AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII. PART III.

THE TRINITY OF EVIL, AND THE MANIFESTATION OF THE WICKED ONE.

Commencing Fulfillment of the First Promise [to the Woman's Seed](Chap. 11:19-12:)

The trumpets, as we have seen, carry us to the end of all. What follows here, therefore, is not in continuation of them, but a new beginning, in which we find the development of details,-of course as to what is of primary importance, and involving principles of the deepest interest and value for us. Through all, the links between the Old Testament and the New are fully maintained, and we have the full light of the double testimony. On our part, we shall need on this account a more patient and protracted examination of that which comes before us.

The last verse of the eleventh chapter belongs properly to the twelfth. It characterizes what is to follow rather than what precedes, and, when we remember that Israel is upon the scene, is of greatest significance. The temple of God is opened in heaven, and there is seen in His temple the ark of His covenant. From the world below it had disappeared, and the temple itself been overthrown, -the testimony of His displeasure with an apostate people. Nor, though the temple were replaced, as after the Babylonish captivity had been the case, could the ark ever be restored by man's hand. It was gone, and with it the token of Jehovah's presence in the midst-a loss evidently irretrievable from man's side. Yet if Israel had no longer thus the assurance of what they were to Him, in heaven all the time, though in secret, the unchangeable goodness of God remained. The ark abode, as it were, with Him, and the time was now come to manifest this:the inner sanctuary of the heavens was opened, and there was the ark still seen.

To us who are accustomed to translate these types into the realities they represent, this is all simple. The ark is Christ, and, as the gold outside the shittim-wood declared, is Christ in glory, gone up after His work accomplished-the work which had provided the precious blood which had sprinkled the mercy-seat. Israel had indeed rejected the lowly Redeemer, and imprecated upon themselves the vengeance due to those who shed it. Yet, though the wrath came, Israel was neither totally nor finally rejected. The blood of Jesus speaketh better things than that of Abel, and is before God the justification of a grace that shall yet be shown them. The literal ark is passed away, as Jeremiah tells us, never to return; but instead of that throne of His of old, a more magnificent grace has declared that Jerusalem itself shall be called "the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart." (Jer. 3:16, 17.)

The ark, then, seen in the temple in heaven is the sign of God's unforgotten grace toward Israel; but the nations are not yet ready to welcome that grace, nor indeed are the people themselves, save a remnant, who on that account pass through the bitterest persecution. To that the chapter following bears decisive testimony, as it does of the interference of God for them. Therefore is it that when the sign of His faithfulness to His covenant is seen in heaven, on the earth there ensue convulsion and a storm of divine wrath:"there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and an earthquake, and great hail."
And now a "great sign " appears in heaven, "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered."

The sign appears in heaven, not because the woman is actually there, but because she is seen according to the mind of God toward her. Who the woman is should be quite plain, as the child she brings forth is He who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron. That is Christ, assuredly, and the mother of Christ is not the virgin, as we see clearly by what follows, still less the Church, of which in no sense is Christ born, but Israel, " of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came," says the apostle. (Rom. 9:4.) Thus she is seen clothed with the glory of the sun,-that is, of Christ Himself as He will presently appear (Mal. 4:2) in supreme power, for the sun is the ruler of the day. As a consequence, her glory of old, before the day-dawn, the reflected light of her typical system, is like the moon here under her feet. Upon her head the crown of twelve stars speaks naturally of her twelve tribes,-planets now around the central sun.

The next words carry us back, however, historically, to the time before Christ. She is in travail with Messiah,- a thought hard to realize or understand, except as we realize what the fulfillment of God's promise as to Christ involved in the way of suffering on the part of the nation. To them while under the trial of law, and with the issue (to man's thought, of course,) uncertain, Christ could not be born; the prosperous days of David must go by; the heirs of David be allowed to show out what was in their heart, and be carried to Babylon; humiliation, sorrow, captivity, fail to produce result, until the voice of prophecy even lapses with Malachi; until the long silence, as of death, is broken by the cry at last, "To us a child is born." Here is at least one purpose, as it would seem, of that triple division of the genealogy of the Lord in Matthew, the governmental gospel, in which the first fourteen generations bring one to the culmination of their national prosperity, the second is a period of decline to the captivity, the third a period of resurrection, but which only comes at last, and as in a moment, after the failure of every natural hope. Thus in the government of God Israel must have her travail-time.

But before we see the birth of the man-child, we are called to look at " another sign in heaven," a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads." These heads and horns we shall presently find upon the fourth beast, or world-empire, but we are not left doubtful as to who the dragon is. Here we find the first in all this part of those interpretations which are given henceforth here and there throughout the book:the dragon is "that ancient serpent which is called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world." Thus as the dawn rises upon the battlefield the combatants are discerned. It is Satan who here as the " prince of this world " appears as if incarnate in the last world-empire. "Seven heads" show perfection of world-wisdom; and every one of these heads wears a diadem, or despotic crown. The symbolic meaning of the number does not at all preclude another meaning historically, as Scripture-history is every where itself symbolic, as is nature also. The ten horns measure the actual extent of power, and infer by their number responsibility and judgment.

The serpent of old has thus grown into a dragon-a monster-"fiery red,"as the constant persecutor of the people of God, and he draws with his tail the third part of the stars of heaven, and casts them to the earth. The analogy of the action of the little horn in Daniel (8:10), as well as the scope of the prophecy before us, would lead us to think here of Jews, not Christians, and certainly not angels, as to whom the idea of casting them to the earth would seem quite inappropriate. The "tail" implies the false prophet (Isa. 9:15), and therefore it is apostasy among the professing people of God that is indicated. False teaching is eminently characteristic of satanic power at all times, and far more successful than open violence.

And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she was delivered of a son, a man-child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron:and her child was caught up to God, and to His throne."

The power of Satan, working through the heathen empire of Rome, was thus, with better knowledge than Rome had, in armed watch against the woman and her seed. The census mentioned in Luke as to have gone into effect at the time of Christ's birth, and which was actually carried out after the scepter had wholly departed from Judah, was in effect a tightening of the serpent-coil around his intended victim. Divine power used it to bring a Galilean carpenter and his wife to Bethlehem, and then, as it were without effort, canceled the imperial edict. Only from the nation itself could come the sentence which should, as far as man could do so, destroy it, and that sentence was in Pilate's handwriting upon the cross. But from the cross and the guarded grave the woman's Seed escaped victoriously:" her child was caught up to God, and to His throne."

All is thus far easy of interpretation. In what follows, there is more difficulty, although it admits of satisfactory solution. " And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days."

There Daniel's seventieth week comes in again, and evidently the last half of it. But the prophecy goes on immediately from the ascension of Christ to this time, not noticing a gap of more than eighteen centuries which has already intervened between these periods. How, then, can we explain this omission ? and granting it can be explained, what is the connection between these two things that seem, in more than time, so far apart,-the ascension of Christ, and Israel's flight into the wilderness for this half-week of years?

The answer to the first question is to be found in a character of Old-Testament prophecy of which already we. have had one example, and that in the prophecy of the seventy weeks itself. The last week, although part of a strictly determined time on Israel, is cut off from the sixty-nine preceding by a gap slightly longer than that in the vision before us, the sixty-ninth week reaching only to " Messiah the Prince." (Dan. 9:25.) He is cut off and has nothing:the blessing cannot, therefore, come in for them; instead, there is a time of warfare-a controversy between God and the people which is not measured, and which is not yet come to an end. Of this the seventieth week is the conclusion, while it is also the time of their most thorough apostasy-the time to which we have come in this part of Revelation.

This lapse of prophecy as to Israel is coincident with the Christian dispensation, the period in which God is taking out of the earth (and characteristically out of the Gentile nations,) a heavenly people. True, there are Jews saved still,-"there is," as the apostle says, "at the present time also, a remnant according to the election of grace." But these are no longer partakers of Jewish hopes:blessed be God, they have better ones; but the nation as such in the meanwhile is given up, as Micah distinctly declares to them should be the case, while he also declares to them the reason of this, and the limit which God has appointed to it. His words are one of the clearest of Old-Testament prophecies to Christ, so clear that nothing can be clearer, and are those cited by the chief priests and scribes themselves in proof of "where Christ should be born." " They shall smite the Judge of Israel," says the prophet, " with a rod upon the cheek." It is His people who do this,-His own, to whom He came, and they " received Him not." Then he declares the glory of the rejected One:"But thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me, that is to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting." (Chap. 5:i, 2.) But what wilt be the result then of His rejection? This is answered immediately:" Therefore will He give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

The last sentence of this remarkable prophecy is a. clear intimation of what we know to be the fact, that in this time of national rejection there would be "brethren" -Jewish evidently-of this Judge of Israel, whose place would not be with Israel; while at the end of the time specified, such converted ones would again find their place in the nation. Meanwhile, Israeli being given up, the blessing of the earth which waits upon theirs is suspended also:the shadow rests upon the dial-plate of prophecy; time is as it were uncounted. Christ is gone up on high, and sits upon the Father's throne:the kingdom of heaven is begun, indeed, but only its "mysteries," unknown to the Old Testament, " things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." (Matt. 13:ii, 35.)

Here, then, where we return to take up the thread of Old-Testament prophecy, it is no wonder if the style of the Old Testament be again found. We have again the gap in time uncounted, the Christian dispensation treated as a parenthesis in God's ways with the earth, and the woman's Seed caught away to God and to His throne. Then follows, without apparent interval, the Jewish flight into the wilderness during the three and a half years of unequaled tribulation.

But this does not answer the second question-that as to the connection between the catching away of the man-child and the woman's flight. For this we must look deeper than the surface, and gather the suggestions which in Scripture every-where abound, and here only more openly than usual demand attention.

That which closes the Christian dispensation we have seen to be what is significantly parallel to that which opens it. In the Acts, the history of the Church is prefaced with the ascension of the Lord:that which will close its history is the removal of His people. This naturally raises the inquiry, If Christ and His people be so one as in the New Testament they are continually represented, may not the man-child here include both, and the gap be bridged over in this way? The promise to the overcomer in Thyatira links them together in what is attributed to the man-child-the ruling the nations with a rod of iron; and the mention of this seems to intimate the time for the assumption of the rod at hand.

This, then, completes the picture and harmonizes it, so that it may be well accepted as the truth; especially as this acceptance only recognizes that which is otherwise known as true, and makes no additional demands upon belief.

The man-child caught up to God and to His throne, the woman flies into the wilderness, into a place prepared of God, where they nourish her for the time of trouble. The woman is the nation as in the sight of God; not all Israel, nor even all the saints in Israel, but those who are ordained of God to continue, and who therefore represent it before Him. The apostate mass are cut off by judgment (Zech. 13:8, 9; Isa. 4:3, 4). The martyred saints go up to heaven. Still God preserves a people to be the nucleus of the millennial nation; and this, of course, it is the special desire of Satan to destroy. They are preserved by the hand of God, though amid trial such as the " wilderness" naturally indicates, and which is designed of God for their purification.

And now there ensues that which in the common belief of Christians had long before taken place, but which in fact is the initial stage of final judgment,-Satan is cast out of heaven.

"And there was war in heaven:Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out,-that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

As I have said, the simplest interpretation of this is counter to the common belief of Christendom. Satan has, according to the thought of many, long been in hell, though he is (strangely enough) allowed to leave it and ramble over the earth at will. To these, it is a grotesque, weird and unnatural thought that the devil should have been suffered all this time to remain in heaven. Man has evidently been allowed to remain on earth, but then – beside the fact of death removing his successive generations – toward him there are purposes of mercy in which Satan has no part. The vision-character of Revelation may be objected against it also, so that the simplest interpretation may seem on that very account the widest from the truth. Does not our Lord also say that He saw " Satan fall as lightning from heaven"? (Luke 10:18.) And the apostle, that the angels which sinned, He cast down to hell? (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6.) Such passages would seem with many decisively to affirm the ordinary view.

In fact, it is only the last passages that have any real force; and here another has said, " It seems hardly possible to consider Satan as one of these," – the angels spoken of, – "for they are in chains, and guarded till the great day; he is still permitted to go about as the tempter and the adversary, until his appointed time be come."* *Principal Barry, in Smith's Dictionary. The question as to the class of angels here referred to, this is hardly the place to entertain.* As to our Lord's words, they are easily to be understood as in the manner often of prophecy, "I saw," being equivalent to " I foresaw."

On the other hand, that the "spiritual hosts of wickedness" with which now we wrestle are "in heavenly places" is told us plainly in Ephesians (6:12, R. V.); and in the passage in Revelation before us, no less plainly. For the connection of this vision with what is still future we have already seen, and shall see further, and the application to Satan personally ought not to be in doubt. The "dragon" is indeed a symbol; but "the devil and Satan," is the interpretation of it, and certainly not as figurative as the dragon itself.

Scripture implies also in other ways what we have here. When the apostle speaks of our being "sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance," he adds that it is to be that "until the redemption of the purchased possession,"-that is, until we get the inheritance itself (Eph. 1:14). But we get it then by redemption, not our own, but of the inheritance itself. Our inheritance has therefore to be redeemed, and this redemption takes place manifestly when the heirs as a whole are ready for it. Now redemption, it is plain, in this case, like the redemption of the body, is a redemption by power,-God laying hold of it to set it free in some sense from a condition of alienation from Himself, and to give his people possession. And if the man-child include " those who are Christ's at His coming," then the purging of the heavenly places by the casting of Satan and his angels out is just the redemption of the heavenly inheritance.

Elsewhere we read, accordingly, of the reconciliation of heavenly as of earthly things (Col. 1:20). And this is a phrase which, like the former, implies alienation previously. And here it is on the ground of the cross:"having made peace through the blood of the cross." In Hebrews, again, as "it was necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens"-as in the tabernacle-"should be purified with" sacrificial blood, so must "the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." (Heb. 9:23.) The work of Christ having glorified God as to the sin which has defiled not the earth only but the heavens, He can come in to deliver and bring back to Himself what is to be made the inheritance of Christ and His "joint-heirs."

All is, then, of a piece with what is the only natural meaning of this war in heaven. The question of good and evil, every-where one, receives its answer for heaven as for earth, first, in the work of Christ, which glorifies God as to all, and then, as the fruit of this, in the recovery of what was alienated from Him, the enemies of this glorious work being put under Christ's feet. This now begins to be, though even yet in a way which to us may seem strange:strange to us it seems to hear of war in heaven,-of arrayed hosts on either side,-of resistance though unsuccessful, the struggle being left as it would seem to creature-prowess, God not directly interfering:"Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not."

After all, is it stranger that this should be in heaven than on the earth? Are not God's ways one? And is not all the long-protracted struggle allowed purposely to work out to the end thus, the superior power being left to show itself as the power resident in the good itself, as in that which is the key of the whole problem, the cross of the Son of Man? If God Himself enter the contest, He adapts Himself to the creature-conditions, and comes in on the lowest level,-not an angel even, but a man.

Let us look again at the combatants:on the one side is Michael-" Who is like God ?"-a beautiful name for the leader in such a struggle! On the opposite side is he who first said to the woman, " Ye shall be as God;" and whose pride was his own condemnation (i Tim. 3:6). How clearly the moral principle of the contest is here defined! Keep but the creature's place, you are safe, happy, holy; the enemy shall not prevail against you:leave it, you are lost. The " dragon "-from a root which speaks of "keen sight"-typifies what seems perhaps a preternatural brilliancy of intellect, serpent-cunning, the full development of such "wisdom" as that with which he tempted Eve, but none of that which begins with the fear of God. He is therefore, like all that are developed merely upon one side, a monster. This want of conscience is shown in his being the devil-the " false accuser;" his heart is made known in his being Satan- the adversary.

These are the types of those that follow them; and Michael is always the warrior-angel, characterized as he is by his name, as Gabriel-" man of God "-is the messenger of God to men. If God draw near to men, it is in the tender familiarity of manhood that He does so. How plainly do these names speak to us!

In the time of distress that follows upon earth, Daniel is told that "Michael shall stand up, the great prince that standeth for the children of thy people; . . . and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." Here in Revelation we have the heavenly side of things, and still it is Michael that stands up as the deliverer. The tactics of divine warfare are not various, but simple and uniform. Truth is simple and one; error manifold and intricate. The spiritual hosts fight under faith's one standard, and it is the banner of Michael, "Who is like God?" Under its folds is certain victory. F.W.G.

(To be continued.)

"Salvation" is a word of such breadth of mean-Sing that we need to see its connection before we can rightly understand its significance in any particular passage of Scripture. For instance, in Jude 5 we have the salvation of the people out of the land of Egypt spoken of. Here it is evident that a physical and temporal deliverance from evil is the thought. Likewise in i Tim. 4:10 the apostle speaks of God as "the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe," evidently referring not to spiritual but to bodily preservation ; God, by maintaining in life, providing for and preserving from danger, is the Saviour of all men. In an especial sense can the believer say this.

On the other hand, in Acts 16:30, 31, we have an entirely different use of the word. In the question of the jailer we see, not a desire for any physical deliverance, but salvation from the wrath of that God whose power he had just felt and seen. It is the salvation of his soul that he asks for, and which he receives at once, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. A similar use of the word is seen in 2 Tim. 1:9,-" Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling;" and in i Pet. 1:9, where believers are said now to receive the salvation of their souls. In this use of the word, salvation is always a present possession. It would be a contradiction to all that brings peace to the anxious sinner to tell him that salvation of the soul was future for the believer.

But the salvation spoken of in the passage before us has neither of the meanings we have mentioned. Along with i Pet. 1:5, it refers to what is "reserved for us in heaven," and "ready to be revealed in the last time." Phil. 3:20, 21, also speaks of the "Saviour" in this sense, specially linking His coming with the transformation of our " vile bodies." It is in this complete sense of the word that our salvation is " nearer than when we believed." Let us now seek to get some idea of its fullness. What does "salvation" mean in this sense? We may not learn any thing new by dwelling upon it, but if old truths come freshly before us and cause us to be indeed waiting for salvation just as Anna and Simeon were waiting for it in Jerusalem, the object of the apostle in the passage will have been gained, so far as we are concerned.

The first thought of salvation is, being brought into a scene which answers to the spiritual condition of the saved. The wicked cease from troubling, the effects and influences of sin are seen no more. Earth, with its sorrows, trials, and groans, is a thing of the past. Our surroundings, instead of witnessing as they do now to the ruin sin has made, will witness to what God has wrought for us. The curse which stamps all things here is then removed, and in its place we have "all things new." Secondly, our body will answer to this new scene. No longer a mortal body, dead because of sin, to be kept under, and often best showing the power of Christ in its own weakness and infirmities (2 Cor. 12:)-no longer such a body, but one made like unto His glorious body, in which at last our ransomed spirits will have, not a prison, as now, but a vehicle adapted to all their enlarged capacities. " It is sown a natural body, (1:e., suitable to an animal life here,) it is raised a spiritual body (1:e., suitable to the spiritual life there)." Those who through weakness or sickness or age feel specially the burden of their earthly house surely are warranted in taking special comfort in this aspect of salvation. But thirdly, both of these would be but shadows did they not suggest and necessitate the blessed fact that sin, whether in transgression or nature, is gone forever. This is not the case now, save to faith-as we reckon ourselves to be dead to sin; but with our mortal body goes the sin which can only have sway there. He who came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself will then, when the redemption of the body takes place, see the full result of His work accomplished.

" No more as here, 'mid snares, to fear
A thought or wish unholy."

Lastly, to which all that has been said is but the introduction, we will be "forever with the Lord," to behold Him, commune with Him, share His glory, and to worship Him and the Father. God and the Lamb! Oh! what will not that mean-at last to. be in His presence, where there is fullness of joy! Let us pause, and dwell upon it:words fail, but may the Spirit of God, whose work it is, show us more of these things to come!

And, dear fellow-believers, this glorious salvation is " nearer than when we believed," nearer than last year, nearer than yesterday. What a future to contemplate!

Notice how our gaze is directed,-not backward, at our past life, which would beget only discouragement in every right-thinking person-for we have all come far short of what we should have been. The backward look would be likely to link us with earth; we are to be "forgetting the things that are behind." Neither are we told to look forward at the time which may yet remain, proper enough in its place, but dangerous to one tempted to have "confidence in the flesh." Plans for the future, needful to some extent, are after all but subordinate. Nor does the apostle lead us to think of the judgment-seat of Christ in this passage, where every one is to receive a reward or to suffer loss. It is sobering and healthful to remember that too in its place. Indeed, all three of these thoughts are right in their proper connection. Here, however, we have the one thought – " the day is at hand."

In the light of that fast-hastening day, the believer is called upon, in the most practical way, to awake:as with the virgins the cry, "Behold the bridegroom cometh! " is to make him arise and trim the lamp. If Zion, in view of her speedy deliverance (Is. 52:), is called to arise, and shake herself from the dust, how appropriate is the call here in view – not of an earthly deliverance, but of an eternal and complete salvation – to " put off the works of darkness," and awaken out of the sleep of the night! As the light of that " morning without clouds " shines into our hearts, how these works of darkness – whether the grosser forms here mentioned or those more subtle ones of strife and envy – will be put off, and that light into which we are so soon to enter clothe us as with a panoply!

Is not this a proper motto for the new year upon which we have just entered:"The time is short." "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh"? There may be but a few days left for service or suffering. Did we but realize what awaits us, did it but come with power to us, how changed the lives of many of us would be! Things which now seem of great importance, and which occupy much of our time and thoughts, would be seen in their true light. Things which perhaps are to us insignificant now would then appear in all the value of eternity. What calmness in the presence of evil, what joy amid trial, what growth in grace, did we hear this word with power in our souls:" Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed"!

Just for today, my Savior,-
Tomorrow is not mine;
Just for today, I ask Thee
For light, and help divine,
Tomorrow’s care I must not bear,
The future is all Thine.

Today I bring my measure
To Thee, that thou mightest fill
And bless it, Lord, and teach me
To trust and to be still.
Today I’d be, my God, for Thee,
And do Thy holy will.

Just for today, my Savior,
For ever the morrow break
Thy voice may call me unto Thee,
And I shall no more walk
The desert path with need of faith,
But face to face shall talk.

And if I have enough, Lord,
Today, why should I grieve
Because of what I have not,
And may not need to have.
Each day, I pray thee, have Thy way,
And I will trust Thy love.

H. McD.

Just seven times-no more, nor less,-God covenants with Abraham before Isaac is offered up; and the eighth and last time when Isaac is received in a figure from the dead. In this the meaning is plain-completeness of testimony, and all founded on resurrection. Let us now consider each covenant (or repetition of the covenant) in detail, and see whether each one does not fall numerically into its place. Both the first and second are found in the following verses:-

I. Gen. 12:1-7.-" Now the Lord had said unto Abram, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee:and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, . . . and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.' So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, . . . and into the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land . . . unto the plain of Moreh. …"

II. "And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, 'Unto thy seed will I give this land:' and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him." I dwell but briefly on these. In the first, appropriately to the number one, we have the announcement in sovereign grace of what God will do; nothing even as to how He will do it. It is the one perfect thing presented to the mind,-God's call and promise, and Abram's perfect obedience. In the second covenant, "unto thy seed will I give this land," we have the way of redemption announced, that is through the Seed, that is Christ (Gal. 3:16). This answers to the second book of Moses,-Exodus-where redemption is the subject, and the Redeemer is the Second Person in the Trinity (Matt. 28:19). The necessity of redemption (though the less prominent thought here) suggests the evil meaning in this number, -sin,-alienation from God,-and so not oneness, but division. But blessing is the subject here-blessing through the Son.

III. The third covenant is beautifully instructive. "And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, 'Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever; and I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth. . . . Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee.' Then Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord.", Here we reach the plains of Mamre, the place where Abraham afterward (chap. 18:) entertains the Lord (the three); that is, we have reached communion with God, as in Leviticus, the third book of Moses, we have the sanctuary and priesthood. And " walk through the land " and " seed as the dust" show liberty and fruitful-ness on resurrection-ground, to which our number brings us.

It is when we see that we are alive unto God in Christ risen, that we know the liberty in which Christ has made us free, and have our fruit unto holiness (Rom. 6:22). Communion, liberty, and holiness. None are free but those who have the living God as one to whom they live in holy fear. Otherwise it is bondage in some form.

On the third day Jonah was cast up upon the dry land of liberty. Before that, it was the depths where all was darkness and helplessness, and the cry for deliverance. It is inasmuch as Christ was raised from the dead that we can walk in newness of life, having been baptized unto His death. Either we walk in the way of death, or else in newness of life in Christ risen from the dead. Every Christian should say, The doctrine of Romans 6:has set me free. (Rom. 6:17, 18.) We are alive in Christ in Romans 6:We are told to " walk in Him " in Colossians 2:In no other atmosphere can we breathe and live. " From the place where thou art" was the word to Abram. The standing being known, he could look to all points of the compass. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ in heavenly places (our Canaan). We belong to heaven, let us freely enjoy our possession, but it must be " from the place where thou art." Abram had overcome and turned away from what had overcome Lot; otherwise he would have had no " ear to hear," and no power to see the "vision of the Almighty." (Num. 24:4.) God could not tell Lot to view the land. May our eyes not be closed to the heavenly vision.

IV. In chap. 15:we have the fourth renewal of the covenant. Now this portion is separated from the three foregoing covenants by the words "after these things," a phrase which does not occur again until just before the eighth and final covenant. We can therefore group the first three and the last four of the seven, and then the eighth. This being the case, there must be something that characterizes the four as a group in comparison with the three. It is this, prominently, whatever else there is, namely, that in the four, man's responsibility, or exercise of soul in the believer comes in; for such is the case from the fourth to the seventh, Abram or Sarah have a question or a doubt, whereas in the first three God alone speaks, man is silent. First, God declares His purpose, then accomplishes it in and through man in the seven as a whole. God manifest in the flesh is the great mystery of godliness, and all is based upon the eighth. He is "received up into glory." The Old Testament answers to the four and the New Testament to the three, the order reversed in the whole history of redemption; first, man is on the scene, then God; yet in the Old Testament, by itself, the order is the same as in the three followed by the four,-that is, the promise is followed by the law. God announces His purpose, then His people (Israel) are tested and redeemed through faith, and all by Christ risen from the dead.

Taking the whole seven (covenants) together, the three followed by the four, we have this:"We are saved by ' grace (the first three), through faith " (the last four).

It may be well to note at this point the tests and exercises of man's heart in the last four. In the first three, as already seen, there is an entire absence of it. But in the four we have the following:Abram says (chap. 15:), "I go childless;" God says, " So shall thy seed be," pointing to the stars. " He believed in the Lord " and was counted righteous. He says, " How shall I know I shall inherit the land?" and then, called to offer the sacrifice, gets a glimpse of the cross, enters the deep sleep and darkness, and has a vision of the furnace and lamp, -trial and guidance of his people, and the announcement that after four hundred years, in the fourth generation his people would be redeemed.

In the fifth covenant (chap. 17:) Abraham laughs at the thought of Sarah having a child, cleaves to Ishmael (like Paul to Jerusalem in bondage), is circumcised with his house.

In the sixth (chap. 18:) he entertains the three, answers to his responsibility, but Sarah doubts and laughs.

In the seventh (chap. 21:12) Abraham is grieved that the bondwoman and her son are to be cast out, but submits to God and to the word, " In Isaac shall thy see be called." In all this God's people are portrayed in their exercises and failures and final rest of faith.

But in the first three not a hint of this, it is purely the sovereign purpose of God declared.

In the first eight chapters of Romans we have what answers to the four, only in the latter part of the eighth we have the three, " Whom He called, them He also justified, and whom He justified, them He also glorified." Romans being thus linked with Ephesians, but ending where Ephesians begins. On the whole, Ephesians is like the first three, Romans the last four.

How marvelous is this frame-work of Scripture! men (as Abraham and others) living their lives through events, ordinary events of the day as well as extraordinary, and these events coming to pass and following into their place in a scheme of lessons for our instruction, with exact precision in each minute detail.

The Lord willing, we may dwell more particularly upon the covenants that follow, from the fourth onward. E.S.L.

From the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer."

He sitteth o'er the fining-pot
With patient tender love.
He doth not set another there
The work to bend above.
But on the molten surface rests
His ever loving eye;
His hand doth gauge the furnace fire,
Nor doth He heed our cry.
But at the perfect moment, when
Upon that molten mass
He seeth there reflected bright
The impress of His face,
His own right hand removeth it.
" It is enough," he cries;
And thus from out our broken hearts
All nature's dross He tries.

H. McD.

In God's mercy, much of the hidden treasure in this portion of His Word has been. brought to light. Truths therein contained as to the work of Christ and His person; as to Israel's history, whether passing through the great trouble of the future, or entering upon that time of blessing so often dwelt upon in Isaiah and elsewhere; truths as to judgments on the nations, and their future destiny-have been rescued from the obscurity thrown over them by a so-called spiritual interpretation, and the result is a greatly increased knowledge of what is called prophetic truth. Now all this is matter for hearty thanksgiving, nor would one say a word to hinder the acquisition of fresh truths in this direction-nay, the first point we would emphasize is that Christians should study the prophets more constantly and more carefully. Alas! this deadly ignorance! what will arouse God's sleeping people to gather the manna lying within their very grasp ? Dear fellow believer, let us read, let us study our Bibles more!

But our present purpose in calling attention to the study of the prophets is to notice especially their immense importance in disclosing what is of inestimable value in the personal and practical walk. Under the Puritans, indeed, this was almost the sole use to which they were put, as their writings would show. We should see to it that light in other directions does not eclipse what .was already shining-above all, that the dispensational or doctrinal part of God's word does not supplant what is practical. He would never have one side of His truth displace another. Let us, then, look at a few of the truths in the prophets which are of distinctively practical and personal importance.

1. The majesty and holiness of God. The prophet Isaiah enters upon his special service after having had such a view of God's glory as brought him to his face in self-abhorrence (Isa. 6:). Like Job, he had heard of Him by the hearing of the ear, but when his eye saw Him, he abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes. But our blessed God does not reveal Himself to dazzle or to smite, so we see grace mingling with the glory." It""is only sin which makes us not at home in His presence, and the coal from off the altar speaks to us of a holiness which has found food there, and does not burn but heals the sinner. Sweet type of that work (and the fragrance of His person who did it) in which God's holiness was so vindicated and manifested that it now comes forth to kiss away sin from defiled lips. In Habakkuk (Chap, 3:) we have a most magnificent description of God's majesty.
"His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. . . . His brightness was as the light. . . . He stood and measured the earth, . . . and the eternal mountains were scattered, the everlasting hills did bow." All His enemies are scattered, but though the believer is filled with awe, he says, "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, …. yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." God seen and known in this way becomes an object of worship and reverence. Is there not an awful absence of that fear of God which is not only the beginning of knowledge, but the characteristic of His people at all times? The love which casteth out fear never casts out godly fear. Assurance and trembling go together, as i Pet. 1:and Phil. 2:would show us. Were God ever before our hearts in His holiness and majesty, self-pleasing,-yea, sin in all its forms, could have no place; conscience would be active, the path of obedience would be plain and not difficult to walk in. Nor would joy, liberty, and praise be wanting. But the flippancy, looseness of walk, hastiness of tongue, would be gone. No flesh can glory in His presence. May we not say, "Lord, increase our fear," as well as "Lord, increase our faith"? Then, too, we would go forth to the world with the message of grace, and our word would be with power-we would be a savor of life or of death.

2. The tenderness of God. Perhaps we little realize the tone of tenderness which pervades the prophets. There is so much of holy indignation against. sin, so many warnings of judgment, that we fail, perhaps, to notice the tender pleading that often accompanies the severest denunciations. HOSEA speaks from God's heart to that of His people. In chap, 2:, after describing Israel's unfaithfulness like that of a wife untrue to her husband, and the resulting judgments, God says, "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." (Heb., "to her heart.") What tenderness is here manifested! He cannot let the record of her sins go down without accompanying it with the promise of future blessing. Then, too, when there seems to be a desire to return to the Lord, but not full and deep, how His love pleads! (6:4.) In looking back over Ephraim's past history, "I took them in My arms, but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love. . . . How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?" He cannot, so He will not, execute the fierceness of His wrath. He will roar as a lion, and His people shall follow Him, trembling indeed, but turning from Egypt and Assyria. Again in the fourteenth chapter, the very words of penitence are put in their lips, and God's answer is given in anticipation, " I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely." JEREMIAH, too, that dark book of judgment, has beneath that the pleading of One who would have been a husband to Israel, and who recalls the love of her espousals. Even now, spite of public unfaithfulness, He pleads with her to return. And when still obdurate, the tears of the messenger mingle with the judgment pronounced in God's name. EZEKIEL, in the sixteenth chapter, has a most faithful portrayal of Israel's history under the figure of the unfaithful wife, beginning indeed in the infancy of one to whom God said "live," who, as she grew up, was adorned with His comeliness, but who turned it all to strangers. Faithfully is the dark picture drawn, but we know that every stroke gives pain to a love which .is neither blind nor insensible. After all is laid bare, love triumphs over sin; and we are pointed on to a time when the poor wanderer will be brought back, nevermore to lift the head in pride, and nevermore to dishonor Him who has won her back. How good it is to apply this to one's personal history, and to take that lowly place of self-loathing so befitting those with whom divine tenderness has dealt.

3. Here, too, we must notice how intensely personal and individual God's dealings are. HAGGAI brings a message to us as well as to the returned Jews, when he says "Consider your ways." May we not in this book learn some of the reasons why spiritual prosperity is at a low ebb-each looking after his own house, and letting that of the Lord lie in neglect? "All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ." ISAIAH, chap. 58:, exposes the formality of a fast which is such only in name, and stirs up the conscience of any who have an ear to hear, pointing away from religiousness such as the Pharisee afterward boasted in, to the practical fruits of a real experience. This unvailing of all shams is one of the prominent characteristics of the prophets-all is vain except that lowly, broken heart, never despised wherever seen. May we not take to heart that rebuke, "The temple of the Lord are these"? Ecclesiastical assumption and pride, so common, alas! are but a stench in God's nostrils. Our place, like DANIEL’S (chap. 9:), is one of humiliation and confession, a real mourning and a real seeking God's face. He would hear.

4. The buoyant spirit of hope breathing all through these books. Blacker pictures of earth's destiny could not be drawn even by the pessimist. Nations pass across the scene to execute judgment on God's people, or on another nation, only themselves to feel the power of that arm which wielded them as His sword, in their own destruction; but spite of slaughter, famine, earthquake, never for a moment is lost the truth that God's purpose is being fulfilled-that He is above all-convulsions of nations and of nature, unfaithfulness of His people-and that after all disorder peace will at last reign. Let us ever remember this in a day of ruin and reproach like the present, and stand firm.

5. Lastly, the prophets are fragrant of Christ. His person, humiliation, sorrow, death, and coming reign are put before us constantly :had we eyes to see, doubtless we would find much more of Him there. It is by occupation with Christ that we grow like Him, and the spiritual exercise entailed in searching for and finding Him in these books is most beneficial.

But we have only gleaned a few things from these books. What a field do they offer for prayerful research! They were written for a time of failure, and are, therefore, specially appropriate for the present time. Written primarily for God's earthly people, they contain principles for all time. Do we not much need that heart-work,- that exercise which would result from letting these books search and try us?

"Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all." (i Tim. 4:15.) " Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" (Luke 2:49.)

We have here two expressions which are in Greek the same; literally, " Be in them,"-" I must be in the things of My Father." There is but one way to make progress in the things of God, and that is by being absorbed in them at all times. One hour of deliberate or permitted turning from His things to the world in any form will mar communion and hinder growth. Whatever we may be doing, we are to be in the things of God, as in an atmosphere. There is nothing hard in this. Will love refuse to be constantly occupied with its object ? Nothing will be neglected if we are thus wholly engaged in God's thoughts and His service. It is the divided heart that makes trouble. The very word for " care " in the Greek (merimna) speaks of the heart being divided-drawn in two directions. One object, one business is all we have. See our blessed Lord in the things of His Father in those years of childhood, as well as in His public ministry.

It is the characteristic of man's work, that, no matter how perfect it may appear, a minute inspection brings out in accuracies. The exact opposite is true of all God's works. Compare, for instance, man's machinery with God's. Man makes a pump to draw water, and noise and labor must be used to operate it, to say nothing of its getting out of order. God's evaporation has worked silently and perfectly from the beginning. Take man's art. His picture may be beautiful at a distance; but approach it, use a magnifying-glass, and it only reveals coarseness and imperfection :not so with God's paintings, on the flower, in the rainbow, etc. The more minutely they are examined, the more their beauties appear, and new beauties are discovered. The rose is beautiful to all; but let the botanist pull it apart, put it .under the glass, and the very pollen-dust conveys its lesson to him of One who is perfect in wisdom and skill. But we are told, " Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name ;" so that the worshiper in the nineteenth psalm has his gaze turned from the heavens to the Word of Jehovah. If, therefore, we find that God's world invites minute analysis and microscopic examination, we find too that His Word invites no less to the same. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away." If we can tear the flower apart and find each part perfect, so we can take His Word, and if seeking to find beauties in its parts-its very words, we will not be disappointed. In these " word studies," it is purposed to thus in a measure dissect and examine the constituent parts of the epistle. It may seem like mechanical work, but if it shows us divine accuracy reaching down beneath the surface, our confidence will be increased, our conviction deepened that "the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." (Ps. 12:6.) 1:Agapao-to love, Agape-love, Agapetos-beloved. The strongest term for love. Phileo is the love of & friend. See Jno. 21:15-17, where our Lord asks Peter the threefold question, " Lovest thou Me ?" The first two times He uses the strong term agapao, and is answered by Peter with the weaker one–phileo, when He adopts the weaker too and meets with the same reply from Peter. Agapao is used in Jno. 3:16 for God's love to the world, Jno. 17:26 for the Father's love for the Son, i Jno. 4:19 for our love to God, and i Jno. 4:7 for our love to one another.

Phileo is used in Jno. 5:20 of the Father's love to the Son, indicating friendship, no secrets, as in Jno. 15:15- "I have called you friends" (philous).

Eph. 1:6-"Accepted in the Beloved." (Egapemeno, participle of agapao.) This gives the sphere and character of the grace shown :it is the beloved Son, as in Jno. 17:26.

Chap. 2:4-" His great love (agape) wherewith He loved (agapao) us." This gives us the source of the love- God, illustrating i Jno. 4:10:nothing in us but sin.

Chap. 3:19-"The love (agape) of Christ which passeth knowledge ; " shown in chap. 5:2-" Christ loved (agapao) us, and gave Himself for us, a sacrifice." Here the work done for us Godward is spoken of as well pleasing and acceptable to God, while in chap. 5:25, 26, etc., the work done in us at the first and with us at the last is given; and ver. 29 gives the care here during our stay- all spring from the love of Christ; well may we say "it passeth knowledge." So we have His love shown in a fourfold way, leading Him to a work (i) acceptable to God (God glorified, His righteousness manifested), (2) sanctifies us by the Word, (3) presents us glorious to-Himself, (4) nourishes and cherishes us. Whichever way we look-at the cross up to the glory or around on our path, we see the love of Christ to us :to fathom it would be to exhaust the fullness of God.

Chap. 1:4 gives us the purpose of God toward us-that we should be blameless before Him in love. The effect of His love will be finally to manifest us in perfect love. But this love is manifested here too, even at the beginning of the Christian life, as in chap. 1:15, their love (agape) toward the saints is spoken of. In chap. 3:18, they are to be rooted and grounded in love (agape) so as to understand Christ's love. This does not mean that we exercise love before we understand Christ's love, but that we grasp and enjoy and return that love in order to know more of it. Chap. 4:2 shows us the practical working of love in the body-the way to keep the unity of the Spirit; thus the body grows, as in chap. 4:15, 16. Also chap. 5:2, where Christ's love is set as the model for ours-and the parting benediction leaves love with them, even those who already love our Lord Jesus (6:23, 24). So in the practical relation of husband to wife it is love, to illustrate Christ's love to the Church. Thus by this word we have set before us love in its source (God), channel (Christ), character (work of Christ), present effects (toward one another and God), and eternal results (holiness with Christ before God in love). "Walk in love."

And from thence they went to Beer:that is the well whereof the Lord spake unto Moses, ' Gather the people together, and I will give them water.' Then Israel sang this song:' Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it. The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves.' " (Num. 21:16, 18.)

Spring up ! spring up, O well!
Hard-digged (divinely given),
With staff in hand, out the dry sand,
By journeyings on to Canaan's land ;
Foretaste of heaven,
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

Amid those distant hills
The water-brooks run clown ;
River and rill the valleys fill,
And the glad land the Lord doth till,
With plenty crown.
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

Savior from thraldom past,
God of the promised land,
Thy desert love, here, here, we prove !
Boasting in Thee, we'd onward move,
Till there we stand.
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

" If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned." (Can. 8:7.)

The pride of man's foolish heart is ever carrying him away from the grace sent to him in Jesus, which must meet him as a beggar-helpless and undone, to some requirement that he may satisfy, which will, as he thinks, enable him to meet God on better terms ; or, he does away with the richness of the grace, and makes it inefficient to meet his real necessities, and then strives to make up the inefficiency by his own change of conduct. On the other hand, the soul taught of God is taught its entire helplessness, (not merely to avow it with the lips, but to know it in the experienced weakness and wickedness of the heart,) but it is taught also to turn away from this to the brightness of grace, that has reached it in its wickedness, and met it in the truth of its condition, evil as it was, with the full consolation, the desperate necessity of that condition sought-Jesus made unto it of God, " wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."

That man is ever attempting to make God as ungenerous as himself-to limit the greatness of His gifts by his own unbelief, and thus to dim the glory of His abounding grace, is not only the necessary result, but the proof, of the unchangeable evil of his heart. It is this, simply this, which has driven the Church into the world, lowering the standard of obedience to the habits of its new associates. Vain would be the search of that man who might try, in the pride of his heart, to bring evidence from the word of truth that any one other motive but love was reckoned on there to bring back to God and guide in His ways the heart of a self-willed and wayward sinner.

There can be no union with God, in thought or act, save in love; " He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." (i Jno. 4:7, 8.) A service of constraint is no service to God. Any thing that would impede the flow of the living waters-the fresh streams of love, peace, and joy into the weary heart of a God-fearing sinner, is just that which would hinder fruitfulness, and leave it a sterile and thorn-bearing thing still.

Now the scriptural word " sanctification " is a fair title, assumed by error, and one so apparently authoritative in its claim, that many are led captive by it, who, while, they feel and know their slavery, are unable to account for it. " If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed " is the happy assurance of our Lord ; and any thing that would limit the love He came to prove is but keeping fast the fetters that bind to earth, and holding us back from the happy, and therefore free, obedience of children. What is " sanctification " (as now used,) but uniting that which God has so graciously, so carefully, separated- salvation and its holy consequences ?

If there is one statement of truth more clear than another in Scripture, and more uncompromising in the language in which it is put, it is this, that redemption is exclusively the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not that of the Holy Ghost. That faith is the work of the Holy Spirit is another question. As a Savior, and a perfect Savior, putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, Jesus says, Look unto me, and be ye saved. " 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 everlasting life." (Jno. 3:14, 15.) If what is so extensively termed " sanctification " (1:e. progressive advancement in holiness) is necessary to salvation, it might well be asked, How much would do ? He who knows God, will know also that he must be as perfect as He is perfect, or neither God nor himself could be satisfied. But not only is this robbing the cross of Jesus of its power, and making His blood inefficient, but, as its result, (how completely, in this as in every thing, is wisdom justified of her children!) we have nothing but an unhappy and an unfruitful Church, hardly knowing whether it is saved or not, knowing enough of itself to understand that it comes short of God's glory ; and therefore, to get itself into peace, (as looking to sanctification and not to Christ,) it must reduce the standard of obedience, bringing down God's character, that it may, somehow, come up to it, and so be satisfied with itself. Thus the ingenuity of unbelief will torture the simplicity of God's Word into something that will impose a burden, when God's love has sought to remove it; and those who are thus self-tasked, or taught by another gospel than that of full and unconditional love, have to run in fetters, with the brightness of the prize for which they contend obscured by intervening clouds of fear and doubt as to God's willingness to bestow it on them. But thus saith the Lord. " Whosoever believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." (Jno. 3:36.*) *See also 1 Jno. 5:11,12; Jno. 5:24; 20:31; Mark 16:15, 16; Acts 16:31; 13:38, 39; Rom. 3:20, 28; 4:3-8, 21-25; 5:8-11, 18 20; 10:4-13; 2 Cor. 5:19-21; Heb. 10:5-18.* The whole Word, in its testimony to the Lord Jesus, speaks of Him as manifesting God as a Savior; and. it is in the face of this that the troubled spirit gets peace, not to be found elsewhere. It sees the God it feared, becoming, in His love to the sinner, the sinner's Savior, and therefore it has confidence toward God :for who can doubt, if God becomes a Savior, the perfectness of the salvation? Its completeness is the soul's security; and faith in it, as perfect and complete, gives peace, and instant peace too. It was thus the gospel (which is "glad tidings"-the expression of God's love to sinners as sinners,) was received when it was first believed on in the world. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved" was the Spirit's, reply to the trembling jailer (Acts 16:), and he rejoiced in God. Philip " preached unto him Jesus " and the believing Ethiopian " went on his way rejoicing."

That salvation, then, is utterly irrespective of what we have been, or of what we are, or of the measure of sanctity we may attain, is, and must be, the conclusion of the heart that trembles at God's word. The simple fact that " God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," is the proof that nothing but unbelief can hinder any sinner's participation in all the rich blessings God has to bestow. What is sin but estrangement of heart from and disobedience to the authority of Him who proved, by the gift of His Son to those who were so estranged and in open rebellion against Him, that though sin was reigning unto death, His grace could reign triumphantly above all sin ?

In the death of the Lord Jesus Christ we learn what God is to sinners as sinners. "Without shedding of blood is no remission " of sin. (Heb. 9:22.) Death is the wages of sin :death was the portion of Jesus, therefore, as made sin for us.

It is the blood of Jesus alone that cleanseth from all sin (i Jno. 1:7):it is by the blood of Jesus alone we have boldness of access into the holiest (Heb. 10:19):it is by the blood of Jesus a/one, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God, that our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:).

Here, then, is our secure, our only, resting-place :the blood of the holy Lamb. If the Spirit beareth witness to the sinner, it is to show the cross as his salvation; to the saved sinner, indeed, He reveals glory, far deeper glory, in the face of the crucified One, as well as the glory of the inheritance (Jno. 16:); but in imparting peace to the conscience,-in delivering from the dread of death and of God's anger, the testimony is one and unvaried- Jesus delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. He who believes this is saved. Let him come ever so exalted in the evident favor of God, to that must he recur for his peace and salvation,-" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Nor is this merely a pardon given in dependence on future obedience. Alas! to those who know how their service is hindered by the heavy bondage of a sinful body how the flesh ever " lusteth against the Spirit,"- who know that all their obedience, while so hindered, is, in God's estimate, "unprofitableness," (surely, unprofitableness can be no claim to heaven,) where would be the joy? Oh how would man pervert God's liberal and most wondrous grace ! how does he ever try to escape the full blessing of being saved altogether by grace, in his ignorance of that God who, having not spared His Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will with Him freely give us all things ! (Rom. 8:32.) What saith the Lord ? " There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," etc. (Rom. 8:1:) One with Him who hath died unto sin once, and over whom death hath no more dominion, the believer is called on to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God ; as knowing that his old man is crucified with him ; baptized unto His death, and raised with Him again to walk in newness of life ; dead, and therefore freed from sin. (Rom. 6:1-7.) It is in the knowledge of the true position of freedom into which he is put before God, as one with Christ, where He is at the right hand of God, that he is enabled to overcome sin in his daily and hourly conflict. Faith in the perfect victory of Jesus over all that was man's enemy is the alone power by which we can become victors too.

It is the freedom of the happy spirit abiding in a Father's love which alone can give power to serve Him who is love ; and upon this rests all the instruction of our Lord, delivering, by the power of that name- " Father," from every bondage, freeing from every other master-man, the world, the flesh, the devil, and all the anxious cares of our fearful and doubting hearts-into the energy of spirit by which alone we can serve in newness of life ; being careful for nothing, taking no thought for the morrow, with the eye single in its object, the heart single in its subjection and service, having no master but Christ, no object but His glory, having present fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, led by the Spirit of God, abiding in Christ, and having, as so abiding, His peace and joy. (Jno. 16:27.)

Jesus came to declare the Father. He spake not from Himself ; He was the Father's Servant. So the Holy Ghost is the Servant of the risen Jesus. He takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. Whether it be the first entering into the sheepfold by that Spirit's quickening, or subsequent increasing power over the world, the flesh, and the devil, the witness is the same – " the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:4.) Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor. 3:18.) However mighty the work, the object of faith is the same as to the weakest believer – Jesus, and not what He (the Spirit) is doing in the believer's heart.

Oh, yes ! the heart must love ere it will serve Him readily, – it must know His mind and will ere it can serve Him faithfully ; but it can only love Him as knowing where His love is seen – in Jesus; it can only serve Him truly as knowing Him who did serve Him faultlessly and faithfully in this same world. All is the witness of the Spirit; but Jesus, the exhibiter of the love which wins the heart – Jesus, the faithful Servant – is that to which He testifies.

It is a wonderful thing that God should bring the heart of a poor, proud, self-seeking man into delight with that which is utterly opposite to every feeling of flesh. And how tenderly and graciously He does it ! He does not say, " Give up the world – deny thyself – crucify the flesh – become abased" (that would be hard indeed, though it would be righteous ; and we all know those who have fancied He has so said, and they have tried every self-inflicted penance and monkish austerity, but the world was loved still, self was the only object of exaltation through it all). He speaks in gentleness, and tells us of the greatness of His love in the midst of our alienation and rebellion,-tells us He loves us, though our hearts are worldly and proud, and our practices selfish and base, and wins us by this love. The testimony of Jesus is the story of this love-the proof of God's love to the sinning man, the ungodly, the proud, the worldly man ; the proof that sin was not a sufficient barrier to shut out love,- that it has broken that down, and can now flow unchecked into the sinful heart. The heart where this is credited, and therefore received, must return an answer of love, and will know, surely know, that God asks nothing from us to prove our love but what will secure to us increased and increasing peace and joy. It is grace the sinner wants, for that alone can be the connecting link between him and God ; and where is the grace but in Jesus humbled, broken-hearted, and crucified ? This is where God has come down to the sinner, and the sinner's step-ping-place to get back to God ; the hand of God stretched out to us in our wretchedness, lifting us up again to Himself, and clasping us to His heart. In truth, there can be no service to God except by the sweet constraint of love. The obedience of heaven is the obedience of love, for there can be nothing but love there ; there is only one will there – obedience to that will is the unity and harmony of heaven. The results of self-will are clear enough around us in the full tide of misery which is flowing over this rebellious world. It is the same power which rules in heaven, reaching, by the Spirit's presence, the heart of a self-willed sinner, that brings it to subjection, and gives (when it has the mastery there,) the joy of heaven, freeing it from its many turbulent and unrighteous masters, and giving it but One, and that One- Love, for God is love.

The more, then, this love is known, and shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us, the more constrained will the heart be to this happy service, because it will thus judge, that "if one died for all, then were all dead, and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again."

And oh ! where is it that we get daily strength but in tracing the love and the glory that can be only seen in the Father's righteous Servant, whose service was both to the Father and to us ? Every step so traced will unravel the depths of that grace which has given the heart its peace, and assured it of everlasting glory. And it is this, it is this, that the Holy Ghost does engrave day by day, deeper and deeper, on the willing heart of the believer, showing him his Lord-Him who was in the beginning, with God, and was God, but " who was made flesh, and dwelt among us;"-marking the circumstances of evil which surrounded Him from His birth onward, and so the untiring love which could not be overcome by those circumstances, but which shone the brighter, and showed its depths the more, as it was scorned and trampled on, while pressing on in its might through them all, to finish that work which alone could meet the necessities of the sinner. It is not the cross only, but the character of the evil, which in its power overwhelmed the Lamb of God, and the unconquered compassion which ever shone forth from Him on the darkness which surrounded and would have quenched it,-the every day's pitying endurance of the " contradiction of sinners against Himself," even to the moment when the readiness of His heart to bless was seen in the prompt reply of forgiveness to him who had reviled Him during His bitterest agony on the cross. (Comp. Matt, 27:44 with Luke 23:43.) It is this that shows the depth of the love,-a love that existed ever, a love that ordained the Victim, that gave the Victim (and that Victim His only Son) to and for those who hated and disregarded both the Giver and the Gift.* *It is not, as some suppose, that the necessity of the sacrifice of Jesus is lessened by the assertion here made that God loved us as sinners, and the sacrifice was but the proof of that love. No, but while nothing but the complete erasure of every charge, the cleansing from all sin, could bring the sinner back to God, with boldness into the holiest of all, yet it was a previous, exhaustless, and self-existing love, which expressed itself to the sinner it loved in the very way the sinner needed it,-by giving him that which would answer his necessities to the full. God loved the sinner and therefore found him the sacrifice he needed. And oh! God so loved the sinner that He spared not His well-beloved Son to be the sacrifice.*

He who delights to trace the steps of Jesus in this grief-stricken world will see in every step the holiness, the moral glory, and the love of the unseen God made manifest to him in a form that he can apprehend.

Oh, yes! it is knowing God in Jesus-in all the exquisite detail of His most dignified yet condescending love – a love that could and that did descend to the depths of degradation and shame, to minister its sweet consolation to the wretchedness of its object,-that came into a world of sin and sorrow, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; to be the lowest and the poorest, to be associated with the most needy and despised of men-the leper, the publican, and the Samaritan ; giving His back to the smiters, His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; "learning obedience by the things that He suffered ;" taking part in our sufferings, that, when perfected in His lesson of love, He might be a sympathizing Intercessor for those whose companion in sorrow He had become. It is this-the weakness of Jesus, the poverty of Jesus, the depths of poverty both of spirit and of circumstances-that shows us how far His love can reach, and what that love would do to bless its object,-that shows us God.

Upon the ground of the soul's present and perfect salvation by the blood of Jesus the believer stands to meet the practical question of following Him, as made even now, by His gratuitous grace, free and ready to serve Him in love, as having but one object-that of showing forth His praises in the world that rejected and still rejects Him. There will be no singularity in the confession of the name of Jesus in heaven ; none will be ashamed of Him or of His words there ; He will be fully glorified and admired there. But it is here, in " this present evil world," in the midst of a crooked and perverse people, that the sinner separated by the blood" of the Lamb to all blessing is called on to stand forth and declare how Jesus " gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS.-Concluded.

The Witnesses.(Chap. 11:1-14.)

The last words of the preceding chapter receive their explanation from what we have seen to be the character of the little open book. If this be Old-Testament prophecy that is now " open," then we can see how John has at this point to"prophesy again"not "before" but "over,"-that is, "concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings."He is to take up the strain of the old prophets, not, of course, merely to echo their predictions, but to add to them a complementary and final testimony.

Accordingly we find now what carries us back to those prophecies of Daniel which were briefly reviewed in our introductory chapter. The mention of the ''beast," and of the precise period of "forty-two months," or "twelve hundred and sixty days,"-that is, the half-week of his last or seventieth week, previous to the coming in of blessing for Israel and the earth, is by itself conclusive. This week we have seen to be, in fact, divided in this way by the taking away of the daily sacrifice in the midst of it (Dan. 9:27). It is by this direct opposition to God also that the man of sin is revealed. Hence it would seem clear that it is with the last half of the week that we have here to do.

A reed like a staff is now given to the prophet that he may measure with it the temple of God. If a reed might suggest weakness, as in fact all that is of God lies at the time contemplated under such a reproach, the words, " like a staff" suggest the opposite thought, God's care for his people implied in this measurement is to unbelief indeed a mystery, for they seem exposed to the vicissitudes of other men, yet is it a staff upon which one may lean with fullest confidence. His measurement of things abides, perfect righteousness and absolute truth, abiding necessarily as such.

The temple of God is, of course, the Jewish temple, and though not to be taken literally, still, as all its connections here assure us, stands for Jewish worship, and not Christian, though a certain application, as in the historical interpretation, need not be denied. The altar, as distinct from the temple proper, is, I believe, the altar of burnt-offering, upon which, indeed, for Israel, all depended. It was there God met with the people (Ex. 29:43), although, as we contemplate things here, the mass of the nation was in rejection, the court given up to the Gentiles,* the holy city to be trodden underfoot by them, only a remnant of true worshipers acknowledged. *Which shows, I think, that it is not the court of the Gentiles, which belonged to them of right.* It may be said that the altar of burnt-offering stood in the court ; but the idea connected with each is different. The court, however, being given up, the worshipers recognized must have the sanctuary opened for them:in the rejection of the mass, God brings the faithful few nearer to Himself. This is His constant grace.

"And the holy city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months."The " holy city " can speak but of one city on earth ; nor can there be justifiable doubts as to the place in prophecy of this half-week of desolation. The mixture of literal and figurative language will be no cause of stumbling to any one who has carefully considered the style of all these apocalyptic visions, which are evidently not intended to carry their significance upon their face. All must be fully weighed, must be self-consistent, and fitting into its place in connection with the whole prophetic plan. Thus alone can we have clearness-and certainty as to interpretation.

As a man, then, who has been sunk in a long dream of sorrow, but to whom is now brought inspiriting news of a joy in which he is called to have an active part,-as an Elijah at another Horeb after the wind and the earthquake and the fire have passed and He whom he had sought-the Lord-is not in these, but who is aroused at once by the utterance of the "still, small voice,"-so the prophet here is bidden to rise and measure the temple of God. Not so unlike, either, to the measure given to the elder prophet, of seven thousand men that had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. How speedy and thorough a relief when God is brought into the scene ! and from what scene is He really absent? How animating, how courageous a thing, then, is faith that recognizes Him!

And where He is there must be a testimony to Him. We find it, therefore, immediately in this case:" And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive-trees, and the two candlesticks which stand before the Lord of the earth."

The reference is plain to Zechariah (chap, 4:), but there are also differences which are plain. There it is the thing itself accomplished, to which here there is but testimony, and in humiliation, though there is power to maintain it, spite of all opposition, till the time appointed. The witnesses are identified with their testimony-that to which they bear witness. Hence the resemblance. They stand before the Lord of the earth,-the One to whom; the earth belongs, to maintain His claim upon it:in sackcloth, because their claim is resisted ; a sufficient testimony in the power of the Spirit, a spiritual light amidst the darkness, but which does not banish darkness. " And if any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies; and if any man shall desire to hurt them, in this manner must he be killed. These have power to shut the heaven that it rain not during the days of their prophecy ; and they have power over the waters, to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague as often as they shall desire."

Here is not the grace of Christianity, but the ministry of power after the manner of Elijah and of Moses :judgment which must come because grace has been ineffectual, and of which the issue shall be in blessing, for " when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world shall learn righteousness." (Isa. 26:9.)

The association of Elijah with Moses, which is evident here, of necessity reminds us of their association also on the mount of transfiguration, wherein, as a picture, was presented " the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Pet. 1:16-18.) They are here in the same place of attendance upon their coming Lord. It does not follow, however, that they are personally present, as some have thought, and that the one has had preserved to him, the other will have restored to him, his mortal body for that purpose.

The preservation to Elijah of a mortal body in heaven seems a thought weird and unscriptural enough, with all its necessary suggestions also. But the closing prophecy of the Old Testament does announce the sending of Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Is not this proof that so he must come ?

Naturally, one would say so ; but our Lord's words as to John the Baptist, on the other hand,-" If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come,"-raise question. It has been answered that his own words deny that he was really Elias, and that Israel did not receive him, and so John could not be Elias to them. Both things are true, and yet do not seem satisfactory as argument. That he was not Elias literally, only shows, or seems to show, that one who was not Elias could, under certain conditions, have fulfilled the prediction. While other words of the Lord-"I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed"-show even more strongly that for that day and generation he was Elias. Why, then, could not another, coming in his spirit and power, fulfill the prophecy in the future day?

This Revelation seems to confirm, inasmuch as it speaks of two witnesses who are both marked as possessing the spirit and power of Elias, and who stand on an equal footing as witnesses for God. Had it been one figure before the eyes here, it would have been more natural to say it is Elias himself; but here are two doing his work, nor can we think of a possible third behind and unnoticed and yet the real instrument of God in this crisis. The two form this Elias ministry, which is to recall the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers, and who both lay down their lives as the seal of their testimony. Put all this together, and does it not seem as if Elias appeared in others raised up of God and indued with His Spirit, to complete the work for which he was raised up in Israel ?

Much more would all this hinder the reception of the thought of any personal appearance of Moses, while there is no prediction at all of any such thing. Jude's words (which have been adduced) as to the contention of Michael with Satan about the body of the lawgiver may well refer to the fact that the Lord had buried him, and no man knew of his sepulcher. Satan may well, for his own purposes, have desired to make known his grave, just as God in His wisdom chose to hide it. Yet the appearance of Moses and Elias in connection with the appearing of the Lord, as seen on the mount of transfiguration, seems none the less to connect itself with these two witnesses and their work,-both caught away in like manner into the " cloud," as the twelfth verse ought to read. And Malachi, just before the declaration of the mission of Elias, bids them, on God's part, "remember the law of Moses My servant."Moses must do his work as well as Elias ; for it is upon their turning in heart to the law of Moses that their blessing in the last days depends ; and thus we find the power of God acting in their behalf in the likeness of what He wrought upon Egypt:the witnesses " have power over. waters, to turn them to blood." It is not that Moses is personally among them, but that Moses is in this way witnessing for them ; and so the vials after this emphatically declare.

God thus, during the whole time of trouble and apostasy, preserves a testimony for Himself, until at the close the final outrage is permitted which brings down speedy judgment. For "when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called ' Sodom' and ' Egypt,' where also their Lord was crucified. And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations do men look upon their dead bodies three days and a half, and suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And they that dwell upon the earth rejoice over them and make merry ; and they shall send gifts to one another ; because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth. :And after the three days and a half, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which beheld them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them,' Come up hither.' And they went up into heaven in the cloud ; and their enemies beheld them. And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons :and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven."
If the twelve hundred and sixty days of the prophetic testimony agree with the last half of the closing week of Daniel, they coincide with the time of the beast's permitted power, and the death of the witnesses is his last political act. That a certain interval of time should follow before his judgment, which takes place under the third and not the second woe, does not seem to conflict with chap. 13:5, where it should read, " power was given unto him to practice"-not "continue,"-"forty and two months." The last act of tyranny may have been perpetrated in the slaying of the witnesses; and indeed it seems a thing fitted to be the close of power of this kind permitted him. With this the storm-cloud of judgment arises, which smites him down shortly after.

If, however, the duration of the testimony be for the first half of the week, then the power of the beast begins with the slaughter of the witnesses, and the three and a half years' tribulation follows, which does not seem to consist with the judgment and its effects three and a half days afterward. Then, too, " the second woe is past" (v, 14), and the third announces the kingdom of Christ as having come. But we shall yet consider this more closely when we come, if the Lord will, to the interpretation of the vials.

Here, then, for the first time, the beast out of the abyss comes plainly into the scene. In Daniel, and in Rev. xiii, he does not come out of the abyss, but out of the sea ; but in the seventeenth chapter he is spoken of as "about to come up out of the abyss," showing undeniably that it is the same "beast" as Daniel's fourth one,-the Roman empire. In the first case, as coming out of the sea, it has a common origin with the other three empires-the Babylonian, Persian, and Grecian-out of the heaving deep of Gentile nations. Then we find in Revelation what from Daniel we should never have expected, but what in fact has certainly taken place,-that the empire which is to meet its judgment at the coming of the Lord does not continue uninterruptedly in power till then. There is a time in which it ceases to be,-and we can measure this time of non-existence already by centuries,-and then it comes back again in a peculiar form, as from the dead:" the beast that was and is not, and shall be present." (Chap. 17:8.) This rising again into existence we would naturally take as its coming up out of the abyss,-out of the death state,-and think that we were at the bottom of the whole matter. The truth seems to be not quite so simple, but here is not the place to go into it further.

For the present, it is enough to say that the coming up out of the abyss is in fact a revival out of the death state, but, as a comparison with the fifth trumpet may suggest, revival by the dark and demon-influences which are there represented as in attendance upon the angel of the abyss. It is the one in whom is vested the power of the revived empire who concentrates the energy of his hatred against God in the slaying of the witnesses.

The place of their death is clearly Jerusalem :"Their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called ' Sodom ' and ' Egypt,' where also their Lord was crucified." Certainly no other place could be so defined:and thus defined and characterized for its lusts as Sodom, for its cruelty to the people of God as Egypt, it is not now called the "holy," but the "great" city,-great even in its crimes. In its street their bodies, lie, exposed by the malice of their foes which denies them burial, but allowed by God as the open indictment of those who have thus definitively rejected His righteous rule. The race of the prophets is at an end, which has tormented them with their claim of the world for God ; A and the men of the earth rejoice, and send gifts to one another. Little do they understand that when His. testimony is at an end, there is nothing left but for God Himself to come in and to manifest a power before which man's power shall be extinguished as flax before the flame.
And the presage of this quickly follows. "And after the three days and a half, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet ; and great fear fell upon them which beheld them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, 'Come up hither.' And they went up into heaven in the cloud ; and their enemies beheld them."

If this is the time of the addition of the saints martyred under the beast's persecution to the first resurrection, of which the vision in the twentieth chapter speaks, then it is plain that we are arrived at the end of the beast's power against the saints, and of the last week of Daniel " Two" is the number of valid testimony (Jno. 8:17), and these two witnesses may, in a vision like that before us, stand for many more,-nay, for this whole martyred remnant in Israel. We cannot say it is so, but we can as. little say it is not so ; and even the suggestion has its interest:for thus this appendix to the sixth trumpet seems designed to put in place the various features of Daniel's last week, the details of which are opened out to us in the seven chapters following, with many additions. And this we might expect in a connected chain of prophecy which stretches on to the end; for under the seventh trumpet the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of His Christ, and the " time of the dead to be judged " is at least contemplated.

The resurrection of the witnesses is not all:a great earthquake follows, " and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons ; and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven."

Thus the sixth trumpet ends in a convulsion in which judgment takes, as it were, the refused tithe from a rebellious people. There is a marked similarity here between the trumpets and the vials, which end also in an earthquake and judgment of the great city:as to which we may see further in its place. The rest that are not slain give glory to the God of heaven. It is the unacceptable product of mere human fear, which has no practical result; for God is claiming the earth, not simply heaven, and for the affirmation of this claim His witnesses have died. They can allow Him heaven who deny Him earth. And judgment takes its course.

The second woe ends with this, and the third comes quickly after it.

The Kingdom.(Chap. 11:15-18.)

The third woe is the coming of the kingdom!

Yes ; that to greet which the earth breaks out in gladness, the morning without clouds, the day which has no night, and the fulfillment of the first promise which fell upon man's ears when he stood a naked sinner before God to hear his doom, the constant theme of prophecy now swelling into song and now sighed out in prayer, that kingdom is yet, to the " dwellers upon earth," the last and deepest woe.

The rod of iron is now to smite, and omnipotence it is that wields it. "And the seventh angel sounded, and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, 'The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.'"

Few words and concise, but how pregnant with blessed meaning! The earth that has rolled from its orbit is reclaimed ; judgment has returned to righteousness ; He who has learned for Himself the path of obedience in a suffering which was the fruit of tender interest in man has now Himself the scepter ; nor is there any power that can take it out of His hand.

There are no details yet:simply the announcement, which the elders in heaven answer with adoration, prostrate upon their faces, saying, " We give Thee thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and who wast, that Thou hast taken Thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give their reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear Thy name, small and great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth."

There is nothing difficult here in the way of interpretation, except that the " time of the dead to be judged " seems to come with the period of the earthly judgments which introduce millennial blessing. We find in the twentieth chapter full assurance that this is not to be. The explanation is that we have here the setting up of the kingdom in its full results, and that the order is one of thought and not of time. The judgments of the quick (or living) and of the dead are both implied in the reign of our Lord and of His Christ, though they are not executed together. God's wrath is mentioned first, because it is for the earth the pre-requisite of blessing, and because judgment is not what He rests in, but in love. It is therefore put first, that the realization of the blessing may come after, and not give place to it. But this wrath of God which meets and quells the nations' wrath goes on and necessitates the judgment of the dead also. Death is no escape from it:the coming One has the keys of death and hades.

With this the holiness of God is satisfied, and the love in which He rests is free to show itself in the reward of prophets and saints, and those who fear His name, little as well as great. This seems as general in its aspect as the judgment of the dead on the other side unquestionably is. The foremost mention of the prophets, as those who have stood for God in testimony upon the earth, is in perfect keeping with the character of the whole book before us. And the destruction of those who destroy the earth is not noticed here apparently as judgment so much as to assure us of the reparation of the injury to that which came out of His hands at first, and in which He has never ceased to have tender interest, despite the permitted evil of " man's day."

(To be continued.)

No pen can write, no tongue can tell, what the blood-shedding of Jesus has accomplished. The wondrous fruits of that one sacrifice, both Godward and manward, are infinite in their variety. The intrinsic value of that blood has fully and fairly met all the claims of God-every demand of the law-and the whole need of roan. It has laid a foundation, or rather, in itself forms the foundation for the full display, throughout eternity, for the glory of God and the complete blessedness of His people. Its virtue is felt throughout the highest heights of heaven, and appreciated there in a way that we can have no conception of here. But in due time its power shall be manifested throughout the whole universe. The vernal bloom of every leaf, and flower, and blade of grass-the playful, lambkin, and the harmless lion-the reign of peace and plenty throughout the whole creation-in the day of His millennial glory, shall alike proclaim the redemption-power of the blood of the cross. And on the other hand, the awful consequences of sinners despising that precious blood shall be endured forever in the deepest depths of unutterable woe. Its power must be felt every where.

But to the believer, the truster in that precious blood, it has opened the pearly gates of heaven, and shut forever the gloomy gates of hell. It has quenched the flames of the burning lake, and opened up the everlasting springs of God's redeeming love. It has plucked him as a brand out of the fire, cleansed him from every stain of sin, and planted him in robes of unsullied brightness in the immediate presence of God.-An Extract.

* From Mrs. Bevan's new book, " Sketches of the Quiet in the Land,' now publishing.*

Come, children, on and forward!
With us the Father goes;
He leads us, and He guards us
Through thousands of our foes :
The sweetness and the glory,
The sunlight of His eyes,
Make all the desert places
To glow as paradise.

Lo! through the pathless midnight
The fiery pillar leads,
And onward goes the Shepherd
Before the flock He feeds.
Unquestioning, unfearing,
The lambs may follow on,
In quietness and confidence,
Their eyes on Him alone.

Come, children, on and forward!
We journey hand in hand,
And each shall cheer his brother
All through the stranger-land.
And hosts of God's high angels
Beside us walk in white:
What wonder if our singing
Make music through the night?

Come, children, on and forward,
Each hour nearer home!
The pilgrim-days speed onward,
And soon the last will come.
All hail! O golden city!
How near the shining towers!
Pair gleams our Father's palace:
That radiant home is ours.

On! Dare and suffer all things!
Yet but a stretch of road,
Then wondrous words of welcome,
And then the Face of God.
The world, how small and empty!
Our eyes have looked on Him;
The mighty Sun has risen,
The taper burneth dim.

Far through the depths of heaven
Our Jesus leads His own-
The Mightiest and the Fairest,
Christ ever, Christ alone.
Led captive by His sweetness,
And dowered with His bliss,
Forever He is ours,
Forever we are His.

G. Tersteegen.

There is a danger of being disheartened and " vexed " through the prevalence of evil, " Because of the abounding of iniquity, the love of many shall wax cold." How perfect the blessed Lord was in this ! All was iniquity around Him, yet, in perfect communion with God, His spirit walked in peace, so that He could notice and recognize even all that was naturally lovely- the lily of the field-God's care of ravens-all that was of God here. But this is because He was perfectly near God (I speak of His mind as man); but, for the same reason, He judges perfectly man and all his thoughts and intents of heart.

But marriage is owned from the beginning-a child, in which simplicity, confidence, and undistrusting readiness of heart to believe, guilelessness, as not having learnt the world nor its vanity – beauty of character, when He looked on the young man who had displayed that character, He loved him; this is lovely, but the presence of God must try man-where was his heart? He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. With the best dispositions and readiness to be taught, and plenty to make good use of, the state of the heart is found; "who then can be saved." With man it is impossible, but then with God all things are possible. At the very outset, the Lord had shown him he was all on the wrong tack, seeking goodness in man-God only was good ; the heart was detected-the cross alone would do, those who follow Him must take it up-death to what man was, the only path. But then there was a blessed starting-point for this, " He came to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:)

The cross was first redemption, then the death of the flesh ; and we are, for ourselves, to take up the cross, and, for others, to serve as Christ did. He had in this character, as now calling souls, only the cup to give-His baptism and His cup, though there was large, ample reward for those for whom it was prepared.

Then comes the reference of this question to the disciples' path. Where the flesh is not crucified, the world and Satan have power-they follow trembling, when He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. There can be sincerity and blessing-Christ, the Son, revealed and holding fast by Him, but the flesh not subdued to the measure of that which we really believe, then there is fear and weakness, and it goes even to the point of being called Satan by the Lord. See the difference of Paul by the Holy Ghost-his righteousness, which was a gain to him, was loss to him, he needed it not ; had he any thing of this world ? It was dung and dross, and followed- this one thing I do. If he had forty stripes save one, or despaired of life, he had the sentence of death in himself; he looked to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory-a bright example of the power of grace and the Spirit, so as to have an undivided and so undistracted heart, and power with him as in Christ, a perfect example of the good which Paul had to imitate-a heart perfectly free in its own self; tested, indeed, but perfect, and so perfect with God that it could, as above all the evil around it, deeply as it was felt, see and recognize all that was of God.

It is wondrously full of instruction to see man's heart sifted, yet all good of God owned ; that edge of the divine word, of the word of Christ, which can run its edge through all that to us is so mixed up ;-nature and fallen nature-nature from God, and nature from man- and in perfect goodness in the midst o:all, yet tell us plainly of the needed cross, and the grace of a needed redemption. J.N.D.

(Lev. 27:)

Our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount are illustrative and illuminative of the law of vows given in the final chapter of Leviticus-a chapter of the greatest importance to the book it closes, in which the great lesson is that of sanctification. The special or "singular" vow of this chapter is just the "sanctification," whether of person or thing, to Jehovah; but a sanctification which goes beyond what is demanded by the law-a voluntary undertaking, though it may be the result of the pressure of circumstances, as for instance in the case of Jephthah.

The words of the Sermon on the Mount seem at first sight rather to prohibit explanation than to explain. They do, in fact, for Christians, set aside any law of vows by the prohibition of vows :" Again, ye have heard it said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths :but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King ; neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black." Thus, plainly, what the law had permitted was now revoked :yet not as if the law had failed,-let not that be imagined. Jesus was Himself the Giver of that law ; and He has but a little before declared of it that " not one jot or tittle should pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Far from failing, it had done its work well; and it is because of this that the new commandment is now issued. For the law was intended to convince men of that moral weakness, and it is because of this weakness, which has been demonstrated by the law that the vow is now prohibited.

But the legal covenant itself, as Israel entered into it, was itself such a "singular vow." They therein dedicated themselves to Jehovah with the affirmation, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do, and be obedient." It may be asked, indeed, Was this a voluntary undertaking? had not the Lord invited them to make such an engagement? It is true He had said, "If ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all nations." It was of Him that they should be tested, just because man, in his self-confidence, alas! welcomes the test. Nothing but the experiment will convince him of his impotence. But it was open for them to deprecate a conditional footing of this kind, and to cast themselves upon divine mercy as their only hope. On the contrary, they readily and voluntarily accepted it, and thus dedicated themselves to the Lord by a "singular vow."

The first eight verses of the chapter speaks of this dedication of persons ; and in this case, the Lord Himself, by the priest, estimates the value of the service to be rendered to Him. No one could be allowed to do this for himself:it must be done for him ; and here every one was valued according to his age, strange valuation as it might seem, – disregarding the manifest inequality between man and man, every man at the same age valued at exactly the same rate, which, physical absurdity as it might seem, only shows that we have here typically a moral standard, which is necessarily the same for every one, though admitting a certain difference in duties also, as for man, woman, child, etc. The ten commandments were thus the perfect appraisal on God's part of man's self-dedication. Yet if he were poorer than this estimation, as man is confessedly unable to pay full value according to the perfect standard, then the priest was permitted to value him according to his ability, so that he could no longer, in that sense, plead his poverty. And just so we find that while the law in the ten commandments was a perfect rule, in practice, something had to be abated. Thus, of the law of divorce the Lord had to say, " Moses for the hardness of your hearts gave you this precept." And in a similar way He revealed Himself as " forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin " at the second giving of the law, after the sin of the golden calf had shown Israel's deep poverty.

Yet law, however modified, is still a ministration of death and of condemnation ; and this is, in fact, said of the law as given the second time-not the first (2 Cor. 3:). Thus the " singular vow " fails, utterly. Only grace could say of any, "She hath done what she could." The Lord therefore, in mercy and justice-both, prohibits it. Man must own himself lost if it be a question of responsibility. He needs not any modification of the law, but grace and salvation.

How blessed, then, to find, in the very next place to the law of the personal vow, the law of the vowed "beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the Lord " ! If man has failed, and at his best, when he has vowed and attempted to devote himself, thank God, there is a life that can be devoted for him, though in death, and which the Lord accepts ! Here, let us note, there is no valuation, and no possibility of exchange or release. Who can value the inestimable, or change places with this precious Substitute for sinners ? An unclean beast may be redeemed, though, as we are made to know here, by what is of more value than itself ; a fifth part more must be added in this case to the priest's valuation. But the beast clean for an offering,-and there is but One whom this could represent,-for it there is no ransom. No, "the Son of Man must be lifted up." There was no other way, or would it not have been taken ? could the Son of God suffer needlessly ? Impossible. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." No saved soul but is the fruit of that precious death.

He indeed could be the subject of a singular vow. He alone could say, without a shadow of misgiving, " I will pay my vows before them that fear Him." (Ps. 22:) Power was with Him. though in weakness ; and on the awful tree where He bare our sins God Himself could turn away His face, and let Him bear the undiminished burden. Yes, the singular vow was His ; and that which mercy prohibits to others it appointed to Him. Here alone in all man's history the law of the vow becomes a law of salvation and blessing.

And next, therefore, we come in this chapter to the sanctification of the house. "And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the Lord, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad :as the priest shall estimate it, so it shall stand. And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it shall be his."

This is in regular and beautiful order. Not until He has a redeemed people does God speak of having a house among men. Israel had such a house, a " holy arid beautiful house," devoted to Him, yet theirs :for to de-vote what is ours to God does not make it the less but more our own ; and what house was there in Israel that was so truly theirs as God's house was? "And let them make Me a sanctuary," He says, " that I may dwell among them." This is the object of His heart which in Immanuel has been revealed to us, to bring His people near to Himself, and to abide among them. Bat for Israel's house to be theirs, it must be redeemed, and so the first house passed away from them because redemption had not given it perpetuity. They knew not, know not yet, bring not, as it were, to God the ransom-price. Hence the house is gone from them, and will not return until the glorious sixty-eighth psalm becomes the language of their hearts :" Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men ; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them."
This truth in a still more blessed way is ours to-day, and after a twofold manner. For to us as redeemed, not a typical house, made with hands, but the heavenly sanctuary itself, is opened ; the vail rent, as Israel never knew it, and we are encouraged with the wondrous words, " Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,-by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His flesh ; and having a High-Priest Over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." (Heb. 10:19-22.)

This is what God's heart yearns that we may know, and this is what the person of Christ (God and man in-one) implies for us, and this is what His work has made fully ours. O to know it better, refuge and rest and sanctuary as it is, the place where God dwells ! This is our one escape from the world, from the burden of care, from the sin that assails us. Nowhere else is there a clean spot, nowhere else a place of security:" Thou shall hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man :Thou shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." (Ps. 31:20.) Yes, here man's pride is rebuked, his haughtiness is brought down, distraction ceases, the mind is cleared, the heart rests. " The name of the Lord is a strong lower :the righteous runneth into it and is safe."

But we can add more :for His " house are we " (Heb. 3:6). The words are fulfilled to us "I will dwell in them and walk in them." (2 Cor. 6:16.) The Spirit of God already dwells in us in virtue of redemption, and our "bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost." (i Cor. 6:19.) An amazing thought, which we realize how little ! And the Church also is His temple. How God presses upon us this nearness that we have to Him, the nearness in which He is to us ! Simplicity of faith in this, what would it not do for us!

But we must go on to the sanctification of the field; and here, if we think of Israel and her land, we have what is of the greatest interest. In Israel, the year of jubilee (which began on the day of atonement, after their sins had been taken away by the scape-goat into a land of forget-fulness,) restored to every one whatever he had lost of his original inheritance. If a man had devoted a field to the Lord, this became his own again in the year of jubilee. But there was an exception :" If he will not redeem the field "-before the jubilee-" or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more ; but the field, when it goeth out in the jubilee, shall be holy unto the Lord as a field devoted ; the possession thereof shall be the priest's." Now Israel's land had been thus devoted to the Lord, and has not been redeemed ; that is, the value of it has not been paid to Him, but it has, alas! been sold to the stranger, as we are all to-day witnesses. Consequently, when the time of blessing for the earth comes at the appearing of the Lord, divine grace will take out of their keeping what they have shown themselves to have so little power to keep. It shall be the priest's, Immanuel's land, forever secure from alienation, and Israel shall inherit with Him who says, "The land shall not be sold forever ; for the land is Mine :for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me."

And we too, in a higher and wider sphere, heirs of God, are joint-heirs with Christ. Our inheritance is secured also by the same strong hand. Grace has omitted nothing that is needful to eternal security; and in the Father's house the first-born children of the Father shall be at home to go no more out forever.

Thus ends really the law of vows ; but the chapter is not yet closed :we have had four divisions of a septenary series, and as in perhaps all such, we have in the last three a change of subject, though of course connected also with the preceding ones. They give us, in fact, distinctly specified as such, what cannot be the subject of vows, and that because they already belong to the Lord. What He claims as His depends not on man's feeble will or effort to make good as His. The vow as to these is necessarily therefore set aside.

And here as the first class of these we have the firstborn of beasts. Spared in Israel at the time when those of the Egyptians fell under the divine hand, God claimed them as His own. It was not left therefore to man's option whether they were to be His. Man's vow was here needless, and nothing left to his will in the matter. He claimed who had title and power to make good His claim.

And is not this too, in view of our own responsibility, and in the consciousness of the weakness of our human wills to yield themselves to Him, that which gives us rest, and animates us in the inevitable conflict, that our sanctification to God is secured by redemption and by birth ? Formed for His service as the beast for man's, claimed by Him who will not suffer aught to defraud Him of His claim, we are His, then, not in the weakness of our poor human wills, but in the might of His will for us. And therefore we are exhorted to " work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure " (Phil. 2:12, 13), " created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:10.)

But there is a second class of things or of persons that is equally His, and holy to Him in a strange and solemn way. These are the subjects of the ban, devoted to death as evil, and sanctified to God in the only way in which that which resists sanctification can be-by its destruction. Here ransom could not be, nor was it to be left to man's will what should be done in the matter. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." (2 Pet. 2:9.) They are His too by title, as are the righteous, and " God will be sanctified in judgment," demonstrated as against the evil and Master of it in the day of manifestation that is drawing nigh.

One thing alone remains to complete this picture. The tithe in Israel was the recognition of the sovereign rights of God over all their possessions. For God to have His own means fullness of blessing for all by whom it is yielded. If God has His place with us, every thing else has its place. When this shall be at last, then will have come the full eternal blessing :"God shall be all in all,"-the definition of the eternal state in the last book of Scripture.

And this, blessed be God, depends not upon man's feeble will for its accomplishment. The whole lesson of the ages from the first sin in Eden to the apostasy after the thousand years itself is but the reiteration of that word, "Cease ye from man." But God will only in this the more be glorified, when the creature being proved to derive all its stability from Him shall rest at last in Himself alone. The first man's vow ended in ruin, and his forfeiture is made up and more than this by the substitution of the Second ; in Him all the glory of God is fully and finally displayed; in Him too God and man at one forever, and united in His person, united by His precious work, now at last full satisfaction of heart is come, and this rest shall be eternal.

I looked around upon the world,
And saw men prospering here and there,-
The flag "excelsior " wide unfurled,
And proudly waving through the air:
I looked,-but " What is that to thee? "
My Savior said, " Come, follow Me;
There's far above earth's greatest height
A glorious home for thee."

I gazed upon the warlike throng,
Hasting to glory and renown;
Heard the triumphant conqueror's song,
And half desired to share his crown,
Till Jesus said, "What's that to thee?
If thou wouldst conquer, follow Me;
There yet awaits a happier song,
A brighter crown for thee."

I listened to the statesman's voice,
And heard the wisdom of the wise,
And thought this heart would much rejoice
If to their height I could but rise;
But Jesus said, "What's that to thee?
If thou wouldst rise, come, follow Me;
Man's wisdom ne'er can reach the height
Of bliss designed for thee."

Still I desired the world's applause,
And shrank before its threatening frown,-
Well-nigh forgot my Savior's cause,-
The cross, the glory, and the crown.
" The world's applause! what's that to thee?"
He said, " 'tis thine to follow Me;
Tread in My steps, and there's My own
Approving smile for thee."

I mused upon the days of old,
And thought of times long since gone by,-
Of friendships warm, but now grown cold;
My heart was full,-tears dimmed my eyes; "
Why weep? " said Jesus; " what to thee
Are things behind? come, follow Me;
Right onward press, the joy's before
Of endless love for thee."
I sought no more this world so vain,
In which my Savior's blood was shed,
But looked upon the cross again,
Where He was numbered with the dead,
And thought, " What is this world to me?
My peace, my joy's to follow Thee:
There is throughout the narrow path
Rest in Thyself for me."

I looked upon the Church of God,
Scattered, divided, rent, and torn;
My heart was grieved, I felt the load,
And did the desolation mourn.
But Jesus said, " One thing's for thee:
Be faithful thou, and follow Me
On to the end, and I will give
A crown of life to thee."

I've often heard the bitter taunt,
And seen the smile of earthly scorn;
The memory still my soul would haunt,
But He, once mocked and crowned with thorn,
Whispered, "I've borne much more for thee;
Canst thou not thus far follow Me?
Bear now the cross; thou soon shalt wear
The crown laid up for thee."

I waited for my Lord to come,
And oft desired to know the day
When He would take me to His home;
But still the voice was heard to say, "
The day! the hour! what's that to thee?
Watch, mark My path, and follow Me ;
The time's at hand when I will come,
Will come again for thee."

Lord, let me not, with vain desire,
Seek what is unrevealed to know,
Nor let this foolish heart aspire
To wealth or honor here below ;
But let my aim, my object be,
My one desire, to follow Thee;
Whatever the path, the end will bring
Rest with Thyself for me.

(Luke 16:)

'This chapter is a consistent whole, and it is very easy I to trace the unity of purpose in it. The parable of the unjust steward at the beginning is illustrated by the story of the rich man and Lazarus at the end :itself not a parable, as people often say, but plain solemn truth, although the language is necessarily not exactly literal, but drawn from the present life, as constantly that which is unseen is conveyed to us in terms of what is seen. As to these things, " we see through a glass darkly," or; as the word is, " in a riddle,"-things which it is not possible in plain words to utter.

The unjust steward is the picture of man intrusted by God with the " good things " of this life, but by sin having lost his stewardship, death being plainly the limit of his possession, when he goes out naked, able to carry nothing with him. These are the " goods " of the previous chapter, which the Father of all distributes to His children, the witnesses of a love to which men are yet blind, whether they wander, as does the younger son, into the far-off country, openly away from God, or, with the correct elder son, only nurse the spirit of the far-off country in their hearts.

The steward of the parable is unjust, and so declared to be, acts in this character all through, is not commended for his justice, but for his " wisdom,"-a wisdom which is employed, as with the " children of this world " to whom it is ascribed, entirely for himself. Nor is it God commends him, but his lord. He is shrewd and careful of the future, judges truly of that future before him, that he must depend then upon other resources than his own, spends what he might have appropriated and laid up to secure himself against that day. In all this there is that which can be pointed out to us for imitation, while the unrighteousness, of course, cannot. When the Lord comes to the application, He makes careful distinction as to all this, and there is not the slightest room left for mistake.

Riches, says the Lord, are the "mammon of unrighteousness "-the god that the men of this world worship. All earthly gain to one's self is included here :plainly all that can be included among the good things of earth. Good they are, not in themselves evil at all, the gifts of One who is good and gives what is good. This is the misery of sin, that man perverts what is good to evil, and makes a curse out of a blessing.

Not only are the good things "good" as regards the present life :we may make to ourselves " friends " with them of that future which men dread, but which so little influences them. This is not the gospel, and is not designed to be. It is, and must be, consistent with the gospel; or the Savior of men could never have uttered it. Certain it is our lives here witness for or against us,- are thus friends or enemies. As the apostle says, and says to professing Christians, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." (Rom. 8:13.) This also is not the gospel, but it would be a woeful mistake to suppose it inconsistent with the gospel. It is how, as he tells us, the children of God are manifested :" for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (5:14.) Such texts, therefore, have their use in searching the conscience, and testing how far the gospel has clone its work with us. "The gospel is preached . . . that men might live according to God in the Spirit." (i Pet. 4:6.) If the bent of the life is not changed, the gospel cannot have been received aright. It is an infallible remedy for a diseased life, so that if the life be not healed, we have a right to argue that the remedy has not been taken.

"Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," says the Lord, "that when ye fail"-or, as the critics read now, " when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." And this is faithfulness, not, as with the unjust steward, unrighteousness. " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." How true is that! and how deeply important! Little and much make an immense difference in our eyes. How many there are who make conscience only of great things, and think of it as mere scrupulous nicety to regard the small! Yet these little things have tongues, like our children, to betray the disorder where all is outwardly correct. A child's chatter may reveal us to a stranger, sometimes to ourselves :and just so our inconsistencies of conduct reveal what is deeper than the surface, and as rottenness under what seemed living and true.

" If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches ; and if ye have not been faithful in that which is Another's "-not "another man's"-"who will give you that which is your own ? "

Thus righteousness is insisted on, the unrighteous element in the parable completely antidoted, faithfulness as stewards made to be that which is profitable in the future, with how sweet and tender an appeal to us on behalf of Him who has turned the very lapse of earthly stewardship into fullest gain for us, giving us in the things that are heavenly and eternal "that which is our own " !

Thus indeed now the grace of God speaks to bankrupt and beggared man. His dispossession from what is earthly becomes the voice of God calling him to " come up higher." And that same grace will reward with eternal riches the devotion to God of that which is after all His ! How good is He !

Let us make no mistake :this is not yet the gospel. But it is truth, self-consistent of course, and consistent with all other truth. Moreover, it has its solemn side, intense in its solemnity. " No servant can serve two masters :for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

How clear, definite, positive, is this, as the word of a Master! The perfect Master, Teacher of truth alone, is He who speaks. He does not, let us mark well, say, " Ye ought not to serve God and mammon." Man's will can get through any number of "oughts." No, he is not speaking of duty here, but of impossibility :"Ye cannot serve ;" " no man can serve two masters." Thus the question is immediately raised, which in this shape ought to be readily answered, "Who is my master? God, or the world ? where are my interests? in this life, or the life to come?" To have the face in one direction is to have one's back upon the other :with one's face toward God, there is no alternative but to have one's back upon the world.

This is not the gospel ; we have not come to the gospel :but it is plain, pointed truth of the most personal kind. And the Lord often insisted on such truth as; this :" If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:24-26.) Here He enjoins the most solemn counting of cost, and the alternative is put in the same decisive way :the present life, or the life to come -which will you have ? for both you cannot have :will you choose here, or there ?-in time, or in eternity?

The story at the end of the chapter, of Lazarus and the rich man, illustrates this choice on both sides. The covetous Pharisees, legal to the heart's core, but who never have penetrated the inner meaning of the law, are made to realize that the man upon whom the law seemed to have heaped its blessings might on the other side of the vail be found lifting up his eyes in hades, being in torment, and crying for but a drop of water from the tip of the finger to cool his tongue, while on the other hand the beggar, with his rags pleading against him-for who ever " saw the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread ? "-is taken to Abraham's bosom,-for a Jew, the chief place of honor,-carried there by angels' hands !

How solemn is that condemnation, " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and . . . now . . . thou art tormented ! " What crime is alleged against him here ? Not even his having left Lazarus at his gate without showing mercy. Perhaps he did get the crumbs from the rich man's table, a dole for his need, never missed from his abundance,-just what practically many give, and count it liberality. But there is nothing but this,-nothing charged but this :" Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." How intensely solemn is this ! May its voice be heard in the hearts and consciences of many !

The vail of Christianity thrown over such a life could have done nothing for it. It would have been only worse,-more self-condemned. No white robe of a Savior's merits could avail to cover the wretchedness of a life like this. True, God's grace can come in wherever, whenever, the heart is turned to Him. But it needs to be maintained that where it comes in it comes in to reign and sin and it cannot reign together. The life is saved where the soul is saved. " The grace of God which bringeth salvation teaches us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." (Tit. 2:11, 12.)

On the other hand, there is a lesson in the fact that it is a beggar whom the Lord places in Abraham's bosom. True it was that as a beggar he had no legal righteousness. It is evident that to the rich man with his life wasted upon himself the beggar is not after all the contrast one might have expected. Had it been one who had sold all that he had to give to the poor, it would have been that. Is it not plain that the Lord has designedly given us something else than what the parable of the unjust steward might seem to have foretokened. He did not mean, then, to teach us that eternal happiness can be gained by human merit. Striking contrast indeed in this respect with him whose doom is gained by a life of self-indulgence, the beggar goes to bliss as every way a beggar ! Such surely are they who are justified through faith, and not by the works of the law.

At best, we are unjust stewards, and claim we have not. The grace of God stoops to us as sinners :when we have nothing to pay, we are freely forgiven. The cross of Christ was not needed for our righteousness :it was that on which He bare our sins in His own body, but that henceforth we, being dead unto sins, should live unto righteousness. Thus a new life begins for us, and with our faces turned Godward, our backs are upon the world. That world is as we were-godless :the cross which has brought us nigh is the full breach between God and it, and by the cross we are crucified to the world. Thus the gospel puts us upon a new path, qualifies us for the new life, conforms us to the divine conditions ; and all the joy, blessing and power of our life as Christians depends upon the steadfastness with which we maintain our course, our faces heavenward, our backs upon the world.

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS.-Continued.

The Little Open Book.(Chap, 10:)

We have already seen that in the trumpets, as in the seals, there is a gap, filled up with a vision, between the sixth and seventh, so as to make the seventh structurally an eighth section. This corresponds, moreover, to the meaning ; for the seventh trumpet introduces the kingdom of Christ on earth, which, although the third and final woe upon the dwellers on the earth, is on the other hand the beginning of a new condition, and an eternal one. With this octave a chord is struck which vibrates through the universe.

The interposed vision is in both series, therefore, a seventh, with a meaning corresponding to the number of perfection. At least, so it is in the series of the seals, and we may be sure we shall find no failure in this case :failure in the book of God, even in the minutest point,- our Lord's "jot or tittle,"-is an impossibility. Nothing is more beautiful of its kind than the way in which all this prophetic history yields itself to the hand that works in all and controls all :thank God, we know whose hand. But the vision of the trumpet-series is very unlike that of the seals, and its burden of sorrow different indeed from that sweet inlet into beatific rest. We shall find, however, that it vindicates its position none the less. As in the work, so in the word of God, with a substantial unity, there is yet a wonderful variety, never a mere repetition, which would imply that God had exhausted Himself. As you cannot find two leaves in a forest just alike, so you cannot find two passages of Scripture that are just alike, when they are carefully and intelligently considered. The right use of parallel passages must take in the consideration of the diversity and unity alike.

In the vision before us there is first of all seen" the descent of a strong angel from heaven. As yet, no descent of this kind has been seen. In the corresponding vision in the seal-series, an angel ascends from the east, but here he descends, and from heaven. A more positive direct action of heaven upon the earth is implied, power acting, though not yet the great power under the seventh trumpet when the kingdom of Christ is come. This being, apparently angelic, is "clothed with a cloud,"-a vail about him, which would seem to indicate a mystery either as to his person or his ways. It does not say "the cloud," -what Israel saw as the sign of the presence of the Lord,-otherwise there could be no doubt as to who was here :yet in His actions presently He is revealed to faith as truly what the cloud intimates. It is Christ acting as Jehovah, though yet personally hidden, and in behalf of Israel, among whom the angel of Jehovah walked thus appareled. It is only the cloud ; the brightness which is yet there has not shone forth :faith has to penetrate the cloud to enter the Presence-chamber:yet is He there, and in a form that intimates His remembrance of the covenant of old, and on His own part some correspondent action.

So also the rainbow (which we last saw round the throne of God) encircles His head. Joy is coming after sorrow, refreshing after storm, the display of God's blessed attributes at last, though in that which passes, a glory that endureth. And this is coming nearer now, in Him who descends to earth. But His face is as the sun :there indeed we see Him; who else has such a face ? In our sky there are not two suns:our orbit is a circle, not an ellipse.
His face is above the cloud with which He is encircled:heaven knows Him for what He is; the earth not yet; though on the earth may be those who are in heaven's secret. But His feet are like pillars of fire, and these are what are first in contact with the earth, the indication of ways which are in divine holiness, necessarily, therefore, in judgment, while the earth mutters and grows dark with rebellion.

Now we have what reveals to us whereto we have arrived :"And he had in his hand a little book opened." The seventh seal opens a book which had been seen in heaven ; the seventh section here shows us another book now open, but a little book. It had not the scope and fullness of the other :we hear nothing of how the writing fills up and overflows the page. It is a little book which has been till now shut up, but is no longer shut up,- a book too whose contents, evidently connected with the action of the angel here, has to do with the earth simply, not with heaven also, as the seven-sealed book has. We have in this what should lead us to what the book is; for the characteristic of Old-Testament prophecy is just this, that it opens to us the earthly, not the heavenly things. Its promises are Israel's, the earthly people (Rom. 9:4), and it deals fully with the millennial kingdom, and the convulsions which are its birth-throes. Beyond the millennium, except in that brief reference to the new heavens and earth to which Peter refers, it does not go ; and the " new heavens " are not our blessed portion, but the earth-heavens, as Peter very distinctly shows. There is no heavenly city there in. prospect; there is no rule over the earth on the part of Christ's co-heirs, such as we have already found in the song of Revelation. All this the Christian revelation adds to the Old Testament; while in Revelation the millennium is passed over with the briefest notice. Here for the first time indeed we get its limits set, and see how short it is, while the main thing dwelt upon as to it is with whom shall be filled those thrones which Daniel sees " placed," but sees not the occupants (chap. 7:9, R. V.). Thus it is plain how the book of Old-Testament prophecy is, comparatively with the New, "a little book." It is fully owned and maintained that when we look, with the aid of the New Testament, beyond the letter, we can find more than this. Types there are and shadows, and that every where, in prophecy as well as history, of greater things. Earth itself and earthly things may be and are symbols of heaven and the heavenly. The summer reviving out of winter speaks of resurrection ; the very food we feed on preaches life through death. And so more evidently the Old Testament:for Revelation, completing the cycle of the divine testimony, brings us back to paradise, as type of a better one ; and the latest unfolding of what had been for ages hidden, shows us in Adam and his Eve Christ and the Church.

But this manifestly leaves untouched the sense in which Old-Testament prophecy may be styled " a little book." The application here is also easy. For in fact the Old-Testament prophecy as to the earth has been for long a thing waiting for that fulfillment which shall manifest and illumine it. Israel outcast from her land, upon whom the blessing of the earth waits, all connected with this waits. We may see now, indeed, as in some measure we see their faces set once more toward their land, that other things also are arranging themselves preparatory to the final accomplishment. But yet the proper fulfillment of them is not really begun.

In the meanwhile, though the Lord is fulfilling His purposes of grace, and taking out from among the Gentiles a people for His name, as to the earth, it is " man's day." (i Cor. 4:3, marg.) When He shall have completed this, and having gathered the heavenly saints to heaven, shall put to His hand in order to bring in the blessing for the earth, then the day of the Lord will begin in necessary judgment, that the inhabitants of the world may learn righteousness. (Is. 26:9.) This day of the Lord begins, therefore, before the appearing of the Lord, for which it prepares the way :the dawn of day is before the sunrise.
The apostle, in warning the Thessalonians against the error of supposing that the day of the Lord was come (2 Thess. 2:2, R.V.), gives them what would be a sign immediately preceding it:"For that day," he says, "shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." The manifestation of the man of sin is therefore the bell that tolls in solemnly the day of the Lord.

This would seem to be the opening, then, of the " little book." Thenceforth the prophecies of the latter day become clear and intelligible. Now the apostasy has been shown, as it would seem, in its beginning under the fifth trumpet, and the man of sin may well be the one spoken of there :thus the little book may be fittingly now seen as opened, and in the continuation of the vision here we find for the first time the "beast," the "wild beast" of Daniel, in full activity (chap. 11:7). All, therefore, seems connected and harmonious ; and we are emerging out of the obscure border-land of prophecy into the place where the concentrated rays of its lamp are found.

We see too how rapidly the end draws near :" And he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth ; and he cried with a great voice, as when a lion roareth." It is the preparatory voice of Judah's Lion, as "suddenly his anger kindles ;" and the seven thunders, -the full divine voice,-the whole government of God in action,-answers it ; but what they utter has to find its interpretation at a later time.

Meanwhile, the attitude of the angel is explained :" and the angel which I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created the heavens, and the things that are therein, and the earth, and the things that are therein, and the sea, and the things that are therein, that there should be delay no longer; but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound"-when he shall sound, as he is about to do,-" then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He hath declared to His servants the prophets."

All is of a piece :the prophetic testimony, (the testimony of the little open book,) is now to be suddenly consummated, which ends only with the glories of Christ's reign over the earth. Amid all the confusion and evil of days so full of tribulation, that except they were mercifully shortened, no flesh should be saved (Matt. 24:22), yet faith will be allowed to reckon the very days of its continuance, which in both Daniel and Revelation are exactly numbered. How great the relief in that day of distress ! and how sweet the compassion of God that has provided it after this manner ! " He that endureth to the end shall be saved,"-shall find deliverance speedy and effectual, and find it in the coming of that Son of Man whose very title is a gospel of peace, and whose hand will accomplish the deliverance.

There has been an apparent long delay :" There shall be delay* no longer." *There is no doubt at all as to this being legitimate, and being so, although the R. V. still puts it into the margin, there should be no doubt as to its being the true rendering.* Man's day has run to its end, and, though in cloud and tempest, the day of the Lord at last is dawning. Then the mystery of God is finished :the mystery of the first prophecy of the woman's Seed, and in which the whole conflict between good and evil is summarized and foretold. What a mystery it has been ! and how unbelief, even in believers, has stumbled over the delay ! The heel of the Deliverer bruised :a victory of patient suffering to precede and insure the final victory of power ! Meantime, the persistence and apparent triumph of evil, by which are disciplined the heirs of glory ! Now, all is indeed at last cleared up ; the mystery of God (needful to be a mystery while patience wrought its perfect work,) is forever finished :the glory of God shines like the sun ; faith is how completely justified ! the murmur of doubt forever silenced.

Thus the sea and the land already, even while the days of trouble last, know the step of the divine angel, claiming earth and sea for Christ. And now faith (as in the prophet) is to devour the book of these wondrous communications, sweet in the mouth, yet at present bitter in digestion, for the last throes of the earth's travail are upon her. By and by this trouble will be no more remembered for the joy that the birth of a new day is come,-a day prophesied of by so many voices without God, but a day which can only come when God shall wipe away the tears from off all faces. And it comes ; it comes quickly now :the voice heard by the true Philadelphian is, "I come quickly." Come, Lord, and "destroy the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and the vail that is spread over all nations ; " come, and swallow up death in victory, and take away the reproach of Thy people from off all the earth ; come, that faith may say in triumph, " Lo, this is our God:we have waited for Him, and He will save us :this is the Lord ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."

(To be continued.)

Q. 20.-"Is not the Jordan the eastern boundary of the promised land?

" I quote a few passages as to this :-(Gen 12:5.) ' Into the land of Canaan they came.'-' And the Lord . . . said, Unto thy seed will I give this land.' The tribes of Reuben and Gad said, ' Bring us not over Jordan.' (Num. 32:5.) And Moses rebukes them for objecting to going over into ' the land which the Lord had given them.' All this shows the Jordan to be the eastern boundary.

"But in Josh. 1:2, the word is, 'Moses my servant is dead; now, therefore, arise:go over this Jordan,-thou, and all this people, unto the land which I give to them, even to the children of Israel, . . . from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates-all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun.' Again, in Ex. 23:31:'And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river.'-the river Euphrates, no doubt.

"Does not 'from the desert unto the river' mean a north and south measurement? If so, what is meant by (Josh. 1:2) 'From the wilderness and this Lebanon,' since the wilderness was south and Lebanon north of the land? Does the land widen out north of the Jordan to the head waters of the Euphrates, the Jordan being the eastern boundary along its course?"

Ans.-In all the references to Israel's inheritance in the land, we have to distinguish between God's original (and unrepenting) thought for them, which is yet to be fulfilled, and the partial way in which they realized it under the legal covenant. When they are finally settled there in full blessing, Jordan will not be the boundary at all, but the portion of each tribe will cross it from east to west, so as practically to obliterate it. On the other hand, in Numbers, it is clearly failure in the two tribes and a half taking their inheritance on the east side.

These things are, as all else, types for us. God has called us with a heavenly calling, and to take up with earth is to renew the failure of Reuben and Gad. Yet, as co-heirs with Christ, we are to reign over the earth also in the day when God's full thought as to us shall be shown out,-the river of death completely obliterated.

Jesus, when here, showed His estimate of man's doings. His withering denunciations of hypocrisy and pretense in religion are well known among us. When the church of Laodicea congratulated herself on her position and attainments, her character was exposed as mere slop-work, for Jesus said, " Thou knowest not," etc. They were sincere enough, and there was no doctrinal heresy in her bosom; but her crying heresy in practice was, having a religion that kept Jesus outside her door. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scripture, nor the power of God." That is the source of all heresy in creed and practice. When the Laodicean church appears again on the scene, it is as " Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots" in Rev. 18:, full of worldliness, and yet professing, with consummate impudence, to be the bride of Christ. She is seen as the mart of the commerce of the nations, and the consumer of the merchandise of the whole world ; and at the top of her list, as has been pointed out, is "gold," and at the bottom, " the souls of men" as if they were hardly worth a thought, coming in, as they do, after "wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots." But judgment is the end of it, "for strong is the Lord God that judgeth her." Religious profession in our day is fast hastening toward this condition of things ; and surely it is a peculiar privilege to stand, in this the crisis of our age, in the place of faithful confessors of Christ, and to be bold for Him as a Noah, a Paul, a Luther, a Knox, in their day was bold. It is a high honor to be living in a day like this, that we may witness for God and His Christ, against the world- not only in its worldliness, but its religion-and have that faith to which he commits Himself. Things are rapidly tending to the condition they were in before the flood. This world is still Cain's world, and its religion is still Cain's worship.

(Continued from p. 234.)

''There was a free and devoted activity in the ministry of the truth-those who had gone forth for the name of Christ taking nothing of the world, to which they offered the better riches. The apostle's commendation is given decisively to such a course. Gaius had received and helped them, and those who do so he assures that they are fellow-workers with the truth. This, as a principle, is readily accepted now, -our David's rule by which, " as his share is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his share be that tarrieth by the stuff" (i Sam. 30:24); but it needs, for spiritual application, to remember that the " stuff " by which we "tarry "must be, not our own merely, but the common stuff. It is thus in the case of those engaged in war, who if they care for the baggage are as much soldiers as the rest, and devoted to the service of all. Let none claim this with whom it is not true. It is one thing to give a dole to the Lord's work, as to a beggar at the door, and quite another to be a helper in a cause that is one's own. Giving is as much a ministry as is preaching, but only as the heart and soul are put into it is either the one or the other acceptable with God.

Gaius was one who did this, his fellowship with the truth expressing itself in practical reality, a hearty linking himself with those who for Christ's sake had gone forth, " whom," says the apostle, " if thou shall bring forward on their journey after a godly sort,"-" in a manner worthy of God," as it should rather be,-"thou shall do well." But how much is involved in this-"a manner worthy of god " ! In how great a cause are we permitted to be engaged ! and how little do stint and parsimony become those who act for Him who spared not His Son !

It was in behalf of this free evangelization, as is evident by the context, that the apostle had written to the assembly, only to prove how helplessly it had fallen under the control of one who loved the pre-eminence in it he had attained. We are not told upon what ground he based his opposition. This was of no matter, because his reasons were not his motives, but the slate of a heart that sought its own, not the things of Jesus Christ. How terribly may we be deceived in this way! what adepts are we often limes in self-deception ! a Diotrephes may be thus his own victim, and in the eyes of others the bold and earnest defender of truth. It is no doubt purposely that we are told so little of what he said or against what he opposed himself. Prate though he might with malicious words against the apostle, we may be sure he did not lack arguments that seemed forcible enough and carried many:had not Paul rebuked Peter to the face ? and had he not been really to be blamed?

On the other hand the truth really was that the work of the Spirit of God aroused the opposition of that in which as man's will and self-love Satan had found his opportunity. And this has been largely the history of the Church ever since :fallen under the power of the enemy, and dominated by ambition, the Spirit of God in the free working of His grace toward men and for the glory of Christ, opposed and quenched, His instruments cast out, with the approbation of those often who are really Christ's, but who lack the energy and decision for God that alone enable to discern His mind. And in every fresh movement of God this history seems to be repeated. How willingly would one prophesy of something else, if only the Word of God would justify the prediction ! If it does not, what can come of such an imagination except the sure entanglement at last in some such snare as the beloved apostle here points out to us? Philadelphia itself, with its sweet name, " brotherly love," has also its warning to hold fast, and its overcoming remnant; and thus it seems directly in line with what we have had before us. The warning is not needless, and those who swim against the stream will not fail to find the tug and strain of the stream upon them. But the encouragement, how great! and the Lord Himself, how near ! " I come quickly ! hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown!"

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS.-Continued.

The Sixth Trumpet.(Chap. 9:12-21.)

In these trumpet-judgments we are, as has been already seen, traversing some of the most difficult parts of the book of New-Testament prophecy. This is owing largely to the fact that the link with the Old Testament seems very much to fail us, and thus the great rule for interpretation which Peter gives us can be acted on only with proportionate difficulty. Moreover, in the case of symbols such as we have before us, the application is of the greatest importance to the interpretation, and the application is just the fitting of the individual prophecy into the prophetic whole. We have need, therefore, to look carefully, and to speak with a caution corresponding to the difficulty.

A certain connection of the trumpets among themselves, however, we have been able to trace, and this we should expect still to discover, every fresh step in this confirming the past and gaining for itself thus greater assurance. Moreover, the general teaching of prophecy will assist and control our thoughts, although we may be unable to show the relation to each other of single pre-dictions, such as we find, for instance, in comparing the fourth beast of Daniel with the first of Revelation.

A voice from the horns of the golden altar brings on the second woe. It is natural at first sight to connect this with the opening of the eighth chapter, and to see in it an answer to the prayers of the saints with which the incense of the altar is offered up. But this view becomes less satisfactory as we consider it, if only for the reason that the whole of the seven trumpets are in answer to the prayers of the saints, as we have seen, and to make the sixth trumpet specifically this would seem in contradiction. Besides, a voice from the horns of the altar, or even from the altar, would scarcely convey the thought of an answer to the prayers that came up from the altar. The horns too were not in any special relation to the offering of incense, but were for the blood of atonement, which was put upon them either to make atonement for the altar itself, or for the sin of the high-priest or of the congregation of Israel. A voice of judgment from these horns,-still more emphatic if we read, as it seems we should do, " one voice from the four horns,"-so different from the usual pleading in behalf of the sinner, speaks of profanation of the altar, or of guilt for which no atonement could be found ; and, one would say, of such guilt resting upon the professed people of God, whether this were Israel or that Christendom which Israel often pictures.

If with this thought in our mind we look back to what has taken place under the last trumpet, there seems at once a very distinct connection. If the rise of Antichrist be indeed what is represented there, then we can see how the horns of the altar, from which he has caused sacrifice and oblation to cease (Dan. 9:27), should call for judgment upon himself and those who have followed him, whether Jews or Gentiles. In the passage just quoted from Daniel it is added, " And because of the wing of abominations there shall be a desolator." In the sixth trumpet we have just such a desolator.

The Euphrates was the boundary of the old Roman empire, and there the four angels are "bound"-"restrained," it may be, by the power of the empire itself, until, having risen up against God, their own hands have thrown down the barrier, and the hordes from without enter upon their mission to " slay the third part of men," a term which we have seen as probably indicating the revived Roman empire. Here, too, is the seat of the beast's supremacy and of the power of Antichrist. Thus there seems real accordance in these several particulars ; and in this way the trumpet-judgments give us a glance over the prophetic field, if brief, yet complete, as otherwise they would not appear to be. Moreover, when we turn to the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters of Ezekiel to find the desolator of the last days (chap, 38:17), we find in fact the full array of nations from the other side of the Euphrates pouring in upon the land of Israel, while the connection of that land with Antichrist and with the Roman empire is plainly shown us in Daniel and in Revelation alike. If the Euphrates be the boundary of the empire, it is also Israel's as declared by God, and the two are already thus far identified :their connection spiritually and politically we shall have fully before us in the more detailed prophecy to come.

But why four angels ? and what do they symbolize ?

The restraint under which they were marks them sufficiently as opposing powers, and would exclude the thought of holy angels ; nor is it probable that they are literal angels at all. They would seem representative powers, and in the historical application have been taken to refer to the fourfold division of the old Turkish empire into four kingdoms prior to the attack upon the empire of the East. If such ad interpretation is to be made in reference to the final fulfillment, then it is noteworthy that "Gog, of the land of Magog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal,"-as the R. K., with most commentators, reads it now,-gives (under one head, indeed,) four separate powers as principal associates in this latter-day irruption. Others there are, but coming behind and apart, as in their train. I mention this for what it may be worth. It is at least a possible application, and therefore not unworthy of serious consideration, while it does not exclude a deeper and more penetrative meaning.

The angels are prepared for the hour and day and month and year, that they might slay the third part of men. The immense hosts, two hundred millions in number, are perfectly in the hand of a Master,-time, work, and limit carefully apportioned by eternal Wisdom, the evil in its fullest development servant to the good. The horses seem to be of chief importance, and are most dwelt upon, though their riders are first described, but only as to their " breast-plates of fire and hyacinth and brimstone." These answer to the "fire and smoke and brimstone" out of the horses' mouths:divine judgment of which they are the instruments making them thus invincible while their work is being done. The horses have heads like lions ; destruction comes with an open front- the judgment of God :so that the human hands that direct it are of the less consequence,-divine wrath is sure to find its executioners.

God's judgment is foremost in this infliction, but there is also Satan's power in it:the horses' tails are like serpents, and have heads, and with these they do hurt Poisonous falsehood characterizes this time when men are given up to believe a lie. Death, physical and spiritual, are in league together, and the destruction is terrible ; but those that escape are not delivered from their sins, which, as we see, are, in the main, idolatrous worship, with things that naturally issue out of this. The genealogy of evil is as recorded in the first of Romans :the forsaking of God leads to all other wickedness ; but here it is where His full truth has been rejected, and the consequences are so much the more terrible and disastrous.

(To be continued.)

In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, we have three wonderful scenes brought before us by the graphic pen of the inspired writer. A fitting sequence to the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven revealed in the thirteenth chapter is this fourteenth chapter ; bringing before us as it does the pathway to be trodden by those who in reality belong to the kingdom. Notice these three scenes, we have,-

First, a palace and a dance, connected with a murder and a burial, (10:1-12.)

Second, a desert and a famine, followed by a feast. (10:13-21.)

Third, a mountain and a stormy sea, followed by a great calm. (10:22-36.)

In all, there is one central figure-Jesus.

We find in the first scene John the Baptist sealing his mission with his death. He was the forerunner of the blessed Lord, and now that Jesus had come, and fully taken His place, God must have Him as the center. There could not be two centers, and John the Baptist passes off the scene by a martyr's death, to receive a martyr's crown. And who could have chosen better for that faithful witness of Christ? A faithful Enoch of the early days of the world's apostasy "walked with God" right into heaven. An Elijah, "man of God," a faithful witness in the days of Israel's apostasy, was rolled triumphantly into heaven in the chariot of fire. And for this rugged, stern, and uncompromising forerunner of Christ was reserved the signal honor of being the last martyr before the "Great Martyr" gave Himself " for the life of the world " that slew Him. John the Baptist, the last of the old ; Stephen-that grand witness, the first of the new ; between them, the Christ, the Son of God ! Oh, what greater honor could servants of God have than this ? And in these days of latitudinarianism, how these examples should stir our hearts, that we might be, at all costs, true and faithful witnesses for Christ!

But notice the result. The disciples of John bury his dead body, "and went and told Jesus." Their leader is taken away. His dead body they put out of sight, and for them henceforth there is one Leader, one Center -the living Jesus.

Oh, brethren, is there not a voice in this for us ? Has not God been saying to us, in a way that we cannot but understand, " No center but Jesus" ? " He will not give His glory to another." Let us therefore, each one, examine ourselves in the light of God's presence as to this. Brethren, is it a reality that Christ, and Christ alone, is the object of our hearts,-that His glory is the aim of our service,-that His coming is the hope of our souls,-that He is the pole-star of our lives-our Center-our "all in all"? May we be able truthfully to say and sing,-

" From various cares my heart retires,
Though deep and boundless its desires,
I've now to please but One.
Him before whom each knee shall bow,-
With Him is all my business now,
And those who are His own."
But we must look a moment at the palace and the dance. In this we have a picture of the world in its glory and its pleasure, guilty of the blood of the servant of God :a true picture of this world under condemnation, being guilty of the murder of God's Son.

In the second scene (10:13-21) we have another picture of the world. A desert, and a multitude of famishing people, with Jesus and His little company . of disciples ministering to them. If in the first scene we have our separation from the world, in this we get our service to the world. When we are brought to Christ, the world changes for us from a palace and a dance to a desert and multitudes of starving people.

The disciples come to the Lord with the wretched selfish cry of unbelief that is so common to the natural heart, "Send the multitude away;" and the Lord turns upon them with "They need not depart. Give ye them to eat." He does not say, I will give them to eat. He puts the disciples in their place of responsibility and privilege-"Give ye." But again the cry of unbelief comes out, "We have here but five loaves and two fishes; " and again grace triumphs over unbelief, and the way of service is shown :" Bring them hither to Me." He takes what they have, blesses it, and then breaks it, having first made the multitude to sit down, so that they could be conveniently served. Then He hands the broken bread to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. " And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full."

Is not the lesson plain ? Have we not said, " Send the multitude away"? 'Have we not both thought and said, "We have so little, that it could be of no use "? and thus left Christ out. Brethren, let us take what we have, little though it be, and bring it to Christ. Notice the order :First, " He took." So let us yield ourselves to Him. His word to us to-day is, "They need not depart. Give ye them to eat." O brethren, let there be a wholehearted surrender of ourselves and all we have to the Lord. Let Him " take " us.

Second, " He blessed." And that always follows if we yield ourselves to Him. He will consecrate, " fill our hands full,"-He will bless us and make us a blessing.

Third, " He brake." And now comes the old pathway of the cross. Euclid once said to the son of a king, " There is no royal road to learning," and there is no royal path to service for the sons of God. How slow we are to recognize that it is the broken vessel God uses for His glory! The old pathway is laid down in 2 Cor. 4:6-12. If it is life for others, it must be death working in us. If we serve the Lord, let us follow Him. The corn of wheat must die to bring forth fruit (Jno. 12:24-26). The measure of suffering is the measure of patience, and the measure of patience is the measure of power, and the measure of power is the measure of blessing. (See 2 Cor. 6:4 ; Col. 1:2 ; 2 Cor. 1:4-6.)

This is the divine order. Oh what natural thoughts we have as to God's service often ! Natural ability and intelligence are not to be despised. "He gave to each man according to his several ability," but they are not to be built on. When Paul became a fool in glorying, the two things he mentions especially are his sufferings and his revelations. The more we are broken, the more we can be used to feed others ; and the more we are used to others, the more fragments are there to gather up. This is divine arithmetic, not human. May the Lord enable us to comprehend it, and live in the power of it for His glory and the blessing of others. Around us are the multitudes to-day. And the Lord is ever ready to command them to sit down. Brethren, are we ready to obey His word, " Give ye them to eat" ? Are we ready to yield ourselves to Him, for Him "to take," "to bless," and " to break "? Thus only can we feed these multitudes of perishing souls. May we be aroused to our privileges and responsibilities.

The last scene gives us a picture of the Church in the world, and the necessary discipline we pass through. Doubtless the Lord sent His disciples on that dark and stormy sea that they might learn to have fellowship with Him in " His compassion." They were to learn compassion for others by being put in a place where they needed it for themselves. In it all we have a blessed picture of the Church sent through the stormy sea, with her blessed Savior in the glory interceding and caring for her, and coming, in the time of trouble and sorrow, to end forever her weeping. And have we not in Peter a little remnant, knowing His coming, going to Him on the troubled waters in obedience to His word ? And have we not seen the waves, and our faith almost failed us ? and is not our cry even now going up, " Lord save ! or we perish" ? But let us be of good comfort. His hand is stretched forth to hold us, and in "a little while "-oh, how short! – we shall " come with Him into the land whither we journey." And we can say,-

' My bark is wafted from the strand
By breath divine,
And on the helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.

" One who was known in storms to sail
I have on board :
Amid the roaring of the gale
I have my Lord.

" He holds me when the billows smite :
I shall not fall
If sharp, 'tis short ; if long, 'tis light :
He tempers all.

" Safe to the land ! safe to the land !
The end is this ;
And then with Him go hand in hand
Far into bliss."

J. J. Sims

As to reward, as motive or merit, it is clear that any A such thought destroys the whole truth of devoted-ness, because there is no love in it. It is self, looking, like "James and John," for a good place in the kingdom. Reward there is in Scripture, but it is used to encourage us in the difficulties and dangers which higher and truer motives bring us into. So Christ Himself, 'who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame." Yet we well know that His motive was love. So Moses:"he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible, for he had respect to the recompense of reward." His motive was, caring for his brethren. So reward is ever used, and it is a great mercy in this way. And every man receives his reward according to his own labor.

The spring and source of all true devotedness is divine love filling and operating in our hearts :as Paul says, " The love of Christ constraineth us." Its form and character must be drawn from Christ's actings. Hence grace must first be known for one's self, for thus it is I know love. Thus it is that this love is shed abroad in the heart. We learn divine love in divine redemption. This redemption sets us too, remark, in divine righteous-ness before God. Thus all question of merit-of self-righteousness-is shut out, and self-seeking in our labor set aside. "Grace," we have learnt, " reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ." The infinite perfect love of God toward us has wrought,-has done so when we were mere sinners,-has thought of our need-given us eternal life in Christ when we were dead in sins-forgiveness and divine righteousness when we were guilty,-gives us now to enjoy divine love-to enjoy God by His Spirit dwelling in us, and boldness in the day of judgment, because as Christ, the judge, is, so are we in this world. I speak of all this now in view of the love shown in it. True, that could not have been divinely without righteousness. That is gloriously made good through Christ, and the heart is free to enjoy God's unhindered love,-a love shown to men in man. For the very angels learn "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." This knits the heart to Christ, bringing it to God in Him, God in Him to us. We say nothing separates us from this love.

The first effect is, to lead the heart up, thus sanctifying it :we bless God, adore God, thus knows ; our delight- adoring delight-is in Jesus.

But thus near to God, and in communion with Him,- thus not only united, but consciously united, to Christ by the Holy Ghost, divine love flows into and through our hearts. We become animated by it through our enjoyment of it. It is really "God dwelling in us," as John expresses it; " His love shed abroad in our hearts," as Paul does. It flows thus forth as it did in Christ. Its objects and motives are as in Him, save that He Himself comes in as revealing it. It is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord ; not the less God, but God revealed in Christ, for there we have learnt love. Thus, in all true devotedness, Christ is the first and governing object; next, "His own which are in the World;" and then our fellow-men. First their souls, then their bodies, and every want they are in. His life of good to man governs ours, but His death governs the heart. " Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us." " The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead :and that He died for all, that they which live should not live unto themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again."

We must note, too, that as redemption and divine righteousness are that through which grace reigns, and love is known, all idea of merit and self-righteousness is utterly excluded, so it is a new life in us which both enjoys God and to which His love is precious ; which alone is capable of delighting, as a like nature, in the blessedness that is in Him, and in which His divine love operates toward others. It is not the benevolence of nature, but the activity of divine love in the new man. Its genuineness is thus tested, because Christ has necessarily the first place with this nature, and its working is in that estimate of right and wrong which the new man alone has, and of which Christ is the measure and motive. " Not as we hoped," says Paul (it was more than he hoped), speaking of active charity; "but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us by the will of God."

But it is more than a new nature. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and God's love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. And as it springs up like a well in us unto eternal life, so also living waters flow out from us by the Holy Ghost which we have received. All true devotedness, then, is the action of divine love in the redeemed, through the Holy Ghost given to them.

There may be a zeal which compasses sea and land, but it is in the interest of a prejudice, or the work of Satan. There may be natural benevolence clothed with a fairer name, and irritated if it be not accepted for its own sake. There may be the sense of obligation and legal activity, which, through grace, may lead farther, though it be the pressure of conscience, not the activity of love. The activity of love does not destroy the sense of obligation in the saint, but alters the whole character of his work. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." In God, love is active, but sovereign; in the saint, it is active, but a duty, because of grace. It must be free to have the divine character-to be love. Yet we owe it all, and more than all, to Him that loved us. The Spirit of God which dwells in us is a Spirit of adoption, and so of liberty with God, but it fixes the heart on God's love in a constraining way. Every right feeling in a creature must have an object, and, to be right, that object must be God, and God revealed in Christ as the Father ; for in that way God possesses our souls.

Hence Paul, speaking of himself, says, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." His life was a divine life. Christ lived in him, but it was a life of faith, a life living wholly by an object, and that object Christ; and known as the Son of God loving and giving Himself for him. Here we get the practical character and motive of Christian devotedness-living to Christ. We live on account of Christ:He is the object and reason of our life (all outside is the sphere of death); but this in the constraining power of the sense of His giving Himself for us, So, in a passage already referred to, "the love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, if one died for all, then were all dead :and He died for all, that they which live should not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again." They live to and for that, and nothing else. It may be a motive for various duties, but it is the motive and end of life. "We are not our own, but bought with a price," and have to " glorify God in our bodies."

What is supposed here is not a law contending or arresting a will seeking its own pleasure, but the blessed and thankful sense of our owning ourselves to the love of the blessed Son of God, and a heart entering into that love and its object by a life which flows from Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost. Hence it is a law of liberty. Hence, too, it can only have objects of service which that life can have, and the Holy Ghost can fix the heart on ; and that service will be the free service of delight. Flesh may seek to hinder, but its objects cannot be those the new man and the Holy Ghost seek. The heart ranges in the sphere in which Christ does. It loves the brethren, for Christ does ; and all the saints, for He does. It seeks the all for whom Christ died, yet knowing that only grace can bring any of them; and "endures all things for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." It seeks "to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus; " to see the saints grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, and walk worthy of the Lord. It seeks to see the Church presented as a chaste virgin unto Christ. It continues in its love, though the more abundantly it loves the less it be loved. It is ready to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

The governing motive characterizes all our walk :all is judged by it. A man of pleasure flings away money ; so does an ambitious man. They judge of the value of things by pleasure and power. The covetous man thinks their path folly, judges of every thing by its tendency to enrich. The Christian judges of every thing by Christ. If it hinders His glory in one's self or another, it is cast away. It is judged of not as sacrifice, but cast away as a hindrance. All is dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. To cast away dross is no great sacrifice. How blessedly self is gone here! "Gain to me" has disappeared. What a deliverance that is ! Unspeakably precious for ourselves, and morally elevating ! Christ gave Himself. We have the privilege of forgetting self and living to Christ. It will be rewarded, our service in grace ; but love has its own joys in serving in love. Self likes to be served Love delights to serve. So we see, in Christ on earth, now; when we are in glory, He girds Himself and serves us. And shall not we, if we have the privilege, imitate, serve, give ourselves to Him who so loves us ? Living to God inwardly is the only possible means of living to Him outwardly. All outward activity not moved and governed by this is fleshly, and even a danger to the soul-tends to make us do without Christ, and brings in self. It is not devotedness, for devotedness is devotedness to Christ, and this must be in looking to being with Him. I dread great activity without great communion ; but I believe that when the heart is with Christ it will live to Him.

The form of devotedness-of external activity-will be governed by God's will and the competency to serve ; for devotedness is a humble holy thing, doing its Master's will; but the spirit of undivided service to Christ is the true part of every Christian. We want wisdom. God gives it liberally. Christ is our true wisdom. We want power:we learn it in dependence, through Him who strengthens us. Devotedness is a dependent, as it is a humble, spirit. So it was in Christ. It waits on its Lord. It has courage and confidence in the path of God's will, because it leans on divine strength in Christ. He can do all things. Hence it is patient, and does what it has to do according to His will and Word :for then He can work ; and He does all that is done which is good.

There is another side of this which we have to look at. The simple fact of undivided service in love is only joy and blessing. But we are in a world where it will be opposed and rejected, and the heart would naturally save self. This Peter presented to Christ, and Christ treated it as Satan. We shall find the flesh shrink instinctively from the fact and from the effect of devotedness to Christ, because it is giving up self, and brings reproach, neglect, and opposition on us. We have to take up our cross to follow Christ, not to return to bid adieu to them that are at home in the house. It is our home still if we say so, and we shall at best be "John Marks" in the work. And it will be found it is ever then "suffer me first! " If there be any thing but Christ, it will be before Christ, not devotedness to Him with a single eye. But this is difficult to the heart, that there should be no self-seeking, no self-sparing, no self-indulgence ! Yet none of these things are devotedness to Christ and to others, but the very opposite. Hence, if we are to live to Christ, we must hold ourselves dead, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Collected Writings of J.N.D.)

(1 Sam. 25:)-Concluded.

Very often, beloved friends, the state in which we are would forbid our thus praising God. I mention this, not at all to discourage, but rather that we may be able to separate between what we are in Christ and our own practical condition as overcomers. Look again at David. He was in clanger, not only of not overcoming, but of being overcome and falling into deep sin. How did he act ? as the servant of God, bearing meekly Nabal's taunts and cutting reproach?-did he take it up in the name of God? No, it was in the spirit of his own wounded pride.

There was one, however, in the house of Nabal, and bound to him, too, by a tie which none but God could break, of altogether a different character to Nabal,-one who belonged to the Lord-a woman of faith. Abigail was able to discern in David (outcast and needy wanderer though he was,) the anointed one of the God of Israel,-him whom God was surely about to bring to greatness, as the chosen head of his people. "The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord." Abigail was able to follow the path of David with the eye of faith, and to put herself on to the hour of his glory. Now this shows that her soul was deeply taught of God. But then the very circumstance of her being thus taught of God must have made her situation in Nabal's house most painful, and her connection with him a yoke. Harassed every day,-finding hindrances from, but having no communion with, him to whom she was bound,-able to see the folly of Nabal's position, and to contrast it with that of the man of faith ; she might have felt this to be a strange dealing of the Lord toward her. But her heart was being prepared for a service which before she knew not. She might have said, " Why is it thus with me ? Were I in other and different circumstances, what blessing-what happiness should I feel in serving the servants of God ; but here I am hindered."Many a soul is thus brought (not by self-chosen paths) into a very trying and painful position, distinctly from the desire to serve God. Now no real desire to serve God will ever be in vain. God may make some way for its being answered, even now, and the time will come when this will be fully the case. Meanwhile, there is great profit and discipline of heart in having our neck bowed to the yoke-in being brought to submit to God. Moses was not bound to Pharaoh's house, and therefore in faithfulness he quitted it for the Lord's sake. So with Abraham and his father's house. But there may be circumstances, as those of Abigail, which must be endured, where the soul is called to bear the yoke and to wait upon God. Yet these will be full of abundant blessing. There is in them a secret breaking of the will and bruising of the flesh which will be found most profitable in after-service to God.

Abigail, in her place of quiet retirement, stood much more in the place of communion with the truth than David in the circumstances of this chapter did. She was able to check the wrong feeling of even the man of faith. Whilst David was lost, as it were, in the mist of his own thoughts, Abigail brought in the clear light of the truth to bear on his actions. And David owned and thanked God for her counsel." Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me ; and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand." (10:32, 33.)These were the words of David when alive to the sin in which his pride had set him.

Now, beloved friends, who would have thought that Abigail would ever have been the counselor of David,- one suffering so much for, so beloved of, God, so distinctly His servant, high in grace and in faith,-one far beyond Abigail, as she would have thought. And yet she was tried and kept where she was alone, until the time came for her to be the effectual monitor of David and intercessor for Nabal.

Observe the teaching of God. She took the blessed place of intercession. David, in his wrath, was just about to give the blow-to avenge himself with his own hand, instead of leaving the case in the hand of God. Now this would have taken away one of the most blessed features in the character of David-the leaving all things to God. In Abigail's words we see the strong power of faith. She said, " The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God ; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of the middle of a sling. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have done to my lord according to all the good that He hath spoken concerning thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel, that this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offense of heart unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself ; but when the Lord shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember thine handmaid." (10:29-31.)

If David had placed himself forward thus to the time of his glory, he would never have thought of raising his hand to give the blow, or of shedding causeless blood ; whereas we know that his hands were nearly imbrued in that of the very young men who spoke so kindly of him to Abigail (10:14-17). Had he thought, How, in the hour of my glory, will this action appear to me? he would have been checked.

The place of faith is, always to look beyond present circumstances-on to the time of the end; then we begin to see and judge of things according to God. Thus it was with Abigail. And when we realize our association with God, and the appointed end of glory, we shall act as she did. In the most trying things which happen to us, if we can by faith associate ourselves with God,-if we can see Him with us as our friend-the One who hath said, "Vengeance is Mine:I will repay, saith the Lord," we shall never feel disposed to avenge ourselves, or think of any thing save intercession as it regards those who may have grieved and wronged us. The present actings of God are in grace and mercy. We should rather seek to bring down and subdue and melt."Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."There is nothing so suitable now as taking the place of grace, and desiring to bring under its power whatever meets us individually.

How highly honored was this poor tried and solitary witness for God in Nabal's house !

The hour will come when the hand of God will give the final blow. Nabal was spared by David, but God was about to deal with him in His own way. He cared for none of these things that were transpiring around him. He understood them not. Intercession had been made for him, he was careless about it ; the recipient of mercy, he passed that by." He held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken."(5:36.) But when that was over, his wife simply told him what had happened,-a tale of mercy and of grace. Yet though told in the simplicity of truth, it was as words of death to Nabal-it withered his heart, and "he became as a stone." (10:37, 38.)The hand of God was against him. Now this is intended to throw a very solemn shade over the chapter. Such is the end of all that is not of faith. The very things that are truly blessed turned into the power of withering. This will be felt to the full by and by, when persons are able to look back at mercies received, but see themselves entirely separated from all blessings and from God that gave them. This is remorse. There is nothing so painful as remorse-the sense of circumstances of mercy which have eternally passed away, and the person who has received them forever separated from God.

Nabal's way was "folly," and his end was that of "the fool." But thus will it be with every thing around that disowns communion with the ways and with the lowly place of David. He said, " Shall I take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give them unto men whom I know not whence they be?" (5:2.) Abigail knew whence they were, and she thought lightly of all these things compared to the service of God. Now although we may not be like Nabal, yet we have each of us this Nabal propensity to watch against-the habit of soul which would incline us to say, "my bread," "my goods," "my reputation," "my standing," etc., wherever the word "my" comes across the blessed privilege of being identified with Christ in the lowly place. No heart can be more miserable than one having the Spirit condemning its ways, and, if there be this seeking of our own things and not of the things which be Christ's, the Spirit of God must condemn and be against it. Very often you will find in saints who have sought to serve God, that when they come to die, they have not the same joy as those who have been just converted. Look at the thief, who believed in Christ after He hung upon the cross, and at one who has served God, it may be, for twenty years. Though both are equally accepted and made complete in Christ, yet the latter ought to be able to say, in addition to that which the poor thief said, " I have kept the faith." It is a thing of deep importance even to the practical peace and joy of the saints to be in circumstances where the desires of the Spirit are met. This is not said to hinder or take away the joy of the feeblest saint. If there be need for humiliation, let it be ; but whether we be led to prayer or praise or humiliation, let it have the character of truthfulness before God.

We see, then, the end of Nabal. Nevertheless, awful as that end was, it freed Abigail from her painful situation, and she became associated with him upon whom she knew the blessing of God to rest (10:39-42). She gave up her house, her riches,-all, it would seem, to cast in her lot with him who was yet a wanderer, hunted for his life " as a partridge in the mountains."

But soon the scene is changed ;-Abigail is taken captive, and apparently about to be separated forever from David (chap. 30:).How strange, after a little moment of blessing, to be placed in circumstances more terrible than before !But this only opened a further occasion for faith. Supposing there had been any undue feeling of elation-any unsubdued thought in Abigail's mind, how must this trial have been felt by her as chastening from the hand of God. Otherwise, she may have acted in very distinct and holy faith, receiving the blessing as directly from God. Blessings must be received in one or other of these ways. If exalted, and walking in the flesh, she must have felt the blow as chastisement, and been taught by it to humble herself, to judge her ways, and consider the difference between resting in the creature and in God. But suppose she had received and sustained her situation in the power of faith, this trial would only strengthen her faith, and thus God would be glorified, whilst she was taught a lesson of the weakness of nature, and of of resting in the creature
instead of in God. Sooner or later, the time must come when we are brought to feel the nakedness of the creature When flesh and heart fail, none but God can be our strength.

It is for us to consider which of the places brought before us in this chapter is ours. We may not be able to take the forward place of David, but then there is that place of Abigail,-at least, we can look at that which is suffering for the sake of Jesus, and give it all, or a portion of that we have. It is not the measure or amount, the question is, whether there be the link between us and them. I trust, through the Lord's mercy, all are able to see distinctly what was the place of Nabal, and to turn from it, as Abigail did. We should be conscious of the trials and difficulties of others, and never think lightly of them, or of any evil in Satan's world.

I know of nothing that will so open the Scriptures, and guide our thoughts as to passing events, and as to those with whom we should seek to become identified, as acquaintance with these things. Seek, then, to have your souls deepened in the knowledge of them,-to judge of present circumstances as placing yourselves on, by faith, to the time of the end. David will then have to see standing before him Uriah; and Paul, Stephen, to whose death he was accessory. It is a marvelous thought,- but will Paul's or David's joy be less on this account? No :there will be a power of blessing, such as none but God can give, that will take away every such bitter sting. I say this, believe me, not to make light of sin, but to associate your minds with that hour. Past sins cannot be undone-seek not to have those things or persons about you now that you might not be able to think of with joy. If you bring in the thought of that day on your ways, you will soon be able to discern the nature of all around. There never is a soul that seeks to bring in God's judgments on its ways, that does not glorify God. Faith, though feeble, must lead to the glory of God. There may be faith about trivial things,-about things that we could not speak of to another ; and here we find the nearness of God to us. So, whether you are threatened by coming danger, or tried by past or present circumstances, seek to bring in the power of faith-let God be your counselor. The character of the enemies of God is that of "children in whom is no faith." May your refuge and strength be distinctly in God. This alone can sustain the soul. "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have received the reconciliation."

It is our privilege to know, not only that we have peace with God, but that He also watches over us, and leads us in the paths of service. May we be able to learn this as being under His hand. Would we desire to be brought into practical fellowship with Him in His ways, let us seek it by prayer and supplication.

Do you love Christ?-I ask not if you feel
The warm excitement of that party zeal
Which follows on while others lead the way,
And makes His cause the fashion of the day ;
But do you love Him when His garb is mean,
Nor shrink to let your fellowship be seen?
Do you love Jesus 'midst blind, halt, and maimed ?
In prison succor Him-nor feel ashamed
To own Him,-though His injured name may be
A mark for some dark slanderer's obloquy?
Say not, "When saw we Him?"-each member dear,
Poor and afflicted, wears His image here.

C.H.M.

1. The Nature of Man.- Adventists and Conditionalists alike teach that it is the body of the man, living or dead, which carries personality. Scripture shows that personality is attached rather to that which dwells within the body. We get the truth "as the truth is in Jesus" (Eph. 4:21). Jesus distinguishes Himself from His body (John 2:19-22; 10:15-18; Luke 23:43). The Person, the "I," "Me," of Jesus, could be apart from the body, and have power to raise it up, and meanwhile be with the "thou" of the thief in paradise. So with Paul and believers (2 Cor. 5:1-8; 12:1-3:Phil. 1:21-25; 2 Pet. 1:13, 14; 1 Cor. 2:11; Zech. 12:1). The texts usually quoted to prove that the body is all give only a materialistic view of man, and are only half the truth; or it would follow that between His death and resurrection there was nothing of the Savior, except what lay in Joseph's tomb. For three days the world was without a Savior. Incarnation would be needed again, rather than resurrection, and the Savior on the fourth day would not be the same Person. This would be to blaspheme (Heb. 13:8).

2. Eternal Life and Immortality.-Adventists make these the same thing, and teach that they are a future reward of good works at the Lord's coming. Free, sovereign grace, as taught by Paul (Rom. 4:4, 5; 5:17; 6:23; Eph. 2:7, 8), and the gift and present possession of eternal life, as taught in the gospel and epistles of John, are denied, though so true and blessed (John 3:36; 5:24; 6:54; 10:27-29; 1 John 5:11-13, 20; 3:15). Just as " no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him," the sons of God have eternal life abiding in them even now; and of this it can be said, " Which thing is true in Him and in you." But as to their bodies, they will only put on immortality when the Lord comes (1 Cor. 15:53, 54). Jesus showed what "eternal life was (John 17:3), and credited the disciples with the possession of it then, in knowing the Father and owning that He had sent the Son (Jno. 5:25, 26). Yet they died; so they had eternal life though not immortality, as they will have that at the resurrection. But this leaves untouched the fact that though "mortal" is applied to the body, it is not said of the soul. That "God only hath immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16) does not prove that men's souls and spirits are mortal, or the same may be said of angels. God alone possesses immortality in Himself, un-derived; but by and in Him men and angels subsist (Acts 17:28; Heb. 1:7; Col. 1:17).

3. Death and Existence and Consciousness Thereafter.

-Adventists teach that the state of the dead is that of "silence, inactivity, and entire unconsciousness." Scripture applies " dead" to the prodigal, and to sinners active in sin (Luke 15:24; Eph. 2:1-5). The one that lives in pleasure is dead while she liveth (1 Tim. 5:6; John 5:25). The germ in the grain of wheat, nor the human personality in Jesus, did not cease to exist by death (John 12:24; 1 Cor. 15:36-3.8). By virtue of the new life he has in Christ, the believer is free from the law of sin and death (Jno. 5:24; Rom. 5:18; 6:11; 8:2; Col. 3:3, 4). If the "me" of Rom. 8:2 died in Rome, that scripture is untrue; but if it is true, Adventist teaching is false. False it is, as the new man is of the last Adam, new creation, incorruptible, and from heaven (1 Pet. 1:23; Eph. 2:10; 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:45-48; 2 Tim. 1:10). For the believer, Christ has abolished death; he can say, " Death is ours." So Lazarus, Stephen, Paul, like the one who was a thief, have been in the conscious enjoyment of the Lord's presence for about eighteen hundred years. Even the unsaved, though dead, as to men, all live unto God (Luke 20:37, 38). That " the dead praise:not," or "know not any thing," is spoken from where we are-"under the sun," and does not take in the unseen condition of spirits (2 Cor. 4:18; Luke 16:19-31; 9:2!)-36; Rev. 6:9-11).

4. Destiny of The Wicked.-Adventists say that the wicked, finally, will be "consumed root and branch, becoming as though they had not been." The proofs are mostly from the Old Testament, which treats of the cleansing of the earth by judgment in the setting up of the earthly reign of Christ. Scripture says explicitly that it is "in the earth" not when it has passed away (Ps. 8:6-11; 101:6-8; Mal. iv). This is the judgment of the quick, the living, previous to the millennium; whereas Adventists take the texts and apply them to the. judgment of the dead, over 1000 years afterward, and in eternity. So, to prove annihilation, they are convicted of "handling the Word of God deceitfully." "Destroy," in Scripture, means the ruin of the thing as to the purpose for which it was designed, not that the thing is rendered as though it had not been. The steamer " Quetta " is destroyed, but divers have seen her at the bottom of the sea. The destroyed antidiluvians are the "spirits in prison " in Peter's day (Gen. 7:23; 1 Pet. 3:19-20). So as to Israel (Deut. 25:61-63; 30:1-3). Likewise, "everlasting destruction" and "to destroy both body and soul in hell," are not annihilation; but as the condition of the impenitent remains unchanged, the punishment will of necessity be eternal (Matt. 10:28; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 15:11 ; 2 Cor. 4:18). It may be urged, " God is love," but love is not God. Did His wrath come on Jesus? Yes. Then dare you say that if a finite being suffers forever, he will suffer more than the infinite and eternal Son suffered while He was under divine wrath? A God of love caused the latter, why not the former, especially if you reject His Son? (1 Cor. 16:22; Heb. 10:28-31; 12:25-29.)

A Small sheet before me, which has been circulated extensively in this town (in California), professes to give the distinctive features of the system, and other points of supposed interest. I propose, with the Lord's help, to define more clearly what they really are.

Passing over some things which scarcely need comment, I learn that, whilst advocating the truth of the second coming of Christ, they excuse themselves from any share in the blame due to those who have repeatedly failed in their attempts to foretell the time of that great event. We are told that they "held to the position that their computation of the prophetic dates was correct, but they had been mistaken in the event."

They do not tell us in this of the unclean device the enemy furnishes to help them to escape conviction, so I invite the reader's attention to it. They tell us that then Christ went, for the first time, from the holy place into the most holy, to cleanse it from the defilements brought in there by His work about sin in the holy place, so carnal are their thoughts on this point. Inspired writers tell us that Christ, "after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God." (Heb. 10:12; see also Acts 2:33, 34, and 7:56.)

Thus is the truth perverted in their hands who come professedly to give us light. It will be seen that in reality they are seeking to overthrow the very foundations of faith.

Further on, they tell us that they keep the Sabbath, or seventh day, and that this and the Second Coming are the two important doctrines. For them, " all other doctrines are, in a sense, subsidiary to those; " and a little further on. in this noteworthy sheet, we are informed that, " whilst they do not underestimate the importance of obeying the whole moral law, they believe that the fourth commandment is especially neglected," so that we are to understand that to keep the Sabbath is more important than to abstain from idolatry, murder, lying, and covetousness; and all other doctrines are so subsidiary that even the Atonement – the central truth of Christianity-is, with them, completely in the shade, if, indeed, it be really held at all, save in name. Scripture makes the true confession of the person of the Son of God the foundation of every thing. With them, of course, it is only subsidiary to keeping Saturday as Sabbath, and a belief in the Lord's return. These and other equally important truths are of very small consequence with them, whilst the paper informs us that abstinence from tobacco and alcohol is necessary for their fellowship.

Fragments of neglected truth are mixed up with errors, and are the sugar-coating to the pill of heresy they wish to have taken without question by their deluded victims. Eternal life as the reward of the faithful is so put as to seem to savor their doctrine of annihilation. For they believe man does not possess an immaterial spirit and soul, capable of being unclothed and clothed upon (2 Cor. 5:8), but is simply a breathing mass of clay, existing only in the shape of senseless dust in the grave after death, and until the resurrection. In an eastern city I knew one who had been a firm believer in their doctrine as to this, but the Spirit of God exercised his conscience, and he could get no peace; for how can one have peace with God under law, and with these views, for they say the judgment is to determine who is to have eternal life, and therefore it cannot be known till that is passed. But to continue,-the one of whom I speak, sitting in their meeting, heard the preacher say that "nobody has eternal life until the resurrection; " a voice seemed to speak in his soul and say, "That's a lie, for the Lord Jesus says, 'He that believeth hath everlasting life, and shall not come into the judgment, but is passed from death to life.'" (Jno. 5:1, 8.) In deep anguish, as one who feared to be deceived in a matter of eternal moment, he lifted his heart to God, and prayed for deliverance from these errors; on returning home, he found a little volume, that taught the way according to the Word, lying on his table, and he sat down to read it, and, to use his own words, read himself "out of darkness into light."

Another interesting piece of information given us is to the effect that the " remnant of Israel" means the "Church." Most people who read this perhaps will not know what is meant by the term "remnant of Israel," but an attentive student of Scripture will soon find that the calling and hope of Israel, as given in the Old Testament, is an earthly one, and the calling and hope of the Church is a heavenly one. They will learn that Israel, given up to judicial blindness for their sins and rejection of Christ, will be taken up again by God in grace, and a remnant of the nation will be restored to divine favor and blessing, because " the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" on His part. That "He that scattered Israel will gather him." (Jer. 31:10, 11; 33:1, 8; 30:11.) The prophet Ezekiel giving even the detailed description of the millennial temple (Ezek. 11:, 17:), and the arrangement of the twelve tribes in the land. And the universal testimony of the prophets being to the fact of Israel dwelling once more in peace in Palestine,-the moral center then of the world-and the Gentile nations coming up to worship the Lord at Jerusalem.

But the Church of God has other hopes and destiny. Gathered out of Jews and Gentiles, quickened with the life of Christ risen from the dead, and by one Spirit brought already into oneness with Him, she waits to share His headship over the new creation, heaven and earth being then subject.

But these "say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie," and they are looking for Israel's blessing as their portion, and mix up things, Christian and Jewish, in a way that betrays them as untaught by the Spirit of God. Romans 11:should be enough to refute their errors on this point. In keeping Saturday as their Sabbath they are quite consistent with their position, for they openly proclaim that they are under the law,-the law of Sinai, and therefore under its curse, and without a Savior (Gal. 3:10; 5:5). In other words, they are open apostates from Christ, having carefully eliminated from their belief every vestige of what is proper to it, except the name.

They ask you to consider "what is truth," but they dare not face the truth with any one who knows and reverences, as the only light from God this poor world has, the precious Word of God, and we may leave them where the word of an inspired apostle puts them in that solemn sentence, "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them'" (Gal. 3:10), with the prayer that God may, in mercy, awaken their dead consciences, that they may learn what sin is before Him, and to value that blessed One whom now they put a slight upon, and to give up seeking to clothe themselves with the "filthy rags" of self-righteousness.

Reader, if you have a vestige or regard for divine things, will you listen to those who teach such things, and who, under the garb of lovers of truth, are substituting the most deadly infidel errors? What do you think of men who, to save their own reputation, could invent and propagate such wickedness as that the precious blood of Christ washed the defilement of sin in the inner sanctuary, so that he had to go there in 1844 to cleanse that away, as if one should, in cleansing a floor, wash some of the dirt into another chamber, and need to go in there to finish His work? What ideas can they have of Atonement? You may believe this at their lips; you may give up Christ and redemption for works of law; you may deny man's having a soul and spirit distinct from his body; in fact, it is hard to say what truth you may not deny, and as long as you keep Saturday for Sabbath, and believe in the Lord's coming, you can have fellowship with them. The denial of precious truth is nothing with them, but to touch tobacco or alcohol is to incur excommunication. Truly, they " strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." R.T.G.

(1 Sam. 25:)

In order to have practical communion with the mind of God, through the Scriptures, whilst the conflict still remains between the flesh and the Spirit, it is needful that the soul be established in grace. Now Satan seeks to hide the simplicity of this grace ; but it is simple grace toward those who were dead in trespasses and sins that has met us. As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so was Jesus on the cross, and He is presented to us by God as the object of our faith. When we look to Him, God says, "Live." The next thing that Satan seeks to hide from us is God's preserving grace; and this he does by bringing in many inventions of his own. God preserves us by something hidden in heaven. We may be looking at our experience-to outward observances-to an outward priesthood, and the like ; but if it is not that which is hidden in heaven, connected with the precious blood of Jesus, and His priesthood, to which we are looking, it must come from him who is the "father of lies." All those things which tend at all to promise the soul preservation, apart from this, lead astray.

There is, then, to all believers, sure and everlasting acceptance, because of the precious blood of Jesus which has been shed for them. " Christ being come a High-Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands,-that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. 9:11, 12.) This secures their blessing and peace forever. Nothing can shake or alter the peace that subsists between the Father and the Son,-nothing that crosses our path here, none of the circumstances of earth, can alter the peace of the sanctuary. It is established forever between the Father and Jesus. So that, whenever a believer seeks it, whatever the condition of soul in which he may turn toward God, the peace of the sanctuary is there-unchanged. How precious the assurance of this! The soul that has learned any thing of God and of His holiness knows how, every hour, many a thing crosses the path likely to affect this peace-that soul must prize the unchanged peace of the sanctuary.

But we know other blessings also. God would have the saints understand and love Him and His ways here- His actings in the midst of an unholy earth, where Satan's seat is. He (God) desires that we should have communion with Himself in His thoughts about all around. By and by the Church will participate with the Lord in the exercise of power toward the earth-we shall share His glory, for we are "joint-heirs with Christ." But besides this, there is the place of present association, in service. And this must be in humiliation. Jesus served God in the midst of circumstances of evil and the "contradiction of sinners."

We read of the apostle Paul saying, " By the grace of God I am what I am ; and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Now, very often (our thoughts are apt to dwell so much and so exclusively on acceptance), this passage:" By the grace of God I am what I am," is looked at as only having to do with acceptance ; but the Lord desires that we should abundantly serve Him in the midst of Satan's world-having, it may be, to conflict, not only with evil in ourselves, but with evil in others ; and nothing but His grace can enable us to do this. It is as much the " grace of God" that has given us to serve, and the " grace of God" that strengthens for service, as it was the " grace of God" that saved us at the beginning.
When "Christ ascended up on high," He "gave gifts unto men. . . . some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints ; for the work of the ministry, to the edifying of the body of Christ." (Eph. 4:8-16.) You. will perceive how the grace of God leads that way, viz., to strengthen and qualify for service. Thus, if any teach you, they do it that you may be blessed, and so blessed as to become servants to others-life in you ministering to life in them, and strengthening that which needs to be strengthened. Now, suppose this be not understood-that I do not see it to be my privilege, I may be very thankful to have one to teach me, but my faith will be weak, and my prayers hindered, I shall not have the right object before me. Teaching amongst the saints is not intended simply to open up truth to them, to tell them what salvation is, or to give them comfort; but also to open out, and direct the soul to, those things which God desires should be the object of service in faith, as it is said, "Your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father." I need not say, beloved friends, how often we stop short of this, and rest in our own personal blessing. When the soul once recognizes it to be the intention God. has in view in strengthening us. that we should serve Him in serving others, it gets quite a new motive for which to live-something worth living for.

Now, I know nothing more important or more blessed than the being able to discern the true servant of Christ in the world. Nothing more marks the difference between a soul taught of the Spirit and one untaught of Him than this. It was a blessed thing-the great test of faith, when the Lord Jesus was here, to be able to discern and confess Him as what He really was-the Son, and Sent One of God. And so, at the present moment, the leading of the Holy Ghost is always toward the distinct recognition of that which is of God in the world. Till Jesus comes again, this will be found in the lowly place, that which the flesh likes not to own, but which the Holy Spirit loves to recognize. He leads the enlightened soul to say, There will I cast in my lot, for there blessing is.

Such parts of Scripture as that on which we are now meditating bring us into communion with the servants of God-the family of faith, in past ages. They show us that, in principle, their trials were like our trials, their conflicts like our conflicts, and thus knit our hearts to them in a way which nothing else can.

David had gained the place in which we find him here because he was of faith, and because Saul was one who was not of faith. He represents the person with whom the truth and the calling of God is. As a simple stripling David had been taught to trust in God-the God of Israel. When the lion and the bear came, he had faith to meet the lion and the bear, and to overcome them. This was a matter between David and God in secret. But very soon after, David's faith enabled him to come forward, not for his own deliverance, but for that of God's Israel. Faith led him to take up the current of the counsels of God. As a Christian goes onward in his career, though the trials he has to encounter may be greater, he goes on in the current of the counsels of God ; and thus, as Paul says, he is led about in triumph in Christ. Greater things may be done, yet, in one sense, they are felt to be easier, because he becomes more acquainted with the strength of God. But this path must begin in secret, and then shall we be led onward of God.

To return to the scene before us. God had anointed David king. Saul was still in power, having offices, etc., which none but one who was of faith ought to have had. David did not lift his hand in vengeance against Saul,- he left all that was connected with the place of the flesh, and took his place as an outcast, simply and singly in the wilderness. There he was glad of any countenance, of any support. Just so is it at the present hour with the servants of Christ who seek to walk in the truth-those, in a spiritual sense, of the lineage of David. The more they walk in it, the more sensitive will they become to any thing of kindness and love which comes in their way, for their hearts will be often worn and weary. I suppose there is nothing more gladdening to the soul that desires the good of others and the glory of God than to see any uniting with itself for the truth's sake. The " cup of cold water"-any little act of kindness connects such with the truth of God. In this there is distinct and precious service-" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." God only sees the heart; but where there is one who says, I receive and countenance, and desire to cast in my lot with, persons who are walking in the truth, suffering for righteousness sake,-there, blessing will be.

David was in need :here was another not in need. Rich in the earth, surrounded by this world's goods, living in abundance,-such was the character of Nabal (5:2). David grudged him not his prosperity (nay, doubtless he felt that he would not have exchanged his place for Nabal's); it was no hard message that he sent-"I do not ask thee," he says, "to leave thy riches and follow me ; I say, Peace both to thee, and peace to thy house, and peace unto all that thou hast ; only wilt thou show kindness unto me; wilt thou give me that which I deed?" (10:6-8.) The heart of David was large enough to have rejoiced in any thing that would have identified Nabal's place with his. And so ever, when the heart of a saint is in a gracious state, there will not be the grudging of those around, nor yet the disposition to say, " See what I am and what you are not." No, that heart will rather seek to bind the connecting link between another and itself.

God deals in grace. He knew what the end of Nabal would be, yet this was the gracious test which he put to him. And if there had been a spark of grace in Nabal's heart, of any thing according to God, it must have answered to the test. But there was not. His eye was fixed upon outward circumstances; his rough, outward thought about David's position was this :"Who is David ? and who is the son of Jesse ? there be many servants that break away now-a-days, every man from his master" (5:10). Now we must remember, dear friends, that we have all of us, naturally, this Nabal feeling; there is no heart without it as well as other evil; and about this, even as believers, we have to watch and judge ourselves. I ask you whether, because you desire to serve God, there is ready willingness, in full freedom of heart, to give all that countenance and fellowship which you are able, to others who may stand in need of it. This may be done in the way of support, or comfort, or sympathy, either in temporal or spiritual things. Love will find out many a way.

In the present day, there are not a few who, it may be, seem to some of us, to shrink from and shun the circumstances in which they find themselves placed. But about this we may misjudge them, and be saying, in principle, the same thing that Nabal said, little aware of the deep inward struggle and anxiety there has been. David had given up much ; many a tie had been broken, many a struggle gone through, ere he took this position. So that, though it was true, in one sense, that he had " run away from his master," how different was the act in the eyes of God and of man. That which is outward soon attracts the eye, when perhaps it requires patient, diligent investigation to find out the truth. If the soul desire fellowship with God in His thoughts and ways, there must be this diligence, otherwise we shall never know what to encourage and what not. Depend upon it, all truth, the more it is known and acted on, the more will it lead into the isolated place.

But we may learn a deep and practical lesson from what is shown out here of David's heart.

The flesh was still in David, and (as many of us are often found, when any thing comes upon us unexpectedly) he was unprepared to meet, in steadfastness of grace, that which God allowed to be in His path.

No doubt he considered the slight and dishonor put upon him by Nabal " most uncalled for," " most unjust," " rather too much to bear." But he was wrongly roused. And how often is this the case with the saints of God ! They dwell on circumstances, instead of turning from circumstances to God and then acting amidst them according to Him. They say, perhaps, "How unkind! How unjust! do I deserve this treatment? Is it not quite right to be angry ? " Thus the place of grace is lost. Day by day a thousand things act on our spirits, in one way or another, which are calculated to produce trying and painful effects. Now, if these be met in fellowship with God, they afford an occasion for bringing forth blessed fruit; but if not, we ourselves become contaminated, and have to confess sin. So that, instead of (as the hymn says) Satan trembling and fleeing from us in every conflict, he often thus gains advantage over us. It is a blessed thing to be able to praise God for having enabled us practically to triumph and overcome. And this we should seek to attain. The apostle Paul could say, " I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith," and " none of these things move me," etc. We can always praise God for what He is in Himself, and for what He has made us in Christ, but we might also praise Him for our own practical victory over Satan and over the world.

" 'Mid mightiest foes, most feeble are we;
Yet, trembling, in every conflict they flee:
The Lord is our banner, the battle is His,
The weakest of saints more than conqueror is."

(To be concluded in our next.)

Being Lessons from the Gospel of Matthew.

I. WITH GENEALOGY AND WITHOUT. (CHAP. I.)

It has been many times said, and is now understood by many, that the gospel of Matthew presents to us Christ as King. We may see by the first verse that this is true. Jesus Christ as " the Son of David " is the first thought in it suggested, though not the sufficient thought; and therefore the chapter goes on to connect with this two other titles :He is also the " Son of Abraham,"the promised Seed of blessing to the Gentiles ; and then much more than this, He is Immanuel, " God with us." These three threads woven together make our Joseph's many-colored coat as He is here put before us.

" Son of David," put first, declares His kingship to be the fundamental thought; "Son of Abraham" widens His dominion into universal reign over the earth ; " Immanuel " plants His throne in heaven, and subjects souls as well as bodies to His easy yoke. The last gives us the peculiar phrase of Matthew, nowhere else found, here abundant, "the kingdom," or rule, "of heaven." What fullness of blessing, for which the earth yet groans, is in this thought of a heavenly rule over the earth !

The break-down of thrones which the present day is witnessing, but which was long ago predicted in the Word, speaks not of royalty as a mistake or needless, as men deem ; but only that He has not taken power to whom it can be safely trusted. When He is come, despotic power will not only be His right, but a necessity, that the blessing of His rule may be realized in its fullness. It is for Him that, as "the desire of all nations," though with unintelligent groans, the whole earth waits ; when " all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him:for He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy . . . and men shall be blessed in Him ; all nations shall call Him blessed."

The genealogy comes first in Matthew because it is the legal proof of the Lord's being David's Son, for which reason also it is traced downward, because the title to the throne descends. In regard to supernatural birth, the law could take no notice of it,-it could not affect the title. Thus Joseph is reminded of his lineage where he is plainly told that " that which is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Ghost." That it is heirship that is in question is plain in the fact that Jeconiah is here said to have " begotten " Salathiel, whose real father, as we are told elsewhere, was Neri, Jeconiah himself being pronounced by the prophet childless (Jer. 22:30):his heir is reckoned as if begotten by him, just as seed raised up to him by his brother after his own death might be. (Deut. 25:6.)

Luke it is that gives us the true father of Salathiel ; and thus the genealogy in Luke is shown to be the natural one,-an important help to settling in the affirmative the question whether it is Mary's, as Mary alone is prominent throughout the early chapters. And this is completely in character with the way the Lord is seen in Luke, the gospel of His manhood, not His kingship. Heirship, therefore, in it is out of question :that He is son of man need not be proved. Thus the genealogy there does not commence the book:He gets no title from any special line of ancestors ; thus also the stream flows backward, as it were, in it also ; for it is grace that has connected Him with the family of man, and He is the spring of it. Thus the line of connection stretches back to Adam (reinstated in his old dignity as " son of God "), and the genealogy itself is appended to that part of the Lord's history in which He comes forward from His thirty years' private life to take up openly His public ministry among men. At His baptism by John He is seen and borne witness to as the anointed Son of God.

Returning now to Matthew and his genealogy, he himself points out to us its division into three parts, in each of which he gives and numbers fourteen generations- for a purpose clearly, as there are names left out to make this number right. Why should this be ? The number itself, which is twice seven, must be therefore significant, and the significance would be apparently, according to the meaning of these numbers (2 X 7), the " testimony of complete divine work." They would assure us that in this carefully measured succession God was bearing witness of His own hand at work in power and wisdom to control and bring order out of that which might seem to be fortuitous, or man's failure merely, – each name the record of a step toward the final result, which is the introduction of Christ as the Ruler in God's kingdom, to whom all from the beginning pointed. Read in this way, the three periods in their general character are plain :First, the period of promise from Abraham to David, the two heads of it ; secondly, a period of decay and ruin till the carrying captive into Babylon ; thirdly, a period of prostration, yet expectancy, ending suddenly in a resurrection of the long-lost royalty, in David's infinitely greater Son. The numbers here, to those who can read them, are again significant, and a divine purpose should be evident to all, which in its details may be difficult to trace indeed, for we have scarcely begun to realize the minute perfection of Scripture, and how as in nature mines of wealth often lie in what seem the most barren spots.

Promise, coming first, lays the foundation for faith, and shows the divine plan, which nothing on the part of man or Satan can alter or interfere with. Then comes the winter-killing of the weeds of self-reliance and confidence in man, who, "being in honor, abideth not;" and then, though still after a long trial of patience, the sudden advent of the promised King. In the first of these periods, just between Abraham and David, when the divine counsel is making itself known, and in a part of the genealogy which no Jew whatever could deny to be Messiah's, occur three of those four women's names, conspicuous as those of the only women there which show that not to Jews only is the Son to be born upon whose shoulder the government is laid. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, are all, as it would appear-certainly the first three-Gentiles, and thus show the blessing for the nations in the Seed of Abraham. Tamar's place is given her by her sin, God's grace being supreme above it; Rahab finds hers there through the faith of which she is in the history of the times a prominent example ; against Ruth the Moabitess lies the law which forbids the entrance of her posterity into the commonwealth of Israel, yet David is only in the third generation king over the whole. What lessons for the law-confiding Jew of our Lord's day ! and still for us what assurances of a grace that has been since fully revealed ! Uriah's wife comes into the second period, of break-down and ruin, and (how fittingly there!) completes the picture of grace that wearies not, nor comes short of the full salvation of those who are recipients of it. Fruit of this perseverance, not so much of the saint as of God toward the saint, is Solomon, the " peaceful," as his name means. Yet from its glory in him the kingdom wanes rapidly and goes on toward Babel when it passes to the Gentiles ; Israel is dispersed; God still over all, so as to make that dispersion the preparation for a gospel to be preached unto all nations, and a spiritual reign among the Gentiles of Christ the King.

Here we must leave the genealogy with its riches indicated only, scarcely at all possessed, yet the divine stamp plainly on it all and on the book to which it is the preface. What follows is the sanctuary into which the long line of this succession has conducted us :we learn after what manner and under what suspicion at the first the King of kings comes to His own world. Under a vail, in the distance of a dream, as if His coming were still to be (as it is) to the Jew but a parable, the angel of the Lord declares to Joseph the dignity of Him who comes. It is the Seed of the woman, the Conqueror, to whom is to be given the name of a conqueror of another time, Joshua, or Jesus, but whose first deliverance is of " His people from their sins." This is the meaning of His disguise; born in poverty,-a manger, not a throne, receiving Him; no room for Him in the "inn," the stopping-place for a night, to which sin has degraded the earth,-how could He assume honor in it? Rather would He take His place here with the very beasts of burden, the patient witnesses of ministering goodness, though in the scene of man's fall, and suffering with him its bitter consequences. " Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins" had been God's word of old to His people; and here was He how serving who could claim as Jehovah Israel for His own. Yet the place of service is that which glorifies, as the place of honor would have degraded Him. He alone had ability to serve those in such a condition,-to serve as savior, and thus to secure to them in due time His kingdom also, bringing their hearts into subjection to Him by that which makes His throne a "throne of grace."

He is Jesus, the Savior, that He may be, according to Isaiah's witness, Emmanuel. ' Those delights with the sons of men which had been of old are now in Him to find their expression and their justification. The sin which has come in is only itself to be made to witness, more emphatically than all else, of those delights. Emmanuel is the Savior, the kiss of God for prodigals, in His own person wedding man to God. May our hearts not think of it without making for Him fit music for the marriage-feast ! " God with us,"-not merely over us,- but so with us that He shall be indeed over us; His yoke the badge of freedom,-true liberty as delivered from the lusts that preyed on and enslaved us, the service of love, which is but obedience to the instincts of its own nature, love that serves in answer to a love that has served us.

" God with us,"-here in our world, on His way to a kingdom, marking out the road in which we are to walk with Him. With Him who would not walk ? Not a path but He knows, who has taken up that which we had thrown off, to show us how our meat may be even in such a scene to do His will who sent us into it. The thorns of our path are upon His brow ; plucked from it, they are indeed His crown.

Such is the manner, then, in which this new King is introduced to us. King of the Jews, His kingdom is world-wide, heaven-high ; the kingdom of One who serves that He may reign, and who if He reigns, serves all over whom He reigns ! A glorious King is He,-Jesus, the " King of glory,"-soon and as suddenly to come, as He came in the days to which we are looking back, and to which through all eternity with unabated intensity of interest we shall still look back.

It is in the mercy of God that Scripture was not completed before the collapse of the Church which its very beginnings in uninspired history present to us had already in great measure taken place:so much so, that in the epistles to the seven churches we could have a picture of its whole after-course exhibited for our admonition. With this many of us are now familiar. By it God has awakened us to realize our position with reference to the passing of the night, and to see that the hands of the clock point to the near approach of morning.

But these epistles are not the only instructions of a like kind, exhortations which have all the character of prophecies, which we who live in the times to which they have especial Application can discern as that. Sometimes, indeed, they are, in fact, upon the face, combined with direct prediction, as in the second epistles, (Thessalonians, Timothy, and Peter,) which, as supplements to the preceding ones, are in direct view of the last days. On the other hand, the second and third epistles of John contain no prediction; yet they too are supplementary, and in them the features of the last times unmistakably appear. Antichrists are such features, as stated in the first epistle; and a warning as to them is prominent in the second. In the third, the Church is seen ruled by a Diotrephes, who withstands the apostle, and rejects and casts out the brethren,-a plain anticipation of what is now history as to the professing church at large.

It is not my purpose at all to take up this at present. The same tendencies and evils manifest themselves continually; and we may find more profitable application in what is nearer to ourselves than Rome. Better still it may be to take up the teaching of the epistle, and let it apply wherever it shall be found to apply. Certainly we can hardly be at a loss to realize its bearing upon our own day, and to many of us it will be of the deepest, saddest interest, as well as of the most practical importance.

The third epistle follows the second in an order which is moral as well as chronological. Together, they meet two contrary tendencies, which unite, however, in opposition to the Spirit of Christ. One is, the laxity which is not love, although it claims to be this, and will find many to concede its claim; the other is, the narrowness which is not faithfulness to Christ, though often masked under such a name. To both, the apostle opposes the love and light which are one in God, and which separated are alike destroyed:what can the love be worth that sets aside truth? or what truth can there be apart from the love which is the greatest truth ?

The union of these is insisted on in both epistles, truth being put foremost in the second, love in the third, neither for a moment any where forgotten. There is recognized the danger of our not holding them together, at least in even balance,-a strange yet a felt difficulty, the pendulum swinging so much more readily from one side to the other than resting in the center ; from laxity to harshness or the reverse is a smaller change than to the faithfulness of love. Love is the energy of the divine nature ; light, the manner of its display :where God acts, He acts in His whole character, although there may be to us a difference in His actions-a predominance of this attribute or that. But thus love itself cannot be described without bringing in other attributes ; and the Word of God needs to describe and define it as the apostle in the first of these epistles does, for in nothing do we mistake more. He gives, therefore, tests and counter-tests :if it be to God, yet "he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?"if it be to our brother, "by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God;" and here he has also to add, "and keep His commandments," and, to define further, "for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous."

Love must have its object, and this is carefully insisted on. It is first of all Christ in whom God has revealed Himself,-thus, then, those who are Christ's-the brethren. It is not that there is no wider range, but here is what characterizes it:"we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." Here the circle marked out shows sufficiently the center from which it is described. Lose the center, and all is lost. It is this, then, on which he insists in the second epistle. If you have not "the doctrine of Christ," you have not Christ, but Antichrist. Thus you must not greet the one who, coming in a Christian guise, brings not the doctrine of Christ. To make this as strong as possible, it is a woman who is warned. Subtlety of intellect is not needed in such a matter, nor official position :it is a question of heart and conscience,-of a soul that knows Christ. If you receive deliberately one who displaces Christ,-if you are an accessory to that displacement, you are "partaker of his evil deeds." Nay, he may be deceived, but you dishonor Christ with your eyes open. Association is in God's sight one of the most serious questions :fellowship with God and with what is opposed to Him cannot go on together.

Thus the second epistle of John comes naturally before the third. First of all, he fixes the center before he marks out the circumference. And Satan too, first of all, aims at the center ; for could he take away that, there is no more any circumference to mark out. People say it is not a question of the Lord's table ; but what table is it where the Lord is denied, or where He is named and insulted together?

But my purpose is not now to pause on this :doubtless even where the honor of the Lord requires separation there may yet be in fulfilling a plain duty a spirit of harshness which already needs the check of the third epistle. We have ever to remember what Christ's people are to Him, and with what discriminating care and tenderness He deals with them. How little, even here, have we learned to distinguish things that differ, and to take forth the precious from the vile ! How many have we repelled from the truth by the lack of grace that we have manifested ! How many have we abandoned to the evil whom we might have drawn out from it had we had a hand to put forth for their help ! Strange it is that those who have learnt their own need of grace can in their conduct toward others act so readily in the spirit of law, and expect to find results which only grace can produce! Sad indeed that we should be so little able to count upon and work in the grace which is in Christians, if they are indeed Christians, and that God's way of loving us out of our sins should be so little known to us ! Strange too that we should hear of that being righteousness which is not grace, as if it were possible from those who have received grace ! We need much searching of heart as to such things, which has engendered a cold, harsh spirit of suspicion, and at best a clear judicial wisdom, which is not the wisdom that winneth souls, but the very opposite. And especially where any departure from what is esteemed a most rigid orthodoxy is in question, tolerance is often counted mere latitudinarianism and indifference; and the needful "separation from evil" is in fact lost in a real biting and devouring one another which ends, naturally, except the mercy of God prevent, in being consumed one of another.

That which the third epistle of John is designed to meet is but the development of such a condition as this, and it will be found by some of us, what all the inspired Word is said to be, " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." We need, however, for this to have the sharply marked individuality of the "man of God" to profit by it. If for any reason, in any measure, we have resigned our individuality, to become merely part of a mass, Scripture ceases in that measure to have meaning for us. Heart and conscience both belong to the individual alone.

The features of the day of the third of John are easily to be seen in the epistle. First of these, Diotrephes, individual enough he, with his controlling power in the assembly, loving to have the pre-eminence. If the epistle to the Corinthians shows us the Church of God on earth, with the already threatening invasion of primitive order, restless and ambitious spirits, dividing the saints into contentious parties, here we find a further stage, one disputant for power having succeeded (as is commonly the case) in reducing all the rest to obedience to himself. A kind of Romish unity had taken the place of the jangle of many tongues, and they perhaps vaunted it as Rome does, while in reality it was a further stage of decline. One individuality had absorbed into himself the corporate condition, and the assembly practically no longer existed :it was a tool in his hand.

How much for solemn consideration is there in such a state of things existing while yet a living apostle remained on earth ! Doubtless the assembly existed still in form and name,-nay, we see it did. The after-history assures that the " church "-the original meaning, however, soon dying out of the word-became a name to conjure by. Ecclesiasticism grew as the real ecclesia (the assembly) was lost sight of. The " ecclesiastics" were the clergy, from whom the people, or laity, were separated by a continually increasing gulf. When the transformation was complete, the church itself was really but the clergy, the name remaining only as a mystical halo of theoretic sanctity round the heads of the latter.

These things had their roots, then, in the apostles' days ; they were, in fact, fast developing, though by a quiet, noiseless development which startled, as it would seem, few. Nay, to most, perhaps, the growth seemed healthy. How much better than the strife of tongues at Corinth was the rule of Diotrephes! Nor was it yet called "rule;" it was but "pre-eminence ;" and are there not those who rightly, and of God, have the pre-eminence ? who would pull them down from this but those possessed with the spirit of independence-radicals and demagogues ? Had not Paul bidden them, " Obey your leaders?" and was there not true humility in such obedience ? None the less by such means Diotrephes may come to reign,-the parasitic growth of clerisy striking its roots into the very tree which it destroys, nourished by the sap which it perverts from its true purpose.

There is, in truth, but a narrow path for us, and a scarcely sensible line divides between good and evil. Every where are there ways that seem right, and whose ends nevertheless are ways of death. What help, what hope, save in the utter helplessness which needs an almighty arm, and a wisdom only found by those sensible of their folly ? God's Word even, apart from God Himself, what help is there in it? Nevertheless it is through that Word that help is ministered, but written out, as it were, only upon the road in which we travel with Him. Thus the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err in it, while the wisest of theorists may go even the more completely astray.

Are there not " leaders"?Yes, assuredly; Scripture plainly says so (Heb. 13:7, 17, Gr.). Ought we not to "obey " them? Undoubtedly, for here again we have Scripture. Nay, says the apostle, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." (I Thess. 5:12, 13.) Here, "over you " is too strong, however :the word is, " who stand before you "-practically much as in the former passages, "your leaders." But there are such, then ? Yes, and we are to know them, a peculiar and important word:had they "known" a Diotrephes, they would hardly have followed him! If we are to know our guides, then plainly there is no responsibility taken off our shoulders, but the contrary:we are responsible for the guides we allow as such ; we are, first of all, to "know" before we follow, not to follow blindly. And how shall we know a guide but by the guidance? and by what can we judge as to " guidance " but by the Word of God ? So says the apostle once more, " Remember your leaders, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith follow." Believing obedience to the Word of God, then, must characterize such leaders, and we only follow their faith when the Word of God is to us what it is to them. The guidance is by it, and faith must be in it, not in them, and only those are to be followed who follow it.

Just so there are "teachers," who are special gifts of Christ to His Church :was, then, John the beloved a radical, or possessed with the spirit of independency, when he said, even to babes in Christ, "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things"? And "the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you" (i Jno. 2:20, 27) ? Here only true humility will keep us right; and yet there is no opposition between these things, and no real difficulty either. Any one of the least understanding would say, Certainly, the teacher is not meant to stand between me and the Word of God, but rather to bring it to me, to make plain to me what is there; and when I see this, it is not the teacher I believe, -it is God :I am not dependent on the teacher, though I thank God for him.

It is the truth which accredits the teacher; never, rightly, the teacher the truth :so with the guide ; if he can show me God's path for me, it is well and good, follow I must; but woe be to him who stands between the soul and God, and whom men "obey" upon the warrant of his superior knowledge, wisdom, or holiness! Our " walk " is to be " with God."

This will not satisfy one " who loveth to have the preeminence ; " and therefore he will soon be discerned by such a text. Human authority will be pressed in same way, and the demand for the Word of God treated as pride and independence. Here, the voice of the church becomes a ready resource, and apparently scriptural too :for "if he do not hear the church," he is to "be to thee as a heathen man and a publican." Upon this text ecclesiasticism builds, naturally enough, a lofty edifice upon a narrow foundation, even where there is added to this the words which lie in immediate connection, "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

I do not propose to dwell upon this now :it has been elsewhere done sufficiently. All that need be said about it is, that there is a sphere wherein this authority of the church is to be owned, and beyond which it cannot go, and that we must learn from Scripture the limits of this sphere. Thus, the church cannot define doctrine ; the Word alone is authoritative there. Moreover, the context shows that it is a question of trespass as to which the Lord is speaking. The Church is the witness of God's holiness upon the earth, and must therefore put away wickedness, is under responsibility to do that. How impossible, then, that it could have power against holiness, to give false witness as to what God is, to pervert righteousness, and force men to go with evil! The Church's authority is therefore in due subjection to the Word of God, from which it gets its authority, and conscience is bound by the Word and must listen to the Word:our walk is to be as absolutely with God as if there were no church.

Here, the apostle had written to the church, " But Diotrephes receiveth us not," and his will seems to have been law in it. Did the voice of Diotrephes in the church, which it had no power to resist, in no wise affect the authority of the church's voice which men had to "hear" ? If not, did Diotrephes' evil become good when the church assented to it? It is plain the apostle did not accept the casting out of the brethren, though the church must have accepted it. And if not, how many questions might have to be raised as to any given assembly-judgment ! Conscience is thus exercised at every step, never released from it :conscience, I say, which we must carefully distinguish from mere will; will, apart from conscience, is pride, independence, insubjection ; but a conscience exercised by the Word of God means humility, and the spirit of obedience.

The spirit of ecclesiasticism while it speaks loudly of the Church, cares nothing for the individual members of Christ. Its church is not a living organism, of which the Spirit is the practical unity, but a kind of unorganic mass whose component parts are atoms and no more – molded from without, not from within. With it, conscience is only a troubler, the fruitful cause of strife and division, with its cry, " We must obey God rather than men." In truth, no government can be effectual with such a living machine, except that of its Head, Christ Jesus. And His guides and leaders must be like Himself, – tender of the individual, careful to maintain the sense of responsibility in the soul, nurturers of the life rather than zealots of the form, realizing that the plants of God's garden grow best with the least handling, and that food and sunshine are their first necessities. God gives us guides like these-men who will speak to us the Word of God, and whose faith we can follow.

In truth, it needs faith :the consciousness that one is but in the hand of God, a worker under Him, having but one's own little bit of service to do, and incompetent to measure the result of that, having to leave results with Him, yet confident, in the face of all seeming failure, that no honest work for Him shall be in vain :His part, to order; ours-all of us-to minister, as witnesses and channels of His love to men. Such guides as those of which Scripture speaks, may His people " know," wherever found.

(To be continued.)