Young Christian: Volume 24, 1934

We had just finished a gospel service in the hall, in the town of A., and most of the people had gone home. My fellow-laborer and I were both preparing to go, when a young girl came up to us, and very politely asked,

“May I have a little conversation with you? I could not sleep last night for thinking about how I should meet God. I would like to have the assurance that Jesus is mine.”

The words were spoken in faltering tones, and finished amid suppressed sobs and tears.

We told her of the one who had come down to seek and to save the lost, and how anxious He was to lay her a lost and wandering sheep, upon His shoulders. But Agnes did not then allow His hand to lift her up. She thought herself too bad for Jesus. A few nights after, she heard some young people speaking about Jesus’ willingness to save, and the thought crossed her mind,

“If Jesus is willing to save others, He will be willing to save me, too, and I ought to allow Him to do so,” and Agnes, then and there, just as she was, a lost and helpless sinner, committed herself to Jesus, and she was saved for eternity.

For about a year after Agnes was converted she walked with God, and served Him as a domestic servant; and in that humble sphere she adorned the doctrine of God her Saviour. Her conversion was manifest in the kitchen as well as at the prayer meeting, and her testimony was blessed in leading weary souls to Jesus.

Agnes left an old Bible in the house where she then served. She was in the habit of marking favorite passages, and she had marked, among others, a verse that was read to her that night when she was anxious in the hall. It was this –

“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee,” (Isa. 46:22).

The servant who succeeded Agnes in the same situation, in turning over the leaves of the old Bible one night was arrested and saved through reading this; and thus the simple act of Bible marking, by one who loved and walked with God, was made a finger-post to point a weary soul to Christ.

But the Lord who loved her, had chosen another path for Agnes – a path of honor and holy service, in which she was sustained to her latest hour, and enabled by His grace to glorify His name. She was called to enter the furnace of affliction, and there – in the midst of the sharpest pain, extending over a period of five years, sometimes in hospitals far from home and loved ones, and sometimes in her mother’s cottage – to let it be known how Christ can satisfy the soul, and rejoice the hearts of His saints even here. It was a real pleasure to spend a quiet hour by the side of Agnes’ couch.

We sometimes visit the sick; and we always felt on visiting Agnes that it was to our gain: she was always so bright and cheerful, and so full of Christ. She was constantly meditating on the Word, and gathering its riches for her own soul, and she liked to share them with others. One day we looked in to see Agnes, and found her reclining with her Bible open by her side.

“O,” she said, as we entered, “I’ve just been asking the Lord to send somebody to help me to beat out some gleanings I’ve been getting today, and you’ll just sit down and do it.”

“And what have you been getting today, Agnes?” we asked.

“O, I’ve been reading about the great and costly stones being prepared for Solomon’s temple. I have only got this length with it, that they were first dug out from the quarries, and then, after that, they passed into the hands of the ‘stone-squarer’s to have all the rough bits knocked off, and to be prepared to fill their places in the temple of the Lord. We are told that the house was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither, and there was to be no hammer or ax heard after that.” (1 Kings 6:7). And, grasping my hand with delight, she added –

“He dug me from the quarry five years ago, and now here I am being polished and squared; and when once He has finished the work, He will lift me up and put me into the place He is preparing for me to fill in His temple up yonder; and won’t that be grand?” Yes, that will be grand!

Most sweetly does her early choice, her joyous, peaceful life, and her triumphant entrance to her home above, invite you, my reader, to the One who can do as much for you. It was Jesus who saved and kept Agnes T., and He is willing to do all this for you. Will you commit yourself to Him, and allow Him to save you?

Living Water

An aged gentleman was on a visit at one of the noted watering-places. While taking a drink of water one morning at the spring, a lady came up to take her usual glass at the same time. The gentleman, turning towards her asked in a pleasant yet thoughtful manner,

“Have you ever drunk at that great fountain?” The lady seemed confused, and turned away without making a reply.

In the following winter, the gentleman was at a place where he was attending a meeting for religious conference and prayer; and at the close of the meeting he was asked to visit a lady who was dying. As he entered the sick room, the lady fixed her eyes intently upon him, and said, with a smile,

“Do you not know me?”

“No; are we not strangers to each other?” was the reply.

“Do you not recollect,” said she, “asking a woman at the spring last year, ‘Have you ever drunk at that great fountain?’”

“Yes,” said he, “I do.”

“Well sir, I am that person. I thought at the time that you were very intrusive; but your words kept ringing in my ears, and they followed me to my room and to my pillow. I was without peace or rest till I found Christ. I now expect shortly to die, and you, under God, have been instrumentally the means of my salvation. Be as faithful to others as you have been to me, and never be afraid to speak of Christ to ‘strangers.’”

What a blessing was granted to this short but faithful word! Little do Christians know how God owns His truth. Let them scatter the precious Seed, and He will give the increase.

Correspondence: Rev. 17 and 18's place in the Tribulation Period

Question: During what time of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, the Tribulation period, will Revelation 17 and 18 be fulfilled?

Answer: You have asked a most difficult question. As we have heard one say, “It is a comparatively easy thing to get an outline of prophecy, but it is an entirely different matter to fit in the details.”

Revelation 17 introduces us to Babylon in her mystic religious character, the false bride of Christ. This includes, or will include all of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant, as it will exist, Christless, after the saints have gone to meet the Lord in the air.

This time being at the beginning of the week, the Roman beast finds it to his interest politically and diplomatically to work in conjunction and fellowship with this great religious octopus. Later on, as he gets the reins of western supremacy more firmly in his hands, he casts discretion aside, and with the all too willing aid of his ten confederates, they confiscate the wealth of Babylon and render her desolate.

This is God’s providential judgment on this abominable apostate system. When the Lord returns in the clouds with His assembled hosts, there remains no apostate church to judge. She has already been judged providentially through the instrumentality of the beast and his confederate kings. What the Lord does find on His return is apostate Judaism.

Now as to Revelation 18. Here we have the judgment of Babylon viewed as linked with world affairs, commercially and politically. The sudden rending apart of these Siamese twins, an apostate religious system, from a great covetous, complex, commercial and mercenary system, results in the fatal ruin of the former, and universal sorrow and lamentation in the latter. I judge this final burning with fire of the whore, and the destruction of that great city, Babylon, will occur near the end of the week.

As to the worship of the second beast in the city of Jerusalem and surrounding territory, this, I think, is the form the Jewish apostasy takes in Jerusalem. Antichrist is not a universal character, but distinctly a Jewish one, and his diabolic demonstrations are carried on in the midst of this guilty people who rejected their “Christ,” and now receive a false Christ.

As to any inconsistency in Babylon worship and beast worship existing at the same time, this will present no difficulties to apostates, void of conscience Godward. If Rome can now canonize for worship departed men, it would be no great step to canonize one while living. But as to details on this kind of points, the Word leaves us pretty much in the dark as far as I see. When the time arrives, seeming inconsistencies and impossibilities will vanish overnight, and all prophetic events fall into place like a “Jig Saw Puzzle.”

The solemn and yet blessed part of all these considerations is the evident nearness of these long predicted events. We can now lift up the head, for the day of our redemption draweth nigh.

A young believer writes asking some information about the compilation of the Bible. This is too large a subject to be handled in these columns, but we would refer him to the following excellent volumes on the subject, any one of which can be obtained at the Bible Truth Depot:

“All About the Bible,” Sidney Collet.
“Our Father’s Will”
“The Story of our English Bible,” W. Scott.

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Part 2

Part 2

But He will come, and we should ever live in the hope of His coming. Thus the Apostle taught his beloved Thessalonians to live. Thus he lived himself. The blessed hope was intimately bound up with all the habits and feelings of his daily life. Was it a question of reaping the fruit of his labors? Hear the Word of God on this:

“For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?”

He would see them all then and there. No enemy will be allowed to hinder that meeting. Satan hindered an angel of God in the discharge of his business in the days of Daniel; and he hindered an apostle of Christ in the accomplishment of his loving desire to see his brethren at Thessalonica. But, thanks be to God, he will not be able to hinder the joyful meeting of Christ and His saints for which we wait. What a moment that will be! What precious reunions! What affectionate greetings of dear old friends! But, far above all, His smile, His welcome, His soul-stirring “Well done!” – Himself!

What a precious soul-sustaining hope! Need we wonder at the prominent place it occupied in the thoughts and the teachings of the blessed Apostle? He recurs to it in all occasions, and in connection with every subject. Is it a question of progress in the divine life and practical godliness? Thus he puts it:

“And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all, even as we do toward you; to the end He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the corning of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.”

Triumphant answer to all who would have us believe that none will share the joy of our Lord’s coming save those who see this, that, and the other! “With all His saints,” spite of their ignorance and their errors, their wanderings and their stumblings, their shortcomings and their failures. Our blessed Saviour, the everlasting lover of our souls, will not shut any of His out at that blissful moment.

Is all this matchless grace to make us careless? Nay, it is the abiding sense of it which alone can keep us alive to our holy responsibility to judge everything in us and in our ways which is contrary to the mind of Christ. And not only so, but the hope of our Lord’s return, if it be kept bright and fresh in the heart, must purify, sanctify, and elevate our entire character and course, as nothing else can.

“Every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even as He is pure.”

It is morally impossible for any one to live in the hope of seeing his Lord at any moment, and yet have his heart set upon worldly things, upon money-making, self-indulgence, pleasure, vanity, folly. Let us not deceive ourselves. If we are daily looking for the Son of God from heaven, we must sit loose to the things of time and sense.

We may hold the doctrine of the Lord’s coming as a mere dogma in the intellect; we may have the entire range of prophetic truth mapped out before our mind’s eye, without its producing the smallest effect upon the heart, the character, or the practical life. But it is another thing altogether to have the whole moral being, the entire practical career, governed by the bright and blessed hope of seeing the one who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in His own most precious blood.

Have we lost the freshness and power of our true and proper hope? The truth of the Lord’s coming has become so familiar as a mere doctrine, that we can flippantly speak of it, and discuss various points in connection with it, and argue with people about it, and, all the while, our ways, our deportment, our spirit and temper give the lie to what we profess to hold.

May the Lord look upon us, and graciously heal, restore, and lift up our souls. May He revive in the hearts of all His beloved people the proper Christian hope of seeing Him, the Bright and Morning Star. May the utterance of the whole life, be,

“Even so come, Lord Jesus!”

(Concluded)

Thy Words Give Light

Satan spreads special snares for the young, and to youth, the attractions of the world are especially attractive. When people grow older they learn much of the vanity and vexation of spirit which is in the world, but generally speaking, the young see only the gilded side of life. They think that the world will prove to be much happier and brighter than is really the case.

Now, dear young Christian readers, in these words,

“The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding to the simple,” (Psa. 119:130), you have a golden text.

With the Word of God for your guide, you will be saved from the wiles of Satan and the delusions of the world. It is only as heeding the Word of God that you can receive divine wisdom for daily life, and thus be saved from the sorrow of lamenting over having spent hours and days in a wrong path.

May your hearts be subject to the Word of God, and so shall the light of His truth guide your steps.

Christ and His Yoke

Matthew 11:28-30

Part 2

It seems strange that, while the inspired Apostle distinctly tells us that Christ is “made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” we, nevertheless, should attach the idea of personal effort to one out of the four things which he enumerates. Can we guide ourselves in the ten thousand difficulties and details of our Christian course by our own wisdom or sagacity? Surely not. Ought we to make an effort? By no means. Why not? Because God has made Christ to be our “wisdom,” and therefore it is our precious privilege, having been brought to our “wits’ end,” to look to Christ for wisdom. In other words, when Christ says, “Come unto Me,” He means that we are to come unto Him for wisdom as well as for all else; and, clearly, we cannot come to Christ, and to our own efforts, at the same time. Nay, so long as we are making efforts, we must be strangers to “rest.”

The same holds good with respect to “righteousness.” Can we work out a righteousness for ourselves? Surely not. Ought we not to make an effort? By no means. Why not? Because God has made Christ to be unto us “righteousness,” and that righteousness is “to him that worketh not.” (Rom. 4:5).

So also in the matter of “redemption,” which is put last in 1 Corinthians 1:30, because it includes the final deliverance of the body of the believer from under the power of death. Could we, by personal effort, deliver our bodies from the dominion of mortality? Surely not. Ought we not to try? The thought were monstrous, impious. Why? Because God has made Christ to be unto us “redemption,” as regards both soul and body, and He who has already applied, by the power of His Spirit, that glorious redemption to our souls, will, ere long, apply it to our bodies.

Why, then, let me ask, should “sanctification” be singled out from the precious category, and saddled with the legal and depressing idea of personal effort? If we cannot, by our own efforts, get “wisdom, righteousness, and redemption,” are we a whit more likely to succeed in getting “sanctification?” Clearly not. And have we not proved this, times without number? Have not our closet walls witnessed our tears and groans evoked by the painful sense of failure after failure in our own efforts to tread with steady step and erect carriage, the lofty walks of personal sanctity? Will the reader deny this? I trust not. I would fain hope he has responded to the call of Jesus, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

It is vain to “labor” in our own strength, after sanctification. We must come to Jesus for that as well as for everything else. And, having come to Jesus, we shall find that there is no lust which He cannot slay, no temper that He cannot subdue, no passion that He cannot overcome. The self-same hand that has canceled our sins, that guides us in our difficulties, and which will, by and by, deliver our bodies from the power of death, can give us complete victory over all our personal infirmities and besetments, and fill our heart with His sacred rest.

It is, I believe, immensely important to have a clear understanding of the question of sanctification. Hundreds have gone on “laboring and heavy laden” for years, endeavoring to work out in one way or another, their sanctification; and, not having succeeded to their satisfaction—for who ever did, or ever could? they have been tempted to question if they were ever converted at all. Many, were they to tell out “all the truth,” could adopt as their own, the mournful lines of the poet,

“ ‘Tis a point I long to know,

Oft it causeth anxious thought,

Do I love the Lord or no?

Am I His or am I not?”

Some persons have clear views of gospel truth. They could, with scriptural accuracy, tell an inquirer after righteousness how, where, and when he could get it. And yet, if that self-same inquirer were to ask them about their own real state of heart before God, they could give but a sorry answer. Why is this? Simply because they have not laid hold of Christ as their sanctification, as well as their righteousness. They have been endeavoring partly in their own strength, and partly by praying for the influences of the Holy Spirit. to stumble along the path of sanctification.

They would, doubtless, deem a person very ignorant of what is called “the plan of salvation,” if they found him “going about to establish his own righteousness;” but they do not see that they themselves exhibit, in another way, ignorance of that “plan” by going about to establish their own sanctification.

And truly if, in the one case, it is a sorry righteousness which is wrought out, so, in the other case, it is a lame sanctification. For if it be true that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags,” it is equally true that all our sanctifications are as filthy rags. Whatever has the word “our” attached to it must be altogether imperfect.

Christ is God’s righteousness, and Christ is God’s sanctification. Both the one and the other are to be had by simply coming, looking, clinging, trusting to Christ. I need hardly say, it is by the power of the Spirit, and through the Holy Scriptures that Christ is applied to us, both as our righteousness and our sanctification. But all this only takes the matter more and more out of our hands, and leaves us nothing to glory in.

If we could conquer an evil temper, we might indeed think ourselves clever; but as we are not asked to pick up a feather in order to add to our righteousness, or our wisdom, or our redemption, so neither are we asked to pick up a feather in order to add to our sanctification. In this, as in those, Christ is all, self, nothing. This doctrine is easily stated; but O, the experience!

Will any one say that we are doing away with sanctification? If so, he may as well say that we are doing away with “righteousness,” “wisdom” or “redemption.” Who will contend for self-righteousness, self-wisdom or self-redemption? Who, but the man that contends for self-sanctification? Who is likely to attain and exhibit the more elevated standard of personal sanctity? Is it the man who is perpetually floundering amid his own imperfect struggles and cobweb-resolutions; or he who is daily, hourly, and momentarily clinging to Christ as his sanctification?

The answer is simple. The sanctification which we get in Christ is as perfect as the righteousness, the wisdom, and the redemption. Am I doing away with “wisdom,” because I say I am foolish? Am I doing away with “righteousness,” because I say, I am guilty? Am I doing away with “redemption,” because I say, I am mortal? Am I doing away with “sanctification,” because I say, I am vile? Yes, I am doing away with all these things so far as “I” am concerned, in order that I may find them all in Christ. This is the point. All-all in Christ!

O! when shall we learn to get to the end of self, and cling simply to Christ? When shall we enter into the depth and power of those words: “Come unto Me?” He does not say, “Come unto My yoke.” No; but “Come unto Me.” We must cease from our own works, in every shape and form, and come to Christ, -come, just as we are-come, now. We come to Christ and get rest from and in Him before ever we hear a word about the “yoke.” To put the yoke first is to displace everything. If a “heavy laden” sinner thinks of the yoke, he must be overwhelmed by the thought of his own total inability to take it upon him or carry it. But when he comes to Jesus and enters into His precious rest, he finds the “yoke is easy and the burden light.”

(To be continued)

Just As I Am

Mary M. was a young woman of eighteen, the eldest daughter in a well-to-do family in the town. There was the widowed grandmother, a genuine Christian, on her way to heaven. Then there were the two daughters and a niece, all professors of religion; but not real believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The evening gospel meeting had just finished, and some anxious ones had been spoken to, when Miss M. came up to me, and said she wished very much I would call and see her the following day, as she wished to speak to me further about what she had heard that night. The following afternoon I called and found her waiting for me. She immediately opened the subject by saying,

“I have been thinking a great deal on these things for some time. A friend of mine presented me with a book, in which the gospel is very simply and clearly put, and it opened my eyes to see things in a new light altogether. I used to think if I said my prayers night and morning, and went to church on Sunday, it would be all right at last; but now I see that I am a lost and ruined sinner, guilty before God, and that I must be saved through Jesus. My difficulty is chiefly this, that I do not feel as anxious about my soul as I ought. I do not feel the burden of my sins as heavily as some have told me they did; but I earnestly hope the Lord will make me more anxious soon, and save me.”

“I am glad to hear you say that you have been awakened Miss M., to see that your church-going and prayer-saying will never take you to heaven; for I have no doubt that many religious people sincerely believe that if they do these things, they will get to heaven, and they only awake out of their delusive sleep when it is too late I am glad you see that salvation is in Christ alone; but I think you are not any better off than before, when you think you have to make yourself ready to receive salvation by efforts of your own. You are just as helpless as ever, for you can no more make yourself feel the burden of your sins, than you can take them away. Salvation is entirely of the Lord.

Let me illustrate it thus: Suppose a certain rich man should provide a free supper for all the ragged children in this town. Supper being on the table, the servants are sent out to bring the children in. Of course, they are all glad to hear about the free supper, and their teeth are set on edge to get it; but they have an idea in their minds that every one who goes to the supper ought to be dressed in white. When they look at their muddy feet and tattered clothes, they shake their heads and say to themselves, ‘We cannot go to supper like this we must be better dressed first;’ and that being out of their power, the thing is settled there is no supper for them. Now, there can be no question about white clothes being a suitable outfit for supper, but he who provided the supper knew that in their case they could not procure them, and he therefore imposed no such condition. The invitation was to ragged children, and they were expected to come just as they were.

The supper was for ragged children.

The gospel is for lost sinners.

The beauty of the gospel of God’s grace is that it meets the sinner just as he is.

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” (1 Tim. 1:15). “Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom. 5:6). “This Man receiveth sinners.” (Luke 15:2).

You are lost, whether you know it or not. Sin is on you, whether you feel it or not; and God asks no further preparation from you than this, that you own yourself, a sinner, and accept Christ as your Saviour.”

Well, I see now that He is willing to save me just as I am.”

“Yes, that is it. He says, ‘Whosoever believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins.’ (Acts 10:43). Are you one of the ‘whosoevers’? Are you willing, then, to receive God’s salvation on His own terms? Will you accept it as a free gift, just as you are? You cannot make yourself more welcome to it than you already are: you cannot make God more willing to save you than He already is.”

“How beautifully simple! I wonder why I did not see it before. I am a lost sinner; God says it. Jesus died for sinners-therefore Jesus died for me. I see it all. He will take me as I am.”

Dear reader, God loves you as you are. He has provided salvation for sinners therefore for you; and He invites you, with all His heart, to accept of it now, in the very condition which you are at this moment.

The Enemy Outwitted

There lived in a certain village an aged disciple, in what men would call very poor circumstances. She had, as we say, no visible source of supply; but she depended upon the living God to meet her daily need; and no one who does so can ever be said to be in poor circumstances.

Well, it so happened, on one occasion, that our poor old friend was called to meet a trial of her faith for God does try the faith which He implants in the soul, in order that the trial, being much more precious than gold that perisheth, may be found to praise and honor and glory. In this way and for this end, our aged pilgrim was tried, for she found herself, one morning, without a morsel of food, or a spark of fire. She was sitting in front of the empty grate, still waiting on her Father who was faithfully watching over her to meet her need, in His own marvelous way. Suddenly she was arrested by the strange sight of a loaf of bread let down by a cord through the chimney. She lifted up her heart in praise to the giver of all good, took the loaf and made a hearty breakfast. The same God who fed Elijah by means of the ravens, now fed His dear child by means no less strange.

In the course of the day a wicked boy, who in the habit of mocking and teasing the dear old saint, came into her cabin, and in a jeering tone said,

“Well, granny, has the Lord sent you anything today?”

“Yes,” said she, “bless His name! He sent me a loaf of bread, this morning, when I had not a morsel of food in the house.”

“Ha!” said the boy, with a diabolical laugh, “It was not the Lord, at all; it was I who let it down through the chimney.”

“Indeed,” said our poor old friend, “I do not care if it was the devil himself who did it, I know it was the Lord who sent the loaf to me.”

And she was right. The devil was outwitted, inasmuch as the very wicked boy whom he had sent to mock a saint of God in a moment of pressure, was used of God to meet her need. Our Lord Christ is at the very highest place of power, and He is head over all things to His church. Earth and hell, men and devils are all under His control, and He can use them for His own glory and His people’s good. All we have to do is to trust Him, and go right on. He can never fail a trusting heart never no, never.

Another dear child of God we once heard of who was reduced to great straits. She had no food in the house and no money to buy it. Someone called and told her there was a hamper directed to her at the railway office. She immediately went to inquire about it; but, to her dismay, she was told there was a shilling to pay on it. The poor thing left the office in deep distress. There was the supply, as it were, within arm’s length of her, but an insuperable barrier between her and it. The tears rolled down her pale cheeks and fell on the pavement. She cast her weeping eyes down and there, to her amazement she beheld half-a-sovereign lying at her feet. With thankful, worshiping heart she lifted the coin, returned to the office and paid for the hamper in which she found a full supply.

We record this for the purpose of encouraging the Lord’s dear people to trust Him, at all times, and under all circumstances.

“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for thy expectation is from Him.” (Psa. 62:5).

The Burden-Bearer

Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. (Psa. 55:22).

When we lean upon the strong One, we are able to stand, for He bears the burden for us. He shoulders our cares and responsibilities. He takes them upon Himself that we need not bear them. He lays upon us burdens that He knows we are not able to bear, so we will fall down at His feet in helplessness. This gives Him a chance to show to us and through us the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward. If we were able to bear our burdens He would receive no glory.

A Found One Becomes a Finder: John 1:45

There is a lovely, unshackled simplicity and naturalness in the way of the Spirit in John’s Gospel. The divine life is seen acting in the most marked independence of everything like human rules and regulations; and yet all is in the most striking and beautiful moral order. What, for instance, can be more simple or natural than the expression,

“Philip findeth Nathanael?”

There is nothing official, nothing mechanical, nothing of routine work here. But yet there is beauteous moral order. It is the energy of the implanted divine life, manifesting itself in its own genuine simplicity and native force. It is the living power of grace in the heart, expressing itself after its own peculiar fashion.

“Philip findeth Nathanel.” But, we must bear in mind, that, before Philip found Nathanael he had found Christ. He was able to say, in all assurance and confidence, “We have found Him.” He does not say, “We are seeking Him and hope to find Him; come and help us in the good work of searching.”

This may be all well enough. It is surely well for those who want to find, to go and seek. But Philip was beyond this. His earnest searching had issued in a joyous finding, as is always the case; and having found Christ, he goes and finds Nathanael.

As, in the last chapter of the book of Revelation, the soul, having heard from above the precious word “Come,” immediately turns to the scene around and repeats the “Come,” so it was with Philip. Having found Christ for himself, he goes in search of a fellow-sinner to bring him into the enjoyment of the same blessedness.

Now, it is well to see that there is nothing official in this. No doubt, office has its own place and its own value. But there is nothing of office in “Philip findeth Nathanael.” It is the power of life and not the functions of office. It is the outflow of the stream of grace from an overflowing heart, made happy by a newly discovered object. And why insist on this?

Simply to answer the pleadings of an indolent heart, which would take refuge behind the claims of official authority, while failing to manifest the energy of divine life. A man may say, “I have no gift, no call, no office.” Yes, but have you no life? You may not be called to stand before assembled thousands (often a very slippery place), but can you not find a Nathanael? Is there no one into whose ear you can drop those thrilling words, “I have found Him?” Is there no friend, neighbor, or relative, to whom you can say, “Come”?

You do not need to possess the gifts of a Paul, a Luther, a Whitefield, or a Chalmers, in order to say, “Come.” What you really want is a heart filled to overflowing with the joy of a newly found treasure. This is what we all want.

If there were more Philips to seek, there would be more Nathanaels found. If everyone would just do as Philip did, how blessedly would the work of evangelization go on! This is the way it should be; and this is the way it would be, if persons were able to say, with unclouded confidence, “We have found Him.”

It is the hesitancy as to this; it is the lack of holy confidence in the record of God; the absence of settled assurance as to the fullness and efficacy of the atonement, and its personal application, that produces such unwillingness and incapacity to testify of Christ to others. In a word, before ever Philip can find Nathanael, he must find Christ. The two findings go together. I must find my own way to the feet of the Saviour, before I can conduct my fellow-sinner thither. It is one thing to talk about religion, and another thing to be able to say, “I have found Christ.”

This latter is the secret of all successful evangelization. For a man to set about preaching Christ to others, before he has found Him for himself, is a most frightful delusion; yea, it is positive folly and wickedness. There is no one in such an awfully dangerous position as a Christless preacher, a Christless talker about religion.

Reader, allow me to make a direct, solemn, personal appeal to your heart and conscience. How is it with your precious soul at this moment? Can you say with Philip, “I have found Christ?” Are you happy in the Saviour’s love? Have you found pardon and peace in His atoning blood?

If you can answer in the affirmative, if you can say, “Yes, thank God!” then I ask, Are you searching for “Nathanael?” Are you doing what you can to spread the knowledge of Jesus?

Think, I pray you, of the beauteous moral order of Philip’s history. It contains, in its brief compass, a volume of precious instruction.

“The day following, Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow Me.... Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.... Come and see.” (John 1:43-46).

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Part 1

Not only did the Lord’s coming and kingdom occupy a prominent place in the preaching of Paul to the Thessalonians, it also shines brilliantly forth in all his teaching. Not only were they converted to this blessed hope; they were built up, established, and led on in it. They were taught to live in the brightness of it every hour of the day. It was not a dry, barren dogma, to be received and held as part of a powerless, worthless creed; it was a living reality, a mighty moral power in the soul a precious, purifying, sanctifying, elevating hope, detaching the heart completely from present things, and causing it to look out, moment by moment, for the return of our beloved Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who loves us, and gave Himself for us.

It is interesting to notice that, in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, there is far more allusion to the Lord’s coming than in all the other epistles put together. This is all the more remarkable, inasmuch as they were the very earliest of Paul’s epistles, and they were written to an assembly very young in the faith. The hope of the Lord’s return is introduced in every one of the eight chapters, and in connection with all sorts of subjects.

For example, in chapter 1 it is presented as the grand object to be ever kept before the Christian’s heart, let his position or his relationship be what it may-the brilliant light shining at the end of his long pilgrimage through this dark and toilsome world.

“Ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for”-what?

The time of their death? No such thing, no allusion to such a thing. Death for the believer, is abolished, and is never presented as the object of his hope. For what, then, were the Thessalonian disciples taught to wait? “For God’s Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead.”

And then mark the beauteous addition! “Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.” This is the person for whom we are waiting; our precious Savior; our great Deliverer; the one who undertook our desperate case, who took, on our behalf, the cup of wrath, from the hand of infinite Justice, and exhausted it forever; who cleared the prospect of every cloud, so that we can gaze upward into heaven, and onward into eternity, and see nothing but the brightness and blessedness of His own love and glory, as our happy home throughout the everlasting ages.

O, beloved Christian reader, how blessed to be looking out, morning, noon, eventide, and midnight, for the coming of our gracious Deliverer! What a holy reality to be ever waiting for the return of our own loving and beloved Saviour and Lord! How separating and elevating, as we rise each morning to start on our daily course of duty—whatever that duty may be, whether the scrubbing of a floor, or the evangelizing of a continent—to cherish the bright and blessed hope that, ere the shades of evening gather round us, we may be summoned to ascend in the folds of the cloud of glory to meet our coming Lord!

Is this the mere dream of a wild fanatic or a visionary enthusiast? Nay, it is an imperishable truth, resting on the very same foundation that sustains the entire fabric of our most glorious Christianity.

It is not more true that our Lord Jesus Christ lay as a babe in the manger at Bethlehem; that He grew up to man’s estate; that He went about doing good; that He was nailed to the cross and laid in the tomb; that He is now seated on the throne of the majesty in the heavens, than that He will come again to receive His people to Himself. He may come at any moment.

The only thing that detains Him is His long-suffering, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” For nineteen long centuries He has waited, in lingering love, mercy, and compassion: and during all that time, salvation has been ready to be revealed, and God has been ready to judge; but He has waited, and He still waits, in long-suffering grace and patience.

(To be continued)

Treasures in Heaven

A rich man once gave $18,000 to some work connected with Christian charity. Several years afterward he lost all his money through misfortune in business ventures. One day an acquaintance met him and asked:

“Do you not regret having at that time given such a large sum? Now, you would be able to use it well.”

“No, my friend,” was his answer, “I do not regret it; that money is all that I consider gained. It is safe in God’s faithful hands whereas those other hands to whom I entrusted my money have proved unfaithful, or at least, unreliable. Had I not at that time given the amount to that work of faith and love, it would have been lost with the rest. Thus I rejoice in having invested that money so well. I am but the Lord’s steward, and He it was who led me to give it.”

How different is the judgment of faith from that of unbelief! How well does the former, not to trust in what is visible, but, have confidence in the living God who richly rewards those who trust Him and are His stewards.

“Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:33-34).

Some Better Thing

The church is a body, called out during the time the Lord Jesus is rejected upon earth; we belong to a rejected Christ, our lot is cast in with God’s Son, whom the world has cast out. This characterizes the “better things” referred to by the Apostle when, speaking of the Old Testament saints, he says,....

“God having provided some better thing for us.” (Heb. 11:40).

The special company to which Christians belong is the better thing. There will be the display of the church in eternity.

“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:7).

“Whatever place Christ has in heaven or on earth, the church has and will have with Him; if He is rejected, as now, she has the place of rejection, too; when He shall reign, she shall reign also. A wonderful thing is the better thing as to our standing and state in the glory, but all we can say to it is, that it is of God’s sovereign grace!

Now, in order to the existence of the Body of Christ, according to God’s ways, Christ as Messiah must first have been rejected by His people the Jews, be received up into heaven, and the Holy Spirit be sent down to form the Body; nor would it have been possible, save only in the counsels of God (Eph. 1:4), for the Body to have existed before Christ as the Messiah was rejected.

In the epistles you have clear statements of what the Body is and how it is organized. The Body of Christ is declared to be one.

“For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” (Eph. 5:30).

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.” (1 Cor. 12:12).

“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Rom. 12:5).

“But the members should have the same care one for another.” (1 Cor. 12:25).

“We are members one of another.” (Eph. 4:25).

“And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” (1 Cor. 12:21).

It is not sufficient for you to be interested in Christ alone, to the exclusion of the church. He is the Head of His Body, and you cannot separate the head from the body; it would be death. God is interested in the Body of Christ and the Scriptures tell you what the Body of Christ is and how it is governed. In the present age there is the Body upon this earth, forming for the Lord’s glory to be His companion in the glory; and this One Body is the church of God, that even as the first Adam had his Eve, so the last Adam has His.

“This is the great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church:” (Eph. 5:32), “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” (Rev. 21:9).

In the Epistle to the Ephesians the Apostle is instructing the Ephesians that they belong to a new family, a family they had never heard of before, a family whose design had been “hid in God.” God had created all things; but here He tells them something which for manifest reasons, had been “hid”. The Spirit of God in this epistle, as also in other epistles, brings out the wonderful calling of the church, the wonders of God’s resources; “the manifold wisdom of God.” It is, therefore, now no longer a mystery, and Christians should not be ignorant of the special place and blessing with which God had blessed them.

These, then, are the Christians guides; not the Glory in the cloud, or in the Tabernacle or in the Temple, as was presented to God’s people in the last age; but the Saviour in the glory, and the written Word, and the Holy Spirit down here. The real point of the Christian’s position, is that he professes to see the truth of the church of God, that God is visiting the Jews and Gentiles, and gathering out a people to His Name that God is preparing a Bride for His Son. The Bride, the One Body, characterizes the present age, nor is there any excuse of the Christian not to own this truth.

What Are You About?

“I sat under His shadow with great delight.” (Sol. 1:3).

One stormy day in the depths of winter a Christian was visiting an old man, who lived in poverty in a lonely cottage. He found him sitting with the Bible open upon his knees, but in outward circumstances, of great discomfort – the snow drifting through the roof, and under the door, and scarcely any fire on the hearth.

“What are you about today, John?” was the question on entering.

“Ah, sir,” said the happy saint, “I am sitting under His shadow with great delight.”

Prayer

Oft do we need to be in prayer

For there are troubles everywhere.

The enemy is on our track,

But prayer will always drive him back.

Prayer makes the Christian warrior strong,

Though fierce the battle is and long.

Prayer strengthens us by night and day,

And keeps us in the narrow way.

Prayer makes us strong to do God’s will,

And joyfully His Word fulfill.

Whate’er the difficulty here,

Prayer make us face it without fear.

No snare can take our weary feet

If oft before the mercy seat.

Though Satan hurls His fiery dart,

Prayer will sustain the fainting heart.

Though in a scene where snares abound,

Prayer holds the saint on solid ground.

Prayer brings God’s answer from on high,

And makes us feel that He is nigh.

When answers come from God above,

We learn still more to trust His love

A love that never can be cold,

Can ne’er decrease, and ne’er grow old.

Then let us oft before His throne

Make all our wants and wishes known,

For we, ere long, are sure to see

Prayer answered for eternity.

I Am the Lord's

What comfort may be found in these words! The Lord Jesus has redeemed us with His own precious blood; and having set such a value upon us, and bought us for HIMSELF, He will assuredly keep us till He has us at Home with Himself. None shall pluck us out of His hand. Our life is safe beyond all contingencies, for it “is hid with Christ in God.” “Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” (Rom. 14:8).

Tossed about as we may be with ever changing circumstances, still, to be entitled to say, “I AM THE LORD’S,” may well keep our souls in abiding peace. It is heaven begun below.

Come what will – painfulness or weariness, poverty or persecution, bonds or imprisonments, fire or flood, still will the sweet words, “I am the Lord’s,” enable us to say, “none of these things move me.”

What strength it will impart, if these words, “I am the Lord’s,” become an abiding thought, running perpetually through our hearts! It will detach us from an evil world. It will keep us calm and patient amidst all its restlessness and strivings, its tumultuous commotions and disturbances. It will raise us above its empty pleasures, and protect us from its dangerous devices. We shall then be anxious about nothing, careful only to please our Father, for whatever troubles may threaten or assail, we can come with confidence, making our requests known to God, and His own PEACE, according to His own Word, “shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Death itself is not death to the believer; it is the entrance into life, unhindered by any of its clogs that press us down here in this lower world. Not only will peace be our portion, but JOY will ever be bubbling up, knowing that “He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry,” and then we shall be “forever with the Lord.”

Correspondence: Peace; Cutting Hair; Spirit vs. Inclinations; Heb. 9:28

Question: Please tell me how I can have peace.

Answer: What you want, dear friend, is to look off, entirely from yourself your feelings, your exercises, your repentance, yea, and your faith in a word, from all that has to do with yourself, and rest in a divine work a work finished on the cross and accepted on the throne. God is satisfied with Christ. Are you? Do you want something more than Christ? Do you want to throw into the scale something of your own to make Christ of full weight? This is the question. The true secret of rest and peace is to be satisfied with Christ. As long as you are occupied with yourself, you will be unhappy.

“And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” (Col. 1:20).

Question: Should Christian parents cut their girls’ hair? Answer “Yes” or “No”, and give Scripture.

Answer: Your question cannot be answered by “Yes” or “No,” as there are qualifying circumstances. You no doubt have in mind the verses in 1 Corinthians 11:6-15, For a woman subject to the Word, these verses ought to be sufficient to deter her from cutting her hair. But as to children, the parent would be in individual exercise before the Lord as to how far the principal in the above Scriptures would apply. Some might feel clear before the Lord to keep their girls’ hair cut shorter until such time as they approach young womanhood. Others with like exercise might not feel clear to do so.

“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

“Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.” (Rom. 14:5-19).

Question: How may I know whether I am following the leading of the Holy Spirit, or simply following my own inclinations?

Answer: It is greatly to be feared that very many mistake their own inclinations for the moving of the Spirit of God a terrible mistake! It needs much brokenness, self-emptiness, and singleness of eye to discern and follow the precious leadings of the Holy Spirit. As a general rule, we should say that where the glory of Christ is the exclusive object of any act to which we feel led, we may conclude that it is the Spirit that moves us. The Lord is so gracious that we can fully count upon Him to guide, and keep, and use us, where the heart is simple.

Question: Does “to bear the sin of many” in Hebrews 9:28 refer to the world, or to believers only?

Answer: The expression in Hebrews 9:28 does not at all apply to the world; but only to believers. It is never said in Scripture that Christ bore the sins of the world “He put away sin.” “The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29). “He is the propitiation for the whole world.” (1 John 2:2). But the moment you speak of sins, it becomes a question of persons, and then we have to do with the counsels of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, producing repentance and faith. If Christ bore the sins of the whole world, then the whole world must be saved apart from all question of repentance and faith. In a word, this would involve the heresy of universal redemption.

We must carefully distinguish between universal purchase and universal redemption. The former is a most weighty truth; the latter is a fatal heresy. Christ has bought the whole world, and every man, woman, and child therein. Hence the Apostle Peter speaks of false teachers, “bringing damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.” He does not say, “that redeemed them.” But this is a wide and a weighty subject, and cannot be gone into here. Chapter 16 of “Notes on Leviticus” by C. H. M. may help you.

Leaving Us an Example

1 Peter 2:21

O! how sweet to trace the footsteps

Of the blessed Saviour God,

As in holiness and patience

He the thorny life-path trod.

How we love to think of Jesus

Seated on the mountain brow,

Walking by the quiet seashore

Just the same as we do now!

Dwelling in the crowded city,

‘Mid the bustle and the strife,

Blessing all who come in contact

With His holy, helpful life.

O! that we who love the Saviour,

Little children, though we be,

Might more perfectly obey Him

As He bids us “Follow Me!”

Our Lord Jesus had this witness

That He welcomed sinful men;

He would have us lead the lost ones

Back to God, as He did then.

From His lips there dropped the precious

Words of wisdom, truth, and grace;

And His hands were filled with blessing,

For this weary, human race.

Lovingly He touched the mourners,

“Weep not,” tenderly He said;

Thus it is for us to comfort

Those who sorrow o’er their dead.

Like to Him, we mingle daily,

With the sinful, and the sad;

All around us, as around Him,

Move the tearful and the glad.

He has left us an example,

O! that we might follow true,

So that He may find us always

Doing what He’d have us do.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

A Splendid Triumph

John 20:1-17

The disciples at the sepulcher see the trophies of a recent victory obtained there, and yet a victory gained in all beautiful divine simplicity and power. There was no confusion, no symptom that a struggle had been sustained, but every witness that a victory had been won. The sepulcher was empty, and the clothes that had bound the dead body lay there, not in disorder, but wrapped together in their due place, the clothes that had been about the head distinguished above the rest.

Death had been conquered and the grave spoiled, but by one who had a glorious victory; for He had already destroyed him that had the power of death at Calvary,

“By death destroyed him that had the power of death,” (Heb. 2) and the rifling of the grave was perfect and glorious, but it was accomplished as without a struggle.

The angels are there, but they are there in full intelligence of all that had happened. They sit at the place where the body had lain, in worshiping admiration of what Jesus had accomplished. Mary is there, but she is there ignorant of it all, but in deep personal affection to Christ. She knows not of His victory and resurrection, but she feels that He is – dearer to her than the whole creation of God.

Such ones meet, and meet as the best of friends; angels and Mary, the bright intelligences of heaven, and the loving heart of an accepted sinner of the earth. Jesus is their common object, and that is enough, though in point of attainment they are so distant from each other; the angels so full of light, Mary too much in ignorance.

But, favored woman as she was, she is soon called to change her company, and even to improve it, though it was so good. She leaves the angels for the Lord of angels, and on His glorious lips hears her own name in well-known accents; for there is nothing too high, nothing too intimate for that heart that loves Jesus as hers did. Her former companions had kindly soothed her grief. But her Lord cheers her spirit and conducts her to know Him in higher, purer, and more loving scenes than even her heart had ever conceived. He lets her know that He was on His way to heaven, there to be with the God and Father of Christ and the saints, of Jesus and His brethren.

What victory, what spoil; of victory, and what prints of victory are here! Death and hell are conquered and made a show of, the very bonds which signified their power made a show of in the place of the warfare; and then, those who had loved Him that had gone down to the battle, are made to share more splendid, glorious fruit of His toil than their fondest hearts had ever even desired.

With believing minds may we trace this victory of the Son of God, and with happy hearts gather up and feed on the fruit of it!

Christ and His Yoke: Part 3

Matthew 11:28-30

Part 3.

This conducts us to the second point in our subject, namely, “the yoke.” It has been already observed that we must keep the two things distinct. To confound them, is to tarnish the heavenly luster of the grace of Christ, and to put a yoke upon the sinner’s neck, and a burden upon his shoulder which he, as being “without strength,” is wholly unable to hear. But, then, they are morally connected. All who come to Christ, must take His yoke upon them and learn of Him, if they would “find rest unto their souls.” To come to Christ is one thing; to walk with Him, or learn of Him, is quite another.

Christ was “meek and lowly in heart.” He could meet the most adverse and discouraging circumstances with an “even so, Father.” The Baptist’s heart might fail amid the heavy clouds which gathered around him in Herod’s dungeon; the men of that generation might refuse the double testimony of righteousness and grace, as furnished by the ministry of John and of our Lord Himself; Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum might refuse the testimony of His mighty works – a torrent of evidence which one might suppose would sweep away with every opposing barrier; all these things, and many more might cross the path of the divine workman; but, being “meek and lowly in heart,” He could say, “I thank Thee, O Father, even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” His “rest” in the Father’s counsels was profound and perfect; and He invites us to take His yoke, to learn of Him, to drink into His spirit, to know the practical results of a subject mind, that so we may “find rest unto our souls.”

A broken will is the real ground of the rest which we are to “find,” after we have come to Christ. If God wills one thing, and we will another, we cannot find rest in that. It matters not what the scene or circumstances may be. We may swell a list of things, to any imaginable extent, in which our will may run counter to the will of God; but, in whatever it is, we cannot find rest so long as our will is unbroken. We must get to the end of self in the matter of will, as well as in the matter of “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, or redemption,” else we shall not “find rest.”

This, beloved reader, is deep, real, earnest, personal work. Moreover, it is a daily thing. It is a continual taking of Christ’s yoke upon us, and learning of Him. It is not that we take the yoke in order to come to Christ. No; but we come to Christ first, and then, when His love fills and satisfies our souls, when His rest refreshes our spirits, when we can gaze, by faith, upon His gracious countenance, and see Him stooping down to confer upon us the high and holy privilege of wearing His yoke, and learning His lesson, we find that His yoke is indeed easy, and His burden light. Unsubdued, unjudged, unmortified nature could never wear that yoke or bear that burden.

The first thing is, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” The second thing is, “Take My yoke upon you, and ye shall find rest.”

We must never reverse these things, never confound them, never displace them, never separate them. To call upon a sinner to take Christ’s yoke before he has Christ’s rest, is to place Christ on the top of Mount Sinai, the sinner at the foot of the Mount, and a dark impenetrable cloud between. This must not be done. Christ stands, in all His matchless grace, before the sinner’s eye, and pours forth His touching invitation, “Come,” and adds His heart-assuring promise, “I will give.” There is no condition, no demand, “no servile work.” All is the purest, freest, richest grace. Just “come, and I will give you rest. And what then? Is it bondage, doubt and fear? Ah! no.

“Take My yoke upon you.” How marvelously near this brings us to the one who has already given us rest! What a high honor to wear the same yoke with Him! It is not that He puts a grievous yoke upon our neck, and a heavy burden upon our shoulder, which we have to carry up the rugged sides of you fiery Mount. This is not Christ’s way. It is not thus He deals with the weary and heavy laden that come unto Him. He gives them rest. He gives them part of His yoke, and a share of His burden. In other words, He calls them into fellowship with Himself, and in proportion as they enter into this fellowship, they find still deeper and deeper rest in Him and in His blessed ways; and, at the close, He will conduct them into that eternal rest which remains for the people of God.

May the Lord enable us to enter, more fully, into the power of all these divine realities, that so His joy may remain in us, and our joy may be full. There is an urgent need of a full unreserved surrender of the heart to Christ, and a full, unreserved acceptance of Him, in all His precious adaptation to our every need. He wants the whole heart, the single eye, the mortified mind, the broken will. Where these exist, there will be little complaining of doubts and fears, ups and downs, heavy days, vacant hours, restless moments, dullness and stupor, wandering and barrenness.

When one has come to the end of himself, as regards wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and all beside, and when he has really found Christ as God’s provision for ALL, then, but not until then, he will know the depth and power of that word, “REST”.

O Lord, the way, the truth, the life.

Henceforth let sorrow, doubt, and strife

Drop off like autumn leaves.

Henceforth, as privileged by Thee,

Simple and undistracted be

Our souls which to Thee cleave.

Let us our feebleness recline

On that eternal love of Thine.

And human thoughts forget;

Childlike attend what Thou wilt say,

Go forth and serve Thee while ‘tis day,

Nor leave our sweet retreat.

(Concluded)

Jesus Died for Me

G. W. was the only son of devoted parents and happy in all with which they had surrounded him. Nothing had been forgotten which could minister to his satisfaction and happiness.

His moral character was blameless, but of what use was that before God when the infallible Word declares that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” (Isa. 64:6). They cannot save the soul, nor procure a righteousness which can stand before Him.

The heart is a fountain of iniquity, and it is a terrible thing but none the less true, that as a sponge absorbs water, so the heart is open to every kind of wickedness and takes it in. It is a sink of sin, (Matt. 15:19), and we cannot be too deeply impressed with this serious and all-important truth.

But, blessed be the name of the Saviour! on the cross He has made propitiation for sins, and all who believe on Him whoever they may be are justified from all things (Rom. 4:5; Acts 13:39). They are righteous before God, saved, and made whiter than snow by the blood of the Lamb, slain, but now alive again for evermore – and this is a truth not less important than the former. For a lost sinner there is a Saviour and perfect salvation.

Having before him the most brilliant prospects, G. W. thought he saw long years of peace and happiness. Not a thought of an approaching end ever entered his mind, young and full of health and strength as he was. Alas! he had altogether left God out of his thoughts in his calculations, and besides had not considered the frailty of life (See James 4:14). He had not learned that all his bright earthly hopes were like a soap bubble to burst in a moment, then the brightness disappears.

Influenza which has carried off so many victims in every clime, attacked him, spite of his strong constitution, and resisted every treatment. At length his lungs were attacked and consumption made rapid progress. His health destroyed, without hope of recovery, poor G. W. was profoundly unhappy. Poor young man! the past could bring nothing but regret, and as to the future, he had not a ray of hope.

But there was One who loved G., One who sought him with love, and desired to fill his broken heart with divine peace and joy. It was He who came from heaven to earth to be “a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).

He it was who was sent to bind up the broken hearted (Isa. 61:1). It was Jesus, and who loves like Him?

Seated in a large chair, feeble and discouraged, his face buried in his hands, and groaning sorrowfully he received me with these words:

“O, how tired I am! if I could only rest! but I am unable to do so.”

It was not only rest for his poor body that he needed – he sighed for rest for his soul, for, for the first time in his life G. was profoundly impressed with the fact that he had “sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Jesus had thought of such souls when on the cross He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). By His sufferings and death the work of salvation was accomplished for every believer, who then finds in Him eternal life, peace righteousness, and glory, and it is to troubled souls under the burden of their sins, that the Savior addresses these words:

“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

“Are you saved? Have you peace with God?” I asked my young friend.

“No,” he replied, “I am not saved, I am lost?”

I read to him first from the third chapter of Romans, the passages which show man lost, and guilty before God, and powerless to save himself.

“I know,” said he, “that I am a guilty sinner.”

I then repeated from the gospel of John, John 3:14-16, and left him for the night. On leaving I asked God that He might deepen the conviction in his soul, and that he might be led to Christ just as he was, with his load of sin, to find in the Saviour’s presence the blood that cleanses from all sin.

God blessed the word, and granted my request.

When I revisited him, I found him calm and collected.

“Are your sins forgiven G.?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied he, without hesitation. “I am saved.”

But your sins, what have you done with them? God says, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that doeth good, no, not one’” (Rom. 3:10-12), and that all have sinned; are you not one of these?”

“Yes,” said he; “but Jesus died for me.”

“What passage in the word of God tells you that?” I asked.

He replied by the precious words which proceeded from the mouth of the Lord Himself:

“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). “I believe,” said he, that “Jesus died for me, and that unworthy as I am, His blood has cleansed me from all sin.”

“Blessed be God! my dear G.” I said, “He who died for you and for me to take away our sins, has been raised up by the power of God and is now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high: what peace for our souls to know that our Savior is upon the throne of God.”

Faith in the crucified Saviour, raised, and glorified, had banished all fear from G. W. and had filled his heart with that peace which passes knowledge.

Do you believe, dear reader, that Jesus died for you? Are you rejoicing in this peace? G. knew now that the precious blood of Christ had forever blotted out his sins, and had placed him without spot before God. He had by faith accepted the words of the Lord,

“Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Have you done this?

May this simple history encourage you to come like G. W. to the Saviour who loves you and has given Himself for you. There you will find a peace and happiness that the world cannot give. But do not delay, for who can be certain of a single hour of life?

All Things Are Ours

Every possible glory indeed is ours. The blessedness that is in God Himself, as far as it can be communicated, for we dwell in God and God in us. Relative blessedness, for we are children. Associated blessedness, in union with the blessed one, for we are the bride. Official nearness and glory, for we are kings and priests. Human blessedness, for we shall be perfect men after the image of the second Adam. Corporate blessedness, for we shall have joy together. Individual, for we shall have a name given which no one knows but he that receives it; and we shall have the fullness of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us unhindered by these poor bodies; yea, clothed upon by a vessel suited to the power of the divine inhabitant, so as to be able in full largeness of heart to enjoy all this.

Jesus Died for Me

Nothing, Lord, I bring before Thee,

Nothing that can meet Thy face;

But in Jesus I adore Thee,

For the riches of Thy grace,

Jesus came in love from heaven

By the Father’s love was given,

From that death He now has risen,

Which He died for me.

Love's Response

“This do in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19).

The love of Christ constraineth us.” (2 Cor. 5:14).

“We will be glad and rejoice in Thee, we will remember Thy love more than wine.” (Sol. 1:4).

“He brought me to the banqueting house and His banner over me was love.” (Sol. 2:4).

Christian, dost thou love another

Is there one of whom thou’rt fond?

What could give the greater joy then,

Than to have that one respond?

Christian, Jesus loves thee dearly,

With a love that feared no cost,

And He came from Heaven’s glory

To redeem thy soul once lost.

Thy salvation He accomplished;

It is finished – judgment past.

Mighty work of love’s own planning,

Through eternity shall last.

Wondrous love that sought and found us

Lost, undone, with stubborn will!

Love that blots out all transgressions

Seeks with joy our hearts to fill.

Jesus asked to be remembered.

‘Tis a small thing on our part

To comply with His petition,

But it cheers His loving heart.

Broken bread tells out the story

Of His death on Calv’ry’s tree

How the Son of God from glory

“Loved and gave Himself for me.”

And the cup speaks peace forever

Through the merits of His blood

Freely shed for sins’ remission,

Reconciling us to God.

He desires to be remembered.

Should such love unanswered be

When the Lord of earth and heaven

Said “This do, remember Me?”

Gladly should we seek to please Him,

To respond to His request,

Render to Him praise and worship

At His table, be His guest.

Our Service

“No service by itself is small

Or great, though earth it fill;

But that is small that seeks its own,

And great – that seeks God’s will,”

Dear reader, have we brought our life-service whatever it be to this test? I take it for granted we are all engaged in some service for our beloved Lord. But is He our object in it? Is it to us as it was to Him, our great delight to seek to do God’s will? O; how happy that service when the servant can truly say,

“It was begun, and is carried on in much prayer, and my only desire in it is to do God’s will.” Happier still if he can add, “And I fully believe it is the work He would have me to do, and that He Himself has given me.”

What can a servant wish for more than to do the will of a Master whose loving-kindness is to him better than life. And O! dear reader, if Christ is not this to us, what is He? Yes, let us ask ourselves continually the question,

“What is Christ to me? Is He, or is He not the dearest object of my heart?” If He is not, our service must be more or less out of gear. If He be, and I have learned to love Him more than that much-loved idol, Self, then to do His will is my sweetest task on earth, as it will be my joyful occupation in heaven.

We have need from time to time thus to challenge ourselves. Of course, if living as we should be, in daily communion with Christ, the answer that He is first, rises as soon as the question is asked. But if our communion is intermittent, and our love cold, it may be some time before we can look up and say, Yes, thank God though my heart is often cold, yet Christ is first. O! may Christ be more and more to each of us.

Who Will Be Taken to Meet the Lord, and Who Will Be Left? Part 1

Part 1

These are important questions as we hourly draw nearer the coming of our Lord. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thess. 4:15-17).

In contrast with these words of comfort, we read further on of others,

“For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” (1 Thess. 5:3).

Who are these respective companies? Will the first company comprise all true believers – all the saints of God? or, will some believers be taken to meet the Lord, and others be left to pass through the tribulation? This question is important, as it affects the value of the atoning death of Christ, and the eternal redemption which every believer has through that death.

When the Lord Jesus appears in glory, and comes in judgment and to reign, we find from Scripture: –

First, “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” (Col. 3:4).

Surely this marvelous statement is true of all believers now as then; for all can give thanks to the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1:12).

Second, “We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2).

Third, when He comes, all His saints come with Him,

“At the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.” (1 Thess. 3:13).

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” (1 Thess. 4:14).

“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all,” (Jude 14-15). This also includes Old Testament saints.

“And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives ... And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee.” (Zech. 14:4-5).

It is, then, certain that when the Lord Jesus appears in glory, all the saints will appear with Him, and be like Him. O, blessed hope! And also it is certain that all His saints will come with Him, to judgment. It follows, then, that if all come with Him, then all must have first been taken up to meet Him in the air; and to this agree other scriptures, whether as to those who are asleep, or those who are alive and remain unto His coming.

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order; Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” (1 Cor. 15:22-23).

Just as all who are in Adam are involved in death, so all that are in Christ shall be made alive at His coming. Christ has been raised from among the dead: we are now waiting the next event – they that are Christ’s at His coming. Equally certain is the word as to all who are alive and shall be changed.

“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. . .” And mark, the address of this epistle evidently includes all Christians.

“Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” (1 Cor. 1:2).

To all these the Apostle could say,

“So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall confirm you unto the end... Blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 1:7-8). This epistle further teaches that all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, now compose the one body of Christ.

“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13). Part of the one body cannot be taken, and a part left behind.

It may be asked, Then is there no difference between those persons who are waiting for the Lord from heaven, and those who are not looking for Him? There is; and we will look at those scriptures that speak of it, that we may see how great that contrast is.

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin unto salvation.” (Heb. 9:27-28).

It is not appointed unto all men once to die; neither did He bear the sins of all men; but those who know that He bore their sins at His first coming, instead of looking for death and judgment, may look for Christ who shall come to them without a question of sin or judgment, “Without sin.”

If we are not clear as to His having put away our sins, we cannot look for Him the second time, we should rather dread Him as a judge. Which is it, reader? Do you look for Him as Saviour, sin and sins forever settled; or, is judgment for sins still before you?

Again, “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” (Titus 2:11-13).

Thus in the Scriptures we find that all, not some few believers, are taught to look for the Lord Jesus. It is the effect of the grace of God. When Paul preached the gospel, those who believed were turned to God from idols, to serving the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. (1 Thess. 1:9, 10).

To Timothy, Paul said, “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.” (2 Tim. 4:8).

To the Philippians he says, “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body,” (Phil. 3:20).

Yes, it is evident, when the church was in the freshness of its first love, that love to the Lord Jesus was pre-eminently seen in their looking for Him from heaven. Could it be otherwise? Is it possible for a wife to love her absent husband and not look for his return? And is it possible to hear the Bridegroom’s tender words, and not wait for His return? He says to us, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:1-3).

How is it possible, then, to love the Lord Jesus, and not love His appearing and wait for His return?

(To be continued)

Seven Comes in Revelation 22

1. “Behold, I come quickly.” vs. 7

A word to the faithful.

2. “Behold, I come quickly.” vs. 12

A word concerning reward.

3. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” vs. 17

An invitation to the Bridegroom.

4. “Let him that heareth say, Come.” vs. 17

A word to the servant.

5. “Let him that is athirst, Come” vs. 17

An invitation to the needy.

6. “Surely, I come quickly.” vs. 20

A word to all.

7. “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.” vs. 20

An affectionate response from His own.

There's but a Step Between Me and Death

“Has Mrs. S. always been so serious?” inquired of an acquaintance.

“No,” she replied, “she has been so only since the death of her husband. They loved one another. But unfortunately they occasionally had misunderstandings. On a certain morning after her husband had gone quite a distance on his way to work in the factory, he regretted his harsh words, because he loved her, so he retraced his steps and finding his wife in the kitchen, he said, “Marie, let us part as friends. Give me a kiss and let’s make up. It seems to me I’ll not succeed with my work if we don’t.”

But she turned away and wouldn’t even give him her hand. She really thought she might teach him to be less irritable in the future; for she really loved him.

He did not get back alive. In the evening he was brought home on a stretcher borne by four men. “Since then, I have not seen Mrs. S. laugh,” continued my friend.

Gladly would she have given years of her life not to have repulsed and pained her husband. And we, who witnessed how she was almost consumed with grief, said to ourselves: “Let us be ready to forgive at once.”

“Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Eph. 4:32).

This Same Jesus

“This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11).

Jesus, our Lord, we love Thy peerless name,

Our Saviour Thou,

Yes, Thou from everlasting art the same,

To Thee we bow;

To seek and save the lost Thou earnest to earth,

Thy glory veiled beneath Thy lowly birth.

Alone Thou stoodest in the desert vast

To face the foe;

Against Thee all his covert wiles he cast,

Blow after blow;

Dependent Thou didst meet each bold attack,

Thou wouldst not swerve from the appointed track.

Upon the holy mount Thy favored three

Saw Thee alone;

They heard Thy Father’s voice saluting Thee,

“Beloved Son”!

Leader and prophet must to Thee give place,

That “Jesus only” might entrance their gaze.

Again we see Thee in Gethsemane,

When all the power

Of this world’s prince, and his deep enmity

In that dread hour,

‘Gainst Thee, devoted One, were here displayed,

Thou didst submit a captive to be made.

Thy holy head with cruel thorns was crowned,

Thou blessed One;

And to the altar Thy blest form was bound,

God’s holy Son!

Thou gav’st Thyself a willing sacrifice,

That we, Lord Jesus, might become Thy prize.

But Thou, our Lord, art risen from the dead

And gone on high;

There, in the glory, our exalted Head,

And we brought nigh

Thou ever livest on the Father’s throne

And soon wilt gather to Thyself Thine own.

Yes, Jesus Lord, today Thou art “the Same”

Enthroned above;

We worship Thee, adore Thy precious Name

And know Thy love;

We wait to gaze upon Thy blessed face,

Whose glory crowns the riches of Thy grace.

Thus, Lord, we trust Thee, till Thou dost appear.

Our constant Guide;

Thou art “the Same” to save, support and cheer

Whate’er betide;

Thou wilt sustain us all along the way,

Until Thy presence brings the perfect day.

Encouragement for the Troubled Heart

“Ah! Lord God, behold Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee.” (Jer. 32:17).

These great words were sighed out by Jeremiah’s troubled soul in prayer to Jehovah. It is necessary to read the whole of the chapter from which they are taken, properly to enter into the prophet’s prayer and the Lord’s answer to it, but the single verse before us contains in itself deep encouragement for the tried and troubled heart.

Dark as present circumstances may be, it is well for the believer, as did Jeremiah, to lay firm hold on God Himself. All was utter gloom to the natural eye, and the promises of God apparently impossible to be fulfilled when Jeremiah uttered the words before us. But he believed God. And God showed His servant who believed His Word, His ways.

First we have to trust God’s Word, and if there be implicit trust in Him, His ways will be made manifest to us.

“In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” (Prov. 3:6).

Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters

I had just been through the street car with tracts. Many had been received, but some only to be thrown away. The snow was deep outside, and one passenger carelessly tossed his on a snow bank as he left the car.

The snow had gone when a letter came from an utter stranger, telling of how returning home one evening, she had picked up a tract in a snow bank, and taken it home to her dying husband. He had read it, and re-read it, and through it had found perfect peace. He now was with the Lord, but the sorrowing widow had comfort in her loss as she knew he was forever with the Lord.

“My Word ... shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11).

Preserved

“As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even forever.” (Psa. 125:2).

There is scarcely a Christian who would not say he believed God was able to preserve His people, to keep them in the daily way, and also in dangerous and difficult paths where faithfulness to Him might lead them. How little evidence of trust in God is, however, to be seen in many of us!

The following brief account of one who put God first, to whom His protection was a reality, and who experienced it in a remarkable way, may by God’s blessing encourage the hearts of some of His children to trust Him more.

A wealthy man was brought to a knowledge of his lost condition as a sinner, and learned the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ the Saviour. He was brought out of utter spiritual darkness into the bright and changeless light of God’s favor, and his whole life was changed outwardly as well as inwardly.

It must have been a remarkable sight to see the fine, tall man presiding at the long table around which his servants assembled, and, like the father of a large family, sharing with them the simple fare, while he sought to put before them the Bread of Life. He labored earnestly for souls, and many were blessed, and led out of fearful darkness to trust simply in the Saviour’s finished work. God worked through His servant, and, as ever, where God was working, Satan’s activity was to be seen.

Mr. S. was made to feel he had enemies, first, by many petty injuries and annoyances, and then in a more serious way. One day, while he was walking in the fields, three men sprang from behind a hedge, and fired. Mr. S. fell, with the contents of a blunderbuss lodged in the lower part of his body. For some time there seemed no hope of recovery; and the authorities, anxious to convict the men, who had been caught, brought them, as he lay in bed, that he might identify them. He looked them in the face, knew them, and they knew it, but not a word would he say to convict them. Had not the Master he loved, and sought to follow, said,

“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matt. 5:39). And again it is written, “Who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not.” (1 Peter 2:23).

“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19).

Contrary to all expectation he recovered, and resumed his former life and labors for the souls of others.

The efforts of his enemies were redoubled. Again he was fired at. This time the assailant was concealed, but aimed well, straight at his heart. The shot entered the Bible he carried in his left breast-pocket, and when the bullet was removed, at the bottom of a deep, round hole, these words could be read, “Holy Father, keep.” Could not the Father to whose care the Lord Jesus entrusted His own, whom He was leaving behind on the earth, could He not keep them?

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.” (Isa. 26:3).

But yet once more those who greatly hated Mr. S., as one whose life and words tended to overthrow their power, stirred up some of the lowest and most hardened of those who knew, by experience, something of his heart and devoted ways.

It was late one stormy, wintry night when a servant came to the study where Mr. S. was quietly reading by his fireside, and said that two men had come to beg him to go at once to see a dying woman at some distance.

“Saddle my horse, John,” said Mr. S.

The servant, closing the door, said, “Sir, don’t go; say you’ll come tomorrow.”

“Saddle my horse, John.”

The faithful servant, who was much attached to his master, now became urgent.

“Don’t go, sir, I know them; I know they mean harm; you’ll never come back alive, sir, if you go.”

“Saddle my horse, John.”

And soon Mr. S. was riding through the storm and darkness with a man on each side of him, guiding his horse over rough country, till at last they turned in a thick wood, where the darkness grew more intense. Soon a light gleamed before them, and they reached a mud cabin where the men said the sick person was. Mr. S. dismounted, and entering, found himself surrounded by armed ruffians, who sprang to their feet as if to attack him, when he, calmly folding his arms, said, “Stand back, and listen to me. Here I am, but not in your power, I am in my Father’s keeping. All you can do to me is to send me to His presence, but the same act that sends me into heaven, sends you to hell.” He added a few words about the love of God, ready to save even the vilest. One by one the men crept out of the hut, and he was left standing alone.

He found his horse tied to a tree, mounted, and rode back safely, to the thankful astonishment of the anxious John.

Some time later this faithful servant was shot down by his master’s side, while Mr. S. lived to be over eighty, and would go about, a feeble old man at last, ever ready to tell of the love he knew so well.

“Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee.” (Psa. 84:12).

Self-Surrender: Part 1

(Philippians 2)

Part 1

It is perfectly delightful to contemplate the moral triumphs of Christianity – the victories which it gains over self and the world, and the marvelous way in which such victories are obtained. The law said, “Thou shalt do this; and thou shalt not do that.” But Christianity speaks a totally different language. In it, we see life bestowed as a free gift – life flowing down from a risen and glorified Christ. This is something entirely beyond the range of the law. The language of the law was,

“The man that doeth these things shall live in them.”

Long life in the land was all the law proposed to the man who could keep it. Eternal life in a risen Christ was something utterly unknown and unthought of under the legal system.

But Christianity not only gives eternal life; it gives also an object with which that life can be occupied – a center round which the affections of that life can circulate – a model on which that life can be formed. Thus it gains its mighty moral triumphs. Thus it gains its conquests over a selfish nature and a selfish world. It gives divine life and a divine center; and as the life moves round that center we are taken out of self.

This is the secret of self-surrender. It cannot be reached in any other way. The unconverted man finds his center in self; and, hence, to tell him not to be selfish, is to tell him not to be at all. This holds good even in the matter of mere religiousness. A man will attend to his religion in order, as he thinks, to promote his eternal interest: but this is quite a different thing from finding an object and a center outside himself. Christianity alone can supply these.

The gospel of the grace of God is the only thing that can effectually meet man’s need, and deliver him from the selfishness which belongs to him. The unrenewed man lives for himself. He has no higher object. The life which he possesses is alienated from the life of God. He is away from God. He moves round another center altogether, and until he is born again, until he is renewed, regenerated, born of the Word and Spirit of God, it cannot be otherwise. Self is his object, his center, in all things. He may be moral, amiable, religious, benevolent, but until he is converted, he has not done with himself, as to the ground of his being, or as to the center round which that being revolves.

The foregoing train of thought naturally introduces us to the striking and beautiful illustration of our theme afforded in Philippians 2. In it we have a series of examples of self-surrender, commencing with a divinely perfect one, the Lord Himself.

But, ere we proceed to gaze upon this exquisite picture, it may be well to inquire what it was that rendered it needful to present such a picture before the Philippian saints. The attentive reader will, doubtless, observe, in the course of this most charming epistle, certain delicate touches from the inspired pen, leading to the conclusion that the keen and vigilant eye of the Apostle detected a certain root of evil in the bosom of the beloved and cherished assembly gathered at Philippi. To this he addresses himself, not with a sledge-hammer or long whip, but with a refinement and delicacy far more powerful than either the one or the other. The mightiest moral results are reached by those delicate touches from the hand of God the Holy Spirit.

But what was the root to which we have referred? It was not a splitting into sect., and parties, as at Corinth. It was not a return to law and ritualism, as at Galatia. It was not a hankering after philosophy and the rudiments of the world, as at Colosse. What was it then?

It was a root of envy and strife. The sprouting of this root is seen very distinctly in the collision between those two sisters, “Euodias and Syntyche” (Phil. 4:2), but it is glanced at in earlier portions of the epistle, and a divine remedy supplied.

It is a great point with a medical man not only to understand what is wrong with his patient, but also to understand the true remedy. Some physicians are clever in discovering the root of disease; but they do not so well know what remedy to apply. Others, again, are skilled in the knowledge of medicine, the powers of various drugs; but they do not know how to apply them to individual cases.

The divine Physician knows both the disease and its remedy. He knows exactly what is the matter with us, and He knows what will do us good. He sees the root of the matter, and He applies a radical cure. He does not treat cases superficially. He is perfect in diagnosis.

He does not guess at our disease from mere surface-symptoms. His keen eye penetrates, at once, to the very bottom of the case, and His skilful hand applies the true remedy.

Thus it is in the Epistle to the Philippians. These saints held a very large place in the large heart of the Apostle. He loved them much, and they loved him. Again and again he speaks, in grateful accents, of their fellowship with him in the gospel from the very first. But all this did not and could not shut his eyes to what was wrong among them.

It is said that “Love is blind.” In one sense, we look upon this saying as a libel upon love. If it were said that “Love is superior to faults,” it would be nearer the truth. What should any one give for blind love? Of what use would it be to be loved by one who only loved us because he was ignorant of our blots and blemishes? If it be meant that love will not see our blots, it is blessedly true (Num. 23:21); but no one would care for a love that was not at once aware of, and superior to, our failures and infirmities.

Paul loved the saints at Philippi, and rejoiced in their love to him, and tasted the fragrant fruit of that love again and again. But then he saw that it was one thing to love and be kind to a distant apostle, and quite another thing to agree among themselves.

Doubtless, Euodias and Syntyche both contributed to send a present to Paul, though they were not pulling harmoniously together in the wear and tear of daily life and service. This is, alas! no uncommon case.

Many sisters and brothers too are ready to contribute of their substance to help some distant servant of Christ, and yet they do not walk pleasantly together. How is this? There is a lack of self-surrender. This, we may rest assured, is the real secret of much of the “strife and vainglory” so painfully manifest in the very midst of the people of God. It is one thing to walk alone, and it is another thing to walk in company with our brethren, in the practical recognition of that great truth of the unity of the body, and in the remembrance that “we are members one of another.”

Christians are not to regard themselves as mere individuals, as isolated atoms, as independent persons. This cannot be, seeing that Scripture declares “There is one body,” and we are members thereof. This is a divine truth – a grand fact – a positive reality. We are not to be like the hairs of an electrified broom, each standing out in lonely individuality. We are living members of a living body, each one having to do with other members, with whom we are connected by a bond which no power of earth or hell can sever. In a word, there is a relationship formed by the presence of the Holy Spirit, who not only dwells in each individual member, but is the power of the unity of the one body. It is the presence of God the Spirit in the church that constitutes that church, the one living body of the living Head.

Now, it is when we are called to walk in the actual acknowledgment of this great truth that there is a demand for self-surrender. If we were merely solitary individuals, treading each in his own self-chosen path, carrying out his own peculiar thoughts, walking in the sparks of his own kindling, pursuing his own peculiar line of things, indulging his own will, then indeed a quantity of self might be retained. If “Euodias and Syntyche” could have walked alone, there would have been no collision – no strife. But they were called to walk together, and here was the demand for self-surrender.

And, be it ever remembered, that Christians are not members of a club, of a sect, or of an association; they are members of a body, each connected with all, and all connected, by the fact of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, with the risen and glorified Head in heaven.

This is an immense truth, and the practical carrying out of it will cost us not only all we have, but all we are. There is no place in all the universe where self will be so pulled to pieces, as in the assembly of God. And is it not well? Is it not a powerful proof of the divine ground on which that assembly is gathered? Are we not – should we not be – glad to have our hateful self thus pulled to pieces?

Shall we – ought we to – run away from those who do it for us? Are we not glad – do we not often pray, to get rid of self? And shall we quarrel with those who are God’s instruments in answering our prayers? True, they may do the work roughly and clumsily; but no matter for that. Whoever helps me to crush and sink self, does me a kind turn, however, awkwardly he may do it.

One thing is certain, no man can ever rob us of that which after all, is the only thing worth having, namely, Christ. This is a precious consolation. Let self go; we shall have the more of Christ. Euodias might lay the blame on Syntyche, and Syntyche on Euodias; the apostle does not raise the question of which was right or of which was wrong, but he beseeches both to be “of the same mind in the Lord.”

Here lies the divine secret. It is self-surrender. But this must be a real thing. There is no use in talking about sinking self, while, at the same time, self is fed and patted on the back. We sometimes pray with marvelous fervor to be enabled to trample self in the dust, and the very next moment, if any one seems to cross our path, self is like a porcupine with all its quills up. This will never do. God will have us real, and surely we can say, with all our weakness and folly, we want to be real – real in everything, and therefore real when we pray for the power of self-surrender. But, most assuredly, there is no place where there is a more urgent demand for this lovely grace than in the bosom of the assembly of God.

(To be Continued)

His Mercy Endureth Forever

Psalms 136

This sweet refrain to the Psalmist’s song of praise is no mere doctrine but heart-felt experience. It is a good thing to establish our souls in God’s own and everlasting goodness. This is a fitting verse for us for the coming year.

As time rolls on, as circumstances change, He changes not, and His mercy endures forever. Read for yourselves this 136th Psalm, and note that beginning with what God is Himself, and following on with His creation works, the Psalmist rejoices in God’s redemption, and restoration of His people.

“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever.”

The Test Day

The Lord’s Day is a test day. It measures the Christian’s power to delight in God, to be happy in His praise, and to put worldly things in the background.

Spiritual Growth

Many young Christians make a mistake in fancying that they ought to mark out a line of conduct and walk for the testimony of Christ; whereas the way we honor Him most is by daily sitting at His feet and contemplating Him, like Mary. Spiritual growth, unlike natural, begets increasing knowledge of our own weakness, and produces distrust of self till self becomes lost in Christ.

Fragment: Praise and Adoration

God has always desired to have the perpetual adoration of His redeemed. We thus read of singers in connection with His service who “were employed in that work day and night” (1 Chron. 9:33). And when the Lord was parted from His disciples, He blessed them, and was carried up into heaven.

“And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.”

Then, too, there are the four living creatures who rest not day and night in their ascriptions of praise.

So will it be when all the redeemed are gathered around the Lord in heaven. Their whole existence will be characterized by continual never-ending praise!

If here on earth the thoughts of Jesus’ love

Lift our poor hearts this weary world above;

If even here the taste of heavenly springs

So cheers the spirit, that the pilgrim sings;

What will the sunshine of His glory prove?

What the unmingled fullness of His love?

What hallelujahs will His presence raise?

What but one loud eternal burst of praise?

We Must Feed Daily

Yesterday’s manna will not do for today, nor today’s for tomorrow. We must feed upon Christ every day with fresh energy of the Spirit, else we shall cease to grow.

Christian, see carefully to it, that you are not only saved by Christ, but also living on Him. Make Him the daily portion of your soul. Seek Him “early,” seek Him “only.” When anything solicits your attention ask the question,

“Will this bring Christ to my heart? Will it unfold Him to my affections or draw me near to His person?

If not, reject it at once.

Tychicus

Among the early Christians there was the most earnest care in their hearts for one another, which proved how much they loved one another. And none among the apostles were more diligent in this than Paul, to whom the care of the churches was committed (2 Cor. 11:28).

The shepherding of the sheep and lambs, led out from the Jewish fold, might be assigned to the elder Apostle, Peter, but it was to Paul that Christ looked to watch over and protect the church against the earliest and most subtle inroads of evil and destruction (John 10:3; 21:15; 1 Peter 5:1-4; Acts 20:28-32; Col. 2;1), and to this trust, Paul, by the grace of God, was faithful unto the end.

But there were helpers needed in the exercise of this care over the church of God, and none, perhaps, were more beloved and esteemed as such than Tychicus, one of the converts of Asia (Acts 20:4). Of the general turning away of those in Asia from Paul, Tychicus appears to have been an exception, for in his last writing the Apostle makes such mention of him as would lead us to believe that Tychicus had continued faithful unto Paul, even as Paul had been faithful unto the churches (2 Tim. 4:12). And, if this be so, the exception must be one truly of grace, and gives this beloved brother an honored and prominent place, according to the testimony of the Apostle concerning him. This testimony, though brief in its expression, carries with it the sweetest fragrance of what grace can accomplish in one who is devoted to Christ’s glory in the scene of His rejection and dishonor.

Tychicus appears to have been Paul’s messenger, and the postman of his letters both to the Ephesians and the Colossians. And the Holy Spirit bears in these epistles a lovely testimony concerning him, in commending him to the confidence and love of the saints.

“A beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord,” was reported of him to the Ephesians (Eph. 6:21-22).

“A beloved brother, and a faithful minister and fellow-servant in the Lord,” was the similar declaration of praise to the Colossians (Col. 4:7). Only, here we observe that he is owned as a fellow-servant with the Apostle, though willing to be subject to him as his messenger and apostle to the churches.

Dear reader, if there be any praise, if there he any virtue, let us think on these things concerning this beloved brother Tychicus (Phil. 4:8). There are three things said of him which we may earnestly seek to imitate, and thus follow his faith, according to Scripture (Heb. 13:7). He was-

1. A beloved brother in the Lord.

2. A faithful minister in the Lord.

3. A fellow-servant in the Lord.

The very least that could be said of one, who, like Tychicus, had heard and believed the Word of the Lord Jesus, as preached by Paul, would be that he was a brother in Christ. But the fuller expression here would lead us to expect something more than the mere being in Christ, or a brother in Christ, much as that may mean to us in the sense of blessing. Tychicus was “a beloved brother in the Lord.” And would not such words recall us to the love of God and of Christ as lived in and walked in by him, causing him to be beloved, not only by Christ and Paul, but by all who knew him? And would not this obedience in love mark him as one who kept his Lord’s commandment, and hence the appropriateness of the expression, “in the Lord”?

This view of Christian character is indeed most lovely, commendable, and needful to follow for any successful end in our testimony as serving Christ, as we may say, in the most ordinary way. For there are none but can and ought to walk in his love towards the world, and more especially towards Christ’s own in the world.

“Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7, 8).

But there is more. God has revealed His truth to us: which we are to hold and minister both in faithfulness and love. For God’s truth, which is His Word, is the foundation of all Christian testimony, and the source of all Christian unity and love. Our Lord Himself, who was the Truth, entered upon a path of obedience in this world to His God and Father “for the truth of God,” and was faithful unto Him who had appointed Him (John 14:6; Rom. 15:8; Heb. 3:2). He was, as we delight to confess “Faithful amidst unfaithfulness, Midst darkness only light.”

And so, whether with Christ or with His servants, it is real love to God, love to the truth, and love to men that produces faithfulness to God, to the truth, and also to men.

And most happily could this be said of Tychicus, that he was “a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord.” He was, we judge, a man able to teach others what had been committed unto him by Paul (2 Tim. 2:2), but we know, at least, that he possessed that much-to-be-desired gift of prophecy, for he was able, much to the Apostle’s joy, to comfort the hearts of the Colossians, after he had determined their state (1 Cor. 14:1-3; Col. 4:8). The Epistle itself, which he bore to the Colossians, would furnish such teaching as was needful to settle and establish them.

But still the faithful ministry of Tychicus, as of a beloved brother, would be most helpful to them, and would doubtless be owned of God to effect what the Apostle had so much desired, that their hearts might be comforted and knit together in love, unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery (Col. 2:2). And what a fellow-helper and fellow-servant in the Lord would Tychicus thus become to the Apostle!

In going to the Ephesian saints with Paul’s letter to them, we observe that Tychicus again appears as a comforter. But now it is not so much to learn of their state, as it had been with the Colossians, but it was that they might know the state and affairs of the Apostle himself (Eph. 6:22). We see then, in either case, how God is able to comfort, and what “comfort of love” is ever to be found in that mutual love which is rooted in Christ. It may be safe to remark that the Ephesian saints at this time were in a better and more perfected state as regards love than were the Colossians. With these the comfort came by Tychicus knowing their state and ministering to it; with those it was more by their knowing how it went with the apostle, for the great love of Paul for the saints counted upon the love of these Ephesians, whose comfort would be in learning of the one they so much loved.

It would appear that Paul’s deep longing and anxiety for the saints at Ephesus never abated or grew indifferent. As a proof of this, we have among his last words such a statement as this, “And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus” (2 Tim. 4:12).

Beloved, while we know that both Paul and Tychicus are now resting and waiting with Christ on high, let us, who are now laboring and waiting for Him below, use all diligence to walk in this same love of Christ that they walked in. May we have a renewed and deeper interest in the saints of God everywhere, and seek, as Tychicus sought, to love them and minister to them in that love, so that both they and we may be approved of Christ in that day, as having served Him on earth in that lovely and becoming spirit, as “beloved... and faithful... in the Lord.”

Soon may we hear His gracious voice, ringing like sweetest music from the morning clouds,

“Rise up, My love, My fair one, and come away.” (Song of Sol. 2:10).

Then may it be ours, when with Him, to hear His faithful voice saying in the righteousness of truth,

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” (Matt. 25:21).

Correspondence: Ecc. 11:2; Mark 9:44, 46, 48; Exo. 12:22

Question: Please give the meaning of Ecclesiastes 11:2.

Answer: Ecclesiastes is wisdom under the sun. Chapter 11:1-6 evidently looks at and exhorts us to use opportunities without regard to opposing elements. “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” “Give a portion” and “Sow thy seed” as opportunity affords, leaving the results with God, are expressions of this exhortation.

This suggests for us service to the Lord, sharing with others what we enjoy; giving a portion to all we can reach; sowing the seed evening and morning, as we find opportunity. May our walk and ways, as well as our words, be “holding forth the word of life” (2 Thess. 2:17).

Question: How would you explain “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”?

Answer: Mark 9:44, 46, 48 refers to the end of the wicked. Their worm tells them of sins committed, of warnings despised, of neglected opportunities of being saved. The memory of them is like the gnawing of a worm that never dies. The fire is the place of torment into which the lost ones are cast (Rev. 21:8). Both are fearful realities for all eternity.

Question: What does the bunch of hyssop dipped in the blood that is in the basin, show us? (Ex. 12:22).

Answer: The hyssop pictures man’s littleness, as the cedar pictures his greatness (1 Kings 4:33). From the greatest to the least, man by nature has nothing acceptable to God. All that he is, is ended in the death of Christ; this is seen in the sacrifices, (Lev. 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52; Num. 19:6, 18).

In dipping the hyssop in the blood and sprinkling the doorpost, it is as if the Israelite said: I am only a worthless sinner; Christ is everything. His blood is my shelter from the judgment of God which my sins deserve.

Correspondence: Gal. 5:19-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 16:20; John 16:8-11

Ques. What would you say of one who has seen himself a sinner before God and believed that Jesus died for him, but has since been guilty of sins mentioned in Galatians 5:19-21?

Ans. In Galatians 5:19-21, the Apostle is speaking of a class of persons who are characterized by the evil fruits specified in the context. No doubt, a child of God, if not watchful, may fall into any of the sins referred to; but he is not characterized by them he does not live in them does not belong to the class who habitually commit such things. Should he, unhappily, be overtaken, he is restored by the advocacy of Christ, whose precious intercession procures for the erring one the grace of repentance, self-judgment, confession, and restoration. Such is the precious grace of God.

Ques. Who are to take part in the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:21), and who are the “all” who in Christ will be made alive (verse 22)?

Ans. In 1 Corinthains 15:21, the word “resurrection” applies to all mankind, for all shall rise. But, in verse 22, the expression “in Christ shall all be made alive,” refers, most assuredly, only to believers, for none but such can be spoken of as being “in Christ.”

Ques. Is the form of salutation given in 1 Corinthians 16:20 to be used now?

Ans. 1 Corinthians 16:20 simply exhorts Christians to salute one another in holy love. The form of salutation may vary according to our national habits; but holiness and love must ever be the characteristics. What we want is spirit and power, whatever be the form.

Ques. Does John 16:8-11 refer to the work wrought in individual souls?

Ans. These verses refer to the world, as a whole, and not to the work wrought in individual souls. The very presence of the Holy Spirit proved the world guilty of rejecting the Son of God.

The Lost Soul; Or, Christ Rejected

Lost! lost! and lost forever! You shrink from the words and say, O, but can it be? Is it a reality? Did you see that soul go down into hell before your eyes, and you had no power to save her? Did you hear her death-cries of agony, and still could do nothing for her? Yes! yes! it was a terrible reality never to be forgotten by me; and though it is years since, I seldom can think of it without weeping, and the remembrance of it has often sent me with a word of warning to others; and this terrible death scene of which I was an eye witness has often brought from me the cry,

“Escape for thy life.” (Gen. 19:17).

The story of A., the rejecter of Christ, is no phantom of some fevered imagination; it is no wrought up story to work upon your feelings and fill you with horror; but may the Lord use it to show you that death is a reality! that hell is a reality! and you, sinner, have to meet both if you reject Christ.

Some time after we had moved to a little suburban home near M-, a gay young couple came to live next door. The dress and bearing of the fair wife marked her as one of the world’s chosen ones. She was graceful and attractive, but upon her face was a look of unrest that told its own tale, No peace! no peace!

My heart rose in silent prayer to God, that He might send me with a message to her soul. Next day I called. On asking for Mrs. E-, the servant told me she was ill, but she thought she would see me. I went in and soon found myself in earnest conversation with Mrs. E-.

Her tale was soon told, for she was unreserved and very communicative; finding it, as she said, a great comfort to have any one to speak to, to break the monotony of a country life in the absence of her husband, who was all day engaged in business.

During my visit she frankly told me that though only a few months married, and her heart thoroughly occupied with the world in every form, its ball-rooms, its concerts, its parties, yet she was very unhappy; and, in a simple child-like way, she said,

“We have been watching you and your husband pass up and down, and we think you look so happy!”

The moment had come: I thanked God for the opportunity to speak, and said,

“You are right, we are happy; and the secret of our happiness is, we know Christ; we have peace with God, through believing in the finished work of Christ; and we have in Him what the world has never given you, and never can give you, for the end of all its joys is eternal misery.”

As I pressed upon her the necessity of conversion, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she said,

“But no one ever told me that before: is it all true?”

“Yes,” I answered, “for God’s Word declares to us,

`Ye must be born again,’ and, ‘Except ye be converted.... ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’”

I pressed upon her the necessity of accepting Christ now, and rose to leave; slowly and solemnly she said,

“Well, I would like to have your Christ, but I love the world; and though I am often unhappy, yet I could never give up my dancing; and you know,” she said as a hollow smile played upon her lips, “I sing at private concerts, and they say, A.’s voice is the best voice there.”

I shudder! A little of the world’s praise is more to thee, fair A., than the unsearchable riches of Christ. I said,

“Remember, they that reject Christ here, will have to spend eternity in hell.”

A few days after this, on returning from a walk, I found Mrs. E. had called. I hastened to return her visit, and found her more miserable than before. Struggling to assume gaiety she did not feel, she met me by saying,

“O, let me tell you about the concert I am to sing at next week.”

“Stop,” I said, “there will be no singing in hell!”

“O,” she said, “don’t speak in that way, I cannot bear it; speak of your Jesus if you like, but not of hell!”

Again I told her of His love for sinners, but her mind was full of her coming concert, her dress, her songs, and other things. And as I parted from her, very sad, she said,

“When the concert is over I will come and talk to you:” but weeks passed and she came not.

We were leaving our suburban home for a time, so I called to say good-bye, and pressed once more upon her the salvation of her precious soul; but she was swamped in a whirlpool of coming gaiety, and had no time for Christ.

It was months before we returned home, and I again visited her, this time in response to an urgent message from her. The door was opened by a sister who said,

“O come in; A is very ill, and is very anxious to see you.”

I entered her half-darkened room, and, O, shall I ever forget the sight! There, on the bed, lay A., in the ravings of a fever; her infant son, a few weeks old, was on a little bed by her side. Her graceful form was racked by pain, her masses of dark tangled hair lay on the pillow, the dew of death was on her brow; and, as her large dark eyes opened and saw me, her parched and blackened lips parted, and she almost screamed,

“O you have come at last; now do not leave me.” Sitting up in bed, she grasped me with a strength that only fever gives.

“Have you sent for the doctor?” I whispered to her sister.

“No,” said A. wildly, hearing me, “he will only tell me I am very ill, and you know I must be at the choral meeting next week. I am to sing at the concert;” and so saying, she fell back on her pillow in a swoon. I pointed to her sister to take my place, and hurried from the room.

In a few minutes my husband was off for the doctor. It seemed long till he came. Her only concern during that anxious hour of waiting seemed to be about the concert.

At last the doctor came. As he left her room a little later, his anxious face told all. He went away for another doctor, leaving these words ringing in my ears,

“Dying fast! don’t tell her!”

Yes, I must tell her, was my resolve, for she is unsaved and does not know it. I could only look up in agony and say,

“O God, help me to speak to her!”

A. had heard the doctor tell me to give her a strong stimulant every quarter of an hour till he returned. She asked for it when I entered the room. Drinking it down she exclaimed,

“O, I can live a quarter of an hour upon that, surely I am not dying?”

“Yes, A.,” I said, “you are dying; but I can tell you of one who died to save just such as you.”

Gently I told her in very simple words of that one who met the prodigal in the far-off land; and the dying thief upon the cross; but she almost threw me from her, and said,

“I cannot hear it now; when I get better I’ll come and sit with you and hear about your Jesus, but not now,” and again she swooned.

I prayed as I had never prayed before, and as I rose from my knees I found her large dark eyes, already glazed by the hand of death, fixed upon me.

“O,” she said, “pray to your Jesus, He will hear you; but I don’t know Him, and I cannot hear about Him now.”

Eagerly I asked,

“What shall I pray to Him for, A.?” Horror filled me as I heard her answer,

“Pray to Him that I may get well, and go to the concert.”

Again I pleaded with her about her soul; but it was no use. She had rejected Christ all her life, and she would not have Him now. Hours passed and the doctors came, only to say, “Sinking fast!” Her husband and friends arrived to see the end of fair A., and I would fain have left a scene so terrible; but she held me in her grasp.

Every quarter of an hour as I gave her her medicine she said,

“O, I can live upon that – it must make me live – I cannot die!” And then in plaintive accents she wailed out, “I’m too young to die, yes, I’m only twenty-one: yes, too young to die!”

“Father,” she said, as her father drew near the bed, “will you take me to the concert next week?”

“Yes,” said her father, “I will.”

I was a stranger to her friends, and seeing she was sinking fast, I passed away from a scene so awful. In a few moments all was over, and the soul of A., the rejecter of Christ, had passed from the world and its pleasures, its balls, and its concerts, into the realities of an endless eternity.

“Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish.” (Acts 13:41).

“Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” (John 5:40).

“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.” (Acts 13:38).

The Searching Test

A young man of considerable intelligence, but not a Christian, was persuaded to go and hear an address from a faithful preacher of the gospel. Like many other young men, he believed the Bible to be true, though he seldom read it, and thought little on its statements regarding his position as an unsaved sinner under the wrath of God. Now and again eternal concerns were pressed upon his consideration, but he studiously avoided thinking of them, putting them off until a more “convenient season.”

The preacher to whom he listened on this occasion was endeavoring to prove to his hearers the utter impossibility of being saved by works of law. The “doing the best you can” theory was completely demolished, and salvation by simple faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ was enforced, explained and illustrated.

In the course of his address, he made a statement which awakened the young man’s curiosity, and riveted his attention. It was to this effect:

“If God offered salvation to any of you that are unconverted, on condition that you could point to one good work in the whole of your past lives, not one of you could be saved.” At once he thought:

“If I were to be saved on such terms, I am quite sure of salvation.”

The preacher proceeded to prove his assertion by saying that the character of an action depended on the motive from which it flowed; that if not from love to God, it cannot be acceptable in His sight; that if flowing from selfishness, it must be sinful. He was completely taken by surprise by what he heard, and resolved, at whatever cost, to test the statement for himself.

On reaching his room, he closed his door, and commenced to review his past life, in order to recall to his mind the best actions he had done. One by one they were put down on paper, and the test was applied:

“Was this done from love to God?” Conscience answered, “No,” and he drew his pen across it.

Another was written, and the same question asked, but conscience gave the same disappointing answer. Every conceivable deed which he thought would come under the category of “good works” was taken into account – Bible reading, prayers, church-attendance, deeds of charity and kindness; but the inexorable monitor told him that they would not stand the test not one of them proceeded from supreme love to God.

He was now fully convinced that if salvation were offered him on this condition, it was utterly beyond his reach. The preacher’s statements took possession of his soul, and stood out in bold relief as a stern and awful reality. His whole past life appeared to him one continued sin, and on this account he saw that he was righteously condemned by a holy and sin-hating God, and eagerly and anxiously asked the all- important question:

“What must I do to be saved?”

At this point, a part of the address which he had heard forcibly recurred to his mind and greatly increased his anxiety. It was to this effect:

“Not only is it impossible in the past to find anything to merit acceptance, it is equally impossible now to do anything which can secure your acquittal at God’s bar. You have sinned, and present obedience could never atone for the past.

“The law of God condemns you for the evil you have already done, and you have no power to undo it. If you sin more, you increase the burden of your guilt; could you sin no more, you would not diminish it. Your tears, your prayers, your struggles, can never take away one jot of it; and were Jehovah to set aside His law, and offer to save you if you did one good work, you must inevitably perish; for no work can be regarded by Him as good unless it proceed from love; and so long as you are unconverted, you do nothing from love to God.”

On thinking over this, dismay seized hold of his soul; for the last prop on which he was resting was taken from him. He had thought that though he had done nothing good in the past, he might yet be able to secure God’s favor and forgiveness by obedience to the law in the future. But on comparing the preacher’s remark with the Word of God, he found that –

“The law that shows the sinner’s guilt condemns him to his face.”

A mountain-load of guilt oppressed his conscience. The Word of God rang in his ears:

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (Ezek. 18:20).

“The wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 6:23).

The dark thunder-clouds of God’s wrath appeared to him about to burst on his spirit, and he was helpless and unable to avert the awful consequences.

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” was the cry of his heart.

He perceived that all hope of salvation by his own works, prayers, or reformation, was entirely out of the question, and he eagerly studied the Scriptures to learn how safety was to be obtained. He saw from them that the law demanded satisfaction for the sins he had committed, and unless a “ransom” were found, he must perish eternally.

With joy and wonder he read such passages of Scripture as the following:

“Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom.” (Job 33:24).

This was what he was eagerly wanting. What was the “ransom” provided by God? Was it adequate to meet his wants? in awe and astonishment he read these wonderful words:

“For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.” (1 Tim. 2:5, 6).

“Gave Himself a ransom for all.” “Himself!” O, what love! “A ransom for all.” therefore for me!

`He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” (Isa. 53:5).

“For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:21).

The Spirit of God pressed home the truth to his heart, and he was filled with unutterable joy and gratitude. The whole plan of redemption came up before him like a flash of lightning, and he could not refrain giving vent to his joy.

He could not now help loving God, as he saw Him thus revealed in the gift and death of Jesus. Now, there was no reason to fear Him, as He was his best and truest Friend “a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” He could now say, with an overflowing heart –

“Death and the curse were in my cup,

O Christ, ‘twas full for Thee!

But Thou hast drained the last dark drop –

‘Tis empty now for me.

That bitter cup, love drank it up

Left but the love for me.”

Unsaved reader, you expect to be saved and go to heaven, don’t you? What is the reason of your hope? Peter, in his first Epistle, says: “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear (reverence).” (1 Peter 3:15).

Does it spring from the thought that though you may have “slipped sometimes,” you are as good as your neighbors? If so, I say, Never mind your neighbors at present. You admit that you have ‘slipped sometimes” – that means, that you have committed sin, and are therefore guilty in the sight of God – and, according to His Word, you are on the way to hell.

If you had committed only one sin, that sin would constitute you a sinner; and the word of the living God has gone forth.

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (Ezek. 18:20). It is not: The soul that commits many or great sins shall die, but “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

Take a retrospective view of the past. Think once again! Don’t you remember sins committed by you in the past – even from your boyhood or girlhood? There is a time coming when they shall be exhibited to view before an assembled universe.

“There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known.” (Luke 12:2).

Do you think that your good actions will counterbalance your bad ones? If so, follow the young man’s example of whom I have written. Write all your supposed good deeds on paper, and apply the test, “Was this done from love to God?” and you will find that not one of them was performed with such a motive.

“They that are in the flesh (unsaved) cannot please God.” (Rom. 8:8).

“Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” (Heb. 11:6).

Do not cling to the hope-which the young man clung to-that you can do anything to merit the favor of God. The law has been broken by you. It brings you in guilty. YOU ARE CONDEMNED ALREADY. Sentence has already been passed upon you.

“He that believeth not, is condemned already.” (John 3:18).

O, dear unsaved reader, what an awful doom lies before you! The One who has condemned you, though “long-suffering and slow to anger,” will “by no means clear the guilty.”

But is there no way of escape for you, O fellow-sinner? Must the awful sentence, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,” be passed upon you? Must you be forever banished from peace, joy, and happiness? Must your eternal destiny be one of unutterable woe and anguish?

If so, there would be no use in penning these lines; it would only be aggravating your misery and intensifying your anguish. But, thank God! A way of escape has been opened, and you may be saved even as you read this book.

There is “good news” for you! The free and full forgiveness of all your sins is proclaimed to you through the finished work of the Lord Jesus (Acts 13:38-39).

“Jesus, the just, has died

Died for the sinner’s sin;

Justice is satisfied,

Hasten and enter in.”

All barriers are now removed. Sin has been judged. The ransom has been paid. The penalty has been borne, and God invites you to take eternal life as a free gift, and to rejoice in the truth of God to thee.

“I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” (Isa. 43:25).

O Christian, Tell of Jesus

O! tell of Him and spare not;

Though devils smite your lips,

And all the light seems circled

In the hate of hell’s eclipse.

O! tell of Him to thousands;

Some yearning heart like mine

Shall hear and come to Jesus,

And prove He is divine.

Yes, tell of Jesus seeking

The lost in sin’s highway,

Their load on Calvary bearing,

And letting justice slay.

Then tell of Jesus risen,

The same in glory’s height,

More souls from heaven seeking

And flooding earth with light.

Tell, and the parched hearts drinking

The life-draft as they die,

Shall rise and sing their praises

In realms beyond the sky.

Until the “shout” long promised

Shall call us hence away,

And we with all redeemed ones

Shall praise through endless day.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” (Rom. 1:16).

Who Loved Me

It would seem that the first thing I have to do is to cultivate a consciousness of God’s love for me, that most amazing fact, and to be sure of it always in the Lord Jesus Christ. If I can only retain my grasp of it, it will invest my life with wondrous dignity, and value; it will sustain me in duty, and comfort me in sorrow, and take out of my heart panic and fear. It will inspire to all that is high and worthy, and prevent me from flinging away or despising the consciousness of my precious portion in Christ.

“Who... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” (Rom. 8:39).

His Mercy Endureth Forever: Psalm 136

This sweet refrain to the psalmist’s song of praise is no mere doctrine, but heartfelt experience. It is a good thing to establish souls in God’s own and everlasting goodness. And this is a fitting verse for us for the coming year.

As time rolls on, as circumstances change, He changes not, and His mercy endureth forever. Read for yourselves this 136th Psalm, and note that beginning with what God is Himself, and following on with His creation works, the psalmist rejoices in God’s redemption, deliverance, and restoration of His people.

Self-Surrender: Part 2

(Philippians 2)

Part 2.

We may range through the wide domain of inspiration and not find a more exquisite model of self-surrender than that which is presented to us in the opening lines of Philippians 2. It is, we may safely say, impossible for any one to breathe the holy atmosphere of such a scripture, and not be cured of the sore evils of envy and jealousy, strife and vain glory. Let us approach the marvelous picture, and, gazing intently upon it, seek to catch its inspiration.

“If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye may be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:1-8).

Here, then, is the divine remedy for envy and jealousy, strife and vain glory for self-occupation, in short, in all its hideous forms. The inspired penman introduces to our hearts the self-emptied, humble, obedient Man, Christ Jesus. Here was one who possessed all power in heaven and earth. Divine majesty and glory belonged to Him. He was God over all, blessed forever. By Him all things were made, and by Him they subsist. And yet He appeared in this world as a poor man – a servant – one who had not where to lay His head. The foxes and the fowls, the creatures of His formation, were better provided for than He, their Maker. They had a place to rest in. He had none. “He made himself of no reputation.” He never thought of Himself at all. He thought of others, cared for them, labored for them, wept with them, ministered to them; but He never did a thing for Himself.

We never find Him taking care to supply Himself with aught. His was a life of perfect self-surrender. He who was everything, made Himself nothing. He stood in perfect contrast with the first Adam, who being but a man, thought to make himself like God, and became the serpent’s slave. The Lord Jesus, who was the Most High God, took the very lowest place amongst men. It is utterly impossible that any man can ever take so low a place as Jesus. The word is, “He made Himself of no reputation.” He went so low that no one could possibly put Him lower.

“He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

And, be it observed, that the cross is here viewed as the consummation of a life of obedience – the completion of a work of self-surrender. It is what we may call, to use a Levitical term, the burnt-offering aspect of the death of Christ, rather than the sin-offering. True it is, most blessedly true, that the selfsame act which consummated a life of obedience, did also put away sin; but in the passage now before us, sin-bearing is not so much the thought as self-surrender. Jesus gave up all. He laid aside His glory, and came down into this poor world; and when He came, He eschewed all human pomp and grandeur, and became a poor man. His parents were poor. They were only able to procure the lowest grade of sacrifice which the law admitted for the poor; not a bullock, not a lamb, but a pair of turtle doves. (Compare Lev. 15:29; Luke 3:24).

He Himself worked, and was known as a carpenter. Nor are we to miss the moral force of this fact, by saying that every Jew was brought up to some trade. Our Lord Jesus Christ did really take a low place. The very town where He was brought up was a proverb of reproach. He was called “The Nazarene.” And it was asked, with a sneer of contempt, “Is not this the carpenter?”

He was a root out of a dry ground. He had no form, nor comeliness, no beauty in man’s eye. He was the despised, neglected, self-emptied, meek, and lowly man, from first to last. He gave up all, even to life itself. In a word, His self-surrender was complete. And now, mark the result:

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The blessed Lord Jesus took the very lowest place; but God has given Him the very highest. He made Himself nothing; but God has made Him everything. He said, “I am a worm and no man;” but God has set Him Head over all. He went into the very dust of death; but God has placed Him on the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.

What does all this teach us? It teaches us that the way to get up is to go down. This is a grand lesson, and one which we very much need to learn. It would effectually deliver us from envy and jealousy, from strife and vain glory, from self-importance and self-occupation. God will assuredly exalt those who, in the spirit and mind of Christ, take the low place; and, on the other hand, He will, as assuredly, abase those who seek to be somebody.

O! to be nothing! This is true liberty, true happiness, true moral elevation. And then what intense power of attraction in one who makes nothing of himself!

And, on the other hand, how repulsive is a pushing, forward, elbowing, self-exalting spirit! How utterly unworthy of one bearing the name of Him who made Himself of no reputation! May we not set it down as a fixed truth that ambition cannot possibly live in the presence of one who emptied Himself? No doubt. An ambitious Christian is a flagrant contradiction.

But there are other samples of self-surrender presented to us in this exquisite Philippians 2; inferior no doubt to the divine model at which we have been gazing, for in this, as in all things else, Jesus must have the pre-eminence. Still, though inferior and imperfect, they are deeply interesting and valuable to us.

Look at Paul. See how deeply he had drunk into his Master’s spirit of self-surrender. Hearken to the following accents from one who, naturally, would have allowed none to outstrip him in his career of ambition.

“Yea,” he says, “and if I be poured forth (as a drink offering) upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.” (Phil 2:17).

This is uncommonly fine. Paul was ready to be nothing – to be spent – to be poured forth as a libation upon the Philippians’ sacrifice. It mattered not to him who presented the sacrifice, or who performed the service, provided the thing was done. Does not this put some of us to the blush?

How little do we know of this excellent spirit! How prone we are to attach importance to work if we ourselves have aught to do with it! How little able to joy and rejoice with others in their sacrifice and service! Our work, our preaching, our writings, have an interest in our view quite different from those of any one else. In a word, self, self, detestable self, creeps in, even in that which seems to be the service of Christ.

We are drawn to those who think well of us and of our work, and retire from those who think otherwise. All this needs to be judged. It is unlike Christ, and unworthy of those who bear His holy name. Paul had so learned Christ as to be able to rejoice in the work and service of others as well as in his own; and even where Christ was preached of contention, he could rejoice.

(To be Continued)

It'll End in the Glory

As I was returning from a stroll in the country, enjoying the quiet beauty of the scenery, I met an aged man, who trudged wearily along the dusty road, leaning upon his stick. Beside him jogged along his old donkey, drawing a roughly-made cart. A picturesque group they were, as they came slowly up the hill where the lengthening shadows were falling, and as they drew nearer, I was struck by the look of peace which the face of the old man wore, tired and worn though he was. I accosted him with a friendly “good evening,” and he bade “Betsy,” his donkey, stop, while he courteously answered the few questions which I asked about the surrounding country. His speech was as cheerful as his face. At length I said,

“Well, I suppose you have not many more times to travel along this dusty road; the end must be drawing near?”

“Yes,” he replied, “very near; but it’ll end in the glory.”

“Glory!” said I; “with whom?”

“Glory with Christ, young man glory with Christ.”

“It seems very strange,” I said, “that you should speak so confidently of glory. Is it possible to be so sure of such a wonderful thing?”

Advancing a step, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and exclaimed,

“Young man, none of those new notions for me, for I’ve got hold of Christ. I get up in the morning thinking about Christ; all day long I feel full of Christ; and when I go to bed at night, I lay and think about Christ.”

His face beamed with joy, as, erect and firm, he rang out his gloriously certain confession of faith. The assurance that I was one with him in his simple faith, and one with him in Christ, drew from him a hearty “Thank God.”

How quick the man was to shelter himself behind Christ at the faintest suspicion of a “new notion.” What a shelter! What a place of safety!

New and strange notions are indeed abroad. Are we equally ready to present Christ as the answer to all? Are our hearts thus occupied with Him?

I would say to every one who may read this paper, Are you living in the happy confidence of the end for you being “glory with Christ?”

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” (Col. 3:1).

“The God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” (1 Peter 5:10).

The Perfect Man

The Lord Jesus Christ was the only perfect man that ever trod this earth. He was all perfect – perfect in thought, perfect in word, perfect in action. In Him every moral quality met in divine, and, therefore, perfect proportion. No one feature preponderated. In Him were exquisitely blended a majesty which overawed, and a gentleness which gave perfect ease, in His presence.

The scribes and the Pharisees met His withering rebuke, while the poor Samaritan, and “the woman that was a sinner,” found themselves unaccountably, yet irresistibly, attracted to Him. No one feature displaced another, for all was in fair and comely proportion. This may be traced in every scene of His perfect life. He could say, in reference to five thousand hungry people,

“Give ye them to eat;” and, when they were filled, He could say,

“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”

The benevolence and the economy are both perfect, and neither interferes with the other. Each shines in its own proper sphere. He could not send unsatisfied hunger away; neither could He suffer a single fragment of God’s creatures to be wasted.

He would meet, with a full and liberal hand, the need of the human family, and, when that was done, He would carefully treasure up every atom. The self-same hand that was widely open to every form of human need, was firmly closed against all prodigality. There was nothing niggardly, nor yet extravagant in the character of the perfect, the heavenly Man.

O my reader, let us carefully study the divine picture set before us in “the life of the Man Christ Jesus.” How refreshing and strengthening to “the inward man” to be occupied with Him who was perfect in all His ways, and who “in all things must have the pre-eminence.”

God Himself Our Comforter

Have you never observed, when a little child has been in very deep distress, if a stranger has attempted to compose and comfort him, that all his efforts have only increased the anguish of the child, but that as soon as he has heard his father’s voice, and felt his father’s embrace, his sorrows have been hushed, and a smile of gladness has lighted up his countenance?

Child of God! your heavenly Father will not leave it to strangers to comfort you. He will not suffer a servant’s hand rudely to touch His child.

God Himself shall wipe away all tears from your eyes.

And Is It So!

And is it so! we now are sons of God.

The blest co-heirs of His eternal Son!

Is this the love of God in Christ made known,

And which to know is heaven on earth begun!

And is it so! we shall be like His Son!

Shall we His image wear in scenes of light.

Where love supreme is shed on all who dwell

Within those heavenly courts of glory bright!

And is it so! we e’er shall dwell with Him!

Shall we forever gaze on that blest face

Forever in its radiant glory read

The story of redeeming love and grace!

O! matchless love, O! love beyond compare,

Beyond all breadth and length and depth and height

Father, this love of Thine is now revealed,

And in the Saviour’s face shines forth in light.

The objects of this sov’reign love are we,

Who once were lost and guilty – far from God,

And doomed to death and shame and endless woe,

But now brought nigh through Jesus’ precious blood.

Through sea of woe, and storm of wrath divine,

Thy holy soul has passed, O Jesus, Lord,

That we might know the love no tongue can tell,

God’s love made known in Thee, the living Word.

O’er all that scene of malice dark and deep.

Of hate, malign, inspired by demon power.

Thy gracious love shone out in glorious light,

Amid the darkness of that darkest hour.

Unquenched Thy love, O Lord, by waves of death,

Or streams of human hatred here below;

Unchecked by power of Satan’s mighty hosts,

Or wrath of God – that cup of unmixed woe.

That awful cup, Lord Jesus, Thou didst drain,

Our mighty load of sins didst bear alone,

When, as a Victim, Thou didst take our place,

To bear the curse, and for our sins atone.

But now Thy woes and sufferings all are o’er;

The storm is hushed, the tempest clouds are gone;

The mighty work is done, and Thou art risen,

And seated high upon the Father’s throne.

And soon, Lord Jesus, Thou wilt come again;

Soon, soon, shall we Thy glorious face behold,

And in its glory read the story sweet

Of endless love – yet love that ne’er grows old.

O sinner, wouldst thou know that heart of love?

The heart that bled to put away thy sin?

Behold, He knocks! He bids thee open the door.

That love may tell its own sweet tale within.

O! haste, O! haste, dear soul, and let Him in;

’Tis Christ the Lord who seeks thy heart to fill;

He knocks, He waits, He knocks again, and calls,

“Whoever thirsts may drink whoever will.”

Who Will Be Taken to Meet the Lord, and Who Will Be Left? Part 2

Part 2.

But are there not many who even profess to be ministers or servants of the Lord Jesus who do not look for His return? There are, and we will now turn to the words of the Lord to such,

“If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth His coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for Him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt. 24:48-51).

Thus, to say even in the heart, “My Lord delayeth His coming,” and not to look for the Lord Jesus, is given by the Lord as a mark of the evil servant – that he is not a Christian at all – and when Jesus comes in the air, he will not be taken, but left behind for judgment. This brings us to the striking parable of the ten virgins, which parable brings our subject to such an issue.

In the beginning all go out to meet the bridegroom, wise and foolish. Those who have oil, and those who have none; those who were saved, and those who were not. For the oil is the figure of the Spirit; and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. Such was Christianity in the beginning. All took that profession, whether true or false, to look for, and wait for, the Bridegroom from heaven – not Christ as Judge to them, but as Bridegroom. We have seen this everywhere in the epistles. While Christ tarried, they all slumbered and slept. Now, in these days, the very midnight of forgetfulness of Him, the cry has gone forth,

“Behold the Bridegroom, go ye out to meet Him.”

These words are being fulfilled at this very moment. The Holy Spirit is presenting the person of Christ, the loving Bridegroom; and the Spirit is moving Christians to go out and meet Christ. Sad indeed that we should have to go out again from that world that crucified and still hates our Lord. Are you being thus moved to meet the Lord? or do you say, Nay, I am not sure that I have oil in the vessel? Take care how you delay. Mark how suddenly and unexpectedly to those who have no oil, He comes, and the door is shut.

“And they that were ready went in with Him... and the door was shut.” Then how sad the cry,

“Lord, Lord, open unto us.” And, O, those words from Him,

“Verily, I say unto you, I know you not.”

Do you notice that these very persons were not only professors, but those who got mixed up with the movement, they, in a half sleepy way, arose and trimmed their lamps.

Is this your condition? Are you ready to meet the Lord? Have you believed God? Have you come to Him, owning your sins in self-judgment? Have you the Holy Spirit dwelling in you? O, think of those mere professors being shut out at last!

Neither will it do to rest on religious activities; you may be doing great things according to human thoughts – greatly praised by your fellowmen; you may be said to have done great good in your day; and yet lost forever – left behind for judgment. O, how many will find themselves deceived when it is forever too late! Jesus says,

“Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in Thy Name? and in Thy Name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me ye who work iniquity.” (Matt. 7:22-23).

How few think of these words of Jesus! Yet it will surely be so. Not a few, but many, will thus be rejected. We are assured all will be left, and given over to strong delusion, who do not receive the truth of the person and work of Christ.

We will now, in conclusion, just point out those scriptures which prove this,

When He comes “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ... When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” (2 Thess. 1:6-10).

Thus all believers have been taken to be with the Lord; and when He appears in glory and for judgment, He shall be seen and admired in all them that believe. This is very blessed, and takes in every one on earth who has received the truth.

But in the next chapter, the doom of every soul who has heard the gospel, and rejected it, is equally certain.

“Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thess. 2:10-12).

Thus it is most certain that all, without a single exception, who have been chosen to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth, will be caught up to meet the Lord; and that the “they” who say “peace and safety,” when sudden destruction cometh, will be all those who have not received the truth. How solemn this is; and we know not the moment when He shall come to take us to be with Himself.

Beloved reader, are you ready? Can you say,

“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood”? (Rev. 1:5). If so, you will be glad to hear His words,

“Surely, I come quickly.” (Rev. 22:20).

O What a God Is Ours!

“HE healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. HE telleth the number of the stars; HE calleth them all by their names.” (Psa. 147:3-4).

What a vivid but beauteous contrast is brought before us in the above! The very ONE who “telleth the number of the stars; and Who calleth them all by their names,” is the very ONE who “healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

That is the one, dear fellow believer, of whom our thoughts once were:

“I knew Thee that Thou art a hard man, reaping where Thou has not sown, and gathering where Thou has not strawed: and I was afraid?” (Matt. 25:24-25). How different are our thoughts of Him now that He has.

“Won our hearts, once worse than naught,” and made good to us those words:

“Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes He, being rich, became poor, in order that ye by the poverty of such a one as He might be enriched.” As an illustration of what the above Psalm brings before us let us turn to a precious and touching scene in Luke’s account of our blessed Lord (Luke 7:11-15).

“It came to pass the day after that He (JESUS) went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him and much people. Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, Weep not.’ And He came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And He said, ‘Young man, I say unto thee arise.’ And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.” How exquisitely human, and withal how unmistakably divine!

Touchingly indeed, yet in how few words, is the deep loneliness of this woman’s condition presented to us by the Spirit. The dead man was “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” The heart of JESUS was arrested, and then He arrested the bier of the dead young man. His compassions always went before His mercies. It is often said that the heart moves the hand.

Do we not prize a blessing that comes to us in that way? Salvation came gushing forth from the heart of Christ. To say that the cross of Christ is the source of our blessedness, would be slandering the heart of God. God loved the world, and sent His Son;

Christ’s heart went before His hand. A blessing from Christ is given, as Jeremiah 32:41 says, “with His whole heart and His whole soul He came and touched the bier.”

He was Undefilable, or He must have gone to the priest to cleanse Himself after touching it. Did Christ ever want the washings of the Sanctuary? He might have restored the young man without touching him, but He had God’s relationship to iniquity. He not only stood apart from the actuality of sin, but from the possibility of it.

“And He delivered him to his mother.”

Let me be bold and say, the Lord does not save you that you may serve Him. To suggest the thought would be to qualify the beauty of grace. He did not say:

“I give you life that you may spend it for Me.”

Let His love constrain you to spend and be spent for Him, but he never stands before your heart and says:

“Now I will forgive you if you will serve Me.”

Surely He had purchased him, yet He gave him back to his mother! Yet you and I go back to the world, and seek to make ourselves happy and important in it. Shame on us! Ah! throw the cords of love round your heart, and keep it fast by JESUS! Amen.

Wherever we follow Thee, Lord,

Admiring, adoring, we see

That love which was stronger than death,

Flow out without limit, and free.

Rejoice With Me: Part 1

These touching words unfold to us the deep joy of the Lord Himself, in the matter of our salvation. This is not sufficiently seen or thought of. We are apt to forget, that God has His own especial joy in receiving back to His bosom of love, the poor wanderer – a joy so peculiar that He can say, “Rejoice with Me” – “Let us eat and be merry” – “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad.” He does not say, “Let him eat and be merry.” This would never do. God has His own joy in redemption. This is the sweet lesson taught in Luke 15.

The shepherd was glad to find his sheep. The woman was glad to find her piece of silver. The father was glad to embrace his son. God is glad to get back the lost one. The tide of joy that rolls through the hosts above, when a sinner returns, finds its deep, exhaustless source in the eternal bosom of God.

“Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luke 15:10).

No one has such deep joy in the salvation of a soul, as God Himself.

The thought of this is most soul-subduing, and heart-melting. Nothing can exceed it. It gives a full, clear, and convincing answer to Satan’s lie, in the garden, and to all the dark suspicion of our hearts. Who could listen for a moment, to those accents, “Let us be merry,” issuing from the Father’s lips – the Father’s heart, and continue to doubt His perfect love?

How could the prodigal have had a doubt, in his heart, when he saw that there was not one in all the house so glad to get him back as the Father Himself. Surely, the words, “Let us be merry” must have fallen upon his heart with peculiar power. He could never have presumed to hope for such a reception. To be let in, at all – to be made a hired servant – to get any place in the house, would have fully equaled his highest expectation. But O! to hear the Father say, “Let us be merry!” This truly, was beyond all human thought. Yet these were the Father’s veritable words.

It was really true that He was glad to get back the poor undeserving spendthrift. He could not tell why, but so it was. The Father had embraced and kissed him, even in his rags. Without a single upbraiding word, He had received him to His bosom. At the very moment when he was full of doubt as to whether he would be let in, at all, he found the Father on his neck. And, as if to crown all, and banish every trace of doubt and every shadow of fear, he hears the Father’s cry, “Let us eat and be merry.”

Reader, pause and think of this. Think deeply of it. Remember, God is glad to get back to Himself the very vilest of the vile. A returning sinner makes God happy. Wondrous thought! profound mystery of love! A poor sinner can minister to the joy of God! O! who can cherish a doubt or harbor a fear, in the presence of such grace? May the sense of it fill our reader’s heart with sweetest confidence and peace!

Believing in Jesus, and Believing on Him

Romans 3:26; 4:24.

There are many who are really looking to Jesus, and believing in Him, and yet they have, deep down in their hearts, a sort of dread of meeting God. It is not that they doubt their salvation, or that they are not really saved. By no means. They are saved, inasmuch as they are looking to Christ by faith; and all who so look are saved by Him with an everlasting salvation. All this is most blessedly true; but still there is this latent fear or dread of God, and a shrinking from death.

They know that Jesus is friendly to them, inasmuch as He died for them; but they do not see clearly the friendship of God as expressed in the act of His raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Thus it is, we feel persuaded with hundreds of true saints of God. They do not see God as the condemner of sin and the Justifier of the believing sinner.

They are looking to Christ on the cross, to screen them from God as a Judge, instead of looking at God as a Justifier, in raising up Christ from the dead. Jesus “was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification.” Our sins are forgiven; our indwelling sin, or evil nature, is condemned or set aside. It has no existence before God. It is in us, but He does not see us in it. He sees us only in a risen Christ; and we are called to reckon ourselves dead, and, by the power of God’s Spirit, to mortify our members, to deny and subdue the evil nature which still dwells in us, and will dwell until we have passed out of our present condition, and find our place forever with the Lord.

Keep the Shutters Open

As I was sitting in my room one evening, with the light shining brightly, and the shutters closed, I fancied I heard a cry in the distance.

I was in a large country home, quite surrounded by fields and woods. I listened, and again I heard a voice, but I could not tell what it was; then again nearer, and soon I could make out the cry, and it made my blood run cold as I distinctly heard,

“I am lost, I am lost.”

Was I dreaming, or was this a practical joke being played on me? But again came the shrill cry,

“I am lost, I am lost.”

I hurried down stairs, and with a lantern went out into the dark field, guided by the voice, and soon found that it was a woman who was indeed lost. She lived in a town three miles off; night had come upon her as she passed on her road home through the woods; she had missed her way, had wandered fruitlessly about in search of it, and in despair thought she must lie down all night in the field, when she saw a light in the distance, for there was just one room that evening in that country house, where the shutters had not been closed, and thus the light was shining brightly into the dark night.

What a boon was that light to the poor frightened woman! She at once made her way towards it, crying out as she went,

“I am lost, I am lost.”

How truly glad she was to see me, and how thankful I was to be able to point her to the road, yes, and to walk with her and put her right through the wood, with a lantern to last her the whole way home!

Now, dear fellow-believers, it is for you that I write this, trusting that God may apply it to your consciences: are there not many poor souls with whom you come in contact, who are spiritually in the same condition as this poor woman, seeking to find the road home in the darkness? And how often the Christian’s shutters are closed, so that none of the joyous light that we have for ourselves shines out to these poor ones in the dark!

The Apostle Paul in his letter, (Phil. 2:15), says, “In the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.”

Now to be a half-hearted Christian, means among whom ye do not shine as lights in the world.

It is not a question of our salvation, for this of course depends upon Christ’s work for us, and all who truly believe on Him, will most surely get home to heaven; but the difference lies in this, that those who have shone for Him down here, will have an “abundant entrance,” whereas those who have been content to keep their Christianity more or less to themselves, will be “saved so as by fire.”

Dear Christian reader, let me ask you a plain question, are you shining for Jesus? Are the shutters kept open or shut? You say, perhaps, “I find it so difficult to show my colors.”

So does every Christian, but tell the Lord Jesus this; own to Him your utter helplessness, and find how He will help you, if He only sees that you have any real desire to shine for Him in this dark scene; for He gives more grace, and in this matter as in all others, you have but to “taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.”

Even the apostles in olden times both felt and owned that they had no strength of their own to enable them to shine for Jesus; for they prayed “that with all boldness they might speak the Word,” and God answered their prayer.

What great blessings we do miss in getting for ourselves, and giving to others, when we keep the shutters closed so that no light for Jesus shines out to poor wanderers in the dark! Far too prone are we to forget what our condition was but a short time ago, thus described in Ephesians 5:8,

“Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.”

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16).

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” (Gal. 6:10).

Let Us Awake

“Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.” (Rom. 13:11).

The day of God’s longsuffering is rapidly drawing to a close, and the day of wrath is at hand. The wheels of divine government are moving onward with a rapidity truly soul-subduing; human affairs are working to a point. There is an awful crisis approaching; precious souls are rushing forward along the surface of the stream of time into the boundless ocean of eternity. In a word, “the end of all things is at hand.” (1 Peter 4:7). Now, seeing these things are so, let us ask each other:

How are we affected thereby? What are we doing in the midst of the scene which surrounds us? How are we discharging our fourfold responsibility to the Lord, to the church, to perishing sinners, to our own souls?

Burning With Pure Oil

In a devoted Christian family, who were walking in the fear of God, the daily reading was one morning in Exodus 27. The twentieth verse was dwelt upon. The parents talked together about the oil that was used in the vessels of the tabernacle, and looked up passages in the New Testament that explained its meaning and how it could be applied.

When the reading was over and the older children had left the room, the youngest child, a boy of five years, was detained, as was the usual custom, to be taught some simple verses by his mother, and to pray with her. The parents had not supposed that this child would understand what they had been talking about that morning, or that he would feel the slightest interest in a subject which they thought far beyond his age. However, when he had learned his verse, he kneeled down to pray, and in the midst of his prayer he paused, then he exclaimed earnestly,

“O, my God, make me to burn this day with pure oil.”

The morning lesson had not been lost upon him. And his earnest petition to God was not lost. For, throughout the day of his life, he was a devoted Christian. Thus was the earnest cry of that little child heard and answered. God’s Word had found its entrance in his soul, and it did its blessed work.

What an incentive this case should be to young Christian parents to maintain the “family altar,” in this day of luke-warmness, when too many feel that they cannot spare the time for this. God’s rich blessing is upon it; and sorrow will be to those who neglect it.

And are there few, or many, young Christians who are seeking daily to “burn with pure oil”? Such as are, will be lights in the darkness, and will be “polished shafts” in the quiver of the Lord.

Correspondence: Priesthoods of Christ; Atone/Redeem; 1 John 5:16; Matt. 24:34

Question: What is the difference between the Aaronic and the Melchisedec Priesthood of Christ?

Answer: At present Christ is exercising a priesthood that takes the character of Aaron’s priesthood. That is, He “is able to succor them that are tempted, and from Him we obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Christ could not be a priest of Aaron’s line, because He is not from the priestly trible, Levi.

Christ’s priesthood is eternal and abiding, mystically symbolized by Melchisedec in Genesis. In the coming Millennial day, Christ will come forth in the glory of royal priesthood as King in Zion. This will be His proper Melchisedec priesthood, both as to order and character.

Question: What is the difference between atone and redeem?

Answer: Sins are atoned for. Persons or things are redeemed. Christ has atoned for our sins. He has redeemed us; and He has redeemed the inheritance. He has done both by the same precious blood shedding, blessed forever be His holy Name!

Question: Please explain “a sin unto death.” (1 John 5:16).

Answer: In this verse it is not a question of the soul’s salvation, but of the death of the body under the governmental dealings of God.

Question: Please explain “generation” in Matthew 24:34.

Answer: The word “generation” is constantly used in Scripture in a moral sense. It is not to be confined to a certain number of persons actually living at the time, but takes in the race. In the passage before us, it simply applies to the Jewish race; but the wording is such as to leave the question of time entirely open, so that the heart might ever be kept in readiness for the Lord’s coming. There is nothing in Scripture to interfere with the constant expectation of that grand event. On the contrary, every parable, every figure, every allusion is so worded as to warrant each one to look for the Lord’s return in his own lifetime, and yet to leave ample margin for the elongation of the time according to the longsuffering grace of a Savior God.

Correspondence: Matt. 7:6; Rom. 11:26; Psa. 138:2; 1 Cor. 15:29; Acts 2:16-17

Question: In what way can the Christian cast his pearls before swine, or give the holy things unto dogs?

Answer: Matthew 7:6: By arguing and discussing the precious things of God with unconverted men, or pressing truth, precious in itself, on those who are not exercised about it. We need to bear a testimony in this world to those around, but it is to be in the spirit of meekness, and with prayer that we may minister the right word. (2 Tim. 2:23-26).

Question: What does “All Israel shall be saved” mean? (Rom. 11:26).

Answer: It means that Israel as a NATION will be saved. It does not mean that every Israelite will be saved. All of them, as well as all Gentiles, who have died without Christ, are lost for eternity, for they have died in their sins. Israel is to be gathered into Palestine again, and all the ungodly ones will be sifted out from them, and the rest will have the national place and be twelve tribes again. (Ezek. 38; Rev. 7; Heb. 8:8).

Question: Please explain Psalm 138:2: “Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name.”

Answer: The absolute authority of the Word is seen in this verse. Jehovah has made His Word great above all His renown. We must therefore receive and honor the written Word above all the general teaching about Him: above everything else.

Question: Please explain 1 Corinthians 15:29.

Answer: The 29th verse must be read in connection with verses 16-18, verses 20-28 being a wonderful parenthesis. The word “for” has often the sense of “in view of.” God was pleased to let the church, during the first three centuries, be sorely subject to fearful persecutions. To be baptized was to take a step, with nothing in this world but death in view, or, as we say, death before them. They were baptized unto a crucified Saviour baptized into His death, and, so to speak, buried with Him in baptism. And why should they take such a place, with nothing but a cruel death before them? But Christ is risen, and this altered everything else. What should they do which are baptized for (or in view of) the dead, if the dead rise not at all? It has been said, Why should they fill up the ranks that were being swept off by the most cruel deaths? Paul then seems to refer to this in his own history. But why do this, if there be no resurrection? Truly they were “as sheep for the slaughter.”

Question: Is there any authority in the Word of God for women preaching? Does Acts 2:16,17 give any?

Answer: 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 and 1 Timothy 2:12, distinctly forbid women speaking in public, or taking a place as teacher or preacher to men. We never find a woman speaking publicly in Scripture. Mary carried a message to the brethren (John 20:17, 18). Philip had four daughters that prophesied, but it must have been privately. Women were forbidden to be speakers in the assembly. The quotation from Joel’s prophecy will be fulfilled in the day of Israel’s restoration. The Apostle said, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;” that is, it was of the same kind. It was not drunkenness as they supposed.

My Heart Is So Hard

Sarah A. was led to consider her fallen state, and solemn prospects for eternity, and her convictions and distress were deep and long continued. She was regular in her attendance to the preaching, and diligent in searching the Scriptures, she cried earnestly to God for mercy, and was always ready to listen to any Christian who would converse with her on the solemn question of how she was to be saved. For months her distress continued, amounting sometimes almost to agony; and nothing that was addressed to her seemed to afford the least relief. Her case became the subject of frequent and anxious conference among those who were laboring for the Lord; and often did they unite in prayer on her behalf; but still deliverance was delayed. The constant burden of Sarah’s complaint was the hardness of her heart.

“My heart is so hard,” she would say; “I see what a sinner I have been, but I cannot feel it. I believe all you tell me, but though my sins stare me in the face, I cannot shed a tear; my heart is as hard as a stone. What is to become of me, poor, wretched, hardened sinner that I am?”

Often and often was she told that we are not justified by feeling, but by faith: that even faith justifies only as it receives Christ, and trusts in Him, in whom all the saving virtue dwells; while she, on the other hand, was trying to make a Saviour of the softened, tender feelings after which she craved. I remember saying to her:

“Hardhearted as you are, it was for such as you that Jesus died. Come to Him as you are. Bring your hard heart to Him. Behold the Lamb of God. One believing-look to Jesus will do more to soften your heart, than pouring over your sins and impenitence will do in a year. You wish for penitential feelings as a warrant for looking to Jesus and trusting in His precious blood; but depend upon it, if ever you have such feelings as you desire, they will be the effect of beholding Him by faith, of believing God’s record of His Son.”

But all seemed to be in vain. While actually holding up before her the love of God in the gift of Jesus, and the love of Jesus in dying on the cross for His very foes, her attention would be fixed, and the hope awakened in one’s breast that she was drinking in the good news. But no sooner did the sounds cease, than she would reply, with such a look of despondency:

“It is all true, but I can feel nothing; my heart is as hard as a stone!”

One day, when we had almost become accustomed to her despairing looks and accents, we were all startled by hearing that Sarah was rejoicing in the Lord. No time was lost in visiting her, to hear from herself how this change had come to pass. Its reality was apparent in her countenance, and in her whole demeanor. Her account was as follows:

“Last night was a dreadful night. Lying awake, and thinking of my sins, wondering how it was that I could neither feel them nor get rid of them, it seemed to me that God was quite giving me up to the hardness of my heart, and that there was nothing for me but the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched. What a night I had! Towards morning I got upon my knees, and began to cry to God. How long I continued I cannot tell; but what the Bible says about God so loving the world as to give His Son, and about Jesus dying on the cross, came to my mind, and somehow I got to thinking of His love, and I could think of nothing else. Before I was aware of it my heart melted, and I found myself weeping to think of what Jesus had suffered for my sins. My tears flowed so fast, and yet they were not so much tears of sorrow as of joy. My load was gone, and I could only praise my Saviour, and weep before Him, that He should have died for such a wretch as me. What love! To die upon the cross for such a wretch as me!”

Such was her account; and, as she gave it, she who had never shed a tear when bemoaning the hardness of her heart, wept profusely as she dwelt upon the love of Christ, exclaiming, again and again:

“O the precious blood of Christ. That precious blood! It avails even for me!”

Dear reader, are you, like this poor woman, looking into yourself for some softening of heart, for some deeper sense of sin, before you trust your soul to Jesus? May you learn by her case, that the only way to have your hard heart softened, is to look to Jesus as you are.

“Behold the Lamb of God!” It was for sinners such as you that His blood was shed; and His “blood cleanseth us from all sin.”

Nothing but Thy blood, O Jesus,

Could relieve the sinner’s smart;

Nothing else from guilt release us,

Nothing else could melt the heart.

Sense of sin doth only harden,

All the while it works alone;

But the grace that seals our pardon,

Soon dissolves a heart of stone.

I Know Something Better Than That

“You know,” said a Christian lady who was visiting a young girl, “that Jesus died for us”?

“Yes,” said the girl, “but I know something better than that; I know He died for me!”

A chord was struck in the visitor’s heart which instantly vibrated to the touch of those important words. They were friends in a moment and forever. The dear uniting name of Jesus was precious to both. They were one in Christ Jesus. The simple yet strong faith that delights in these words, is sweet to the heart, and brings us near to Himself.

“Jesus died for me!” There is no truth more plain in Scripture, and none more assuring or comforting to the heart. The cross is the fullest expression of His love, and the foundation of all our blessing. Though now in glory, the Lord puts nothing between our hearts and Himself, and neither does faith.

“Ascended now in glory bright,

Life-giving Head Thou art;

Nor life, nor death, nor depth, nor height,

Thy saints and Thee can part.”

But alas, alas! are there not many for whom Jesus died, who cherish no gratitude for His love, no memorial of His death? Yet He died willingly, voluntarily, that they might be saved from endless woe. What can the Lord Himself think, what can heaven think, what can all enlightened minds think, of such unaccountable ingratitude? How unmitigated must the remorse of the ungrateful be in the hopeless depths of hell forever!

Some time ago a young man was introduced to a preacher after having listened to his discourse; and on being asked if he was a believer in Christ, he replied, in rather an offhand way:

“Of course I am, I have always believed in Him, we have no one else to believe in. He died on the cross for us.”

Without contradicting him, the preacher said, “May I ask how old you are”?

“I am seventeen,” he said.

“Well now, my dear young man, will you answer me another question? If you believe that Jesus died on the cross to save you from the pains of hell, have you ever really, when alone, knelt down and thanked Him for it?”

“No,” was his honest reply.

“Then, you must be a stranger to Him. He will say to all such, ‘I never knew you: depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity.’ Sleep not, young man, for your soul’s sake, for Jesus’ sake; sleep not until you have considered your ways and turned to the Lord. Only think, you have reached the age of seventeen, and never thanked the Lord Jesus for all He has done, that you might be pardoned and saved forever!”

But are there not many who are chargeable with the same neglect of the Lord Jesus?

Let the love of Jesus, who died for sinners, move your heart to grateful love and admiration of that blessed one. He finished the work of man’s redemption on the cross; He now rests on the throne in glory, waiting for you. He will hear your prayers, see your tears, rejoice in your faith, and listen to your praise and thanksgiving. Then tell to others,

“Jesus died for me!”

“The Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20).

Of Him and His love will we sing,

His praises our tongues shall employ

Till heavenly anthems we bring

In yonder bright regions of joy.

In What Is Our Delight?

“His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” (Psa. 1:2).

We should meditate prayerfully upon the deep mysteries of God’s truth. It is such an immense thing to have to do with the blessed God – to be eternally related to Him in such a way, and by such a means as we are, who believe in Jesus, who is “the Son of the Blessed.”

He that drinks in the nourishment of His love, so well proved as none but such sufferings could prove, shall be like “a tree planted by the rivers of water, which bringeth forth its fruit in due season.”

Rejoice with Me: Part 2

God manifested. The only thing that produces “truth in the inward parts” is the grace that imputes nothing. This is the secret of God’s power in setting hearts right with Himself. It is God’s right and privilege to come amidst sin and sinners, to come near to sinners. This may not suit a moral man; but it suits God, because He and He only can deliver out of it. Why is this picture drawn thus? To show that nothing could put the sinner beyond the reach of grace.

The prodigal was doing his own will, and this is the secret of all sin. And note, whether we are living in vice or not, we have all turned at some time or other our back on God; this is our history as men. The prodigal went forth to do his own will.

A parent’s heart will understand it. Our child sins against us – we feel it. We sin against God; and do not feel it nor do we trouble our heads that if we do not feel it, God does.

Any person who lives beyond his means, looks rich for a time; so does the sinner wasting his soul, seem happy, but he is not really, for liberty of will is just slavery to the devil.

“No one gave to him.”

There is no giving in the far country, “not even of husks.” Satan sells all, and dearly. Our souls are the price. Satan sells everything.

Would you find a giver, you must come to God. Necessity finds God out.

Self-Surrender: Part 3

Philippians 2

PART 3

Then, again, look at Paul’s son, Timothy. Hearken to the glowing testimony borne to him by the pen of inspiration.

“But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort, when I know your state. For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. But ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel.” (Phil. 2:19-22).

Here was self-surrender. Timothy naturally cared for the saints; and that, too, at a moment when all sought their own things. And yet, dear as Timothy was to Paul’s heart – valuable as such a self-denying servant must have been to him in the work of the gospel, he was willing to part with him for the sake of the church. Timothy, likewise, was willing to be separated from his invaluable friend and father in the faith, in order to ease his anxious mind in reference to the state of the Philippians. This was indeed giving “proof” of real devotedness and self-surrender. Timothy did not talk of these things; he practiced them. He did not make a parade of his doings; but Paul, by the Holy Spirit, engraved them on a tablet from which they can never be erased. This was infinitely better.

Let another praise thee, and not thyself. Timothy made nothing of himself, but Paul made a great deal of him. This is divine. The sure way to get up is to go down. Such is the law of the heavenly road.

A man who makes much of himself saves others the trouble of doing so. There is no possible use in two persons doing the same thing.

Self-importance is a noxious weed nowhere to be found in the entire range of the new creation. It is, alas! often found in the ways of those who profess to belong to that blessed and holy creation; but it is not of heavenly growth. It is of fallen nature – a weed that grows luxuriantly in the soil of this world.

The men of this age think it laudable to push and make way for themselves. A hustling, self-important, pretentious style takes with the children of this generation. But our heavenly Master was the direct opposite of all this. He who made the worlds, stooped to wash a disciple’s feet (John 13); and if we are like Him we shall do the same.

There is nothing more foreign to the thoughts of God, the mind of heaven, the spirit of Jesus, than self-importance and self-occupation. And, on the other hand, there is nothing that savors so of God, of heaven, and of Jesus, as self-surrender.

Look, once more, reader, at our picture in Philippians 2. Examine, with special care, that figure which occupies a very prominent place. It is Epaphroditus. Who was he? Was he a great preacher – a very eloquent speaker – a pre-eminently gifted brother? We are not told. But this we are told – and told right powerfully and touchingly; he was one who exhibited a lovely spirit of self-surrender. This is better than all the gifts and eloquence, power and learning, that could possibly be concentrated in any single individual. Epaphroditus was one of that illustrious class who seek to make nothing of themselves; and, as a consequence, the inspired Apostle spares no pains to exalt him. Hear how he expatiates upon the actings of this singularly attractive personage.

“Yet I supposed it necessary to send unto you Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labor, and fellow soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants.”

What a cluster of dignities! What a brilliant array of titles! How little did this dear and unpretending servant of Christ imagine that he was to have such a monument erected to his memory! But the Lord will never suffer the fruits of self-sacrifice to wither, nor the name of the self-emptied to sink into oblivion. Hence it is that the name of one who, otherwise, might never have been heard of, shines on the page of inspiration, as the brother, companion, and fellow soldier of the great apostle of the Gentiles.

But what did this remarkable man do? Did he spend a princely fortune in the cause of Christ? We are not told; but we are told what is far better – he spent himself. This is the grand point for us to seize and ponder. It was not the surrender of his fortune, merely, but the surrender of himself. Let us hearken

to the record concerning one of the true David’s mighty men.

“He longed after you all, and was full of heaviness.” Why? Was it because he was sick? because of his pains, and aches, and privations? Nothing of the sort. Epaphroditus did not belong to the generation of whiners and complainers. He was thinking of others.

“He was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick.” How lovely!

He was occupied about the Philippians and their sorrow about him. The only thing that affected him in his illness was the thought of how it would affect them. Perfectly exquisite! This honored servant of Christ had brought himself to death’s door to serve others, and when there, in place of being occupied about himself and his ailments, he was thinking of the sorrow of others.

“He was sick and nigh unto death; but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.”

Can aught be more morally beautiful than this? It is one of the rarest pictures ever presented to the human eye. There is Epaphroditus, nigh unto death for the sake of others; but he is full of sorrow about the Philippians; and the Philippians are full of sorrow about him: Paul is full of sorrow about both, and God comes and mingles Himself with the scene, and, in mercy to all, raises up the loved one from the bed of death.

And then mark the tender solicitude of the blessed Apostle. It is like some tender mother sending her darling son away, and committing him, with fond earnestness, to the care of some friend.

“I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation.’ Why? Was it because of his gifts, his rank, or his wealth? No; but because of his self-surrender.
“Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.”

O! dear Christian reader, let us think on these things. We have introduced you to a picture, and we leave you to gaze upon it. The grouping is divine. There is a moral line running through the entire scene, and linking the figures into one striking group. It is like the anointing of the true Aaron, and the oil flowing down to the skirts of his garments.

We have the blessed Lord, perfect in His self-surrender, as in all beside; and then we have Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus, each in his measure, exhibiting the rare and lovely grace of self-surrender.

(Concluded)

Some Things to Think About

Do I expect others to be devoted to Christ’s interests while I am set upon furthering my own?

Do I count it right that others should take their lives in their hands and go forth to pestilential swamps to carry the sweet odor of Christ’s Name, where it has not been sounded, while I sit at home and do nothing to help them?

Do I enjoy the blessed liberty of the gospel, and all the riches of the grace of God of which it tells, and eat “my morsel alone,” not caring for others who are strangers to its truths?

Do I receive all from the pierced hand of Christ, and delight in the mercies of God, without presenting my body a living sacrifice, as I am exhorted to do in Romans 12:1?

A Word to the Aged Pilgrim - An Extract

“They say I am growing old because my hair is silvered, and there are crow’s feet on my forehead, and my step is not as firm and elastic as before. But they are mistaken. That is not for me. The knees are weak; but the knees are not me. The brow is wrinkled; but the brow is not me. This is the house I live in But I am young – younger than I ever was before.”

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” (Isa. 40:31).

We long and pray for spiritual vigor. Our rest is awaiting us, and our Home is on high with our blessed Lord. His coming draws near.

Called Saints

The Bible tells us that all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are “saints,” not that in themselves they were any better or different from all others, but they are

“Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.” (Heb. 3:1).

All true believers in Christ are “called saints” (see Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). This does not mean that they are called saints by men, but that they become saints by the call of God. And how does God call them? He calls them by the gospel.

“We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth. Whereunto He called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thess. 2:13-14).

What marvelous truths are wrapped up in these two short verses! Let us just enumerate them, and leave all our readers to meditate upon them with thankful, adoring hearts:

Beloved of the Lord – chosen from the beginning, that is, from before the foundation of the world – saved – sanctified, that is, set apart to God by the Spirit – believers – called by the gospel – soon to be glorified in the company of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is by the mighty operation of God’s Holy Spirit producing in the heart of a poor, lost sinner a belief of the truth contained in the gospel that such a one is saved. Called by God through the gospel that tells of man’s ruin through sin, of God’s sovereign grace towards such, of the remedy found in the precious blood of Christ, and much more besides – yes, and believing that gospel, thus and thus only, according to the Bible, does any one become a saint.

Story of a Conversion: Part 1

I had been a Christian for about ten years when the second conversion, of which this is the story, occurred; for I can as clearly speak of two conversions in my history, as I doubt not the apostles, Andrew and James could speak of two in theirs one when they believed in Christ as Messiah, and the other when He became their sole object on earth, detaching them moreover by His express call, even from their daily occupation. Peter, indeed, could speak of a third conversion, expressly mentioned by the Lord as such:

“When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren,” (Luke 22:32).

But while these instances show that such cases are by no means rare, it is well to remember that when God does save a man, expressly as a pattern to them “which should hereafter believe in Him to life everlasting,” he is so completely turned to God from everything at the outset, that we do not read of anything that could be regarded as a second conversion in the history of the apostle Paul.

It should, however, be clearly understood what is meant by conversion. The Greek word is generally translated “to turn,” or “turn about.” In Matthew 9:22, We read “But Jesus turned Him about, and when He saw her, &c.” In Matthew 12:44, we find “I will return into my house.” In both cases the word is the same as that translated “conversion.”

Any definite turning to God is a conversion to God. People may turn to other things; we often hear of a conversion to politics, or to some school of medicine; with these, however, we need not concern ourselves now, as the only conversion I have to speak of is “to God:”

When first we believe, we are converted, as we read of the Thessalonians, “they turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”

But this may only be a turning from some one thing, as in their case, “from idols,” which might still leave room for a turning from the world, or a turning from self.

It must be plainly understood that conversion in no way always implies salvation, which can only be once, and is forever, whereas a conversion (as we have seen) may occur several times in a Christian’s life.

This, indeed, I clearly apprehended in my own case, having been saved as I have said, ten years before the conversion of which I now write, and during the whole of that time being perfectly clear as to eternal life.

I had always enjoyed sound gospel teaching, and was also rightly taught what a Christian should be, although I had never grasped the power. I used to attend the meetings regularly on the Lord’s day, and I helped also a little in working among the young. I also went to one meeting in the week, feeling it was not right to do less. Under the plea, however, of necessary bodily exercise I mixed largely with the world in sports and amusements. In traveling I desired to see as much of the world as possible; – in short, although I recognized the claims of God over part of my time, I lived the rest to please myself.

Not that I ran to any excess; on the contrary, in every respect my life was very regular and steady. It is of principles I now speak, and my principle was to please myself as far as possible, without violating what my conscience told me God required.

Of course I was not very happy. In this I am sure you, my reader, will bear me out if you are trying to trim with the world and draw the line, so as to include as much of it as possible.

The very fact of marking out a boundary between myself and the world short of that formed by the cross and grave of Christ shows that we are not of one mind with God in the matter, and are therefore out of communion with Him on this subject, and no soul can be happy where it is out of communion

In this way, therefore, I went on drawing my own lines of demarcation, which included those pleasures that I most loved, while rigorously excluding those I did not so much care for, or had a bad conscience about, which lines were necessarily always shifting and uncertain, not being established by God’s Word; and as I had a good many Christian companions, each with lines of their own drawing, and which often did not coincide with mine, the question continually arose:

“Is this right?” or “Is that wrong?”

But the Lord had a better course for me than always steering as near as possible to the rocks and shoals which I loved, although I knew the danger I ran if I struck upon them.

It was in the autumn I left home for a month’s pleasure tour. The program was a delightful one to me, and just suited my tastes, being mainly by water. One of my companions was a child of God, the other not. At first everything went well, our plans prospered, the weather was fine, the scenery magnificent. But after a few days things suddenly took a turn. We suffered shipwreck, and after being nearly drowned, were compelled to give up the water and travel by land.

All this spoke to my conscience, which was by no means completely at its ease, for none of my boundary lines between what was right for a Christian and what was wrong, had really satisfied it; but of one thing I was glad; by going on foot instead of by water I found we should be able to include in our route a town I had long wished to visit, in order to see a Christian who lived there, and of whose consistent and happy life I had very often heard. Fortunately the town was in the midst of beautiful scenery, so I was enabled to change our route without disclosing what was in my heart. After some unpleasant adventures we reached the town about 7 o’clock one evening.

On leaving our hotel after dinner I went to the meeting-room and found that a lecture was being given by the very man I had come to see. I cannot remember a word of that address. I had attended meetings and lectures from my infancy. God was going to work in my soul by other means. I was not unknown by name to the lecturer, and was, with my friends, invited to supper.

Somehow I listened that night with wonderful interest to what I heard of the Lord’s work, in which he was so happily engaged; and as I looked at his face, I felt that he at least had found a source of pleasure in serving his Master to which I was still a stranger. What struck me too, was, not so much the work he spoke of as the manner in which it seemed to flow from a real love to Christ, so that even I felt it must be a very happy life to lead.

At a late hour we left promising to breakfast with our new friend in the morning. We had to tell him something of our plans, although I must say I felt ashamed at laying my tour of pleasure by the side of his work for the Lord. I thought a good deal that night about the different paths he and I were pursuing, both children of God.

(To be continued)

Jesus, the Shepherd

The GOOD Shepherd. “The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” (John 10:11).

The GREAT Shepherd. “Brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep.” (Heb. 13:20).

The CHIEF Shepherd. “When the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” (1 Peter 5:4).

A Single Eye

A gentleman relates how, as a boy, he was accustomed to taking long rides with his father through wild, forest country. He drank in with delight the beauties of nature, was gladdened by the fine exhilarating mornings, and was refreshed by the cool of evening.

The father had a very keen sense of smell, and could detect various locations by their odors alone. Although not expecting to attain to his father’s power of discernment in this particular sense, the son did ask himself the question: “If I enjoy so much, mere glimpses of nature in all its simplicity, cannot I increase my pleasure with longer looks?”

By experimenting he found out that he reached the fullest appreciation and keenest pleasure, in the exercise of any particular sense sight, hearing, smell, by “merely shutting out all other impressions, feelings, or thoughts, and concentrating full attention upon what he saw or heard at that instant.

Dear Christian reader, will not the same be true in connection with the development of our spiritual sense in the study of God’s Word and communion with our blessed Lord? The more we can exclude thoughts of “time and sense,” the more deeply will we enter into the beauties of Christ, discovering the “hidden treasures” that are to be found in Him alone.

“In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col. 2:3).

There are duties and cares that demand some of our time and attention. There are also occupations and diversions with which we can dispense, if we are willing to give them up for something better.

Let us more and more do away with those things which are unnecessary and unimportant in the light of God’s Word, giving that precious time to the Lord Himself, both in communion and in service. Our time as well as our bodies, belongs to Him

“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you and... ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).

Let us press on untiringly in a deeper search for “the knowledge of the Son of God,” as we approach “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:13).

Only with a “single eye” can we penetrate the fuller and richer depths of the “wisdom and knowledge of God.” (Rom. 11:33).

O for a fuller knowledge

Of Him Whose Name we bear;

O for a deeper longing

For Him Whose throne we’ll share,

When the riches of His glory

Shall gladden every face,

And our hearts will feast forever

On the riches of His grace.

Address to Young Christians: Part 1

Samuel

1 Samuel 1:10-12, 18-28.

Part 1

One admires the reality and purpose of heart of this dear woman, Hannah, in this chapter. We find her in bitterness of soul in the 10th verse: “She was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore.”

There is much of that in this world. We do not have to be very old, nor be very long in this world to find out more or less bitterness of soul and weeping. It is a matter of common comment that a child comes into this world, not with a laugh, but with a cry. That is typical of this world since sin is here. Many things that start out very fine and promising, turn out to be bitterness of soul in the end.

This may sound like a rather somber subject upon which to address young people, but I suppose I am speaking not only to those who know and have confessed the Lord, but to those who in some measure have already experienced the truth of what I am telling you.

Hannah knew where to take the burden, she knew where to go and unload what was pressing upon her soul. That is a grand thing to find out, isn’t it? I often think of that in connection with those who know the Lord. Have you ever (you who are believers) stopped to think what it would mean if you didn’t know the Lord Jesus, and knew nothing about prayer; if you knew nothing about the privilege of getting down on your knees and weeping out your burden in the ear of Christ.

It is hard for you to realize what it would mean to have a heart heavy with grief and sorrow and have no outlet for it: to have no one to whom to go and unload that great burden! Well, friends, that is where the unsaved are. So they try all sorts of means to forget their sorrows; they speak of drowning their sorrows, but they do not get rid of them.

Here was a woman who had a deep burden on her soul; she went to the right place with that burden, and told it out in the ear of the One who was willing to hear, and to bear, and to deliver. Unlike some of us, she didn’t go away from that little prayer meeting still carrying her burden. She didn’t go back home a sad and burdened woman, still sighing deeply underneath the load. No! she went back a woman vastly relieved, and enjoying the sense in her soul that she had been heard. See how it reads;

“So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad” (vs. 18).

That is the reality of “casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you.” That is prayer in its reality; actually, truly, unloading the burden, and going away with the consolations of Christ.

We have that same privilege, and what a privilege it is! That is one of those rare things that pertain to us as God’s children. That is one of the things that marks us off from the world. The world has no such privilege; it has nowhere to get rid of its burden. We have; we have the privilege of coming into God’s presence and telling all to Him, and then going away with the consciousness that He has heard, and in His own time and way will give the answer. Hannah went away light-hearted and glad because she had the confidence that God had heard.

Now that she has her request (vs. 20), what use is she going to make of it? She has asked the Lord for something; He has given it to her. What is she going to do with it? Isn’t that a question that ought to come home to everyone of us who profess the name of the Lord? Perhaps we have made requests, perhaps we have had desires and laid them before Him, and He has in some measure granted us these desires. We have our requests, and now what use are we going to make of the answer? Well, this dear woman when she gets this son, says,

“I am not going to keep him for my own selfish enjoyment; I am going to present him to the Lord. The Lord has been good and gracious to me, and now I want to give back of what He has given me.”

Sometimes young people seem to congratulate themselves upon the possession of various endowments they feel they have; various advantages of one kind and another. Some may feel they come from good families; some may feel they are in homes where there is wealth; some may feel they have attained superior standards of education, or perhaps endowed with superior mental capacity; there are various things we may congratulate ourselves on having. Some may find themselves vested with superior business ability. The question is, if God has given you them, what use are you making of them? This woman says,

“I am not going to keep dear Samuel all for myself, but I am going to take him to the Lord, and I want him to be lent to the Lord all his days.”

That was a grand sacrifice. That was better than those three bullocks and the ephah of flour and the bottle of wine they took with them on their journey to Shiloh. She took the dearest object of her heart, and dedicated that son to the Lord.

(To be continued).

Kept

How tenderly does the Lord lead us on step by step; and the very secret of all – kept by the power of God. Therein lies all our safety; not in our striving, not in our doing, but His keeping.

Duncan Matheson wished to have written on his grave-stone just his name and this one word, “Kept.” Will not that one word sum up the life of every child of God? More and more do I see that it is His gracious keeping alone that is our safety. Some think that it is our holding fast to the end; but God’s Word says that our holding fast to the end is just the proof that we are kept.

We know “whom we have believed.”

Then the Lord Jesus, when here, addressing the Father (John 17:11), said, “Holy Father.” Think of this, dear fellow Christian; our Father is a holy Father, and, consequently, He cannot go on with the world, for all that is in it the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father. Consequently, His children must be holy, too; and, to please Him, are called to walk in separation from this present evil world. And how evil it is: it has cast out God’s Son; crying, “Away with Him,” and nailing Him to the tree.

Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? Then you cannot love the world that treated Him thus, giving Him but a manger at the beginning, and a cross and a grave at the end of His path here, and it is the same world still, whatever change of face it may make.

“Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God.” (James 4:4).

Extract: A Remnant

Thank God, there will be a small remnant, “that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” The path may be very narrow: but let us take courage, we only read of one Enoch, who walked with God; but “he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” As it was then, so it is now: the world is ripening fast for judgment, but a few more days, and then, “when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” In that day we shall not regret having walked in a path of separation from all evil, however lonely. And we can only say,

“Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.” (Psa. 119:117).

Trust Him

Hidden in the hollow of God’s blessed hand;

Never foe can enter, never traitor stand,

Not a shade of worry, not a surge of care,

Not a thought of hurry, touch my spirit there.

Every joy and trial falleth from above;

Traced upon our dial, by the Sun of Love.

We may trust Him fully: all for us to do;

They who trust Him wholly, find Him wholly true.

Yet a Little While: Hebrews 10:37

Only “a little while,”

A moment it may be,

Ere I shall see Him face to face,

Who died, who lives for me.

Only “a little while,”

The wilderness to roam,

And then the Father’s house above,

My dwelling-place, my home.

Only “a little while,”

To walk by faith alone,

And then without a veil to see,

And know as I am known.

Only “a little while,”

To tread the path He trod,

nd then the home of rest and joy,

The dwelling-place of God.

Only “a little while,”

Then watching will be o’er,

And we shall see Him face to face,

And worship evermore.

Only “a little while,”

O, precious, cheering word!

It may be ere this day shall close

I shall behold my Lord.

Then not “a little while,”

But through eternal days,

To sing the never-ending song

Of tribute to His praise!

I Will Remember You

“And God said, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you.

“I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.

“And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant.” (Gen. 9:12, 13, 16).

(Read all of verses 8-17).

“This do in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19).

“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” (Ex. 12:13).

“Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His Name. And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels.” (Mal. 3:16, 17).

When God made promise ne’er again

By flood to judge the earth,

He placed a token in the sky

Establishing its worth.

With Noah and his family

The covenant was made,

And sealed with God’s own promise

Of a bow set in the cloud.

It must have given wondrous peace

To Noah’s family

To see the bow, and know the flood

Would ne’er repeated be.

And then to think that God Himself

Would view the token, too!

He said, “I’ll look upon it, and

I will remember you.”

Another token God has given

Of judgment past and done;

It is the emblems of the death

Of His beloved Son.

There on the cross of Calvary

His precious blood was shed;

The Lamb of God’s providing, bore

The judgment in our stead.

More solemn judgment then was vent –

More awful than the flood –

When Christ, the one who knew no sin,

Redeemed us by His blood.

There all the billows of God’s wrath

Fell on His only Son,

And He endured such agony,

Forsaken, and alone.

He gave those precious emblems –said,

“This do, remember Me.”

And as we view the loaf and cup

God’s wondrous grace we see,

Reminding our forgetful hearts

Of all His suff’rings past,

And love that wants us e’er with Him

While endless ages last.

What boundless love, and matchless grace

That thought out such a plan

To pardon, justify, and bless

Poor, lost, rebellious man!

And all who trust Christ’s finished work

Are sheltered, safe, and free;

No condemnation! – one with Him

Throughout eternity.

What peace the emblems of His death

Give to the trusting soul!

They tell him all his guilt’s removed –

In Christ he is made whole.

They banish every fear and doubt –

They set his heart at rest,

Assuring him as he is secure

In Christ – supremely blest.

And as we view these emblems and

Upon them meditate,

We see Him now at God’s right hand,

Our Priest and Advocate.

And from the glory He looks down –

Assures His feeble few,

“When I gather up My jewels,

I will remember you.”

It Seems Too Good to Be True

I was visiting a Christian man who had recently had a stroke of paralysis. I said to him,

“What a wonderful thing it seems that you have finished your earthly work, and now have just to sit still and wait for the Lord who may be coming very soon to take us to Himself.”

“It seems too good to be true, it seems too good to be true, it gives me such a feeling of joy.”

After more conversation on the same blessed subject I left him; but his words remained with me.

We talk glibly enough about the Lord’s return, but do we realize what it means? At any moment we may be in His presence, never more to go out. Truly, it seems almost too good to be true.

“Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” (Heb. 10:37).

Correspondence: Peace; Judgement; Phil. 2:12; Repentance

Question: I have seen myself as a sinner before God, and have believed that Jesus died for me. Still, I have so many wicked thoughts, and do so many things a Christian ought not to do, that I am very unhappy. How can I get that peace which a believer should have?

Answer: You will never know what true peace is until you get done with yourself as an utterly ruined, good-for-nothing thing, and rest on Christ’s finished work and God’s faithful Word. Self-occupation is your special disease. You want to look off unto Jesus, for this is the divine remedy.

Question: On what ground will Christendom be judged?

Answer: The Holy Spirit has given us the three grand distinguishing titles, namely, “The Jew, the Gentile, and the church of God.” Alas! that which calls itself the church of God has become a corrupt thing – a vast mass of baptized profession. But clearly that which is called Christendom is no longer viewed as being on Jewish, or Gentile ground, nor will it be judged as such, but according to the profession which it takes up. Hence the appalling solemnity of Christendom’s position. We believe it, beloved friend, to be the most terrible moral blot in the wide universe of God the master-piece of Satan and the destroyer of souls. O! the awfulness of Christendom’s condition the awfulness of its doom! No human language can set it forth.

May all who truly belong to the church of God be enabled to yield a calm, clear, decided, and consistent testimony against the spirit, and principles and ways of that terrible thing called Christendom.

Question: Please explain “Work out your own salvation.” (Phil. 2:12).

Answer: This verse refers to the difficulties, trials, and temptations which surrounded the Philippian saints: the apostle exhorts them now that they had not him to lean upon to work out their own salvation, as a daily practical thing, ever remembering that it was God who wrought in them.

Question: What part has repentance in the salvation of the soul?

Answer: Repentance is an abiding and universal necessity for the sinner (Acts 17:30). It has nothing whatever to do with the ground of a sinner’s peace, any more than the feelings of a drowning man have to do with a lifeboat. But man, being a sinner must be brought to the moral judgment of his nature and state in the sight of God. This judgment may vary in its measure and character but it must be sooner or later, in every case. Man must find out that he is lost, that he is a guilty hell-deserving sinner, else what does he want of life, pardon, or salvation at all?

No doubt there is an utterly false legal way of handling the question of repentance which must be carefully avoided by all preachers of the gospel; but at the same time we must never forget those words of our risen Lord and Master: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47).

The Center of Rest

God Himself is the only center of rest. In all creation there is movement.

The face of the world changes islands are formed and other islands sink beneath the ocean’s waves. An earthquake hurls to the ground buildings which were thought well-founded. A volcanic eruption covers a district with destruction. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, come in their rotation, seed time and harvest. The rivers flow to the sea, and evaporation carries their waters back to the mountain tops. A child is born, grows, reaches maturity, and then the decline of life, and passes from the spot which once knew him. Another succeeds and pursues the same course. Where shall we find rest? As the wise man said of old,

“All things are full of labor.”

If we take a wider view and stand in thought in the midst of the universe, we find every planet and star in movement too rapid for the human mind to grasp. The moon in its orbit round the earth, the earth and its attendant moon around the sun, the sun and the earth and its moon, and the other planets of the solar system and their moons, and all the stars of heaven circling round the distant central star. The mind is lost in the vastness of the heavenly mechanism, and bewildered, asks where rest can be found.

And the answer is in God, in God alone.

He is the great Author of all, who caused all to exist and causes all to subsist. He is the center of rest. Stupendous, incalculable, overwhelming power is with Him. His eternal power and Godhead are displayed, but He is past finding out. Augustine of old, cried,

“O God, Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are weary till we rest in Thee.” He is the center of rest and in Him alone is rest found.

But He who is invisible in His essential glory, “whom no man hath seen or can see,” has been pleased to reveal Himself in the Son.

And He, in His days of Manhood here, cried to the weary of the world, to the restless, sinful sons of fallen Adam, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you REST.”

He found for Himself perfect rest in the knowledge of the wisdom and power and love of the Father, and in the midst of the turmoil and trouble on every hand, called the laboring and heavy-laden to Himself, that there in His bosom they might be in repose near His heart of love.

“I will give you rest.” Yes! In the quieting calm of His presence the heart is stilled.

“I will rest you,” has been given as the idea of the promise. As a mother comforts her child – not at a distance from herself, but near to her beating heart. So our Lord rests His own in the knowledge of His all-sufficiency for all circumstances and all times.

“Calm amid tumultuous motion.” Like an island of rock amid the tossing of the ocean waves. So is the believer who relies upon his all-powerful, all-loving Lord and Savior.

What Am I?

Well, dear friend, if you are a believer in Jesus, you are a child of God; for we are “all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus.”

As a son of God, you are distinguished from the world, you are honored above the world. To you belong the promises of grace, the provisions of Providence, and the prospects of glory. For you the throne of grace is erected, the Word of God is preserved, and the Intercessor in heaven pleads. To you the glory of God should be dear, the name of Christ precious, and the work of God delightful. By you the cause of God should be espoused, the people of God should be encouraged, and the enemies of God should be warned. You should walk with God, work for God, and expect great things from God.

If you are a child of God, you are a servant of Christ. Jesus died for you to redeem you. He paid the price of your ransom; and, being bought with a price, the one object of your life should be to glorify Him. Act for Christ, so that all who know you may be compelled to say,

“If there is a Christian upon earth, that is one.”

If you ever ask the question, “What am I?” answer it by your life, and say,

“I am a son of God, I am a servant of Christ, I am, therefore, an heir of glory.”

“Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Cor. 6:19-20.

Words of Counsel to Young Believers

As much as possible have your Bible beside you. Be familiar with its books, chapters, and pages. Have its doctrines and truths stored up in the heart and memory. Be able to give at least one positive Scripture for the new-birth, life, salvation, forgiveness, justification, glory, which are yours. Count up your treasures gathered from God’s Word, again and again. You will gain immensely by constant study and reference to the Scriptures of all you are taught and enjoy.

Depend upon it, however, that the habitual reading of God’s Word without much prayer and self-examination, will only inflate you with spiritual pride and conceit which are hateful in any, but especially so in the young. Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought to; think soberly of your own attainments (Rom. 12:3). Know your membership in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:18), then practically act upon it (Rom. 12).

Beware of the evil in thinking you know more than other people. Do not be morbid, cynical, and fault-finding. When you meet a fellow believer do not cause friction of spirit by rubbing against his angles and corners, but look for some traits of Christ in him and esteem him better than you do yourself (Phil. 2:3).

Again we say, Beware of conceit; it is awfully destructive of Christian progress and testimony, and makes one forward, bumptious, and most unpleasant in Christian society. We are here to display Christ and get people to know Him. Live and act in view of eternity and of the judgment-seat of Christ. Let help, not hinder, be our practical daily motto.

Do not lend an ear to evil reports and accusations against any of God’s children. If you are compelled in the interests of truth to hear certain things, see that the evidence be irresistibly clear; there is a lying and unwholesome spirit abroad avoid it. Treat with reverence the aged, and with loving respect the servants of the Lord (1 Tim.; Titus). In all things, in all circumstances, in all relationships, be faithful. Be courteous and gracious, but never condescend to lower the truth, or adapt it, or trim it to suit the whims or the convenience of people.

“Buy the truth and sell it not.”

Cultivate a spirit of cheerfulness and thanksgiving (Phil.). Look onward and up ward. All is bright on the other side of the cloud. Be quiet, modest, and unostentatious in your ways. Avoid habits which are unlike Christ whose name you bear. Be obliging, and generous, and most kind to all, “especially to the household faith” who have the first claim upon your thoughts and purse.

Moral and doctrinal evil is to be shunned, and its supporters too; always however making a difference between those who lead and those who are led (Jude 22-23); guard against extremes.

Speak up for your Master; confess Christ openly and decidedly. Solemnly remember the words of Luke 12:8-9. Make Christ your one object on earth; how to please Him your one desire (2 Cor. 5:14-15; Phil. 1:20-21).

Continue in Prayer

If we then are to have fellowship with Jesus Christ in His present work, we must spend much time in prayer; we must give ourselves to earnest, persistent, sleepless, overcoming prayer. I know of nothing that has so impressed me with a sense of the importance of praying at all seasons, being much and constantly in prayer, as the thought that that is the principal occupation at present of my risen Lord.

I want to have fellowship with Him, and to that end I have asked the Father that whatever else He may make me, to make me at all events an intercessor, to make me a man who knows how to pray, and who spends much time in prayer.

This ministry of intercession is a glorious and a mighty ministry, and we can all have part in it. The man or the woman who is shut away from the public meeting by sickness can have part in it; the busy mother; the woman while doing her housework can have part she can mingle prayers for the saints, and for laborers in the vineyard, for the unsaved, and for foreign missionaries; the hard-driven man of business can have part in it, praying as he hurries from duty to duty.

But of course we must, if we would maintain this spirit of constant prayer, take time – and take plenty of it – when we shall shut ourselves up in the secret place alone with God for nothing but prayer.

Another reason for constant, persistent, sleepless, overcoming prayer, is that prayer is the means that God has appointed for our receiving mercy, and obtaining grace to help in time of need.

“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel.” (Eph. 6:18-19).

“Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6-7).

“We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers.” (1 Thess. 1:2).

The Mother's Hand

The little child had been fast asleep, but on the mother entering the room with a light in her hand to retire to rest, she woke up, and as the little one looked at her mother, the little face was lighted up with joy and loving recognition, quite content to watch with interest all her movements about the room.

But on the mother extinguishing the light, the sudden darkness startled the child with surprise and fear. The mother drew quietly near, and gently placed her hand upon the child’s, and in a moment its fears were gone; then, placing its little hand upon its mother’s, confiding in her presence and love, in a few moments the child was fast asleep.

It is a sweet picture of faith in the presence of Christ with us. Though sometimes, even after exalted periods of enjoyment, the darkness of unbelief, the sense of indwelling sin, through the tempter’s efforts, fill us with fear; or if trying and mysterious dispensations seem to hide our Saviour’s face from our view, we are dismayed. Yet as soon as we draw near to Him in simple faith, His own presence calms our spirit; we are lifted out of ourselves, our restlessness vanishes, and we realize the truth of His words of sweet promise,

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee” (Isa. 26:3).

“I need Thy presence ev’ry passing hour:

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me!”

What Do I Need

If we examine the value of the death of Christ, what do we find attached to it in Scripture?

Do I need redemption?

We have redemption through His blood, an eternal redemption, for “by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).

Do I need forgiveness?

That redemption which I have through His blood is the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7). Yea, without shedding of blood is no remission.

Do I need peace?

He has made peace through the blood of His cross (Col. 1:20).

Do I need reconciliation with God?

Though we were sinners yet now hath He reconciled us in the body of His flesh through death (Col. 1:21, 22). When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son (Rom. 5:10).

Do I feel the need of propitiation?

Christ is set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood (Rom. 3:25).

Do I need justification?

I am justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9). How are we washed from our sins?

He has loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, for His blood cleanseth from all sin (Rev. 1:5; 1 John 1:7).

Reader, have you learned the value of the death of Christ for yourself?

The Word of God

We should more intensely press the Scripture on the soul. We should remember that all in us is to be Christ’s disciple – the heart the conscience, and the understanding. The light, and joy, and beauty of the truth may be received at the door, but the reality of the truth must be known in the soul, its dwelling-place. God looks for it, that our very selves be occupied with this truth. It addresses itself to us, in the deep, full sense of it.

Correspondence: Nations B. C. ; Church in O.T.; Heb. 11:26; Luke 13:7

Question: What knowledge had the nations who lived before Christ of sin and of judgment; and how will they stand in the day of judgment?

Answer: The oldest book now in existence, the book of Job, throws great light on that question. It is evident, that in the earliest ages, God communicated to men the clearest knowledge of the atonement. (See chapter 33:23-33). Notice the marginal reading. Yes, in the oldest book known, God declares that He hath found a Ransom, or Atonement, so that a man could say then, if he believed God, “I have sinned;” and “He has delivered me from going down to the pit.”

Blessed is that man even now who can so speak. Was not the truth known to Abel, and rejected by Cain? It is the truth most disliked and rejected, to this day – for near 6000 years. Abraham and his spiritual seed, that is, all believers, believed God; and it, faith, was reckoned to them for righteousness, perhaps “the promise” was not dim to them. (See Heb. 11). Surely all pointed forward to the death and resurrection of Christ.

Question: Is the Church spoken of in the Old Testament?

Answer: The church is not mentioned in the Old Testament. It was the mystery kept hid, as stated in Ephesians 3. The Song of Solomon may be used in illustration and meditation. But you will notice it never rises up to the heavenly position of the church, the bride of the Lamb. It is more expressive of the yearnings of the Jewish remnant immediately before the coming of the Lord. Still Scripture is manifold, and no doubt the Spirit may use, in rich blessing to the Christian, such portions as speak of His having brought us into His banqueting-house, and of His banner over us being love. But Christ is precious everywhere in the Word of God, is He not? The book of Ruth may be used in a similar way, also the call of Rebecca and the creation of Eve. But no one could have seen the church in these until it was revealed, especially to Paul. Now the storms of darkness and tempest, like the destroying blizzard, are sweeping over the world. The Lord keep us holding fast the foundation truths of the Word of God.

Question: In what way did Moses bear the reproach of Christ (Heb. 11:26)?

Answer: This verse teaches us that Moses chose the very same character of reproach as Christ Himself, namely, the reproach arising from identification with God’s people in all their need, their sorrow, and their degradation. He might have acted for them. He might have stood apart from them, and helped them by his personal influence. He might have patronized them; but none of these things could be called “the reproach of Christ.” This latter is seen in Moses “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.” This was what Christ did perfectly. “In all their afflictions He was afflicted.”

Question: It is right to make a present application of Luke 13:7, or is it meant wholly for Israel?

Answer: The primary application of Luke 13:7 is to Israel; but we may all learn a solemn lesson from it. Let us seek to be fruitful and not be cumberers of the ground. We live in a day of easy profession. God looks for reality, for diligence, for earnestness, and integrity of heart. May we be watchful, and never rest satisfied with mere head knowledge or lip profession. The Lord will have “truth in the inward parts.”

The Broken Arm

William was an open-hearted young man, with plenty of courage and determination. He had the advantage of having Christian parents, and an early instruction in the great truths of salvation, and this good seed, early sown, sprang up after many days, and bore the welcome fruits of peace in his heart, giving him that divine comfort which nothing can disturb or take away, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Sunday evening that William said he was converted was during a time when many Christians were stirred to pray for the conversion of souls to God, and their prayers were abundantly answered. William told us that he knew he was all right for heaven, however, some of us could not refrain from a little misgiving at William’s confession, since distrust of self, and his own strength, seemed wanting.

For a few months William bore the jeers of his companions, and listened patiently to the advice of Christian friends; but after awhile his professions broke down, and, like too many young people, he turned his back upon heaven and his face toward the world.

Thinking of these days, calls to my mind many a youth and maiden who, for a little while, seemed to run well, but of whom, now, in the words of the great preacher of Christ, we are constrained to say,

“Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction.” (Phil. 3:18-19).

How many young men and women there are, who once had their faces set towards heaven, but who have been turned aside by the allurements of the world; or by the persecutions arising from professing that they belong to Christ – O! that they might be saved from that terrible destruction which is at the end of such a course.

We must then class our William among those hearers that the Lord tells us, “Anon with joy receive the Word, but in time of temptation fall away” – hearers, who have no root in themselves – hearers, who would go to heaven gladly, if the road thither were strewn with flowers.

After a time, William set his mind upon going to sea. His mother’s tears and his father’s entreaties stood for nothing, for though an affectionate son, the love of adventure drew him irresistibly from home. Unseen countries, with all the glories of the imagination were before his mind; the sober matter-of-fact advice of older heads, that the world is the world all the world over, did not suit him.

Seafaring life agreed well with his health – he developed into a fine young man, and William was as confident of making his way up in the world, as he had been of making his way to heaven. But there was a power pulling the other way all this time, and some of you young people having godly parents know what it is – it is prayer. It lays fast hold of God, and God loves so to be held – such is His grace to us His creatures. The prayer of his parents,

“O God, bless our boy, save his soul. Wash away all his sins in the blood of Thy Son for Thine honor and glory” was heard on high.

William had many solemn warnings at sea, but he heeded them not. At one time, during an awful storm a vessel was foundering, and William’s ship lay close beside her – that is, as close as a ship dare in a tremendous sea – and they witnessed the vessel’s distress, yet could render no assistance, fearful lest they also should founder.

There was many a strange, inquiring look cast from one sailor to another that night, but with death before him, William only blasphemed his parents’ God as he stuck to his work. When the morning came, the vessel was gone, and the cry of her company was swallowed up in the deep. They had heard their last sermon, they had attended their last prayer-meeting, their spirits were gone into eternity. But William only thought it was by good luck his ship lived.

Being a smart young fellow, if there was a sail to be reefed in, when the gale blew strong, he was sure to be one of the first aloft. And one day, as the ship was running in a storm, and William was aloft, it happened, as he stood high up upon the ropes, that the wind swung the spar against his head, half stunning him, and down he fell through the rigging. Had God forgotten the cry of William’s parents? Had He cast off the youth who had turned his back upon His love? O, no! Instead of being plunged overboard, unconverted as he was, the ship lurched, and William fell upon the deck. He was picked up insensible, and carried to his berth, his life saved, but his arm badly crushed and broken.

So, instead of a three years’ cruise, William was sent home an invalid, his arm in a sling, and he sadly cast down. Should the arm come off, or would it be possible to save it? At length the doctors arranged to try what splints, bandages and lotions would do. Month after month rolled on, but the arm grew worse and worse, and at last, to his severe disappointment, William had to give up all hopes of again following the seafaring life.

His brave buoyant spirits, however, led him to one plan after another for earning a livelihood. He battled hard with the energy of youth, and its fearlessness of danger. Now one bright scheme, now another floated before his eye, but he was baffled on every hand; each plan was fruitless, each expectation disappointed.

Those who are older can read God’s goodness in such painful lessons. Young persons are frequently drawn aside from thinking about their souls, by the business of getting on in the world, and the God of love was turning poor William’s trials and disappointments to the dear youth’s eternal blessing.

The loving counsels of his parents began to bear fruit, and William began to see that God was not unkind in having thus thwarted his prospects. His eyes opened to the concerns of his soul, he could not resist, as once he had done, the solemn warnings God gave him. God was showing him his sinfulness, and his need of a Saviour, and the burden of unforgiven sins weighed heavily upon his soul. “What must I do to be saved?” – the cry which thousands have uttered came in real earnestness from William’s heart.

When thus soul-burdened, William paid a visit to a friend’s house, and there he was much struck by a picture of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness to the gaze of the stricken and dying Israelites. Mothers were raising their pale, faint babes towards the brazen serpent, and children with eager steps were carrying their aged parents towards the same object. William was absorbed in the scene; he applied it to himself, and the gracious words of the Lord,

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life; 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!” – came home with living power to his soul. He believed in Jesus – he received eternal life – he was a new creature in Christ.

“Father,” said he, upon returning home, “I am saved, I have everlasting life!” and he related to his overjoyed parents what God had done for him.

The more William’s earthly prospects were blighted, so much the more did his heavenly hopes blossom.

There was one thing which much troubled him for a time. He believed that Christ died for sinners, but he could not reconcile the pardon of his sins, with his sinfulness of heart. He did not doubt the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, but he was perplexed because he had wicked thoughts and feelings.

“But,” said he, one day to his father, “I understand it now, I see I have two natures; the new nature which loves God; and the old nature which still loves the world.” It was an immense comfort to him when he laid hold of the fact that he was “a new creation in Christ Jesus;” that the old nature is not improved by God, but set aside. And that, for peace before God we have not to struggle with ourselves to overcome our sinful nature, but to remember that we are crucified with Christ, and that we are risen in Him, and hence to reckon ourselves dead unto sin, but alive unto God. When he was enabled to see himself justified in Christ risen from the dead, in Christ who had died for him on the cross, then he had full peace with God. One of his favorite hymns was,

“Not all the blood of beasts,

On Jewish altars slain,

Could give the guilty conscience peace,

Or wash away its stain.

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,

Took all our guilt away,

A sacrifice of nobler name,

And richer blood than they.

Our souls look back to see

The burden Thou didst bear

When hanging on th’ accursed tree,

For all our guilt was there.”

The prayers of his parents were heard Their boy owned God’s love in permitting his poor arm to be crippled, by which, he told us, God had found a way to his heart. The love of the Saviour in dying for sinners occupied his thoughts, and gradually the light shone brighter and brighter within him.

“Despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

Is It Nothing to You?

Nothing in His smile of recompense for any poor bit of service you are trying to do for Him?

Nothing! in “Well done, good and faithful servant?”

Nothing! in God’s approval as you enter the glory and the “new name” being written (a secret between you and Christ)?

Nothing! in the thought, that’s the one who bears all the effulgence of the light that dazzles, and I can look at it, and no need of the sun, because He is the one who gave Himself for me, to bring me there, able to gaze with undazzled eyes? He hiding not a single ray of His glory. (John 17:22-23).

But deeper still in connection with His own blessed person, will it be nothing to see Him perfectly glorified, who is rejected and despised, and, alas, how poorly represented by those who are His?

Nothing! to be there, and see Him enjoying the fruit of the travail of His soul, perfectly satisfied?

Nothing! to see the Man who was the Man of Sorrows here, and who suffered all for us, in the brightness of the glory of God? Infinitely more blessed than all He has to give me!

The Divine Anathema

“If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” (Or, Accursed at the coming of the Lord). (1 Cor. 16:22).

The position which this solemn anathema occupies is truly remarkable. In the course of his lengthened epistle, the Apostle had to rebuke and correct many practical evils, and doctrinal errors. There were divisions among the Corinthians. They were puffed up one against another. There was fornication among them. They went to law one with another. There was gross disorder at the Lord’s Supper. Some of them called in question the grand foundation truth of the resurrection of the dead.

These were grave errors and formidable evils – errors and evils which called forth the sharp and stern reproof of the inspired Apostle. But be it carefully noted, that when, at the close, he pronounces his solemn “Anathema Maranatha,” it is not directed against those who had introduced the errors or practiced the evils, but against “any man” who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ. This, surely, is well worthy of serious thought. The only security against all manner of error and evil is genuine love to the Lord Jesus Christ.

A man may be so strictly moral, as that no one could put his finger upon a single blot in his character – a single stain in his reputation, and, underneath that strict morality, there may be a heart as cold as ice, so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned. Again, a man may be so marked by a spirit of noble benevolence, that his influence is felt throughout the entire sphere in which he moves; and, all the while, his heart may not have a single pulsation of love to Christ. Finally, a man may possess, in the region of his understanding, a perfectly orthodox creed, and he may be devotedly attached to the ordinances and observances of traditionary religion, and be wholly without affection for the adorable person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It may even happen that all these things, namely, lofty morality, noble benevolence, sound orthodoxy, and devoted attachment to religious forms, exist in one and the same individual, and that individual be wholly void of a single spark of genuine affection for the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as a solemn and startling consequence, stand exposed to the burning Anathema of God the Holy Spirit.

I may be moral, through love to self. I may be benevolent through love to my fellow. I may be orthodox, through a love of dogmas. I may be religious, through a love of sect. But none of these things can shield me from the merited judgment which is denounced by the Holy Spirit against “any man,” no matter who or what, who “loves not the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is a deeply solemn and most seasonable word for the present moment. Let the reader deeply ponder it. Let him remember that the only basis for true morality the only basis for genuine benevolence – the only basis for divine orthodoxy – the only basis for “pure religion” is love to the Lord Jesus Christ, and where this love exists not, all is cold, sterile, and worthless – all exposed to death and judgment by the “Anathema Maranatha” of the Holy Spirit.

If the heart be really touched with the vital spark of love to Jesus, then every effort after pure morality, every struggle against our hateful lusts, passions, and tempers, every opening of the hand of genuine benevolence, every sound and truthful principle, every act of devotion, every pious aspiration, every fervent breathing, every outgoing of the soul, is precious to the Father – precious to the Son – precious to the Holy Spirit all – is fragrant with the perfume of that dear Name which is the theme of heaven’s wonder, the center of heaven’s joy, the object of heaven’s worship.

And, my beloved reader, should we not “love the Lord Jesus Christ?” Should we not hold Him dearer to our heart than all beside? Should we not be ready to surrender all for Him? Should not our bosoms swell with emotions of sincere attachment to His person in heaven, and His cause on earth? How could we trace Him from the bosom of the Father to the manger of Bethlehem – from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary – and from the cross of Calvary to the throne of the majesty in the heavens – how could we “consider” Him as “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession,” and not have our whole moral being brought under the mighty constraining influence of His love?

May the Holy Spirit so unfold to our souls His matchless glories and peerless excellencies, that we may “count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“Jesus, I love Thy charming name;

‘Tis music to mine ear,

Fain would I sound it out so loud,

That earth and heaven should hear.

Yes, Thou art precious to my soul,

My transport and my trust:

Jewels to Thee are gaudy toys,

And gold is sordid dust.

All my capacious powers can wish,

In Thee doth richly meet;

Nor, to mine eyes, is light so dear,

Nor friendship half so sweet.

Thy grace still dwells upon my heart,

And sheds its fragrance there;

The noblest balm of all its wounds,

The cordial of its care.”

Extract: To Be Near the Lord

Read the Bible with prayer, seek the Lord there, and not knowledge. That will come too, but the heart is well directed in seeking the Lord, the eye is single, and the whole body is full of light.

My earnest desire is that you may be very near the Lord, and the Lord very near to you. “Be not conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your minds,” “Christ is all,” and the more one travels on down here in His ways, the more one feels it.

Address to Young Christians: Samuel, Part 2

1 Samuel 1:10-12; 18-28

Now just a word here, perhaps there are some parents present. This mother says in the 22nd verse:

“Then I will bring him, that he may appear before the Lord, and there abide forever.”

The burden of this mother was that her son might appear before the Lord. Sometimes we read of some people making their appearance; perhaps it is some great singer making his or her first appearance at such and such an opera, or in other lines of achievement. What is meant is public display before the world. Little Samuel made his appearance here, but it was based upon the faith of a godly mother, and she was satisfied that Samuel should make his appearance before the Lord.

Those of us who are parents, may we search our hearts with that Scripture! Are we satisfied to have our children make their appearance before the Lord, or do we lust for something of the world for them place or position? How many a parent seems to have learned as to his own life the lesson of death with Christ as to this world, but O how the flame of ambition flares up when it is a question of his children. It wasn’t so with Hannah. She says,

“I want him to make his appearance before the Lord forever.” It is beautiful, isn’t it?

The nice part about it is, that as we read on in the life of Samuel, we find he quite fell in accord with his mother’s wishes, and when he arrived at the years of responsibility, or at that time in his life when he could take a stand for the Lord, he was satisfied just to go on in a quiet way as a servant and prophet of the Lord. He was satisfied with his parent’s desire for him.

Dear young people (I am addressing those who are believers), I suppose you have godly parents who have consecrated you to the Lord. They have done for you what Elkanah and Hannah did for Samuel when they brought him to Shiloh. They slew a bullock and brought the child to the priest. They recognized in that typical act of slaying the bullock, that there was no standing for that boy before God, save on the ground of the death of Christ.

You have been brought to God by your parents. They may not have necessarily used any symbolical act to express their consecration of you to the Lord, one way or another; be that as it may, the fact is, every Christian parent going on in communion with the Lord, has consecrated his children to the Lord. Now what is going to be the response in your life and walk, to that parental consecration? Will you rebel against, or gladly submit to it, and go on in that happy pathway of having been lent to the Lord forever? It was so with Samuel; he was lent to the Lord forever. What a beautiful history is that of young Samuel.

I believe I am talking to many Samuels here this afternoon. What does “Samuel” mean? “Asked of the Lord.” When I say I am speaking to many Samuels, ‘I do not mean in your case there was the burden of heart for a man child, as was the case of Samuel, but what I mean is, if you are the Lord’s, and children of godly parents, every one of you is a Samuel, because long before you knew the Lord – long before you ever formed the name of Jesus on your own lips your parents were crying to the Lord for your precious soul, you were asked of the Lord; your parents were pleading with the Lord that you might be a child of God, and that you would early yield your life and heart to Christ.

How little you realize how many times father and mother have been on their knees for you, praying, perhaps weeping over you, when they saw the possibilities that were ahead of you in a world they have found to be evil, and they consecrated you to the Lord; so you are a “Samuel.” You have been asked of the Lord.

(To be continued)

The Love of God Abides

“I feel I have lost my love for God,” said a young man to an old Christian. The reply was,

“That may be, but God has not lost His love for you.”

This recovered the doubting soul and let him into a truer occupation – with God and not with himself.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God” is not keep loving God as is sometimes thought, but abiding in the warmth of His unchanging love to you.

Surely I Come Quickly

“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Rev. 22:20).

Brethren, hark! the midnight cry!

Lo! the Bridegroom draweth nigh!

Let us all with joy proclaim Him,

Lest our careless slumbers shame Him;

Shame, were ready none to meet Him,

None prepared with joy to greet Him!

Shame to us, were robes not white;

Shame, were lamps not burning bright;

Shame, if not our vigils keeping,

He should find the virgins sleeping!

Hark! my brethren, hear the cry,

“Lo, the Bridegroom draweth nigh!”

Let us each repeat the cry,

Louder let the tidings fly;

Every virgin swell the story

Of the Bridegroom’s coming glory!

Lamps all burning, hearts all beating,

Longing for the joyous meeting. Amen!

Where Should We Look? Read Psalm 73 and Psalm 77

In Psalm 73, the soul looks out, and reasons on what it sees there, namely, successful wickedness and suffering righteousness. What is the conclusion? “I have cleansed my heart in vain.” So much for looking about one.

In Psalm 77, the soul looks in, and reasons on what it finds there. What is the conclusion? “Hath God forgotten to be gracious?” So much for looking in.

Where, then, should we look? Look up straight up, and believe what you see there. What will be the conclusion? You will understand the “end” of man, and trace the “way” of God.

“Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?” (Psa. 77:13).

Only Believe

My dear Young Friend,

If only simple faith were in exercise there could be no difficulty. Trouble of soul arises from mixing faith and feelings, and that is just what you are doing. It is a common mistake. You acknowledge, that as a guilty, lost sinner, you are looking to Jesus as your Saviour; that you do believe in Him, but you want to feel it more within yourself: you own that you are not happy. No, and you never can be happy, so long as you are looking partly to Jesus, and partly to yourself. You must learn to look only to Jesus, and to have faith in the Word of God, as to what Christ has done for us. Then you will have peace and rest on the ground of His precious blood shed for us, and He, Himself, will be the abundant joy of your heart.

Will you look at Ephesians 1:7, and let us go over it together?

“In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”

Now you will observe, that here it is said, “We,” believers, have redemption and forgiveness now. These blessings are our present possession in Christ. “In whom,” mark, “we have,” not we hope to have, but, “we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Nothing can be plainer; “only believe.” In Christ, all who truly believe in Him as their Saviour, have, at this present moment, “eternal redemption,” full and everlasting forgiveness.

Now, look at the way in which these blessings are secured to us. “His blood” the precious blood of Jesus, and that alone. And if you think of the standard by which they are measured, your heart must be at rest forever, “according to the riches of His grace.” We are blessed according to the value of the blood of Jesus, and the riches of God’s grace.

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:1).

Here, again, the same form of expression is used, “we have.” It is a present reality to faith. ‘“We have peace with God.” The believer can truly say, I know that my peace is made with God, and that nothing can ever disturb it. It rests on the eternal efficacy of the blood of Jesus, by which my sins were all put away on the cross. He made peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:20). Again, we read, that He, Christ Himself, is our peace, and “My peace I give unto you” (Eph. 2:14; John 14:27).

From these texts it is quite clear, that Christ and His people stand on the same ground, before God, as to this great blessing, PEACE. Christ Himself is their peace. Well we know that He can never lose His peace; therefore, they can never lose theirs. True, I admit, they may lose the enjoyment of it, and they may fail, practically, to exhibit it; but they can never lose the thing itself. This is a point in which many make a great mistake, who speak of peace as if it were a mere feeling a certain state of mind.

Now, we can understand a person feeling peaceful in his own mind, but the mind may soon change, and where is the peace then? No; there is much more than a mere feeling of the mind in the expression “Peace with God.” The finished work of Christ is the only foundation of true, settled, solid peace in the sight of God. The believer is set in the presence of God, in virtue of that finished work, without his sins. He is at home and happy there.

Christ died: then I am clean;

“Not a spot within.”

God’s mercy and love!

“Not a cloud above.”

‘Tis the Spirit, through faith,

“Thus triumphs o’er sin;”

“Not a cloud above”

“Not a spot within.”

Ever, Most Affectionately, Yours.

Grace

There is nothing so hard for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace. It is by grace that the heart is “established;” but there is nothing more difficult for us really to comprehend than the fullness of grace.

Grace supposes all the sin and evil in us, and is the blessed revelation that through Jesus all this sin and evil has been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins, nay, than all the sins in the world, are to us; and yet, with the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be towards us is LOVE!

It is vain to look to any extent of evil – a person may be (speaking after the manner of men) a great sinner or a little sinner; but this is not the question at all. Grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our sins does but magnify the extent of the “grace of God.”

I have got away from grace, if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God’s love. I shall then be saying,

“I am unhappy, because I am not what I should like to be.”

But this is not the question: the real question is, whether God is what we should like Him to be – whether Jesus is all we could wish.

If the consciousness of what we are – of what we find in ourselves – has any other effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we are off the ground of pure grace. The effect of such consciousness should surely be to humble us, but to make our hearts reach out to God and to His grace as abounding over it all.

Mediator, Priest, Advocate

Jesus Christ is the Mediator between God and the unconverted.

“There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Tim. 2:5).

He is the High Priest before God to maintain His people in their position before Him, for without His intercession none of His saints could stand an hour.

“Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come... by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” (Heb. 9:11-12).

He is the Advocate with the Father to restore the child who has sinned.

“If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1).

Worship Thou Him

“Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house;

So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty: for He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him.” (Psa. 45:10-11).

My Lord has called me “Daughter;”

‘Tis wondrous grace, I know,

That He who dwells in Heaven

Takes note of me below.

He asked me first to “Hearken”

To just incline mine ear;

He had a precious secret

He wanted me to hear.

He told me to “Consider”

His love to ponder o’er,

And all His grace and goodness

Which makes me love Him more.

He asked me then to “Worship”

My Saviour, Lord the King,

And said He was desirous

That homage I should bring.

To worship Thee? “But Lord,

I’m vile as vile can be.”

He answered me, “My daughter,

I see no spot in thee.”

“Thou’rt trusting in the Saviour

Whose blood was shed for thee;

That finished work on Calv’ry

Forever sets thee free.”

“And now I see thee standing

In Christ the Lamb once slain;

Partaker of His righteousness

And cleansed from every stain.”

“Yes, Lord, I see it clearly,

“Tis through Thy blood alone

I can approach and worship

For all that Thou hast done.

Thy boundless love constrains me;

“Rememb’ring Thee,” ‘tis meet

To bring my feeble praises,

And worship at Thy feet.”

And so my heart is peaceful;

I’m sure such matchless love

Will bear me safely onward

And Home to Him above.

Fragment: What Can Be Done?

It should not be so much with me, “What can I do for the Lord?” as “What can the Lord do with me?”

Correspondence: Mark 9:49; The Trinity

Question: Please explain Mark 9:49.

Answer: This passage sets forth a most solemn truth for all who are out of Christ; and a great practical truth for all Christians. “Every one shall be salted with fire.” This refers to the future judgment of all who die in their sins. “Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.” This refers to present self-judgment exercised by all Christians who will present their bodies a living sacrifice to God. We are delivered, by the death of Christ, from the salting with fire; and we are privileged to know the preservative power of self-judgment.

Question: I cannot understand the Trinity. Can you help me?

Answer: We are not surprised at your inability to comprehend the profound mystery of the Trinity. But let us remind you, dear friend, that though you cannot understand it, you are reverently to believe it. The Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Spirit is God. Did you ever hear those last words of a dying idiot?

“I see! I see! I see!”

“What do you see?” said a bystander.

“I see three in One, and One in three, and they are all for me, for me.”

Think of those words.

Tell Them of Jesus

A young friend gave a very interesting account of the circumstances of his conversion, and it is not unlikely that his case may illustrate the real condition of many.

My young friend had been trained, from his earliest days, in strict morality, but without one spark of light as to Jesus and His salvation. His religion was cold and dreary. He had nothing to meet the need of the soul. The atmosphere in which he lived was intensely worldly. To make money was the grand object of his parents and friends.

It pleased the Lord, however, to visit this precious soul with the convicting grace of His Holy Spirit. He became really anxious about his eternal interests, and, in his anxiety, he thought he would seek for some spiritual advice from a Christian friend. Accordingly, he went to his friend, and opened his heart to him. He told him of his exercise of soul, and asked him what he ought to do.

“Well,” said this friend, “you can do nothing. All your efforts are useless. You must just wait until God’s time comes, and then, but not until then, you will get what you are seeking.”

My young friend inquired how long he might have to wait; but this, of course, his adviser could not tell – who could?

Now, there was a measure of truth in this advice; but it was truth entirely out of place. To use a medical figure, the prescription was good enough in itself, but it was not suited for the case, and, consequently, gave the patient no relief whatever. This spiritual adviser was wholly unfit to deal with an exercised soul. He prescribed theology in place of ministering Christ. Alas! alas! this is too often what is done.

Well, my poor young friend was as unhappy as ever; and he thought he would go to see another, to whom he opened his heart and asked him what he should do to be saved.

“O!” said he, “you must knock. ‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you.’”

“How long am I to knock?” inquired my friend.

Of course, no one can tell that. He must just continue knocking; and, in due time, it should be opened.

Here, again, we see misplaced truth. No doubt, it is all quite right for those who want to get in to knock at the door; but is this the advice to give to an anxious inquirer after salvation? Is such a one to be told either to wait, in dark uncertainty, on the one hand; or to knock, in hopeless effort, on the other? Are there no glad tidings to declare to poor, anxious souls? Has the Son of God died on the cross, and there finished the work of redemption, merely to leave a soul waiting or knocking? For what have I to wait, or to knock? Has not Jesus finished the work of redemption? Yes; blessed be His name, all is done, and hence both these spiritual counselors were defective in their advice, and they left their friend as miserable as they found him. He told me he continued for three years knocking, and received nothing.

At length he went to a third adviser, and he at once told him:

“You are altogether wrong. You have neither to wait nor to knock, but simply to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved – saved on the spot – saved forever!”

Blessed news! Precious tidings! How welcome to a poor, harassed soul, just emerging out of a cold, dreary, misty formalism, and perplexed by the conflicting counsel of his misleading advisers, to be told, on God’s authority, that all is done, that sin has been put away, that salvation is as free as the air he breathes, free as the sunbeams that fall upon his path, free as the dewdrops that refresh the earth, or as the perfume that emanates from the opening rose.

My dear young friend drank in the gladsome message. He found peace in believing. He was set free. The waiting and the knocking gave place to a joyous trust in Christ. He found the Lord Jesus Christ, “who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” He grasped by faith the precious casket, and found therein all he wanted for time and for eternity.

“Salvation in that Name is found,

Cure for my grief and care;

A healing balm for every wound;

All, all I want is there.”

Confess the Lord

If any of our dear young friends who know the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, have been timid about confessing Him before others, I beg of you to do so now.

Go to the Lord alone first, and tell Him all the truth, then go to others. Like the man in Mark 5, begin at home.

“Go home to thy friends,” and tell them first. Also write to your friends, and tell them of what the Lord has done for you.

Confession of Christ will often meet a difficulty felt by many young converts, a difficulty, which was once expressed to me by a young man in these words,

“I do want to follow Jesus, but how shall I get rid of my old companions in sin: for they seek to draw me aside?”

I advised him to tell them gently and lovingly of the Saviour, and invite them, in the spirit of the hymn, to come to Him,

“O that my Saviour were your Saviour too!”

“You may be sure,” I said, “the result will be this: you will either win them to Christ, or they will leave you entirely.”

He promised to adopt this plan.

Now I would like to have you try the same thing, and you will find that those who care nothing for the Lord will drop off like autumn leaves.

How sweet, on the other hand, if you should thus be the means of leading a companion to Christ. You will find, as I have found, that if a bold, decided confession of Christ in your home, school, or business is unhesitatingly made, it will give glory to Him, and save you a great deal of sorrow and remorse.

“Whosoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 10:32-33).

Gladness

“Thou hast put gladness in my heart.” (Psa. 4:7).

Worldly joys put gladness into the face. The rich Corinthians “glory in the appearance, and not in heart” (2 Cor. 5:12); but the Spirit of God puts gladness into the heart; divine joys are heart joys.

“Their heart shall rejoice in the Lord.” (Zech. 10:7).

“Your heart shall rejoice.” (John 16:22).

Living Epistles

“Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ.” (2 Cor. 3:3).

“Consider your ways.” (Hag. 1:5).

Is my life an epistle of Christ

In my speech, my walk, and my ways?

As with others I meet and converse,

Does my life testify to His praise?

As the moon and the stars in the sky

Reflect rays of light from the sun

Does my life in some measure reflect

The love of the crucified One?

That One who created the worlds –

Who sustaineth all things by His might –

The Eternal in glory above –

Was ever His Father’s delight.

But He left it: so great was His love

That He laid all this glory aside

And stooped to come down to this earth

To redeem for Himself His bride.

For He saw us afar off from God

With hearts and minds ruined by sin,

And He longed to reveal divine love

That our poor rebel hearts He might win.

He told out the love of God’s heart

To a world that was ruined and lost

By willingly bearing our guilt

And atoning for sin at such cost.

Since the Son in His infinite love

The love of His Father expressed,

‘Tis our privilege that to receive

And, believing in Him, simply rest.

Believers who trust in His love

A reflection of Jesus should be

That others whom daily they meet

A glimpse of His image may see.

Lord, keep me abiding in Thee,

In fellowship close to Thy side;

From sins of the flesh keep me, free –

Lusts, selfishness, hatred, and pride.

Forbid that my letter of life

Should to any a stumbling-block be;

But grant that Thine own blessed Son

May be seen – “Christ living in me.”

O help me to lean on Thy breast

And prove Thine unchangeable love,

Then to live that my life may reflect

The heart of the Father above.

Address to Young Christians: Samuel, Part 3

In the second chapter we have the growth of this dear young soul.

“But Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod.” vs. 18. Wasn’t that a happy service!

You do not have to wait until you get to be a man or woman to serve the Lord. You may start that blessed service in very tender years, though perhaps the character of it will not be such as it will be when you get your growth. You will not stand on the street and preach the gospel, you will not fill a formal position of that kind, but in how many things you can serve the Lord even as a child!

Samuel’s service to the Lord was characterized by being girded with a linen ephod. That young boy’s service to the Lord was characterized by personal righteousness – separation from evil. What a privilege in an age like this to live a life of service girded with a linen ephod!

The poor ungodly world around knows nothing of it. It is utterly foreign to it. It is your privilege and what a sweet and rare privilege it is! The spirit of the world today is well expressed in a great flaring poster I saw recently:

“Why be good?” The very question itself insinuates the answer:

“There is no use being good.” That is the spirit of the world.

But dear young Christian, if you are girded as Samuel was with a linen ephod, what a different life it will be for you. Practical, personal righteousness in separation from everything that is evil. What a privilege to live a life like that in a sinful, godless age such as we find ourselves in. Your parents are throwing about you every possible hedge of protection they can, and are shielding you just as far as it is in their power, but you cannot always stay behind that. There is coming a time when you will have to assume responsibility for yourself. Will you continue in this path of separation from the world? What a privilege if you can do as Samuel did!

“Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod. Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year.”

Now young people (I speak to those who are still under authority), sometimes we get the feeling that we are quite self-sufficient. That is quite characteristic of adolescent years, but I trust none of those to whom I am speaking, will ever reach the stage in your experience as young people, when you think your father and your mother cannot give you a little helpful advice. I hope you haven’t reached the place when you consider your spiritual judgment superior to that of father and mother.

Samuel’s mother made him a little coat, and each year took it up and presented it to him. I suppose it would have to be a little larger from year to year. So the advice and counsel you receive will be of a broadening and enlarging character as you grow more mature. But little Samuel didn’t cast off the coat and say,

“Mother, I don’t like the looks of that coat; they don’t wear them that way now; that is two years behind the time.”

No, he just received it from – year to year, and as he thrust his little arms into it, he saw in each stitch the expression of love and care of his godly mother, and with what pride and satisfaction, he wore that coat throughout the coming year. That speaks of fatherly and motherly counsel of godly, praying parents. May you not get beyond this.

We get quite consistent growth in the 26th verse:

“And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favor both with the Lord and also with men.”

That is quite a healthy Christian life: steady, quiet growth. What we want is that development of Christian character in keeping with Scripture. Go on learning from day to day what you have in Christ, growing up into the knowledge of Him as we have in the Word of God.

(To be continued)

A Tender Conscience

Cherish a tender conscience. Remember this: Whatever unfits for Christian duties, whatever cools the fervor of devotion, whatever indisposes us to read the Scriptures or engage in prayer, whatever we could not engage in with a perfectly clear conscience in the presence of a rejected and suffering Saviour, are not for us. The pleasures, amusements, recreations, which we cannot thank God for, should be avoided. When the thought of God, of Christ, of His coming, of the judgment seat, falls like a shadow on what we call enjoyment, we are out of our right place. Let us flee from it.

Let us never go where we cannot ask God to go with us. Let us never be found where we cannot act as Christ would have us. Let us pass each day as pilgrims, consciously on the way to their heavenly inheritance. Let us press after close communion with Jesus. Let the love of God reign in our hearts and thus shall we be kept from a thousand snares, exhibit a holy consistency, and become possessed of a peace and a joy which passeth knowledge.

There Is a Time to Dance

“Is it sinful for a Christian to encourage dancing, or to take part in it when entertained by Christian people, who practice it, arguing that it is a harmless recreation?”

It would seem that this subject is a perplexing one to some young Christians in this day. Beloved young readers, are you willing to turn with me to the Word of God?. Let us bear in mind that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Rom. 14:23). And faith can only act on the known will of God.

It may he said, But do we not find dancing in the Scriptures? Yes, that is true, we do.

“Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously.” (Ex. 15:20).

This was the great joy of redemption from Egypt. Is it so when those called Christians, in this day, entertain their friends with dancing? Are their hearts filled with joy because God hath redeemed them? Do they sing to the Lord, because He hath triumphed gloriously? Do they think of the Lord, or dare they name His holy name at the dance? No; they never dance the dance of Miriam.

David “also danced before the Lord with all his might” (2 Sam. 6:14). But why did he dance? It was because the ark was brought into the city of David with gladness. The restoration of this symbol of Jehovah’s presence filled the heart of David with gladness, and thus in its dispensation was a time to dance. Have we ever been filled with higher and holier joy, because the enjoyed presence of the Lord Himself has really been restored wherever two or three are gathered to Him? Does not David condemn us? Honestly, dear young friends, do you believe you are invited to dance with all your might before the Lord? Or is it not really that you may make yourselves as happy as you can be in Cain’s world, and forget God? Is God in all their thoughts when they invite you to dance? You will not find a dance in modern Babylon that answers to Miriam’s or David’s.

Let us try another scripture. Israel, had sinned exceedingly while Moses was away in the mount. (See Ex. 32). They had freely subscribed their gold, and fallen into idolatry. They had really turned after demons. “And they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” And they offered offerings, indeed, they imitated the worship of God. “And said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.” Read the full account. “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” And in verses 17 to 20 we learn they played at dancing till they shouted again. Was this a time to dance? Was this faith, or sin? Which?

Now is not this an exact picture of Christendom: of those very so-called Christians that invite you to sit down and eat and drink, and rise up and play at dancing? They have practically turned aside from the Word of the Lord to the idolatry of paganism, and to the pagan festivals which they call feasts to the Lord. They sit down content in this world, to eat and to drink religiously, as many a one even takes the Lord’s Supper. And then, as it was while Moses was away in the mount, so now, while Jesus, the once crucified, is away in heaven, they invite you to rise up and dance. Dear young souls, may God open your eyes.

But is there not a scripture which says there is a time to dance? There is, let us read it:

“A time to mourn, and a time to dance.” (Eccl. 3:4).

The question then is this – is it now, is this the time to dance?

If an enemy invaded these shores, and if disloyal men betrayed the head of our national government into their hands, and he was with the greatest possible cruelty and indignity banished from this country, would that be a time for loyal citizens to dance, or to mourn?

When David was driven from his kingdom did his loyal friend, Mephibosheth, dance? When the king returned:

“Mephibosheth the son of Saul came down to meet the king, and had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in peace.” (2 Sam. 19:24).

What would David have thought of him if he had called his friends together to amuse themselves with play and dancing?

Dear young readers, do you profess to be loyal Christians? to belong to the King of glory, who for the present has been rejected, and mocked, and with the utmost possible cruelty had been rejected by this world, by Jew and Gentile yea, who has been put to the most cruel and shameful death and who is still hated and rejected by this world? And is this the time to mourn His absence, or to dance for joy with that world that hates your Lord? That long-rejected Lord will soon return

“In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our 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. 1:8-9).

That blessed Lord has told us, it shall be in that day as it was in the days of Noah and of Lot. Was it a time to dance when the angel had warned Lot? His daughters and sons-in-law may have been at an evening party having a harmless dance. Was that a time to dance?

There was eating and drinking, and perhaps dancing: marrying and giving in marriage, when Noah had long warned the world of coming judgment; but the flood came at last. If it was not a time to dance then, is it now? A far greater judgment is at the very doors. Men did not believe it then, but it came. It will be so again.

Do you say, “O, but I am a Christian, and I expect the Lord to come first, and take me?” Do you look for the return of the Lord to take His church? And do you really believe that all who have heard and rejected the gospel – your very friends, it may be – that all these will be left behind for everlasting judgment, and can you amuse yourself and them with dancing? If you were sure the Lord would come tomorrow, would you spend tonight in dancing? Is not dancing a pleasure of that world lying in the wicked one? Has not God said in His Word,

“Love not the world, ‘neither the things in the world. If any love the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.” (1 John 2:15).

O, be not deceived; if you are really a Christian, then Jesus says, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Do not let the devil deceive you by telling you that you can have both the pleasures of the world now, and heaven at last. Are we not baptized unto His death? Do dead men dance? We are to reckon ourselves dead with Christ and alive to God in Him.

Well, if it is not a time to dance now, will it ever be so? Yes, indeed there will be a time to dance, even on this earth. Faith in the Word of God sees a blessed time beyond the darkness and the judgments about to be poured upon this poor guilty world.’ The ancient people of God to whom the promises were given, the children of Israel, will be gathered to their own land.

“Let Israel rejoice in Him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their king. Let them praise His name in the dance: let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and harp.” (Psa. 149:2-3).

“Praise Him with the timbrel and dance.” (Psa. 150:4).

O what a change! The devil is the accepted god of this world now, and Jesus is rejected.

It is a time to mourn. The Lord shall then be King in Zion.

“For behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.” (Isa. 65:18).

“Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her... For thus saith the Lord, Behold I will extend peace to her like a river.” (Isa. 66:10, 12). (Read the context of chapters 65 and 66).

Yes, then will be the time to dance, for those who are spared to people the earth when Jesus, the Messiah, the King, shall reign in Zion. But notice the character of the dancing there. It is real joy in Christ, their King. It is with the heart filled with praise to Him. It is as if the body is thrilled with holy joy in the Lord, and expressed its joy in Him in the dance.

Can you tell me where there is such dancing as this now? Is the name of Jesus ever named in the dance? Does the heart swell with praise to Him? There may be the mockery of mixing dancing with a form of family prayer, as there was around the golden calf.

In conclusion then, as dancing is not now in keeping with the time in which we live, – (Jesus having been murdered and rejected), so it cannot be of faith, and “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Is it possible for a Christian who is waiting for the Lord from heaven to be found dancing? We do not believe that the two things can exist together. May the Lord separate all that are His from this pleasure-loving world.

The Confederacies of Men, and the Judgments of God: Part 1

Part 1

Scripture contemplates hostile associations of men and of nations. Isaiah 7, 8, was the era of one, and the prophecy of another. Joel 3 tells of “multitudes, multitudes,” gathered together in the day of Jerusalem’s final sorrow. Psalm 83 anticipates a confederacy against the Israel of God; and “Gog” is the witness of a host of nations leagued in infidel defiance of the Lord.

But Scripture also contemplates civil or worldly associations – and it is our business to watch their spirit, their purpose, and their working, awful indeed as they are in forming the character and history of the world, and in urging it on its way to meet the judgment of God.

It was confederacy of this sort which was among the descendants of Noah. The one speech and the one language of the children of men in that day led them to judge that they were strong, and that by a little skill and effort they might wax still stronger, even to independency of God. The material under their hand in the plain of Shinar, promised very fair. They were all of one language, and were journeying in one direction. They were invited by favorable circumstances (providences, as they might say), and they would make a common effort, and try the industrial resources of nature. Things looked well for progress. With a little skill and diligence of their own, the fruitful plain would yield them brick and mortar, and they might accomplish much. And why should they not use the resources of nature, and exercise their own capabilities? Why should they not try what “the raw material,” by man’s “art and manufacture,” would lead to, and do for them?

This was the language of the children of men in Genesis 11. Whether God would have it thus or not, they never thought of waiting to consider. He was not before them. They did their own pleasure. They built a city and a tower, that both name and security, glory and strength might be theirs.

Thus was it in those early days. In other and very distant days, in the days of the Saviour, it was the same – with this aggravating circumstance – that confederacies then formed themselves of strange, discordant elements, because of the working of the natural enmity of the heart to God let that heart be disciplined or trained as it may be, whether in a Jewish or Gentile school. In that enmity, the Jew and the Gentile are found together; and so are the Pharisee and the Sadducee the men of different politics and of different sects. The world combined these diverse materials against an unworldly Jesus. This was the secret of their confederacy. The Pharisee and the Sadducee were men of different thoughts altogether considered simply in themselves; but the world can be their common object in resistance of Christ.

This is seen in Matthew 16:1-5. “Show us a sign from heaven,” they come together and say to Him. That is, they challenge the Lord to accredit Himself in some way that the world could appreciate, or that, otherwise, they would reject Him by common consent.

This is to be laid to heart. The world has power to combine very different elements when an unworldly Christ stands out as a common enemy. Herod and Pilate were made friends together. There may be the secular and the ecclesiastical, even the infidel and the superstitious; but let an unworldly Christ appear, and He will be challenged as the object of common enmity.

A heavenly stranger sojourning on earth for a time, is resented as a trespasser by both; and however else they may differ, they can confederate and act together against Him. God, such as man’s heart or man’s religion gives him, man will accept; but the true God, whose image Jesus is, will never do for him.

All this is for the present consideration of our souls. For the world is becoming a common object in these days of ours. All are aiding its advancement, and the development of its capabilities, and the multiplying of its desirable and delectable things and such a generation as this may easily become the material of a confederacy, or common association against the unworldly Jesus and the church of God.

Strange coalition of this kind is presented to us by the Lord Himself in Luke 11. It is a solemn word of warning; and I may add, a seasonable word, just in this present day.

The unclean spirit had been the original tenant of this leprous house. In due time he left it, seeking other scenes of action. But after a while he returns, and finds his old house in a new condition. His absence, the absence of an unclean spirit, has left it open to other influences; and, accordingly, on his return he finds it “swept and garnished.” This, however, does not disappoint him. He rather deems it to be more suited to his purpose than ever. And it is in this fact this solemn, awful fact that I judge there is something for our careful and special observation at this time, and for this generation.

This leprous house changed its style or condition, but not its owner, nor its fitness to answer the purposes of its owner. If the unclean spirit had been disappointed in his wanderings, he is not so on his return to his old dwelling. So far otherwise is it, that he goes to gather seven other spirits, more wicked than himself, and they all make entrance into the house, more thoroughly than ever to accomplish its ruin. And they succeed. The last state of it is worse than the first.

This is a picture, indeed, of strange unexpected confederacies. An unclean spirit enters a swept house, associating with himself seven other spirits. This is a strange coalition. Things are found together in this house which naturally suited neither the house itself, nor each other. But still, there they are in company, and dwell and work together. An unclean spirit, with seven other spirits, in a swept and garnished house!

Is this Christendom in her last state? Is it to come to this? Is it not, I rather ask, on its way to this already? Are there not symptoms, somewhat too plain to be mistaken, of such strange, unnatural alliances, all around us? Are not elements in themselves repulsive, beginning to try their capability of combining? Is not “alliance” the favorite watchword of the day? Is not the unclean spirit of darker, earlier days making fresh entrance into a reformed, and swept, and ornamented house? Is not this the Christendom of the present hour? Are not the premonitions of the divine prophet being realized before us, and around us at this moment?

(To be continued)

Fragment: Loving the World

“If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15).

The Father could not manifest His love to a lover of the world, for there is the most absolute contrariety between the world and the Father.

Extract: Sorrow

We are not given sorrow for sorrow’s sake, but for the sake of association with Christ. Is not that blessed? Is it not honor?

Correspondence: Mark 12:31-32; The Elect; Luke 23:31; S.S.vs. Gos.; Elders of Israel

Question: What is the unpardonable sin?” (Matt. 12:31, 32).

Answer: The only places where the “unpardonable sin” is referred to are the parallel passages in the three synoptic gospels. There it is connected with attributing the miracles of Christ to the power of Beelzebub. It is definitely and finally rejecting the testimony of God by the Holy Spirit.

“It signifies imputing to Satan that power of God which the Holy Spirit exercised then and afterward, and it bespeaks deep and settled hatred to God. Souls that give themselves up to such malice against the workers of all good are beyond pardon. Forgiveness is for those who repent and believe the gospel.”

Question: What does “Elect” mean? Who are “the Elect” in Scripture?

Answer: “Elect” means “chosen.” In Isaiah 42:1 and Matthew 12:18 the Lord Himself is the chosen one of God, God’s Beloved Son. In Matthew 24:31, it is the elect nation of Israel, chosen out of the nations to be a peculiar treasure unto Jehovah above all people (Ex. 19:5).

In 1 Timothy 5:21 we have the elect angels also. Then we have the “elect” of the present time, those who compose the church (Eph. 1:4; Col. 3:12; 2 Thess. 2:13; Titus 1:1; 1 Peter 1:2). This is the treasure and the pearl of Matthew 13:44-45. Election is the choosing of the persons; predestination is to the place or position of relationship they are to fill.

Question: Please explain Luke 23:31.

Answer: “The green tree” refers to that special time when the Lord was present in their midst. “The dry tree,” on the contrary, points to the future. It is as though He had said, “If they can act so now, in My presence, how will it be by and by?”

Question: If the Lord gives one the opportunity to teach a Sunday school class, would it be pleasing to Him for that one to absent himself from the regular gospel meeting for this work?

Answer: You have received the gospel for your own soul’s salvation; and hence, however precious it may be to hear the gospel preached, over and over again, we do not think you ought to let this stand in your way in seeking to lead others to the Saviour.

Were it a question of the Lord’s Table, it would be a totally different matter. No line of service ought to be allowed to hinder our attendance at the celebration of that most precious institution. Every rightly taught and spiritually minded Christian will assuredly give the Lord’s Table the paramount place.

Question: Did the elders of Israel see “the God of Israel?” (See Ex. 24:10; John 1:18; 1 Tim. 6:16).

Answer: In Exodus 24:10 the elders saw “the God of Israel,” who was pleased to take a form in which He could show Himself to man. But John 1:18 and 1 Timothy 6:16 refer to God, in His eternal essence. NO mortal could see a spirit. There is no real difficulty in the passages.

But Will He Not Despise Me Now?

Mrs. B. was a clever, reasoning woman; and having been thrown at a certain period of her life among those who speak of Christ as nothing more than a mere man, she embraced, and with the natural activity of her mind, sought to spread the soul-ruining opinions of her new friends. The orthodox faith which affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ is both God and man in one person, she assumed to believe was false. Therefore, according to this fatal heresy, He could not be the Saviour of her soul. She was now taught to trust in herself – in her good works, especially in works of charity – and in the general mercy of God for salvation. Strong feelings of opposition used to arise in her mind when she was told that nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ could cleanse away her sins, and fit her for heaven. The very thought of such a thing was rejected with scorn.

“Never, no never, could I believe such a thing – I can’t; it’s impossible,” is the style of answer we have heard from such lips, even when apparently anxious about the future.

In conversing with such minds, we are made to feel that there is much more to contend with than the mere darkness or indifference of nature. There is the power of Satan who has blinded the mind, hardened the heart, and seared the conscience. He is in full possession of such souls. As in the case of Joshua the high priest, he stands at their right hand – the symbol of power – ready to resist every attempt to show them the truth, and every desire on their part to receive it. Painfully solemn things will sometimes be said by such; but we know where the blasphemy comes from, and can have patience with the ensnared soul and also deep compassion for its fearful state; faith sees it in the foul grasp of the fiend of hell, and knows that Jesus only can take the prey from the mighty.

But the time came while yet in the prime of life, that the one immediately before us must lie down and die. To human pride and an unbroken will this was disappointing and humiliating; but it could not be put off; it could not be avoided; disease was there and doing its work. No love, no kindness, no power on earth could stay its course; she must die, and die soon. The most terrible feelings came over her mind as to what might be after death. She could not persuade herself that she was prepared. Doubts filled and harassed her mind; all that she had been taught to trust in, vanished as utterly worthless. Reasoning was now useless; it failed to satisfy her anxiety; she was, as it were, left alone in the dark; nothing to rest on; nothing to hold by; all refuge failed her; yet she could not receive the testimony of God to the all-sufficiency of the blood of Jesus – she could not bear to give the undivided glory of her salvation to one who was in her estimation nothing more than a Moses or an Elias. Yet she was convinced of sin, and that with her sins, she could never enter into heaven; how to be pardoned and cleansed was the great question now.

“Only by the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son,” was the faithful reply from a friend who stood at her bedside.

“No, never will I bow to Him as God,” was the rebellious feeling of her heart. She refused; she was distressed; she was restless; death was near: what was to become of her?

Again, she was told by the same friend, to look to Jesus as a lost, ruined, and hell-deserving sinner, and she would be saved at once – that God was ready beforehand with everything for her; but she must honor His Son as co-equal with Himself, in His being, power, and glory. This was the one difficulty with her. To surrender her heart to Jesus as Saviour, and Lord, would be doing violence to every feeling of her nature; and would be giving the lie to her past profession. No, she would not do that; and yet she sighed and groaned for something she needed but could nowhere find.

Day after day passed, and the mighty struggle increased. The friend referred to sent a written request to the meeting for prayer. It was so worded as to impress the importance of the case on all hearts. Earnest prayer was made night after night. Still the report was.

“No hearty yielding yet to the name of Jesus; hut increasingly anxious.” Satan was unwilling to let go his hold. Having beguiled the soul to the brink of hell, was he there to lose his prey? But faith too held a firm grasp;

“Look to Jesus; confess Him as Saviour and Lord; His blood cleanseth from all sin; and trust in Him alone, and all will be well,” were the encouraging words spoken to her. But we need not attempt to trace the different aspects of the terrible struggle.

The Lord in mercy heard prayer; this was evident from her anxiety continuing. At last her heart began to yield, the power of old associations became feebler, all outward things were passing away, she was more by herself before God.

“But can it be true that He is really God as well as man?” she inquired.

“‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.’ (Isa. 45:22).

“He is a just God and a Saviour,” was the immediate answer given. “The Just died for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. What love! Mrs. B., O think of it! believe it! What love in God’s Son to come down from heaven to be a man and die, to die that we might live! All that is required for our salvation is done; we have only to look to Jesus, to look in the spirit of faith and dependence, and we are saved.”

While she was being thus spoken to, the grace of God was at work in her soul. We believe the Lord had rebuked Satan; she was free, and ready now to receive the truth; still she was in darkness and doubt; but then came the never-to-be-forgotten dawning of an eternal day.

“But will He not despise me now?” This was, we doubt not, the cry of a breaking heart. The friend who stood by her bedside wisely answered:

“If He despises you, you will be the first He has ever despised in this world.”

This word of wondrous love broke the last link with her former self, and men and things. The work was done; she confessed the Lord Jesus. The thought of a love that could bear with so much disdainful pride and opposition, and for so long, brought her to His feet in faith and love.

The friend who had been so interested in her now put the following plain questions:

“Do you now really believe that Jesus is God?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered.

“And do you now really believe that His blood has cleansed all your sins away?”

“Yes, I do.”

She confessed her faith in the precious blood of Jesus, God’s Son, as the only way of salvation; and owned Jesus as Saviour and Lord – her Lord and her God.

Let men of all creeds and of all opinions hear it; and let men of no creed, of no religious opinion, if there be such, hear it; let the learned and the unlearned, the savage and the sage, hear it; let the hell-inspired debaser of the Son of the ever-blessed God, hear it. Hear what? Hear this,

“If He despises you, you will be the first He has ever despised in this world.”

But remember that if you despise, lightly esteem, or even neglect the Lord Jesus, the only Saviour of sinners, you must be lost, lost forever, lost in the fiery depths of hell. But how awful the reflection would be in that place of unmitigated woe, and how deep its agony – I am here for despising Him who never despised the chief of sinners, or ever once spurned a penitent soul of Adam’s race. Now, just now, without delay, dear reader, turn to the Lord, believe His Word, and trust in Himself.

“A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Psa. 51:17), stands in the records of His ways with mankind. Hear then, dear reader, and believe it true.

“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28).

“Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” (John 6:37).

Believing in Christ Himself

Believing in Christ Himself, supposes that I have, more or less, come to an end of myself; that I have bowed to the humiliating sentence of Scripture upon my nature, and that I own myself to be lost in the sight of God. So that, when one receives Christ, he has still his old nature, not only body, soul, and spirit, but even “the flesh” – for this, too, he has still, and it may be, alas! the occasion of many a slip and sorrow, if he be unwatchful. Besides these, there is for the believer a new nature that he had not before.

We must take care that we put things in their proper places. It is the Word brought home by the Holy Spirit that produces faith, and this not by mending the first, but by revealing the last Adam – Christ. God has come down from heaven to accomplish this great purpose – to give me this new life – to deliver me from sin and self: and how is it done? It is the Holy Spirit who effects it by the Word of God, which makes Christ known to the soul.

The Two Mines

Lines found among the papers of a young man who later fell asleep in Jesus. He had been to the gold diggings, where he realized a large amount, of which he was afterward robbed. The hardships he endured at the mines brought on an illness, in the progress of which, the Lord revealed Himself to his precious soul.

I once deemed that contentment was bought with gold,

And I went to the land where the rich tide rolled,

And I eagerly sought, mid disease and death,

To grasp it; nor feared I the withering breath

Of the damp chilling mine, when I saw it shine.

Nay, I laughed when I thought of what wealth was mine.

But it fled and it left me diseased and worn;

And I grieved ‘mid a night which might have known no morn.

But I was not deserted; for Jesus came

His suffering blood-bought one from Satan to claim.

And He opened the mine of His love divine,

And His Word bade its gems round my heart to shine.

O! how softly He whispered, “ ‘Tis Mine to roll

“The mountain of sin off thy laboring soul.”

How full was her freedom, relieved of her load!

And He gave me a name, ‘twas – “a son of God.”

And He said, “In its mine

“Leave earth’s gold to shine,

“The riches of grace are eternally thine.”

Address to Young Christians: Part 4

Part 4

Samuel

1 Samuel 3:19-21

Further, in the third chapter, we have another experience in the life of young Samuel,

“And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh; for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” (Verses 19-21).

Sometimes we find young people growing (I speak not of physical growth), and we are confident the Lord is not with them. They are growing in worldly prosperity – in business; perhaps they are able to write bigger checks, and drive finer automobiles; they are growing, but we cannot add the last of the verse; “And the Lord was with him.” Growth in fellowship and companionship with the Lord Himself is what we desire for you. The result of that was,

“And did let none of his words fall to the ground.” In other words, he was building day by day steadily and solidly that which would stand. The Lord “did let none of his words fall to the ground.” The only way I know to do this is, going on building according to the specifications laid down in this grand book of God’s plans.

Dear young souls, if you are building your lives according to the specifications laid down in the precious Word of God, you are building for eternity, and not building that which is to be torn down, and go into ashes in that coming day when everything will be tested. If you are building in accordance with the precious Word of God, you are building that which will abide.

There is much of what is called the wisdom of this world, yet one of the characteristics of it is this, that no sooner is one thing established, than something else comes along and sweeps it away, and then we have what is called the latest theory. I was struck with that recently while in R. I was speaking to a prominent doctor about a technical book on a certain subject, and the advisability of getting hold of that book. He said,

“You know the trouble is, by the time you get the hook, it may be out of date.” I thought, what an admission on the part of one who occupied a position of learning in this world.

But here is Samuel, and he is living such a life that the “Lord did let none of his words fall to the ground.” What is truth today, is truth tomorrow. It has that enduring character of God Himself. A life lived in communion with God, is a life that goes on and on.

“He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

O, the privilege of living a life like that! I know if we could just simply, and with confidence accept that for our own pathway, what sorrow we would be saved; what unhappy reaping we would be spared, and yet we know it is the truth. It is here in the Word, and it is for you and for me.

In closing I want to leave with you the last part of 1 Samuel 2:30: “Them that honor Me, I will honor; and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.”

Dear young Christians, I wish that you could take that verse, and nail it up over the lintel and door posts of your heart.

“Them that honor Me, I will honor.” Seize hold of it! Grasp it while you are young, cling to it through life, and see it return to you in that coming day.

(Concluded)

Rest

Matthew 11:28; Hebrews 4:9

The word rendered “rest” in Mattew 11:28 is not the same as in Hebrews 4:9. Our Lord says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

This is rest of conscience – rest as to our sins, our guilt, our responsibilities as sinners – rest as to everything which might raise a question between our souls and God. But further He says,

“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest.”

This is rest of heart, as regards our present path – our circumstances, our cares and anxieties, our difficulties and trials. This rest is the opposite of restlessness, and flows from our being subject, in all things, to the will of God, as our blessed Lord was perfectly. He could say, “I thank Thee, Father,” when everything seemed to be against Him. “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” And when we can say with all the heart, “Thy will be done. O Lord,” then we “find rest.” If our will is active, we are restless; if our will is subject we have rest sweet rest – rest of heart – the peace of God which passeth all understanding. Precious portion!

“There remaineth a sabbath-keeping for the people of God.” (Heb. 4:9). This is the future rest, the rest of glory to which we are on our way. It is God’s rest into which He will, blessed be His name, conduct us when all our wilderness toil is over. The Epistle to the Hebrews presents the people of God as pilgrims on their way to rest, and it exhorts them to labor to enter into that rest.

The sinner is not told to labor for rest, but the Christian is. This makes all the difference.

Sent Forth Lacking Nothing

During a Scripture lesson given to a class of children, a question was asked,

“When the Lord Jesus sent out His disciples two and two into the world, as we have just been reading (Luke 10), to preach this gospel, and to work for Him, did He give them any directions? Did He, for instance, say anything to them about what they would have to take with them?”

“O! yes, He did,” promptly answered a bright little fellow, “the Lord Jesus told them He would see that they had all they needed, so they would not have to trouble themselves about taking anything at all with them, and their clothes and shoes would do.”

The child stroked his own clothes down complacently as he spoke, evidently with a boy’s thorough appreciation of the feeling of relief which it must have given to each of the disciples to hear that he might start off at once, just as he was, free from all encumbrances.

O! that all disciples of the Lord, in this our day, may drink more deeply into this childlike spirit, this true idea of service, entire dependence upon the one who sends them forth, and freedom from all that would distract the heart, or hinder the feet.

If encumbered with riches, surely “the cares of this world,” or “the lusts of other things” may prove to be an equally ensnaring and impeding burden. It is enough for every disciple that he be as his Master, who sought no accumulation of treasure for Himself on earth, but simply to do the will of God who sent Him.

With this object in view, and this only, we shall find that what we have “will do,” will suffice for our need, and, “looking off unto Jesus,” happy lightness of step, and an unhindered walk, will be the result.

“Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matt. (6:32-33).

Trust Him Wholly

There hath not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised. (1 Kings 8:56).

You will always find as you trust in the Lord that He is just as true as His Word. The devil may try to discourage God’s people, yet faith in God giveth the victory. We find people today who are trying to keep themselves: if they would just trust in the Lord He would keep them. Paul learned the secret of trusting in the Lord, and so can God’s people of today. Christ says,

“Be of good cheer; for I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Heb. 13:5).

Come, Lord Jesus: Revelation 22:20

COME, Lord Jesus, hearts are waking,

Won, attracted unto Thee;

We have seen where now Thou dwellest,

And we long to be with Thee,

True and faithful to Thy Word,

Quickly Thou wilt come, blest Lord.

LORD, we own Thy blood has washed us

From our sins of scarlet dye;

Brought us to Thy God and Father,

In Thyself forever nigh

Soon with Thee to have our part

In that glory where Thou art.

JESUS, Saviour, we adore Thee

For Thy wondrous, matchless grace;

Sweeter songs of praise we’ll give Thee

When we gaze upon Thy face.

Surely, Thy return draws nigh:

“Come, Lord Jesus, come,” we cry.

The Confederacies of Men and the Judgments of God: Part 2

Part 2

There are many spirits abroad at present, “gone out into the world.” The old “unclean spirit” is abroad in growing vigor, the spirit of idolatry or superstition. The infidel spirit is abroad. The worldly spirit is abroad – that energy which, with its ten thousand arts, is embellishing and furnishing its native place, using refinement of all sorts, morals, religion, intellectual culture and intellectual delights, science and music, books and pictures, everything that can set off and recommend the world, and linking “the million” with nobles in the enjoyment of it.

Thus is it in the history of this present hour. The affecting truth that Jesus is the rejected Jesus in this world, is practically forgotten in all this. That mystery is scorned by some, denied by others, slighted by others, and but coldly, carelessly, and feebly acted on by us who thoroughly and entirely own it among the deep and precious things of God. For we say, How could God meet anything in this world but rejection? The world had already departed from Him, ere He came into it. It had set up for itself long before, even from the days of Cain and the city of Enoch. But how deep-seated its enmity must be, when it refused to know such a one as Jesus!

This enmity of the world was as the enmity of the Jews, who could forget all their hatred of the Gentile, settled and rooted as that hatred was in the very heart of the nation, and say, in the desire to rid themselves of Him, “We have no king but Caesar.” They refused the waters of Shiloh that flowed softly, and rejoiced in Rezin and Remaliah’s son.

But confederacy has not closed its history, or spent all its energy yet. Far otherwise. It must be witnessed in full action at the end, as it was at the beginning. We have seen it in the early days of Babel, and in the matured meridian days of the Lord Jesus, and are still to see it in the declining days of the Apocalypse. And the “old Serpent” will be the life and instigator of confederacies at the end, as he was at the beginning, and hitherto. The book of the Apocalypse witnesses this, specially in the mysteries or symbols of the “Woman” and the “Beast.”

The Woman sits on many waters. Multitudes, tongues, nations, and peoples, all receive the cup of fornication at her hand. Kings of the earth, merchants of the earth, every shipmaster and sailor, and such as trade in the sea, are subject to her.

The Beast has the whole world wondering after him. In himself he combines the lion and the bear and the leopard, and he has ten horns and seven heads. The False Prophet ministers to him, and the kings, by one consent, give their power to him. All that dwell on the earth worship him. Small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, receive his mark in their forehead.

There are awful tokens of confederated energies of evil. And in them we see the beginning reproduced at the end. For confederacy is the mode or form in which man makes display of his natural pride and apostasy.

And in that form of confederation God will judge the revolted children of men speedily, as He has already done in early days. At the beginning, it was the alliance between the woman and the serpent that He broke, saying to the serpent, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman.”

It was those who were gathered in the rebel plain of Shinar that He scattered over the face of the whole earth.

And so it is the body of the Apocalyptic Woman in her pride, He will give to the burning flame; and His supper, “the supper of the Great God,” shall celebrate the doom and ruin of the Beast and his associates.

Our present victory, beloved, is by separation. Separation is holiness if it be separation to the place and character which the calling of God suggests.

The purpose of the serpent in the garden was to withdraw Eve from the condition in which the Lord God had put her. She was to sacrifice that, and get advancement from him. She consented; and at once as a “chaste virgin” she was ruined. Her purity was lost. Whatever she gained, she lost that. She lost what God had made her.

The church, like the Eve of Genesis 2, should be what the hand of God has made her, taking, as it has done in this age, the cross of Christ as its instrument or material. And that cross has brought her nigh to God, but estranged her from the world, and when the principles of the world propose to cultivate and advance the church, and such proposal is listened to, we see again, what of old we saw in Genesis 3, the mystic Eve has lost her virgin purity.

The proposal to advance the church by such means is attractive. But so was the proposal of the Serpent at the beginning, “Ye shall be as gods.” This was an angel of light, a minister of righteousness, in the judgment of flesh and blood. But it worked corruption and utter moral ruin, for it beguiled her from the state in which God had left her.

And this generation is doing its best to commend the world to the church, the tree to the woman again. It speaks as though the world were now a very different thing from what the cross of Christ has declared it and proved it to be. It speaks as if Christ were no longer a rejected Christ. But if the saint listen, as of old Eve did, he is so far corrupted – for he is surrendering the place, the condition, and the character, which the cross of Christ has given him and made him.

The serpent would fain give man a garden again. And a happier garden it shall be than God once gave him. He shall have every tree in it. The world shall be a wise world, a religious world, a cultivated world, a delight full place, and still advancing. The man of benevolence, the man of morals, the religious and the intellectual man, the man of refined pleasures, all will find their home in it. And this shall be the world’s oneness. And all who desire their fellow-creatures’ happiness, and the common rest after so many centuries of confusion and trouble, will surely not refuse to join this honorable and happy confederacy.

Nothing will withstand all this but “the love of the truth” – nothing but faith in that Word which gathers a sinner to Jesus and His blood, and the hopes of a poor world-wearied believer to Jesus and His kingdom. Come what may to you, beloved, though it be moral and refined, or religious in its hearing, it is “unrighteousness,” if it be not of “the truth.” (2 Thess. 2).

(To be continued)

Praise

An elderly man was ill. His wife carried a basin of hot soup to his bedside. As he took it, he exclaimed, out of the fullness of a grateful heart,

“My praises do not keep pace with my mercies!”

He was in the habit of tracing God’s hand in all the circumstances of life, and felt that he never praised Him enough for His care.

Christian reader, can we not all say the same? Do we not find that our praises lag behind? Yet the Lord even “daily loadeth us with benefits.”

“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thess. 5:18).

An Earnest Appeal

Christian reader, I feel constrained to make an earnest appeal to your heart and conscience, in the presence of Him to whom you and I are responsible, and to whom our hearts and ways are fully known. I do not mean to judge you, or speak invidiously to you. Neither do I wish to write in a bitter or complaining spirit. I only desire to stir up your pure mind to wake up the energies of your new nature to exhort and encourage you to a more earnest zeal and whole-hearted devotedness, in the service of Christ.

The present is a deeply solemn moment. The day of God’s long-suffering is rapidly drawing to a close. The day of wrath is at hand. The wheels of divine government are moving onward with a rapidity truly soul-subduing. Human affairs are working to a point. There is an awful crisis approaching. Immortal souls are rushing forward along the surface of the stream of time into the boundless ocean of eternity. In a word, the end of all things is at hand.

“The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.” (Ezek. 12:23).

Now, dear reader, seeing these things are so, let us ask each other, how are we affected thereby? What are we doing in the midst of the scene which surrounds us? How are we discharging our fourfold responsibility, namely, our responsibility to God, to the church, to perishing sinners, to our own souls? This is a weighty question. Let us take it into the presence of God, and there survey it in all its magnitude. Are we really doing all we might for the advancement of the cause of Christ, and the prosperity of His church, the progress of His gospel?

I candidly confess to you, my friend, that I very much fear we are not making a right use of all the grace, the light, and the knowledge which our God has graciously imparted to us. I fear we are not faithfully and diligently trading with our talents, or occupying till the Master return. It often occurs to me that people with far less knowledge, far less profession, are far more practical, more fruitful in good works, more honored in the conversion of precious souls, more generally used of God. How is this? Are you and I sufficiently self-emptied, sufficiently prayerful, sufficiently single-eyed? You may perhaps reply,

“It is a poor thing to be occupied with ourselves, our ways, or our works.”

Yes; but if our ways and our works are not what they ought to be, we must be occupied with them – we must judge them. The Lord, by His prophet Haggai, called upon the Jews of old, to “consider their ways;” and the Lord Jesus said to each of the seven churches, “I know thy works.”

There is a great danger of resting satisfied with our knowledge, our principles, our position, while at the same time, we are walking in a carnal, worldly, self-indulgent, careless spirit. The end of this will, assuredly, be terrible. Let us consider these things. May the apostolic admonition fall, with divine power, on our hearts,

“Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.” (2 John 8).

Correspondence: Heb. 13:9, 1:14; Rev. 3:5; 1 Jo. 2:28; Matt. 20; 1 John 2:18

Question: What are we to understand by Hebrews 13:9, “For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace”?

Answer: “Grace” sees all good to be of God, and found in the second Man. “Meats” still looks for something from the first man works, doings, ordinances. Grace establishes the soul “meats” make a place for man and contribute to bondage. For an explanation of the principle referred to by the expression “meats” see Rom. 14:14-15; 1 Tim. 4:3.

Question: Does every person who will be saved, as well as those who have been saved, have an angel to guard them? (Heb. 1:14).

Answer: Scripture does not speak of “a” guardian angel, but of the fact that they are serving spirits for the good and blessing of the heirs of salvation.

Question: What is the Book of Life? How do persons have their names entered if they can be blotted out? (Rev. 3:5).

Answer: Revelation 3:5 refers to Sardis or the period of “State Churches” where baptized professors are formally unregistered as Christians in the State Church Rolls. Such records supposedly represent the roll of the redeemed, but “that day” may declare many a one “blotted out.” God’s “book of life” (Phil. 4:3), knows no erasures. (John 10:28, 29).

Question: Will some Christians feel ashamed of themselves when they meet Christ? (1 John 2:28).

Answer: The “shame” of 1 John 2:28 is that of the apostle not of the believer. If they turned out badly it would reflect on the workmanship of the Apostle. (See 1 Cor. 3:10-15).

Question: Does the parable of the laborers, Matthew 20, show the grace of God to sinners at whatever time they are saved?

Answer: The parable of the laborers, in Matthew 20, does not apply to the salvation of sinners at all. It applies to Christian service, which shall be rewarded, not according to our thoughts of its value, but according to the Master’s sovereign will and pleasure. A very wholesome truth.

Question: What is meant by “the Antichrist,” and “many antichrists”? (1 John 2:18).

Answer: “The Antichrist” is the man who will be over the Jews as king in the tribulation. He is pictured (Rev. 13:11) as coming out of the earth – the order brought about by the first beast (vs. 1). He is like a lamb, but his voice is a dragon’s. This is future – these two beasts cannot rise till the Church is in glory.

The “many antichrists” are those now who deny the work of atonement, and the Person of God’s beloved Son. This includes Unitarians, higher critics, Seventh Day Adventists, Russellites, Spiritists, and all who deny either the deity, or spotless humanity of the Son of God.

The Unwelcome Visitor

It was a dull, dreary afternoon. Mrs. N. settled down in a comfortable chair in her pleasant sitting-room. She was thankful she need not go out, for she was not well and very tired. She remembered with dismay that she would have to go out in the evening, but there was the afternoon still before her – a quiet time for rest and reading.

At that moment a visitor was announced, and Mrs. E. entered. Mrs. N. had known Mrs. E. for some years back, but they had nothing in common, and had seen little of one another. Mrs. N., in spite of much luke-warmness, was truly one of the children of God. She knew, and believed the love He had to her, and she desired, however faintly, to bring others to the knowledge of His love. But when Mrs. E. was announced, no thought but that of annoyance took possession of her. On what possible subject could she talk to Mrs. E.? To speak of anything above and beyond the earth and earthly things, would be like talking Chinese to her! And what could more add to her weariness than to spend the time in small talk about things in which she had no manner of interest?

Yes, alas! Her weariness was the uppermost thought, and she consoled herself with the hope that in a quarter of an hour this visit would be over. But the quarter passed, and half an hour passed, and three quarters of an hour, and Mrs. E. sat there with no apparent intention to move. Her sleepy, expressionless face grew more and more wearisome to Mrs. N. Her languid voice, too; even her dress, in the height of fashion, which told a tale of little interest in anything but the concerns of this world – all was wearisome.

Slowly it dawned upon Mrs. N. (strange that it should have been so slowly!) that the Lord had sent Mrs. E. to her house that day, and had given her an opportunity she might never have again. And that, unlike the Lord when weary with His journey, He sat upon the well, she had thought only of her weariness, and had not thirsted for the soul whom God had sent in her way. But what should she say? and how should she begin? Her visitor looked as if no subject in heaven or earth could be of the slightest interest to her.

Mrs. N. asked her where she went to church. Mrs. E. answered by naming the church, and there was silence.

“Mr. M.’s sermons at St. Paul’s are very interesting,” said Mrs. N., “I advise you to go and hear him.”

‘‘O, indeed!” was the reply, in sleepy tones; and again there was a silence.

“Or Mr. R.,” continued Mrs. N.; “I am sure you would find his sermons would help you, and it would be nearer.”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. E., slowly, “but I go where my husband goes.”

A longer silence broken by some insignificant remark of Mrs. E.’s about the weather, and again a silence. Then Mrs. N. talked about some little trifles, while thinking what to say next. Mrs. E.’s answers became shorter and more languid, and the silences became longer. An hour had passed away!

Mrs. N. now made a reflection it would have been well to have made before, that the way to reach the heart is a straight and not a circuitous road, and almost desperately she said, looking earnestly at her visitor,

“Mrs. E., tell me, Are you saved?”

In a moment the expressionless face of Mrs. E. lighted up into the intensity of interest.

No,” she said, “I am not, and that is why I came to you. I have been utterly miserable. I knew we were none of us saved, and I longed – how I longed – that my husband and children might be saved; but then I knew I was not saved myself, and that I could be of no good to them. And I thought I would give all I have if I knew how to be saved. I went to the houses of all the people I know, who belong to what we call the ‘good set.’ I thought they would tell me, but I dared not begin; and they talked about pictures, and about riding, and I don’t know what, and they never spoke of God. At last I thought I would come to you, and I waited all this time, hoping you would say something about Him; and, O! how thankful I am you have asked me that question. How I was longing to ask you what I should do – but I was afraid to ask. Will you not tell me now?”

It is needless to say that the second hour passed only too quickly. Mrs. N. forgot her weariness, and Mrs. E. listened as for her life. It was all new to her – how new, we often forget when with those who have been well-taught the knowledge which is to fit them for this world, but never have been taught the knowledge of Him, whom to know is life eternal.

It was new to her that she had nothing to do, that Christ had done the whole work which saves the soul. It was new to her that He had loved her even when she was dead in sins – that He had died to save her, and now He lives for her in the glory. It was new to her that He would make her to be a well of living water in her turn to the dead souls around her.

Mrs. E. believed simply, as a little child, and became a faithful and loving witness for Christ in her home, and among her friends and neighbors.

Mrs. N. never forgot how nearly this soul had been left in darkness through her indolence and self-seeking, through her little faith and little love, and she asked the Lord to remind her continually how many troubled hearts and awakened consciences are hidden behind the faces which often look expressionless, because the things of earth have ceased to charm them, and there is nothing to fill the void.

O Lord, give us Thine eyes to see, and Thine heart to care for these hungry souls overlooked and neglected, except for Thy care and love.

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” (Eccl. 11:6).

“A word spoken in due season, how good it is!” (Prov. 15:23).

A Constant Lesson

The young convert may be compared to a child, whom his father is leading over a rugged and uneven path. After proceeding for some time without much difficulty, he forgets that it has been owing to his father’s assistance begins to think that he may now venture to walk by himself, and consequently falls. Humbled and dejected, he then feels his own weakness, and clings to his father for support. Soon, however, elated with his progress, he again forgets the kind hand which sustains him, fancies he need no more assistance, and again falls. This process is repeated a thousand times in the course of the Christian’s experience, till he learns at length that his own strength is perfect weakness, and that he must depend solely on his heavenly Father.

Fragment: Forgetting the Past, Reaching for the Future

“Forgetting those things which are behind. and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13-14).

Looking back we see plenty of failure and pain – plenty to cause shame and sorrow. Our hearts may be filled with gratitude and praise because, in and through it all, the Lord has shown great mercy and drawn us closer to Himself.

Yet even so, He would not have us occupied with this past. The prospect ahead should claim our attention and fill our hearts. “Reaching forth!” There is no indifference or half-heartedness in those words. Watch a young child reaching out for his toys. What effort he puts forth! What eagerness in his face!

So we should press on with eager, earnest effort, toward that blessed goal – there to “win Christ and be found in Him,” not having our own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God by faith.

Our blessed Lord! What an object!

Christ and His Yoke: Part 1

Matthew 11:28-30

Part 1

“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

In this precious and well-known passage we have two points which are very distinct, and yet intimately connected, namely, Christ and His yoke. We have, first, coming to Christ, and its result; and, secondly, taking His yoke, and its results. “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” “Take My yoke, and ye shall find rest.” These things, being distinct, should never be separated. To confound them, is to dim the luster of divine grace; to separate them, is to infringe upon the claims of divine holiness. Both these evils should be carefully guarded against.

Many there are who hold up before the eye of the “heavy laden” sinner, the yoke of Christ as something which he must “take on” ere his burdened heart can taste of that blessed rest which Christ “gives” to “all” who simply “come unto Him,” just as they are. The passage before us does not teach this. It puts Christ first, and His yoke afterward. It does not hide Christ behind His yoke, but rather places Him in all His attractive grace, before the heart, as the one who can meet every need, remove every weight, hush every guilty fear, fill up every blank, satisfy every longing desire; in a word, who is able to do as He says He will, even to “give rest.” There are no conditions proposed, no demands made, no barriers erected. The simple, touching, melting, subduing, inviting, winning word is, “Come.” It is not “Go” “Do” “Give;” “Bring;” “Feel;” “Realize.”

No; it is, “Come.” And how are we to “Come?” Just as we are. To whom are we to “Come?” To Jesus. When are we to “Come?” “Now.”

Observe, then, we are to come just as we are. We are not to wait for the purpose of altering a single jot or tittle of our state, condition, or character. To do this, would be to “come” to some alteration or improvement in ourselves; whereas Christ distinctly and emphatically says, “Come unto Me.” Many souls err on this point. They think they must amend their ways, alter their course, or improve their moral condition, ere they come to Christ; whereas, in point of fact, until they really do come to Christ they cannot amend, or alter, or improve anything. There is no warrant whatever for any one to believe that he will be a single whit better, an hour, a day, a month, or a year hence, than he is this moment. And even were he better, he would not, on that account, be a whit more welcome to Christ than he is now. There is no such thing as an offer of salvation, tomorrow. The word is, “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. (Heb. 3:15).

“Behold now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2).

There is nothing more certain than that all who have ever tried the self-improvement plan have found it an utter failure. They have begun in darkness, continued in misery, and ended in despair. And yet, strange to say, in view of the numberless beacons which are ranged before us, in terrible array, to warn us of the folly and danger of traveling that road, we are sure, at the first, to adopt it. In some way or another, self is looked to, and wrought upon in order to procure a warrant to come to Christ.

“They, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” (Rom. 10:3).

Nothing can possibly be a more dreary, depressing, hopeless task, than “going about to establish one’s own righteousness.” Indeed, the dreariness of the task must ever be commensurate with the earnestness and sincerity of the soul that undertakes it. Such a one will, assuredly, have, sooner or later, to give utterance to the cry,

“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?” (Rom. 7:24).

There can be no exception. All with whom the Spirit of God has ever wrought, have, in one way or another, been constrained to own the hopelessness of seeking to work out a righteousness for themselves. Christ must be all; self, nothing. This doctrine is easily stated; but O, the experience.

The same is true, in reference to the grand reality of sanctification. Many who have come to Christ for righteousness have not practically and experimentally laid hold of Him as their sanctification. Whereas He is made of God, unto us, the one as well as the other,

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:30, 31).

The believer is just as powerless in the work of sanctification as in the work of righteousness. If it were not so, some flesh might glory in the divine presence. I could no more subdue a single lust, or trample under foot a single passion, or gain the mastery over a single temper, than I could open the kingdom of heaven, or establish my own righteousness before God. This is not sufficiently understood; and hence it is that many true Christians constantly suffer the most humiliating defeats in their practical career. They know that Christ is their righteousness, that their sins are forgiven, that they are children of God; but, then, they are sorely put about by their constant failure in personal holiness, in practical sanctification. Again and again, they enter the lists with some unhallowed desire or unsanctified temper; and, again and again, they are compelled to retire with shame and confusion of face. A person or a circumstance crossed their path yesterday, and caused them to lose their temper, and, having to meet the same today, they resolve to do better but, alas! They are again forced to retreat in disappointment and humiliation.

Now, it is not that such persons may not pray earnestly for the grace of the Holy Spirit to enable them to conquer both themselves and the influences which surround them. This is not the point. They have not yet learned practically, and, O! how worthless the mere theory! that they are as completely “without strength” in the matter of “sanctification” as they are in the matter of “righteousness,” and, that as regards both the one and the other, Christ must be all; self, nothing. In a word, they have not yet entered into the meaning of the words, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” Here lies the source of their failure. They are as thoroughly powerless in the most trivial matter connected with practical sanctification, as they are in the entire question of their standing before God; and they must be brought to believe this, ere they can know the fullness of the “rest” which Christ gives. It is impossible that I can enjoy rest amid incessant defeats in my practical, daily life.

True, I can come, over and over again, and pour into my Heavenly Father’s ear the humiliating tale of my failure and overthrow. I can confess my sins and find Him ever “Faithful and just to forgive me my sins, and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). But, then, we must learn Christ as the Lord our sanctification, as well as “the Lord our righteousness;” and, moreover, it is by faith and not by effort, we are to enter into both the one and the other. We look to Christ for righteousness, because we have none of our own; and we look to Christ for practical sanctification, because we have none of our own. It needed no personal effort on our part to get righteousness, because Christ is our righteousness; and it needs no personal effort on our part to get sanctification, because Christ is our sanctification.

(To be continued)

Who Is Coming?

He will come again. Who? Need I name Him? The Lord Jesus Himself!

Could there be any word sweeter after the putting away of sin, and the forgiveness of sins, than that He who did it all, is coming for us? Is He not the one we should be the least afraid of, and the most long to see? Hear Him answer,

“Surely, I come quickly!” (Rev. 22:20).

The Confederacies of Men and the Judgments of God: Part 3

Part 3

The world is “to wonder after the Beast” before “every tongue confesses Jesus to be Lord.” Each will be in its day – but the Beast will have his day, his day of the rule of evil, ere Jesus has His day of the dominion of light and righteousness.

The saint has to walk apart from these schemes or confederacies which are undertaking to make the world what God can accept, till the rejection of Christ be answered from heaven. Little do many who favor the system of religious ordinances, and assert the rights and dignities of office, think that they are combining with those who are cultivating the masses and the people by liberal institutions. But it is so – for all are cultivating man, instead of renewing him. All are doing something against the truth, and not for the truth. (See 2 Cor. 13:8). The attempt is very specious.

The system of the Beast and his kings will, in its day, be very fair. They have all “one mind,” and from the attractiveness of such unity nothing will preserve the soul but the faith that knows the principles of God, and that anything or everything that proposes to set the world in order till judgments have cleared it, is of the god of this world and not of heaven. The thing that is to have this “one mind,” is the very thing that withstands the Lamb, and is judged of God in the day of the Lord. (Rev. 17:14; 19:19-20).

Easy to write this, beloved – but I know that it is the power of separation that is to be cherished by us. It was so in the soul of the clear Apostle, as we have seen him in 2 Timothy. In that affecting epistle, he breathes a spirit which was strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and consciously treading the borders of the glory. And with this he had ardent love for the prosperity of the church, and of his beloved Timothy. Here was the hidden virtue of his beautiful and distinct separation from the world; or the corrupted “great house,” which was then rising up before him and around him. His separation was in the power of this faith and hope and charity. And to like grace the Spirit calls us in this day, when the “great house” of that epistle has become the Christendom of this day.

The scenery of the prophets (and that scenery is as real as what at this moment is under our eyes), and I may say, very specially that of the Apocalypse, is acquiring increased distinctness in the thoughts of many of the saints of God in these days. In other days it was looked on as dim and clouded. And is not this, I ask, some symptom that we are approaching those regions that – we are conscious of increasing distinctness because of nearness?

And besides: there is something of an instinctive turning to thoughts of judgment and of glory among us. There is something of a sense of this solemn fact, that God is about to interfere in some way or another with the course of things around us. The energies of evil are seen to be very active, and the world to be very haughty and self-sufficient.

The present day is the manhood of the world. The world is playing the man now. It speaks of other days as one would remember his childhood. It is boasting itself beyond all former pretensions, and promising to do greater things still. And so will it proceed, till in the moment of its loftiest pride the judgment of God overtakes it.

The people of God should wait with the girdle and the lamp, which are the beautiful standing symbols of their calling till the Lord appears that is, with minds girt up unto holy separation from present things, and with hearts brightened up with the desire and expectation of coming things.

These thoughts of judgments may profitably move our hearts at this hour. But let me add, for it is a comfort to remember it, that the judgments of God are always only by the way, and never close the scene, or terminate his action and purpose. He does indeed pass through them, but He only passes through them, or rather with them, onward to glory and the kingdom, which is His calling.

The Deluge, one of His judgments, led to the new world under the government of Noah.

The judgment of the cities of the plain was survived, and Abraham is seen on high, the next morning, above it all, and Lot is delivered.

The judgment of Egypt was the redemption of Israel destined for the inheritance.

And for still further strength and comfort I may add, that if the mind could be delivered from the blinding and prejudicing power of self-love, it would speak the judgment of righteousness, and justify God in His judgments.

Look at Adam. His hiding behind the trees of the garden gave judgment against himself with God.

Look at the camp in Numbers 14. Their utter silence the moment the Glory appeared did the same. It was like Adam’s hiding of himself.

Look at David. Nathan catches his conscience when he appealed simply to his moral sense, his estimate of right and wrong, his measure of iniquity and its retribution. He got from David such a sentence as justified the judgment of God against himself. He little suspected that he was pronouncing sentence in his own cause. But it was so – and self-love being dismissed or set aside for a moment, and the moral sense being left alone in company with the offense, David out of his own mouth is judged, and God’s judgment is justified.

So the husbandmen of Matthew 21. Like Nathan with David, the Lord catches the conscience of the Jews, and makes them pronounce their own condemnation. And all this, because self-love was again, as it were, sent out of court, and the mere moral sense, the sense of good and evil, right and wrong, is alone on the judgment seat. The decree of God against them is there anticipated by themselves.

And so with the man without the wedding-garment in Matthew 22. He got into the marriage-feast with a careless heart, just thinking of himself in the power of some form or other of mere nature. But again, in his case, when the sense that judged what was fitting and necessary was called into exercise, and there was nothing to interfere with its action in the conscience when the simple, unmixed thought is presented to him, whether any person in such a dress should be in such a place he is “speechless,” he is convicted, he has nothing to say, and his own judgment tells him that such an one as he has no business in such a place as that.

These may be used by the soul as illustrations of the great truth, that the Judge of all the earth will do right, that He will be justified when He speaks, and clear when He judges. Out of our own mouth will He condemn.

When Eve pleaded the serpent’s guile, and Adam pleaded Eve’s gift to him, the Lord God did not condescend to answer the pleas. And who of us at this hour does not justify Him in pronouncing that sentence without replying to those excuses?

All this is for us and our comfort, when we think of Him with whom we have to do; and we may sing of Him and of His praise when the subject is either “mercy” or “judgment.” (Psa. 101). But judgment, again I say, never closes the scene. It is never “the end of the Lord.”

The things of Job were all set right, and much more than that, ere “the end of the Lord” in his history was reached. His things in the world, in his own person, both mind and body, in the family, and in the church, were all in confusion. His cattle were stolen, his houses were in ruins, his children were dead, and his brethren were set against him, he misunderstanding and reviling them, and they injuriously reproaching and condemning him. All was thus out of order, within and around him, as to the world, the family and the church.

How could there be more confusion! But God’s “end” lay beyond all this for we never reach God’s end in either discipline or judgment, the discipline of an individual saint, or the judgment of a people, or a world.

So does the Holy Jesus alone close and crown the book which details the coming judgments of God (Rev. 22).

How little does the soul rise up in the power of these things, which are so easily discerned, and so freely spoken of and written about.

(Concluded)

The Person of Christ

Let us turn to a few passages of the Word of God which speak of the person of Christ, the unspeakable gift of God’s wondrous love. (2 Cor. 9:15).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:1-5).

“And the Word was made (became) flesh, and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” (John 1:18).

“And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” (1 Tim. 3:16).

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us).” (1 John 1:1-2).

“Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21).

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12).

Things Which Are Before: Philippians 3:13

Beloved, let us be decided, for it is impossible for us to grasp at things “before” and “behind” too. Were we “pressing forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;” were we “reaching forth unto these things which are before,” we must be forgetting those behind; were we looking up, gazing with the eye of faith on our portion above, could we be groping in the dirt of this world for what we might find there? Could we be making a god of business, pleasure, riches, or reputation?

Faith is an anticipating grace. Faith is a substantial reliance on the verities of God, such as makes its possessor count all things else but dross and dung for Christ and the things above.

Dear reader, either give up professing to be guided by the Bible, or act as if you believed it. There is such a thing as the “obedience of faith;” and if we don’t obey, our religion is all pretense and unreality.

A Heart's Desire

Lord, while we on our journey roam,

Till Thou dost take us to Thy Home

To dwell with Thee;

Help us in all we say and do,

Each thought, each word and action too,

To have Thy glory e’er in view.

Lord, keep us true.

Teach us no more ourselves to trust,

If we would win the fight, we must

Lean hard on Thee.

So keep us ever near Thy side,

That we may in Thy love abide,

In Thee, who for us bled and died,

Lord, may we hide.

We love Thee and would serve Thee, Lord,

O! make the pages of Thy Word

More dear to us.

Reveal Thyself that we may see

Amazing things; learn more of Thee,

So that our lives henceforth may be

More like Thine own.

We feel our weakness, Lord; how true

That we without Thee naught can do

Whilst here below!

But when we’re weak, ‘tis then that Thou

Canst make us strong, wilt show us how

To serve Thee more, if we but bow

To thine own will.

So keep us, Lord, until that day,

When, called from this poor world away,

Thy face we see.

Then when this race of ours is run,

We gather with Thee round Thy Throne,

O! may we hear Thee say, “Well done”;

Lord, let this be.

Correspondence: Sins of the World; REV 4:4; 144,000; Judgement; Isr. & Christ

Question: Is it right to say that Christ bore the sins of the world?

Answer: Scripture nowhere says that Christ bore the “sins” of the world. We read,

“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

And again, “He is the propitiation for the whole world.” (1 John 2:2). You will note that the words “the sins of” are not Scripture. Wherever you find the word “sins” it refers to persons; and then comes in the grand question of the counsels of God, and the work of God’s Spirit in the soul producing repentance and faith. Thus we read in Hebrews 9:26:

“But now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” And then he adds,

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (vss. 27-28). It is of the utmost importance to distinguish these two aspects of the atonement of Christ.

You can announce to the whole world that Christ appeared to put away sin; that by His death God has been glorified with respect to sin; that the veil is rent; the way to God is open; that all are welcome; all are commanded to repent, invited to come, responsible to believe; that the righteousness of God is unto all; that God willeth not the death of any sinner; is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; that all who die in their sins will have themselves to thank for it; and all who are saved will have to thank God for it. This, it seems to me, is the utmost limit to which the evangelist can go in declaring the gospel message.

But when, through grace, anyone is broken down, and brought to true repentance, then he may be told that his sins were all laid on Jesus; that Christ stood in his stead, bore his judgment, paid his penalty, and settled every question on his behalf to the glory of God.

Question: Are the four beasts (living creatures) the church? (Rev. 4:4).

Answer: We do not see the church in the four living creatures. These latter are the heads of creation, and they are ever seen in immediate connection with the government of God. We believe that the church and the Old Testament saints are seen in the twenty-four elders in chapter 4. They are not in their distinctive places, for that is not the object, until we reach the close of the book, when the church reappears as the bride, and the elders disappear.

Question: Who will compose the 144,000 of Revelation 7, and who the unnumbered multitude?

Answer: The 144,000 represent the saved remnant of Israel; and the unnumbered multitude are saved Gentiles. Both these companies will come on the scene after the rapture of the church, which is not formally or distinctly presented at all the Apocalypse. We deem it a most serious error to place the church on earth during the apocalyptic judgments.

Question: Will the unconverted as well as believers stand before the judgment seat?

Answer: Scripture does, most certainly, teach that the unconverted shall stand before the judgment seat. 2 Corinthians 5:10 takes in all, both believers and unbelievers, though not of course at the same time or on the same ground. The expression “we all,” in 2 Corinthians 5:10, differs materially from the “we all,” in chapter 3:18 (See Greek). The latter refers only to believers; the former to both. Our Lord Christ will judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and kingdom. In Matthew 25:31, we have the judgment of the living nations. Revelation 20:11 gives the judgment of the wicked dead. In the former, not one will have passed through death; in the latter, all will have done so. In neither scene have we the Church or Israel as the subjects of judgment.

Question: Did the Israelites look forward to Christ when they performed their ceremonies?

Answer: The Old Testament saints looked forward to a promised Saviour. As to Israel, after the flesh, they went through the ordinances and ceremonies of the Mosaic ritual without any spiritual insight into their deep significance. You must distinguish between carnal Jews and true believers.

The Power of the Word of God

Julia and Emilia E. were the daughters of refined and educated parents, who had trained them carefully for the social circle in which they hoped to see them shine. Yet there was a blight hanging over this prospect, for the health of Emilia, the younger one, was giving them much anxiety. She was tall and graceful and had a sweet expression of countenance, but consumption seemed already to have marked her for its victim.

A relative visiting the neighborhood and hearing of the delicate health of Emilia, asked permission for the sisters to visit his home in the country. He was one who knew the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and delighted in making known His love to others. The parents hesitated. The religious influence of the relative was much to be dreaded; on the other hand, the pure country air was most desirable for their child, and they yielded consent. “The Word of God is quick and powerful,” and this was their relative’s confidence he counted on God to use His own Word in blessing to their souls.

The next morning after their arrival, the Gospel by John was begun at family reading. The sisters listened attentively to the precious unfolding of Him who was “from the beginning,” who. made all things, who was “the Word,” “the Light of the world,” and “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” To “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” This was the One by whom grace and truth came. The law of Moses had demanded righteousness and had brought out man’s utter ruin as a sinner (Rom. 3:19), but now God had sent His beloved Son to reveal the Father, and to be the Saviour of all that come unto God by Him.

It was not until the reading of the 3rd chapter that her personal need of salvation was felt by Emilia. She knew it was written, “Ye must be born again;” but why this necessity, she could not tell. The first man’s irreparable ruin was told out in her ears. His fall in Adam had forfeited everything as to innocence in which God had created him. God’s testimony is, that man, now possessed of nothing but an Adam nature, is lost. All human reforms and patching up of man in his state by nature will not do for God. Hence the need of the solemn,

“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

As the chapter went on to tell how the Son of Man must be lifted up, and how God so loved the world that He gave His Son “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” dear Emilia took God at His Word and believed in Christ as her Saviour. Some days later she wrote in her bedroom the following little poem,

Thankfulness

So great my joy, I cannot keep

My tongue in silence bound;

I’ll sing aloud to let the world

Know that my Christ I’ve found.

One month ago no hope had I

Beyond this world of sin;

But now the love of Christ my Lord

My soul has entered in.

I saw my guilt, my wretched guilt,

And trembled ‘neath the load,

And conscience, wakened, proved to me

A miserable goad.

I knew not then ‘twas God’s own love

Working my soul within,

To make me see the love of Christ

That ransomed me from sin.

It made me feel how weak I was –

Feel I was lost, undone –

And when I cried. aloud to Him,

Made me behold His Son.

He showed me from His blessed Word

How Christ had died for me,

How graciously He left His home

From sin to set me free.

Emilia was now praying for her sister. Julia hung back instead of thinking of the great gain. She was afraid of what the cost would be to have Christ. One day, on hearing the solemn Scripture, Proverbs 1:14-32, she wept much, and said she did believe in Christ as her Saviour. With her it seemed to be fleeing from the wrath to come, and not the heart won by Christ, as with Emilia. The following is an extract from a letter they sent to one who wrote to them rejoicing in their conversion,

“We do feel how blessed it is, ‘Our theme of joy’s but one,’ that we are members of Christ. It is indeed only the work of God’s Holy Spirit has made us such. The Scriptures you refer to are very precious and helpful. We are already beginning to experience what a satisfying portion to our souls is our Saviour Jesus Christ. What a blessed thing to know our sins are forgiven. We wrote home yesterday to make known the news to our father and mother. We shall need to cling close to Christ for strength to enable us to show to the dear ones at home by our manner of conduct what a change has come to us.”

The letter was signed by both. The writing to their parents was an unsuggested act; but undoubtedly the Spirit of God led them thus to confess Christ. The result was an immediate summons home, and thus abruptly terminated their happy visit of some weeks. They parted from their relatives in tears, conscious of the cross that awaited them, yet knowing, too, where to go for strength.

Emilia was much better for the country air. Months elapsed, during which she bore bright testimony for Christ. How could she now call herself a miserable sinner and cry, “Lord, have mercy upon us; spare us, good Lord,” and similar petitions, when she knew herself justified and standing in the favor of God! (Rom. 5:1-2). Delighting, too, in knowing herself “accepted in the Beloved,” and brought into the liberty wherewith Christ has made free.”

The returning cough, however, and the hectic flush soon told that the incipient disease had not left her. Soon all hope of her recovery was gone. But was she afraid to die? O, no! She knew the one who had conquered death and removed for her its sting. To an aunt watching beside her, she said her eighteenth birthday was the happiest she ever had. This was one of her last days on earth. The Lord lovingly granted her desire to depart to be with Him on a Lord’s Day.

Dear reader, is Jesus your Saviour?

“Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” Tomorrow to you may never come.

Truly wrote another –

“Salvation without money,

Salvation without price,

Salvation without labor,

Believing doth suffice.

Salvation now – this moment;

Then why, O! why delay?

You may not see tomorrow;

Now is salvation’s day!”

Rejoice With Me

These touching words unfold to us the deep joy of the Lord Himself, in the matter of our salvation. This is not sufficiently seen or thought of. We are apt to forget that God has His own especial joy in receiving back, to His bosom of love, the poor wanderer – a joy so peculiar that He can say, “Rejoice with Me” – “let us eat and be merry” – “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad.” He does not say, “Let him eat and be merry.” This would never do. God has His own joy in redemption. This is the sweet lesson taught in Luke 15. The shepherd was glad to find his sheep. The woman was glad to find her piece of silver. The father was glad to embrace his son.

God is glad to get back the lost one. The tide of joy that rolls through the hosts above, when a sinner returns, finds its deep, exhaustless source in the eternal bosom of God.

“Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luke 15:10).

No one has such deep joy in the salvation of a soul, as God Himself.

The thought of this is most soul-subsiding, and heart-melting. Nothing can exceed it. It gives a full, clear, and convincing answer to Satan’s lie, in the garden, and to all the dark suspicion of our hearts.

Who could listen, for a moment, to those accents, “Let us be merry,” issuing from the Father’s lips the Father’s heart, and continue to doubt His perfect love? How could the prodigal have had a doubt, in his heart, when he saw that there was not one in all the house so glad to get him back as the Father Himself?

Surely, the words, “Let us be merry,” must have fallen upon his heart with peculiar power. He could never have presumed to hope for such a reception. To be let in at all to be made a hired servant to get any place in the house, would have equaled his highest expectation. But O, to hear the Father say, “Let us be merry!” This truly, was beyond all human thought. Yet these were the Father’s veritable words. It was really true that He was glad to get back the poor undeserving spendthrift. He could not tell why, but so it was.

The Father had embraced and kissed him, even in his rags. Without a single upbraiding word, He had received him to His bosom. At the very moment when he was full of doubt as to whether he would be let in at all, he found the Father on his neck. And, as if to crown all, and banish every trace of doubt and every shadow of fear, he hears the Father’s cry, “Let us eat and be merry.”

Reader, pause and think of all this. Think deeply of it. Remember, God is glad to get back to Himself the very vilest of the vile. A returning sinner makes God happy. Wondrous thought! Profound mystery of love! A poor sinner can minister to the joy of God! O! who can cherish a doubt or harbor a fear, in the presence of such grace? May the sense of it fill my reader’s heart with sweetest confidence and peace!

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

Young Christian: Volume 24, 1934

Table of Contents

Story of Agnes T.

Living Water

Correspondence: Rev. 17 and 18's place in the Tribulation Period

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Part 2

Thy Words Give Light

Christ and His Yoke

Just As I Am

The Enemy Outwitted

The Burden-Bearer

A Found One Becomes a Finder: John 1:45

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Part 1

Treasures in Heaven

Some Better Thing

What Are You About?

Prayer

I Am the Lord's

Correspondence: Peace; Cutting Hair; Spirit vs. Inclinations; Heb. 9:28

Leaving Us an Example

A Splendid Triumph

Christ and His Yoke: Part 3

Jesus Died for Me

All Things Are Ours

Jesus Died for Me

Love's Response

Our Service

Who Will Be Taken to Meet the Lord, and Who Will Be Left? Part 1

Seven Comes in Revelation 22

There's but a Step Between Me and Death

This Same Jesus

Encouragement for the Troubled Heart

Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters

Preserved

Self-Surrender: Part 1

His Mercy Endureth Forever

The Test Day

Spiritual Growth

Fragment: Praise and Adoration

We Must Feed Daily

Tychicus

Correspondence: Ecc. 11:2; Mark 9:44, 46, 48; Exo. 12:22

Correspondence: Gal. 5:19-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 16:20; John 16:8-11

The Lost Soul; Or, Christ Rejected

The Searching Test

O Christian, Tell of Jesus

Who Loved Me

His Mercy Endureth Forever: Psalm 136

Self-Surrender: Part 2

It'll End in the Glory

The Perfect Man

God Himself Our Comforter

And Is It So!

Who Will Be Taken to Meet the Lord, and Who Will Be Left? Part 2

O What a God Is Ours!

Rejoice With Me: Part 1

Believing in Jesus, and Believing on Him

Keep the Shutters Open

Let Us Awake

Burning With Pure Oil

Correspondence: Priesthoods of Christ; Atone/Redeem; 1 John 5:16; Matt. 24:34

Correspondence: Matt. 7:6; Rom. 11:26; Psa. 138:2; 1 Cor. 15:29; Acts 2:16-17

My Heart Is So Hard

I Know Something Better Than That

In What Is Our Delight?

Rejoice with Me: Part 2

Self-Surrender: Part 3

Some Things to Think About

A Word to the Aged Pilgrim - An Extract

Called Saints

Story of a Conversion: Part 1

Jesus, the Shepherd

A Single Eye

Address to Young Christians: Part 1

Kept

Extract: A Remnant

Trust Him

Yet a Little While: Hebrews 10:37

I Will Remember You

It Seems Too Good to Be True