Tithing the Mint

" Ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs and pass over judgment and the love of God " (Luke 11:42).

As men generally do who walk at a distance from God, but who wish to be considered godly, the Pharisees to whom the Lord spoke the above words were exceedingly technical and careful of small things, while they left out the weighty matters of "judgment and the love of God."

There is no need of exercise of soul to " tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs." Moreover, it has the appearance of much conscience; and this satisfies pride. It gives a character of piety in the eyes of our fellows; and the flesh loves this. How frightfully subtle is the human heart! How, by trifles, and with Bible in hand perhaps, it can hide from itself the great and solemn matters of "judgment and the love of God " which reach out unto all eternity. This is what has built up the Romish system of religion into a gigantic fabric of trifles, forms, ceremonies, superstitions without end-a churchianity which is but a painful caricature of Christianity; and it is ready to build up in the same way any individual or company of individuals who yield themselves to it.

But oh, dreadful omission! it omits judgment and the love of God. It retains the chaff-the outside- and lets go the wheat-the real substance.

Where judgment and the love of God prevail, all minor details take their rightful place; but, once gone, the closer adherence to details, the deeper and more offensive the pharisaism which follows.

Judgment without the love would be hard and fruitless. Love without the judgment would end in corruption. Tithing mint without judgment and love is but legality and hypocrisy. The true path is narrow, but it ends in a large place.

David has only one book, the book of Psalms-the comfort of multitudes. Save one great fall, his heart was with God from end to end of his life. It was a life of one piece. Love marks him. He is Israel's shepherd as well as their king, and leader, of their praises.

His son Solomon has three books :1:Proverbs- his wisdom, which is the chief feature of his life. 2. Ecclesiastes-his sore disappointments and dejection. All that the wisdom of man can devise is insufficient to satisfy the heart. 3. The Song of songs -the expression in Old Testament imagery of repentance, faith, and love. He has found at the end of his life what his father had found at the beginning.

Happy are they who learn God's wisdom at their beginning.

The Kingdom and the Church.

It is not difficult to see a marked difference between the first seven chapters of Acts and the rest of the book. Those seven chapters are the final appeal of God in grace to the Jewish nation. Their Messiah had come; they had rejected Him, and God had taken Him back to heaven. On the cross He had yet prayed for them in most tender words, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." His prayer, as ever, is granted, and the nation, forgiven this great crime for the time being, is yet given an opportunity for repentance and acknowledging Him as the Messiah, the King, which God had promised them in the Scriptures of their prophets. They are bidden to repent, to own themselves as His subjects by being baptized in His name, and their sins will be forgiven them, and He will return to them and set them up at the head of all nations, as promised in the Prophets.

For a moment their fate hangs in the balance. Thousands are convicted, baptized, and forgiven. But the same nation breaks out in fierce persecution imprisoned and beaten, and Stephen is stoned to death, though they had seen his the face of an angel."

Their doom is sealed now. A few more years of the patience of God, and the Romans raze Jerusalem to the ground and scatter the nation to the four winds of heaven, where it is to this day.

Saul is converted, chosen last of all as an apostle_ not to the Jews as were the Twelve-but to the Church. She is in the kingdom, but she is not the kingdom. She is the King's wife (Rev. 19:7), and is, with Him, to rule the kingdom when it is set up in power and glory.

Because Paul is the apostle of the Church, and the Church is a heavenly body, he was not sent, like the other apostles, to baptize (i Cor. i:17); for baptism is a kingdom, not a Church, ordinance. It has to do with the earth, not heaven; with time, not eternity; with subjection to the King, not life and union with the Head of the Church.

Paul recognized, of course, the truth of the kingdom, and, accordingly, he did baptize; but, as with the Twelve, whose mission was the kingdom and therefore still a Jewish and earthly order of things, baptism of water was in the front; so with Paul, whose mission was the Church and therefore no more a Jewish and earthly order of things, baptism of water was in the background. The ordinance of the Lord's Supper was given a new and prominent character by the revelation of the Church dispensation (i Cor. ii:23-34). On kingdom ground they broke bread at home, in theft own houses (Acts 2:46), each family separately, as loving subjects of their Saviour-King, and probably at the end of their meals. On Church ground they "came together on the first day of the week to break bread" (Acts 20:7).

They had learned that "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles," and this necessitated a new and different order of things.

The Church dispensation as given to the apostle Paul is still the one we are in. His gospel, as he himself calls it (Rom. 16:25), is still the gospel to be presented to men. They who preach the gospel of the first seven chapters of Acts preach a Jewish gospel-the gospel of the kingdom-not the gospel of the Church dispensation. Is it a wonder, therefore, if the Christianity which prevails under that gospel is little else than a baptized Judaism ?

How unspeakably blessed to have learned Paul's gospel!-to know and enjoy the exceeding riches of God's grace as unfolded in the gospel of the present dispensation! Not a few think that the gospel which offers deliverance to the sinner from the wrath to come is all there is of the gospel. How great and serious a mistake! How dwarfed it leaves its converts! Indeed, deliverance from the wrath to come is but the blessed door into the further gospel of God's infinite grace in relation to the place we have in the Church, and the place the Church has in the .glorious counsels of God. May we learn this, and worship!