes his first interview: “I was taken to a tent,” he says, “where several men were sitting together. I inquired for Corporal P―, and one of them, a tall, well-built young fellow, browned by the sun, but hale and hearty-looking, and with a frank, open expression on his face, jumped up and said, ‘I am Corporal F —.’

“I asked him if he was a Shrewsbury man. He said he was, and wished to know what I wanted of him. I told him I only wanted to have a good look at him in order to send word to his mother that he was hale and hearty. He said, ‘Well, sir, here I am; look at me up and down, you will see I am in the very best of health.’ Then he added, I wonder if you know my mother?’

“I said all I knew was that his father and mother were Christians and in fellowship with Christians here in Hong Kong.

“ ‘Oh,’ he said, is that it? It is quite true my father and mother are real Christians, but why should they want you to inquire after me?’

“I said they did not communicate with me, but that a Mr. W― had written to say that he was acquainted with a Shrewsbury man now in Hong Kong, the son of earnest Christian parents. He then repeated his assurance that his father and mother were Christians, but added that he did not belong to the meeting himself, and if I thought I was going to induce him to go in for that kind of thing there, he was really afraid I might be mistaken. I said he would be welcome if he came of his own accord, but none of us would wish him to come otherwise.

“Oh,’ he said, ‘don’t be surprised if, after all, I come one of these days; only I am a regular hard, dry brick, and it takes a deal of power to break me down!’

“I said, ‘I was once just as hard and dry, and God managed to break me down.’

“‘Oh,’ he said, but I am a regular rascal, a regular, scoundrel!

“So he went on, but he gave me a promise to pay me a visit at my office.”

Only a few days later, and the aspect of things for this high-spirited young fellow was entirely changed. And what a change! Yes, the God who had broken down his kind friend the doctor was now about to prove Himself equal to the accomplishing of the same thing for him who had just before styled himself “a regular hard, dry brick” of a sinner, not easily broken down. This young man might have forgotten those two verses in John 14, once referred to in such careless fashion; but his devoted mother had not forgotten, nor had He who first uttered them, as it will subsequently appear. On the 30th of the same month that Dr. E― had visited him Corporal P― was compelled to report himself sick. The complaint was soon pronounced to be Hong Kong fever, and he was sent to the hospital ship in Hong Kong harbor. He left the hospital July 2nd, but got a relapse on the 4th, and was then sent to the casualty ward in an unconscious state, and placed in ice to reduce the temperature of his body.

On Saturday he had spells of consciousness. How glad would he then have been to have heard a mother’s voice reading the Word of God to him! But that privilege was gone forever. During one of those periods the visitor already referred to, hearing of his illness, went once more to speak to him. If we let the good doctor tell his own story we shall plainly see that he who would not listen when he could, is utterly unable to speak when he gladly would.

“I asked him if he knew me. He made a movement with his face, which I thought meant, yes. He could not speak, his tongue was paralyzed-like.

“I then said in slow, distinct syllables, ‘Your mother is praying for you,’ at which he made a movement with his face and lips. He tried to speak, but could not. I said, ‘There is no help for you but in Christ. Will you put your sole trust in Him now?’ His face worked convulsively and his eyes seemed to say yes, but he could not speak. I said a few more brief and distinct words into his ear, but I did not pray with him because he would not have been able to follow. I spoke a few words in his ear, like giving single drops to a thirsty soul, but after a while he lost consciousness again, and did not regain it till Sunday morning. He then tried to speak to one of his comrades, but could not say a word. I was there again at noon, when I observed that a great change had taken place. The fixed, staring look had left his eyes, which now looked natural for the first time, but he was in pain. When the fit of pain had passed and I found he was conscious, I said, ‘P―, may I write to your mother and say that you wholly trust Christ?’ He plainly moved his head, and his lips moved too, but he could not speak, though he tried hard. The attendant and myself both felt sure he meant to say, ‘Yes.’ A few more brief words, and he once more became unconscious and never recovered from it.”

Dear reader, think. Only one short month intervened between that sentence from the young corporal’s lips, “Look me up and down, and you will see I am in the very best of health,” and those lips being sealed against the utterance of a single word. Who that saw him stretch his fine form to full height and utter those words could have guessed that such a change would have come so soon?

And you may seem to be as little like nearing your end as he.

While God still holds out the possibility of repentance and the full forgiveness of your sins, will you not consider? Before your lips are sealed, to be opened no more in this world, will you not embrace this golden opportunity and accept this gracious message of the gospel? Will you not confess your sin and seek His mercy? Dare you miss the opportunity of confessing Christ as your own Saviour? Don’t say, “I will not listen,” for it is GOD that speaks to you. “This is a faithful saying,” He declares, “and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). “And by Him,” He further declares, “all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). What a message for you! Oh that His gracious power might break you down, His great love win your heart’s confidence Centuries are dying out, men are departing, and you yourself are going shortly―going where centuries are never reckoned. But thus is it written: “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever,” and again, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die” (John 11:26). “Believest thou this?”

The Invisible Thread.

IT is a matter of solemn interest that everyone who has really listened to the gospel message has “turned.” But there are two ways of turning. The Thessalonians heard the gospel and “turned to God,” as the apostle reminds them in his letter to them (1 Thess. 1:9); but the same apostle, writing to the Hebrews, speaks of a turning in the opposite direction. Mark his words: “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more ‘shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven” (Heb. 12: 25). Now, my dear reader, you have turned; but which way, to God or from God? You have heard the gospel testimony: how have you treated it?
Many, many years since a servant of Christ was privileged to speak to thirty or forty people who, up to that point, had turned a deaf ear to the heavenly message. Thus he addressed them: “Suppose you should see coming down from heaven a very fine thread, so fine as to be almost invisible, and it should come and attach itself to you. You knew, we suppose, that it came from God. Should you dare to put out your hand and thrust it away?” Then he added, “Such a thread has come from God to you this afternoon, and you can easily brush it away: but will you do so?”
Now what did this servant of Christ mean by the tender thread that had come down from God and attached itself to them, and which they were in danger of defiantly brushing away? It was what the apostle spoke of when he said to the unbelieving Jews at Antioch: “It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46).
Mark this well, my reader: whatever is known of you on earth, you are known in heaven: either as one who has gladly welcomed the gospel, and believed it for yourself; or as one who has been glad to brush away the thought of God’s message from your mind, so that you might, without any interference, pursue the bent of your own will. How do you stand as to this?
In the following chapter (Acts 14:15) we find the apostle beseeching another company to “turn from these vanities unto the living God.” Have you turned from the vain idols of earth-idols which can neither console you in the dark day nor satisfy you in the bright? Have you turned to the God who can fill your heart with food and gladness (vs. 17); who satisfies, nay, more than satisfies—who floods the heart that comes near to Him with the light and joy of His own blessed presence? Of this we have tasted for ourselves, dear reader, and therefore can speak of it. And to you we would say with fervid earnestness, “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him” (Psa. 34:8). But you must taste it for yourself. We cannot taste it for you, nor do we pretend to. We have proved its sweetness for ourselves, and you must do the same. God has expressed His love in a sinful world; and, by the very act which declared His utter hatred to sin, has expressed His love perfectly. He has given His Son to be a sin-bearer; and now, through His precious blood, He is able to point you to the Risen One, and say, “Through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38, 39).
Once more has this tender, golden cord been stretched toward you, and it may be the last time it will ever thus reach you. What, then, are you going to do with it? Remember where it comes from. It comes from God. It touches the glory of Christ; it is brought to you by the Spirit of grace; and your salvation or damnation for eternity may be determined by the way you treat this very message. If in the past you have “turned to your own way,” be now persuaded to turn to His. If you have turned from God, turn now to God. It is Christ you need. In Him alone can any heart find satisfaction.
Only through His precious blood can a guilty conscience find rest.
If you still refuse to turn to God through Christ, both His Spirit and His servants will, sooner or later, turn from you to find elsewhere more fitting guests for the heavenly feast. He who said, “None of those men which were hidden shall taste of My supper,” said also, “Go out quickly into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.”
“God’s house is filling fast,
Yet there is room.
Some guest will be the last,
Yet there is room.
Yes; soon salvation’s day
To you may pass away;
Then grace no more will say,
Yet there is room.

If you still turn to “your own way,” we can only warn you that it will not be the last turn you will have to take. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God.” Therefore we cry with the prophet, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” (Ezek. 33:11).

"It Is Reported That You"

“IT Is REPORTED.” What tales of sadness and of joy have followed these three words before now! Add two more, and you could hardly find a man on earth that would not be all attention instantly. “It is reported that you―” For where is the man who has not some secret that he would not like to become a common report in the ears of his fellow-men?
We expect therefore, dear unconverted reader, to get your earnest attention, since we have to say that a report has reached us about you.
About me?
Yes, a serious one, and about you.
Ah, but you must not believe every report you hear.
True enough; but there is no mistake about this one.
Then pray let me hear it.
Well, it appears that every tittle of your history has been minutely watched by an eye that nothing escapes; and what is more, all has been accurately recorded (Prov. 5:21, 15:3; Eccl. 12:14; Rev. 20:12,13). Weigh well the evidence, and if you think you can disprove it, go to the Chief Witness and say so.
The report states that you have been cruelly deceived by one who seeks, with subtlety, to accomplish your everlasting ruin (Rev. 20:10; 2 Cor. 4:3,4). And the worst part of the deception is that you have been induced by your subtle enemy to refuse the kindness of your truest Friend, and that you carefully avoid being brought into contact with Him (John 5:40). Is not this also sadly too true?
It is stated that you even know (though your enemy would fain have you forget it) that, in connection with the charges to be brought against you, a certain “officer” is on your track to arrest you, and that that “officer” may put his cold hand upon you at any hour, day or night, waking or sleeping; and that, though you are in terror of his very shadow, you obstinately persist in pursuing your old course (Job 24:17; Matt. 5:25, 26). You cannot deny the truth of this.
But wait a moment; there is

ANOTHER REPORT.

This is a good report; so good, indeed, that human ears never listened to a better. But it is not about you this time, though sent to you.
One great comfort about it is that you have not to try to be anything but what you are in order that this report may benefit you. As sure as the first report has come from heaven about you, the second—the gospel of God’s saving grace—has been sent from heaven to you (1 Peter 1:12). You are not asked to be worthy enough to receive it. But you are told that the report is worthy of being received (1 Tim. 1:15).
Be assured of this, that whether you are constrained by the Spirit of God to believe “this” faithful saying “and come to Christ, or prevailed upon by the enemy to refuse and stay away, your soul is beyond all description precious.” Lose it, and your all is lost—LOST FOREVER!”
You must either “repent” or “perish”; “turn” or “die.” You must either make haste and come to Christ for salvation, or loiter and be lost. “Linger not” is mercy’s cry. Another day of lingering may land you in a night of despair. It has been said that “hell is the truth seen too late.” Loiter not another moment lest you be forever too late. Remember that once in hell all the blame will be locked up in your own bosom: and what bosom could bear it? “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” WHY WILL YE DIE?

The Last Man You Will Ever See.

DID it ever strike you that the last person whom the eye of every unsaved one will rest upon will be the Man who died for sinners? The last they wish to see is the last they will see. And is it not a serious thing, think you, that God has appointed a MAN to judge men? All judgment has been given to Jesus because He is the Son of Man. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22, 27). The Man who suffered will be the Man to judge. And who so fitting as He, the altogether sinless One? Who better knows the deserts of sin than He who once bore its full penalty? It is this Man who will execute its full judgment upon the sinner who despises God’s grace and refuses His call; and He will do it without respect of persons.
What excuse could you give, my reader, for the sin of rejecting Him, if called before Him as you read this? Would you not be speechless in His presence? What have you got against Christ, that you should reject Him?
After seeing the face of Jesus as He sits as your Judge, you will never rest your eye on another face for all eternity. From His holy presence you will descend to an eternal night, that “outer darkness,” “the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13). “They shall never see light” (Psa. 49:19). It will be darkness ever, light never.
How vastly different the lot of even the very feeblest believer! “That they may behold My glory” was the gracious request of the Son of God to the Father ere He left this world; and “They shall see His face” is the Spirit’s testimony since (Rev. 22:4).
“There, with unwearied gaze,
Our eyes on Him we’ll rest,
And satisfy with endless praise
A heart supremely blest.

But not only shall we be satisfied, but, sweeter still, He shall be filled with satisfaction also. Yea, while remembering all the bitter soul-travail He passed through to bring us there, He shall, for the love He bears to us, be abundantly satisfied; and consider that the “treasure” brought to glory is well worth all He gave to get it. Could love go further? Oh, my reader, IF YOU ONLY KNEW HIM!

Liberty, Never.

“The wicked shall be silent in darkness.”―1 Samuel 2:9.

“They shall never see light.”―Psalms 49:19.

IT is always a serious word, that word “never”; but when God is pleased to make use of it, how infinitely its importance is increased! Think of it, for example, in the text above quoted. It is the door that shuts the cheer of hope outside the heart forever, and shuts the blackness of despair within. When God says “NEVER,” it is a divine hand that both turns the bolt and keeps the key; and who can revoke His sentence?

NEVER. Is it not, then, a word well worth our serious thought? Pause, then, my reader, and consider its import. Just take your stand on the narrow dividing-line that separates this world from the next, that marks off time from a vast eternity, and con the word carefully. Never, NEVER!

You are, perhaps, aware that in this country there is one asylum under special Government control. It is known as the Breadmoor Asylum, and is devoted entirely to the detention of criminals who, as far as can be judged, have committed offenses while in an unsound state of mind.

A few years since one of the unhappy inmates of this asylum not only got restoration for his mind, but found for his soul a safe refuge in the Saviour’s love, a, sure resting-place in His precious finished work.

What a change all this wrought in him the reader may readily imagine. Still, there was one thing more his heart craved for. But, alas! he had, years before, taken life in a fit of madness, and this longed-for boon was denied him. It was liberty he craved—liberty from the grip of the law. “Oh, for liberty! oh, for liberty! The flowers in the garden are pretty enough, and I am allowed sometimes to see them; but, oh, they are prison flowers. The grass, too, is green enough, but it is prison grass.” “If I only knew,” he would sometimes say to his warder, himself also a converted man, “if I only knew that there would ever be a chance of liberty for me to stand once more under a free sky, I could patiently wait. But―” and here the inevitable would thrust itself before him. Who could not pity such a case?

But if his lot was pitiable because, though with the fairest flowers and brightest sunshine, he had no liberty, what must be the portion of the lost in hell? In chains of darkness, bound hand and foot forever; no light, no liberty, no love, no hope; never, NEVER!

But for you, my reader, it has not come to this yet. For you there is still the opportunity of repentance. “The true light now shineth.” The light of the gospel, revealing all that God is, is still within your reach, and from that light, thank God, you have no need to shrink. It just suits you, for in that light we read God’s love. Think of that sinful woman at Sychar’s well (John 4). The Saviour’s holiness did not repel her; her sinfulness curt not repel Him. No doubt she knew something of her own badness, but she knew nothing of God’s love. The Saviour who conversed with her knew both perfectly, and He had come, by His precious death on the cross, to remove the one and reveal the other.

“He took the guilty culprit’s place,

And suffered in his stead;

For man, O miracle of grace!

For man the Saviour bled.”

Here, my reader, you will find both light and liberty. In the light of what God is you will have liberty to look calmly at all that you are, and this without a fear. You will see that it was the depth of your need as a ruined sinner that brought out the deeper depths of God’s love as a Saviour. For “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

But to the careless reader we would cry aloud, “Yet a little while is the light with you.” “Repent and believe the gospel”; own your sinfulness; cast yourself on the merits of His precious blood. So shall you be made a happy “partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12), and instead of looking up from the depth of eternal woe to the place of eternal rest, and sadly saying, Never you shall be able, even now to look down to the pit to which your sin once righteously exposed you, and say triumphantly, By the grace of God, by the blood of Christ, NEVER, NEVER!

Man's Way and God's.

THERE are four groups of words in the closing chapters of the Gospel of John which, taken together in the order in which they come, give us God’s order in the blessing of souls.
In chapter 19:30 we have the three precious words, “It is finished.” Not, “I have finished,” as though He had done part of the redeeming work, and left the other part for us, but “It is finished.” All the work was done.
A poor old woman, in her eightieth year, came one evening to a cottage meeting in a small hamlet in South Lincolnshire. She was among that vast number of honest though mistaken souls who are “doing their best” for salvation. She had taught herself to read when more than fifty years of age, so that she might, among other good things, read the Bible for herself. After this she made it her practice for many years to stay up every Saturday night an hour later than the rest of the family to read and pray, in order to fit herself, as she thought, to spend a holy day on the Sunday, considering that this would “go a long way toward her salvation”!
However, one night she attended a cottage meeting, and heard of the “finished work of Christ.” This completely changed the whole aspect of things in her soul, and, with tears chasing each other down her deeply furrowed face she exclaimed at the close of the meeting, “To think I have been doing so much all these years to get salvation, and now to find the work was finished on the cross by Jesus?”
Yes, reader, “it is finished”; and your part, if you would find salvation, is to believe on Him who did that precious finished work.
Then come those three gracious words from the lips of the risen Saviour to the trembling hearts of His poor followers

“PEACE UNTO YOU (22:19).

It is knowing that the Saviour’s precious blood and, finished work have righteously and fully met all that God had against us that gives the guilty conscience peace. The chastisement to effect our peace was laid upon Him, and “with His stripes we are healed.”
Then comes the Saviour’s challenge to Peter―

“LOVEST THOU ME?” (21:15).

It is when we see that He has laid down His life in meeting that which disturbed our peace―the judgment of God which our many sins deserve―that the affections of our hearts are drawn out to Him, and “we love Him, because He first loved us.”
Like Jonathan, who, when he saw David with the giant’s head in his hand, was knit in heart to the worthy victor, so are we drawn to love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity; and when love is in activity the response to the last three words before us, viz. —

“FOLLOW THOU ME” (21:22)

comes in as a natural consequence.
It is not hard to follow one we love, nor hard to love One who has laid down His life for us, and whose love will never end.
Thus we have seen that God’s order is―
“It is finished.”
“Peace unto you.”
“Lovest thou Me?”
“Follow thou Me.

While man’s is the very reverse. He―
“Tries to follow Christ,”
“Tries to love Him,” and
“Hopes to get peace”
“When all is finished.

Which has my reader been adopting? Remember that “there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” If you would have God’s salvation you must bow to God’s way of getting it.

Mercy Without Merit.

“WHEN I first became anxious about my soul,” said an old man who had spent the best of his days for himself in the pleasures of sin, “I felt how impossible it would be for me to get blessing because of what I deserved. It would, I felt, be something like using a pocket-knife for years, till it was worn nearly down to the haft, and then expecting to get as much for it as for a new one. Indeed, I lie here sometimes and wonder how a sinner like me dare have come to God for salvation after a history like mine. But there, it was all of mercy!” Yes, it is indeed all of mercy, all of grace―grace that reigns through righteousness―on God’s side; while all the misery, all the guilt, is on ours.

“Nothing but sin had I to give,

Nothing but love do I receive.”

And this is the story which every redeemed one has to tell. Spite of our badness, His love drew us―drew us to Himself, and blessed us in a manner worthy of Himself. “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” (Rom. 2:4).

Here is encouragement for you, dear troubled one. Perhaps you have been almost bordering on despair, because you have nothing wherewith to commend yourself to Him. Be of good comfort, then. He asks for nothing but a broken and contrite heart, a sense of your need of His mercy. All the rest is on His side. He commends His own love to you, and testifies of His own Son, and of His delight in what Jesus accomplished on the cross for your blessing.

GRACE is the word which just suits you. Grace blesses without a meriting cause in the one blessed.

Bring as many charges against yourself as you will, and you only prove thereby that you are a fitting subject for grace. When you come as a broken-down sinner to God, you come to One who has been pleased to reveal Himself as “THE GOD OF ALL GRACE.” The only thing that can possibly shut you out from the provision of grace is the fancied claim on your part of proved merit in the past or promised merit in the future. The one who realizes that he has nothing but ungodliness in the past, and nothing but weakness in view of the future, is just the one for the blessing.

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).

“Nothing but mercy’ll do for me,

Nothing but mercy full and free;

Of sinners chief—What but the blood

Could calm my soul before my God?”

Much in Little.

“JUST one letter of the alphabet makes all the difference between us now,” said a recently converted young woman to an unsaved neighbor who could not understand the great change that had come over her. “You love the world, and I love the Word.”
How much there was in this simple way of putting it! The Word speaks of Christ, so the true Christian loves it. The world cast Christ out, yet the worldling still loves it.

Near, but Missed It.

“I WAS once in a certain place where several people were getting what you call ‘converted.’ Indeed, I was within the toss of a halfpenny of being converted myself; but it all passed off again, and I have never been troubled with those kind of feelings since.”
So spake a fashionable lady as she sat at dinner with an officer in the army, as gay and thoughtless as herself. Alas! to be so close to the blessing, and yet to miss it! If that lady should ever reach eternal perdition, what unutterable remorse will the memory of those flippant words bring her! “Within the toss of a halfpenny of being converted”! Whatever her words might have really meant, they left the heart-saddening impression that she had been once amongst the “almost persuaded.” But there had been no real work wrought in her soul. Felix “trembled,” but it only made him wish to get away from the searching light of the truth― “judgment to come.” “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee,” were words which made only too apparent his true condition. But we are not told that he ever “trembled” again under the word of God, or ever found “the convenient season” he presumed upon.

“Near to the door, and the door stood wide,

Close to the port, but not inside;

Almost persuaded to give up sin,

Almost persuaded to enter in;

Almost persuaded to count the cost,

Almost a Christian, and yet lost.”

A Christian man still lives in the north of England who was once as near to damnation as the lady just spoken of was near to salvation. He had spent all, at least to his last halfpenny. How should he spend that? He was despairingly miserable at the moment. But could he not find a short way out of it? “Oh, yes,” whispered his old master; “you have just got enough to pay the bridge-toll. Pay your halfpenny, and jump from the bridge into the river below, and end your misery.” He obeyed. The solitary coin was paid, the bridge was reached. Now for it! End your misery! But wait, whispered another voice, will it end your misery? “AFTER DEATH THE JUDGMENT”! Jumping into the jaws of death will not end your misery. It was enough. He fled from the bridge. God had spoken; his precious soul was ultimately saved, and today he is a rejoicing Christian.
Truly, if we may use the poor worldling’s words, he was literally within the “toss of a halfpenny” of eternal damnation, yet, through grace, he missed it, and his old master missed him. Thrice happy he!
Are you aware, my reader, that you are getting perilously near—not, perhaps, to your last halfpenny, but to your last half-hour of gospel opportunity? Have you yet seen nothing in Christ to attract you? Nothing in your own deep need to drive you to Him? Well, remember, as a general rule, people die as they live; and remember that SALVATION MISSED IS DAMNATION REACHED. If you continue in your sins, EARTH ONCE LEFT IS HEAVEN FOREVER LOST.
Are you feeling the burden of sin? Are you realizing the world’s emptiness? Are you discovering what a dupe of the devil you have been? ―what drudgery his service is? Oh, turn to God from your idols. He will bless you.
Are you longing for deliverance, sighing for peace? The precious blood of Christ is all you need for a guilty, upbraiding conscience; His changeless love is enough for the cravings of an aching breast.

There are, no doubt, tens of thousands in hell this moment of whom it might be said, They were once near salvation, very near, but they missed it. May such never be true of you. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). “Be it known unto you... that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:38,39).
Let “this Man” have your confidence. God has raised Him from the dead, and glorified Him. He has God’s full confidence, for He has committed all things into His hand (John 3:35). Let Him have yours. “Whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

None Like Christ.

CHRIST was forgiving while self-righteousness was grumbling. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven... Who is this that forgiveth sins also?” (Luke 7:47, 49).

Christ was receiving sinners, and eating with them, while Pharisees caviled at His grace (Luke 15:1, 2).

Christ comforted whom men condemned. “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8).

Christ relieved whom some men robbed and others refrained from helping. The robbers turned away because there was nothing more to get; and the priest and Levite, because they had either nothing to give or no heart to give it. “But a certain Samaritan [figure of Christ], as he journeyed, came where he was,” did all, and paid all.

Christ walked weary miles to reveal Himself to one whom the world was ashamed to own. “Jesus, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well” (John 4:6).

Christ took into His own companionship one whom the world took positive pains to get rid of— “Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23).

The world gave thirty pieces of silver to get rid of Christ. Christ gave all that He had, and His precious life as well, to make sure of me! (Matt. 26:15; 13:44).

Surely there is none like Christ, none like Christ How safely you may trust Him!

“There is none like Jesus,

None like Him, none like Him!

There is none like Jesus,

Weary hearts to win.”

Not Reenlistment.

THERE is, perhaps, nothing which the heart of a young believer is slower to grasp than the fact of the unchanging character of the love of Christ. When his own heart is warm and his walk, as far as he has light about it, pleasing to the Lord, he does not suspect any change in the love of Christ; but when his ardor cools, when his service slackens, when his walk becomes careless, then he begins to question whether the love of Christ is the same as it was when he first became a Christian. But how grieving this must be to the Spirit, who has written it down for our comfort, that “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).

A soul in the state we have just been describing soon becomes a special target for the darts of the wicked one. As the taste for heavenly things gradually declines, the world in its most enticing forms is spread out before the eye, and plausible reasons suggested for going in for it. Not the grosser forms of worldliness, perhaps, at first; that would alarm the conscience too much, or draw the attention of others too markedly to the changed course, to be palatable.

Then comes some sad fall, and upbraiding conscience is once more up in arms. Then an effort to be better, but only followed by a deeper fall than ever. Then the subtle adversary suggests giving everything up. He whispers, You have, if you were ever converted at all, lost everything now. Christ could never own and certainly never love such a wicked wretch as you are; so that if ever you are set right and made happy after this, it will have to be by being again converted and coming to Christ for salvation as you first came, although nobody will ever believe in your reality again.”

Now this is all very plausible, but it is anything but the truth. The love of Christ never changes, and what the Spirit of God has effected in the soul of a believer can never perish. No, not even in the soul of a backslider. A deep well may be filled up with dry sand so that, from appearances at the top, none would guess that there was a spring of water at the bottom. But has the spring gone? Nothing of the sort. The spring is as really there as when there was not a particle of sand to bar your free access to it. How is this? Because the secret of the spring’s existence is on yonder distant mountain, where the hand that filled the well with rubbish has never reached and never will. So with the soul of a true believer, no matter how deeply he may have fallen. It is not a new spring he wants, but the removal, by self-judgment and honest confession, of the choking rubbish. “The water that I shall give him,” said the blessed Saviour, “shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).

Among the wounded in the military hospital at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the writer found a young man in great distress of soul. He had been shot right through the shoulder, and showed where the bullet entered and where it had escaped, having cut its way clean through to the other side. He was a poor backslider, and though the bodily wound had healed with wonderful rapidity, his wounded conscience was in sore agony still.

“I had made up my mind,” he said, “that there was no hope for me, and seriously contemplated taking my own life. “But,” said he, “I knew too much―too much about what comes after death―to dare to attempt it when it came to the point!”

It appears that he had once been gathered with a few believers in India who had taken the Lord’s supper together; but, he said, “I got away from the Lord (indeed, I never had settled peace at the bottom), and at last I felt it was only playing the part of a hypocrite to continue breaking bread any longer. “Now,” he continued, “do what I will, I get no comfort, no peace. Yet I have been on my knees for hours about it.”

I remarked, “Well, if you have been converted you need not expect to get back your joy and comfort by trying to come to God as you first came,” which brought out the confession that this was exactly what he had been doing. So I tried to point out to him his mistake thus: ―

“You belong to the 2nd Queen’s?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Suppose you were to desert and then afterward reenlist, say into the 11th Hussars, would not that be a criminal offense in the eye of military law?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Would you be at rest in your mind as you once more stood in the ranks under such circumstances? No. You would always be in fear and misgiving. Why? Because the full truth had not been faced before the military authorities. Your only honest way would be to come back, and, making full surrender, confess the simple truth, that you were a deserter from the 2nd Queen’s.

“It is the great enemy that has suggested your coming back to God and joining the ranks of your fellow-Christians by ‘re-enlistment,’ that is, by making a fresh beginning just as you first started. He knows that by this means you will not get the comfort you crave for, that your mind will never be at rest, and that to try to do so is only placing an effectual weapon in His hands wherewith to drive you to crushing despair. God will have reality. If the military authorities will not tolerate false pretenses, how can you expect God to do so?”

What this young man needed is the need of thousands in similar circumstances, namely, to see that there cannot possibly be any change in the love of Christ toward them or any slackening in the interest of Christ in them, come what may. When they carelessly fall into sin, He stands their righteous Advocate to restore them. When they turn against sin, He stands engaged to minister His mighty succor to them and to give them the sense of His tenderest sympathy with them.

If you want soul prosperity, have all out with God. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:13). “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Peace.

Romans 4:25; 5:1.

(From a Gospel Address.)

I DESIRE to speak of this scripture in such a way that the very youngest may be able to take it in. And if there is one here today who has not found rest in Christ, I trust some word may drop into your heart that will bring you into peace.

The last thing we get in chapter 4, is the first thing that troubles an awakened soul, namely, what he has done―the question of his offenses. He has a history he cannot get rid of; he has sinned against God and sees Himself condemned.

How is he to get clear? Many have tried to do so by making a fresh start; they promise to alter their ways, and falsely fancy that if they could only keep their promise they would get the desired blessing. Others feel that they could not keep it up if they did try, and are consequently afraid to take the position of a Christian at all.

Let me tell you plainly that reformation is not the way to meet your past offenses. This precious verse tells me of One “who was delivered for our offenses,” and who rose again from the dead. This is something outside us altogether. The death of Christ, the proof of God’s love, is outside us; the comfort of it is within.

Even with human love you must have some outside proof of a friend’s love before you can have the comfort of it in your heart. The proof must come first. It may be by a look, by a word, or by a gift, but in some way or other the outward proof of the love must precede the inward comfort of it. I believe God loves me. How do I know? Oh, by what I hear, by what I see.

So in this scripture God first gives an unmistakable proof of His love. “He was delivered,” i.e. He suffered for us. Then we have the comfort of it. The Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts. God’s Son has come down. Oh, mystery of mysteries I wonder of eternal ages! He has come down to save us, mere specks of dust, as polluted as sin could make us, as hard as Satan could harden us; unclean, foul, loathsome, desperately wicked; as degraded in our lusts as we were determined in our rebellion; filthy, yea, so bad that nothing could meet our case but the death of God’s beloved Son. But He gave Him. He was delivered for our offenses. Is not that a wonderful proof? When there was no hope, when we could only look forward to condemnation, and dread the time when we must stand before the great white throne, and thence descend into a gaping hell, oh, we saw that the Son of God had come down that we might be saved, that we might be able to stand in the presence of that glory without a fear, without a cloud!

He was delivered for my offenses. What is the consequence of that? I am delivered from my offenses. If He came down to bear the judgment, am I not to be delivered from it? Was His work without avail? No! If He was delivered and rose again, I am set free.

Is that difficult? It is simplicity itself. I wish so to speak that the youngest boy over there may understand. That is what I earnestly desire, for when people get old and hard it is so difficult to reach them. I am always charmed when I see a little boy set free. Do you ask, Why? I will tell you. Because such are not only saved from the dishonor into which older ones have been plunged, but they have a whole lifetime to give to God; they are privileged to serve Him before their hearts become hardened, and before they learn the crooked ways of this poor world. Some who are saved when old seem to spend half their time unlearning what had been wrongly taught all their life through before. Oh, how I long for your conversion, you who are young in years! God give me grace to be simple, and you to take the message in.

You know you have sinned. It was because of what you have done that, if He would save you, He must come down and die for you. But He came: He took what we deserved for our sins―took it all, and said, “It is finished.” Blessed Saviour! He was raised again for our justification.

The next thing to consider is what results from this for those who believe on Him.

Look at verse 1 of chapter 5. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” What does peace with God mean? I will tell you first what it does not mean. It does not mean peace with yourself. It does not mean that I can now say, Though I was bad before, now I am good. It does not mean being satisfied with myself in any way. I have had peace a long time, but I am not satisfied with myself yet.

Peace with God! Weigh the words. The first step towards it is a quarrel with yourself. I know a man I have had a standing quarrel with for many a long year. Do you understand? The more I know what I am naturally, the more I have occasion to quarrel with myself.

But there is a Man at God’s right hand who is all that I could wish for. He it is who has put all my sins away. Through Him I see that God is for me. In God’s presence I am at rest. I have peace with Him. All that was between God and me is settled. I can look up to His throne and be at peace. I remember much of my guilty history, but all that has been settled, and there is not a charge against me. God, on the very throne of His holiness, has not a charge against me. Why? Because He who once suffered for my sins is on that very throne.

I cannot think of that throne without thinking of Him who is there. WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD! Yes, and Christ made it. We could neither make it ourselves nor purchase by future merit that which He made.

I knew a village doctor so miserable about his sins that he promised God that, if He would give him peace, he would preach at the village pump! It was no easy thing to stand at the village pump, where everyone could see him, and publicly confess Christ. What would his friends, the gentlemen of the neighborhood, think of such a thing? He thought that was a big price to pay for it, so he promised God that if He would only give him peace he would do this humiliating thing.

But, dear friends, he did not get it on that ground. He has preached there, and the writer has preached there with him; but he did not get peace on that ground. He got it through believing in Christ. It is because He was “delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification,” that, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” Do you say, “I do believe, but I have not found peace”? I really can hardly believe such a statement. For a person to believe the gospel which I have believed and not have peace is more than I can understand.

I will tell you what I mean. By way of illustration, suppose that a friend of yours owes a large sum of money. He is in great trouble about it. At last you hear that someone has come forward and offered to pay the money and relieve him. One morning you go and call upon him. You say, “I have heard some good news about you, but I am afraid it cannot be true, or you would not still be looking so very unhappy. I have heard that Mr. So-and-so has been to your creditor, and paid all you owed.”

“Yes, I have heard the same.”

“But I heard,” you continue, “that he has sent you a letter telling you what he has done. But I see from your face that it cannot possibly be true.”

“Oh, but he did send me a letter.”

“And did he say he had paid the money?”

“He did.”

“But you did not believe the letter?”

“Oh, yes, I believed it was his letter.”

“But you did not believe the news it contained, for if you had believed it you would have peace.” “Oh, yes, I believed it.”

“No, you did not. I see by your face that you did not believe it, for you are still disturbed about the meeting of the debt.”

If light comes into a dark room the darkness goes out. If I believe that the Son of God actually took my place and bore all my sins, if I have reliable evidence that the God I have sinned against is satisfied with the righteous settlement on the cross, and that He has declared it by raising Christ from the dead, I must have peace. If, by the death of Christ, God has removed the disturbance for Himself, He has removed it for me.

But you say, “What about tomorrow’s sins?” That is another matter. Do you intend to sin again? You say, “God knows my weakness better than I do, though I know a little of it; but, as far as I know my own heart, I wish not to sin.” That is right. The truly converted man has no wish to sin, but if he does sin God has made provision for it. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

I am speaking now of the whole question of my sin. It was gone into and settled on the cross; yea, even before I was born: ―

“All my sins were laid upon Him,

Jesus bore them on the tree;

God who knew them laid them on Him,

And believing I am free.”

Suppose you are on the sea and a storm is raging. The waves are foaming and dashing mountains high. You say, “How can I get peace?” I will tell you how, if you could manage it. Take away the disturbing thing—the wind, and the consequence of it—the waves, and you have a calm. Now with conscience—storms the disturbing thing is sin, and the consequence of it righteous judgment. If God takes away the sin and the consequence of it, there is nothing left but calm, nothing but peace. Well, Jesus came on purpose to put away my sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He has borne God’s judgment, He has made peace, so that, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

When we see that, what effect has it on us? We are afraid of grieving Him, we “stand in awe and sin not.” “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” We fear to grieve Him, not because of the judicial consequence to us, but the consequence to Him. We know His love now, and we become very jealous lest we should either dishonor His name or grieve His heart.

A Risen Christ and the Day of Reckoning.

TRULY solemn were the words of the great Gentile evangelist as he boldly took his stand for God on Mars’ Hill, and sounded forth, “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31).

From this we find that God has already fixed upon two things in connection with coming judgment―

The day is appointed.

The Judge is ordained.

Notice also the little word “all” as occurring significantly twice over in these verses: (1) God has, by raising Christ from the dead, given the “assurance” or the pledge that He will judge the world, and He has given it to “all men.” (2) Because of this God is now commanding “all men everywhere to repent.”

What for the unconverted could be more solemn than this? Yet, on the other hand, Could we possibly be furnished with a better proof of His long-suffering mercy? For the last eighteen centuries and over, the “great and terrible day” has been fixed, and yet, instead of coming forth in fiery judgment, the “ordained” Judge has patiently waited upon a throne of grace, and patiently He waits there still. But THE DAY OF RECKONING WILL COME. God assures us of that, and gives the resurrection of His Son as the solemn pledge of it. It is easy enough for the infidel reasoner to deny both the Lord’s resurrection and His coming in judgment; but where is the scoffer who can prove either that He is not risen, or that He is not coming? Such a person is not to be found.

When the world―Jew and Gentile—crucified the Son of God, and closed the door of the tomb upon Him, there needed no further witness of what man thought of Jesus. The world could not and would not tolerate Him. “Let us murder Him; and have things our own way,” was really the language of man’s wicked heart, and his actions went with it.

But there is another side to all this. Hear the testimony of the blessed Lord Himself: “Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again” (John 10:17). And again, “If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him” (John 13:32). This He did. But from the very moment that the Father’s glory visited that tomb, and raised His beloved Son, the world and the Father are manifestly on two sides. Man put Him into the sepulcher, God took Him out; and henceforward that open grave becomes a picture of the gulf that must ever lie between the world that hated, crucified, and buried Jesus out of sight, and the Father that loved and glorified Him, and decreed that every eye should see Him.

Now, reader, every soul on earth must take sides either with Christ against the world, or with the world against Christ. In God’s account you are taking one side or the other this moment. Where do you stand? Have you till now been on the world’s side of that open grave? Then God has but one thing to say to you. He calls you to repentance; He commands you now: “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” He calls you to repent NOW. When Christ appears in power and glory to execute judgment it will be too late to repent! And remember, “The end of all things is at hand,” “The Judge standeth before the door” (James 5:9). As you value your soul, there is therefore no time to lose.

How men will wish in that day that they had obeyed God’s gracious call, as they try in vain to hide themselves from the all-searching gaze of Him who comes as the executor of wrath so long in mercy held back, the wrath of God! Oh, think of it seriously! The wrath of God! Yes, the wrath, of that God who gave the world His Son as a Saviour, and extended to it eighteen hundred years of long-suffering after that. What a day when righteous retribution bursts upon it! But, thank God, it is still the day of grace, and “God” “still commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” How good of Him to turn our eye forward to the burning day of judgment, and command us to repent! to turn us backward to the cross, and thus to commend His love!

“Who is a pardoning God like Thee,

Or who has grace so rich and free?”

Unsaved reader, may His goodness bring you to repentance before the fast-closing day of His long-suffering shall be over.
“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.”

Saved by Grace Alone.

THERE is nothing more natural to us than the thought of meriting God’s favor by some goodness of our own. That God should be favorable toward us, when there is nothing in us to win His favor, is entirely outside the reckonings of the unrenewed mind.

A little girl once said to her uncle, during a conversation about the conversion of the dying thief, “I should think, uncle, the reason God saved one thief and didn’t save the other, was, that the thief He saved hadn’t stolen quite so much as the other.” She couldn’t imagine anyone getting the blessing without there being some redeeming feature in his case. And in this thought she was by no means alone, for multitudes of professing Christians in the present day think the same. Yet it is plainly stated otherwise in the Holy Scriptures. God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5). “For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8, 9).

It is the custom in most of the herring-fishing stations in Shetland to pay the coopers, who make barrels for the salted fish, a certain rate of wages per week whether the fishing is good or bad. Three or four years since, those coasts were so infested with the destructive dog-fish that the herring season was a complete blank. Still the coopers had to be paid according to contract, fish or no fish. One of these coopers said to the writer, “I feel thoroughly ashamed to go and draw my wages week by week, for I know I have not earned them.” He knew that when the merchant engaged him, he expected that there would be something done by him to merit the weekly wage, or he would not have hired him.

Not so with God. He knew that we should have nothing wherewith to merit that which He so richly held out to us. Therefore it is that the gospel which proclaims these blessings―the gospel sent “to every creature which is under heaven”―is called the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24). Thus could the chief of sinners testify, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first [the very nation that crucified His beloved Sony, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Yes; salvation is entirely of grace, without a single merit on our side. We must be saved through Another’s deserving’s or forever reap our own.

Secret Doubters.

IN the matter of the knowledge of salvation there are three great classes of religious doubters: ―

1. Those who think it is right to be in uncertainty as to the future.

2. Those who believe it is possible to be sure, yet confess openly that they have no assurance.

3. Those who have serious doubts about their acceptance, though generally supposed to have none.

To the first class, that is, those who adopt uncertainty as part of their creed, we have little to say. That which God would make known to “every creature,” they would fain seal up under the title of “unknowable.” Willful ignorance!

Should such a doubter chance to read these pages, we would earnestly remind him that human opinions, when they contradict the word of God, are worse than nothing, and the end will surely prove it. Man is an important being in his own estimation; but death has to be faced, and “in that very day his thoughts perish.” Not so the truth of the gospel. “The word of the Lord endureth forever.”

Between the next two classes there is one main difference. In the one case, the lack of the comfort of divine assurance is openly and unhesitatingly confessed. In the other, although the comfort is lacking, the lips are wellnigh sealed. Such souls seem to consider it hardly orthodox to say that they have a misgiving. Having once confessed that they are sure of salvation, what would their fellow-believers think if they now said otherwise? Besides, they once had some plain verses of Scripture pointed out to them as the ground of their assurance; and, like the limpet to the rock, for dear life they tenaciously hold on to them. For example, they have the “SHALL NOT come into condemnation” of John 5:24; the “ARE justified from all things” of Acts 13:39; the “HATH everlasting life” of John 3:16; and we heartily thank God with them that they have such unfailing reserves to fall back upon. But, at the same time, there is a good deal of inward struggle, which, if it were expressed on the lip, would certainly not sound like having the “full assurance of faith.” Such souls have almost to argue themselves into the propriety of continuing to confess that they are saved, for, in their honest judgment, there is most perplexing evidence to the contrary.

Now, the secret of all such inward restlessness lies in the lack of apprehension by the soul (whatever the head may know about it) that salvation is entirely on the ground of GRACE. In multitudes of cases there is a secret clinging to the thought of merit. Not natural merit, perhaps, but merit notwithstanding—merit produced in them by the Holy Spirit. If they could only discover in themselves such longed-for merit they would rest satisfied; not finding it, they are, at best, ill at ease. What they see in the Scriptures would make them quite sure, if it were not that some lack in themselves makes them doubt.

Now, such souls have not yet fully seen that the believer’s goodness, even if he could reach the standard he aims at, could not merit God’s blessing: on the other hand, that all his discovered and confessed badness could not forfeit it. There would be a limit to the abounding grace of “the God of all grace,” if my badness were so great as to shut me out of blessing; and it would not be grace at all if my goodness could bring me into it. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). The apostle could say of himself, after speaking of his blasphemous, persecuting, overbearing, Christ-hating course, “But the grace of our Lord surpassingly over-abounded” (1 Tim. 1:14, New Trans.).

It was my badness that made Christ’s death an absolute necessity, it was by the grace of God He tasted that death for me (Heb. 2:9).

If, therefore, my badness has been the occasion for the expression of His grace through Christ, my badness cannot, at the same time, be the means of shutting me out of the blessing.

We would ask any secret doubter to consider, prayerfully, the two following questions: ―

First. Is God righteously satisfied with the giving up of the life of His own Son as a ransom?

Second. Are you so satisfied with the work accomplished that you cannot help desiring as your Saviour the blessed One who accomplished it?

Again we ask, Is not GOD satisfied? Never mind your own feelings about it—they are but of small account at best. Is GOD satisfied? Has He not raised and glorified Jesus on that very ground? He has, blessed be God, He has! Read the assurance of this in the words which fell from the Lord’s own lips: “If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him” (John 13:32).

All God’s righteous requirements having been met, and, still more, His holy name glorified in the meeting of them (John 17:4), He is now, through the merit of Christ, free to gratify His own heart. He can bless the very chief of sinners, and bless him righteously. Grace reigns “through righteousness.” That is, the sinner can be righteously blessed through grace, because grace has found One who was equal to the work of becoming righteously answerable for his sins.

Looking at Christ’s cross, and at His crowns of glory, we can say, It is all of God’s righteousness; looking at ourselves, we can say, It is all of His grace.

When you first came to Christ all that you had to bring was the heart-felt confession that you were such a sinner and that nothing but grace and mercy would do for you; and the last lesson, in this respect, is only the first lesson deepened. If you have, since then, made deeper discoveries of the evil within you naturally, it is only that you may have a better apprehension of the fact that the grace that met you at the beginning is the grace that keeps you to the end, and that to this grate you have owed, and will still owe everything.

“By grace are ye saved” (Eph. 2:8).

“We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace (Eph. 1:7).

Nor has grace done with us when our souls are redeemed and our sins forgiven; for “in the ages to come” He will show “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7).

What boundless blessing is here; all, all because of what HE is.

“HIS GRACE.”

“THE RICHES OF HIS GRACE.”

“THE EXCEEDING RICHES OF HIS GRACE.”

Can you not say, spite of all your unworthiness and all Satan’s subtlety, that God is so satisfied with Christ that He has crowned Him with glory and honor; and you so need Him, that you could not do without Him?

A glorified Saviour, and a heart that cannot do without Him, are arguments which utterly confound the foe, and drive him from the field without another word. May some troubled reader so learn to overcome.

The Service of Angels and the Work of Christ.

ANGELS are, no doubt, wonderful beings; but how dark must his mind be who bends the knee to worship or to make prayer to one or all of them. There can be no doubt that they have come into marked prominence in the history of God’s dealings with men, and their ministry has its place still (Heb. 1:14).
An angel could stand at the gate of paradise and keep man out; but what angel could meet the fiery sword and conduct man back? (Gen. 3:24).
An angel might drag Lot out of the fire of Sodom; but what angel could save me from the fire of hell? (Gen. 19:16).
An angel might stop the lion’s mouth for Daniel; but could he deliver me from the mouth of that roaring lion who “walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”? (Dan. 6:22).
An angel could be sent to trouble the waters of Bethesda’s pool for the healing of the body; but could one of all the heavenly host go into the troubled waters of judgment and secure peace and healing for a single soul? (John 5:4).
An angel might have power enough (for they excel in strength) to carry a sinner like you or me to heaven; but what is he going to say about our sins when he gets us there? (Luke 16:22).
An angel was sent to strike off Peter’s chains and open the prison gates for his free exit; but could that angel have loosed a sinner from the fetters of sin, and opened to him the gate of heavenly liberty? (Acts 12:7).
An angel could be sent to hold over guilty Jerusalem the sword of judgment, and make every man, from King David downward, to tremble as he beheld it; but who is sufficient to meet the sin which called it forth so that the “drawn sword” could be righteously put back into its sheath? (1 Chron. 21:16).
Angels might come from heaven by “multitudes” and say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”; but who could take up the overwhelming question of man’s guilt and ruin, and so work as to express God’s good pleasure in men-bring glory to God in the highest, and peace for men at their lowest? (Luke 2:13).
There is only One who could accomplish all this—Jesus the Son of God. He could take a dying robber to paradise, and make righteous answer for the wherefore of such a marvelous act; for He had died for him. He is the only Deliverer from the fire of eternal judgment, and from the destroyer’s power. He has already accomplished a work for the saving of every believer’s soul, and is soon coming again to change or raise the bodies of His saints.
“He breaks the power of canceled sin;
He sets the prisoner free.

He bared His bosom to the sword of judgment; and that sword is now forever sheathed for all who, in this day of grace, fly for shelter to His wounded side. Is the reader known in heaven as one of them?

"Shall I Smite?"

IT was night in a small Eastern town. A band of warriors, equipped for the fight, surrounded it. Their object was not so much present conquest as the apprehension of one particular man. It so happened, however, that that one particular man was a man of God, one who feared God more than he feared man, who could be fearless in a day when the prevailing power seemed all against him, and gracious and Godlike when the prevailing power was manifestly on his side. The young man with him, his servant, was full of alarm, both for himself and his master, until his eyes were opened to sec that, with the hosts of heaven on their side, he Might stand as calmly as his master in the face of every earthly foe. “He saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about” his master. (Read 2 Kings 6:8-23.)

“Thus protected,

All their foes they boldly dare.”

Now God has more ways than one of overcoming an, enemy. Instead of cutting him off in judgment, He can overcome his enmity by the power of His own overwhelming grace, and, as we shall see, turn the foe into a friend.

This army of heavenly warriors, crowding the mountain round about, did not summarily crush the Syrian force sent to spy out Elisha with a view to his apprehension. By one heavy blow they could have done so, but Elisha did not ask for this. The only thing that happened to them was the infliction of a temporary blindness, and this only lasted till they had been conducted within the strong walls of fortified Samaria. Then they had even their eyesight restored to them.

Again, their presence within those high walls made it only too manifest that they were entirely in the hands of the king of Israel, entirely at the mercy of the very one they had come to capture. Now is our chance to get rid of them by bringing vengeance, upon their heads, thought the king, and, therefore he cried to Elisha, “Shall I smite them? Shall I smite them?”

“Don’t smite them; feed them,” is the gracious answer of the prophet of God.

Then they “prepared a great provision” for them, we are told: “and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away.”

What a lovely illustration of God’s saving grace, and of its blessed results also, for we read in the same verse, “So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.” Grace overcame them. Grace was triumphant. It overcame evil with good.

There is, however, one great contrast to be noted here. In the case of this delivered band they all returned to their old master; while “the grace of God that bringeth salvation” wins the heart of the delivered one to serve his Deliverer, and to quit the service of the old master forever.

You might, centuries ago, have found such a company in the city of Thessalonica. This band of men had heard “the glad gospel of goodwill to men” from the lips of the apostle Paul.

It had reached their souls in the Spirit’s power, and forthwith “they turned to God from idols” (the devil, their former master, was hidden behind those idols) “to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, their Deliverer from the coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:9, 10).

Oh, the triumphs of God’s grace! How little man understands it! How lightly he regards his own wicked willfulness as he sets his face and steels his heart against even “the God of all grace”!

A war correspondent, describing the battle of Omdurman, commented strongly on the dogged determination of the Mandi’s followers on the field of conflict. “So vicious were these fanatics,” he says, “that they would feign death until a column had passed over them, then they would jump up and attack the soldiery in the rear. Even wounded men, craving a drink of water, would attempt the life of the hand that succored them!” Then he adds, “What could you do with such a treacherous foe?”

Has man forgotten what was once done to Him whose hand gave the healing touch to lepers, raised the dead, healed the sick, took the blind by the hand and gave them eyesight, fed thousands, and all this and more without even demanding so much as “Thank you” in return?

Has man forgotten that the very people thus befriended loudly clamored for that hand to be nailed to the gibbet?

Well might wondering angels ask, “What will God do with such a treacherous foe?” And how will the rejected One Himself meet such treatment? Listen, and wonder as you listen: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Oh, is this the way He meets their wickedness? Why, it is even more astonishing than the returns they made for His kindness! Then see Him, after breathing such a prayer, surrendering His own precious life that that prayer might be righteously answered!

Listen to Him once more as the risen One from among the dead. Has He changed in His desire for man’s blessing? No. He now manifests greater grace still, for He commissions His servants to go and preach “repentance and remission of sins in His name among all nations”; and then, to crown the very grace of that gracious sentence, He adds, “Beginning at Jerusalem.”

Divine justice might well have cried, “Smite them, smite them,” even before the display of their wickedness at Calvary. But not so. Jesus would Himself be smitten―smitten in man’s place. He would suffer in man’s room and stead in order that the voice of mercy might be heard and His own wishes gratified. Oh, smite them not, He says. Call them to repentance. Proclaim forgiveness in their ears. Set an eternal feast of love before them, and in “My name” bid them welcome.

Such is the gospel! Who that knows it in reality would not wish to shout it to the very ends of the earth? Dear reader, how do you stand affected by it?

"Show Me the Doctor."

HOW many there are who Only appear to make heaven a place of refined, natural enjoyment, a place “where everlasting spring abides, and never-withering flowers,” where the ranks of its inhabitants are not thinned by disease, where no foe disturbs the rest, and no jarring note mars the music! Christ is not in their thoughts, for He has never found a place in their hearts.
Ask a true believer, “What will it be to be there?”
and he will answer, “Christ.” Christ will be seen, His voice will be heard; only those who love Him will surround the Lamb and sing His praises. Every true believer has fullest sympathy with the old saint who said, “I would rather have Christ in my chimney-corner than have all heaven without Him.” It is the blessed Person, to whom we owe our all, that will attract and engage our hearts there. The following incident related by another will illustrate this.
Mr.―was a man of much intelligence, vigor, and many engaging qualities. He had a loving wife and several bright, beautiful children; but with all these joys he had one dreadful trial―he was blind from his birth.
An eminent French surgeon while in this country called upon him, and examining the blind man with much interest and care, said to him, “Your blindness is wholly superficial; your eyes are naturally good; if I had operated upon them twenty years ago I think I could have given you sight; I may possibly be able to do so now, though it will cause you much pain.”
“I can bear that,” was the reply, “if you can but enable me to see.”
The surgeon operated upon him, and was gradually successful; first there were faint glimmerings of light, then more distinct vision. The blind father was handed a rose—he had smelt one before, but had never seen one; then he looked upon the face of his wife, who had been so true and faithful to him; and then his children were brought, whom he had so often fondled, and whose charming prattle had so frequently fallen upon his ears.
He then exclaimed, “Oh, why, I have seen all of these before inquiring for the man by whose skill I have been enabled to behold them! Show me the doctor.” And when he was pointed out to him, he embraced him with tears of gratitude and joy.
Dear reader, would the presence of Christ be heaven to you? Or, granting you the companionship of the fairest and best of earth’s great ones, the enjoyment of the most refined pleasures your mind could conceive―sights most enchanting, sounds most thrilling―would a Christless heaven satisfy you? If, as a poor, hopeless, guilty one, you have been given to know the saving value of His precious blood, to taste the reality of His dying love, nothing could satisfy you short of seeing His blessed face, and uniting with the myriads of His redeemed ones to sing His praises. Thank God, fellow-believer, that prospect is ours; and not far off the day when all shall be realized. Happy people!

Something About Yourself.

YOU may consider yourself, dear reader, an entire stranger to the one who addresses you through this paper, but it so happens that he knows three things about you. THREE UNDENIABLE FACTS! To throw this paper down would only prove that you were afraid of facing them; but the facts themselves would still remain.

Indeed you can no more get rid of them than a bird could fly away from its own wings.

You have—

A GOD TO MEET.

A HISTORY TO ACCOUNT FOR.

AN ETERNITY TO SPEND.

But stay; this is not all we have to say. It is our privilege to tell you that the God you so much dread to meet in coming judgment is prepared to meet you in present blessing.

If you come to Him through Christ, He will wipe out every stain from your guilty history, and make you as fit for the highest glory as you are now fit for the lowest hell.

His precious Son has died; the cleansing blood has been shed; and in spite of your sinful past your soul may yet be saved. Oh, what a Saviour Jesus is! If you only knew Him, the thought of meeting Him would no longer be your darkest dread, but would become your brightest hope.

This may be yours, not because you have any merit, but all on the ground of pure grace. I ask: Does it not suit your case? For surely you have naught to plead but God’s own love and your exceeding need.

Accept then this all-gracious Saviour, and when you have accepted Him

“Let everybody see it

That Christ hath set you free;

And if it set them longing,

Say, ‘Jesus died for thee.’”

Sought and Brought.

(Psalms 22, 23, 24)

I DESIRE to bring before you the blessed Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, by His grace and help, to present Him to you in three different positions. I would not overlook the fact that there may be more than one reader of these pages who does not know Him. To such I could not say less than that I am heartily sorry for you, for if you die without knowing Him there will be nothing for you but eternal damnation. Remember this, the judgment to come and the lake of fire are not mere human fancies, but solemn, eternal realities, and it is God’s goodness to tell you about them. The rich man in hell (Luke 16) cast a reflection on that goodness when, in effect, he said, If I had my will I would warn people of these things; I would be kinder to my five brethren than either God or His servants have been to me.

Was this insinuation just? Far otherwise. I believe God has let men know, and it would be no kindness on the part of His servants if they did not tell you that there is hell everlasting for every man who dies in his sins. The blood on the lintel shows that God can have nothing to do with sin but judge it. He must either wipe the sin out in judgment or wipe the sinner out forever. But the sheltering blood is of God’s own providing.

Some reader of these pages may be anxious about this matter. You long to be at rest. Well, one thing is certain, you will never find satisfaction by analyzing your own feelings, nor by occupation with your own faith. Perhaps you are like a person of my acquaintance who was disturbing herself by a wrong use of Scripture. Referring to that sentence in Matthew 9:29, she said, “Does it not say, ‘According to your faith be it unto you’?” She was evidently looking at herself, and measuring God’s blessing by what she thought of her own faith, and doing this till she became quite downcast about it.

I showed her that it was not her business to be looking at her faith, but the Lord’s. It was the Lord who said to the two blind men, “According to your faith be it unto you.” They did not go to Him and say, According to our faith be it unto us. The language of their hearts was rather this, According to Thy ability be it unto us; for they believed He was able to open their eyes, and this was all the Lord wanted to know. They said nothing about His willingness to do it, but He did not diminish the blessing because of this. He did not give half-sight for half-faith; He opened both eyes. To those who believe on the Lord Jesus a little bit of faith brings an eternity of blessing.

Prince Bismarck said shortly before his death, speaking of his royal master, “We could not always get him to make up his mind as quickly as we should have liked in important matters of the State. He was so slow, so deliberating. But when he did make up his mind you might build castles on his word.”

How much more confidently, then, may we build on God’s sure word! I want nothing better for the assurance of my faith than Christ. Christ is the only Saviour for a sinner like me. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”―then, just as though Paul had said, Wait a bit! I will put my own name down as belonging to that class― “of whom, I am chief.”

It is God’s declaration, and without a shadow of question I can put my name down as belonging to the class to which that declaration refers― “SINNERS.”

There are two important things to notice in this 23rd Psalm. The first is that having got Christ as my Shepherd I have got the guarantee that all my wants will be supplied, and far more. “He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty” might be able to say, “I shall not want”? Oh, yes, but far more than that. “That ye through His poverty might be rich.” Having got Christ I have got what I want. But there is something, if possible, still sweeter. For having got us He has got what He wants. That is the end of the psalm, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” He wants me there. I was so bad, I could not do without Him; He was so good, He would not do without me. Both are mutually satisfied.

Psalms 23 is often called the “Shepherd-psalm,” but we may regard all these three psalms as Shepherd-psalms.

Psalms 22 is the Shepherd’s outward journey in search of the sheep. Psalms 23 gives us His care of the sheep on the homeward journey. Psalms 24 is His own grand reception when He reached home, and such will be His reception when He takes us all home together. Are you surprised when I say that I pity the one who does not know Him?

At God’s right hand there is One who loves me. And, oh, such a love is His! It is not restricted to the times when I go on well. It is a love that never changes even when I walk badly. It is quite true in the latter case, as another has said, He will change His manner towards me. True love will always do this. But He loves me through all (John 13:1). Why does God choose a mother’s love as a picture of His own? Is it not this, that a mother loves, not so much because of what her object is, as because of what she is? Her child may have crooked limbs, and a miserably disfigured countenance, and you would naturally say, What a mercy it would be if the Lord took it! But the mother does not think so. She loves it with a mother’s heart, and God makes choice of such love as a picture of His own, although He has to show in the very next sentence that the figure breaks down. A mother may forget; her love may break down―His NEVER!

“‘Tis this that humbles us with shame,

To find that Thou art still the same.”

He may have to chasten us. “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten,” as He says to Laodicea (Rev. 3:19). “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth” (Heb. 12:6). But this is because He has no other way of expressing His love to us at the moment.

There is a lovely verse in Jeremiah 2. The state of Israel had become very bad. What does the Lord do? He seeks out a tender-hearted young man to weep with Him over the desolations of His people. He had many things to complain of through His prophet, but note how He begins addressing them. “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” That is to say, In your darkest day I do not forget your brightest. And He is the same today. He never forgets that bright beginning of yours, my reader, when you sang so heartily―

“Happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away”

Perhaps you have got away from Him since then—got into the world. But the love of Jesus never changes. If you will not turn to Him and let His love shine on your face, it will shine on your back. He may have to make you suffer great loss, and bring you through deep sorrow, but through it all He will surely bring you and bless you too. He loves you, and nothing can change His love. He interests Himself in us when we are walking well, and even when we are walking badly the same loving interest continues. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2). He pleads our cause in heaven.

He engaged Himself to reach His wandering sheep, and take it safely home. But before He reached it He went through death to meet the deep, deep need of the foolish wanderer.

In Psalms 23 the found one says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.” But in Psalms 22 we find a striking contrast to that. His language on the cross is prophetically stated in this psalm. “Why art Thou so far from helping Me?” In Psalms 23 the Lord will not leave His sheep; but in Psalms 22 He is Himself the absolutely forsaken One. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” “Lover and friend hast Thou put far from Me.”

There are two places in these psalms where the Lord is seen alone. He was alone when dying for my sins (Psa. 22); He was alone when He ascended in triumph to God’s right hand (Psa. 24). What an entrance does that psalm present! What a contrast to the place man had given Him on the tree!

How wondrous was His mission to this world He came from God, and went to God. The One who set the starry firmament moving in perfect order, and keeps it so, is the One who has visited this little planet we call Earth, to seek and bless His fallen creature man. He came to declare what God’s heart is to man. That blessed adorable One has been to the cross and died for my sins! Wonderful! Are you surprised when I tell you that I want you to know Him? But more than this, God wants you to know Him. He was on the cross for our sins, and He is now up there in heaven without them. If He was there on the cross, He was bearing sin’s judgment. If He is now on the throne, sin’s judgment is passed forever for the believer. So that I do not cling to the cross now, I look to a living Saviour at the right hand of God. I believe on Him as I know Him there.

He was, as we have seen, alone on the cross, and He went up alone. But I want now to call your attention to one position where He is not alone. “Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” What was the rod for? Not for beating the sheep. It was for the direction and counting of the flock. When an Eastern shepherd wants to number his flock he puts out his rod, and as the sheep pass under it he counts them. The “staff” is for another purpose. It was a kind of club, and was used to defend the sheep from the ravages of wild beasts.

Here we have the figure of a double source of comfort for the believer in Christ. He is able to defend us, and He takes care to count us. Why does He count us? Because He does not intend to lose one, not even the least. He will say at the end, “Behold, I and the children which God hath given Me.” He will not leave one out. Then there is the staff. He is determined that no foe shall harm us. And He will exercise this double care to the end.

Someone may say sadly, I am away from the Lord now, and how shall I get back? Go to Him and judge yourself—that is, go in self—condemnation. When you do this you are in a line with what God has done. The moment you are in conflict with evil you have the sympathy of heaven. The moment you condemn sin you get the benefit of the full succor and sympathy of God’s High Priest in heaven. His service as Priest is not confined to this, but it includes it notwithstanding. And I would rather have His sympathy in a ditch than be on a throne without it.

It is a great thing to know the Lord, to know that He is touched with the feeling of my weakness here, and that He can extricate me from the deepest ditch into which my own folly has brought me. What a comfort to know there is One at God’s right hand who loves me! He never takes His eye off me. He talks to His Father about me.

We are most of us acquainted with that hymn which says―

“No subject so glorious as He,

No theme so affecting to us.”

And it is true, every word of it. But there is no theme so affecting to Him as that of His dear saints below, even when their hearts are not right. He is thinking of His saints down here, scattered up and down, in their homes and offices, in their fields and workshops; His eye sees, His heart cares for them all. Do not keep to your own side so much. Think of what He is thinking about. Someone once said to a fellow-Christian, “Why don’t you get up, and look down sometimes?” But whether you do so or not, you cannot look up without finding the Saviour looking down. He never has taken His eye from you yet, and He never will. Every believer is bound up in His affections eternally.

A Three Years' Mistake.

ANYONE who had seen George J― diligently reading his Bible every day might easily have taken him for a sincere Christian. Yet, in reality, he was an entire stranger to “joy and peace in believing.”
What, then, was the secret of all this diligence in Bible reading? We will try to explain. An ex-officer of the English army (H. T―) had come to the town where G. J― resided, and was announced to preach the gospel in the public hall. To this fleeting our friend G. J― was prevailed upon to go. In the course of the address one word, more than any other, fastened itself upon his mind. It was the word

“NOW.”

With solemn earnestness the preacher sought to press the importance of this word upon his hearers, in connection with the gracious opportunity that was there and then held out to them: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).
It is certainly high time, thought G. J —, that I should make a start, if I would secure this priceless boon for myself. The verse says “Now.” I cannot do better, therefore, than begin at once. But how shall I begin? Why, by doing good works, of course. And what better work can I do than read the Bible right through from the beginning?
To this he earnestly set himself, and many a spare hour was taken up by what he considered to be a meritorious task. Nor was he contented with going through the, holy book once, nor even twice.
Three years had passed away, and for the third time he had started this “good work” when the same preacher was again announced to preach in the public hall. With some measure of self-satisfaction because of his past three years’ religious performances―for by this time he had been confirmed, had become a regular communicant, and a total abstainer―our friend went to the hall, and took his seat with the rest of the audience. But on this occasion there was, with the former preacher, another officer’s son; and he it was who was the first to speak.
After opening his Bible, and announcing the scripture he wished to bring before his hearers, with more than ordinary sobriety in his manner, he read two verses with marked emphasis and great deliberation. These two verses proved to be enough to entirely upset our friend G. J―, as with one rude shock they seemed to completely overthrow all his religious notions, turning them upside down. Indeed, if these words were true, his endeavoring for three years to be good enough for God to save him was entirely beside the mark. These were the words,: “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh

NOT,

but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:4,5). Was it any wonder, after three years of earnest effort to work out for himself a title for salvation, that he should feel utterly confounded as he listened to this clear declaration of God’s revealed mind?

NOT
“TO HIM THAT WORKETH,”
but
“TO HIM THAT WORKETH NOT.”

If he had been exhorted to work harder, and do better, he could well have understood it; but to hear that the blessing comes “to him that worketh not,” and that God justifies the “ungodly,” was more than he was prepared for. And strange indeed was it that, in reading the Bible through again and again, he had never noticed it before!
Thank God, however, his eyes were open at last; and, better still, he had the wisdom given him to bow to the truth when he did see it. It was in this gracious way his soul was prepared for the Spirit’s message through the next speaker―the one he had really gone to hear. This was the text: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. (John 3:16).
On this blessed Sent One he did believe. He saw that the blessing did not depend on his working, but on God’s giving and Christ’s suffering; and gladly he received the welcome message.
The misapprehension of what God had connected with the little word “Now” had given him three years of fruitless effort to merit salvation. The right apprehension of what God had connected with the other little word “NOT,” has since then given him many, many years of solid, settled peace.
George J — ‘s three years’ mistake has been, with many, extended to a lifelong blunder. With many, alas! it is to be feared, the discovery of the fatal mistake comes all too late, leaving the soul burdened for eternity with the unbearable remorse that, with them, it had been as the Scriptures had said, “Always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Reader, has such a blunder been yours? Give up at once, then, the thought of trusting such a faulty foundation, and turn to Christ. He only is able to save. Trust no other refuge. Seek no other merit. Never rest till you are able to say, in heart-broken sincerity and with joyous satisfaction,
“I stand upon His merit,
I know no safer stand;
Not e’en where glory dwelleth,
In Emmanuel’s land.

“By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8,9).

A Triumphant End.

“Not a cloud above,

Not a spot within.”

“LET me die the death of the righteous,” said Balaam of old, “and let my last end be like his” (Num. 23:10). And who knows but that there was a measure of sincerity in the words of the hireling prophet, as from the “top of the rocks” he beheld the thousands of God’s people encamping in divinely prescribed order around that cloud-capped tabernacle?

No wonder, either, that even this poor money-loving prophet should at that moment give vent to such an expression; for Israel was indeed a blessed people. Jehovah Himself was in the midst of her, at once her Saviour, her Defender, and her Guide.

Yet, what a moral contradiction it was to hear this lover of the “wages of unrighteousness” saying, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his”!

Well, reader, I know neither your course of life nor your state of soul. God knows both. But I dare venture to say that the substance of Balaam’s prayer has been the burden of your thoughts, ay, many a time. Now I want to ask you to think a little more of those three monosyllables, “my last end.” Repeat them over to yourself again and again, “MY last end.” Take a pencil and write them down if you will, but weigh well their meaning, I pray you, so that at least one of God’s desires may be realized in your case. “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (Deut. 32:29).

Life’s journey will come to a close some day. That is certain. You may, even now, be very near the end. A long eternity is before you, and, whether you like it or not, you are inseparably linked with it. I solemnly ask you, therefore, as you look beyond all earthly plans and pleasures, beyond earthly friendships and earthly ties, beyond life’s latest hour, What are your prospects! What shall the end be?

But I have a bright tale to tell you, and I want your attention. The happy subject of it, Richard H —, was for years a valued personal friend and fellow-laborer. From boyhood’s days he had known and loved the Lord, and from that time to the “home-call” his deepest delight was to serve and follow Him.

But it is of his end I desire to speak particularly. Shortly before he passed away, and after a visit from the doctor who attended him, he expressed a particular wish to know what he thought of his physical state. On being told that “departure” was soon to be looked for, he burst forth into quite an ecstasy of joy, saying, “Good news! Good news from the far country! Set the bells a-ringing! Hoist a flag outside, to announce that I, a sinner of the earth, washed in Christ’s blood, am going into the heavens; and going by a work that has glorified, God! Good news! good news!” he again exclaimed; “it’s like breaking up school and going home!”

It was a few days after this when, for nearly the last time on earth, I was privileged to see him. Physical weakness, through the rapid inroads of consumption, seemed to be increasing. But, oh, while things seen and temporal were gradually fading away, how strong a grip had faith got of that which is “unseen and eternal”!

After a warm, familiar greeting, he said, and said in such a way as it is impossible to describe on paper, “You haven’t come here to see death, Georgie. Death isn’t here—not a bit of it. It’s regions behind me, and He is before me.” Then, looking up to heaven, he said, as if in some deep, happy reverie ― “Holiness! the more holiness, the better; the more righteousness, the better; the brighter the glory, the better. They can but bring out to my soul the value of my title.”

What a bright sunset! What a peaceful close to life’s short day! Death, with all its accompaniments, was as nothing to him. Nay, he wouldn’t have it that he was dying, but only going home. And I shall not be a bit surprised, unsaved reader, if you tell us that you would fain have your last end like this.

But mark, let your wishes be what they may, depend upon this, that to live without Christ is the surest method you could possibly adopt of dying without mercy. Oh that the Spirit of God might awaken you this moment!

But let us inquire what was the real secret of such a victory as the one just referred to. He hadn’t a word to say, or a thought to bestow upon his good works or pious life, though I may safely say that all who knew him can testify of his self-denying, heavenly minded devotedness, both to Christ and His people, and that for many years ere he was called home. But it was Christ Himself, his own gracious Saviour, who covered his vision and filled his heart, so that everything else―grim death itself not excepted―was, as he so graphically expressed it, “regions behind him.”

Once, no doubt, like thousands more, he had turned his eye inward upon himself to find something which he thought God might accept as a ground for blessing him, and something, therefore, which he too might rest his hopes upon. But, when weary and disappointed in such a search, the Spirit of God had turned his longing gaze to One in whom God could and did delight, whose finished work at Calvary He had accepted. Yes, reader, it is the look without that brings the peace within. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved,” is the message from a Saviour-God to guilty men (Isa. 45:22).

Notice now, it is not― “Look at yourself till you feel you are saved.”

That may be man’s gospel, but it certainly is not God’s. God is not looking at you, dear reader, to see whether you are worthy of His confidence. He knows you are not, and has told you so. Your heart, He declares, is without its match for treachery― “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9).”

God’s eye rests with delight and satisfaction upon His beloved Son. He thinks everything of Jesus. He has highly exalted Him, enthroned and crowned Him, put everything into His hands and under His feet, yea, given Him power over all flesh. God has entrusted Him with the giving of eternal life, and with the dispensing of His righteous judgment. He is to be the Head of heavenly government― “King of kings” in that bright millennial day; “for He must reign,” says the Holy Ghost, and we who love Him say, “Alleluia! alleluia!” The once despised and hated Nazarene, God’s King in Zion! How it makes the heart well over with joy to think of it!

“He shall reign from pole to pole,

With illimitable sway;

He shall reign till, like a scroll,

Yonder heaven shall pass away.”

Well, then, I repeat, the gospel does not ask you, dear troubled soul, whether or not you are sufficiently worthy for God to trust you, but it brings the blessed welcome news that His Son is sufficiently worthy for you to trust Him; that in turning away from all thoughts of your bad self, as well as from all your vain efforts to establish a good self, and reposing the confidence of your heart in the worthy Son of God as your Saviour, everlasting life is yours. Listen to the highest of all authorities: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47).

Oh, let me ask you then, “What think ye of Christ?” It was this blessed Saviour, this crowned, honored, exalted, beloved Son of God, and Son of man in heavenly glory, that was before the happy soul of this dear departing disciple.

“But,” says one, “how was it that the holiness and righteousness of God, yea, the very brightness of the light of the glory of God, seemed friendly to him?”

Friendly to him! Yes, as friendly as the cross, as we shall see; But let us first listen to the words of Him who hung upon that cross: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son”―gave Him to be “lifted up” as a victim for sin. On this ground the believing sinner stands before God free from all condemnation.

Faith can say, “If the righteous Son of God was delivered for my offenses, and if God has accepted that sacrifice, I must be delivered from my offenses.”

But then God has not only given His Son to be delivered up to death and judgment for us, He has given Him in resurrection life and glory to us.

“The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). “He made Him to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21); but He has also made Him “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” to us (1 Cor. 1:30).

Bear in mind, too, that this is not Christian attainment. It is the common portion of all that believe in Christ. The Holy Ghost speaks of them as created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24); and, of course, creation is not attainment. It is what God has made them in Christ.

The old creation was by Christ (see Col. 1:16), while the new creation is said to be in Christ (see Eph. 2:10).

Now this happy young Christian had learned not only to look from self to Calvary’s Victim for the righteous discharge, and therefore the full forgiveness, of his many sins, but also to look off from self to Christ, the Heavenly Victor, for perfect acceptance before the throne of God. With childlike simplicity he believed what God told him in His Word, not only that the work of Christ on the cross was accepted for him, but that he too was “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6).

Thus, you see, he knew from God’s Word that Christ was his righteousness and Christ his sanctification; and as to the glory of God being friendly, why, the effulgent brightness of that glory shines in the face of the very Man who once “bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (2 Cor. 4:6; 1 Peter 2:24).

What a trumpet-tongued witness is this, that those sins are forever put away from before the eye of God.

Well, dear Christian reader, this same Lord Jesus is soon coming again, and then once more shall we meet our dear brother shining in the fair beauty of Christ Himself. Oh, what a prospect! No wonder the believer’s heart leaps within him at the thought of it.

But “what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel?” “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” Oh, reader, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there may be but a step between thee and death. And don’t forget that if death finds thee in thy sins, judgment also will find thee in thy sins, and an eternity in the lake of fire will be the never-ending end of thy guilty history. As God is true, HELL is the certain doom of the unrepentant. Oh, why will ye die? God waits to be gracious still.

Trying to Believe.

SO many look at believing as some difficult task which they, on their part must perform, before God, on His part, can give them the longed-for blessing. After some special effort to accomplish this great work, they look in upon themselves to see if a right result has been produced, and in this way vainly try to get satisfaction. All this is self-occupation, from beginning to end. They try to produce something in their own feelings, by their own efforts to believe, and presume to be their own judge as to whether the thing arrived at is genuine or not. SELF! SELF! SELF! Then, usually, it is some sort of natural emotion that they expect; and, of course, it must be of a kind they have never felt before.
But conversion is not a physical change in our feelings, it is a moral change, produced by the Spirit of God in our souls. When a man is indifferent about sin one day, and dreads it and longs for Christ the next, it is surely proof that a change has been effected. But it is a moral change. The conscience has been awakened by the light. The light has exposed what he is in view of what God is. Nothing will meet such inward cravings but the One who could meet, and has met, all God’s claims against us. It is by this means that the sinner realizes that he cannot do without Christ. Then it is he learns with joy that this blessed Saviour exchanged the adoration of angels in heavenly glory, for the shame and suffering of the cross, in order that He might secure such sinners as himself for His own and His Father’s joy forever.
If the sinner’s awakened conscience cannot rest satisfied without the Saviour and His sin-atoning work, the Saviour’s love will not rest satisfied till that convicted sinner has received the longed-for blessing.
It is the GOSPEL which brings this glad news to a guilty, self-condemned one, and it is important to see that it is this GOSPEL which he is called upon to believe.
He is not commanded to believe that he is saved, but to repent and believe the gospel, and it is only when he does thus believe that he gets the assurance that salvation is his. There are four great facts about the gospel, and any one of them ought to be a cure for trying to believe.
1. Where it comes from―Heaven (1 Peter 1:12).
2. Who sends it. ―The blessed God (Acts 10:36; 1 Tim. 1:11).
3. Who brings it. ―The Holy Ghost (1 Peter 1:12).
4. Whom it is about. ―The Lord Jesus Christ.—His precious blood and heavenly exaltation (Rom. 1:3; 2 Cor. 4:4).
What a message it is! It comes from a place where no lie and no liar can enter. It comes from a God who cannot lie―who hates lying. It is brought by the Spirit of Truth, and it is concerning Him who is the very embodiment of Truth itself.
Yet a poor sinner will coolly say he will try to believe it!

You are bad enough, my reader, to deserve the judgment of God, and God has been good enough to send His beloved Son to bear that very judgment. This you are called upon to believe. Not that you are good, but that God is. Not that you are worthy, but that Christ is worthy. Not what you feel about yourself, but what God feels about Christ.
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15).
May the Spirit of God direct the heart of every troubled reader away from his worthless self to the worthy Saviour.
What think ye of such tidings?

The Two Congregations.

THERE will be but two congregations in eternity, and in one or the other of these, my reader, you will have your place. God will dwell with the one, and those who compose it will necessarily be fit for His holy presence; the other, shut out from God, and only fit for the presence of the devil, will with him have to find their “everlasting habitations” in the darkness of hellish despair. It is a mistake to think that heaven is merely a place for men to be happy in. It is a place for God’s happiness, and nothing to mar His joy will ever enter there. Sin enter there? Impossible. Fallen human nature? Never, never. God must be allowed to judge of who are accounted suitable for His own holy company, and woe betide the man who dares dispute the point with Him. He has taken the utmost pains to show us what those requirements are, and moreover at His own personal cost He has met those very requirements by His crucified and risen Son. And now, even to use the language of Old Testament Scripture, “The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead” (Prov. 21:16). The ungodly shall not stand in the congregation of the righteous (Psa. 1:5).

Let me tell you of two men who left one of these congregations to join the other, in hope that if you are still in the “congregation of the dead” you may change places this very hour.

We will let Scripture speak for itself. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts” (Heb. 11:4). Sin had come into the world, and death by sin, and man born naturally was under its power and judgment. By nature, therefore, Abel belonged to the “congregation of the dead,” and had no title whatever to the “congregation of the righteous.” But God did not leave him in this hopeless position. He devised means whereby those banished from Him might be blessed with Him; and moreover He let the sons of Adam into His gracious secret. In what way this was done we are not told, unless it was by covering Adam and Eve with the skin of the animal, an act which plainly declared that they could only stand before Him in that which involved the death of another. But whatever was the means of the revelation, Abel’s faith accepted the gracious provision revealed. He took his place before God on the ground of the death and acceptability of the slain lamb, and God pronounced him righteous. Not righteous because of any personal merits as a natural man, but because of the excellency and acceptability of the offering which he brought― “God testifying of his gifts.” If Abel, therefore, entered the congregation of the righteous, it was all because of the grace of God and the excellency of the sacrifice. God had brought him there, and therefore God and the Lamb must have the full praise of it eternally.

Turn now to a sadder picture (Matt. 22). We read there of one who was found at the wedding feast without the wedding garment. The feast was worthy of Him who in honor of His Son had provided it, and the fitness for the feast must be of the same character also. This man lacked the required fitness, and therefore, silenced and sorrowful, he had to hear the solemn sentence, “Take him away.” Unfit for the presence of the righteous King, he is bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness; where there was “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Did not his guilty silence prove that he knew that the One who had spread the feast had provided the fitness also? Yet, like Cain, he dared to stand before God in a fancied fitness of his own devising. He wandered “out of the way of understanding.” He followed “in the way of Cain”; and, like him, therefore, must “remain, in the congregation of the dead.”

Reader, where are you? If you would leave the “congregation of the dead” you must accept the death of Christ as your only way out. If you would be found in “the congregation of the righteous” when the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and when God shall dwell with them, you must find your fitness in the acceptability of a risen Christ.

Thus, whether in your deliverance from the one or your entrance into the other, Christ alone must be honored, and hence the beauty and importance of that opening sentence in the parable, “A certain King” made a marriage feast for His SON. Be sure of your “congregation.” In the words of another, may you be able to say―

“I stand upon His merits,

I know no safer stand,

Not e’en where glory dwelleth,

In Emmanuel’s land.”

Two Special Meetings.

IT was a serious meeting—most serious.
And was it specially arranged on his account, and he not there?
Ah, yes. It was the very fact of his absence that constituted the sadness of the occasion. For, strange as it may sound, if it had even been possible for him to be present at this meeting, it would never have been called at all—it was because he had gone that it was arranged.
The treasurer of a building society absconded, and a meeting of its members was called to examine how his financial matters stood. But the meeting we refer to was not for such a purpose as this. The absent one had not absconded: he had been apprehended. A sure-handed detective had taken him off most unceremoniously. Yet he well knew that this officer was coming.
Then why not try to escape?
Well, he would have evaded him if he could, but evasion was impossible. Indeed, all the skill and power both of devoted friends and of paid agents proved utterly fruitless to keep at arm’s length the unwelcome visitor. There is no question they did their utmost, yet their best was baffled, and it had to be whispered round the house after all, “He has gone.” Then the special meeting above referred to began to be spoken of. What meeting? Well, it was the meeting of relatives and sympathizing friends around the grave of a young man, who, it is to be feared, died in his sins. And, unless you repent, a similar meeting will probably be called for you before many years have fled.
When the funeral of that “rich man” mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Luke took place, it was, after all, only the clay tabernacle that they buried. He was not there. “In hell he lifted up his eyes... in torments.” He had left all that he valued on earth, and kept nothing! It is true he retained his memory, but that was only a source of inexpressible remorse.
“I am leaving this pretty little home for you, my dear,” said a dying gentleman to his wife, “and I am sure you will take a delight in keeping it as near as possible to what it now is.”
“But what have you got for yourself, my dear?” was her question, but it brought no answer!
What have you got for yourself, my reader? If called today to part with everything that could gratify your natural senses, what have you got for yourself? Have you yet found an undying portion for that heart of yours? Have you got salvation? Have you received Christ? Without Christ, your narrow span of life here is only the outer porch to an eternal prison-house, the certain way to an undying death.
However many might attend your funeral and mourn their loss in your departure, it will be only your body that they quietly lower into the grave. You will then have passed ALONE into the realities of eternity. Not that you will be certain, of a funeral. Thousands are hurried off so rapidly that their death and burial are but one event. How absolutely true of them, “buried without ceremony”! Not till the sea shall be commanded to give up her dead will those vast thousands be told, save that in God’s account they have already been numbered.
But there is another meeting which has been arranged, though it has not yet taken place. We mean the gathering together in the clouds of those who, in this day of grace, have repented of their sins, and believed the gospel of God’s grace in the gift of His beloved Son: Will you not be there, dear friend? Thank God, you may be. “They that are Christ’s at His coming” surely will be (1 Cor. 15:23). Is He necessary to you? If you cannot do without Him, depend upon it He will not do without you. Every believer can say, “It was my badness that made me first seek Him; it was His goodness that made Him first seek me. I was so bad I could not do without Him; He so good He would not do without me.”
But since the time we first came to Him, we have found another reason why we could not do without Him―His own personal blessedness and unchanging worth. His precious love has formed a bond that nothing can separate.
“Lord, from Thy love I cannot part,
Nor wouldst Thou part with mine.

You may, my reader, know the unspeakable reality of such a bond.
“What can wash away thy stains?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
So that not one spot remains?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

But if you die in your sins, as surely as they will say on earth,

NOT HERE,

they may, looking heavenward, add with equal certainty,

NOT THERE.

It is for you, therefore, to consider seriously

WHERE, THEN? FOR EVER―WHERE?

The blessed Lord made this solemn matter unmistakably plain when He said to certain bystanders, “Ye shall die in your sins,” and “Whither I go ye cannot come” (John 8:21). Yet, in the very same chapter, we have an account of His touching grace to one whose very sinfulness detained her in His holy presence until every self-satisfied, accusing Pharisee had been made to feel the powerful gaze of His all-searching eye, and to beat a hasty retreat in consequence.
He is the same Saviour still. If He will not tolerate empty show and self-righteous pretension, thank God He will not turn away the guiltiest sinner that comes with a broken spirit and contrite heart to Him. He will graciously welcome, abundantly pardon, eternally save. Will you not come to such a Saviour, my reader?
“I have seen the face of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside;
I have heard the voice of Jesus,
All my soul is satisfied.
In the brightness of the glory
First I saw His blessed face;
And from henceforth shall that glory
Be my home, my dwelling-place.

The Unwelcome Discovery.

HOW much easier it is for man to understand God’s power in creation than to grasp the thought of His love in redemption! Hence it is a common thing to hear Him spoken of as “The Almighty,” or as “The Creator,” or even addressed by professing Christians as “Thou great and almighty Being.” There can be no doubt that He is all this, and that, as Romans 1:20 puts it, His eternal power and Godhead are “clearly seen” by His works in creation. Yes, clearly seen by all but the blinded atheist, who is rightly described in 2 Peter 3:5 as “willingly ignorant.” Shutting his eyes to divine revelation, the very existence of the earth and the heavens becomes a mystery to him, and his own existence not less so; while the inevitable future is a darker mystery than either. He cannot even count the stars that spangle the heavens, for every freshly added power to the telescope only shows him that his past calculations were numerically far below the mark; nor can he, with all his boasted cleverness, count how many times a common house-fly moves his wings in one minute. He could not give life to a single dead gnat, nor could he, with all his scientific appliances, place a new star in yonder heavens, or take one from its present place, and yet he has the daring to lift his rebellious voice and say, “No Creator, no God.” There can be little doubt, however, that had it been possible for God to have created the world, and then gone out of existence, there would have been no infidelity about the creation. But He is the “LIVING GOD.” He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and consequently a God who must judge sin. This man cannot bear, and hence it is written of him, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” But, as another has remarked, he only says this in his heart, not in his conscience.

Such men remind one of the wealthy Brahmin who had come into possession of a very powerful microscope, with which he was wont to amuse himself by examining the different wonders in creation around him. One day, it is said, he chanced to examine his own dinner, and to his great annoyance discovered the rice to be full of tiny living creatures, too small for discernment by the natural eye. Now, alas! it was part of his creed never to taste of anything belonging to the animal kingdom. What could he do therefore? There was nothing for it but to demolish the instrument that had manifested the unpalatable secret! This he accordingly did by dashing it to pieces at his feet. But did this alter the unwelcome fact? No; he thereby only manifested his own folly. Nor does the rejecter of God’s Word do anything less unreasonable than this. A distasteful fact lies therein recorded― “after death the judgment.” He does not like it, and therefore, if he could, would sweep the blessed Book from the face of the earth. But it has been well said that the Book itself is as great a miracle as any miracle it records. It has stood many a storm, and’ is likely to stand a good many more, be they ten thousand times fiercer than the former. “The Word of God abideth forever.”

But God’s power in creation, and the certainty of coming judgment, are not, thank God, the only truths this precious record contains. In the person of His beloved Son, God has fully declared Himself as the “Friend of sinners,” of the worst of sinners. He “so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” That Son―the “Word made flesh” ―has fully revealed the Father’s heart, and if not a sinner in the wide world should ever be saved, God has certainly declared His boundless love to man. “God is love.”

Take an illustration. The snow lies deep on the ground in hard mid-winter; wild forest-birds are seen half-starved near your door; you go out in kindness to them, clear the ground, and scatter crumbs and seeds all around. Now, if every bird fled back to the forest without tasting a crumb, and eventually perished for want of food, it would not alter what your kindness had been to them. But suppose one half-famished little thing hopped within five yards of you, and ever so timidly picked up a few crumbs, would you not like it? Yes, and the nearer the tiny creature came, the better pleased you would be; and should one of the hungry flock be so trustful as to hop on your shoulder, or pick crumbs from your hand, you would be inclined to call every child in the house to witness it (see John 3:16; 1:18; 1 John 3:16).

Now God has come near to man in the person of His Son. He knew that without the death of a spotless victim man must righteously perish forever, and He so loved a guilty world “that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” What love, what giving, what a gift!

Reader, your responsibility is to receive this unmerited gift from God. Remember that the alternative, if in blind unbelief you refuse it, has been expressed in that one awful word— “Perish.” Weigh the issues well and carefully, for they stretch into eternity. God has righteously cleared the ground by the work of His beloved Son in suffering and death upon the cross, and UPON THAT GROUND ALONE He holds out to you eternal blessings. Whatever your heart may be, He has proved that His heart is to be trusted; and when a poor sinner comes for that salvation which He delights to bestow, the very angels are called to witness the overflowing’s of His joy. The servant could say of the prodigal’s reception, “Thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound” (Luke 15:24).

Blessed be God, if for His pleasure He created the world at the beginning (Rev. 4:11), for His pleasure also He will bless needy sinners to the end (Eph. 1:5-7). “They began to be merry,” nor will the joy ever cease throughout eternity. May the reader be inside the house to share it.

A Voice.

A VOICE from the dwellings of men. “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning” (Matt. 2:18).

What did it mean? It was all the result of human wickedness, man’s determined will. King Herod could be plausible and polite enough, and if he could only have accomplished his ends that way he would no doubt have been satisfied, but when milder means were unsuccessful he could be cruel down to death. The destruction of only one Child was what Herod’s heart was really set upon, but a whole district must be robbed of its tender nurslings rather than his wicked will be frustrated. What odds who suffers so that I get my way? Such is man: for Herod was only a sample of the race. God looks at man’s heart and says, “There is no difference; all have sinned.” “They have all gone out of the way.”

What can a holy, righteous God do with such a creature? Listen. There is another voice. It is a voice from the wilderness. It is not the voice of lamentation, but of one who plainly calls for it, and pointedly shows the necessity of it. He points men to their histories. He announces the approach of the coming King. He calls to repentance. It is the voice of one crying in the wilderness and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 3:2, 3). He shows that wickedness would then be swept out of the land in burning judgment, and all iniquity stop her mouth. Repent, repent, he thunders forth, REPENT. SIN MUST BE JUDGED.

Then there is, so to speak, a short pause in the Baptist’s rousing mission, and in that pause another voice is heard: not from Rama nor from the wilderness this time. It is a voice from heaven. Suddenly we find ourselves in the company of divine Persons, and we may well tread softly and listen here with bated breath, for the voice of God the Father is heard.

Man is once more the subject, but it is a new order of man, entirely, that comes before us. In Him all the moral excellencies and perfections of the blessed God find their true expression. Yet He is as veritably “a partaker of flesh and blood,” as truly human, apart from sin, as any of the ruined race He has come to serve.

“‘Tis Jesus, ‘tis Jesus, the Saviour from above;

‘Tis Jesus, ‘tis Jesus, ‘tis Jesus whom we love.”

Listen, then, while God the Father bears His own testimony to this heavenly Stranger. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” or as it is sometimes rendered, “in whom I have found My delight” (Matt. 3:16,17).

No weeping over the cruel havoc of human wickedness is heard here: no room for a call to repentance. The attention of heaven and earth is drawn to a Man who is, to the Father’s eye, “altogether lovely,” and to His heart a very wellspring of delight. “‘Tis Jesus, ‘tis Jesus!”

A few more steps forward and we are once more called to pause and listen. Another voice is heard―a voice from the place of judgment―a “loud voice.” It is the Son Himself who speaks this time, and He in the place of judgment. Whose judgment? God’s judgment! How amazing that He in whom was found all that God could wish for in man should be found under the overwhelming judgment of God, and that from His blessed lips should come the bitter cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). The Son of Man is “lifted up” by man, yet brought down to the very dust of death by the judgment of God! Why? SIN MUST BE JUDGED. God’s holiness is too great to pass sin by without judging it, but His love too great to pass the sinner by without putting blessing within his reach. And the blessed Lord Jesus came down from heaven engaged to bear that judgment and express that love. What a mission! Well may the heavens be opened to honor Him, well may the lips of every saved sinner be opened to praise His blessed name!

But the picture would hardly be complete without reference to the Saviour’s voice from another position―a voice from the throne of God.

A mad persecutor, in his blind zeal, as determined if not as cruel as Herod himself, as self-satisfied as the most scrupulous Pharisee in Jerusalem, is stopped on his way to Damascus. The voice of mercy arrests him―the voice of the exalted Jesus; the grace of Jesus wins him, the power of Jesus completely changes his entire course, and the chief persecutor of the saints becomes their chief comforter. The chief of sinners is made gladly willing to take the place of “less than the least of all saints.” He who once dragged them off to prison, and persecuted them to death, because they were the followers of Jesus, is now ready to serve them to death, and if, for Christ’s sake, he spends the end of his days in prison-chains, he will not slacken his service even then.

Oh, what wonders can the voice of Jesus accomplish! Have you yet heard that voice, my reader? Listen, then. It is addressing you today. In His name repentance and remission of sins is still being preached. What are you doing with this message? You are not asked to wait for some redeeming merit ere you respond to His call, but simply and heartily to condemn the evil you find in yourself, and trust the good that is in Him; in other words, to “repent and believe the gospel.” But we earnestly warn you that that voice will not always call you to blessing. Refuse the blessing a little longer, and the same voice will call you to judgment. What must it be, think you, to hear the voice of a rejected and oft-insulted Saviour saying, “DEPART FROM ME”?

May such a lot never be yours!

“Soon that voice will cease its calling,

Now it speaks and speaks to thee;

Sinner, heed the gracious message,

To the blood for refuge flee.”

Waiting for an Inward Change.

NOT long since a man, inquiring of a child whom he met the way to a certain street, got this brief and unlooked-for reply, “You are in it, sir.”
Now in a similar way there are many souls (through ignorance, no doubt) wanting to reach that which has already reached them. They are longing for an inward change, and deeply troubled because they have not had one; and yet, strange as it may appear, the change they expect would never be wished for if a change had not already taken place. From the slumber of sin they have been aroused by the Spirit of God, and are now wide awake to the bitter consequences of their guilty, godless course. This surely is a change, and a great one, but it is not what they are looking for. They expect some sort of happy change, which they vainly hope will give them peace about their sins; and hence they are always kept occupied with their own feelings instead of with Christ.
The exercises of a young person in the north of Ireland were of this type. After years of indifference, though brought up carefully by Christian parents, she was awakened by the Spirit of God to a sense of her lost condition. Deep indeed were the exercises she passed through before she found peace with God; her great trouble being that she had not had an inward change. In the middle of the night she would rise from her bed and peep into her mother’s room, fearing that the Lord’s coming might have taken place, her parents gone, and she left outside the door of mercy. Indeed, her anxiety increased to such an extent that, for want of sleep, her physical strength gave way, and for some days she was forced to keep her bed.
I inquired if she had ever before been thus troubled and distressed about her state before God, and she freely owned that such exercises were altogether new to her; and yet, marked as the change was, it was not the change she looked for, not the change she would fain have rested upon could she have found it. It is true she had heard of Jesus as a Saviour for sinners, doubtless longed to call Him hers, and to find peace through Him, but she expected to find it, and everything else her soul craved for, in this longed-for change.
Now, reader, what was her mistake in all this? She was trying to get, by a happy inward change, what alone can be found in an outside finished work, i.e. in the work of Christ upon the cross.
How many there are who are doing this! They are seeking for peace by a change within, whereas it is really the change within which makes them, seek for peace.
Let us consider this a little more closely.
Man is naturally an enemy to God, and his carnal mind enmity itself against Him (see Romans 5:10; 8:7). He has no fear of God before his eyes (Rom. 3:18). He seeks not after God (Rom. 3:11), for he desires not the knowledge of His ways (Job 21:14). He counts God as his enemy, and would, if he could, get rid of Him altogether. As it is, he says in his heart, “No God” (Psa. 14:1), the wish being father to the thought. In this state he neither fears “wrath” as the judgment due to his sins, nor seeks for peace with God about them. But when the Spirit of grace works effectually in the soul, what a change is brought about! The careless one is made to feel his guilt, and to review the whole of his relationship with God, and condemning thoughts of self take the place of hard thoughts about Him.
But great as such a change may be, it is never to become the ground of peace for a guilty conscience. That alone which meets the claims of God against us can really give peace to us. When a man of business finds by taking stock and auditing his books that he is practically a bankrupt, from that moment, if he is honest, his anxiety and distress will commence. Nor does he dream that any happy change of mind in him will meet the difficulty. His one thought is, “Where is the money to come from?” How are my heavy arrears to be met?” And it is only when some near relative or friend at last steps in and pays the whole debt, that his anxiety and misery are changed to comfort and peace of mind.
Yet how many, we repeat, are looking for a happy change within to assure them of salvation from coming judgment, and of peace with a holy God, instead of seeing that it is the blood of Christ, as God has declared its value, that cancels the debt of sin, shelters from judgment, and gives the guilty conscience peace! Such souls, like the young woman just referred to, want to find satisfaction in the joy which they expect the Spirit will produce in them, whereas the Spirit wants them to be satisfied with what Christ has done on the cross for them, and this by assuring them that God is satisfied therewith. It was the “God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20). “Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4:25; 5:1).
In reality, then, we may say that there are two great changes wrought in the soul of a believer. The first is by the Holy Spirit, who makes us feel our sinfulness and the consequent need of a Saviour. The second is effected when we see by faith that oar Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly met our need by dying for our sins upon the tree, and that the full penalty has been borne by Him; and when we see that God has declared His satisfaction in that work by raising Him from the dead.
One is a change from hardened indifference to penitent anxiety, and usually called repentance; the other a change from soul-trouble about our sins to joy and peace through believing on Him who bore them for us. Or to put it more briefly: the first is through the Spirit’s work in us; the second through the Saviour’s work for us. In one I am disturbed because “born of the Spirit”; in the other I have “peace through the blood.”—Reader is this peace yours?

"Well off."

TO be really “well off” you must have more than health (you are in a world of death); more than wealth (all that you possess here must be both parted with and accounted for); more than gratified ambition (death’s iron grip will burst that bubble also) ―you must leave Christ. Without Him you will neither have comfort in the hour of death nor boldness in the day of judgment.

John N― was very well off, and he knew it. He could say on a dying pillow, “If I get better it will be ALL GRACE; if I don’t, it will be ALL GLORY. Who could be better off than I am?”

What is the Gospel Which a Man is Damned for not Believing?

THE gospel which you are commanded to believe, and which you will be damned for not believing, is “the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:1-4).
In Christ God has declared His LOVE. In the gospel He commends it (Rom. 5:8).
What Christ was, God is; that is, God has been so fully declared in His blessed Son (John 1:18), that the refusal of Christ is the refusal of the God who has thus, in grace and truth, so fully laid bare His whole heart.
Every moral excellence in the blessed God was seen in the man Christ Jesus. Hence the condemnation. “Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). It is the light of the revelation of what God is that has come in with the presence of the Beloved of the Father here below, leaving man without excuse. Nothing can more fully demonstrate the wickedness of the human heart than the refusal of Christ as the only begotten Son declaring what God is, because that declaration shows that God is for man, notwithstanding all the evil that is in him. “He that believeth not shall be damned.”
When a soul has bowed to the righteous sentence of God against him as a sinner, when he has bowed to the authority of Jesus as his Lord, all the blessings of the gospel are his; and it is of these blessings, with the responsibilities attaching to them, that the epistles mainly speak. These epistles, be it remembered, are not written to unconverted people, but to those who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

I could not say, “Christ died for your sins if you believe He did.” I don’t think that is the way the gospel is presented. But when a person has come before God in true self-judgment, with broken-hearted confession of his guilt—when he has believed the testimony of God revealed in grace through Christ—I could direct him to the Spirit’s testimonies in the Scriptures as to all that righteously flows to him through the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 15:1-4).
Paul first directed the converted jailer to Christ Himself, and afterward spake unto him “the word of the Lord.” It is Christ Himself that we need to direct anxious souls to, and when in true repentance they have heartily bowed to God’s Raised One as Lord, then it is our privilege to show them what are God’s blessings in the gospel, as revealed by the Spirit in the Word for the acceptance and joy of faith, and to say, “All things are yours.” First the Blesser, then the blessing; without the Blesser no blessing.
The refusal of God declared in grace will get its own reward. The judgment that falls upon the head of a gospel rejecter will fall heavily. His silence at the bar of judgment will eloquently declare the righteousness of his sentence, how well-deserved his doom.
“He that is not subject to the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36, New Trans.).
“The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of oar Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:7-9).
“He that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).
“See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh” (Heb. 12: 25).

What the "Precious Blood" can do.

IF a sinner thinks of the GUILT of sin, he needs to be JUSTIFIED. If he thinks of the DEFILEMENT of sin, he needs to be CLEANSED.

If he thinks of the Offense of sin, he needs to be FORGIVEN.

All this is accomplished for the feeblest believer by the “precious blood of Christ.”

Listen to the testimony of God’s Word: “Much more then, being now JUSTIFIED by His BLOOD, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:9).

“The BLOOD of Jesus Christ God’s Son CLEANSETH us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

“Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).

“In whom we have redemption through His BLOOD, the FORGIVENESS of sins” (Eph. 1:7).

“Of all the gifts Thy love bestows,

Thou Giver of all good,

Not heaven itself a richer knows

Than the Redeemer’s blood.”

What Will Your End Be?

AN aged Christian woman lay dying in her quiet village home in Derbyshire. Weeping friends stood near her bed, but she wept not. Looking calmly upon them she said, “I am going.” Then, turning her gaze upward, she said, “I am coming,” and was immediately with her Lord. How different from the end of the notorious infidel who cried to the woman who waited upon him, “Stay with me, for I cannot bear to be alone. Send even a child to stay with me, for it is hell to be alone.” Yes, lonely indeed must that soul be who is left to face death and eternity without Christ! What will your end be?

When He Thinks.

“Is it peace?” said Joram’s mounted messenger to Jehu, when, in the king’s name, he met him.

“What hast thou to do with peace?” was the stern reply. Judgment was at hand. Even while the two kings were fraternizing together the avenger was rapidly approaching―driving “furiously.” Moreover, a deadly arrow was in Jehu’s sheath, and his strong hand ready to give it aim and flight.

Then the king himself approaches and asks the question, “Is it peace?” The stern reply is ready, “What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?” (2 Kings 9:18, 22).

Is it peace with the unbeliever today? We may well answer in Jehu’s words, “What peace?” If he has any peace at all, it is only when he is able to forget the things of eternity and shut his ears to God’s unmistakable warnings concerning the doom of the unpardoned sinner.

When he thinks of his dying hour, has he peace? No. For he knows that his sins are not pardoned, and that to die in his sins is to be banished from Christ’s presence forever. “Ye shall die in your sins [said the Lord to the unbelievers of His day]: whither I go, ye cannot come” (John 8:21).

When he thinks of the Lord’s coming, has he peace?

No. For he knows that no unbeliever will be “caught up.” by the Lord’s power to meet Him in the air. No unbeliever has the Spirit of God dwelling in his heart: no unbeliever has oil in his vessel. Only those who are “Christ’s” will be caught up at His coming. And listen to His solemn words, “Ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep” (John 10:26). Outside the door will be the unbeliever’s place.

When he thinks of the resurrection of the just, has lie peace? No. He knows that he would be left in his grave to await the resurrection of the unjust—all who have died in their sins will be raised in their sins (Rev. 20:6-12).

When he thinks of the day of judgment, has he peace? No. For well he knows that the open books will bring to light two condemning indictments―a lifetime of sin against God and the willful neglect of salvation through Christ, though brought right to him and pressed upon him in the gospel, times without number. He is fully aware, also, that the inevitable sequel to the great white, throne for every unbeliever will be the lake of fire for eternity. Thus it is written: “The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whore-mongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).

Oh, unbeliever, what hast thou to do with peace? If thou thinkest thou hast peace, we would earnestly, tenderly challenge thee to answer Jehu’s question, “What peace?” While Christ is rejected and thy sins are unpardoned, WHAT PEACE?

Believers in a triumphant Saviour, what say ye? Is it peace? YES. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Where True Faith Rests.

A PIOUS sailor was once heard explaining to a shipmate the nature of faith. Among other things, he said, “Mark you, it isn’t breaking off swearing and the like; it isn’t reading the Bible, nor praying, nor being good―it is none of these; for even if they answer for the time to come, there is still the old score. And how are you to get over that? It is not anything you have done or can do; it is taking hold of what Jesus did for you, and expecting the pardon and salvation of your soul, because Christ let the ‘waves and billows’ go over Him on Calvary. This is believing.”
Oh that every professed gospel preacher throughout the world might be brought to tell out the gospel as simply as this sailor told it to his shipmate! It is Christ and His precious shed blood, Christ and the glorious work He finished, that is the substance and center of all true gospel testimony. We do not occupy a drowning man with the hand that seizes the life-buoy, but draw his attention to the buoy itself thrown out to save him.
It is a living and glory-crowned Saviour that is the theme of the gospel. The Spirit delights to bear witness to Him. He tells me of the power of that love which brought Him down beneath the dark billows of judgment for my sins; of God’s satisfaction in His suffering work, told out by the place He now occupies, the crowns which adorn Him, the glories which cover Him.
He fills my ears with the tale of His praises, and my trembling heart with the story of His love, until my lips are constrained to say, “Lord, if I dare not trust my own heart, I cannot help trusting Thine. Thou art above and beyond suspicion. Thy love is a proved love―deeply, fully proved―and it needs no effort to trust a proved friend. Thyself all clean, all worthy, Thou hast died for me a sinner.”
It is thus that a weary, sin-sick heart is taught to trust the Saviour. And though the gospel fully recognizes all the badness that God has found in the sinner, yet the burden of that heaven-sent story is the goodness and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sent One of the Father, the gift of God. It is “the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ,” and it is what God has to say about Him that you are asked to believe.
Oh that some reader of these pages might be brought, in absolute distrust and abhorrence of self, to have faith in Him and in His precious blood!
He alone can save you. He alone is worthy. May your heart exclaim with David, “This is all my salvation, and all my desire,” and may you be able “To tell to sinners round What a blest Saviour you have found,”
and to begin at once to do it.

Why am I not Satisfied?

(Letter to an Exercised Soul.)

I FEAR you lose sight of the fact that God has already revealed Himself by means of the personal mission of His beloved Son into this world, and, moreover, that He has done so in connection with what man is, as tested by God’s own standard of holiness and righteousness. That is, I mean, He has not only fully declared what He is, but has done so by righteously meeting what man is. And all this He has done by the One who bore sin’s judgment on the cross.
The work of God’s beloved Sun has so met what Mali is, that God has declared Himself satisfied as to His righteous judgment on man’s badness; and at the same time Christ has so declared what God is, that those who believe the testimony are fully assured as to God’s grace and goodness toward them.
Now, dear friend, why are you not satisfied with God as revealed in Christ? Why do you not rest in what He is? Simply because, as I much fear, you are so much taken up with yourself that you rob your soul of the comfort of knowing that all blessing flows from what He is to you in grace, and not from what you are before Him through your own merit.
What God is, He is to you, if you would but turn your heart to Him, and get the comfort of His love.
What the shining sun is, he is to everyone, not blind, who turns his face in that direction. And what God is, He is to everyone, without exception, that honestly turns to Him through Christ. But if we turn in upon ourselves, and try to judge of what God is by what we are, there is little wonder that our souls should get into darkness and distress, and be well-nigh overwhelmed with distracting doubts and fears.
May the Lord turn you entirely away from yourself to Him. There is nothing to disturb your soul in what He is― “God is love, and perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18)―and there is certainly nothing in what you are to give you a moment’s real rest or solid comfort. Then, why look there? Look to Him. All you want is certainly to be found in Him.

"Why?"

A Troubled Question for the Troubled.

IF the report were to reach you some morning that outside the town or village where you reside a certain man, on his way to your house, had been arrested by the authorities and imprisoned, two questions would immediately arise in your mind―What man is it? What has he done? If you further learned, on inquiry, that he was actually on his way to show you a special kindness, your interest would naturally be increased sevenfold.

Now we wish in this paper to draw your attention to a “great sight,” an event so, momentous that beside it all others pale into insignificance—a Man under the judgment of God! This certainly ought to command your attention, for it was in connection with showing you a great kindness that He reached that place, and if not on His way to reach your house, He was certainly on His way to reach your heart.

A man under the judgment of God! Serious! Yes, truly. Who could forbear asking, What man? and Why?

Listen, and we will try to tell you, for an eternity of adoring wonder lies in the answers. To understand them aright we must bring together the opening verses of Psalms 22 and Matthew 27:46—the prophecy and its fulfillment. In the latter we learn who it is; in the former, why.

In Matthew 27 we see that it is the “Holy One” Himself that claims to be the fulfiller of the psalm. Jesus, forsaken of God! What meaneth this?

Of itself the announcement of a man under God’s judgment would bring no surprise with it. Had we seen a wicked Haman there, or a cruel, ungrateful Absalom, or a money-loving traitor like Judas, or had we been there ourselves, there could have been no surprise; but when we behold Jesus, “the Son of the Blessed,” under God’s righteous judgment we are bound to inquire, Why? Had not the evidence of angels, and men, and demons―yea, of God Himself―gone to show that, by right, the place of heavenly honor was personally His, and not the place of judicial abandonment?

Gabriel, in announcing His birth, had said, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.... He shall reign.., forever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32, 33).

Hear the bitter cry of Judas, as he throws the reward of his iniquity on the floor of the temple, saying, “I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4).

Let the Roman centurion, who saw Him bow His head in death, bear testimony, “Certainly this was a righteous Man” (Luke 23:47).

Listen to Pilate: “I find no fault in this Man” (Luke 23:4).

The penitent thief: “This Man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:41).

Even demons recognized Him as “the Holy One of God,” whose bidding they were compelled to obey, for the forsaken One had clearly demonstrated His Creator-power. Winds and waves and the fishes beneath the surface were alike under His control. All, all obeyed His will. He had baffled the enemy in his efforts to draw Him aside from His holy, obedient, dependent path, and silenced His would-be accusers by, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?”

Lastly, God Himself had publicly proclaimed that He was His beloved Son, in whom He found perfect satisfaction and delight.

Now, with all this evidence before you, fix your eye once more on that “great sight,” and bow your heart in wonder. This is the Man that is found under God’s judgment! Not the “abominable worker of iniquity” that says, “No God,” in Psalms 14, but the perfectly dependent One who cries, “My God,” repeating it four times in the first few verses of the psalm we have been considering (Psa. 22).

How naturally the word, wrung in agony from His lips, springs to our own, and we say,

WHY?

Why is this One under God’s judgment? As in thought we stand gazing on that “great sight” who will tell us? Can Gabriel from heaven or demons doomed to hell give us the, answer? No.

Can Judas or the centurion, or Pilate, or the dying malefactor, or even His poor trembling disciples tell us?

No, no, they cannot. And the One who forsakes has essentially got no answer for the One forsaken: Is the question,—then, to remain forever unanswered?

Oh, no! Blessed be His name, an answer has been found―found in the Sufferer’s own bosom, expressed by His own blessed lips, “BUT THOU ART HOLY, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Psa. 22:3). The secret lies in God’s holiness, in His absolute intolerance of sin. It was the sin of others for whom, of His own free will, the Lord Jesus had made Himself answerable, and He fully accepts the righteous consequences. He bears sin’s terrible penalty, and justifies God in dispensing to Him His wrath and judgment, yea, to its utmost extremity. So that when He thus answered His own troubled question with these words, “But Thou art holy,” it was as though He had said, Thou couldst not be the holy God Thou art, and do otherwise, even when Thine own Son has, for Thy glory, made Himself answerable for the iniquity of others.

Oh, ye “fools” that make a mock at sin; oh, ye careless triflers, consider this, lest, turning from the solemn sin question with a faint smile now, you turn to it with, a pale shudder presently, and never turn from it again for eternity!

But there is another side of the inquiry, Why was He there at all? What caused Him to step into that place of wrath and judgment? The answer is enfolded in one mighty word, and unfolded by one mighty deed. LOVE is the secret―the love of God in Christ Jesus, love displayed at Calvary. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). “He loved me,” said Paul, “and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

DEATH, the penalty of sin, was thus made the means of expressing God’s love to the sinner. What comfort for the sin-sick is here! What confusion for the God-accusing foe!

But, in reality, we should have no gospel to preach if all that we had to tell was of a “Man under judgment.” The Man who was under judgment has risen again, and is now forever beyond it. (Read from verse 22 of Psa. 22) It is striking that in the first half of this psalm there is no mention of His “brethren.” They had no part in what His enemies were doing, and they could not possibly take part in what He was doing. With the Holy Sufferer it was a question of “Thou” and “Me.” Hence the Lord’s answer to Peter’s question, “Why cannot I follow Thee now?” (John 13:37). Peter’s “Why?” finds its answer in the forsaken One’s “Why?” How could he stand under the judgment of God, who was not able to bear the taunt of a maid-servant? None but He could take the place of bearing sin’s full judgment, and none but He, when once under it, could ever by exhausting it pass out free beyond it. This, as the Eternal One, He could do.

This He has done; and in verse 22 of the psalm we see Him beyond it forever. Oh, what depths of blessedness in that verse! Note the very first word He utters. He has no complaint against the sinner for his sins, nor against God for sin’s righteous judgment. He speaks to God His Father, and says, “I will declare Thy name”! “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren.” The “Thou” and “MY” of the dark hours of judgment are exchanged for the “THY” and “MY” of resurrection triumph. “Thy name” and “My brethren” are brought thus together, and who shall divorce them? He fills their hearts with joy to overflowing as He reveals to them His Father’s name, And fills His Father’s heart with joy by leading their praises back to Him.

For them whose cause He took up, as truly as for Him who took it, the judgment they deserved is forever past. Nothing is left but to enter triumphantly into what “He hath done” (the last three words of the psalm), and to praise the love that did it.

Sin has been removed in righteous judgment. God has been declared in perfect love, and “HE HATH DONE” IT. What a triumph!

“We triumph in Thy triumphs, Lord,

Thy joys our deepest joys afford;

They taste of love divine.”

How all this turns our trouble about sin’s consequences into hatred of its very nature and character!

One word more. It is to direct your attention to the “Why” of the risen Jesus. “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet” (Luke 24:38,39). As though He had said, Since I have passed through such depths for you, since My soul has been troubled in the presence of God’s judgment for your sins, nothing but peace and gladness should now fill yours in My presence.

“Oh, what a load was Thine to bear

Alone in that dark hour!

Our sins in all their terror there,

God’s wrath and Satan’s power.

“The storm that bowed Thy blessed head

Is hushed forever now,

And rest divine is ours instead,

While glory crowns Thy brow.”

What more could any sin-troubled heart wish for?

Sin unsparingly judged.

Love undeniably declared.

The Sin-purger transcendently honored and enthroned.

God Himself eternally satisfied and glorified.

Should there be one doubt left in the reader’s heart, let us entreat you to take that doubt to the risen Lord, and ask Him to go through the tale of His sufferings with you, and to tell you Himself whether He and His Father are fully satisfied with what

“HE HATH DONE.”