In this matter-of-fact, rational period, it is more especially needful for those professing to be separated unto the Lord Jesus to bear in mind the fleetingness of time, and the seriousness of eternity. Temporal things loom large. Competition for a livelihood is often severe ; friends prove changeable and those we expect godly prove otherwise. False creeds abound, sin is glossed over, and the love of many waxes cold. And more especially does there seem a tendency to luxury. By that is not meant necessarily extra high living, but a settling down, satisfied with the comforts of the world that tend to set the affections on things below and not to follow the Lord Jesus in "that He pleased not Himself." This trying to please oneself and not regarding the feelings and thoughts of others is shown by that roughness, bluntness, and selfishness which do not glorify our God, and which are certainly not the mind of Christ. The root of this is in minding earthly things. When death draws near, and eternity comes in view, how paltry are the things of time; yet there is only a thread between us and eternity. Our life is but a vapor that vanishes quickly away. Over every house, over every meeting-room, and above all, over our heart should be constantly inscribed-eternity ! eternity!

This looking at the things unseen should effect an alteration in our whole business as well as private life. Our work or labor should be performed with eternity written over it. While others are laboring with this world as their goal, it is ours to prove our heavenly citizenship by separation from the world's ways and means, even though it bring, as it will, the world's laughter and money loss.

We should seriously examine ourselves, and find out if we are seeking our own ends in life, and resolutely determine by the grace of God that for us to live shall be Christ.

But this spirit of freedom from the world and consciousness of eternity can only be obtained by personal communion with our blessed Saviour. Only as we are often in His presence, only as we meditate on His dying love, only as we are conscious of His being with us moment by moment, shall we look at the things not seen, which are eternal.

How difficult sometimes it seems to realize what it means, and yet how near it is continually being shown to be. This year with its terrible record of sudden catastrophes and loss of life-the sudden precipitation into eternity of hundreds of people-ought . to act as an incentive for all believers to live more and more as seeing Him who is invisible.

We must show to the world by our conduct, that our life that is hid with Christ in God is just as real -nay, far more so – as the life that is earthly :by that I mean that with us eternal things are real
issues and exert a real influence over our life, just as carnal things that can be seen are real to the unbeliever.

What a testimony to the power of a personal God is a holy life ! Education, culture, refinement, and training all fail completely to make a man holy. It requires nothing less than the power of God to make a saint. What a proof to a dying, unbelieving and scoffing world of His reality.

What a testimony to the blood of the Lord Jesus ! For nothing less than a realization of all sin forgiven and an entrance into the heavenlies effected, could give such peace and joy here, and hope for the future.

And what a witness to the keeping power of the Spirit of God, who alone amidst the deceitfulness of sin could keep the believer looking unto Jesus and show him the mind of His Lord; who in the darkest hour can bring a ray of light, can smooth the rough paths, and enable the believer to say, "Thy will be done," after the fiercest trial.

It is our privilege then to be living epistles, known and read of all men, and to follow in the steps of Him whose meat and drink was to do His Father's will.

It is our duty to point sinners to the Lamb of God who alone taketh away sin, and who only can enable the soul to escape the fearful eternal doom which will be pronounced after the shadows of time have given way to the realities of eternity. S. J. P.

He was, when He arose, as when He died. The light of the rainbow of promise, which shone out from His cross, proclaiming no more judgment storm for His sheltered ones, glowed still with the light of God's everlasting love, and, although to those of us (Peter was of us, John was of us), who gazed, new tints of resurrection glory mingled and blended with the divine light of the past, He was still our Jesus, our Lord. At times these tints so shone before us, that as we gazed, we knew Him not; and yet they caused our hearts to burn within us, until, breaking through the cerements of glory which wrapped Him round, a turn of the Kaleidoscope of Love revealed Him who had walked and talked and labored and loved with us, in the days gone by, and we worshiped. And it is sweet to our hearts to think of those days, and to talk together of how He was made known unto us.

Those two, who walked the road to Emmaus, must have wondered indeed at the Wondrous Expositor of God's word, who joined Himself to them, but it was in the familiar act of breaking bread that He was made known. How this speaks to us. How it says, This is He who once said, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst." This was no doctrine with Him.

The longing of His heart brought Him there. He could not stay away. Before the grave, He had raised the dead, He had cleansed the lepers, He had healed the sick, but that disciple whom Jesus loved delights to proclaim Him, God, sitting at the table of Lazarus, or gathering His disciples within the house and at the table. Never more God than then! And yet how it melts the heart, to remember that this God, the God "over His own house," was once a stranger with nowhere to lay His head. Sin, strife, selfishness,-these are they that rend the home in pieces. Love, light, goodness,-these are the sweet bonds that unite all that know Him, and their source is in Himself. Do we wonder, then, that He was made known unto them in the breaking of the bread?

Turn to the twenty-first chapter of John and read the story written there. Notice the words closely. When the miraculous drought of fishes startles the disciples, John says to Peter, "It is the Lord," and Peter hurries to shore, but as soon as Jesus pronounces the words, "Come and dine," he who had seen, whose eyes had gazed upon, whose hands had handled of the Word of Life, breaks out into those sweet words, as if this were the climax, outshining all miracle:"And none of the disciples dust ask Him, Who art Thou ? knowing that it was the Lord." O blessed Early Riser and Daily Toiler and Late Retirer, Thine own resurrection hands have made the fire and spread the feast, and as we ponder it, we remember, too, that on the night of Thy deep sorrow Thou didst break the bread and hand it to us as most powerful reminder of Thee; and portrayed in it and symbolized by it and shining through it, Thy precious body and blood whisper to us of the time, when in the midst of the elders, ever in the midst, Jesus, our God of home, (the Breaker of bread), shall gather round Himself, the Church of God, the Lamb's wife. Thus the act by which He made Himself known to the two at Emmaus, and by which we remember Him, is of such character as if, in the longing of His heart, He would say to us, "The broken body and the blood herein symbolized were all to provide you a home whither I go to meet you." Amen! F. C. G.

QUES. 15.-Please explain Rom. 8:11, "He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies." Is this quickening present or future, as in 1 Cor. 15:54?

ANS.-Without doubt the quickening refers to the future. In no sense is the body spoken of as now quickened. If it were, there would be no need of the resurrection. ''The body is dead because of sin," it is the spirit which is alone life. But the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the pledge of the resurrection or quickening of the mortal body. The Spirit is spoken of as ''The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead," and it is by, or rather on account of, the presence of the Spirit now dwelling in the believer that his mortal body will be quickened. The body of the saint, in itself, differs in nothing from that of the sinner, save that it has been purchased, and in the power of the Spirit the believer can now present it a living sacrifice to God, yielding his members as instruments of righteousness. But we groan being burdened, " waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our body." Therefore to claim resurrection life for the body now would be to declare that the resurrection is past, and if this were the case, the believer could not die. Without doubt the application of this doctrine to the subject of bodily healing has misled many, and is a grave error. Paul had the life of Jesus manifest in his mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4:10, 11), but that is the exact reverse of resurrection life for the body; it was the excellency of a power not inherent in him, and working out through what was subject to death and weakness and decay. "Alway delivered unto death" does not speak of the throb of resurrection life, but it does give an opportunity for the exhibition of the power of Christ to rest upon the feeblest instrument.

QUES. 16.-Does Phil. 3:21 refer exclusively to the change of the living at Christ's coming, or to the resurrection of the dead in Christ also? Is identification involved, or do the saints have new bodies apart from identity? (1 Cor. 15:36-38).

ANS.-We might say that death is not contemplated for the Christian, so that a special revelation was given to comfort as to those who had fallen asleep, to show that they would in no wise be losers as compared with the living (1 Thess. 4:13-18). Therefore while the form of the verse speaks only of those whose bodies of humiliation will be changed, its spirit would assure us that the sleeping saints will be included. The corruptible, the dead, will put on incorruption, and the mortal, the living, will put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:50-53). As to the identity, there can be no question, for our Lord, the first-fruits, has established that. ''To every seed his own body "shows the identity, while "God giveth it a body as it has pleased Him " shows how far the resurrection body will transcend this body of humiliation.

QUES. 17.-Why is the manna called the Mighty's meat?

ANS.-"Bread of the Mighty" is the proper rendering of Ps. 78:25, and seems to suggest the omnipotence of the One who was providing for Israel and the sustaining character of the food supplied to them in the wilderness. Of course, it is all typical of Him who is the true bread of God, the bread which gives life, Christ the sustainer of His people all through their pilgrimage.

QUES. 13.-"And at that time thy people shall be delivered every one of them that is found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:1, 2). Does not the latter sentence refer to Israel's restoration, and not to the resurrection of the body? In Rom. 11:Israel's restoration is called ''life from the dead"; so also in Ezek. 37:May it not be said, ''Many of them that sleep, etc.," because some of Israel will be already awake?

ANS.-It seems evident that it is not a literal but a national resurrection that is here spoken of. The passages referred to by our correspondent would confirm this. We would rather think the "many" referred to the mass of the nation, almost equivalent to all, the nation as a whole, and not to the remnant, which would seem to be among those who awake.

And there was a strife between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle, and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle "(Gen. 13:7). Whosoever engages in strife shows that he is on low ground, spiritually. The subject of the strife here is the cattle possessed by these men. It was the cattle that made Lot decide for the plains of Sodom, well watered and fertile. Temporal interests are right and proper. ' "If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel" (or unbeliever). A man of the world has natural affection, and will provide for his own, just as sinners love those that love them. It would indeed be a reproach if a Christian man showed less love and care for those near to him than a worldling did.

One then should labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to give to him that hath need. But temporal interests must be watched lest they draw the hearts from the things of Christ. How often have God's people been led into strife through temporal affairs, or, worse yet, been lured toward Sodom. We are living in an age of speculation. Men wish to make a competence rapidly and easily, and are drawn into the whirl, excitement, and worse, of the world's ways. Like Lot, they are drawn into Sodom. Ah! too often have peace of conscience and joy of heart been bartered for this world's cattle. "But they that will be (are determined to be) rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts" (i Tim. 6:9, 10).

God blesses a man's labor, and may give even riches. The thing to guard against is that absorption, which draws the soul away from Christ and His interests:A lean soul is a bad companion at any
price.

"Thy servants have cattle " (Num. 32:4). The tribes of Reuben and Gad urged this as a reason for remaining on the east side of Jordan. They came short, practically, of their high calling. Pharaoh had tried to induce Moses to leave the cattle in Egypt, which would answer to a man leaving his business in the world, not subject to the word of God. Pharaoh did not succeed, but selfish interest did keep these tribes from their rightful place.

Are we, any of God's saints, held from going in to possess our full portion in Christ? What interest can dispute Christ's place in our hearts?

The east side of Jordan may not be Sodom, spiritual wickedness, but it is not the heavenly place which God has appointed for our chief enjoyment. We need not fear that He will fail to give us all needed earthly good, but we do need to fear lest our absorption with these things hinder us from the path of faith, and enjoyment of heavenly things.

We are not to be ascetic, nor foolish, but we are to be whole-hearted for our blessed Lord.

The woman of Samaria told the truth when she said Jacob and his cattle drank from the same well. Every earthly spring is like that; we drink it in common with the world; it cannot quench the soul's cravings. " Whoso drinketh of this water shall thirst again."

The tribe of Manasseh, as has been shown, (See the Numerical Bible) had a portion on both sides of the River. Forgetting the things that are behind, and pressing on to what is before, we really get the good of heavenly things and all of earth that we need. The Lord teach us to be like Manasseh. May Christ, our blessed Lord, be first in our hearts and thoughts, and He will see to the cattle also. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

It is written when our Lord ascended up on high He gave gifts unto men, " He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:11-13), expressing thus in those love gifts to His people, His love and care as the Good and Great Shepherd of His sheep. We will dwell for a space upon one of those gifts especially, that of the pastor, and his work. These love gifts were intended by Him to be with us till the end (Eph. 4:13).

When this dispensation runs its course, and the Church, the body of Christ, is completed, and the saints caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, service such as those gifts render now will be required no more. Yet as we look around us the great need rises up before the mind, and not one of those should we undervalue. As we move among the careless masses of the day, the cry goes up from many hearts for the Lord to raise up more evangelists, or if they are among us for the Lord to lay upon their hearts as a heavy burden their work, and send them forth among men to awaken the careless, set free the anxious, and win precious souls for the Lord Jesus. This truly is blessed work to be engaged in, work that is well pleasing to the Lord of life and glory.

But again, as we move among the various classes of the redeemed of the Lord, the desire also goes up to the throne of grace to see developed among His people the pastoral gift. Many of the people of God are destroyed for lack of knowledge and care. The gift of pastor is mainly for the people of God, though he may possibly also possess that of preacher and teacher. His work therefore as a necessity is more a hidden work and one that the public are less cognizant of, and therefore recognized mainly by the people of God among whom he labors. This in itself requires faith of another order from that of an evangelist; the fruit also is of another kind, and, as in all work, the heart needs patience in it and to wait upon the great Head of the Church till that day to see the fruit. We know the righteous Lord, who loveth righteousness, will pass nothing by done in His name. The work of each is before Him and as under His eye each is to serve, in that part of the field where the work of each lies. To one He entrusts the work of saving, to another cultivating and tilling and watering at times, and to others that of reaping, etc. Yet this matters not with the laborers, it is all the Master's planning. A careful reading of Rom. 12:; i Cor. 12:and Eph. 4:clears up these things for all who follow the word of truth.

The pastor now we will seek to follow. We believe the Lord, ever true in His care for His own, does not fail here. He gives the gifts, yet there seems everywhere the need and the lack of pastors. What is the reason, we might well ask, beloved. May it lead us to more serious inquiry. Is it not true that the gifts are still here? Yet lack of exercise of heart, and care for His interests keeps many from exercising this gift, and doing the work, and thus meet the crying need of the day. Let none think that it is only those who are wholly given up to the service of the Lord that can be termed pastors.

And may there not be a reason among the people of God themselves, in their lack of appreciation of such a blessed work? We believe such a work ought to be followed with the prayers and sympathies and also fellowship of God's people as much as that of the evangelist who occupies perhaps a more prominent place, especially before the public. We repeat, beloved, the crying need among the people of God, is the pastoral work, and that of teaching. The spirit of the day, if we are not kept in grace, lays hold upon the people of God and it is then very easy to depart from the spirit of Philadelphia to that of Laodicea "rich and increased in goods with need of nothing."

The Lord give His people exercise everywhere as to the great need of pastors and pastoral work, and cause the cry to rise from many hearts, Are we exercising the true pastoral care we ought ? Such passages as Jer. 3:15; 23:1-4; Ezek. 34:1-23, are profitable to study in this connection.

Now we will turn and trace out that pastoral care as seen in the model pastor of the apostolic age- Paul. He had the care of all the churches lying as a heavy burden upon his heart. In this connection it could be truly said, he was "a man after God's own heart."

An apostle he was, a preacher, and teacher also, yet he was nothing behind in his pastoral care and labor, as his labor in the Acts and Epistles fully demonstrates. We believe his first great missionary journey from Antioch (Acts 13:14, 26) was as an evangelist, yet after the dispute was settled at Jerusalem (chap. 15:) which tended to hinder this blessed work of grace, see the pastoral care of the apostle, " Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do." This desire was prompted by a heart that loved the people of God and because they were such-loved to see them, and know of their welfare ; and this love of Christ, the Head of the Church, which filled the apostle's heart, found its delight in moving among them and serving them for Christ's sake.

Next, we will turn to his written ministry under the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and see how at every stage of the journey in his service as teacher, the pastoral heart is manifest, and his care for the true spiritual welfare of what was to the Lord as dear as the apple of His eye, His redeemed and beloved people.

The first in order is, "To all that be at Rome, beloved of God, called saints" (Gk.). "Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers." The apostle had never as yet visited the capital of the great Roman Empire, had never been privileged to sit with the saints in that city around the Lord's table, never privileged to bow in prayer nor minister the precious things of Christ, nor to sound out the gospel of glory within their hearing. Individuals among them he had seen in other places, and knew them. Yet he thought of them all, he loved them, they were dear to him, because dear to Christ, whom Paul knew so well, loved, and served with true devotion. From this first chapter also we learn he bore them upon his heart continually in prayer (ver. 9). Is not this where all true pastoral care begins,-to pray for the saints? Let us all lay this part of the pastoral exercise and service more to heart, to pray for the people of God.

Again he adds, "I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye maybe established" (ver. ii). This is a true pastoral desire; he longed to see their faces, to minister to them of the rich bounty bestowed upon him by the great Head of the Church, and to feed them with knowledge and understanding, a true pastoral desire (Jer. 3:15).

In this epistle (chap. 15:14) we learn the true condition of the saints at Rome. There was the need of the various lines of teaching as developed in the epistle in chaps. i-11:and the exhortations and care enjoined in chaps. xii-16:Yet he could add, " I myself also am persuaded of you my brethren, that ye are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another." Yet the apostle longed to see them, and also preach the gospel, and so have fruit to show there as among other Gentiles also.

The next in order are his epistles to the Corinthians. In this place (in sad contrast to those at Rome), serious evils had developed among them unchecked and unjudged, and the whole epistle expresses the pastoral care for that assembly, formed through the apostle's labors. To visit them under those circumstances would be no joy nor pleasure, yet we see his care for them. He wrote this letter calculated to set them right before God, and he adds here, "But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will." "What will ye? shall I come to you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness" (chap. 4:19-21). How changed his language! how different! Yet from the same pen and prompted by the same pastoral heart, with a love many waters could not quench.

Why this change? were they not the people of God as well as those to whom he wrote in the former epistle ? Surely they were, as the second verse informs us, yet their condition, their walk, and practice were far different; hence they needed to be dealt with in a different way, he needed to pen an epistle with different words, a different line of ministry. Yet it was love and the care the apostle had for the people of God which led him to write both. Note the epistle well; the various evils which were manifest there and yet unjudged, all those things were too serious for the apostle to pass over lightly; he points them all out most carefully, and while he said he would come to them he desired one thing before he came, repentance and self-judgment.

Titus was sent to relieve the apostle's mind (2 Cor. 8:16, 17; 12:18), for day and night he labored in prayer for their deliverance. Titus, no doubt, was kept longer than the apostle had anticipated. He had great suspense at Troas insomuch that he could not pursue his gospel work, because there he met not Titus, and so he leaves this open gospel door behind him, and sails across the water to meet Titus in Macedonia (2 Cor. 2:12, 13; the map is a help here, to follow the journey of the apostle as well as that of Titus). In Macedonia he finds Titus, and good tidings are communicated concerning the saints at Corinth, and Paul is relieved and comforted. The model pastor's spirit is refreshed and strengthened.

If Paul had been compelled to go to Corinth with those evils still unjudged, he would have had to use the rod. This would have been a great grief for him. But now they having cleared themselves, he would go in love and minister the precious things of Christ so as to lead them on in the ways of the Lord. Two prominent lessons we glean from these two epistles to the Corinthians. In the first epistle, faithfulness and righteousness in dealing with the evils mentioned, love prompting him to act. These evils were not simply hearsay, they were well known. The apostle had full proof and they were not yet judged by them. For all this, God, in righteousness, desired brokenness, and self-judgment, and so did Paul.

Next, in the second epistle, when the apostle found there was the brokenness the Lord desired, how lovely to see the grace that reigns so supremely in his heart. Now it can flow out. This truly was grace reigning through righteousness, a principle ever true in the ways of God. The Lord keep us and hold us ever as a testimony as this model pastor was.

We would further note, in the apostle's care, he wrote the first epistle condemning the evils permitted. Next he desired Apollos to go there with other brethren, perhaps Titus, and another brother (i Cor. 16:10, 12; 2 Cor. 12:18). But, in this desire for them to go, it would be simply as servants to help to deliver the Corinthians from the evils, and in no wise to have fellowship with them while these evils were there, and unjudged. To go among evils, no matter how serious, to deliver the Lord's dear people, while refusing fellowship, might in many cases be right. This is left for the individual servant to decide. Apollos felt it a difficult work, and would not go; Titus felt free, and was helpful, and found the first epistle had been used of God. Hence, none, neither Paul, Apollos, Titus, nor any other brethren, were required to have fellowship with the Corinthians while these evils were there. Nor yet did the apostle desire Apollos to do so, but as a servant to minister at this critical time. This must always be distinguished. Service is one thing:fellowship is quite another. This is the lesson we would learn from the apostle's desire for others to go there; a lesson which ought to be plain to all. A. E. B.

(To be continued.)

Ques. 18.-Concerning the Lord’s Table is it in accordance with God’s Word to pray or sing hymns in which one or more verses are prayers, or speak anything save that which bears on the Lord’s death or His suffering?

All I can see from the Word is, we come to remember Him, and not ourselves. If it is wrong, how is it that so many, even of those who should know better offer prayers at the Lord’s Table?

Ans.-The high plane of Christian worship is, alas, too little occupied by us all. Cold neglect on the part oi most professors, of what concerns the honor of Christ, is the rule. Even the true children of God rise but seldom to their privilege. Hence most think that what contributes to their own blessing is of greatest importance. This puts worship in a secondary place, and we need not be surprised that prayer, making requests for themselves, usurps the joyful worship that should he offered to the Lord.

Prayer, even for spiritual blessing, is hardly in place at the Lord’s table, where adoring worship, the result of remembering Him, should be the chief occupation. On the other hand real prayer is better than forced worship, and if in it a low state is owned, God will surely lift up. Doubtless if there were more secret prayer, and more full attendance at the prayer meeting, less need would be felt for confession and prayer at the Lord’s table. Then too we must guard against a too rigid exclusion of prayer, as in hymns. There is such a thing as "making request with joy."

Ques. 19.-Does not the number twelve speak of ministry, as well as of government?

There were twelve apostles. The twelve disciples ministered to the multitude of the loaves and fishes.

Twelve officers of Solomon’s household procured supplies for his household.

There were twelve wells of water, with the seventy palm trees at Elim.

The tree of life bearing twelve manner of fruits.

If other scriptures such as the twelve "princes of Israel" (Num. 7:2.) speak of government, are the two meanings intertwined as in Matt. 20:27-" whoso will be chief among you let him be your servant"?

Ans.-The spirit of rule is that of service. " I am among you as He that serveth;" " the servant is not greater than his Lord." Twelve throughout Scripture seems to be the number of divine administration of the earth. Its factors (4 x 3) seem to suggest this, each part being taken hold of by the three. Thus the prominence of twelve in the heavenly city is not simply a suggestion of Israel, but is a reminder of that perfect and absolute control of all things, when the throne of God and the Lamb are the center of blessing throughout the universe.

At our general meetings, mornings and afternoons are commonly occupied with readings and open meetings; the evenings are generally devoted to lectures. Might we not take a little profitable counsel here, and consider any possible danger, as regards our way as to the evenings?

Should we not be on our guard against deciding or arranging as to what we would prefer? Should not those who take the lead be jealously on their guard against this, so that what is ministered may be truly of the Lord-not human arrangement, nor human wisdom?

If no one announces beforehand his purpose to address us, would it not be better to assemble without soliciting any one, leaving the way open for any one who may be led at the time to speak to us?

If no one has been announced as desiring to lecture, and yet a certain one or other is counted upon, should we not be very careful to hold this desire and expectation with such reserve, that if some one else arises to speak we shall be ready to receive from him whatever is for edification?

These are delicate considerations, but the Lord will help us to keep the balance.

If we had spiritual strength would there not be place for lectures in open meetings? why should not the whole time be taken up by one, occasionally? Would not the power and edification manifested show to all that the lecture was of God-though no time was left for others- and others would be more free, in an open meeting, to shew their fellowship in prayer and praise? And even at a "lecture" would it not be well both for the speaker and his brethren to count upon the liberty of the Spirit, in any such open hearted expression of fellowship and joy, as might especially be manifested at the close of a heart-filling address?

We will all agree that what is needed is that all should be led of the Spirit, whether those speaking or those who are silent. There is One who searches the hearts.

If we are in prayer and waiting upon God, the word of ministry will be the word suited for us. It will strengthen us for the way, it will fill us with joy. Deeply humiliating it is, both for speaker and hearers, when it is otherwise.

If our open meetings are sometimes humiliations, let us learn the needed, lesson; let us not be discouraged; let us seek restoring grace. Let us pray without ceasing. E. S. L.

We commend our brother’s remarks upon this most important subject to the prayerful consideration of the Lord’s people. Our sweetest privileges may become snares if they are not used aright. Anything that comes between the soul and God, even though it be a gift from Him, is a snare. On the other hand each one is to recognize his personal responsibility to minister what the Lord may give. Two principles seem to be involved, which though, of course, not contradictory are clearly distinct:the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and individual gift and responsibility for its use, on the other. At a general meeting, or any meeting, these principles are to be remembered and acted upon, not only when such a meeting may be in session, but during the intervals as well. A spirit of prayer should mark all our gatherings. Where God is thus owned and waited upon, there is little difficulty as to details. We do not believe it to be a mark of spirituality to sit in barren silence. Such silences are often a reproof for our lack of prayer and faith, and are alas too often broken in upon in mere fleshly energy. A mere "open meeting" will not remedy this. God must be waited upon, must be counted upon. It is this we are sure our brother would emphasize. May we not ask ourselves if the intervals between the meetings might not be given more to prayer, to silent meditation, or godly converse? We are persuaded that this is done in good measure, but may we not "abound more and more"? A sweet sense of God’s gracious presence with us will result, and a quiet restfulness of spirit which is ready to be silent before Him, to hearken to others, or to speak ourselves, will mark our coming together.

Where this is the case the nature of the meeting will be easily understood. Those who have a word from God will be ready to give it, while those with a longer message will not hold back. Each will feel his responsibility.

But we do not think that this will necessarily exclude the lecture, or even its announcement beforehand. If a reading meeting is announced beforehand, may not a lecture also? If there be present servants of the Lord from whose ministry we have profited before, is there any denial of the Spirit’s control, after waiting upon God, to give a meeting to such, in which it is understood that the meeting is entirely in the hands of the speaker, to use as God may guide? We do not think that such meetings should exclude the open meeting, nor, as our brother suggests, that even at an open meeting a long address may not be given. But it is merely a question of fellowship, whether a brother should not be conferred with beforehand as to whether he has it upon his heart to give us a lecture. Some of the most precious ministry we have received has been given to us in this way.

We need hardly say that such meetings should form but part of the general meeting. Ample time should be given for Bible readings and for the open meeting.

With regard to the open meeting, the saints we fear shrink from their responsibility. "Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge " (i Cor. 14:29). We have here a twofold responsibility:the prophets are to speak "two or three," not in unlimited numbers, and the rest are to judge. Those who speak are to do so "as the oracles of God." What dependence, what holy fear, what singleness of eye are here involved. They are to speak too in limited numbers, "two or three." Saints are confused by a multiplicity of addresses. Doubtless this has been frequently ignored, to our loss.

But there is another side of this responsibility which is perhaps even more overlooked. It relates not to the speakers, but to the hearers:"Let the others judge." This does not mean, let them criticize. That alas, is too common, and nothing grieves and quenches the Spirit more quickly. But the hearers are to discern the Lord’s mind as to what has been spoken. They are to try the words, " For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat. Let us choose to us judgment:let us know among ourselves what is good" (Job 34:3, 4). It is just here that firmness and love find their place. Instead of speaking disparagingly of a brother’s failure, or of the unsuitableness of his remarks, the responsibility of the saints is plain. They are to speak to such a brother, not of him. We believe this would most effectually check the spirit of criticism. If a brother manifestly violates the liberty of the Spirit, he should be spoken with gently, but firmly. It is this that will help to clear the open meeting from the reproach that rests upon it. We believe that if the forwardness and irrelevancy, so often deplored in secret, were charged to the brethren who offend-in all love and kindness-there would not be such shrinking from the open meeting. These precious privileges are of too great value to be trifled with for fear of offending a brother. If he is in a right state he will not be offended by the "faithful wounds" of a friend.

May we be permitted to add a further word as to the general meeting? We are sure the hearts of many have been pained by the great number of hymns given out at meetings for breaking bread, and the general spirit of forwardness that sometimes has marked that holy season. Far be it from us to say a word that would check Christian liberty or put a damper upon Christian joy. But the heart yearns for the chastened quiet, broken only by the leading of the Spirit of God. Then a hymn will be the echo of heavenly praise, and every word will lift the heart to God.

We have much, very much to thank God for, but we trust we are not so satisfied with ourselves as not to "suffer a word of exhortation."

The man that has seen Christ, has seen the greatest wonder that God can shew him; only he has seen but little of Christ yet, for it will take eternity fully to exhibit His glories.

"When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me . . He will bring me forth unto the light, and I shall behold His righteousness." (Micah.)

The best of life is near its close,
For there is light at eventide;
Faith’s estimate of Christ’s the cause,
And to the last will He abide.

Life has not all been bright afore;
My day has mostly been a night,-
Life’s good was blighted to the core,
The star of hope my only light.

And was this God’s permissive will?
I bow, and wonder, and adore;
Life’s sea ‘s now calm; He said," Be still."
And He will guide to the blest shore.

No goodness in myself I see;
What faltering in the darksome way!
All is of grace through Christ to me,
And grace has turned my night to day.

And soon He’ll come who is the Light,
The Sun will rise and never wane;
Life’s day will then be always bright,
The child of day, "in life shall reign."

And should I not in flesh remain
Until He come, but fail and die,
The Word affirms," To die is gain,"
What gain to be with Him on high!

And when He comes and gives a "shout,"
His dead will "rise," be " caught " away,
With those "alive," the Lord to meet,
And with Him be in endless day.

Oh, blessed be His peerless name,
What joy to see Him face to face!
While waiting here, I’ll spread His fame,
And lastly shout," Saved, saved by grace!’

R. H.

(Concluded.)

The great body of discipline ought to be altogether aimed at hindering excommunication, the putting of a person out. Nine-tenths of the discipline which ought to go on is individual. If it comes to the question of the exercise of the discipline of "the Son over His own house," the Church ought never to take it up, but in self-identification, in confession of common sin and shame, that it has come ever to this. So it would be no court of justice at all, but a disgrace to the body. Spirituality in the Church would purge out hypocrisy, defilement, and everything unworthy, without assuming a judicial aspect. Nothing should be so abhorrent, as that, in God’s house, such a thing had happened. If it were in one of our houses that something dishonorable and disgraceful had happened, should we go on and feel as though we were altogether unconcerned, that we had nothing to do with it? It might be that some reprobate son must be put out, for the sake of the others-he cannot be reclaimed, and he is corrupting the family-what can be done? It is necessary to say, "I cannot keep you here; I cannot corrupt the rest by your habits and manners." Would it not, nevertheless, be for weeping and mourning, for sorrow of heart, and shame and dishonor to the whole family? They would not like to talk on the subject; and others would retrain from it to spare their feelings:his name would not be mentioned. In the house of the Son, how abhorrent to be putting out! what common shame! what anguish! what sorrow! There is nothing more abhorrent to God than a judicial process.

The Church is indeed plunged in corruption and weakness; but this is the very thing that would make one cling to the saints, and the more anxiously maintain the individual responsibility of those who have any gift for pastoral care. There is nothing I pray for more, than the dispensation of pastors. What I mean by a pastor is a person who can bear the whole sorrow, care, misery, and sin of another on his own soul, and go to God about it, and bring from God what will meet it, before he goes to the other.

There is another thing most clear. The result may be putting out; but if it ever comes to a corporate act in judgment, discipline ends the moment he is put out, and ends altogether-"Do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth" (i Cor. 5:12).

The question whether I can sit down with this or that person who is within never arises. A person staying away from communion (because of another, of whom he does not think well, being there) is a most extraordinary thing; he is excommunicating himself for another’s sake. " For we, being many, are one bread [loaf], and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread" (i Cor. 10:17). If I stay away, I am excommunicating myself, because another has gone wrong. That is not the way to act. There may be a step to take, but it is not to commit the folly of excommunicating myself, lest a sinner should intrude.

All discipline until the last act is restorative. The act of putting outside, of excommunication, is not (properly speaking) discipline, but the saying that discipline is ineffective, and there is an end of it; the Church says, " I can do no more."

As to the question of unanimity in cases of church-discipline, we must remember, it is the Son exercising His discipline over His own house. In the case in Corinthians it was the direct action of Paul in apostolic power on the body, and not of the Church. The body claiming a right to exercise discipline! one cannot conceive a more terrible thing; it is turning the family of God into a court of justice. Suppose the case of a father going to turn out of-doors a wicked son, and the other children of the family saying, "We have a right to help our father in turning our brother out of the house," what an awful thing! We find the apostle forcing the Corinthians to exercise discipline, when they were not a bit disposed to do so. " Here (he says) there is sin among you, and ye are not mourning, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you (he is forcing them to the conviction that the sin is theirs, as well as that of the man); and now put away from among yourselves that wicked person." The Church is never in the place of exercising discipline until the sin of the individual becomes the sin of the Church, recognized as such.

There is all this,-"Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear" (i Tim. 5:20), "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such," etc., and the like; but, if evil has arisen of such a character as to demand excommunication, instead of the Church having a right to put away, it is obliged to do it. The saints must approve themselves clear. He forces these people into the recognition of their own condition, gets them ashamed of themselves-they retire from the man-and he is left alone to the shame of his sin. (See 2 Cor. 2:and 7:) That is the way the apostle forced them to exercise discipline. The conscience of the whole Church was forced into cleanness in a matter of which it was corporately guilty. And what trouble he had to do it! That is, I think, the force of ‘’ To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also:for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; lest Satan should get an advantage over us:for we are not ignorant of his devices." What the devil was at was this-the apostle had insisted upon the excommunication (i Cor. 5:3-5); and the assembly did not like it. He compelled them to act; they did it in the judicial way, and did not want to restore him (2 Cor. 2:6, 7). Then he makes them go along with him in the act of restoration; "to whom ye forgive," etc The design of Satan was to introduce the wickedness, and make them careless about it, and, afterwards, judicial; and then to make it an occasion of separation of feeling between the apostle and the body of saints at Corinth. Paul identifies himself with the whole tody, first forcing them to clear themselves, and then taking care that they should all restore him, that there should be perfect unity between himself and them. He goes with them, and associates them with himself, in it all; and so, in both excommunication and restoration, he has them with him. If the conscience of the body is not brought up to what it acts, to the point of purging itself by the act of excommunication, I do not see what good is done:it is merely making hypocrites of them.

The house is to be kept clean. The Father’s care over the family is one thing; the Son’s over "his own house," another. The Son commits the disciples to the care of the Holy Father (John 17:), this is distinct from having the house in order. In John 15:he says, "I am the true vine," "ye are the branches," "my Father is the husbandman," etc., it is all the Father’s care. The Father purges the branches, to the end they may bear as much fruit as possible. But in the case of the Son over His own house, it is not individual, but the house kept clean. "If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged," etc.

There are then these three kinds of discipline:- 1st.That of brotherly relationship. Here I go as a person wronged, but it must be with grace.

2nd. That of fatherly care-the Father exercising it with loving-kindness and tenderness, as over an erring child.

3rd. Where the Son is over His own house, and where we have to act in the responsibility of keeping the house clean, that people should have their consciences according to the house in which they are- not only the individual, but the house, the body:the conscience of the body must act. The effect may be, graciously, that the individual is restored, but that is a collateral thing. When you come, to that point, there is something besides restoring; there is the responsibility of keeping the house clean-the conscience of all there; and that may sometimes give a great deal of trouble.

As to the nature of all this, the spirit in which it should be conducted, it is priestly; and the priests ate the sin-offering within the holy place (Lev. 10:). I do not think any person or body of Christians can exercise discipline, unless as having the conscience clear, as having felt the power of the evil and sin before God, as if he had himself committed it. Then he does it as needful to purge himself. It will all be for positive mischief-the dealing with it, if not so. What character of position does Jesus hold now? That of priestly service. And we are associated with Him. If there were more of the priestly intercession implied by eating of the sin-offering within the holy place, there would be no such abomination as that of the Church assuming a judicial character. Suppose the case of a family, in which a brother had committed something disgraceful, would it not be for bitterness and anguish of the whole family? What common anxiety and pain of heart it would occasion! Does Christ not feed upon the sin-offering? does He not feel the sorrow? does He not charge Himself with it? He is the Head of His body, the Church:is He not wounded and pained in a member? Yes it is so. If it be a case of individual remonstrance with a brother for a fault, I am not fit to rebuke him, unless my soul has been in priestly exercise and service about it, as though I had been in the sin myself. How does Christ act? He bears it on His heart and pleads about it to draw out the grace that will remedy it. So with the child of God:he carries the sin upon his own heart into the presence of God; he pleads with the Father, as a priest, that the dishonor done to Christ’s body, of which he is a member, may be remedied. This I believe to be the spirit in which discipline should be exercised. But here we fail. We have not grace to eat the sin-offering. I come to church-action and there I find yet more:it should go and humble itself until it has cleared itself. This is the force to me of "ye have not mourned," etc.; there was not sufficient spirituality at Corinth to take and bear the sin at all; "You ought to have been bowed down there, brokenhearted, and broken in spirit at such a thing not being put out-concerned as to the cleanness of Christ’s house."
It is another part of priestly service to separate between clean and unclean. The priests were not to drink wine nor strong drink, that they might keep themselves in a spiritual state by the habits of the sanctuary, being able to discern between clean, etc. This is always true. We must take as our object, in dealing with evil, God’s object. God’s house is the scene and place of God’s order. If it be said, that the woman must "have power [a covering] on her head because of the angels" (i Cor. 11:10), it is as the exhibition of God’s order. Nothing should be permitted in the house that angels could not come in and approve. All is in thorough ruin; the full glory of the house will be manifested when Christ comes in glory, and not till then; but we should desire that, as far as possible, by the energy of the Holy Ghost, there should be correspondence in spirit and manner with what shall be hereafter. When Israel returned from the captivity, after Lo-ammi had been written upon them, and the glory had departed from the house, the public manifestation was gone, but Nehemiah and Ezra could find that in which to act according to God’s mind. That is our present condition. But we have now what they had not:we were always a remnant, we began at the end -"Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them "(Matt. 18:20). If the whole corporate system has come to nought, I get back to certain unchangeable blessed principles from which all is derived. The very thing from which all springs, to which Christ has attached, not only His name, but His discipline-the power of binding and loosing-is the gathering together of the "two or three." This is of the greatest possible comfort. The great principle remains true amidst all the failure.

If we turn to John 20:we find that when He sent forth His disciples, He breathed on them and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost:whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." There is nothing like a corporate church system here; but the energy of the Holy Ghost in spiritual discernment in the disciples, as sent from Christ, and acting on behalf of Christ. Discipline is a question of the energy of the Spirit. If that which is done is not done in the power of the Holy Ghost, it is nothing.

In principle, what was needed has been said. I do not see any difference, whether it be in the hands of a remnant, or anything else; because then we get into the structure of a judicial process at once-sinners judging sinners. It is, first of all, a question what the energy of the Spirit is for ministry in God’s house. The unanimity is a unanimity of having consciences exercised and forced into discipline. It is a terrible thing to hear sinners talking about judging another sinner; but a blessed thing to see them exercised in conscience about sin come in among themselves. It must be in grace. I no more dare act, save in grace, than I could wish judgment to myself. "Judge not, that ye be not judged:for with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (Matt. 7:1, 2). If we go to exercise judgment, we shall get it.

As to the difficulty of saints meeting together, where there is not pastorship, my prayer is that God would raise up pastors; but I believe where there were brethren meeting together, and walking together on brotherly principles, provided they kept to their real position and did not set about making churches, they would be just as happy as others in different circumstances. One thing I would pray for, because I love the Lord’s sheep, is that there might be shepherds. I know nothing, next to personal communion with the Lord, so ‘blessed as the pastor feeding the Lord’s sheep, the Lord’s flock; but it is the Lord’s flock. I see nothing about a pastor and his flock; that changes the whole aspect of things. When it is felt to be the Lord’s flock a man has to look over, what thoughts of responsibility, what care, what zeal, what watchfulness! I do not see anything so lovely. " Lovest thou Me? . . . feed My sheep-feed My lambs." I know nothing like it upon earth-the care of a true-hearted pastor, one who can bear the whole burden of grief and care of any soul and deal with God about it. I believe it is the happiest, most blessed relationship that can subsist in this world. But we are not to suppose that the "great Shepherd" cannot take care of His own sheep because there are no under-shepherds. If there were those who met together and hung on the Lord, if they did not pretend to be what they were not, though there were no pastors among them, there would be no danger; they would infallibly have the care of that Shepherd. We must not impute our failure to God, as though He could not take care of us. The moment power in the Spirit is gone, power in the flesh comes in. J. N. D.

What a mighty influence this world exerts over us! It is ever interweaving something into the framework of our hourly life; drawing a film between the soul and God, and deadening the keenness and sensibility of our spiritual perceptions. There is no moment when it is not upon us. Like the law of gravitation, which universally takes effect wheresoever it is not kept out by a special counteraction, so is it in our intercourse with the world. All the day long there is an influence playing upon us which draws our characters to the surface, and there fixes them; it rushes upon us with an overwhelming torrent; enters into the soul through our eyes and ears, and every inlet of the senses; through our instincts, our wants, and our natural affections; smothering or extinguishing every thing that would lead to something higher; each day drawing a fresh, hard layer over the heart; each energy laying another touch on the deepening character, and every moment fixing its colors with deeper steadfastness, until we live and act as if it were our only home.

For all this, we need a strong counteracting influence. Our life is too outward and visible among the throng of men; we are not enough alone with God; we live in the unreal, and become unreal ourselves. There must be the calmness of intercourse with God. God’s presence is full of reality; and His presence must be the antidote to the withering blight and the hourly infection of this world, and must abolish in us all that is not real and eternal. Never do we so put off the paint and masquerade of life as when alone with Him. The duplicities of the heart, which the world had interweaved, are held in check, and by habitual communion with God are weakened and overcome. This is the only counteracting and transforming influence; and think as we will, we may rely upon it, that, if we are not under it, the world will most surely and deeply conform us to itself.

In our intercourse with it, a thousand tests touch us on every side; and if we would maintain uninterruptedly our communion with God, we must also be watchful. We must watch against sin, against the world, and against self.

We must watch against sin. Nothing so darkens the soul as sin, or produces so deadening an insensibility. And it gains an entrance with inconceivable subtlety. Just as we contract slight peculiarities of manner, tone, and gait, without knowing it, so in like manner, does the soul become warped and darkened by sin. It can hide itself from the conscience; it is most concealed at its highest pitch; and when it is at the worst, it is least perceived-it has no sensible pain. Thus our insensibility becomes continuous. We come to live without any true relation to the presence of God; consenting to the darkness of our own hearts; cold and dead in our affections; formal and lifeless in prayer; and the whole moral and spiritual nature estranged from God. Pride and vanity, self-complacency and envy, scornfulness and wrath- all follow in the train of this spiritual deterioration.

This is the cause of much of the insensibility and deadness of which people so often complain. Sins unconfessed and forgotten lie festering in the dark; and our whole communion with God and our spiritual character suffer in all its parts and powers. It is the deadness and insensibility consequent on this that obstructs the spiritual life, and thrusts itself between the soul and" the presence of God.

For all this, there is only one remedy-immediate confession. Come and throw yourself in to the arms of everlasting Love! Open the heart, with all its sins and stains, to Jesus. His love is the light in which we shall see our sins, and the light in which we shall see them forgiven.

Let nothing harbor or fester in the heart. If sins be allowed to linger, they will only taint and estrange it more; the sins and spiritual decays of to-day will run on into to-morrow, and to-morrow will begin with an inclination to a lower tone. One day heaps its sin upon another, and our spiritual decline gains in speed as it gains in time. In this, there is one specially alarming thought-the degrees are so shadowy, and the transitions so imperceptible, that it is like a motion too slow to be measured by the eye, or so intense as to seem like rest. If we are not much in the presence of the Lord, these decays will be always advancing.

The true secret of preserving our spirituality of mind, and maintaining our communion with God is, to bring our sin to Jesus the moment it is committed, and while it is fresh on the soul. In the street, in the throng, in the routine of every-day life, let the heart go up in unreserved confession. Let us guard against hesitation. Hesitation brings reasons for delay, and delay opens the door for forgetfulness. One moment’s delay brings unknown hindrances. The suggestions of God’s Spirit are like the flowing of the tide, which, taken at the full, will lift us over every bar-tarry and lose them, and we are stranded! Let us go at once to Jesus with them all. So shall the "blood of sprinkling" be precious to our souls, and we too shall " walk with God."

We must watch against the world. On many Christians, this world weighs heavily, and lowers them to its own standard. Only the few rise above it. All its efforts are exerted to shut out the stern reality of the cross. Its pleasures and amusements, its mirth and its songs, its religion and its worship, find no place there, and cannot go with us into the presence of the Lord. Let us watch against the standard and tone of its society, against the spirit of its social life. To mingle with it in safety to the soul there needs gifts the very reverse of which make men its favorites-caution, retirement, silence; and its tone and spirit will surely be caught up unless we are in habitual intercourse with God.

We must watch against self. Unless God be the center of the soul, it will be a center to itself. Such a spirit is a deliberate contradiction of Him who made Himself of no reputation. Let us watch against ourselves; our self-pleasing and self-love; our tempers and our spirits; our inclinations and our aims; our desires and our imaginations; our thoughts and our words. Let us bring them all into His presence. There we shall see them as they are. There we shall learn the true character of them and of ourselves. It the light of His presence there are no illusions. All the colors and shadows, the false and changeful hues, the gloss and the glitter which we put upon ourselves in the world, and even in the light of our own conscience, are there dispelled. Thus shall our souls be filled with His brightness, and we shall ‘’ glorify God both in our bodies and in our spirits, which are God’s."

The Throne of God and of the Lamb.

The Lamb is the well-known title of Christ in the Apocalypse, the book of the future. It expresses the patience of His humiliation, even to the death of the cross; but it characterizes Him still in glory. Even when the apostle is told of the Lion of the tribe of Judah having prevailed to open the book, the vision assures him that it is a " Lamb, as it had been slain."

The connection between the humiliation and glory is familiar to us. Because of that wondrous humiliation "God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11).

This is His personal exaltation, and as Man. He has descended and is now ascended up, far above all heavens, and sits upon the Father’s throne, waiting there until His foes are made His footstool. All things are to be put under His feet, though as yet we do not see this.

The Kingdom of the Son of Man, His millennial reign, is that in which this is accomplished. He has then a throne which He can share with others, as the Father’s throne He cannot (Rev. 3:21); and the saints reign with Him a thousand years.

But while the Father thus glorifies His Son, for the Son His personal exaltation is not the object. He takes the Kingdom to bring all things into eternal order, and thus bring in the rest of God. Having done this, the Kingdom in this form is given up; its object is achieved; "and when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all" (i Cor. 15:28).

We can in this way understand both why the Kingdom lasts for comparatively so short a period, and yet why it occupies so large a place in the field of prophecy. In the Old Testament, save in Isaiah’s promise of a new heavens and earth, we never get beyond it. And even in the New, while that promise is expanded for us in the sweet picture with which we are all familiar (Rev. 21:1-8), yet that which follows of the New Jerusalem goes back immediately, as to the time of view, to the millennium again. Only in this way could the leaves of the tree of life be for the healing of the nations (22:2).

Beyond the thousand years the city itself abides, for it is eternal; and here is for us the fullest view that the book of Revelation affords with regard to the eternal state. Yet it is both brief and enigmatic; and the eyes that have been upon it for many generations have ever yearned to see more clearly what is portrayed in it.

But upon this we do not mean to dwell at present. We are following, as we may, the Christ of God through all that changes into the changeless blessedness. What can we know of it? Little, perhaps, indeed; but we may at least distinguish some things that need to be, and where Scripture seems clear enough to save us from any presumptuous speculation in the matter.

For many-and some even of those who are theoretically clearer-the millennium has been practically too much identified with the eternal condition. It has given too much its character to eternity; while, on the other hand, I think it will be found that sometimes that which is eternal has been thought of as millennial.

The millennium, with that which immediately follows and connects with it, is a period of formation, -of labor, not of rest. First, things are set in order morally and spiritually; then physically also. It applies also to the earth solely; not (in the higher sense of the word) to heaven. The "new heavens" are firmamental, the heavens of the second creative day.

Now, as to the reign, when it is said of the saints that they reign with Christ a thousand years, we might naturally think that they would cease to reign, then, after this. Yet we find it said of those in the heavenly city, "they shall reign for ever and ever," (or "the ages of ages ") the strongest expression used for eternity. And this may remind us that before the thrones are seen set up as to the earth (chap. 20:4), and before even the Lamb has taken the book in heaven (chap. 5:7), we have seen thrones around the throne of God (chap. 4:4) and those occupying them who afterwards sing the song of redemption, and are therefore redeemed men (5:9). Is there not here implied plainly a reign which, as it begins before the millennial reign, will not be limited by it?

As to the Lord Jesus, "all authority " is already His "in heaven and on earth " (Matt. 28:18), and yet He has not taken His throne as Son of Man. He is on the Father’s throne, which is not divided nor circumscribed by that "Kingdom of His dear Son," into which already He has "translated" us (Col. 1:13). Thus we cannot limit Christ’s reign by the Kingdom of the Son of Man. And when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, "that God may be all in all," will that "Kingdom of the Father" more exclude His sovereignty? If all authority be His now, has it shut out the Father? Will the Kingdom of the Father any more shut out the Son?

If we need a more direct answer to such a question, we shall find it in what is said of the heavenly city, that " the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it." It is but one throne:two there could not be; and it is characterized in this way, as the " throne of God and of the Lamb." That which speaks of the lowest depths of humiliation gone into is joined with the incommunicable Name of glory:it is added to that to which no addition would seem possible. God accepts this addition; yet not as if it were the acceptance of anything extraneous to Himself:nay, in it He is become manifest in a glory before which the hosts of heaven prostrate themselves in adoring wonder. In the Lamb God has found the expression of Himself He has been ever seeking,-the means of pouring out unhindered the fulness which shall make His creatures full:and thus from the throne of God and of the Lamb issues the stream of the water of life.
That it is the "throne of God" declares at once that here we have before us what is eternal:not dispensational, not temporary. "That God may be all in all," the Lamb has brought Him down to the lower parts of the earth, and taken humanity up to the height of heaven. The Lamb is henceforth the "Lamp " of divine light; as "the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple " of the city, the unveiled Presence in which worship shall be alike free and necessary. The mystery of the Person of Christ is the assurance that in no way whatever can God and the Lamb be separated ever.

But what an overwhelming thought it is, humanity united thus to Godhead, the Crucified upon the throne of God? And we, whom He has taken up from the depths in which He found us, to declare in us the fulness of divine self-sacrificing love,-we are following on to see Him where He is, with eyes at last able to behold His glory; changed ourselves into His likeness! (Concluded.) F. W. G.

The clear and soul-stirring blast of Gideon’s trumpet had drawn around him a very large and imposing company; but this company had to be tested. It is one thing to be moved by the zeal and energy of some earnest servant of Christ, and it is quite another thing to possess those moral qualities which alone can fit a man to be an earnest servant himself. There is a vast difference between following in the wake of some devoted man of God, and walking with God ourselves – being propped up and led on by the faith and energy of another, and leaning upon God in the power of individual faith for ourselves.

This is a serious consideration for all of us. There is always great danger of our being mere imitators of other people’s faith; of copying their example without their spiritual power; of adopting their peculiar line of things without their personal communion. All this must be carefully guarded against. We specially warn the young Christian reader against it. Let us be simple, and humble, and real. We may be very small, our sphere narrow, our path very retired; but it does not matter, provided we are precisely what grace has produced and occupying the sphere in which our blessed Master has set us, and treading the path which He has opened before us. It is by no means absolutely necessary that we should be great, or prominent, or showy, or noisy in the world; but it is absolutely necessary that we should be real and humble, obedient and dependent. Thus our God can use us, without fear of our vaunting ourselves; and then, too, we are safe, peaceful, and happy. There is nothing more delightful to the true Christian, the genuine servant of Christ, than to find himself in that quiet, humble, shady path where self is lost sight of, and the precious light of God’s countenance enjoyed-where the thoughts of men are of small account, and the sweet approval of Christ is everything to the soul.

Flesh cannot be trusted. It will turn the very service of Christ into an occasion of self-exaltation. It will use the very name of Him who made Himself nothing in order to make itself something. It will build up its own reputation by seeming to further the cause of Him who made Himself of none. Such is flesh! Such are we in ourselves! Silly, self-exalting creatures, ever ready to vaunt ourselves, while professing to be nothing in ourselves, and to deserve nothing but the flames of an everlasting hell.

Need we marvel at the testing and proving of Gideon’s companions? All must be tested and proved. The service of Christ is a very solemn and a very holy thing; and all who take part therein must be self-judged, self-distrusting, and self-emptied; and not only so, but they must lean, with unshaken confidence, upon the living God. These are the grand qualities that go to make up the character of the true servant of Christ, and they are strikingly illustrated on the page of inspiration which now lies open before us.

Let us proceed with the narrative.

" The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands … therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand" (Judg. 7:2,3).
Here the first grand test is applied to Gideon’s host – a test designed to bring out the measure of the heart’s simple confidence in Jehovah. A coward heart will not do for the day of battle; a doubting spirit will not stand in conflict. The same principle is set forth in Deuteronomy 20:8:"And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart."

Faint-heartedness is terribly contagious. It spreads rapidly. It withers the arm that should bear the shield, and paralyzes the hand that should wield the sword. The only cure for this malady is simple confidence in God, a firm grasp of His faithfulness, a child-like trust in His word, true personal acquaintance with Himself. We must know God for ourselves, in such a way that His word is everything to us, and that we can walk alone with Him, and stand alone with Him in the darkest hour.

Reader, is it thus with thee? Hast thou this blessed confidence in God-this solid hold of His word? Hast thou, deep down in thy heart, such an experimental knowledge of God and His Christ as shall, sustain thee even though thou hadst not the support or sympathy of another believer under the sun? Art thou prepared to walk alone in the world?

These are weighty questions, and we feel the need of pressing them upon the Church of God at the present moment. There is a wide diffusion of the precious truth of God, and numbers are getting hold of it. Like the blast of Gideon’s trumpet, so the clear testimony which has widely gone forth of late years has attracted many; and while we quite feel that there is real ground for thankfulness in this, we also feel that there is ground for very serious reflection indeed. Truth is a most precious thing, if it be truthfully found and truthfully held:but let us remember that in exact proportion to the preciousness of the truth of God so is the moral danger of trafficking therein without a self-judged heart and an exercised conscience. What we really need is faith-unfeigned, earnest, simple faith, which connects the soul, in living power, with God, and enables us to overcome all the difficulties and discouragements of the way. Of this faith there can be no imitation. We must either possess it in reality or not at all. A sham faith will speedily come to the ground. The man who attempts to walk by faith, if he have it not, must speedily totter and fall. We cannot face the hosts of Midian unless we have full confidence in the living God. " Whosoever is fearful and afraid, ‘let him return." Thus it must ever be. None can go to battle save those who are braced up by a faith that grasps the unseen realities of eternity, and endures as seeing Him who is invisible. May this faith be ours, in larger measure, beloved reader.

It is full of instruction for the heart to notice the effect of the first test upon the host of Gideon. It thinned his ranks amazingly. "There returned of the people twenty and two thousand, and there remained ten thousand." This was a serious reduction. But it is far better to have ten thousand that can trust God than ten thousand times ten thousand who cannot. Of what use are numbers, if they be not energized by a living faith? None whatever. It is comparatively easy to flock around a standard raised by a vigorous hand; but it is a totally different thing to stand, in personal energy, in the actual battle. Nought but genuine faith can do this; and hence when the searching question is put, "Who can trust God?" the showy ranks of profession are speedily thinned.

But there was yet another test for Gideon’s companions. "And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there:and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water:and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men:but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand:and let all the other people go every man unto his place " (7:4-7).

Here then we have another great moral quality which must characterize those who will act for God and His people, in an evil day. They must not only have confidence in God, but they must also be prepared to surrender self. This is a universal law in the service of Christ. If we want to swim in God’s current, we must sink self; and we can only sink self in proportion as we trust Christ. It is not, need we say, a question of salvation; it is a question of service. It is not a question of being a child of God, but of being a proper servant of Christ. The thirty-one thousand seven hundred that were dismissed from Gideon’s army, were just as much Israelites as the three hundred that remained; but they were not fitted for the moment of conflict; they were not the right men for the crisis. And why? Was it that they were not circumcised? Nay. What then? They could not trust God and surrender self. They were full of fear when they ought to have been full of faith. They made refreshment and comfort their object instead of conflict.

Here, reader, lay the true secret of their moral unfit-ness. God cannot trust those who do not trust Him and sink self. This is pre-eminently solemn and practical. We live in a day of easy profession and self-indulgence. Knowledge can, now-a-days, be picked up at very small cost. Scraps of truth can be gathered, second hand, in all directions. Truth which cost some of God’s dear servants years of deep soul-ploughing and heart-searching exercise, is now in free circulation and can be intellectually seized and flippantly professed, by many who know not what soul-ploughing or heart-exercise means.

But let us never forget – yea, let us constantly remember – that the life of faith is a reality; service is a reality; testimony for Christ, a reality. And further let us bear in mind that if we want to stand for Christ in an evil day – if we would be men for the crisis, genuine servants, true witnesses – then verily we must learn the true meaning of those two qualities, namely, confidence in God, and self-surrender.

There is something peculiarly striking in the fact that out of the many thousands of Israel, in the days of Gideon, there were only three hundred men who were really fit for conflict with the Midianites; only this small band fit for the occasion. This truly is a suggestive and admonitory fact. There were hundreds of thousands of true Israelites-truly circumcised sons of Abraham-members of the congregation of the Lord, who were by no means up to the mark, when it was a question of war to the knife with Midian-a question of genuine confidence in God and self-surrender. We are safe in saying that the men who were morally fitted for the grand crisis in the day of battle were not one in a thousand. How solemn! Not one in a thousand who could trust God and deny self.

Christian reader, is not this something worthy of deep and serious thought? Does it not, very naturally, suggest the inquiry as to whether it is otherwise at this moment? Is it not painfully evident that we live in a day in the which little is known of the blessed secret of confidence in God, and still less of the exercise of self-surrender? In point of fact, these things can never be rightly separated. If we attempt to divorce self-surrender from confidence in God, it will land us in the deep and dark delusions of monasticism, asceticism, or ritualism. It will issue in nature trying to subdue nature. This, we need hardly say, is the direct opposite of Christianity. This latter starts with the glorious fact that the old self has been condemned and set aside by the cross of Christ, and therefore it can be practically surrendered, every day, by the power of the Holy Ghost. This is the meaning of those fine words in Colossians 3:, " Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." He does not say, "Ye ought to be dead." No; but "ye are dead." What then? " Mortify your members which are on the earth." So also in the profound and precious teaching in Romans 6:, " How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto His death?" What then? " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Here then lies the secret of all true self-surrender. If this be not understood and practically entered into, it will simply be self in one form trying to subdue self in an other. This is a fatal delusion. It is a snare of the devil into which earnest souls are in imminent danger of falling, who sigh after holiness of life, but do not know the power of accomplished redemption, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost-are not built upon the solid foundation of Christianity.

We specially warn the reader against this insidious error. It distinctly savors of monasticism or asceticism. It clothes itself in the garb of pietism and sanctimoniousness, and is peculiarly attractive to a certain class of ardent spirits who long for victory over the lusts, passions, and tendencies of nature; but, not knowing how to attain it, are turning their back upon Christ and His cross, and betaking themselves to the resources of a spurious religion.

It is against this most mischievous and delusive system that the apostle warns us, in Colossians 2:,"Let no man," he says, "beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances "-such as,." touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using -after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom’ in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh" (Colossians 2:18-23).

We deem it needful to say thus much lest any of our readers should at all mistake us on the subject of self-surrender. We desire it to be distinctly understood that the only possible ground of self-surrender is the knowledge of accomplished redemption, and our union with Christ through the power of the Holy Ghost. This is the essential basis of all Christian conduct. In short, a known salvation is the basis; the Holy Ghost indwelling, the power; and the word of God, the directory of all true self-surrender.

But what did Gideon and his companions know of these things? Nothing, as Christians now know them. But ‘ they had confidence in God, and further, they did not make their own refreshment or comfort their object, but simply took it up by the way asa means to an end. Herein they teach a fine lesson even to those whose privilege it is to walk in the full light of New Testament Christianity. If they, in the dim twilight in which they lived, could trust God, and surrender self for the moment, even in measure, then what shall we say for ourselves who, with all our light and privileges, are so ready to doubt God and seek our own things?

Is it not painfully evident that, in this our day of light and privilege, there is but little moral preparedness for the path of service and conflict which we are called to tread? Alas! alas! we cannot deny it. There is a deplorable lack of genuine trust in the living God, and of the true spirit of self-surrender. Here, we may rest assured, is the deep secret of the whole matter. God is not practically known and habitually trusted; self is exalted and indulged. Hence our unfitness for the warfare, our failure in the day of battle. It is one thing to be saved, and quite another thing to be a soldier; and we cannot shake off the painful conviction that, in this day of widely extended profession, the proportion of work men and warriors would not be found a whit greater than it was in the days of Gideon and his companions. The fact is, we want men of faith, men whose hearts are fixed and their eyes single; men so absorbed with Christ and His cause that they have no time for aught beside. We greatly fear that, if the double test which was applied to Israel in the days of Gideon, were to be applied now to those who stand on the very highest platform of profession, the practical result would not differ very materially. C. H. M.

3.THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS AND THE GREAT TRIBULATION.

It is evident from what we have been considering that the writers from whom we have been quoting are involved in the same great error. Overlooking the meaning of the time-gap in which we are, and ignoring or belittling the mysteries which give Christianity its distinctive character, we can be said to be in the "last days " of Jewish prophets, and "partakers of the promise given through Abraham to the sons of Israel." There is but one passage that I know which may seem to assert the first, and that is the quotation of Joel by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17). But that is quoted to the Jews to whom through Christ’s intercession the mercy of God was yet giving time for repentance (Luke 13:8, 9), so that if even yet they repented nationally, the times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord, and He would send Jesus Christ again to them (Acts 3:19-21). This was soon ended by the rejection of the message.

That "in the end of these days " (of the prophets, ‘Heb. 1:2, Gk.) "God hath spoken to us by His Son" says nothing of our place in them, and no more than Heb. 9:26, which asserts what in reality is very different. The sanctuary could not have been opened for us if the ages of probation had not been actually ended for us; nor could the history of Israel have disclosed its types, if for us the "ends of the ages" had not "arrived."

Yet the "end of the age" has in the prophetic sense not yet arrived (Matt. 13:39; 28:20):so that we cannot be in it; and the age to come has still a probationary character for men at large. For us the cross of Christ has already manifested the character both of the flesh and the world, and we need nothing else to manifest it. But how important for us to realize the gap in prophetic time in which we stand.

We are now to go in company with some other writers who have given us their refutation-to themselves such-of the views for which we are contending here. If they come to us in fragmentary, and perhaps disorderly fashion, the responsibility is not our own. It is due very much to the lack of seriousness with which the subject seems to be taken up. As Mr. Cameron affirms, "None of the learned students of prophecy in Germany seem to think the modern vagary of a secret rapture of the Church before the end time is reached is worthy of serious consideration." We can but lament the influence which the attitude of these learned Germans seems to have exerted over others in this matter, even when they can afford some brief moments to it. Their language is too often tinged with a scorn which might be spared without injury to their arguments, and which can only impress favorably those for whom the larger part of the argument is the man who uses it. Their method seems to be to gather up a sheaf of statements in denial of what they are dealing with, point them with scripture references, and launch them at the unwelcome doctrine; leaving the point and propriety of the application often to be determined or taken for granted as suits best the temper of the reader. We shall have occasion to point this out as we proceed; but it certainly makes less easy the examination of arguments which have often to be first discovered, and perhaps unsuccessfully.
A tract is lying before me of twenty-one small pages, fourteen being taken up with an enumeration of the texts which have the words to show what the Scriptures say as to the question, "Can the Parousia (Coming in Person) of the Lord be separated from His Epiphaneia (Shining upon); or from His Apokalupsis (Revelation)?" The writer (Mr. Robert Brown) cautions us at the outset, "that positive and absolute statements of the Divine Word must of necessity be received before, and must therefore override, all inferences from other passages which seem to contradict them; as such inferences are, of course, merely human."

He concludes with some inferences of his own, which are, of course, as open to question as those of any other, and which we shall take up as such, but in the order which may be most convenient for us, and putting along with them the statements of other writers, as far as they may serve to give completeness to the subject before us.

But in the first place the question in the title of his tract is misleading, and as a consequence the classification of some of his texts likewise. For no one, as far as I am aware, would contend that the coming of the Lord could be separated from His manifestation or revelation. What is contended for is that the coming of the Lord into the air, as announced in i Thess. 4:, takes place previous to, and in fact some time previous to, His coming on to the earth with the saints He has gathered to Himself before. Both would be His coming; and therefore the merely quoting texts with the word "coming" in them would settle nothing.

But the passage itself declares that those who sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him; when He appears, therefore, they shall appear with Him. That the Thessalonians needed to know, that the dead had not lost their place with Him in that day. How then would this be accomplished? The dead would first be raised and the living then changed and caught up with them. And so they should be ever with the Lord.

It was in fact a new revelation, and so the apostle announces it as what he said "by the word of the Lord." The twenty-fifth of Matthew had shown that the living saints would go forth and meet Him, but had said nothing about the dead at that time. The apostle adds as to the dead. Dr. West indeed declares with his usual strong assertion, that "the word of the Lord" here is nothing but the Lord’s "Olivet discourse" (Matt. 24:; 25:). "It corrected the Thessalonian error as to the ‘any-moment view.’ Paul appeals to it to decide the question. He calls it the ‘word of the Lord.’ He had it on his table when he wrote both letters to the Thessalonians (!) He uses its very language. The seventieth week covers his own words in 2 Thess. 2:i-8."* *Daniel’s Great Prophecy, p. 130.* But that settles nothing as to what is here. Where is the declaration in the Lord’s prophecy as to the resurrection of the sleeping saints? One can only suppose that the gathering together of the elect from the four winds is taken to mean this; but the proof of it must be found, if found at all, elsewhere.
Moreover the apostle does not speak as if he were citing. In i Cor. 7:10, where he does cite, he says, "not I speak, but the Lord." Here it is the phrase used for a special revelation (See i Kings 13:2, 32; 2 Chron. 30:12; LXX.):"I say to you," but "by the word" or "a word of the Lord," (for there is no article,)-that is, by a revelation.

Our assurance of this will be still more confirmed if we consider that Paul it is to whom especially belongs the revelation of the "mysteries" (Eph. 3:3-9), among which is that of the Church as the body and bride of Christ (Eph. 5:32). Could there be a thing which required less (as we would suppose) a special revelation to make it known to him, than the institution of the Supper of the Lord? It is narrated by three of the evangelists, and as the common feast of Christians was known to every one; and yet, as showing forth in the participation of it the unity of the Body of Christ (i Cor. 10:17), and thus coming into the special sphere of his commission, it has to be the subject of a special revelation to him (i Cor. 11:23). It is therefore in perfect accordance with this that the taking home of the Bride (Eph. 5:27) should be in like manner the subject of a special communication. Thus everything unites to refute Dr. West’s assertion.

He has more, however, upon the subject of the resurrection of the saints which we must look at as nearly concerning us here. "Its time-point," he says, "is given with the utmost precision in the Scriptures. It is the time-point of the Second Advent for the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked, even as at the one time-point Noah and his family entered the ark, and the ungodly perished in the flood; and Israel was redeemed when Egypt was whelmed in the sea; and the Church fled to Pella when Jerusalem was destroyed. It is a time-point for both judgment and salvation. Asaph calls it the "shining of the Lord (Ps. 1. 1-6). Isaiah calls it His ‘appearing’ (66:5) in order to raise the holy dead, deliver Israel, destroy the Antichrist, and bring to victory the Kingdom. Five times in the Old Testament this illustrious Parousia of Christ is described, (1) as the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven (Dan. 7:13); (2) of the Conqueror from Bozrah descending over Edom (Isa. 63:1-6); (3) of the coming of the Lord to Olivet (Zech. 14:5); (4) and to Zion (Isa. 59:20); and (5) in clouds both for Judgment and Salvation (Ps. 1:1-6; 96:13; 97:2-8; 98:1-9; 110:1-7; 72:2, 4, 9-14, 18, 19; 113:2-17)."* *Daniel’s Great Prophecy, pp. 197, 198.*

That is not the whole, but we pause here for the present. It is a good specimen of the style of argument on the part of one of the liveliest opponents to what he calls the "Any Moment Theory." One naturally supposes that all these references are to establish the time-point of the resurrection of the saints. That is what he is speaking of; but by a turn which, if we are not to call "dexterous," we must ascribe to his perplexingly involved style, a number of texts which merely speak of judgment and salvation at the appearing of Christ, come to look as if they were proof-texts of what he is seeking to establish;-even the Church’s flight to Pella when Jerusalem was destroyed! Let us examine, however, as far as necessary, what he has set before us.

And first as to Noah and the flood, we may frankly admit the application to the coming of the Lord which He Himself makes (Matt. 24:37-41). "The one shall be taken and the other left." But we must handle such things more carefully than Dr. West:"taken" how and for what? Those whom resurrection takes out from among the dead are saints and taken for glory. At the rapture of the living saints, it is the same. In Noah’s time, " the flood came and took them all away;" those taken are the judged and not the saved.

When the Son of man comes in the clouds of heaven, there will be a real correspondence with this. When the purification of the earth is in question, as it will be then, "the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend." But that is neither dead nor living saints. The application here, therefore, fails entirely.

But Dr. West has forgotten Enoch; though, as a living saint removed to heaven before the judgment of the earth, he occupies a sufficiently striking position to attract attention. One who actually prophesied, Jude tells us, of the coming of the Lord, and seems to fill the gap that would otherwise be left in what is really a very striking picture of the times that are at hand. But the application fails Dr. West. If Enoch had been taken away at the time when those shut up in the ark were nearing deliverance, how readily would he have seen and seized so fair an argument.

But Israel was redeemed when Egypt was whelmed in the sea! True; but I see nothing that points in that either to the Coming, the Resurrection, or the Rapture:everything seems to be lacking here that would give even the semblance of proof of what it is cited for. That Israel will be actually delivered from her enemies again when the Lord appears is true, and her former history may typify her latter:but that shows nothing as to the Church or the risen saints.

As to the Church’s flight to Pella, we need not waste time in imagining arguments from it, for those who have not ventured upon the task of pointing them out to us.

And what does God shining forth out of Zion (Ps. 1.) prove as to the time-point of the resurrection of the saints? Is it possible that ver. 5 can be the proof? It is clearly Israel that is gathered, for the psalmist says so; and nothing about resurrection at all.

In Isa. 66:5, the Lord appears to deliver Israel; but there is not even a hint of resurrection or rapture in it. In Dan. 7:, the "saints of the high places," as "saints of the Most High "should rather be, if applied to heavenly saints, as I shall not at all deny when judgment is said to be given to them (vers. 18, 22), infers, of course, that they must be risen to reign as such. But nothing is said as to the time of their resurrection further than this. In Isa. 63:, there is nothing at all of resurrection or of rapture. In Zech. 11:5, as Dr. West would even himself contend, the "saints," or "holy ones" coming with the Lord are probably only the angels, and thus every trace of resurrection or rapture is removed; and there is none in any of the texts that follow.

There is perhaps no need of question that upon none of these texts cited would Dr. West ground a very serious argument for the precision with which the time of the resurrection is fixed in the Old Testament. His real texts have been given before, and we must now go back to see what they have to say as to the matter in hand. He says:-
"Decisive and clear are the words of the angel, ‘At that time,’ when Israel is delivered,-‘many shall awake (literally, be separated) out from among the sleepers in the earth-dust; these (who awake at that time) shall be unto everlasting life, but those (who do not awake at that time) shall be unto shame and everlasting contempt’ (Dan. 12:2). … It is the resurrection of the holy, and of Israel’s holy dead that here is predicted, as in Isa. 26:19, and the non-resurrection of the wicked ‘at that time (Is. 26:14)."

The translation here given of Daniel is an old Jewish one, not by any means commonly accepted, and yet certainly possible. The application to literal resurrection is in both cases questioned by many, though in Daniel less than in Isaiah; but it would be an unnecessary labor for our present purpose to examine this. The connection in Isa. 26:(which is not history nor historical prophecy, but a song to be sung at a future day,) is not of a nature to give any but the most general idea of the time of the resurrection, and certainly not of the relation of this to the "time of Jacob’s trouble." In Daniel, at first sight, it seems otherwise, and that, if it be a literal resurrection that is here, this must be after the tribulation. Yet Auberlen remarks as to this:"To show the causal connection between the behavior of the individuals during the time of probation and their eternal state-this is the sole purpose for which the resurrection is introduced; as to the chronological relation between the time of distress and the resurrection, not the slightest intimation is given. It is worthy of remark in relation to this point, that the phrase ‘at that time,’ occurs twice in 12:i, while no time is fixed in verses 2 and 3."* *Daniel and the Revelation:translated by A Saphir, p. 174.* This, of itself, seems a sufficient answer; but we shall see, as we go on that we might admit all that is claimed with regard to the order of time without in the least involving what Dr. West supposes.

But let us go on to the New Testament:as to this the same writer says:-

"Ten times this time-point is fixed at the close of the Great Tribulation, and is described (1) as the Lord’s coming with His saints, the Holy Angels, for His saints, the holy living and the holy dead – a ‘ gathering of His elect’ universally, involving first of all, the resurrection of the holy who sleep in the dust of the earth, then the rapture of these and the holy living ones, and their meeting of the Lord in the air (Matt. 24:29-31, 40, 41; 25:i); these scenes followed by the deliverance of converted Israel, – ‘these My brethren,’ (Matt. 25:40); the judgment of the nations (31-46), and the welcome to the Kingdom; (2) as a time-point for "our gathering together at Christ’ (2 Thess. 2:i), ‘in the air’ (i Thess. 4:17); (3) as the thief-time (Matt. 24:43); (4) as the coming to judge the World Power (Rev. 6:12-17); (5) as His coming under the seventh Trumpet, to vindicate the holy dead by their resurrection (Rev. 11:15-18); (6) as His coming to reap the holy living (Rev. 14:14-16); (7) and at the thief-time (Rev. 16:15); (8) and after the sixth vial (Rev. 16:12); (g)and to destroy Babylon (Rev. 16:19); (10) and the Antichrist (Rev. 19:11-21; (11) and to enthrone and reward His saints (Rev. 20:1-6) …. From Moses to Malachi, and from Matthew to the Apocalypse by John, the resurrection of the sleeping saints is placed at no other epoch than at the close of the ‘ Tribulation Great,’ and of the ‘ Warfare Great.’ "

Again we have a number of passages grouped together, with merely a few words of application to mark his point; otherwise supposed to speak plainly for the view for which he contends:for he uses no argument, takes no pains to remove misconceptions, or meet objections; those who examine them must do the whole work both for him and for themselves. We shall attempt it nevertheless, with the more courage, that it is, at least, an enumeration of all the points that he can make, with great apparent precision. Let us attempt the examination.

(1) The first passages are evidently interpreted for us, and the interpretation becomes part of the proof. The "gathering of His Elect "is made to involve the resurrection of the dead and the rapture of the living. Yet we may question whether it does either, or rather applies to the gathering of the elect nation, Israel, from their long dispersion. In all the first part of the Lord’s prophecy here to 24:42, Israel is manifestly in the foreground, as all other details show:in the very next verse to the one in question, the parable of the fig-tree for instance. As for the "deliverance of converted Israel" following these scenes, he can only appeal, to the words, " these My brethren," which certainly does not show where the deliverance comes in. There need not be the slightest question that the appearing of the Lord itself marks the deliverance of the Jews at Jerusalem (as Zech. 14:3-5); which makes. it natural to speak of the gathering of those scattered afar off. The place of Christians with reference to the coming is shown in the parables (comp. Matt. 13:34, 35); but if the appeal to 25:i is meant to make the " then " with which it commences prove that the rapture of the saints takes place at the time of the appearing, it will not bear the weight of such an argument. The parables are connected by their ends and not by their beginnings. For after this first going forth of the virgins, there is the tarrying of the Bridegroom, the falling asleep, the midnight cry, the rousing and going forth again,-all following the "then." Will it be contended that this all takes place at the time of the appearing, instead of giving us a history of centuries? Let Dr. West defend this, if he can. But indeed he has merely indicated a text and left it. The rest here is not in dispute.

(2) The next two references, from the two epistles to the Thessalonians, need nothing to be said, as we have no controversy with the Scriptures, and the argument is not produced. The first epistle we have looked at already.

(3) The third head takes us back to Matt. 24:43, and has nothing to do with either the resurrection or the rapture.

(4) The fourth brings us to Revelation; passing over the. decisive passages in the third, four and fifth chapters, as if they had no existence, and bringing us to the " Coming to judge the World-power " (chap. 6:12-17), to a passage which does not speak of it, but of the alarm in men’s minds as thinking of the Lamb’s day of wrath as having come.

(5) The fifth again gives us Dr. West’s interpretation "to vindicate the holy dead by the resurrection." The last words are his own, and a comparison with chap. 6:10 may well raise question of them. Yet did this refer in fact to the resurrection of the martyrs (chap. 20:4), there would not be the least perplexity growing out of this.

(6) As to chap. 14:14-16 again, it is the interpretation that is taken for the proof, as so often. There are harvests of various character and various times; and there is nothing to show that this is in the tare-field of Christendom. We shall have to look at the parable another time.

(7) The coming as a thief is to the world (i Thess. 5:2-4), and has in it no hint of the resurrection or the rapture; and (8) the eighth head is as little to the purpose here. Similarly the 9th and the 10th.

(11) One text only remains, and we shall consider it with Mr. Brown, Dr. West giving us no matter of contention really as to it. Our account with him is closed; although there may be something to add a little later:but as things stand we may certainly say that the strength of his argument is in no wise proportionate to the vigor of his language or the number of his texts.

Mr. Brown also contends that his texts prove that the saints are not to be raised before the great tribulation:-

"For they show that the saints are to be raised at Christ’s Parousia; and that this Parousia will not take place until Antichrist has come to the end of his career; for they tell us that he is to be destroyed ‘with the Epiphaneia’ of this ‘Parousia’ (2 Thess. 2:8), and that the saints only then ‘rest,’ when Christ Himself is thus revealed, 1:e. at His Apokalupsis (2 Thess. 1:7); when only they assume His likeness and are manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4; i John 3:1-3; i Thess. 4:17)."

We have the same peculiar manner of reference to texts that are not examined, as we have had before, the same putting in of words which are not in the texts, the same avoidance of opposing arguments and objections. One would think that our brethren had made a point of not reading the writings of those they are replying to. Think of people having need to refer us i Thess. 4:, which we have been constantly quoting in behalf of the views in question, to show us that the saints are to be raised at Christ’s Parousia! and then our needing to be shown that the manifestation of this Parousia destroys the wicked one. Why, we have been saying so all along; though perhaps without using the Greek word. What Mr. Brown needed to show us is that it is at the manifestation of the Parousia that the saints are raised.

Then he says that they "only then" rest when Christ is revealed; but it is Mr Brown who has put in the "only." The apostle tells the Thessalonians that they will have rest recompensed to them when their persecutors are troubled, putting these things together for the sake of the contrast; and it will be just as true when the Lord Jesus being revealed brings out the contrast, though the entrance into rest might be some time before. The next chapter shows that they were in danger of being led into the belief that their sufferings were a proof that the day of the Lord had come. Why, says the apostle, in the day of the Lord the opposite will be true:your enemies will be suffering, and you will be at rest.

But, says Mr. Brown, "only " at Christ’s revelation will they assume His likeness and be manifested with Him in glory! The passage in the first epistle of John does not say when we shall assume His likeness, but that when He appears we shall be in it:for to "see Him as He is" necessitates that. There is again no "only," which is a misleading addition to the text. The resurrection chapter (i Cor. 15:) shows that the dead in Christ are "raised in glory," and i Thess. 4:that the meeting with the Lord is "in the air." When we see Him, then, we shall be already in His likeness, and when He is manifested, we shall be manifested with Him. How can the last be made to eke out the proof that we must wait for that manifestation to be changed into His likeness?

"Moreover," continues Mr. Brown, "it is expressly stated elsewhere (Matt. 24:29-31) that the Parousia is not to take place till after, although it be ‘immediately after,’ that’ tribulation,’ while it is likewise stated that the martyrs under Antichrist (1:e. in the great tribulation) are to be partakers of the ‘first resurrection’ (Rev. 7:13-17; 20:4-6); and that this resurrection is to take place at Christ’s Parousia (i Cor. 15:23)! Now, as there are only two resurrections, (i Cor. 15:23, 24; John 5:25, 29; Acts 24:15; Rev. 20:4, 5), it is manifest that the saints are not to be raised before the ‘great tribulation"-a truth which is further confirmed by Dan. 7:21, 22, 25, which tell us that Antichrist made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the Kingdom."

We have looked at Matt. 24:sufficiently already, and have seen the mistake committed in supposing that the mere occurrence of the word "Parousia" proves anything in the matter. The question as to the martyrs in the tribulation having part in the first resurrection is one of more concern, and the consideration of it may give additional help as to some points which have been already before us.

In the revival of pre-millennial doctrine from its long slumber of centuries, the vision of the first resurrection given to John caused it to be thought that the saints that were to reign with Christ a thousand years were only the martyrs. It was not perceived, as it naturally had not been by the advocates of a "spiritual" resurrection, their predecessors, that there were here, in fact, two companies:first, thrones, upon which persons were sitting, to whom judgment was given; and then a company of martyrs, who alone were seen actually rising from the dead and joining the number of those already reigning.

Moreover these of the second company were not and could not be, all the martyrs that ever were, but specifically those that were slain for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and such as had not worshiped the beast, nor his image, and had not received his mark upon their foreheads nor on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The context shows, moreover, that, since all together make up the first resurrection, all the dead saints that ever were beside must be included in the first company of those already reigning when this company of martyrs are added to them.

Why, then, this strange division, as it might seem, between these two companies? There can be but one answer:it is a chronological division. These martyrs are people who died after the others (the great mass of saints) had been raised or changed and taken to heaven; and must have lived in a brief time at the end only, else no reason could be given for such a company being all martyrs, or at least, to speak within bounds, characteristically composed of them.

But this is again a very striking argument for the view for which I am contending:-the resurrection and rapture of the mass of dead and living saints having taking place before, yet not long before, the time contemplated in the vision. It confirms the truth of their being already in heaven in the fourth and fifth chapters, and agrees with what we find of the Gentile multitude of the seventh, that they had all come out of "the great tribulation." Thus the vision of the first resurrection in the twentieth chapter, instead of being against the view he is controverting, is in fact a remarkable witness for it. It shows the second company to have come into the first resurrection in an exceptional manner, and accounts for the strong way in which it is announced that all together these are the saints of the first resurrection. God’s grace has overruled man’s sin and violence to bring into it those who might naturally seem shut out.

The argument about two resurrections only, therefore, which Mr. Brown is not alone in advancing, fails entirely here. It is the very passage from which alone he really gets it, which itself makes and accounts for the exception as to it:it still remaining true that in character there are but two resurrections, the resurrection of life, and the resurrection of judgment, as in John 5:

Taking this now with us back to Dan. 12:2, let us notice how the addition to the first resurrection of this supplementary company (largely Jews also, as they necessarily would be) would set aside the difficulty that is made by Dr. West as to the first resurrection coming after the tribulation. It would even help to account for the terms used which express a partial rather than a complete number:"many," but still only a fragment of a larger number.

As for Dan. 7:21, 22 being in opposition to the view we are contending for, as Mr. Brown supposes, it is merely what all prophecy shows, that Israel’s distress goes on until the Lord’s coining ends it. F. W. G.

(To be continued.)

(Concluded from page 134.)

Paul ends the presentation of the glad tidings in the eighth chapter of Romans, and then goes on to other themes.

In the eleventh chapter he says, "Blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in " (ver. 25). This will close this Christian dispensation when the dead saints shall be "raised, and the living ones changed in a moment, and all together caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall be ever with the Lord" (i Thess. 4:12). It is then that "the saints are clothed upon with their house (new bodies) which are from heaven " (2 Cor. 5:2). " For (or because) our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His body of glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself " (Phil. 3:20). After this we are taught by Paul that Israel shall be taken up again, as God’s earthly people, and the kingdom of Israel be restored, with David’s Son, the Lord Jesus, as King, who will (as David in his day) subdue all the earth to His sway, until "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Isa. 45:23, and Phil. 2:10,11). This is the work of the blessed Lord Jesus when He comes again to earth, though the world’s church, in its own darkness, pride, and self-sufficiency, has usurped it, and is now striving in vain to accomplish it!

Paul concludes this epistle of the gospel to the Gentiles in these words:"Now to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets (new dispensation prophets) according to the commandment of the Eternal God, made known for the obedience of faith" (chap. 16:25, 26). Again, "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery" (i Cor. 2:7).

We come now to the next epistle of Paul (as our version is arranged) which is specially addressed to the Church, and contains special instructions for God’s order in the Church on earth. Please keep this in mind, as it is important for a proper understanding of Church truth. All these epistles are to the saints and for their teaching and edification in the Church of God, ‘’ which is the pillar and ground of the truth"-or should be. They are not written for outsiders at all, and cannot be apprehended or understood but by the Spirit of God, whom only the saints have. He dwells in the saints, and is their great Leader and Teacher-by the word of God-if they only have the faith for Him. Here in the beginning, after forbidding any division among them- which command alone should extinguish all sects- he says, "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery"- and much more:turn to your Bibles and read it (chap. 2:7).

In the eleventh chapter we have some things for which he praises the Corinthian Church, and others in which he does not praise, but condemns; and one of these is the disorderly manner in which they observe the Lord’s supper. First, he tells them there are divisions (sects) among them, and that it is impossible to eat the Lord’s supper aright in divisions, because it is in itself a symbol of the unity of the Church, all one in Christ Jesus. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion (all of one mind with God) of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? for we being many are one loaf, one body, for we are all partakers of that one loaf" (i Cor. 10:16, 17). It is therefore impossible to partake aright of the Lord’s supper in sectarianism, because it is in itself a type, or figure, of the one Body, the oneness of the body of Christ. "Is Christ divided? " (i Cor. 1:13.)

In the twelfth chapter we have a full description of the Church, the one body-of which all believers are members:"for by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body;" and thus by the Spirit of our God are we all united together into the one body, and by the same eternal bond to our Head who is in heaven. Therefore as all the members of our bodies are completely subject to the head, so also should we all be subject to Christ- in all things. His will for us and about us is fully made known to us in His word, which we have in our hands, and we all have "an unction from the Holy One," to enable us to understand and obey it. Our responsibility is to do this.

In the thirteenth chapter we have set forth the love which characterizes the Church. The word rendered "charity" in our version is better translated "love." In the fourteenth chapter God even gives us the order of worship in the Church. There is no clerisy in it. Clerisy is of man, not of God, and has no place in God’s order for worship. Clerisy is believed by many to be the " Nicolaitanism" of Revelation 2:All worship, and all order in the Church, is of God by the Spirit, gathered by Him unto the name of the Lord Jesus, to remember Him in His death, and with Him in the midst (Matt. 18:20). He rules and reigns in His assembly, and all said or done is to be in subjection and obedience to Him. He is the Head, and we the members of His body, subject to the Head:for no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost (chap. 12:3). Here all things are of God, according to the order set forth in this fourteenth chapter. If one reads or expounds the Word, gives thanks, breaks the bread, sings praise, or exhorts the saints, it is to be by the Spirit and according to God.

The epistles to the Corinthians and also that to the Galatians, as well as all of Paul’s earlier letters, are addressed to the Church; but later, in Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, he addresses himself not to the Church, which is significant, but "to the saints and faithful brethren" as individuals:as though the churches had already begun to lose their first love, as is charged against the church at Ephesus in Rev. 2:

In these epistles is set forth the highest grade of Christian truth contained in the whole Bible. In Ephesians we have the highest blessings and privileges of the Church set forth. There is no justification in it, but the saints "blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ." "Herein is made known unto us the mystery of His will"-"the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, (the saints) according to the working of His mighty power, (resurrection power) which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:and hath put all under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:18 to end of chapter).

"We (the saints of which the Church of God is composed) are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus (new creation) unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them " (chap. 2:10).

In the third chapter we have Paul’s gospel specially set forth. It is a new dispensation, God’s new order for the Church in the world, and is revealed to him out of heaven.

It is "the mystery, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men" (vers. 3-5). It was given to him, he tells us, "to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, to the intent that now (never before) unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (vers. 8-11). There is much more of it in the chapter, which concludes with that wonderful prayer that the saints may be able, by the power of God, the Spirit, to comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height of all this; "and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, (out of which all this blessing comes) that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God’"

In the fifth chapter, we have the relationship of Christ to His Church set forth under the figure of husband and wife. As the wife is-or should be-subject to her husband in all things, so is the Church to Christ. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church:for we are members of His body. . . . This is a great mystery:but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."

What a marvelous intimacy exists between Christ and His Church! It is God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, united into one body by the Spirit, blest with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, united to Christ the Head in heaven by the Spirit, dead to this world and risen with Christ, as we get in Colossians; and now awaiting His return, thus to get our new bodies of glory, and go to be forever with Him in the Father’s house above!

This is the mystery which had heretofore been hid in God, but is now revealed unto us by the Lord Jesus from heaven, through His chosen messenger, Paul. It is to him, "My Gospel," "The mystery of the Gospel," God’s new order of things for His saints in this dispensation of grace.

In Colossians we have from Paul again, "I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to complete (pleroo) the word of God; the mystery which hath been hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest to His saints." This mystery is revealed through Paul, and not through Peter, James, John or any of the other apostles. He was chosen to complete the word of God to man. It was incomplete until "the mystery of the Church" was revealed.

In the second chapter, we are told that "we are complete in Him," in Christ; "in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" and "in Him "- all is in Him-"ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (chap. 2:ii). It is not "the sins of the flesh," as in the common translation, but the body of the flesh itself, the Adam nature set aside in the cross of Christ. The old man has been set aside forever as being unfit for God and incapable of being made fit; therefore he had to be cut off, and was cut off in the cross. This is why the Lord Jesus had to die. He died for us, was cut. off as a substitute for us, and we in Him. Believers accept this truth, by faith take their place with Him in death, the outside place, come to the end of themselves before Him, "reckon themselves dead indeed unto sin," and are made alive by the power of God in new creation. It is the miracle of the new birth, and when so born we are entitled to all the privileges and blessings won for and freely given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is, "as is your faith, so be it unto you." The table is spread, the good things are all provided, come in and take all that you will have! We are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus"; but " in Christ" is out of Adam, to faith. This is resurrection life. It is "risen with Christ" and so beyond the cross, beyond death. It is life, new life, eternal life! It is God’s new creation in Christ Jesus. It is, to faith, out of Adam, and "in Christ"; out of the world, and in the heavenlies!

" If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above; not on things on the earth, for ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3:1-4).

We shall appear with Him when He comes to judge the earth, because the saints will have previously been caught up to meet the Lord in the air, as set forth in i Thess. 4:The appearing is set forth symbolically in the nineteenth of Revelation, when "the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."

All this, and much more, is the portion of the Church. The way into it is through death and resurrection. Death with Him and resurrection "in Him." It is all of God, by Jesus Christ; real now to faith, and realized in all its fulness when "He that shall come will come and will not tarry."

This is the Church according to God’s mind, as set forth in the Word; and which man in the unbelief of human wisdom has entirely missed; just as Israel missed the knowledge of their own Messiah. It is man’s failure under this dispensation of grace as it was man’s failure under the past dispensation of law.

The World’s Church Judged.

In the book of Revelation we have set forth the Lord in judgment subduing the earth; and first we see the world’s church judged in chapters two and three. The Lord Himself in person, as Judge, is set before us in the first chapter, judging the Church; and in the two next chapters the whole history of the Church in the world is symbolically described from the beginning. It is a sad picture of declensions through the whole of its seven stages, from loss of "first love" in Ephesus, to the pride, boasting and complete ruin of Laodicea,-spewed out of His mouth. Out of it all, only a little remnant that "have kept His word and not denied His name" remains! This remnant is the little church of Philadelphia-"brotherly love."

Out of this scene of judgment the saints are all caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and the whole scene changes to a heavenly one in the fourth chapter. Here is seen the Church in heaven, under the symbol of "the four and twenty elders." Now "the days of vengeance of our God " (Isa. 61:3) are fully come, and the judgments of God are visited upon the earth from heaven, until the nineteenth chapter, in which the Lord with His saints descends to earth and rules and reigns over it in millennial glory.

In all this judgment of the Church, as set forth in the second and third chapters, we have at every step downwards the word of God sounding in our ears, "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches." The appeal, it will be seen, is to the individuals in the churches. " He that hath an ear let him hear," etc. The world church will never be reclaimed and brought up to the unity and fellowship of the Church of God revealed to us through Paul; therefore the appeal here is to the individual saints, as to Abram of old, to "leave their country, their kindred, and their father’s house, and go unto a land that I will show thee." It is to come out of the world to Christ; to walk on the water to go unto Him, and this can only be in the faith that God giveth,-to the humble, believing, submissive soul. He is found now in the outside place, the place of rejection, as ever before. "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle (the worldly sanctuary); for the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for-sin, are burned without the camp-in the outside place; wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate; let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name " (Heb. 13:10-16). J. S. P.

"And upon His head were many crowns." (Rev. 19:12.)

(Continued from page 65.)

CHAPTER XIII. Bridegroom.

It is not of the Bride that we are now desiring to speak, but of the Bridegroom; but the one so implies the other that we are compelled to the course we have been pursuing. The recurrence of the type so frequently in the Old Testament, even from the beginning of the history, is full proof of how dear to Him is the thought of the relationship. Assuredly we shall not give these up from any preconceived idea that they ought not to be there. They are there, and speak so plainly for themselves, pictures though they may be only, that no unprejudiced mind can avoid seeing them.

Take Rebekah:and if Isaac be a type of Christ, and, in the twenty-second of Genesis, received back "in figure" from the dead (Heb. 11:19), how is it that we find next Sarah, the mother (Rom. 9:5) passes away, and then Rebekah takes her place in Sarah’s tent as bride of the risen heir. Of the kindred already, she is called by a special messenger (as the Church by the Holy Spirit) to cross the desert in his company to meet her yet unseen Lord.

Take Asenath; and Joseph too is betrayed by his brethren, brought down to the prison-house and brought up out of it to be the Saviour of Egypt (the world); and then he must have a Gentile bride, while his brethren are strangers to him.

Take Zipporah (the "bird"-the heavenly bride); and again Moses is away from and rejected by his brethren when he finds her by the well-a Gentile too-and marries her.

Are such things, so fit in themselves, so fitting to their place in the history, mere casual happenings, which we may use, if we will, for illustration, but must not seriously press as having any design from God? Surely if design may be recognized anywhere without a label, we may recognize it here.

Now it is not contradictory to all this, and cannot be, to find that Old Testament saints looked for a city which has foundations; or even to believe, as I have long done, that this city and the New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb in Revelation, are the same thing. Once let us realize that the "city," however identified in some sense with its inhabitants, is yet in fact the habitation and not the inhabitants, and the difficulty begins to clear. The Bride-City may contain more than the Bride, as even the writer whose views I am referring to allows. The throne of God and of the Lamb are in it; and the twelfth of Hebrews distinctly shows us "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem," apart from both "the church of the first-born ones,"and "the spirits of just men made perfect."* * In the tract to which I have been referring the names of the twelve tribes on the gates of the city and those of the twelve apostles on the foundations are taken alike to show the Israelitish character of the city itself, and the "portion " of the twelve as judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28) shows these to be " separated off from the Church," the body of Christ. He even declares that " the Lamb is the special title of the Lord Jesus in relation to Israel, and the elect of Israel"! No wonder that it should be also discovered that "the Gospels are the conclusion of the Old Testament history, and not the commencement of Church teaching; except, of course,"-and how important the exception!-"so far as Christ crucified is the foundation of all blessing."*

"God has prepared for them a city" does not in this case imply necessarily what it is quoted for; and we may adapt the writer’s own words otherwise than he would allow. "This holy Jerusalem may contain"-the saints of the Old Testament; "but it is not necessary on this account that we should identify them."

Turning from all this now, how blessed to think of this Bridegroom character of the Lord Jesus! It should be plain that it expresses His personal joy of love, in a way that the " Head of the Body " cannot, because it expresses a very different thing. A whole book of the Old Testament has been given to the expression of this relation of the Lord Jesus,-no doubt, in the first place to Israel; but capable of application all through to the higher and heavenly. Perhaps we have not a New Testament book of this character, for the same reason that we have not a New Testament psalm-book. It would rather belittle than truly represent it; if it were not, at least, to be a book too large for human handling. Christian psalmody finds in all else that has been written its material of praise. Its "song of songs" must also transcend utterance. And perhaps must be learned otherwise than any book of this kind could avail for.

Thus it is, after all, that one can say so little of what the Lord’s Bridegroom character means. We see that all the nearest, sweetest human relationships are taken up to image forth these more wondrous spiritual ones. And Bridegroom and Bride, always remaining in the first freshness of the sabbatic morning of their beginning, speak of a mutual abiding for one another, which is the revelation of a sufficing love, such as we are surely learning by the way as we go to meet Him, but which in the first moment of His presence will manifest itself as it had not been before.

In the moment of her presentation to Isaac, Rebekah took a veil and covered herself. We can but do so in the anticipation of that time.

Deut. 2:7; Neh. 9:21.

These words tell us of the abiding faithfulness of Israel’s God, yea, our God. Their history as a people across the desert serves only as an occasion to display more fully what God was. He it was who sent a Saviour and delivered them. In the wilderness they commence their journey as His people, but the journey for them in the end was long and testing; their path was one which could only be enjoyed as they walked daily in communion with Him and obeyed His word; and this is how they commenced the journey; when there was neglect of this in any stage of their history, the flesh in some way manifested itself, and murmurings and complainings took the place of the songs of joy with which they started. (Ex. 15:)

The flesh, even in a believer, can never enjoy a path of faith and daily walk with God. This is fully demonstrated in Israel. Many times their hearts turned away from Him,-"the Rock of their salvation." The forty years tell us what a miserable thing the flesh is. The book of Exodus (chaps. 15:-20:), also Numbers and Deuteronomy witness this fact, as well as Psalms 78:, 105:, 106:

The mixed multitude were a source of trial to them the whole way. They did not leave Egypt wholly behind them when they entered the wilderness, for the mixed multitude came up with them (Ex. 12:38; Num. 11:14). Oh, that our gospel preaching had always that power with it which leads souls out fully, and causes a clean break with Egypt (the world). But with us, alas! as with Israel, it is often not so. Here their history is given as an example, (i Cor. 10:)

We are informed this "mixed multitude fell a lusting, and Israel also wept again." When the eye and heart get away from God, grace is soon forgotten, and, as with Abraham and Israel, after the face turns toward the south country (Egypt-Gen. 12:9), then the feet soon follow (Isa. 30:1-7).

Let us look at a few examples from their history. They said,-

1. "We remember the fish we did eat in Egypt freely:the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic:but now our soul is dried away:there is nothing at all, beside this manna (Christ) before our eyes " (Num. 11:4-6).

2. " It was well with us in Egypt " (Num. 11:18).

3. " Why came we forth from Egypt "(Num. 11:20)?

4. "Would God we had died in Egypt" (Num. 14:2).

5. "Were it not better for us to return to Egypt " (Num. 14:3)?

6. "Let us make a captain and return to Egypt" (Num. 14:4).

7. "Because the Lord hath hated us, He hath brought us forth out of Egypt" (Deut. 1:27).

Who would ever have thought such to be the language of a redeemed people, a people that had beheld the signs and wonders they had, a people who had sung such a memorial song as they had just before? (Ex. 15:) Yet such is the case; the flesh is still the flesh, and will be till the end.

But to walk with God, in a path of simple faith, and enjoy our abiding portion, in a glorified Christ above, we need to be reminded, again and again, by the Spirit, through the word of God, that there is nothing good in the flesh. (Rom. 7:18.) It is enmity to God (Rom. 8:7). Sin is condemned in the flesh (Rom. 8:3), and we are to reckon ourselves dead to it (Rom. 6:ii). What a lesson for each believer! a lesson we all need to learn when we enter a path in which the renewed man finds enjoyment in the precious things of Christ!

But they cross the desert, they reach the end of the journey, and ere they enter the goodly land, the land that flowed with milk and honey, Moses, their divinely appointed leader, reviews for them the past, goes over the whole history, and adds, "The Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand; He knows thy walkings through this great wilderness:these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing." Did they need water to quench their thirst? The smitten rock poured forth its refreshing stream. Did they need bread to eat? He gave them bread from heaven. Did they need clothing? Their clothes waxed not old, neither did their feet swell-"they lacked nothing." His goodness, His love, His compassions were new every morning; and Nehemiah, at an after time, repeats to their children also, "They lacked nothing" (Neh. 9:21).

We will now pass on to another scene and at another time, the wilderness with all its varied lessons, is a thing of the past, and we will glance at the condition of things in the land, not now so much a time of weakness and failure, but one of triumph, and peace, and blessing, as was witnessed in the bright days of Solomon. We will pass over the history that intervenes, in which, however, God’s faithfulness is marked at every stage, and in time every obstacle is overcome, every enemy set aside, and the king of peace ascends the throne. The nation, the object of God’s special care, enters into the consummation of blessings intended for it. There is one day, and only one, ever to eclipse it, the day yet future, when Solomon’s Son and Solomon’s Lord, will display His power and glory in His kingdom, which Solomon’s but faintly foreshadowed. The reader will do well to take a glance at the first ten chapters of i Kings, and then he will see the order and progress of this time.

In chapter 1:the false king is set aside, and Solomon the true king, by the appointment of the father, is anointed.

Chapter 2:12, "Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father, and his kingdom was established greatly."

In chapter 3:we have Solomon in the wisdom and power of God in the kingdom.

Chapter 4:20, "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry." "And he had peace on all sides round about him" (ver. 24).

The whole of chapter 4:is a wondrous picture of a future time not far distant,-a time that will reach on and touch the border line of eternity, and in verse 27, it is said, "they lacked nothing;" hence of the historic past and the prophetic future it can be truly said, "they lacked nothing." Blessed sufficiency! blessed fulness! and all this fulness treasured up for us now in the Christ above!

Next, we will notice briefly the same lessons of grace, love, and care, as manifested in the wondrous days of His humiliation here below in connection with those that walked with Him. He entered the path in lowly grace, and called the various ones from their several occupations; Matthew sitting at the receipt of customs, hears a voice, "Follow Me." He obeys; "leaves all, and follows Him." Simon and Andrew likewise, as they were busy at their nets, hear His voice, "Come ye after Me, and I will make you to become fishers of men; and straightway they forsook their nets, and followed Him." James and John were mending their nets, and the same voice calls them, " and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after Him" (Mark 1:26-20).

Thus they leave their several occupations to be with Him (Mark 3:14), to serve Him, and to preach His word. They walked with Him, they served Him, they preached the word of the kingdom, no stated salary was promised them; this they were not to look for nor expect. Theirs was to be a path of faith; one in which, at its every stage, and all its various demands and needs, they were to look to and trust the One who had called them. All the resources of heaven and earth were at His disposal, as of old, the key of all those vast storehouses of Egypt was in the hands of Joseph; and Pharaoh directed all who were in need to "go to Joseph." So Jesus, our Joseph, held the key, and does still.

Did He fail them? Did He neglect them at any time? Surely not! He watched them at every step with an unwearied love and care,-blessed Master He was. He noticed the press at times and called them aside, to rest awhile (Mark 6:31). If money were needed at times, His grace touched the hearts of the women from Galilee, and they minister unto Him (Luke 8:1-3). At other times the sea was made to serve Him, and the fish delivered up the required means to meet the need; "for Me and thee" (Matt. 17:24-27). How soul-refreshing to trace His ways of grace when He was here among men, and at the close of such a life He asks them, "When I sent you out without purse and scrip, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing" (Matt. 10:9-14; Luke 22:35).

In this review we get the highly exalted path of a servant to profit by in this our time as then. True, our Lord is gone up on high, and is now Head of the Church, yet He still calls and sends forth His servants, some to go into "all the world to preach the gospel;" to others the Chief Shepherd says, "Feed My sheep," "feed My lambs." They are as those whom He called when on earth, to be with Him, serve Him, and trust Him in every stage of such a path of service and not another. At every step of such a path, whatever the needs may be, there must of necessity be faith. Look, in every need, straight up to the Head of the Church. In John 15:16, we learn the work each is expected to do-"bring forth fruit," and then the blank check is signed and left for the servant to pursue his path of faith, and fill in for what is required-"That whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name He may give it you."

There will be encouragement needed to seek His face day by day. (Ps. 27:8.) Are there demands made? They are to turn not to the world, nor yet to the Church; but wholly to Him; "go tell Jesus"! Study the example of Paul, the man of faith, in i Cor. 9:, where he sets forth so clearly and fully the believer’s responsibility in those matters, yet he adds, "Neither have I written these things that it should be so done to me." Faith shuts the servant up to the Lord alone. There are and will be times of testing, for the Lord is zealous of His pleasant fruit, and loves the faith that trusts and clings to Him; yet the Holy Spirit, through the apostle, has written, "My God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory in (Gk.) Christ Jesus."

And when this path of faith ends, the path of toil and labor, and the general review takes place, we will remember all the way, and when He again asks the question, "Lacked ye any thing?" what a tale this will tell! What a response will be given! Every servant, as he looks back and renders up his account, will exclaim, "Nothing, Lord, nothing!" What a prospect! What a day! A. E. B.

Prayer is speaking to God, and prophecy is I speaking from God; so that we need not be surprised to find them associated together in Scripture (i Cor. 11:4, 5; Acts 13:i, 2; i Cor. 14:i, 15). There are in the Church of God various gifts for the edification of the body, but there is no such thing as a "gift of prayer." Fluency, comprehensiveness, eloquence-are not essentials, nay they are often hindrances to true prayer. Every Christian must pray, and we might add, every Christian man in communion with God should be ready, if led of God, to pray in public. We long to see God’s beloved people delivered from the last vestige of clerisy. There is no such thing contemplated in God’s word as one man or a few men being the only ones used in prayer. As we have just said, prayer is no gift of words, belonging to some few, specially endowed. The babe can lisp its prayer, as the father can pour out the full longings of his heart; but all can pray. Is the soul in communion with God? Are we seeking to please Him? Then what possible hindrance can there be to prayer? Ah brethren, let us own the pride and worldliness which close our mouths and limit our faith. Let us search our ways and ask if we engage much in secret prayer. He who is familiar with God in his closet, will find it no difficulty to speak to Him in public.

Closely connected with this question is another:do we speak for God, individually? Are we finding the way open to speak to one and another of the great questions that must be answered? and can we without hesitation confer with our fellow Christians about the things of God? If we are in abiding communion with God this will be the case. We will not have to plead that we have "so few opportunities," or are "naturally diffident." When the Spirit of God is unhindered, He uses the weak things. Saints have no difficulty in speaking of the affairs of every day life:why this hesitation in speaking of the things of God? Is it not Satan robbing us?

Coming now to the corporate life of God’s people, we find simply an enlargement of scope, not a change of principles. Prayer and prophecy are closely associated and interdependent. Wherever there is a spirit of prayer there will be the spirit of prophecy, and the reverse. Both are having to do with God, and imply that reality which is always the mark of one in His presence.

By prophecy it will be understood that we are not referring to any supernatural manifestations, whether in prediction, designation of special persons for special work, or new revelation. We solemnly believe that all claims to such prophetic gift are antichristian and blasphemous. The systems which at this day lay claim to such gifts are ungodly to the core. God’s written word is ample and all sufficient, and in it we are told that revelation is complete (Col. 1:25).

But there is another sense in which the term prophecy is used in Scripture. " He that prophesieth speaketh unto men for edification, and exhortation, and comfort" (i Cor. 14:2). There is no question here of something supernatural. The man speaks for God, conveys His mind to the hearers. It is the word spoken in due season-suited to the need of the Lord’s people, comforting the weak, exhorting the faint, and edifying all. It differs from teaching in that its chief object is not to impart instruction, but to move to action, or to secure a definite result.

Now it is one of the primary principles of gatherings or meetings that no man should or can preside. That is the place of the Holy Spirit alone, "dividing to every man severally as He will."* *It will be understood that reference is here made solely to meetings of the assembly. An evangelist may hold a meeting, or a teacher, which is entirely upon his own responsibility as a servant of the Lord. In this no one dare interfere. But when the assembly as such meets, the evangelist or teacher is simply one of many. He cannot assume a place here-to do so would be to usurp the place of the Holy Spirit. There is a constant tendency to forget or ignore this, with the inevitable result of clerisy-clergy and laity-the one or the few taking all ministry, and the rest quite willing to have it so. Need we be surprised where this is done, to see leaders set one against another, with the saints taking sides, forming parties, sects, and divisions in the Church of God? This, we are persuaded, is the cause of divisions assigned in Scripture (1 Cor. 1:), and illustrated on many a page of church-history.* Here all are alike brethren, ready for the Spirit of God to use according to His sovereign wisdom. We need hardly say that the distinguishing meeting of all others to which this applies is that for the breaking of bread. Saints come together .for this purpose, are gathered to our Lord’s Name, and He according to His promise is in the midst. " He makes His presence known by the Holy Spirit. At this meeting no one should think of assuming charge, but all should be ready as channels of worship and of prophecy. Worship is prominent here.

But there are other meetings of the saints beside that for the breaking of bread, and it is of these chiefly that we would speak. Though most scriptural there is no injunction as to a prayer meeting. The general exhortation is, "not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another" (Heb. 10:25). We assemble together, for whatever the Spirit of God may have to give us, and for prayer.

It has sometimes been asked what is the special meeting which is alluded to in i Cor. 14:Our reply would be first, that every meeting of the assembly is covered by that chapter, but that we would naturally expect the "prophecy" spoken of there to have special prominence at other times than the breaking of bread. We deprecate the use of the term "open meeting" to characterize any special gathering of the saints. Every assembly meeting is open, that is, no man presides.

But the fact remains that freedom in prophecy is, or should be, a special feature in our meetings. We will be pardoned for speaking plainly, so as to be clearly understood. Of the first meeting, that for breaking bread on the first day of the week, we have already spoken. There is usually what is called a Bible Reading, or Reading Meeting. While open for all to take part freely, being more or less of an informal character, the main object is the study of the Word, and naturally those gifted as teachers would come prominently forward. But this would not preclude any from giving a word for the conscience or heart as the reading proceeded. Besides, there is freedom for prayer and praise at such meetings. We have not yet reached however that which is characteristically the meeting where prophecy would be expected to have the prominent place.
Most assemblies of God’s people have what is usually called a Prayer-meeting, at which, as its name suggests, it is expected that prayer will be prominent. At this meeting, of course, no one presides-all being free to take part as led of the Spirit. We believe that the spiritual state of an assembly can be gauged by the character and attendance at this meeting. Is there a free and earnest spirit of prayer? do all take part, not formally, but really? If so, we would expect to find an assembly walking with God, awake to its privileges and responsibilities. Let us, beloved brethren, search ourselves as to the prayer-meeting. Is it a weariness? a cold duty unwillingly performed, or neglected? Ah! have we nothing to speak of to God, no word of thanks, no requests for ourselves and others, no intercessions for the Lord’s work? We need not be surprised, if such is the case, to find all our meetings heavy, and the Lord’s work languishing.

But we must look a little further. It is our purpose to show that prayer and prophecy are closely linked together in Scripture, and as a result that a meeting for one would necessarily include the other. Let us look at a passage strikingly illustrative of this. In 2 Chron. 20:, in the face of a great danger, king Jehoshaphat and his people assembled in what might very properly be called a prayer-meeting. They gather together before God, pleading His promises, confessing their weakness and ignorance and casting themselves upon God. How beautiful is their attitude – "we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon thee " (ver. 12).

They do not have to wait long for an answer. "Then upon Jehaziel . . . came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the congregation. . . . ‘ Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s’" (vers. 15, 16). How speedy and suited was the answer-a word in season, truly. What we wish particularly to notice, is that it is a word of prophecy in immediate connection with prayer. They had been speaking to God, and He speaks to them. Notice, too, the uplifting effect of this word:they worship God, "with a loud voice on high" (vers. 18, 19);-before the enemy has been met or overcome, they celebrate the victory.

But if prayer and prophecy are thus connected at a special meeting, why should it not be so always? "Pray without ceasing" and "despise not prophesyings" come very closely together (i Thess. 5:17-20). In fact they belong to one and the same closely connected paragraph. Do we believe in prayer? Do we believe in prophesying? Why then should there not be the freest exercise of both at the meeting which is characteristically the one where both would be expected to be prominent?

Need we go into any detail? "Ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted" (i Cor. 14:31). It may be but a few words uttered, but if from the Lord they will come with power. Here no "gift" is required, but simply a soul in communion with God, and so, ready to give His word. Two or three would speak, the rest judging-not criticizing, but weighing and testing the word. As one finished another could utter what was on his heart; and as a result the presence and power of the Lord be manifest, even to an unbeliever who might be present (ver. 23).

Beloved brethren, what an attractive meeting! How the saints would flock to it, what a testimony would issue from it, and what power in individual walk and gospel work would result. Is this the character of our meetings? If not, then let us at once confess it, and turn afresh to our God, crying to Him who delights to hear and to meet His people.

We conclude therefore that the meeting ordinarily called the prayer-meeting is the one where we would expect to find the marks of i Cor. 14:; not, however, as we have seen, to the exclusion of other meetings. Let us become clear as to the teachings of that chapter, and fully alive to the blessedness of the Spirit’s presence, and we will prove the reality of all there promised. It is a matter too sadly common, that there is a dullness in the prayer-meeting-only a few attending and fewer participating. This ought not so to be. Let us see to it that it is not, and blessing, rich and lasting, will be the result.

We might add further that when no one is present who has it specially laid upon him to conduct a public meeting, this would be the natural and, scriptural way for the assembly to come together. The result, if there were real exercise before God, would be both prayer and prophecy under the power of the Holy Spirit. There would then be no need to complain of unprofitable or dull meetings. Saints would be edified and sinners converted, apart from any special gift. May our God stir us up as to these things.

True Christianity ever magnifies Christ, and we may test the claims of that which assumes to be true by proving whether Christ is glorified by it or not. Let us look at the inspired words of the apostle Paul:"I am crucified with Christ:nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Now, much Christianity which is accepted as devout, looks for perfection in a result which may be summed up thus:"I am Crucified." This being crucified is regarded as the highest attainment. Self is mastered; the world conquered. There is victory over passions and temptations, and the "crucified," being dead to all that to which he was once a slave, is in this world a superior power to the world. To such as have reached this elevation our paper is not addressed. But there are many who are striving to crucify themselves, to put themselves to death, to be master over themselves and the temptations and allurements of the world and their enemy, sin, and to those especially our few words are directed.

Now, the apostle does not say, "I am crucified," but he says, "I am crucified with Christ." It is quite possible to say, "I am crucified," and yet to leave Christ out of one’s religion, and all the while to be an enemy of Christ’s cross. "I am crucified" may be merely the outcome of fancied spiritual attainment and the result of spiritual pride. But "I am crucified with Christ" is in no sense whatever a sign of superior goodness; on the contrary, it is the evidence of the terrible nature of sin which demanded for our salvation the cross of the Son of God; and it is the blessed assurance that, vile as we are in ourselves, by being crucified with Him we have been judged and condemned, when Christ in mercy was judged and took our condemnation upon Him, on Calvary.

"Crucified with Christ" does not allow us, in ourselves, one single standpoint before God. It sweeps away all our hopes of self-betterment, and of our dying to what we are by nature, and instead, it accepts with reverence and with love, the position our Lord and Saviour took for us on the cross in grace as our position. In His judgment we were judged, in His death we died. As a man might say of his substitute, "He died not only for me, but I died with Him," so we are privileged to say of our Saviour and Substitute, "He died for me and met my deserts, and I died with Him and receive the satisfaction rendered to God by His death."

Here is the true beginning for the Christian-"I am crucified with Christ." He does not, therefore, look to himself for power to die to himself, but he looks to Christ’s cross and knows that there he was crucified with Christ. The cross of Christ is his judicial end in the sight of God, and when by faith he takes in God’s fact about himself, he starts his spiritual career with the reality of his utter badness by nature, and the condemnation of what he is by Christ’s cross.

Having spoken of the end of the old, the apostle proceeds to the beginning of the new. "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The apostle lived in the energy of the Holy Spirit of God; he was a witness on the earth to divine love and power. Whence then this life? Of himself He had spoken:" I am crucified with Christ." Now of himself as the Christian, he in effect says, Though crucified, still I am a living man, spiritually, but the source of this life is Christ. This is not victorious self reasserting itself. It is not Paul, the Jewish Pharisee, nor Paul, the Christian Pharisee-no, Not I, not self, but Christ. " I live, yet not I, but Christ who liveth in me."

Neither could it be said Paul so became crucified that Christ could live in him, for he says, "I am crucified with Christ." He did not become crucified by slow degrees, but with’ Christ who was crucified on Calvary. To leave out "with Christ" would be to leave us a crucified Paul without Christ. And this would be that kind of Christianity which endeavors by following Christ, to arrive at Christ crucified, whereas God begins with Christ crucified for us and our being crucified with Christ, and thus opens up to us the Christian life in its power and faith.

" I am crucified with Christ" is grace and not attainment. It is the portion of every believer, and we should so deport ourselves as to conform to the reality.

"Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," is also not attainment; it is grace, absolute grace, and it is as much for us as for the apostle. There is none other life for any Christian whereby he lives before God in holiness than this:"Christ liveth in me." There are not two lives for the Christian whereby he lives to God, one more exalted than the other-one for the selected saints, the other for the general class. All God’s children are in Christ, and Christ is in all God’s children. But when we speak of the manner of our living, another subject is before us-then we have degrees of excellence before us, and attainment in practical holiness.

The apostle said, further, "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." Now, in this there is attainment-there is spirituality and true holiness. From Christ he drew his strength for each day and hour. The wonder of his zeal, the beauty of his character, arose from Christ, in whom he lived daily by faith. Faith is our own. Each believer has faith for himself; and a life of faith is the personal and constant reliance of the soul upon the Lord in heaven.

It is very delightful to hear the great apostle say, "Yet not I," also of his labors for God. He magnified God’s grace in all that God did by him:"I labored more abundantly than they all:yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me " (i Cor. 15:10). He gives us the true secret of power, of living and of working, and the secret is Christ, "not I."

" What have I to do any more with idols?" (Hosea 14:8).

Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
"Chief among ten thousand" own Him,
Joyful choose the better part.

Idols once they won thee, charmed thee,
Lovely things of time and sense;
Gilded, thus does sin disarm thee,
Honey’d lest thou turn thee thence.

What has stripped the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not the sense of right or duty,
But the sight of peerless worth.

Not the crushing of those idols,
With its bitter void and smart,
But the beaming of His beauty,
The unveiling of His heart.

Who extinguishes his taper
Till he hails the rising sun?
Who discards the garb of winter
Till the summer has begun?

‘Tis the look that melted Peter,
‘Tis the face that Stephen saw,
‘Tis the heart that wept With Mary,
Can alone from idols draw-

Draw, and win, and fill completely,
Till the cup overflow the brim.
What have we to do with idols,
Who have companied with Him?

O. R.

1 Corinthians 15:13-23.

This portion of the word of God is the Holy Spirit’s emphasis on the work of Christ in making atonement for His people. A clear apprehension of Christ risen from the dead is therefore of the utmost importance, as that which, through, of course, the instrumentality of the Spirit, discovers to and establishes in the soul an active sense of that glorious peace which Christ has made through the blood of His cross, and which He Himself is, and that, too, abidingly (Col. 1:20; Eph. 2:14). In raising Christ our Lord from the dead our God has stamped indelibly the atoning work of His beloved Son.

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14, 15). Here is divine emphasis put on the need there was for Christ’s death. But if it "behooved Christ to suffer," it equally behooved that He should "rise from the dead the third day." He could not have entered "into His glory" otherwise (Luke 24:46, 26). Here we get the risen Lord Himself emphasizing the need of His resurrection, as before we found Him putting emphasis on the need of His death. It is in the power of resurrection that He places the heavenly credentials, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, in the hands of His ambassadors. (2 Cor. 5:20.) All that had to be still waited for was the "Power from on High" (Luke 24:49)-a Power which in due time was blessedly manifest. (Lev. 23:15, 16; Acts 2:)

The types and shadows which of old spoke of Christ and His glorious work whereby He should answer all questions affecting the holiness and righteousness of God, making atonement for the sins of His people, types and shadows now interpreted for us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, are not confined to the Jewish ritual alone; they are found in "Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms," concerning Him.

But let us examine briefly one or two of these precious types and shadows, viz.-

The golden candlestick, Aaron putting off the linen garments, and the cherubim of the mercy-seat.

In the light of the golden candlestick (Ex. 25:31-40), we get the Holy Spirit. The candlestick was outside the veil, where without it all would be darkness. (Ex. 26:35; 27:21.) And if its light be a type of the Spirit, as it surely is, how blessed to see that the Holy Spirit, illuminating the darkness, already speaks of the resurrection and ascension of Christ!

But there is another point equally worthy of our attention.-Its seven branches (or perhaps, 1+6)- Branch and branches, as in Isaiah 11:i, 2-display beautiful carvings of almond blossoms all over them. This fact at once reminds us of Aaron’s rod which, on a memorable occasion (Num. 17:), "brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds." The rod was a mere branch of the almond-tree, and cut off from the tree was dead. Christ was "cut off out of the land of the living," was "cut off and had nothing." (Is. 53:; Dan. 9:26.) Here was life out of death – resurrection. "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit" (i Pet. 3:18).

On the day of atonement, Aaron is seen to put off his linen garments. Why? The work is completed. (Lev. 16:23.) On the resurrection morning, as recorded in Matthew and Mark, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Salome are invited to behold the "place " where the Lord lay; in Luke and John it is the "linen clothes" that the early visitors are invited to behold. The "place" is empty, and the "linen clothes" are left there as a token of the Lord’s resurrection and consequently of atonement completed.

After the "linen garments " were divested by the high-priest, he came forth to continue whatever shall be sweet savor to God. (Lev. 16:24, 25.) After the "linen clothes" are seen in the "place where the Lord lay," is there not sweet savor in the Lord’s communion with His own then (Luke 24:30,41-43; John 21:5-12), and ever since? Is there not, both in Leviticus and in Luke and John more than a hint of that Melchizedek sustenance and joy, which are so essential to an endless life, communicated (John 20:22) to the children of faith! Christ is all.

Again, in Matthew it is, although the "angel of the Lord," one whose "countenance was like lightning"- almost the language applied to the Lord Himself in Rev. 1:16, and Dan. 10:6 – who stills the fears of the early visitors at the tomb. In Mark it is a "young man " who does so (chap. 16:5, 6). This is beautifully characteristic of this gospel, for who is fitter for service than a young man?

Then we hear the voice of the suffering Saviour, exclaiming in anticipative sorrow-"He shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days! " (Ps. 102:23, 24).

In Luke we see "two men" standing by the women in shining garments (Luke 24:4-8), whose object is to awake them, as it were, by refreshing their memory with the Lord’s own words. "And they remembered His words." I hope to refer to the "two men " further on.

But in John, the gospel of the Godhead of Christ, the gospel in which the deity of Christ is the theme, and full access into the Holiest found, from beginning to close, because, as we have learnt, there is no rending of the veil in John’s gospel-faith finding the veil rent as it steps on to its glorious threshold- in this gospel, then, "two angels," are seen by Mary Magdalene, the intensity of the love of whose heart for her Lord and Saviour rivets her to the sacred spot where, though Peter and the "other disciple, whom Jesus loved," might go, she would abide, weeping. The position of the angels is significant. They are " in white, sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain" (John 20:12). Here the angels are sitting, as if to indicate that of which the cherubic figures of the mercy-seat (Ex. 25:18-22; Lev. 16:14) spoke in type was now accomplished in fact. But the angels could not satisfy Mary’s heart. Their question of "Woman, why weepest thou? " hinted rather of Eden (Gen. 3:6), where the "woman be-being deceived, was in the transgression" (i Tim. 2:14). The angels’ question is repeated by the Lord Himself, but is followed by another that goes to the root of the matter, "Whom seekest thou? " Ah, well He knew she sought Himself, the adorable Person, "whom God has set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood " (Rom. 3:25). He called her by name, for she was graven on the palms of His hands (Is. 49:16). Such was her joy that she would have thrown her arms about Him – that could not be:"Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father:but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and unto my God, and your God. " Blessed message! and so appropriately given and borne!

The transfiguration, so fittingly omitted in John, is very precious as recorded in Mark 9:Here, as I take it, the unsealed eyes of His own are privileged to gaze upon the High-priest, in His holy garments, anticipative of His assumption of that glorious place foretold of Him by the Voice in the psalm (Ps. 110:4). For it is as risen from the dead that Christ is here regarded, and in Mark it is distinctly stated – "He charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen till the Son of man were risen from the dead." Was there not a divine reason for this? "The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Peter "wist not what to say," and so the flesh would act to dishonor the Lord. Through its zeal would it build, ostensibly for the Lord. How much of this sort of thing is going on to-day, while the Holy Sprit is quenched, grieved, and resisted in the "great house" of profession, and the living word itself equally set aside!

This brings us to the consideration of the "two men " alluded to before. The "two men" who were seen with Jesus on the Holy Mount (2 Peter 1:16-21), if carefully compared as they appear in Luke 9:30-32; 24:4, and Acts 1:10, will be seen to be symbols of the divine testimony to the all-sufficiency of the word of God-Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets) were the "two men " who were with Christ on the Mount and who talked with Him, the subject being "His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." This is surely the wondrous theme of the word of God. The "two men" witnessed His resurrection and stamped it with the seal of His own words. The "two men" witnessed His ascension, rebuking the "men of Galilee" for gazing "toward Heaven." It is the living and unfailing word of God which they, and we too, must look into to learn all about Him and His coming again. This living and abiding "Volume of the Book," read in the sanctuary in the "light of the seven-branched Candlestick," as another has put it, will give us burning hearts, for thus indeed shall we hear Him talking with us by the way.

Blessed be God! He has defeated Satan’s devices to nullify and render void the atonement. The enemy’s devices are recorded for us in Matt. 28:11-15, and in the arrogant utterances of the "Higher Criticism" of our own day. Yes, indeed, our blessed God has perfectly safe-guarded by type, shadow, and prophetic voice the invulnerable glories of a full and perfect atonement. Let the attacks of the enemy be ever so furious, " nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure "(2 Tim. 2:19). Men may try as energized by Satan to lay another foundation; but the One that "liveth and was dead" is God’s foundation, our joy, and our hope. Now, "Unto Him who loveth us, and has washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and the might to the ages of ages." J. M.

Ques.14.-Has the Church any authority apart from the word of God?

Ans.-The Church has no authority in herself. Her place is that of subjection to her Head and Lord. He makes known His will through the Scriptures by the Spirit Therefore no action on the part of the assembly, contrary to the word of God is of the least authority. But, believing in the presence of the Spirit of God, and seeing from Scripture the responsibility resting upon the assembly to act for God, no one should raise questions save after prayerful deliberation, and in a scriptural manner.

Ques. 15.-If a matter on hand is put into the assembly to be settled there, and all the assembly except two or three decide that so and so is right, but the two or three see clearly from the word of God that the larger number in the assembly are wrong, would it be right for the two or three to give in to the others; or should they hold the truth even if the assembly cut them off?

Ans.-The question has been partially answered above. We would add, that an action nearly unanimous would suggest the Lord’s presence, unless it most clearly contradicted Scripture, therefore great care and patience should be used in expressing dissent. If a vital question is involved, principles affecting the very basis of fellowship, then a firm, definite stand even if but by one, must be taken, whatever the cost. But how much prayer, self-judgment and waiting on God should precede such a step. Then, too, the saints should be appealed to from some neighboring gathering, that if possible the entire weight be not left upon the two or three remaining firm at the local assembly. How much is accomplished by faith and love.

Ques. 16.-Are younger brethren In their place if they are trying to rule in the assembly.

Ans.-"Likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder" (1 Pet. 5:5). A principle is involved in this of wide reaching effect. Both in the history of Israel and of the Church the evil effects of its neglect have been manifest. But there is an inherent reason for such direction. It presupposes godliness, gravity, wisdom and the proper government of one’s own house, on the part of the elder. Alas, alas, how family failure has come in to render God’s order impracticable, and then self-assertion on the part of the young is only too easy.

But there is another side; "Let no man despise thy youth." And if there be a heart for the Lord, a devotedness to Him and true humility, the young man will surely find a place of service. What can be sadder than a forward restless disrespectful spirit on the part of the younger, unless it be the spiritual in-competency of the older that makes it possible.

Ques. 17. If a brother has been cut off from the assembly (it may be justly or unjustly) but he continues to come to the meetings, and at the worship meeting quietly takes a back seat. When a hymn is given out he joins in heartily and sings praise to God and God’s beloved Son his Saviour and Lord. Has any one a right to request him to be silent, not to sing in the meetings? Some found fault when a box of ointment was broken.

Ans.-We would say a brother if dealt with by an assembly, would feel the solemnity of the judgment, and as bowing under the mighty hand of God, would be quiet and undemonstrative. His demeanor would indicate this. On the other hand, a hard ungracious spirit should be avoided that checks the work of grace in the soul.

" And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:11, 12.)

We need hardly remind our readers that punctuation, as we now know it, is of comparatively recent origin. In the Greek manuscripts there is nothing of the kind, words and sentences following one another without marks of separation. While for us this would render reading more difficult, we must not think of it as affecting or necessarily obscuring the meaning. The arrangement of words in the sentence frequently took the place of punctuation most effectually, and sometimes a change of word or particle would render the meaning clear.

A striking instance of this last will be found in the latter clause of the passage at the head of this paper. In our authorized version-most admirable, and for all ordinary purposes, exact translation-the passage stands as we have quoted it. The English reader would think that "for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,"gave us three distinct and Coordinate objects contemplated in the various gifts of Christ to the Church. He would not suppose that the word "for," thrice repeated, is a translation of two different prepositions; and yet such is the case:"For (πρoς) the perfecting of the saints, for (εις) the work of the ministry, for (εις) the edifying of the body of Christ."

The word also translated "perfecting" has perhaps a different meaning in the original. It is from the same root rendered "mending" (Matt. 4:21; Mark 1:19), "fitted" (Rom. 9:22), "prepared" (Heb. 10:5), "restore" (Gal. 6:i). The thought is not making perfect in the ordinary sense of the word, but fitting, preparing for a definite use,-as in a net, or a vessel.

Returning to the clause, having noted these points, it might be rendered, "for the preparation of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ." It will be noticed that we have now removed the comma after "saints," because of the change of preposition, and instead of having these coordinate objects for which gifts were given, we have one, "the perfecting or fitting of the saints;" and this again is for the work of the ministry and the edifying of the body of Christ.

But surely our object has not been to point out some nicety of grammar or translation. We believe that the passage as it now appears will give a fresh view of a most important subject, and correct a very gave error in which the Lord’s people are constantly in danger of falling.

As the passage is ordinarily understood, there are certain "gifts" which Christ has bestowed upon the Church, men especially endowed and entrusted with the work of the ministry. The danger here is in regarding a certain limited class as entrusted with this work, so that the vast bulk of the Lord’s people are either excluded or exonerated from the activities of the body. Many introduce a safeguard in the suggestion that all have one or the other of these gifts. We believe the rendering indicated will obviate either interpretation.

There are certain clear and well defined gifts of a leading character, if we may so speak. The apostles and prophets are clearly connected with the foundation or establishment of the Church (chap. 2:20). We have them in the inspired Scriptures, and in the order of the Church as at first set up. Evangelists, pastors and teachers, are the three gifts respectively for gathering in, caring for and instructing the Lord’s people.

Now it is evident that these three gifts are entrusted to certain persons. The apostle asks in another passage, "Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers? " (i Cor. 12:29). It will not do to say every Christian is an evangelist, or a pastor, or a teacher. Neither Scripture nor observation will bear this out. Evidently these gifts are special, and in a sense limited.

But if this be so, the upholder of the clerical system will say we have here our authority for a limited ministry-"a one man ministry." Notice how absolutely the Scripture guards against such an abuse. These special gifts are for "fitting the saints to the work of the ministry." It is the saints, all the saints, who are to engage in this work of the ministry, and for this they are fitted by these gifts endowed of Christ.

Next to the assumption of clerical authority even by one who has distinctly a gift, we believe that the effort to assume a gift unpossessed is unscriptural and injurious. It is not every one who can hold an audience and speak to edification, whether to saints or sinners; often the way of truth is evil spoken of because unsent men, presuming upon a "free ministry," intrude themselves where God did not intend them to go.

But worse even than this disorder is that clerical spirit so closely allied to Rome’s priesthood, that they blend together. Let us keep the even balance of truth.

Returning for a little to the passage we learn that some, not all, are evangelists, and so on. But we learn further that the special work of these fits all the saints for ministry; and how varied is that ministry. We may not be teachers, but we may in our measure be "apt to teach," able to teach or help one another; we may not have a clearly marked gift as an evangelist, but we can tell of Christ to a sinner; we may not be pastors, but we can love, care for, and help one another.

There is not a single member of the body of Christ who should not be engaged in the work of the ministry; man or woman, each has his appointed place and service. None are exempt; none dare refuse at peril of impairing the usefulness of the body.

But who denies this? we are asked; why all these truisms? We reply, Because they are not believed and not acted upon. We would call the particular attention of those who know these things to them afresh. Gifted brethren, you say, preach, teach, and visit. Ah! gifted brethren are not given that the others should fold their hands and do nothing. They are rather to furnish all for the work. A teacher who does not prepare teachers, an evangelist who does not equip evangelists, is not only half doing his work,-he is hindering, or quenching, the Spirit. In like manner the saints who remain apathetic are quenching the Spirit.

No amount of precious truth can take the place of the activities of Christ’s body. Nay, truth will lose its power, or change to error if it find no response in the ministrations of love.

What a personal matter this is! Each brother and sister can ask, Am / being used in the work of the ministry? Am I edifying the body of Christ? If not, let us remember that no one can do it in our place. If we are idle, our work is never fully done, and the body suffers. May our hearts and consciences be stirred as to these subjects during the little time that still remains.

1 Kings 13:

The ten tribes under Jeroboam had not only revolted from the authority of the son of Solomon, but had established centers of idolatrous worship at Bethel and Dan. Here was not only rebellion but apostasy, a most shameful return to the abominations of Egypt, from which they had long since been rescued.

God’s faithful love even for such people, and His care for the holiness of His Name, leads Him to send a message, by one of His prophets, from the land of Judah to the idolatrous king of Israel at Bethel. He was to deliver His message of coming judgment. This was accompanied by special manifestations of God’s power; the altar was rent, and the king’s outstretched arm was withered, and only restored by the prophet whom he would have smitten.

Seeing the power of God manifest, the king changed his attitude. He invites the man of God to come to his house for refreshment and a reward. Mark, the king is not broken and penitent; he simply wishes to take the edge off the prophet’s denunciation, and there could be no more effectual way than by getting him to accept his hospitality and a reward. Unquestionably there is much of this kind to-day. The world can endure strong language if it is not accompanied by corresponding conduct. But what must the impenitent think of those who preach most solemnly of the lost condition of men, of their enmity against God, the impossibility of their doing aught to please Him-and then taking up a collection, soliciting help from those whom they have declared to be Christ’s enemies!

The prophet is firm, and refuses the reward and the refreshment, and according to divine instruction betakes himself homeward. "There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing." We are sure the king must have felt, even if he did not acknowledge, the solemnity of the prophet’s words, backed by his conduct. Ah! the world may smile at those who walk apart from it, and have nothing to do with it to dull the effect of their warning, but it feels their testimony all the more keenly. Well does Satan know this.

So far the prophet has acted, to outward appearance, in faithful devotedness. He is now to be subjected to another test. There was an aged prophet, with some remains perhaps of past enjoyment of divine things, but utterly out of the current of God’s thoughts, and in a place of disobedience. On hearing of what had occurred, he goes after the prophet of Judah. A false position covets companions. Alas, it is one of the characteristics of disobedience. Doubtless this was the motive-perhaps not fully known-which induced the old prophet to go after the man from Judah.

He finds him "sitting under an oak." For some reason, instead of getting away as rapidly as possible from the ungodly place, the man of Judah has slacked his pace, and is even taking his ease in what Bunyan would call "enchanted ground."

There are no trifles in Scripture, and without forcing the meaning here, it seems evident that the prophet had lowered the tone of his testimony. He had not done this publicly. In fact, when approached by the old man he replies well-nigh as vigorously as he had to the king. But strong words are not always indicative of the true state of soul. In fact, sometimes we may seek to make up in intensity of language what is lacking in fervency of heart. Why is he sitting down in the enemy’s country? Does it not tell more loudly than words that his soul was not shrinking from the defilement of the place?

May we not pause here and ask ourselves a few serious questions? "They are not of the world even as I am not of the world." Do we feel this in our souls, or is it a doctrine with us? Coupled with the doctrine there may be certain lines of behavior understood as consistent. Certain amusements are to be eschewed; certain practices are reprobated. How about the state of the mind? On what is it feeding? Ah brethren, do we not know something of that relaxation of the inner man that answers to sitting under the oak?

Let it be remembered that such times often succeed seasons of special faithfulness. The enemy knows us. Perhaps conscience has stirred us up to a pitch of faithful testimony beyond ordinary; we have stood for God among His enemies, and now alone, with no one to see, there is the casting off the unusual armor, and a little indulgence of self is allowed.

There was nothing wrong in sitting under the oak. It was what it indicated as the state of heart.

Just here comes the attack. But notice that it requires all the ingenuity of falsehood to ensnare the prophet. The old prophet claims that he too has had a word from the Lord, rather from an angel, to allow the man of Judah to retrace his steps. Might he not have answered somewhat in the language of Paul to the Galatians, "Though we or an angel from heaven"? That the man from Judah could be deceived by a word as from God shows how far his soul had drifted. He goes back, to receive from the same lips the sentence of his doom. It is a solemn fact that if we want it we can find,-Satan will help us find-scriptures that can be perverted to suit our wishes.

May we be kept from all temporizing, and guard most closely our hearts. " Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."

What a solemn picture is that of the dead prophet, the ass and the lion. The ass could have carried him swiftly, the lion could not have hurt him, had he abode in the path of obedience.

And upon His Head Were Many Crowns." (Rev. 19:12.)

(Continued from page 329, Vol. 15:)

CHAPTER XI.

Head and Heir of all things.

That title which Isaiah gives to the "Child born "-the "Father of eternity "-leads us on to consider His relation to that eternal state of which He is Author. Here we shall find, indeed, in some sort an opposite line of thought to that which we have just had before us; and yet in fullest accord with it. For if, in what we have looked at, Christ has been seen seeking and working for the Father’s glory, until He can give up to Him the Kingdom, which He has taken to bring all things into agreement with His blessed will, it is surely in perfect accord with this to find that Christ is Himself the Center of all the thoughts and purposes-the counsels of the Father. As in communion with the Son we have had the Father before us, so now in communion with the Father have we the Son. Our joy it is and wondrous privilege to be brought into communion both "with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ."

The Son is as the Word the Revealer of God, and, as the Word made flesh, the Revelation also. Creation, as brought into being by the Word, proclaims in broken and reflected rays the glory of its Creator. This is that house of God of which the tabernacle in Israel was a figure, and which the Son is "over" (Heb. 3:1-6). Even in this from the beginning He has been already serving, and to what service does it not pledge Him in result! For, as over it, and the Revealer, He must maintain the glory of that revelation, amid all the frailty incident to the creature; and it would not be the creature, if it were not frail, nor could other than frailty and dependence suit it.

Moreover, the higher the structure is carried,-the more complex and wondrous it becomes, the frailer it is; the more it climbs Godward, the greater the depth to which it may fall; the more richly the ship is laden, the more is the treasure which is in it exposed to wreck.

The service undertaken here by the Son is a service of love. Revelation is for the creature, not for God. The glory revealed in it is not to increase the wealth of the Revealer, but of him to whom it is revealed. God is not making gain out of His creatures, nor are they increasing His wealth at their own cost. "If thou hast sinned, what doest thou against Him? and if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him? if thou be righteous, what givest thou Him? or what receiveth He at thy hand?" Nay, love alone can count its riches in assuming such burdens. And God is love; and His glory is in the out-flow of His goodness; and of this Christ is the only complete expression. What simpler then than that Christ-not simply the Son of His love, but the Son become Man-is the end for which all creation exists? Divine love, as it is exhibited, confirmed, glorified in Him, is the only possible key to the mystery of our being.

Sin has come in, and we think naturally very different thoughts from these. "I knew Thee, that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed," is said in all human languages, in accents of assured conviction. Even the Cross, the most wonderful manifestation of divine love that could be made has been darkened and profaned by such blasphemous accusations. But the answer has been given by the lips of the patient Sufferer Himself, whose lifting up avails and shall avail, to draw men unto Him, and so to God. Yea, "He died for all, that they which live should no more live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again."

He has vindicated then afresh His hereditary title as "Son over the house of God;" and having finally consecrated it as a temple of praise for ever, He will abide the Head of it. For this is the "mystery of God’s will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, for the administration of the fulness of times, to head up all things in Christ; both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him, in whom we also have obtained an inheritance" (Eph. 1:9-11, Gk.).

We must not confound this with millennial Kingship, or with anything which is to pass away. The "fulness of times" is not simply the last of probationary ages, but that to which they all pointed and led the way. Headship is not the same as rule over, after the manner of a king, but implies a closer, natural, and, so to speak, organic relationship. The head is the representative and interpreter of that to which he is head, and which would be defective in a terrible way without it. Such is Christ’s Headship over creation; and Ephesians here completes the doctrine of the two epistles which precede and connect with it as positional epistles-Romans and Galatians. The three are an ascending series, reaching in Ephesians their highest point and thus the widest view. For in Romans and Galatians His Headship is confined to man, and thus He is the second Adam of a new creation. That by itself would shut out angels; but they are not to be shut out, and the Lord’s title here would necessarily include these also.

In the third chapter we find accordingly that "every family"-so it should be translated-"in heaven and earth is named"-or gets its title- "from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is, the relationship of God to Christ as Man, affects His relationship with all His intelligent creatures. It could not surely fail to be so. Christ’s own place in relation to men must in some way avail for more than men; and the heading up of creation in Christ must bind it to God in a manner unspeakably different from its original relationship as creation merely. The character of man so commonly remarked on as a microcosm,-his nature thus putting him in relation to every part of the universe of God-becomes in this way a matter of highest and tenderest interest, as we realize this to be the nature assumed by the Son of God.

That He is the Son has here also its significance, as we see, and how the original and divine relationships shine through the acquired ones. Wonderfully accordant it all is, with all its surpassing blessedness. How "all things were created for" Christ, as well as "by" Him, we can clearly see (Col. 1:16); as well as how, not merely by His power, but in the link of such relationships, "by Him all things consist" (ver. 17).

Thus the Son is the "Heir of all things" (Heb. 1:2); and sonship and heirship go together, not merely among the dying sons of men who, under death because of sin, leave their possessions to others; but sonship and heirship go together in things that are eternal, and where again that which is divine shines through and interprets the creaturely and temporal. The thoughts of God reflect Himself and spring out of His affections-out of the depth of His nature. Would only that there were more ability to receive and trace out what His word, the key of all, has opened so for us! Let us remind ourselves that it is in this very connection that we are assured that, "according to the riches of His grace, He has abounded towards us in all wisdom and thoughtfulness,* having made known to us the mystery of His will."

*I cannot find a better word to express here the idea of phronesis, which the common version translates, most unsuitable surely, "prudence." Others give "intelligence," but being on God’s part toward us, this also seems hardly adequate.*

Yes, God has thought of us, indeed, as those whom He has called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ, and is training to be His co-heirs in His inheritance. Shall we not respond to His care and seek to grow more into "the mind of Christ"?

How tenderly are our thoughts drawn towards these glories of His by the reminder of our own personal interest in them. As here, where the mystery of His will to head up all things in Christ being spoken of, we are straightway reminded, "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance." At the close of this chapter again, "He has made Him to be Head over all things to the Church which is His body." In Colossians we find, in the verses most characteristic of the whole epistle (chap. 2:9, 10):"For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are complete"-filled up-"in Him, who is the Head of all principality and power." Such things as these, which assuredly we should most shrink from putting together, the word of God unites as if to challenge our attention by such connection; as if to make it impossible to possess ourselves of what is our own, without exploring the glories of Christ so linked with it. F. W. G.

(To be continued.)

(Rom. 16:15.)

In this most wonderful epistle written by the apostle to the saints at Rome, these words are found, " Salute Philologus."The epistle itself, the foundation of all the rest, and of the Christian life itself, is worthy of our most careful study, unfolding as it does the utter ruin of the human race, and the redemption and full salvation of God, based upon the blood of atonement, and brought to light by the gospel.

The closing chapter is devoted to commendations, salutations, and personal touches all beautiful and perfect in their place. " Salute Philologus " is one worthy of note. Nowhere else do we read of this name upon the pages of inspiration. We never read that he was an evangelist as we do of Philip, nor yet of his pastoral labors, or teaching as is recorded of Paul, Timothy, Apollos and others; nor is he even commended for things noticed of certain others in this chapter:‘’ Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which labored much in the Lord," "Greet Mary, who bestowed much labor on us " etc.

There may have been in his case little or no gift, and perhaps not time nor strength to do much in the way of labor; perhaps little seen or known in public, but of all this Scripture says nothing, but simply those words "Salute Philologus."

One thought looms up before the mind as we meditate upon this part of the inspired word of God. Is the name an index to the subject? Is the name the characteristic of the life of this one so worthy of the apostle’s salutation?

If so then we have found the key to a life sweet and precious to God and worthy of a place in the closing part of this epistle; and to those familiar with the word of God, this line of interpretation will not be new, nor yet out of order. Notice this from Gen. 4:down through the inspired word; Eve naming her sons, Cain and Abel; Noah’s birth (Gen. 5:29), Leah’s four sons (Gen. 29:32-35), in fact the whole family; and again the Spirit’s interpretation of the name of Melchisedek (Heb. vii).Also the frequent change of names, as from Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul, and Joses to Barnabas. These by the way as incidents true and divine in this line and order. But now, to return, if the name gives us a clue to this case, there was abundant reason why the apostle caused it to be placed upon the divine record"Salute Philologus"-a lover of the word for so is his name by interpretation. What a lesson this name has in it for us! the true secret of the Christian life, progress, and usefulness, the secret of true greatness before God. This epistle Paul had sent to Rome, and it was written by inspiration. Did not the apostle desire all the saints meditate upon the wondrous and precious themes therein given? Surely this was the apostle’s desire for the saints in that large city. Hence Philologus would be a pattern in this respect, and the mention of his name might inspire all to the same diligence and love for divine truth, " a lover of the word."

Beloved, let us, one and all, more truly answer to this name. These days are dark, evil is on the increase, lack of confidence is felt everywhere, and neglect of the word of God is felt all over, especially among the young.

May we have a reviving everywhere, and true hearty interest in the study of the word of God. It is written of one, "I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food " (Job 23:12). And again still later,"I rejoiced at thy word as one that findeth great spoil." "I love thy commandments above gold, yea, above find gold" (Ps. 119:127, 162).

Again, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart" (Jer. 15:16). These also were true Philologuses in their day and time, and we do well to draw near, and as the heart warms in communion with the Father and the Son, love for the Word will revive. The range is large, the fields are immense, the mines are rich and full of heavenly ore, and yet many of the people of God are passing over and by, and gather little or nothing. Reading a few verses, or a chapter now and then, good and right in its place, will not give us this Philologus character. But ‘’ As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word" (i Pet. 2:2). "If thou criest after knowledge, and lifteth up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure; then thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God " (Prov. 2:1-5). Then the Book will not appear dry, and hours spent therein will not grow dreary.

We may be dumb and have no utterance; deaf and hear little oral ministry; yet there lies before us the precious word of God, and if we are never commended, or rewarded for preaching or teaching, will it be said at the end that we have been lovers of the Word?

Philadelphia (Rev. 3:7) is a name akin to Philologus, and one thing is there said to Philadelphia, " Thou hast kept My word." Herein lies the secret of all spiritual power. How refreshing, in a day like this, when Higher Critics are doing their best to weaken and overthrow confidence in the Word, and again Satan in other ways draws away the hearts of men by love of pleasure, love of wealth, love for the world, to find here and there those who love the word of God, those who abide fast by it.

Search it! and love-beyond rubies or find gold- the precious things therein written. Of such we can truly say, The Lord increase their number, and to such we can yet write, "Salute Philologus." A. E. B.

By cloud and storm Thou teachest me.
While o’er life’s main Thou leadest me
The haven reached, at home with Thee,
I’ll bless Thee for their ministry.

I may not know what storm, or shoal,
Awaits me on life’s tide;
I may not know if joy, or woe,
Shall tend my footsteps as I go,
The while I shall abide-
Life’s sea is rude and wide.

I only know the past is full
Of clouds of varying hue;
I may not see why this should be,
Or that, but oh, I know that He
(Though all should fail,) is true,
He’ll safely bear me through.

This strange and tangled web I weave,
Mysterious to me!
His love alone could mark and own,
A work so miserably done,
Yet He accepts most graciously,
What love hath wrought imperfectly

I may not draw aside the veil
That kindly intervenes:
But, come what may, I know some day,
He’ll tell me in His own blest way,
What every trial means
By which my heart He weans.

No sorrow’s ever small to Him,
By which I learn His love.
His tender heart feels every dart,
The bitter tear, that oft will start,
Doth e’er His pity move.
How infinite His love!

My grief, however great it be,
His greater heart doth know,
And oft I need-(though heart may bleed)
The knife that roots out some rank weed,
He will not let it grow,
Because He loves me so.

Forgive, if I should murmur, Lord,
And chafe against Thy ways;
Some day, this fast retreating past,
With all its darkening shadows cast,
Will all Thy .mercies trace
And magnify Thy grace.

Ah! then I’ll know, as now I would,
The wisdom of Thy ways.
A troubled dream this life will seem
When I shall catch the first bright gleam
Of glory from Thy face.
Earth’s clouds will have no place.

Life’s storms and clouds and shadows o’er,
The school of sorrow past,-
The garnered grain needs not the rain-
Yet, through the discipline of pain,
And earth’s rude tempest blast,
He’ll bring me home at last.

These threatening storms that surge and roar,
These waves that wildly lash the shore,
But make me long for Thee the more,
And tell me, "night will soon be o’er."

H. McD.

(Jer. 14:21.)

This remarkable language is used by the prophet at a time of chastening under the hand of God -a chastening which was richly deserved by the people. He acknowledges the righteousness of God in it, but in connection with that confession appeals to His unchanging character. He does not merely appeal to God’s mercy and love; nor does he use the people’s low condition as the great motive with Him. Rather, his appeal is to His throne, the throne of His glory. Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of that throne. Should He fail to uphold, to preserve His blood-bought people-that throne of glory would be disgraced. What holy boldness, what effectual intercession! It is similar to that of Moses, when Israel had provoked the Lord to anger (Num. 14:) and He threatened to cut them off from being a nation,-" Then the Egyptians shall hear it; "or like Joshua’s plea at Ai (Josh. 7:), "What wilt thou do unto thy great name?"

Yes, beloved brethren, our salvation and eternal security are indissolubly linked with the throne of God’s glory. We often need chastening and reproof, but as soon would the throne of God be disgraced, as one of the least or most unworthy of His people perish. What security is ours! What rest!

" Our hearts have peace that can never fail,
‘Tis the Lamb on high, ore the throne."

Let the walk, partake of that stability. "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear."

Do you believe God? If God be God, whatever He shall plan for us, is positively and surely the best; and could our eyes, at this moment, see by the light of eternity instead of time, we would always choose for ourselves that which God has chosen for us. "Jesus said unto him, what I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John 13:7).