QUES. 1.-Please explain in Help and Food verses 14 and 18 of Eph., chap. 5. If a child of God is "in Christ" (ch. 2:13), and "light in the world" (ch. 5:8), how can such be "among the dead" or "drunk with wine"? In Matt. 25 both the wise and foolish virgins slumbered and slept. Is it a similar thing?

ANS.-The fact that both "the flesh" and "the Spirit" are in the children of God furnishes the explanation. So we read in Gal. 5:16,17, "This I say, then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." When a child of God conforms to the course (the spirit and ways) of the world, he is sleeping among the dead, and the heavenly voice calls to such, "Awake, thou that sleepest, arise from among the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee." It is as the ship master's call to Jonah as he slept in the sides of the ship ready to be destroyed in the storm. In verse 18 we are warned against a sinful indulgence of the flesh:"Be not drunk with wine." The Christian needs no other exhilaration than the joy and power of the Holy Spirit. The world will look with approbation on the Christian "asleep among the dead," and cast a look of contempt upon the other, fallen a victim to the desires of his flesh. Both, however, come from the same source -our fallen nature. Oh, serious fact-the old, Adam-nature, "the flesh," remains in us, by which we are continually tested whether we are walking with God or not, until "our body of humiliation" is changed by our glorious Lord into the likeness of His own(Phil. 3:21).

As to the virgins in. Matt. 25 falling asleep, it is said as to their expectancy of the Lord's early return. "As the Bridegroom tarried," this sanctifying hope dwindled and fell, as the Church's history also proves. The midnight cry, "Behold the Bridegroom" seems to have been broadcasted some 100 years ago and since, when the Lord's near return as the hope of the Church was re-kindled far and wide. Believing that it was, and is, the voice and work of the Spirit, how much more may we look for Him now!

QUES. 2.-Will you point out for us the difference between what we call "the Word of God," the Bible, and what is said in 1 John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God?" A Christian friend here says that when he holds the Bible in his hand, he holds the Lord Jesus.

ANS.-This Christian friend makes a gross mistake. When he receives a letter from a friend, does he hold that friend in his hand?

By the Holy Spirit John tells us of the Creator, all things having been created by Him, and His name "The Word," seems to point Him out as the Revealer of the invisible God. The Scriptures, which we also, and rightly, call the word of God (see Rom. 9:6; Eph. 6:17, etc, etc.), are the written communications which in His love and goodness God has been pleased to put in our hands.