All God's ways now are presenting His moral manifestation. It will next be His judicial manifestation. If the moral manifestation is not received, " the word that I have spoken shall judge him at the last day." The Lord did not accompany the word with judgment when it was spoken; but that word will judge him at the last day, and he will be condemned. Antichrist will only bring out by God's judicial action towards him what He has taught all the way through. Antichrist will be brought out in full display, and Gad has to show what He is, and to act towards him in that character. The first way God taught them was in the Lord Jesus Christ, but being rejected, and having ascended up on high and become the expression of what we should be, the Church should be the manifestation of what Christ is. Then comes the communication of the life from Him in heaven. This was the new thing-" a new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another." It was not a new commandment to love one another. It was the old commandment and yet new, because it was now given in the power of it; being not merely commanded in His word, but communicated by the power of the Holy Ghost to reproduce in us the life of Christ, and that is a new thing, and we are to manifest it. The Church of God is to be that vessel for the manifestation of Christ down here according to the power of the life in its Head in heaven. God acted in government towards Israel when He dwelt in the thick darkness. He acted in government according to a known law, but He was hid behind a vail" set bounds about the mount;" but now when Christ died, the darkness was past in the cross, and there was a full display of the holiness of God. At the same moment that His wrath burst forth against sin, the light burst forth which fully manifested His character. " The darkness is past and the true light now shineth." The vail is rent and we can now enter into the presence of God Himself into the holiest which is now opened to us. " Walk in the light, as God. is in the light;" " You were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." Nothing is to be allowed that cannot bear the light. My fellowship is with light. Men perish for lack of knowledge. " The true light now shineth," by Christ's death. He ascended up on high-the vail is rent-God is fully manifested in truth and love. If He had been only just we should have perished; if He had been only love, there would have been no justice; but there was justice and holiness with love, and God has been glorified about our sins in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The light now is shining, Christ the source of that light is to be manifested in us, " which thing is true in him and in you." It is an old commandment which was from the beginning-Christ Himself. You cannot have a better than that, and now the manifestation of it is learned in us; and if we want it as a test, it must not be the imperfect light that is in us, but in Christ Himself. While it is given to us as the means of detecting these errors, it is also to build us up in what Christ is; and in looking at these traits we discover more and more that it is thoroughly divine. I learn in Christ such and such a trait of perfectness, and I say that is " God manifest in. the flesh;" and thus I learn all I shall know in heaven. " He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." We learn the beauty in Jesus and learn it is divine, and learning what God is we are happy and peaceful. And if you have seen a saint dying, if he has apprehended the blood of Christ, he will have peace; but if you look for joy, it must spring from the affections being acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. You will sometimes see a saint, and there is joy, and by and by his peace is gone: That is where the soul is not settled. There ought to be both; the blood gives peace, but it is my acquaintance with and knowledge of Christ that gives me joy. The apostle always speaks of the abstract principle, " He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him."
(Continued from page 192 of Vol. IX.)