QUES. 24.-Will you kindly explain John 3 :13? I cannot understand how the Lord said, " No man hath ascended up (o heaven," when His Word tells us that Enoch and Elijah, and the spirits of all His people, were there while He was even now speaking.

ANS.-We could not answer you more fully than by quoting a paragraph from the Numerical Bible, which shows the matter to be very simple :"Nicodemus can only express his bewilderment. ' How can these things be ? ' he asks. The Lord asks in turn how he can be the teacher of Israel, and yet not know them. Then He affirms His own knowledge, from which He speaks, not with the uncertainty of their traditional teachers. Yet Israel received not His witness, even when He spoke of things upon earth, where what He said could in many ways be tested. New birth was a thing in this way sufficiently within their knowledge :for the work of the Spirit in men had a voice if they could hear it, and the prophets also had borne witness to it. Now if still they believed not, how would they believe if He spoke of heavenly things? of a sphere as to which they would have no witness but His own? For it was plain that there was no one-He is speaking of accessible witness only, as is manifest, not of Enoch or Elijah, or the spirits of the dead-no one who had ascended up to heaven, to give any confirmation. His own witness must stand alone. He, the Son of man, had been in heaven; from heaven He had come down; still, by the mystery of His nature, the One who is in heaven. The divine-human Person comes out distinctly here, the One always in heaven, though a man on earth :of no created being could such a thing be said. And here at once comes in the witness of heavenly things ; which, alas, Israel would reject, as we know they rejected Him who bore the witness, and of whom the witness was."-N. B. (Gospels.)

QUES. 25.-Kindly explain 2 Peter 1:4. In what way do we become " partakers of the divine nature"?

ANS.-In verse 3 he testifies that God, in his divine power, "hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness." Life first, of course. We are born of God through faith in Christ. A new and divine nature dwells in ns, which enables us to love what once we hated, and hate what once we loved. But the power of God does not stop here. In Christ is provision also made for godliness. He is God manifest in flesh, and in Him the glories of God are so revealed that the believer's heart is captivated and drawn after Him. 2 Cor. 3 :18 says:"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." This, we believe, is what is meant by being "partakers of the divine nature."

QUES. 26.-Will you explain in what way our "bodies are the members of Christ"? (1 Cor. 6 :15.)

ANS.-In the same sense in which a man's hand or foot is his member-that through which is displayed the mind of the possessor. It is not here, as in chapter 12, the formation of the body of Christ in which there is no more distinction between Jew and Gentile, bond and free, rich and poor, but all believers are fellow-members of that one body formed by one Spirit.

Here it is the body only of the believer which is the subject. The Corinthians, as all heathen do, had used it for fornication. Having become Christians, all was changed, however. The Holy Spirit dwells in the body of each believer, and joins it to the Lord, for the Lord's use, of course. That body is henceforth to be used to express the will and pleasure of the Lord, no more to gratify the passions and lusts of the flesh.

When the membership expressed in chapter 12 penetrates the soul, it gives us our dispensational and ecclesiastical place. That in chapter 6 transforms our practical life, and leads us to live to ourselves no more, but to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. If my body is the member of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit, holiness surely becomes it.

QUES. 27.-Are we taught by Scripture that Israel, as a nation, is to be "the earthly bride of Christ"? Will their blessings, in the eternal state, be equal with those who compose the heavenly bride-the Church ?

ANS.-We know of no plain scripture which teaches this, and mere inference we shrink from. As to the second part of your question, we judge it to be an established law that whatever has superiority of position has, correspondingly, superiority of blessing.