QUES. 3.-"Is it necessary that a Christian should know the exact time or date of his salvation (of his conversion) ? Some here claim that we should know."

ANS.-The date of our natural birth is not gotten from our experience, but from our parents' testimony. In like manner we depend upon God's testimony for the certain knowledge of our new birth. (See John 5:1, 24, etc.) On the authority of God's word therefore we may, and should, have a present assurance that we are born of God and have eternal life through faith in Christ; but what is the need of trying to fix the date of its beginning, which we cannot prove? Many Christians can speak of the time when they found "peace with God;" but that may be subsequent, or separated in time from new birth. To trust to our experiences for assurance in such matters is a poor foundation.

QUES. 4.-"Are the Psalms expressive of Christian experience, and suited for the edification of the saints in our gatherings for the breaking of bread on the Lord's day?"

ANS.-A judicious use of the Psalms (as well as other portions of the O. T.) has often been used to the edification, instruction and refreshment of saints at various occasions. It is important, however, to remember that they voice the experiences of the godly in Israel; David and his afflictions being largely representative of them. Hence God's people in all dispensations have drawn consolation and encouragement from the Psalms. Prophetically, they express the deep exercises, distresses and deliverances of the Jewish godly remnant in "the great tribulation" under the reign of "the Beast."

In a few psalms our Lord's unique sufferings are prophetically expressed:-in the 22nd as the sin-bearer of His people; in the 40th as the whole burnt-offering willingly offering Himself for His own; in the 69th as the trespass-offering, restoring what He has not taken away.

The following extract from Mr. Darby's Synopsis, presenting a succinct view of the application of the Psalms, should be useful:

"The Psalms are, almost all, the expression of the sentiments produced in the hearts of God's people in the events through which they pass, and indeed express the feelings, not only of the people of God, but often those of the Lord Himself. They are the expression of the part the Spirit of God takes in the sorrows and exercises of the saints. We find in them consequently, the hopes, fears, distress, confidence in God, which respectively fill the minds of the saints-sometimes the part which the Lord Himself takes personally in them, and occasionally, exclusive of all but Himself.

"Hence a maturer spiritual judgment is required to judge rightly of the true bearing and application of the Psalms than for other parts of Scripture; because we must be able to understand what dispensationally gives rise to them, and judge of the true place before God of those whose souls' wants are expressed in them; and this is the more difficult as the circumstances, state, and relationship with God, of the people whose feelings they express are not those in which we find ourselves. The piety they breathe is edifying for every time; the confidence they often express in God in the midst of trial has cheered the heart of many a tried servant of God in his own trials.

"This feeling is carefully to be preserved and cherished; yet it is for that very reason so much the more important that our spiritual judgment should recognize the position to which the sentiments contained in the Psalms refer, and which gives form to the piety which is found in them. Without doing this, the full power of redemption and the force of the gospel of the grace of God is lost for our own souls; and many expressions which have shocked the Christian mind, unobservant of their true bearing and application, remain obscure and even unintelligible."