(Continued from page 49.)

II. THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE SCHOOL OF GOD.

When we speak, as we are going to do, of qualifications, we have, first of all, to understand that lack of qualification can keep no one out of that which God designs for all. If there is only a sincerely willing heart, God undertakes with regard to all that is needed in the way of qualification; and what we have to do just now is to consider how fully in this way He has provided for us-how well, therefore, we may learn in God's school, whether young or old, quick or dull, whatever in ourselves may seem to hinder or indeed forbid education!

God's meaning for us all is, as we have seen, education. Apart from any choice of ours, He has ordained for us needs which peremptorily require to be attended to, or we cannot even live in this world at all. The human creature is dependent as no other creature is. We are placed at the very beginning of our history here, in our mothers' arms, to find there, assuredly, more than the mere physical nourishment that we need. We may find the latter as mere animals, but God has made us something more than this; and we may be sure that in whatever He has ordained for us, we shall do well to remember what we are as human; and not because, for instance, the beasts are fed in the same way that we are, to merge ourselves therefore in the beastly nature. We are not mere flesh; we have spirits from the Spirit, and it is thus that we have been formed in "the image of God," even naturally, for "God is a Spirit."

God can never forget this; and the first element here is that of a moral nature, which not only can gee and understand things in themselves, but weigh them, balance them, understand their worth. Here, in our mothers' arms, we surely learn, and necessarily, some lesson of that dependence from which no one can escape; but we learn more than this:we learn, and are to be assured of, and drink in, a love which meets us in this need of ours, and which is to be our first lesson, and a moral one. The mother's love is proverbial as the deepest which nature knows. How little would the child be provided for in the mere provision of her breast, if there were not under it a mother's heart, which would willingly spend itself upon the child, and which is surely a wondrous lesson of altruism, as people say, for the child itself!

Sin, of course, has disordered everything; and we shall find not only that many children are deprived of that which they instinctively crave in the way of nourishment, but are deprived still more of that meeting of heart with heart, and awakening the heart by the heart, which God would have. Sin has disordered everything; but it takes little wisdom to realize that we must separate the disorder from the natural institution which is plain in spite of it, and the love that breathes in it on the part of the Creator. How much, in fact, men owe to a mother's love! How often have we heard of the criminal in his prison-cell hardened into perfect callousness as to every other feeling, but who yet has woke up to at least a flash of self-reflection and self-judgment at the remembrance of his mother!

Under this kindly influence then, the child begins its development. In God's design the mother is the
first teacher of the babe; and if all is right, will be the first best teacher in a spiritual way also. But we have not exactly to do with this now. That which we gather from it is clearly this, that God's design for us all is education; and that for Him the moral part is all-essential to the rest. If we think of God's school, however, as we are now to contemplate it, the Book which is put into our hands, and which is in itself so unique and so sufficient that we rightly call it "the Book," "the Bible," is plainly that which is to give us all our lessons. In the authority with which it speaks, it takes only the place which the mother, for instance, must take with her child, and which is so necessary for the child.. It speaks with authority because it is the language of One who knows; and as the Book of God, who does not suggest possibilities, but teaches truth. What sort of a teacher could any of us be who has no positive truth to teach? If the Book be God's Book, then certainly it is competent, and must be so, and in this way the uniqueness which we recognize in it speaks very plainly. But while it speaks thus with authority, the simplicity of its language shows us God's earnest desire for all His creatures, and is the only thing that is worthy of the God of all. He is not the Creator of the rich or the intellectual or the man of science, or of. any other special class, but the Creator of all. And thus it is that the apostle argues with regard to the gospel and the simple ability to enter into all the gladness which it gives by faith, where-ever faith maybe. "Is He the God of the Jews only?" he asks. "Is He not also of the Gentiles? Seeing it is one God that will justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith" (Rom. 3:29-30). But thus the Book of books is in a sense all of it a primer, however much else it is, and its first and last lesson is of God.

How blessed the way in which the only Teacher possible with regard to the creation of things speaks in the very beginning of the Book! What majesty in the simplicity of it! How it naturally awakes the response of the heart to Him who speaks in it! Nevertheless we want something more in order to have aright even this first lesson, and as Scripture is put into our hands to-day, in all the fulness of a perfected revelation, one Personality reveals itself in it throughout; and that He may be perfectly understood and be realized as near us, in such a way as no mother even can be to her child, in human guise God puts Himself before us in it.

In the Old Testament, for the Messiah everything waits. In the New Testament, we wait in that sense no longer:He has come, and with all blessing in His hand. There was a needed preparation of man for this which the long previous history declares, but we are not to speak of this now. God is fully revealed, He is in the light; and then He is Himself the Light by which all other things are read. How plain that here alone it is that we are in the true place for ' learning anything whatever! and in His presence we learn first of all, ourselves. We learn what hinders learning. How great a necessity this, and how from this we realize the good of a human Teacher as well as of the Manual in our hand! We need to know how to learn, as well as what to learn. We need, too, (how often,) to be free from other thoughts that have come in from elsewhere, and which prevent our recognition even of the simplest truths! With us, according to what has been already said, we shall not wonder to find that the hindrances are largely moral. Thus if we are truly in the presence of God, we shall be occupied with ourselves first of all in order to learn in ourselves, in the way of true self-judgment, all that is contrary .to Him with whom all our knowledge is to be communion. We learn thus in ourselves that which is to help us all the way through, and we learn self-mastery from Him who is absolute Master, and whose help is found in learning every lesson.

It is a fundamental necessity for learning, in the whole range of learning, that our eye must be single, in order that our whole body may be full of light. Now here God's singular care for us is once more revealed. The Spirit of God is He who brooded at first on the face of the deep, and He is the Agent in creation everywhere. Most capable, surely, He; and He it is who now takes upon Him to be our effectual inward Monitor; Himself, as Scripture assures us, (if we are Christians indeed,) dwelling in us. How perfect, then, is such a provision! We have Christ on the one hand, as our Teacher, Himself the revelation of God in His own Person, and thus of all things else,-the Light in which we see light. But then we have the Spirit of God in us to remove that which would, nevertheless, prevent the light having its proper effect. What love breathes in all this, to subdue in us all that is contrary and to mold us to its teaching!

The Spirit must form the house before He can dwell in it. Thus necessarily, according to Scripture, and because of what we are as fallen, new birth must precede indwelling. Here we are at once faced with a mystery which yet, like all other mysteries, has within it, in fact, a revelation. We are not, of course, developing Scripture doctrines now, and therefore we cannot enter, as might be desired, into the doctrine here; but Scripture assures us that we have thus communicated to us by the Spirit a new nature which is so really a divine nature, that we become by it, in a way which the original creation itself could not make us, children of God. God's way is to meet all that sin has caused by abounding over it. It is not enough for Him simply to replace what has become no longer able to answer its original purpose. His way is to show His perfect mastery over it by bringing in that which is higher and better, controlling thus for good the very evil which has come in. Christ's work has not replaced us where we were; it has done far more than this. We are not back in Eden and are not to be back there. We have lost earth, but to gain heaven. We have lost the innocency in which man naturally was, not to regain this, nor to find a fresh life sustained by the old tree of life in the midst of the garden. All these things become but types and shadows of what Christ has made our own. In Christ we have a new life which is eternal life; and in Him we find also in a higher way, not simply un-forbidden but made fully our own, that tree of the knowledge of good and evil which gives us now a competency to enter into the whole problem of good and evil, and to find holiness when it would be impossible for us to go back to innocence. We know what evil is in ourselves, and here is the mystery of which we were just now speaking, that while in new birth we have a new nature, yet as every Christian's experience will tell him if he consult it in the light of Scripture, the old nature is not yet removed. This is a perplexity which, no doubt, we have all found ; and which yet not only experience affirms to be the fact, but we may be able also without much difficulty to realize how effectually by its means the whole problem of good and evil is thus put before us. We find in ourselves the evil and the good. We find the evil in the presence of the good, revealed by it effectually. In all the manifestation of the sin that still remains within us, we learn by reason of use to have our senses exercised to discern between these.

But let us carefully remember that this does not imply that God would have us in any sense in subjection to the evil. If the Spirit indwells us, then ample power there must surely be over whatever inveteracy of evil can be imagined. We need only to be subject to the Spirit. The power is not in us but with us. We are still with this divine Teacher, learning dependence as we learned it first at our mothers' breasts. Yet ever also our responsibility, the proper responsibility of a moral being is enforced. The very presence of the Spirit of God does not make us of necessity the victors in the conflict which is implied in these two nature^.We must be subject to the Spirit, not finding strength in ourselves, but weakness; and not needing to be dismayed because of the weakness, when the very condition of triumph is that when we are weak then we are strong. How thoroughly is it God's purpose to hide pride from man! and thus if the Spirit indwells us it is, in the strong language of Scripture, to join His help to the very infirmities revealed (Rom. 8:26, Gk.).Thus if we pray, because we know not what to pray for as we ought, "the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Here then is infirmity which is expressed even in the very groanings of the Spirit. But these groanings are perfectly intelligible to Him who "knoweth the-mind of the Spirit"; and the Spirit still "maketh intercession for the saints according to God." Thus the groan declares our infirmity. We cannot utter the wants which, nevertheless, are most real ones. This groaning which is unintelligent to us is intelligent with God, and here how truly the Spirit intercedes for us, therefore, is manifest. It is Another who, in fact, is groaning in these groans which we cannot utter; and, according to this wisdom which is beyond us, God answers the Spirit-guided prayer. How blessed to know, then, that weakness is nothing which is to daunt us, but only that which is to make us lean the more simply and more fully upon the power of God!

(To be continued.)
'NOT A -DOG SHALL MOVE HIS TONGUE."