(Continued from p. 386, Dec.,1929)

"Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Christ Jesus unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath taken us into favor in the Beloved."

Somebody has said that familiar truths often lie "bedridden in the dormitory of our souls alongside exploded error," but we must rouse them up and have them take possession of us. Contemplation helps.

A famous picture of the Crucifixion shows only the shadows of the three crosses, falling sombrely athwart the hillside, while the story itself, in all its great and tragical wonder, is graved in the faces of the onlookers- Roman soldiers, Jewish rabbis, disciples, a fanatical throng of peasantry, men and women. We sometimes sing,

"Oh, how our inmost souls do move,
When gazing on that cross,"

and well they may, yet surely each of us yearns for deeper appreciation.

The verses before us proclaim the fruits of that wondrous work, and we are sharers in its benefits, and the commingling of both should engrave on face and life their infinite significance. Scientists have calculated that there is sufficient energy stored away in a single grain of radium to keep an electric bell ringing for thirty thousand years, and the subject of our meditation, properly assimilated, contains inexhaustible, unending springs of joy, waters that never run dry. Indeed, Mount Election is the Saints? Mount of Transfiguration. Its glories blaze forth in character. The objects of its blessing are clothed in immaculate righteousness, spotlessness, holiness, and stand unabashed before God. The saint to be with Him, must be like Him. To tread the golden streets of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, he must be "undefiled" (Rev. 21:27). Heart-filling fact it is that,

"The sons of ignorance and night,
May dwell in the Eternal Light,
Through the Eternal Love."

This is the theme that emancipates Jude from the morass of Stygian history in the earlier part of his epistle, and sweeps him, in an utter jubilation, into one of the grandest doxologies in the New Testament:"Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless in the presence of His glory, in exceeding great joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be the glory and majesty, dominion and power, before all time, NOW, and unto the eternal ages. Amen."

Mark well the phrase, "In exceeding great joy." Its position in the quotation from Jude is similar to that of the "in love" of Eph. 1:4. This suggests that the "in love" describes the believer. And "in love" with such a God he may indeed well be. How can he, indeed, help it? In love, in exceeding great joy, that is it! Yet, as most know, there is little punctuation in the Greek manuscripts, and some think that the "in love" properly links with the "predestinated," so that it is God who, in love for us, predestinates us. Here indeed is an unquestionable truth. Here also is another delightful ambiguity, and read either way, it anoints us with the oil of gladness. It baptizes us in heavenly joy.

Notice, moreover, how the verbs "choose" and "predestinate" carry us along in a warm current of live, logical thought. The original of "choose" suggests a "picking out" from among others, while the Greek of "predestinate" implies that a "dividing mark" separates us to God, shuts us up to Him. The thought is widened and deepened in the "people for a possession " of the epistle to Titus. According to a custom of ancient times, property in a contract was specified as "as much as can be plowed around" within a certain designated time. The Greek word for possession, peripoiesis (made around), hints at the latter thought. So then we are "picked out," "marked off," and "encircled" for God, His own, His very own.

But the "good pleasure of His will" does not stop here. It reaches out more and more. It is characterized by Francis Xavier's missionary watchword, "amplius" (farther afield). For the spotlessly righteous God has a place of the closest relationship, into which the predestinated are brought by the united will and effort of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By the Spirit they are "born of God," by Christ Jesus they are given an exalted, legal position of "sons." This is the magnificent declaration of the prologue of John's Gospel:"To as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the children of God, even to those that believe in His name, who were born" (John 1:13). This is indeed adoption, and to this blessing the Father predestinated us. In it the Holy Trinity unites us, in the bonds of filial affection, as members of God's happy family. "Consider (then) what manner of love the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God." Yea, "consider." It is not simply "behold."

The "by Jesus Christ unto Himself" has its beautiful counterpart in Roman Law. To quote Faussett, "A son and heir often adopted brothers, admitting them to his own privileges. By the Roman law of adoption, the adopted child was entitled to the father's name, possessions and family sacred rights." Here in other form we have the theme of Paul's jubilation in the 8th of Romans:"And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." And in delightful accord with the "by Jesus Christ unto Himself," Galatians in its turn salutes us with, "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, shouting, 'Abba, Father.'"

Methinks here one may catch the joyful exclamation of the blessed Son, the Captain of our salvation, quoted in the 2nd of Hebrews, "Behold I and the children that God hath given Me." It is another and better "These are my jewels" of the noble Roman mother, Cornelia, who when asked by invaders to bring forth her jewels, presented her seven sons. It is the music of an ennobling affection.

This sequence of "character," then "sonship," in Ephesians is but a twin thought to that of the ascending scale of God's great purposes for us, as set forth in Romans 8, all things working together for our good:"For whom He did foreknow, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that HE might be the first begotten among many brethren." The First-begotten not only admits us, as in Roman law, to His own privileges, but the Father for that purpose stamps the Son's blessed likeness upon us.

Thus all bondage and fear are things of the past. Such a spirit have we not received. Free indeed we are, for the Son Himself hath set us free (John 8:36). From the heights of Mount Predestination the shout of "sons" resounds, for the Great Liberator has adopted a race of slaves as His children. "He came to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised."

I would like to place you deep within some camera obscura, and there, shut out from the world, in its peaceful seclusion display in the central glass the onward march of the ages, disclosing that glad evangel in the millions in which its power has been dramatized. You should read their story, you should behold the transformation of their lives, the drunkard made sober, the unclean pure, the selfish purged of every desire but to "please another," the proud wearing the diadem of a meek and quiet spirit, in the sight of God of great price, and all with the hope of heaven and home shining upon their faces. For this however we have neither time nor power. A single tale from Harold Begbie's "Other Sheep" must perforce suffice us.

She was a poor, demon-possessed woman. Some of the dramatic details of the demon-possessed in the Gospels were strongly etched in her life. Obsessed and harassed, her horrific condition became absolutely intolerable. "Neither her husband nor her neighbors doubted for a moment that she was the darling of the demons." She was thrown down and torn by her familiar spirit. She was subjected to attacks of convulsion. A pall of the deepest gloom shadowed her, though she wrought reputed cures of disease and became sought after far and wide. The cup of blessing that she offered to others defied her every effort to raise to her own lips. In the midst of this deep distress she heard of the God of the Salvation Army and attended a meeting of the local corps in a near-by village. "I did not know that Christ had ever cast out devils; all I knew at that time was His Name, and that people in trouble prayed to Him, nothing more." She came, she saw, and He conquered. Through His Name and power she was set free. Wondrous was the transformation in her life. From the servant of sin and sorrow she became a messenger of peace, she proclaimed the glad news, she did the work of an evangelist. "Her prayers, I am told," says the narrator, "were of extraordinary beauty. She always began, her eyes raised to heaven and her arms uplifted, with the words, whispered in an imploring tenderness, 'O God, you are my Father, my Father!'" Through every fibre of her being thrilled the emancipation proclamation of the sons of God.

Her story was to "the praise of the glory of His grace," and so is yours, and so is mine. Are we praising? Mr. Spurgeon was once invited to preach an extempore sermon on "One star differeth from another in glory," and eloquently -he spoke. But on another occasion he said, "When I come to speak of glory, I can only stammer about it." He must have been thinking of such glory as this. And as measured against their glorious theme, all other efforts are but stammering, yet the stammerer may sing unhindered:

"In loving-kindness Jesus came,
My soul in mercy to reclaim,
And from the depths of sin and shame
Through grace He lifted me.

From sinking sand He lifted me,
With tender hand He lifted me,
From shades of night to plains of light,
O praise His Name, He lifted me." F. C. Grant

(To be continued, D. V.)