QUES. 12.-Please answer in Help and Food a question which has been raised in our small meeting here. In Mark 1 :12 it says :"And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness." The question is, What spirit ? "Was it the Holy Spirit ? or the evil spirit?

ANS.-The connections leave no doubt that it was the Holy Spirit that led our Lord into the wilderness, where He was to be put to the test, "tempted of the devil." Luke 4 :1 says, "Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness ; " " to be tempted of the devil," adds Matt. 4 :1. Satan never could lead thus the Holy One of God. It was necessary that the Second Man-the last Adam- in coming forth from His retirement and hidden life with God, into His public life as our Representative and Mediator, should be fully tested by him who had ruined the first man. The Holy Spirit therefore leads, or "impels" him to this test, as later He was to lead Him on to the cross.

There is much instruction and great beauty in all this. The first man, Adam, surrounded in the garden by tokens of God's care and goodness, breaks through God's one prohibition, and surrenders to Satan's first temptation. The Second Man is urged by the Spirit to meet Satan-not in Divine power, but in human weakness-to defeat Satan in all his wiles. The "saying of God " alone is used by the Second Man. Not once, but three times (that is, completely) and Satan is utterly defeated by " It is written ;" "It is written;" "It is written"-that is by complete obedience to God's word.

We quote, in connection with this, from the Numerical Bible, on Matt. 4 :"And here now is His own Beloved ! He uses not the power that is in His hand against the adversary. In conflict between good and evil, power cannot decide ; the good must manifest itself as that, and stand by its own virtue against all odds. The glorious Wrestler is stripped therefore for the wrestling. Son of God though He be, He comes into the poverty of the creature, the conditions of humanity, and these in their utmost strait-ness. Man, in Adam, had been tempted in a garden specially prepared and furnished for him. The weakness of the creature was owned, but tenderly provided for, so as to witness to the tender arms of love that were about him; he had but to shrink into them to be in perfect safety, beyond all possible reach of harm.

"But not so sheltered, not so provided for, is the new Adam, the Son of Man. The garden is gone; in its stead is the wilderness ; nor is there nurture for Him now from nature's barren breast. For forty days He fasts, and then with the hunger of that forty days upon Him, the tempter comes. It marks the contrast between Him and other men that, whereas a Moses or Elias fasted to meet God, He fasts to meet the devil."

QUES. 13.-In John 6 :44, our Lord says :" No man can come to Me except the Father, which hath sent Me, draw him." Does not God want all to be saved? Is not salvation free for all ?

ANS.-Yes, surely. In Heb. 2 :9 it is written, " That He (Christ) by the grace of God should taste death for every man." 2 Pet. 3 :9 also says, "The Lord … is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;" and our Lord Jesus, in that beautiful scripture, John 3 :16, declares that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." No one can read these declarations from God and say that He has not provided for the salvation of all, or that it is not His will that all should be saved.

But having thus declared His gracious will, and provided a means of salvation for all, what if they for whom He has thus provided, refuse His gracious appeal :"Come; for all things are now ready? " Alas, the next word is, " They all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said," etc. (See Luke 14 :15-24.)

Is God's prepared supper then to be absolutely fruitless ? Will none be there? Oh, yes! How, then? Verses 21-23 give the explanation. They are not asked to come, now ; the Servant (the Holy Spirit) is to "briny in … the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind." Yea, " Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in "-their needs, their very misery are used to compel them to come. They who otherwise would not come, are thus by the Father's will drawn to the Son our Saviour, who says, "All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me ; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (Jno. 6 :37).