God's way of preserving His people.
When God led Israel out of acknowledged them as His nation, they were to be marked by separation from all others. Through them Jehovah was to be made known to the world as the One and only true God, Creator, and sovereign Ruler, holy and righteous. They themselves would be marvelously honored and blest by a true and joyful acknowledgment of what He is. Their worship of the true God was to be in marked contrast to the abominable demon-worship represented by the many idols by which the nations were degraded, and by which they dishonored themselves. Therefore the injunction to Israel, continually insisted upon, was to maintain their separation from the nations thus linked with idolatry. If unheeded it would surely result in their corruption and destruction. That it did so is recorded in the books of Judges and Kings.
An admonition to us
Israel's history was "written for our ad- monition" (1 Cor. 10:11). Spiritually applied, it is for the Church's instruction and warning. Again and again Israel's history is drawn upon for this purpose in the New Testament. As the House of God in which the Holy Spirit dwells, the Church must be in holy separation from the world. By alliance with it, in spiritual mixture with it, a true testimony to God's character is made impossible.
Descent from Abraham was Israel's title, to which circumcision was the seal. The new birth brings us in, and gives title to take our place in God's spiritual family (Jno. 1:12, 13), and of this the Holy Spirit is the seal (Eph. 1:13). How contrary to God it is, therefore, to count as of God's house those who neither know this new birth, nor the spiritual circumcision and seal of the Spirit! It has ruined Protestantism which once stood boldly and righteously against Romish abominations, in restoring the Word of God to the people. This defection from following the word of God has brought this sentence from the Divine pen, "Thou hast a name to live, and art dead… If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief" (Rev. 3:1,3). Solemn words! to which few, alas! are taking heed.
Infidelity under a new name.
Admixture with the world has become such in protestant bodies that enemies of the Cross, enemies of the Christ of God, boldly mount the pulpits to assail the word of God and the foundation truths of Christianity which they once pledged themselves to proclaim, but to which they have become adversaries, while pretending still to the Christian name, by which the blind and careless camp-followers are deceived.
It is with thankfulness to God, therefore, that we hear courageous voices raised against that infidelity, now called Modernism, which has invaded their churches. So far has the truth of Christianity been twisted and corrupted by them, that literary culture, genial ways, and an honorable life is palmed off to the people as Christianity, and our blessed Lord Himself presented as a pattern moralist instead of the Saviour of the lost. Thus is the Christ of God dishonored by sinful man's perverted imagination ! The Presbyterian body which hitherto has been considered, justly, we believe, as the backbone of Protestantism in this country, is now, as we write this, in the throes of controversy in their General Assembly at Grand Rapids, Mich., as to casting out leading "Modernists" from among them. Let those who love our Divine Saviour, and the precious truth entwined about His holy Name, sustain them in prayer.