QUES. 20.-Please explain the latter clause of Rom. 11 :22. Has it any reference to eternal life?

ANS.-Not at all. It is not a question of individual souls here. It has a dispensational application. God gave His testimony to Israel as a people at first. (See chapter 9 of this epistle.) They failed to keep it. So He passed it to the Gentiles ; and they too have failed to keep it. Christendom is largely plunged in idolatry and legality, and is fast going on to apostasy. God is about to cut it off therefore, as He before cat off Israel.

The Gentile (Christendom,) is represented as speaking of Israel in verse 19 of this 11th chapter. The reply to this is from verse 20 onward.

But mark this well; the cutting off of Israel as God's vessel of testimony on earth, which took place about thirty years after our Lord's return to heaven, in nowise hinders individual Israelites from salvation. Nor will the impending cutting off of Christendom as God's present vessel of testimony on earth hinder in the least any individual Gentile from salvation, except they be of the class described in 2 Thess. 2:8-12. Indeed, verse 15 of our 11th of Romans shows plainly that when Christendom is cut off and Israel restored again to favor, a wave of blessing heretofore unknown on earth will be experienced.

Well may faith sing, though in a scene of sorrow, as indeed she does in the closing verses of this chapter ; for she has learned that the failure of man has but displayed "the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God."

QUES. 21.-Please explain Heb. 10:26-29.

ANS.-It must be borne in mind, to understand Hebrews aright, that " sin " here is not at all the same as in 1 John 2 :1, for which there is an Advocate. In Hebrews there is no Advocate, for the reason that the sin there is the rejection of Christ Himself. Some were turning back to Judaism, after having professed Christianity. But Judaism had only the shadows. Christianity had the realities. Turning back from the realities to the shadows was sinning wilfully, with open eyes, with knowledge of the truth. It set aside the only sacrifice which avails for sins, and so there was no more sacrifice, no more possible hope. They who despised Moses' law died without mercy. How much worse the end of those who despised Christ after having professed Him ! for they trample under foot, not a law, but the Son of God.

They had been positionally sanctified, that is, separated from the ungodly world by the blood of Christ, in whom they professed to believe :just as Israel in Egypt had been separated from the Egyptians by the blood of the lamb on their doors, whilst in many of them there was no real faith in God, and they perished by the way.

This is doing despite to the Spirit of grace, whose mission here is to exalt the grace of God as displayed in Christ.

QUES. 22.-What is Predestination, as taught in Scripture?
ANS.-It is what the children of God are to be in eternity-the destiny which God has prepared for them :"It doth not yet appear what we shall be:but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him " (1 John 3:2). Rom. 8 :29 explains it in a few words :" For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son."

It should not, be confounded with Election. Election has to do with God's sovereign grace in making us children; Predestination, with His sovereign grace in the glory which He has purposed for us in eternity.

QUES. 23.-What is the meaning of 1 John 3:8, 9?

ANS.-A double line of truth may be intended by the Spirit in these verses.

1st. The life implanted in the believer:"His (God's) seed remaineth in him." It is as impossible for this " seed " to produce sin, as for our fallen nature to produce righteousness. The root of a grafted tree is still wild, and if allowed to grow can produce only wild fruit. But the implanted graft is from a good tree. It cannot produce wild fruit, but, in greater or less perfection and quantity, only fruit like that of the parent tree. But that graft, not the root, is now really the tree; the new nature implanted in the believer is what constitutes the man now, and so it is said of the child of God, "He cannot sin, because he is born of God."

2nd. It is also true in the practical life of the child of God. He cannot walk any more in the paths of sin in which he walked before. He can be happy only in the practice of righteousness. If in this sense he fails in detail here and there, he has "an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous " (chap. 2:1); but he cannot live in sin ; it cannot be the practice of his daily life any more. Indeed, it is by this that men see the change which has taken place within him.

This, we think, will also explain what difficulty you may have in chap. 5 :18 of the same epistle.

QUES. 24.-In 1 Cor. 12 :9, 28, 30, "the gifts of healing" are mentioned. Are those gifts still in existence in the Church? If so, would you kindly say who has them ?

ANS.-We know of none. In all the years of our Christian journey we have never seen any. Those we have met who claimed to possess them were manifest deceivers, and represented generally the most wicked religious systems in existence.

Some who would not claim to have the gift of healing as we see it in the disciples at the first, when God was establishing Christianity on the earth, claim, nevertheless, to " heal by faith." Now we know that God ever answers the prayer of faith ; and we are thankful for it; but, among the various kinds of "faith-healers," we have seen so much deception, such a horde of antichristian doctrines, such a love of money, and at best such a hindrance to the interests of the soul by undue occupation with the comforts of the body, that we are convinced Satan has much more to do with it than Christ.

Such persons utterly disregard the blessed use the Lord makes of sickness, as is seen in the cases of Job, of Timothy, of Paul, of Epaphroditus, and others.
The Church belongs not to earth, but to heaven. Let us not love the earth and crave for its comforts, but rather love Christ and suffer patiently the discipline we all need, to make us "partakers of His holiness."

QUES. 25.-On what scripture is the practice-based of licensing young ministers to preach, arid yet not to administer the Lord's Supper ?

ANS.-There is scripture for neither the one nor the other. It is all a part of that order of things now found in Christendom which has arisen from ignoring the presence and place of the Holy Ghost in the dispensation we are now in. See John 7:37-39 and chap. 14:15-20. It has led to human organizations much after the pattern and character of things in Judaism. It has formed a "clergy" and a "laity," in direct opposition to our Lord's words in Matt. 23 :8, " Be not ye called Rabbi:for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren."

There are, no doubt, many excellent men found in false positions ; but that does not justify the false, nor will they find it to have been profitable when all is manifested "before the judgment-seat of Christ."