One of the most interesting and significant features of the time is the rapid growth of the mission movement. In itself, it is surely full of the deepest interest to the Christian heart, the awakening of the Lord's people (though even yet but very partially,) to their responsibility to carry out His command to " preach the gospel to every creature." The results, too, have been striking proportionately to the effort made. The history is one full of stirring incident and power to arouse the deepest emotions. The work and the workmen call out our fullest sympathy, and demand our most earnest support ; and here our prayers at least can penetrate into all fields, unhindered by what may and must often limit cooperation of another kind. Alas! how much are we strangers to what is (in the main,) of Christ and for Him ! We know little, because we care so little ; and then, again, it is assuredly true that we care so little oftentimes because we know so little.

A singularly interesting book has been published in the last year,* from which some idea may be gained of how God has been moving within the last century to open the world to the blessed gospel of His grace, as well as, in some measure, of how He has moved in humiliation hearts to send the gospel into these open doors. *"The Crisis of Missions," by Rev. T. Person, D. D. This book may be had of Loizeaux Bros., 63 Fourth Ave., New York. Price, $1.25, post-paid.* It would be a pleasure to be able to transfer to these pages some sufficient extracts to induce others to get the book itself, or to convey to those who may not be able to do this a scanty outline of the story there so well and wisely told. Dr. Pierson may without reproach be styled an enthusiast upon his subject. Yet he one who expects no conversion of the world as the result of present evangelizing, but the speedy coming of the Lord Himself.

As to the conversion of the world, a few figures, culled from a pamphlet* issued about the same time with the book just mentioned, should demonstrate how little has the century almost passed (since Wm. Carey went to India) done to give any national hope in this direction. *"A Century of Missions and Increase of the Heathen," by Rev. Jas. Johnston, F.S.S.* The population of the world is set down in it as about 1,470,000,000. Of these, the Protestants number 135,000.000 ; the Greek church, 85,000,000 ; the Roman Catholics, 195,000,000. The total of Christendom is thus 415,000,000.

It does not need to argue how much, if we could ascertain the proportion among these of true Christians, these numbers would be reduced. Over against these 415,000,000 of professing followers of Christ (many, indeed, not even that, for what is the meaning in a census of the first class-Protestants ?) we must place 8,000,000 of Jews, 173,000,000 of Mohammedans, and 874,000,000 of heathen,-1,055,000,000 in all. "When Carey wrote his famous inquiry, in 1786, he estimated the Mohammedans at 130,000,000 and the Pagans at 420,000,000,- equal to 550,000,000. This would give an increase of 493,000,000. But as we have come to the knowledge of vast populations in Africa and the East which could not be even guessed at in Carey's time, we must largely increase his estimate, but I am not prepared at present to say to what extent. Of this, however, I am sure, that the actual increase during the hundred years is much more than the 200,000,000 at which I have put it."

As "results" of this century of missions, Mr. Johnston gives,–

"870,000 adults, converts from among the heathen, are now in full communion with the Church of Christ, as the result of Protestant missionary labors. These, with their families and dependents, form Christian communities scattered over almost every portion of the habitable globe; numbering, in the aggregate, at least 2,800,000 souls."

Thus, after a hundred years of missionary labor, we have 197,000,000 more of heathen to be reached by the gospel than when we began ! " It is enough to note the fact," adds Mr. Johnston, "and its bearing on the possibility of Christian missions, with their three millions of converts, overtaking the increasing one thousand millions of heathens and Mohammedans in the world." The italics are his own.

Other considerations make the outlook in this respect even more hopeless. The same writer adds,-

"It is full time that the Church of God looked this fact in the face, that no religion which had been formulated into a system, or is possessed of sacred books, has even been arrested in Us progress by our modern missions. Hindooism, Buddhism, and Islam not only stand their ground, they are yearly making proselytes by tens of thousands. For one convert from any of these systems, they gain thousands from the inferior races, which they are absorbing into their systems."

He qualifies this statement thus far, that- "It is true that Christian missions have made an impression on all these systems; many agencies have combined to unsettle the belief of Hindoos and Mohammedans, and it is no hyperbole to say that these systems of error have been shaken. But it depends upon the future of the Church's efforts whether the shaking is to lead to an awakening followed by a new lease of superstition and fanaticism, or to their overthrow. The shaking may not move the foundations of these systems, but, like the agitation of some chemical compounds, they may crystallize into new forms of error, more dangerous and deadly than the old."

To this last consideration the dechristianization of Christendom which is going on, spite of all real or apparent revivals, gives alarming force. We shall, however, speak of this, if the Lord will, at another time. It is enough to show here that the logic of facts is coming with irresistible force to demonstrate the truth of Scripture- that the world is not to be converted by present agencies. It has been indeed promised, and will be fulfilled, to Christ:"Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession ;" but how to be fulfilled is also declared to us :" Thou shall bruise them with a rod of iron ; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." (Ps. 2:9.)

If it were simply ignorance that had to be removed in the case of the heathen, then the light of Christianity might be counted on to dispel it. But it is not so ; else their condition would be more their misfortune than their sin. In fact, Christendom itself, but for the sovereign mercy of God, had before this returned into utter heathenism. We have come already through the dark ages of professing Christianity. Before our eyes, men are lapsing into a deeper darkness which the sure word of prophecy declares. When the glory of the Lord shall arise (as yet it will) upon Israel, "darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples." (Isa. Ix. 2.)

Yet this should not damp our zeal for the spread of the gospel, which the Lord's word directly enjoins, and with which His power will never be lacking. Results are not indeed what we would desire, and yet they are full of encouragement. Says Mr. Johnston once again,-
"The annual increase in mission converts averages, so far as we can learn, about six or eight percent., while the increase to the membership of the churches at home does not average one per cent, per annum."

In many places, the testing of the reality of the work also has been sufficiently severe ; as, for instance, in Madagascar ; and some of the most notable records of faithfulness and endurance in modern times have come to us from the mission fields.

Dr. Pierson's book will give, in a short compass, the best idea of what has been accomplished and what is accomplishing in this way. And one of the most striking facts he brings before us is the way in which God has, by His providence, been opening door after door to the divinely given faith that laid hold upon the command to publish the gospel as a sure pledge of power to go before and to accompany it. Who will not be moved at this record of one only of His marvelous doings among the Pacific islands?-

"Sixty years ago, the brig Thaddeus was nearing the Sandwich Islands, with the first missionaries to those habitations of darkness and cruelty, on board. Never was an enterprise, humanly speaking, more hopeless. Seventeen persons were going to these ten isles to evangelize them, to upheave the ocean, and flood them with the knowledge of the Lord:and against coast-barriers as formidable as ever the gospel encountered,- barbarism, sensuality, superstition, brutality. These people, lost to shame, went almost naked. Husbands had many wives, and wives had many husbands; and they exchanged as they would trade in any other commodity. Two-thirds of all the children died in infancy by the hands of their mothers, who would choke a babe, or bury it alive in the earth floor of the hut, to stop its crying. A nation of thieves, gamblers, drunkards, they sacrificed human beings as victims, and had neither science nor literature, however rude. Government was a farce; a taboo system made death the penalty for offenses so small that they might be committed without either will or knowledge; for a common man to allow his shadow to fall upon a chief, for instance, could be atoned for only as his head lay at the feet of that chief. No words can do justice to the moral and spiritual condition of those islands. It was a question whether such a people could be saved, even by the gospel; not a few doubted whether they were worth saving. Could yon expect the sea to sweep against such barriers and wash them away ? It would take a thousand years !

"But as the boat drew near the coast, Hopu, a native who, having found his way to this land and to Christ, was now going back, put off in a small boat for shore, and at once returning, swung his hat and shouted, 'Oohu's idols are no more!' God had gone before these pioneers. The old king was dead, the images of the gods all burned, and the first death-blow struck at the taboo system,-all this before the vessel's prow touched the beach. The missionaries wrote in their journal, ' Sing, 0 heavens, for the Lord hath done it !'

"Ah, yes, the island system was sinking, and the huge barriers subsiding; the sea need not change its level, but only move in upon the sinking land. And so in two years the missionaries began to give them a written language and literature. The first convert was Keopulani, the king's mother. Within four years, the Christian Sabbath and Ten Commandments were formally recognized by government; and so the work went on, until within fifty years the islands took their place with other Christian nations, and became themselves centers of gospel light for the darkness around."

This is only a sample, though a striking one, of how God has been working to remove hindrances and open doors within the century past. At the beginning of it, " there was little or no access to the great nations of the heathen world. China was walled about, Japan's ports were sealed, India was held by an English power hostile to missions, Africa impenetrable even to the explorer, and the isles of the sea crowded with cannibals more to be dreaded than the devouring waves of the angry ocean." Mohammedanism made death the penalty of change of faith; and " there was less hope of proper missionary work among Roman Catholics than among Polynesian cannibals." Beside all this, "tediously slow travel and transportation made neighbors foreigners; languages, strange and hard to master, hindered even converse and communication, and, formed in the matrix of heathenism, offered no mold for spiritual ideas; moreover, at least sixty such tongues must be reduced to writing, having no literature, nor even lexicon, nor grammar." Woman, again, among these nations, was secluded, degraded, and "denied all social status and individual rights, and even a soul. Worst of all, caste, that gigantic foe of human progress, forbade not only conversion, but communion among converts."

These are but some of the external hindrances that existed. It is most interesting to see how largely, and in what manner these difficulties have been overcome. With the exception of one country-Thibet, soon likely to throw clown its barriers with the rest, the whole world is now accessible to missionary labor ; and here and there peoples, themselves evangelized, are helping to send out the gospel to others. The Bible is in almost every tongue, and the number of those who offer themselves for missionary labor is so increased that means are lacking to send them out.

No doubt, if we look at the work and its methods, there are many things that hinder full and unalloyed satisfaction. Yet who but must own that God has been working, and wonderfully working? Who but must be reminded of the words, "The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come"? Far off, assuredly, the end cannot be; and this going out of the gospel to the ends of the earth is, among so many signs, not the least. But not only in this way,-not only as onlookers,-should we be interested in it. It is Christ's work,-it is the proclamation of His dear name, that as such calls for our fellowship. How far behind are we, most of us, in this respect! And how often do we allow blemishes in the work to take away our interest in it, when they should rather stir our hearts to intercession and greater fervency of prayer in its behalf ! "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints!" Alas ! how little we do this ! How little are we able to lift ourselves out of the circle of our own horizon to link ourselves with what is dear to Christ upon earth !

Henceforth we may, if the Lord will, often return to look at features and details of the mission work, and in the meanwhile would recommend warmly Dr. Pierson's book, as a most helpful introduction to, and a means of engaging a more intelligent and practical interest in it.

The lesson of this chapter, as we in our day may read it, is very full in its evangelic teaching. Its two broad features are these:that let man but take his true place before God, he shall surely find God's mercy for him ; and then, also, that this mercy is, and must be, also righteousness. As the apostle puts it concerning the gospel, " It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; " and then why? "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed." In God's good news to fallen man is His righteousness revealed!

The prophet, though he be that-God's man toward the people, in the presence of God must fall as low as any other. A Manasseh, or a thief on the cross, could do no more than utter that cry, " Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." And that is all the man of God can say. Like the Psalmist, " Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified."

It is the first essential thing for blessing to be brought just to this point:to the utter giving up of all pretension of any thing before God,-to the acceptance of His sentence of utter condemnation upon all the world;-all the world guilty before God. When we have reached that point, we do not look round with self-complacency upon our neighbors, to reflect upon how much guiltier they are than we. That word " LOST," if we know what it means, swallows up all other distinctions. It refuses to know any distinction. "Undone!" "Lost!" The sinner of the city and Isaiah the prophet absolutely upon the same level as to that!

Have you come down to that dead level, reader? Death is, you know, the abolisher of all distinctions. Men are dead ;- all dead ;-dead in trespasses and sins alike. Oh the hopelessness of that condition! Can you educate or improve death ? Can human power do aught with death? No; God alone can quicken. You must have "life." You must be born again." No works can come of you but "dead works;" nothing that has not the odor of corruption in it, until you are born again,-born of God, -born of His Word, which liveth and abideth for-ever:" and this is the word, which by the gospel is preached unto you." (i Pet. 1:25.)

Where and as you are, then,-utterly powerless and helpless,-doing nothing, being nothing, promising nothing, you must receive the sweet and gladdening message of God's good news. You can be nothing, do nothing, till you have received it, for you are born again by it, and only so. You do not even begin to live to God until it does its work upon you.

And now, mark. No sooner is there the acknowledgment, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips," than the mercy of God supplies the remedy. "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, ' Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.'"

How blessed! how worthy of God! No long, laborious process of cure is here! No conditions are imposed, no work of self-help is enjoined. The provision of grace is simple, immediate, and immediately effectual then and there. On the sinner's part is solely the confession of ruin which sin has wrought. The declaration of iniquity taken away and of sin purged meets it at once on God's part. It is preached to the "undone" one. God's word gives him the assurance of what is done for him. He is not left to examine himself, and to search out by his own feelings what is the mind of God toward him. He has to believe only, and be at peace.

And so it ever is. Every where the gospel proclaims for all, because all are sinners, the good news of a salvation provided just for sinners. The call is, to "repent and believe the gospel,"-that is, to take the place of sinners, and just drink in the mercy provided for sinners. To "repent" is to give up the pretense and effort at self-justification. To "believe the gospel" is just to believe in the justification which God has provided.

" Being justified freely by His grace." "Freely," -what does that mean? "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." What is taking it freely ? Surely, just believing that it is mine, unconditionally mine, because I want it. That I am to assure myself that it is mine if I will," without any further question. This is the only " appropriation " Scripture knows of. The prophet confesses himself " undone." He is a needy, anxious, convicted one. He is thereupon assured that his iniquity is taken away, his sin is purged. That is what he is called on to appropriate. Not something that is not his own, but something that is freely his, just upon the ground of his being a poor lost one, needing it.

Many, if I could ask, Do you need a salvation such as this? would have no difficulty at all in giving answer that they did. And further, if I asked them, would they have just such a salvation if they could, would think it folly to ask such a question. With them, the question is of God's will, not of theirs. In Scripture, the question is of man's will, not of God's. " How often would 7 have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and YE would not." " Lord, if thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." "I will:be thou clean." "Who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth." Thus, if we will, there is no difficulty. For lost ones God has provided salvation through the work of Jesus. If we are that, and would have that salvation, it is ours. " It is not for us to question, but to believe our blessedness.

But what a strange mode of purging unclean lips-a live coal" from the altar! A coal red-hot with the fire which has just been consuming the victim. Yes, "our God is a consuming- fire." What a picture of that indignation and wrath against sin which is a necessity in the nature of a holy God! And though He pity, yea, love the sinner, that cannot change His holiness. Set me in presence, then, of this righteous and holy God, how can He show me favor? How can the righteousness of God clear or justify me? It seems as impossible as that a "live coal" should purge instead of blasting human lips.

But look again. It is a coal from off the altar:a live coal still, for God's wrath against sin never can die out; God's righteousness never can be aught but what it ever has been. But this live coal from the altar of sacrifice is nevertheless changed in its character so far:it does not blast, but purges. And looking not at the type, but at the Antitype, the righteousness of God in the cross of Jesus Christ does not condemn, but justifies, the sinner. That cross surely is the altar of sacrifice where the live coal has done its work. It is where the righteousness of God has been declared as no where else; but where it is declared, perfect as ever, living and active in its antagonism to sin, and yet not against the sinner, but on his side. So that if I, confessing the sins which prove me one of those for whom He died, take my place thus before Himself, I find Him faithful and just to forgive me my sins, and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.

God has title to tell out His love-title to show it me-has earned this title at such a cost to Himself, that I cannot but believe He must love much, and love much to tell it out, and make souls happy in it. The gospel, sent out every where, is His witness that it is so. I cannot honor Him more than by giving credit to it.

Will you, beloved reader, if yet you have not? Will you let in this tale of joy which is seeking admittance to your heart at this moment? Is it too good to be believed? Too good fora tale from God Himself? Does it give Him more glory than He deserves? Only take your place with the prophet in this chapter; God's testimony to the work of Christ is this,-that it avails for you; for you, poor undone one, so glad to have this salvation if you only might, for you it avails;-"Your iniquity is taken away and your sin purged." Believe it and rejoice.

It is quite beyond me," are words that are often heard from one and another with regard to some presentation of spiritual things. Coming from different quarters, the significance of the expression is necessarily also different. It may be a simple statement of fact, without any moral significance. It may be confession of ignorance, real and lamented. It may be a sarcasm, implying the fault to be with the speaker rather than the hearer, the writer rather than the reader. It may be, alas! and very often is, the unintentional revelation of a state of soul which needs to be considered seriously, for it is in itself most serious.

That as to the fact there are for every one of us things that are beyond us, must be conceded at once. There are babes and young men, as well as fathers:and the farthest advanced will most readily perhaps accept in this respect in the apostle's language, " Not that I have already attained, neither am already perfect." He said it as one pressing on continually ; and there is never a place reached by us where there is need of this no longer. As a matter of knowledge, " we know in part," " we see through a glass darkly," and as long as we know but in part, yet with no hard and fast line drawn to hinder indefinite attainment, there will still be unexplored fields beckoning us-things that are beyond us still.

The question is, do we speak of "things beyond us," with desire after them, and an earnest mind to press on after them, as travelers talk of the blue hills which yet are in the horizon, but which draw nearer steadily as they progress? Or do we speak of them as with an intervening chasm between us and them, which we never expect to pass, and so, having no hope of it, naturally make no effort.

In this case-and this is the alarming thing about it,-we have ceased to be travelers plainly; we have settled down. Is not this the fact at least with many who use such expressions?

Let us make any exceptions needed, however, that we may charge no one wrongfully. There are things beyond us which we may have to accept as that. Life is short, and needs a wise economy of strength and effort that it may be to its fullest possibility fruitful. It is easy to distract ourselves even by a multiplicity of pursuits, individually worthy enough. We cannot all be critics of Scripture-texts, or students of the Bible languages, or versed in controversy or apologetics. It would sometimes be for real blessing to recognize in such ways a sphere beyond us, and rigorously restrict ourselves within the limit of true expediency. Even among profitable things thorough earnestness will seek that which is most profitable, and by close pruning of mere branch and leaf, procure the best attainable fruit. With all this it is very far from my object to find fault. Would that we only knew better how to practice it.

But it is different wholly when we come to the range, immense as it is, of Scripture truth-of that of which it is said, "All Scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." We have here no option at all, no discriminative power to put away from us any part of what God has given for our learning, and as truth for our sanctification. He who does this is setting up to be wiser than God, despising the love that provided for our need, missing the very thing which he professes to seek by it. Doctrines, such as that of the coming of the Lord, and of which Scripture is full from one end to the other, are dismissed in this way as mere curious questions, irrelevant to holiness, and for which there is not space in a rightly filled up life. But indeed how many of our Bibles, if the unused parts were but to atrophy and drop out, would judge us by their gaps as thus far practical unbelievers! For how many of us the prophets prophesy almost in vain! And if, going deeper than this, we think of chapters and of sections of the books, what a curious net-work of ruin would the pages present, if all these unheeded counselors withdrew themselves from our neglect-dismissed themselves from a thankless service!

It must be confessed that in God's school the scholars are very differently treated from what we might expect, or from the way in which the schools of the day carry on the educational process. In God's school-where from the lowest to the highest all are scholars-there are babes, young men, fathers-every variety of attainment, and measure of capacity. Yet we have no class-books for these different classes, but one common school-book for all grades at once. The simplest parts of Scripture are at the same time often the deepest; the truths of the Word of God are in every page most exquisitely and most intricately interlaced together. It is no mere entanglement, which calls for a hand to separate and unravel; but a perfect, divine manufacture, the beauty no less than the complicity of which resists all such attempts. God means, evidently, that child and mature man shall sit side by side, upon the same bench, and ponder the same lesson, while nevertheless each learns according to his capacity that which harmonizes with and perfects his previous lessons.

But there is to be no picking and choosing of the scholar, no putting himself in class:the blessed Spirit of God, true and only Teacher here, does this unfailingly, dividing to every one his portion of meat in due season. The scholar is to be subject, conscious of his dependence, led along, eye and ear open, amid things confessedly beyond him, part of his discipline to realize this, while encouraged by the assurance that these things too are his own, and by the way he finds them, one after another, actually becoming his. So vast are his possessions, he finds no where a limit; so great in themselves, that if he "think he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." Patience and energy are being thus continually called for; hope is stimulated and assured as well; earnests of his inheritance are being constantly put into his hand. This is God's way of teaching, and our hearts as well as minds approve it.

A ministry of what is-at the moment-beyond us is, therefore, what we need as Christians. If we are to be led on, it must be by the putting before us that which as yet we have not attained, and which without energy of soul on our part will lie ever beyond attainment. For while energy itself may be roused and sustained by ministry, this can without it put nothing into our possession at all. Even the roots of a plant spread themselves under the ground to seek their food, though unconscious. But as we rise in the scale of being, it is still more and more apparent that the law is, " Seek and ye shall find." The nourishment must lie close around the rootlets of the plant; but the animal, and in proportion to its rank in the scale of existence, must seek its food from afar, or it will die of starvation. And when we come to man, what a life-labor is his to secure it! On this very account indeed he would plead that in spiritual things the law should not hold good ; and in the thought of many, grace sets it aside or reverses it; but this is an entire and a most injurious mistake. God is still "the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb. 11:6.) It is still "giving all diligence, add to your faith" such and such things (2 Pet. 1:5); and again, "give diligence, to make your calling and election sure " (5:10). Still we are to run a race, and forgetting the things which are behind, to reach on after the things which are before. ….
Let it not be missed, that all progress spiritually means progress in the truth itself-that sanctification is by the truth (Jno. 17:17). It is true this does not necessarily mean more head-knowledge, but often more heart-knowledge. Yet it is the truth itself by which we progress, and only so. There is a secret infidelity here which takes all the failure on the part of those who have the truth as the failure of the truth itself, and thus while insisting upon the "essentials" of Christianity would make all else a thing indifferent. But the failure only shows how little often that which is mentally known is learnt in the heart. To cast the reproach of this upon the truth itself is really wickedness. " By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live" is the assurance of the Old Testament, taken up and emphasized by the Savior Himself, as in the wilderness He repelled the tempter. By this let us repel the tempter still. The very hidden things of the Word are for blessing and sanctification to them that search them out; and they are hidden just to draw forth the energy that will search them out. Like the earth's deep mines, only here and there tilted up and opened to the light, to invite further exploration of their riches, so the Word of God has its lodes of precious ore for the diligent heart-hid in parable, in figures, in names, in numbers, in genealogical lists, and what not. And here, all that glitters is true gold:you will find no dross, no base admixture.

Therefore the law:"If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou"-what? gain some out-of-the-way accomplishment? some unpractical curiosities for the mantle-piece, or literary lumber? Nay, but " then shalt thou understand THE FEAR OF THE LORD, and find the KNOWLEDGE of god." (Prov. 2:3, 4.)

Let it be truth, and what the Word teaches, then we have surely what enriches, satisfies, sanctifies. What looks barren at first sight may carry more wealth within than where the fertile soil repays with full harvests the easy labor of the husbandman. Look at Israel's land of promise, and you shall find it largely a ridge of rocks and hills, the very place to breed a hardy and energetic race. And here the Philistines are not, but on the low level of the coast. "Their gods are gods of the hills," said their Syrian foes; and though this were not the truth, yet it was but the perversion of a truth. Judah's – the law-giver-was a "hill-country." Jerusalem was enthroned upon the hills. God's dwelling-place is Mount Zion, which He loves.

It is certain that in divine things we are called to diligence if anywhere, and the diligent soul it is
that shall be made fat. It is not, of course, that we have all equal time to devote to Bible-study, although it is certain too that here, above all, may we not say, the will can make a way. Scripture carried in the mind can be ministered by the Spirit, of God, meditated on amid necessary toil, and, instead of making the task heavier, lighten it exceedingly. But the question is not of how much time is at our disposal, but of the heart we have to dispose of it,-the purpose to enter upon our possessions,-the pilgrim yearning to go on, and make the horizon Of to-day the attainment of tomorrow.

Such will still and ever find "things beyond" them; but this will not discourage, but incite forward. They will say, "Not that I have attained, but I press on." Is it not indeed commonly the reason for stopping short, not because the acquisition of truth is unpractical, but for the opposite reason? I have said sometimes, it is as if Scripture were written out on sign-posts by the way we travel; we must travel the road in order to read it therefore. And it will be found in general that the energy which does not find its outlet here, is in fact going off in other directions.
I conclude with this, that if things are, as to knowledge, beyond us, we are wholly incompetent to judge of them; if they are Scripture-truths, to think of them as unpractical is accusing God their Author; to stop short of possessing them, is to defraud ourselves of our inheritance.

Surely, "there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed."

" To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Rom. 4:5.)

Many a sincere soul is perplexed by the question, whether his faith is of the right kind or not. Granting, as we must, that there is a dead faith and a living faith, that "faith, if it have not works, is dead, being alone," and that even the devils may believe, after a certain sort, without it being any sign or evidence of good in them, the natural thought is, therefore, to look in upon one's self, and find out whether our faith is such as saves or not. Even apparent scripture may be quoted, and often is, for self-examination upon this point, as for instance, " Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith:prove your own selves," -a text upon which many a sermon has been preached with most false application, inviting Christians to continual doubt, under the specious pretext of making sure of their Christianity.

For it is plain that if the apostle, writing to those already accepted as Christians, invites them yet to examine and see if such they really were, he supposes them to be in doubt upon the point, or else that they ought to doubt; and if this be a right thing to urge upon all Christians, as he urged upon those at Corinth, then they ought never to be beyond doubting. And thus the plain inconsistency of such a recommendation is seen, and that what is called making sure of salvation would be really making all unsure.

The fact is, that those who make self-examination the way of assurance, are compelled in most cases
to own that upon that very ground none can be quite sure. For is not the heart "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked"? And if people object that that is only true of those who have not a new heart,-even allowing that, we may well ask, Is there not in the case before us just the question to be answered-whether we have the new heart? We have no right to take for granted the very thing to be proved. If our hearts arc new, there is of course no question as to our being "in the faith." If there is doubt about that, there is very grave doubt as to whether we shall get a proper answer to any question upon that point we can put to them. Scripture asserts, as a broad, general truth as to this, that "he that trusteth his own heart is a fool."

But then, what about the apostle's exhortation? Just this (which may be said of many another thing apparently brought from Scripture):it is mis-quoted, because only half-quoted. Reproving the Corinthians for the doubts they had begun to entertain as to whether Christ had indeed spoken by him, he puts it to them that then they must question their own Christianity. They owed their own conversion to his preaching, and if Christ had not spoken by him, then He had never spoken to them. The beginning of the sentence, obscured to a careless reader by some intervening words, which I omit, is in 2 Cor. 13:3, and the whole argument (for such it is,) reads thus:"Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, . . examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith:prove your own selves." And then, instead of taking it for granted that they would seriously do that, he asked them whether they needed to examine, "Know ye not, your own selves, how that Christ is in you-except ye be reprobates?" If they took that latter ground, the proof of Christ speaking in him was indeed gone.

He appeals, then, to the certainty of their knowledge about themselves to reprove their uncertainty about himself; and tells them, if they are going to set about proving in the one case, they had better set about proving in the other. And this is what people take up as an exhortation to all Christians seriously to examine themselves to see if their Christianity be not all a mistake!

But the question remains, If only they that believe are justified, and moreover there is a false and dead faith, as well as a real living one, how am I to know whether I have the right kind of faith except by self-examination?

Now the text at the head of this paper, if weighed in the soul, will give us, I surely believe, the means of answering this. Christ died for the ungodly. Yea, "when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." This is most evidently how the apostle can say in the text that God "justifieth the ungodly," and also "to him that worketh not." If my condition is one of real impotence, of one without strength, then righteousness must be "to him that worketh not" in my case, or for me not at all. That is simple,-at least, if justification is the beginning of a Christian course. That it is so is just as simple too, because it is "the ungodly" whom He justifies:the sinner, and not the saint. I have not, then, to work myself out from sinnership into saintship before I am justified:as a sinner, I begin with that.

Faith, therefore, in One who justifies the ungodly, works necessarily this as a main thing, that I cease
from working for justification. The two things necessarily go together here:" to him that worketh not, but believeth." He justifies the ungodly. I am that. I have not therefore to get to be something else, but simply to own my condition in the presence of His grace, and I am righteous:this faith is counted unto me for righteousness.

There can thus be no doubt as to my having justifying faith. The faith that, seeing God stoop down to take up sinners, makes me give up self-righteousness, to take my place as a sinner before Him, is true and justifying.

But notice, then, this faith is occupied, not with itself, but with the grace of God in Christ. I have got, in a certain sense, a step lower even than " he that believeth on Him hath everlasting life." That is, it is not even the sense of my believing that comforts and settles my soul, but the sense of love which has come down to me as a sinner. I see my sin, not my faith. My sin is easy to be seen, my faith much less easy. And, wonderful to say, it is my sin which gives me title to my Saviour. I give up all pretension to be anything; I take my place before God, not as a worker, but as a sinner; the grace which justifies the sinner is what enables me to take a place before Him just as that; and doing so, I am justified; and have the true and saving faith.

This settles also another question. People ask how you can say that you have the direct testimony of the Word of God for your salvation so as to make it sin to doubt that. Plainly, it is sin to doubt God's word. "But," they contend, "while you have God's word that all believers will be saved, you have not that same word that you are a believer:that must be an argument at best, and you may be mistaken."

I admit at once that it is an argument that such and such an one is a believer. But it does not follow that the Word of God does not give me direct and positive testimony to what I am. For, as we have seen, that testimony is, that Christ died for the ungodly, and that God justifies the ungodly. Dropping all effort, then,-all pretension to do any thing, or to be any thing but "ungodly," I see a Saviour for me, as that, whose love, whose power, whose all-sufficiency, it would be "sin to doubt." There is my assurance. I have title to trust him, if not myself. Can I trust Him too much?

This is a very solemn subject, and yet it is one most satisfactory the better we understand it. I believe every act of our lives will be set forth there, so that God's grace and dealing with us with reference to our own acts will be known there. It is said in Rom. 14:, " Every one of us shall give account of himself to God." The judgment-seat is there referred to in connection with the admonition to the brethren not to judge one another with respect to a day, or eating meat. I am disposed to think that only the deeds will be matters of manifestation; but so much is every act of our lives dependent on inward feelings, that it is in one sense hard to distinguish between deeds and thoughts. Acts always declare the strength of the thought or feeling. I believe all our doings shall be detailed there-not to us as in the flesh for condemnation, but to unfold to us the grace which has dealt with us, regenerate and unregenerate. Our whole history will be detailed there, and, in parallel line, the history of His grace and mercy toward us. The why and the how we did this or that will be declared then. It is declarative, and not judicial, for us. We are not in the flesh before God. In His eye, blessed be His name, we are dead ; but then where we have walked after the flesh, we must see how we lost blessing-what a loss it has been to us; and on the other hand, His ways toward us all, in wisdom, mercy, and grace, will be fully known and comprehended for the first time. Of course, there will be no replying, but each history will be like a great transparency. How you yielded, and how He preserved ; how you slipped, and how He rescued ; how you approached danger and shame, and how He, by His own hand, interposed. I believe it will be the bride making herself ready, and I regard it as a wondrous moment. There will be no flesh there to receive condemnation, but the new nature will enter into the transcendent love and care which in true holiness and justice, even in grace, have followed us every step of our journey. Passages in our lives now utterly unexplained shall be all seen clearly then. Tendencies of our nature which we may not think would lead to desperate issues, and to curb which we may now be subjected to a discipline which we have not interpreted, will be fully explained there ; and still more the very falls which distress us sorely now will be shown then as used to preserve us from worse. I do not believe that we shall get any thing like a full view of the evil of our flesh till then. We shall have done with the flesh then ; but I believe the display of His grace individually to us will be so magnificent that even the sense of the evil of the flesh that were ours, if it were possible to intrude, will be prevented by the greatness of the other. Why do we not deny and mortify our members when we remember that hour? The Lord enable us to do more to the glory of His grace.

The subject leads the soul into a very full sense of our individual place-to think of each giving an account of himself to God.

I do not know that the judgment-seat of Christ is used oftener than in Rom. 14:and 2 Cor. 5:In the former, to prevent private judgment; in the latter, to provoke to present well-doing and self-judgment, in view of that day.

5. THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH.

To most Christians perhaps, even at the present day, the kingdom and the Church are one. The Church practically is the whole body of professors:what, else is the kingdom? They would not deny that these are different aspects,-that, the thought connected with each is different, but they are aspects only of the same thing. We have now, then, to consider how far this difference extends-whether it be only of thought, or of the things themselves.

The kingdom we have seen to be the sphere of discipleship; the Church is, in its fundamental idea, the body of Christ,-it is the unity of His members. Notice that that action of the Spirit by which we are brought into this body is called " baptism:" " by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." (i Cor. 12:13.) Scripture, by adopting this word in this connection, institutes a comparison, thus, between the kingdom and the Church. But the one baptism is an external rite; the other, inward and spiritual. The error of identifying the two spheres has led to that of identifying the two baptisms ; but the one is in the hand of man, the other in the power of God alone.

The Church is not only the body of Christ; it is also the house of God:and under this figure of a house the Lord first speaks of it in the gospels,- " Upon this rock I will build My Church." Peter, taking up and extending the Lord's words, shows us this building and its foundation clearly:"To whom coming, as unto a Living Stone, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house." (i Pet. 2:4, 5.) But Paul it is, to whom the doctrine of the body of Christ was committed, who first explicitly calls the Church, as indwelt by the Holy Ghost, the house and the temple of God. (Heb. 3:6; i Cor. 3:19.) As the Church, then, is in the kingdom, which is yet wider and external to it, it stands with respect to the kingdom as the temple to its outer court. In the former, the priestly family drew near and worshiped; in the other alone, the Israelite of the common people. Peter identifies, as it were, the house and the priesthood:"a spiritual house, a holy priesthood."

The house and body were, in God's design, and for a short time at the beginning, exactly commensurate. The one was composed of living stones, the other of living members. But men with their bad building have done as was foretold:they have unduly enlarged the house. They have built in "wood, hay, stubble." (i Cor. 3:12-17.) Thus the house is become " as a great house," in which there are vessels of gold and silver, of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor." And it will be purged from its disorder only when the Master comes.

But we have not here to think of the disorder, but to look back to the beginning to get the true design of the divine Architect. The more simply we can do so the better.

In the kingdom, then, we have individual responsibility, conditional blessing, a place of privilege to which man has authority to introduce his fellow; in the Church, a place of absolute grace, relationship to one another, communion:and here belongs another institution which expresses this. Paul, the special apostle of the, Church, to whom it was given to complete the doctrine of it, was not sent to baptize, (i Cor. 1:17.) But he has, by distinct revelation from the Lord, the institution of the memorial feast, in which not only do we symbolically "eat the Lord's flesh and drink His blood," but in which also it is expressed that "we, being many, are one bread, one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." (Chap. 11:24; 10:17.)

Baptism and the kingdom speak of conditional blessing and individual responsibility; the Church, and the breaking of bread, of already-enjoyed (therefore absolute) grace, and fellowship in it, relationship to one another and the Lord. The kingdom is the outer court of the sanctuary ; the Church, the house of God, the sanctuary itself. The first affirms God's desire toward all; the last is the espoused object of Christ's unchanging love.

It may thus be seen why Paul, the "minister of the Church " as we have seen in a special sense, claims to be also specially the " minister of the gospel" (Col. 1:23), and to have as his peculiar mission "to preach the gospel" (i Cor. 1:17), the last in some sort of opposition even to a commission to baptize. So tie speaks of "my gospel"(Rom. 16:25), associating with it the " mystery " of the Church. And, as has been fully shown by others, in fact it is Paul who alone speaks plainly of justification and of our place in Christ. With the other inspired writers it is rather forgiveness, although I do not say that there are not passages which look beyond this.

In the kingdom, the twelve are to sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt. 19:28.) Here we cannot imagine a thirteenth throne for Paul. The commission to baptize, we have seen, was given to them also, although Paul takes it up and acts upon it, as we all do since.

Paul thus completes-as the sense is in Col. 1:25 -the word of God. The complete truth is given through him, and hence he preaches also the kingdom of God. (Acts 20:25.) All lines of truth we shall find in his epistles who in his own person is the expression of the perfect grace of God. Nay, in a sense, he can bring out the very truth of the kingdom itself with more distinctness, because he is able to give along with it the full position and standing of the true believer.

Accordingly, nowhere so fully as in Paul's epistles do we find the warnings as to a fruitless profession with which we are so familiar. He who can say, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace," can on that very account the more insist that "to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness." (Rom. 6:14, 16.) The freedom to which God has called us, the power with which He endues us, make the service of sin now so unutterably solemn; because it is manifestly on man's part the choice of evil:it is man's will in rejection of the grace of God.

On the other hand, even he in the experience of the seventh of Romans can still say," The good that I would," "the evil that I would not," while of Christians characteristically it is said, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (Chap. 8:14.) The true Christian, conscious of the grace of which he is the subject, and established in a place which is unchangeably his, is just the one who submits himself joyfully to all the conditions of discipleship; and this is what Paul does in those words of his so often misinterpreted, (9:26, 27)-" I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air; but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest after having preached to others I myself should be a castaway." He is here speaking as a disciple under the rules of the kingdom,-as a disciple to disciples; but he knows not only how to tread the courts of the Lord, but how, as a priest, to enter the sanctuary also, and to say, " Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us:who can separate us from the love of Christ?"

Here again, to keep the kingdom and the Church distinct, throws light upon the Word. Never will you find these conditions insisted on where it is a question of the child of God as suck, or of justification and the place in Christ, membership in the body of Christ, or any thing which implies that divine grace has indeed wrought in the soul. All such conditions apply to the disciple-to all disciples surely, but as such,-to the kingdom, the court of the temple. The Church is the temple of God itself, the place of enjoyed nearness and settled relationship.

Before we close this, it will be well to notice how the apostle separates these different spheres in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Ephesians. His seven unities there comprise and are divided into three concentric circles of blessing, of which he begins with the innermost and proceeds outward. The innermost circle is that of the Church:" There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling." Next, we have that of the kingdom:" One Lord, one faith, one baptism." Outside, again, is the world ; not, of course, in the evil sense, but as the creation of God:"one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all." This is the Scripture classification, which it has been our object to establish here.

THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, Laodicea:What Brings the Time of Christ's Patience to an End. (Rev. 3:14-22.)-Continued.

How solemn to contemplate the last end of what began so differently! How above all solemn to consider that both at the beginning and the end, the sin and failure of the true people of God it is which initiates and completes the ruin! Who can doubt that Christians themselves are largely taking up this self-complacent assumption -"rich, and increased with goods, and in need of nothing"?

Even by some who deem the time of harvest drawing near we are invited to consider the fact that if the tares are ripening for it, yet the wheat must be ripening too; and that this means that the present generation of Christians is spiritually in advance of every other! We are bidden observe the great awakening of the missionary spirit, the restoration of gifts of healing to the Church, and so on. Surely we are rich, and increased with goods, if this be our condition! And is there not a creed, connected very much with the latter claim, and largely professed among those who naturally take their place as the very leaders of the Christianity of the day, which comes very near indeed to Laodicean profession ? How could the claim to be rich and increased with goods be more really made than by those who profess what they will not indeed call "sinless" and yet do assert for it what ought to be a still loftier, title,-that of " Christian perfection."

Christian perfection is of course the very summit -the ne plus ultra of Christianity. Higher than this no one can hope to go:with such a condition God Himself must be completely satisfied. As Christ is, (so they apply it,) so are they in this world. Perfect knowledge, perfect wisdom, they do not suppose they have, but " perfect love " is the term which exactly fits and describes their condition. They perfectly obey the divine law, and for a large class there remains in them no corruption of nature even, although many would not go as far as that. There are many grades of the doctrine, and correspondingly it affects very distinct classes of Christian profession. Its wide acceptance is a very noticeable thing in these days, an unmistakable sign of the times.

For the term " perfection," and that as applied to Christians, there is scripture, of course. The devil, in deceiving the people of God, will always, if he can, use scripture to accomplish his object. But the term there does not mean what in the dialect of the " higher life " it is made to mean. Take one of the strongest texts used, " Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" -the context shows decisively what is meant. We speak of a thing as perfect which has all its parts, without at all regarding the finish of its parts. So the Lord tells us that as children we must resemble our Father, and for this exhibit all the features of our Father's character. We must not only love those who love us, but as He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust, we must exhibit this feature of His character also:" Love your enemies, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." (Matt. 5:44, 45.)

"Perfection" is also used for the mature Christian condition, as a glance at the margin of Heb. 5:14 will show. The term there-"of full age"- is in the margin rendered "perfect," just as in I Cor. 14:20, "be men" is in the margin rendered "be perfect," or "of a ripe age." It is used thus with two applications:in Hebrews, Christianity itself is perfection, or maturity, in contrast with Judaism, which was a state of childhood. But again, among Christians there are those perfect, or mature, in contrast with being babes; and the apostle Paul, in the third of Philippians, in which he disclaims the having attained, or being already perfect, (as a consummation which he would not reach until with Christ in glory,) classes himself immediately after among those who had in another sense "attained:" "Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded."

There are many texts which I cannot now go through; but this should prevent the catching at a word, as people are prone to do. Plenty about perfection there is, no doubt, in Scripture; but if we set up any standard short of walking as Christ walked, we are really lowering it. If, on the other hand, we can measure ourselves with Christ, and yet feel no rebuke, we must be indeed inordinately, if not incredibly, self complacent.

Mischief is wrought in two ways by the idea. In the first place, sin must be palliated, excused, covered by misleading names. Lust is called temptation, and sometimes even daring dishonor done to Christ Himself by the insinuation that He too was in like manner tempted. So people quote, " He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," as if it meant that He had such inward desires, only restrained them, so that there was no positive outbreak. This, the actual blasphemy of Irving and Thomas, in milder and less pronounced forms infects many in the present day. The text they quote in the common version favors these views too much. And the Revised Version unhappily perpetuates the error. There is properly, as any one may see by the italics (Heb. 5:15), no word in the original representing "yet." "He was tempted in all points, like as we are, apart from sin" is the true rendering. You must not imply sin in any way in the Holy One of God. Sin it is that produces lust, as the seventh of Romans decisively teaches, as on the other hand lust, again, brings forth the positive outward sin. He had neither; no inward incitement as no sin in act, and herein was our total opposite, who, as Scripture assures us, "in many things offend, all" (Jas. 3:2.)

But again, the character of holiness is sadly spoiled by this perfectionism. In the lips of many, "holiness" means "perfection," and nothing else, and so does "sanctification." And yet in fact holiness itself is marred and perverted by this claim as made. It becomes self-occupation, self-assertion. "Seraphic" men are held up to admiration. And how much of Christ really do you find in the experience so largely boasted of by those who advocate the doctrine? It may be in words-is it in reality, "not I, but Christ liveth in me"? or is it in fact a glorified, transfigured, but very self-conscious I, that lives and reigns throughout them? They do not see that, as the natural life in a state of health does not engross or claim the attention,-as the heart's pulsation, or the lung's work is not furthered, but disturbed, by thinking of it,-as the man in hospital it is who talks of his good days, because they are scarce, and as the dyspeptic it is who "feels" his stomach,-so this aim at a self-conscious holiness produces but a poor, degenerate, sickly Christianity at best. Is it far off from that which says, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knows not that it is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ?

" I counsel thee," says the Lord to Laodicea here-" I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see."

Three things are here which they are exhorted to " buy." So wealthy are they, the Lord will not talk of giving to them. And indeed it would be a happy thing for them to exchange their riches for them,-false glitter for true gold. This is the first thing:gold. A frequent symbol this is, we know, in Scripture, and pure gold (as here, "tried in the fire,") for what is divine. In the ark of the testimony, and in the furniture of the holy places generally, gold covered all. The apostle, I believe, gives us the exact meaning, when he speaks of the golden cherubim as the " cherubim of glory, shadowing the mercy-seat. This "glory " is the display of what God is. God glorifies Himself when He shines out in the blessed reality of what He is; and Christ is the true ark in which two materials are found together-gold and shittim-wood. The radiance of divine glory is the gold ; the shittim-wood, the precious verity of manhood.

Can we not see why to Laodicea " gold tried in the fire" is the first requisite? Their riches were but paper money, manufactured out of the rags of self-righteousness, and of merely conventional, not intrinsic value. Christ was what they lacked:divine glory in the only face in which it shines un-dimmed. This is the power of Christianity, its essence and its power alike, and this is what their false, pretentious Christianity lacked so terribly:occupation with Christ,-discernment of what and where all that is true and valuable in Christianity is to be found. To know where this is, is to have it. Faith that finds this treasure is welcome to its enjoyment. To be without it, is to be poor indeed.

The next thing is, "white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear." This is, no doubt, practical righteousness of life and walk. There is a connection between this and the former, which when we have their meaning becomes evident enough. Unless you have the divine glory in the face of Jesus shining for your soul, you will find no ability to live and walk aright. The " white " is the full, undivided ray of light; and God is light. How is our life to be the reflection of this, except as " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, "is shining in our hearts,"to give out the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ in the face of Jesus Christ?" Leviticus must precede Numbers ever. We must go in to see God in the sanctuary before we can possibly come out and walk with Him in the world.

Finally, we have here, "and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." Thus there was utter blindness,-the condition of the Pharisees over again. They did not realize it. They said, " We see,"and thus their "sin remained." For the consciously blind, there is with Christ effectual healing; but they, alas! needed not the physician.

These characters, taken in their full extent, reveal a state which is assuredly not Christian. We must not, however, on this account suppose, as some have done, that Laodicea thus represents merely the unbelievers among the Christian profession. Of Sardis it is distinctly said, " Thou hast a name to live, and thou art dead" and yet there are owned among them those who are not only alive, but "have not defiled their garments." This shows that we must beware of ascribing the characteristics of the mass to all the individuals in it. It is a state of things as to which all found in association with it have the gravest responsibility; but to say it is only to be applied to the unconverted is to deprive the warning given of all its power. It is to enable every consciously converted man to wash his hands of the responsibility. Whereas all around us, not only are the signs of Laodiceanism growing continually more manifest, but the infection also of Christians with its spirit. And here again also it is apparent how Philadelphia may open the way to Laodicea itself.

Philadelphia proclaims the brotherhood of Christians, seeks the true Church, insists upon the evil of division, and the maintenance of individual conscience in consistency with the recognition of the one body of Christ in all its members. Laodicea- Satan's counterfeit-proclaims also that the church is one, that union is strength, in order to bring about a grand confederacy in which truth shall be sacrificed for company's sake, and the power conferred by numbers. To the eyes of men, Laodicea becomes thus only the true carrying out of the Philadelphian idea,-itself a better and grander Philadelphia. Here Christ may in the very name of Christ be put outside the door,-a development of principles which are far and wide leavening men's minds, and preparing the way for the dark and dread apostasy in which the dispensation is announced of God to end.

(To be continued.)

CHAP. I 1-5.

We have already noticed that the epistle is addressed to Jewish Christians, but the second verse calls them "elect;" and then follows a remarkable outline of the work of the Trinity. Election is according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; sanctification is by the Spirit; and that sanctification is unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

As to works of law, all was lost; the works of the flesh were unholy ; but by the Father's counsels and choice, and the Spirit's inward work in the new birth, and the cleansing of the blood of Jesus. they were set apart to the path of obedience.

The effect of the Spirit's work in the new birth is a nature that is holy-a being who is pure and holy:" Seeing ye have purified your souls (5:22) in obeying the truth through the Spirit,"-that is, as in John 3:, we are born of water (obedience to the truth) and of the Spirit. Thus the sanctification of the second verse and the purification of the twenty-second verse refer to the holy nature we. receive when born of God. It is by the Spirit we are sanctified in the second verse, by the truth, and by the Spirit we are purified in the twenty-second verse, and correspondingly in Jno. 15:3-" Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you."

The seed in the good ground is the Word received when the will is broken. This is at once repentance toward God and faith toward Christ; and this work is wrought by the Spirit; and we have a new nature according to which we delight in obedience and love, whereas the mind of the flesh is enmity to God and to one's neighbor.

Therefore in ver. 22, those who have been thus purified by the new birth are to walk according to it:" See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." In ver. 22, it is obedience which is toward God; here, it is love which is toward one another-fruits of the new life to the glory of our
God, and for our joy and blessing. How great the contrast to the works of the flesh, which have filled the world, and, alas! the Church too, with shame and sorrow! But in the contrast shines the glory of God. "Unto obedience" (5:I), "as obedient children" (5:14), and "obeying the truth" (5:22) show obedience to be the character of faith,-as in Rom. 16:26, the gospel is made known to all nations " for the obedience of faith."

We must distinguish between the sanctifying of the Spirit and the Spirit indwelling. The Holy Spirit comes to abide in the one who is already sanctified, as Jehovah came to dwell in the temple when it had been built and set apart to God. We are born of the Spirit on believing,-that is, we are by the Spirit (as by the blood and by the water- the Word) set apart, or sanctified, to God from the evil nature within and from the world without, when born of God,-that is, when we believe on Christ.

Now we are prepared for the Spirit to come and dwell in us as His temple, as in Eph. 1:13-"In whom after that ye believed," or, as it should be, " In whom having believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." This is the order of Scripture:First, born of the Spirit on believing (and in effect sanctified), then also indwelt, or sealed, by the Spirit; but the latter truth is not a doctrine of the apostle Peter in these epistles, though implied in chap. 1:13.
" Sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood " has its type in Lev. 8:30-" And Moses took of the anointing oil (type of the Spirit), and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons' garments with him; and sanctified Aaron, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him." But in Lev. 14:14 the order is different:First, the blood; then, the oil upon the blood afterward ; because there it is a type, not of the sanctifying of the Spirit, but of the sealing of the Spirit upon one already sanctified.

The doctrine of election according to the foreknowledge of God the Father is here presented. It is full of solemnity and of tenderness of love. " Many are called, but few are chosen." The solemn reality is, that all naturally with one consent refuse (Luke 14:18); and it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy (Rom. 9:). But how precious to the believer to know that he was chosen-that he is the object of the Father's love, "as the elect of God, holy and beloved." (Col. 3:) " This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

There is tenderness of love in this, and the effect in the believer who knows this love is, to work affections that correspond,-" Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind." It is as we know and enjoy the "electing grace of God, and the Father's love in Christ, that we become worshipers in spirit and in truth. We become worshipers toward God ; and toward one another, ministers of love and of good; and there is no other power for this in the world but the sovereign electing grace of God by which we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Unbelief will question, and harden the heart; but faith rests in the love of God, and worships Him, and rejoices.

Does this show indifference to others-to the world-to the lost? Nay, it is the very power of ministry to others, and has been for these eighteen hundred years; for whence has the gospel gone out to the whole world? Was it by the law? No, but from those who had known this grace, and could not but make it known to others. Am I saved ? I rejoice to know it was only grace that did it. Have I neighbors unsaved? The word is, "Preach the gospel unto every creature;" "and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17); for God "would have all men to be saved, . . . for there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (i Tim. 2:4); and yet ".strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

Here the reasoning mind will adopt one extreme or another error, but faith embraces and holds to the truth which makes equally plain the love and grace of God, and the righteous judgment of God, and man's responsibility. Faith believes that God is good, and that He forgives the repentant sinner; that He is just, and that He will judge the evil-doer. This is to the glory of God; and thus He reveals Himself in His Word, and faith delights in His Word, and will refuse to reason against it, but will receive all sides of the truth in its fullness.

Those that believe are saved; but such are born of God-born again. They enter into a new life, which could not be by law,-that is, by works; for works can only be according to the life already there-the fruit is according to the tree; but children of God are "born, not of blood (not of Abraham, for example), nor of the will of the flesh (not of works), nor of the will of man (by no power in man, Jew or Gentile), but of God." (Jno. 1:13.)

How great a revelation (see Gal. 3:23), then, to these Jewish Christians, to have the heart lifted up from works of law, which tell us only of sin and shortcoming, to the knowledge that we are the elect of God the Father, the work His, and the glory His forever, to us the joy of worship and thanksgiving forever, and willing service!

" Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied," is His salutation. This is the good-will of God for us as we read and hear His Word; and each moment of our lives, we stand in grace (Rom. 5:2); but we also need grace ministered to us to sustain us (Heb. 4:16); and peace is supplied to us from on high, to keep the feet, to keep the heart, in the difficult ways of the great and terrible wilderness. Like the diver, our life is sustained from above. The words "be multiplied" are peculiar to these two epistles, and are perhaps added because we are here being prepared for the fiery furnace and varied testings of the wilderness more than in other epistles (chap. 1:7, 17; 2:20; 3:13; 4:12; 5:10). From the annoyances and sufferings of a servant in a household, to the extreme of sufferings, grace is multiplied to the Christian through all, that the soul may be kept in peace, and the Lord's name be glorified in us.

Let us picture to our minds a people of old drawing near to a mount that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and a voice that made them tremble, and what a contrast to the salutation we are considering-"grace and peace"! In the one case, we have what man is before a holy God; in the other, what God is in grace for man. The Christian needs to lay firmly hold of grace, for it is not only peace to the soul, but the power for holiness. (See Rom. 6:)

And now the apostle who had once looked into the empty tomb in doubt and perplexity, breaks forth into praise and blessing, that by the resurrection of Christ from the dead they had been called to a new and living and heavenly hope that could never perish. All is of grace now, and in the hands of God-the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had wrought this salvation in His abounding mercy, and a heavenly and unfading inheritance is reserved for us, and we, by God's power, through faith, are kept for it. It is through faith, but the power is of God from first to last (Rom. 1:16; Heb. 7:25 ; 2 Tim. 1:8, 9).

The salvation is not yet revealed, but it is ready to be in the last time. When the Lord ascended, may we not say our place there was prepared-our salvation was ready to be revealed ? It was " when He had by Himself purged our sins " that He " sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Heb. 1:3.) Therefore His appearance in the presence of God for us (9:24) meant, a place prepared for us. But when this salvation shall be revealed, we shall appear with Him in glory.

We are saved now, as regards the soul (5:9; 2 Tim. 1:9), but the Church is not yet delivered out of this scene of humiliation (Rom. 8:18) as it will be at the Lord's second coming. In that sense, our salvation is future.

The saint who dies rests from conflict, and enjoys the presence of the Lord; but the salvation we look for will be when the dead saints are raised and the living ones changed, and all are together caught up into the air, to be forever with the Lord, with bodies of glory like to His (i Thess. 4:15; Phil. 3:21) at His second coming. For this we should be watching hourly. It will not be the end of the world, but the end of this present period of grace, during which the Church is being gathered out, and after which apostate Christendom will be given up to delusion (2 Thess. 2:), and the great tribulation will come upon the whole world (Rev. 3:10), to be followed by the millennium, or a thousand years of blessing, righteousness, and peace upon the earth, at the close of which will be the resurrection and judgment of the wicked before the great white throne and the beginning of eternity. (Rev. 19:; 20:)

The salvation, then, that we look for will be at the resurrection of the just (Acts 24:15), the resurrection of life (Jno. 5:28), the first resurrection (Rev. 20:), which precedes the second by more than a thousand years, and which is the ever-present blessed hope and expectation of the Church.

The Thessalonian saints were told to have on, for a, helmet, "the hope of salvation"-that is, the hope of deliverance by the Lord's coming, which is specially unfolded as a doctrine in first and second Thessalonians.

" Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power." May we be daily walking in newness of life, in the power of which, by the Spirit, the believer will enter into heavenly glory at the first resurrection, at the second coming of the Lord.
E. S. L.

(To be continued.)

(Eph. 4:3.)

The blessed truth of God, as broad and catholic as it is spiritual and holy, is being constantly narrowed and stiffened into formality of some kind by the narrowness of our own hearts. We interpret the Word so much out of our hearts,-we see it so much in reference to our own circumstances merely,-the things that are before us are so apt to engross and prepossess us, that we are often little able to realize at all the mind of the Spirit in it. The narrowing of the application becomes a real perversion often thus. Sectarianism is natural to us; and sectarianism means but self,- " our own things," whether in a smaller or a larger circle, and "not the things of Jesus Christ."

We have also to remember that we may be easily ensnared into the identification of these contrasted things with one another. " Our own things " readily become for us the " things of Jesus Christ." Scripture contracted by our selfishness becomes then also the enforcement of our selfishness in the name of the Lord. The idol we have fashioned begins fashioning us; and by this process of action and reaction, how soon and how far may we be led astray! What cause have we to pray for the grace of self-judgment when we take God's Word into our hands, lest we bring our own thoughts into it, instead of receiving divine truth from it!

Has not the blessed truth of the unity of the Spirit suffered this sort of contraction at our hands ? Has it not been often made to serve the purpose of a rigid and narrow ecclesiasticism, and pressed into the very opposite of that which the apostle so earnestly here enjoins? Has it been always used so as to foster the spirit of " all lowliness and meekness, forbearing one another in love"? Has it been sought even to be kept "in the bond of peace"?

But my purpose is not to pursue this at all just now, but to put and answer, as the Lord may enable me, the question, What is the " unity of the Spirit" we are to keep? and how then are we to keep it?- questions in the present day of very great importance surely, amid the strife of parties and opinions ever increasing, and when also there is danger of a mere liberalism which is not of God, effectually aided, with many, by the weariness of the strife itself.

These questions are not really difficult to answer, however, nor are the answers in any way them-selves difficult or questionable. The apostle, in his next sentence, has given us the first of these. As old Matthew Henry would have said, the key hangs very near the door. " There is one body and one Spirit!' Here are two unities, which are plainly to be distinguished, while as plainly related, and that unity of which the apostle speaks proceeds from this relation of one to the other. The "unity of the Spirit" is the unity produced by the one Spirit as animating and controlling the " one body."

The unity of the body, it has been truly said, is not ours to keep. God has taken care for that. Whether we are practically acknowledging it or not, the body of Christ is one, and we are members one of another. But that which practically unites the body together is the living Spirit which puts the members in real and practical relation to one another. They are thus kept in communion with and true subjection to the Head, Christ Jesus. It is not a mere formal, but a true spiritual and intelligent oneness, owned and carried out in mutual sympathy and service,-a service which is duty no less than privilege-and to the full extent of our . ability, within a sphere not less than that of the whole body of Christ.

This is the answer to the first question, and there is surely no need to enlarge upon it, nor to enforce the truth of it. Its truth is manifest:the duty to one another flowing from our place together in the body of Christ will be owned by every true and loyal-hearted Christian wherever found.

But the question of greater difficulty, and therefore of greater interest at the present moment, is as to what is involved in the endeavor to keep the unity-to carry out this principle so easily recognized. The body is no longer manifestly one:the members are separated from one another, variously and widely. Each one of numberless divisions is united by and earnest to maintain the differences by which its adherents are sundered from the rest. Hence discordant views create discordant interests. Collision and conflict are the inevitable results.

More than this:in this strife of party interests, aid is welcome, and one must not too nicely investigate from whence it comes. Impoverished and distracted by internal feuds, the Church of God accepts, if it does not invite, the help of the world, perhaps loosely Christianized, sometimes not that, and sometimes even antichristian. How is a way to be found and held with God through this bewildering, shifting, maze of difficulties? How shall we take a step into this stream without being whirled from our feet by these eddying currents of human passion, emulation, and party zeal? How are we to be large enough yet discriminating enough?-"wise concerning that which is good, and simple concerning evil"?

And yet we are to "endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." As the duty remains, so do the way and means of fulfilling the duty. Isolation from whatever affects our brethren is not God's thought for us, who has joined the body together, and would have no schism in it. Whether we will or not, from this interdependence of one upon another we cannot "escape. "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." And while there may be and are great difficulties,
these are but the means of testing and drawing out faith, never of confounding it.

How, then, are we to keep the unity of the Spirit? The answer may be given in a few words:by uniting ourselves in heart to every thing in which the Spirit's work is manifest, while turning from and refusing all (though it may be mixed up with this) in which, as tested by Scripture, the character of that work cannot be found.

This is but to apply to the matter before us the principles of the apostle John's last two epistles. Love must be in the truth, is the motto of the second ; The truth must be in love, is that of the third. And these are the two sides of the divine nature, "God is love" and "God is light," made to test our practical conduct. As "grace and truth," they together " came " to us " by Jesus Christ." We cannot sunder them :to sunder is to destroy. Without love, there is no truth in us:love is itself the first and fundamental truth. Without truth, love cannot be.

And so the apostle insists, If you keep God's commandments, this is His commandment, "that he who loveth God love his brother also." On the other hand, if you love your brethren, the children of God, " by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous."
How necessary, in a day of mixture such as the present, to remember these words! And how it would seem often as if we did not believe that " His commandments are not grievous"! How many are the plausible suggestions now that, at least within certain limits, the end sanctifies the means; and that if the object be to serve Christ, a little conciliation of the world and the flesh may secure an immense influence in His favor! No doubt, they would not like to be thought to patronize unholiness who do this, and in truth they do not mean to violate conscience:but it is natural conscience only which they have in mind; not conscience enlightened by the word of Christ,- for in His light they do not see light.

Keeping, then, in mind the only perfect standard of what is "vile" or "precious," we have only come, after all, to the words of God to Jeremiah in a day of apostasy,-"If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth." Priceless words are these indeed, with all their simplicity. We shall do well to ponder them if as yet we have not, to recall them to remembrance if we have. For contact with an evil world, even when necessary, tends to dull our spiritual sense continually, and only by perpetual recurrence to the word of truth can our sanctification be maintained. Let us look, then, at these words to the old prophet, and see if they are not words of power for our day,–if they do not give us at least the underlying principle in the following out of which the unity of the Spirit will be most simply and surely kept.

It is true that in Jeremiah necessarily there is no mention or thought of the body of Christ. And this is now that in which (in a way unknown to the Old Testament,) the Spirit of God dwells. We will not forget that the Church, which Christ loved so as to give Himself for it, is the sphere of this unity which we have now before us. But this affects the details rather than the principles. The work of the Holy Spirit is in all ages morally the same:the work speaks of its Author, and has the impress of His own immutability.

First, then, let us notice carefully that in taking forth the precious from the vile, our occupation is with that which is precious. We do not hunt for the vile, although we cannot but recognize it when it comes before us. We judge it better by our refusal of it than by any amount of analysis and condemnation of it. Our part is, " whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," to "think on these things." This has a wonderful effect upon the heart. The occupation with evil tends to distress, discourage, and enfeeble on the one hand; on the other, to engender a spirit of controversy and harshness, closely allied with and near akin to a subtle self-righteousness. When that which is good occupies us, we are kept in rest, encouraged, and superior to the evil; love is not merely unchecked, but active, in the presence of what calls it out. If we strive, it is with the desire of rescuing what is of God and dear to Him from what injures and defiles it.

Secondly, this effort is supposed and enjoined in taking forth the precious from the vile. Every where the conflict of good with evil is going on, and divine grace is in unceasing, unwearied activity to win souls out of the darkness and corruption, to God and to the holiness which is the atmosphere in which He dwells. Of this activity we are ourselves the fruit, and in this way have become also its instruments. The world is a vast battle-ground, in which there are only two parties, essentially opposed. He that is not with Christ is against Him; he that gathereth not with Him scattereth abroad. Nor is there pause or relaxation in the continual struggle. To pause is to give way; to cease from conflict is to be overcome ; to persevere is, on the other hand, to win certain victory, and every effort gathers strength for a fresh one. But assuredly we shall not without a struggle "take forth the precious from the vile;" for sin is an armed and aggressive enemy, and the goods of the strong man can only be taken in the might of One who is stronger than he.

The main difficulty lies in this, that although there are but two parties in this strife, and the lines might seem easily enough drawn, in practice it is not so. There is an inner enemy as well as an outer one, and a battle-field in every Christian heart corresponding to that outside. Thus the power of the Spirit has to accomplish in us the work of deliverance from the evil within as well as around; and we have to be with Him, not only in winning from the world the trophies of divine grace, but also in delivering the people of God from themselves and from their fellows, as well as from the world around.

What makes the endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit so difficult, but this? Why does it require all lowliness and meekness and long-suffering, forbearing one another in love? It is because the body of Christ is composed of men in whom sin is and in whom it works; and thus unity can be only maintained by conflict:here, as in the individual, "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that you should not do the things that you would."

Thus no mere keeping of an external or ecclesiastical unity will suffice us here. Every where, as a first necessity, we need that discernment which only he that is spiritual can have. There is implied a constant exercise, a continual need of being before God, a practiced faith, a thorough individuality of walk, which mere ecclesiasticism, far from encouraging, always represses, as hostile to unity,
instead of favoring it. It is the unity of the Spirit that is to be kept, not that of the Church. And this can never be really kept, I do not say by a violated conscience merely, but by an unexercised one. The Spirit of God ever acts, indeed, in behalf of real unity ; but in this very way it can only be attained by a close and intelligent following of His mind. Could the whole body act as one apart from this, it would only be the more completely contrary to the apostle's precept here.

(To be continued.)

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII

PART I.–(Continued)

INTRODUCTORY.

(2) Prophecies of the New Testament.

What we have gathered, then, from these different prophecies is this :-

I. That the times of the Gentiles-of the Gentile empires-are closed in sudden overthrow by the kingdom of God established in the hands of One who, as Son of Man, comes in the clouds of heaven.

2. That the last form of Gentile power,-the Roman,-ends in blasphemous opposition to God and to His saints -opposition which brings the judgment down.

3. That this opposition displays itself in a special way in connection with the Jews, who, in the security of a covenant with the last head, have re-established their temple-worship at Jerusalem. Three and a half years from the end-a half-week of years-he breaks this covenant, causes the worship of Jehovah to cease, and replaces it by an idolatry which brings in desolation, a scourge from God, lasting until this period expires. Deliverance for the saints, and the end of Gentile dominion, come together with the sudden appearance of the Lord from heaven.

In all this the simple comparison of scripture with scripture has set aside the need of any labored interpretation. The time, times, and dividing of a time of the little horn's prevalence (Dan. Vii.) correspond so in every feature with the last half week of the seventy in chap, 9:, and the time, times, and a half of the twelfth chapter, that to force them asunder would seem almost manifest perversion. The successive prophecies agree with the preceding ones in the most perfect way, while adding each something of its own. The one mind of the Spirit runs evidently through them all.

We are now going to add in the same manner some New-Testament prophecies to the Old, and see if still Scripture will not speak for itself, and become its own interpreter,-if as definite certainty cannot be reached as to the main features of unfulfilled prophecy as with regard to any other part of inspired testimony.

And the first passage we naturally take up proclaims its own connection with what we have been looking at in Daniel. I refer, of course, to the great prophecy of Matt. 24:Read in the light of the prophecies to which it refers, it becomes as clear and intelligible as can be.

The Lord has announced to His disciples the impending overthrow of the temple. They thereupon put two questions to Him, which in their minds were no doubt more closely connected than they would be in ours:" Tell us when shall these things be ? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age?"
As to the first question, which of course refers to the destruction of .the temple, we have little to do with it just now. The answer will be found more fully given in Luke 21:, in which the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place more than thirty-five years afterward, is explicitly announced. In Matthew it will be found that the Lord deals rather with the second, double question, where they seem evidently to identify the coming of the Lord with "the end of the age"-for "world" it is not, either here or in the thirteenth chapter, where the same expression is to be found. Literally, it is the "consummation of the age."

Now, remembering Daniel, and that these were Jewish questioners, with at present none but Jewish hopes, but owning Jesus as their Messiah,-with no thought of the long interval which was in fact to elapse before His still future coming, it is plain that the age of which they spoke was the age of law-of Judaism as it then was. Of a Christian dispensation they could have no thought. The "corning" of which they spoke was doubtless connected with, if not derived from, the coming of the Son of Man of which Daniel had spoken. The "end of the age" we have found portrayed there in fact, in terms to which the Lord refers; but while they would necessarily think of it as the end of a Jewish age, most Christians would as naturally from their stand point think of it as Christian.

For us, Judaism is gone forever, and it is a strange thing to speak of its revival; yet we have seen that Daniel shows us a week of special divine dealings with Judah and Jerusalem, cut off from the sixty-nine preceding by an unknown interval in which plainly Christianity has prevailed. And in this last week we find the temple-services again going on until their interruption by the head of Gentile power.

It is to this interruption the Lord refers, directly citing Daniel:"When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand 😉 then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains; let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house; neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes."

In Luke, where the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, eighteen centuries ago, is prophesied, while the same injunction to flee to the mountains is given, the sign is different-"Jerusalem compassed with armies;" and these latter directions are omitted, -they would be plainly out of place. No such rapid and instant flight as is here spoken of was needed to escape the desolating hosts. It is merely therefore said, "Let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter there into."

But here, the enemy is in the midst, the saints are the objects of special enmity, and there must be no delay:"And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days; but pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day." Here it is plain that Jews under the full rigor of Jewish law are contemplated.

And now conies another reference to Daniel. In his last prophecy we find that "at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince that standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." (Chap. 12:1:)

Thus it is the great day of Jewish deliverance which is at hand, and they are delivered out of a time of unequaled trouble. The Lord's words echo and emphasize the words of Daniel:"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no,-nor ever shall be. . And except those days shall be shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened."

The precise time of the tribulation is given by the Old-Testament prophet-three years and a half; and we see by the Lord's words that it is impossible to apply here the year-day theory, which would extend it to twelve hundred and sixty years. This certainly would not be shortening the days in any sense.

He follows with the announcement of false Christs and false prophets as characterizing this period,-an addition to the Old Testament of the greatest significance, and which we shall find developed in succeeding prophecies :" Then, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe him not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs 'and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the desert! go not forth; Behold, He is in the secret chambers! believe it not. For, as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together."

As in Daniel also, it is by this coming that the time of trouble is closed:"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."

For our purpose, it is not necessary to go further. The agreement with former prophecies is clear and conclusive. A latter-day remnant is seen in Jerusalem, distinctly Jewish in character, yet listening to Christ's words, and owned of God; and the end of the age of which the disciples inquire is identified with the broken-off last week of Daniel's seventy. The temple is again owned as " the holy place," though in the meanwhile defiled with idolatry, and this before the Lord's coming in the clouds of heaven. We necessarily ask ourselves, Where, then, is Christianity ? and what does this presence once more of a Jewish "age" imply as to the present Christian dispensation ?

To this, Scripture gives no undecided answer. It shows us that the Christian dispensation (properly so called,) is over then; that the Church, Christ's body, is complete; that all true Christians have been caught up to Christ, and are with Him; that the rest of the professing church has been spewed out of His mouth, according to His threatening to Laodicea; that the Lord is now taking up again for blessing His people Israel and the earth, and we are again in the line of Old-Testament prophecy, and going on to the fulfillment of Old-Testament promises.

That these promises belong to Israel, literally,-His kinsmen according to the flesh,-we have the unexceptionable witness of the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 9:4), who also warns the Gentile professing body, that they stand only by faith, and if they abide not in the goodness of God which He has shown them, shall be cut off; and Israel, abiding net in unbelief, should be graffed back again into her own olive-tree. He tells us also that this receiving of them back shall be "life from the dead " to the nations of the world; that blindness in part is happened unto Israel, only till the fullness of the Gentiles is come in; and then all Israel-the nation as a whole-shall be saved. And he adds that while, as regards the gospel, they are [treated by God as] enemies for our sakes as touching the election they are yet beloved for the father's sakes; because the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. (Rom. 11:13-29.)

Thus the wonderful change which Matt. 24:exhibits is fully accounted for. The Jews and Judaism once more owned, shows that the Christian "gospel," having completed its full gathering of Gentiles as designed by God, is going out no longer. Heaven (though we must make a certain exception which we shall by and by consider,) -heaven is full. The gathering for earth and blessing there is now commencing.

The Lord has spoken of false Christs and false prophets in connection with that time. Let us turn now to the apostle John's description of Antichrist. He warns us indeed that already in his time there were many; already there was the character of the " last time." He speaks of them as apostates, issuing from the professing church itself, never really Christians, though among them, (i Jno. 2:18, 19.) But he goes on to describe one special form, " the liar," " the antichrist," as his words really are. '"Who is the liar," he asks, "but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?" And then he adds, "He is the antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son." (5:22.)

It will be found that there are here two forms of unbelief, which in this wicked one unite in one. The first is the Jewish one that denies that Jesus is the Christ. They do not deny that there is a Christ, but they deny Jesus to be this. The full Christian belief is not only that Jesus is the Christ, but that He is also the Son of the Father. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father,"-there are many of these now, as the Unitarians so called; but they deny the Son to make much of the Father:the full climax of unbelief in this great head of it is here, that he denieth both the Father and the Son.

Thus the antichrist denies Christianity altogether; but he owns Judaism, for the very denial that Jesus is the Christ implies, however, that there is Christ. And this is the complete antichrist, who is not only against Christ, but takes His place. And so the Lord speaks of "false Christs:" These are, by profession, then, Jews, and the antichrist is a Jew.

How naturally the antichrist belongs, then, to a time when Christianity is gone from the earth, and a revived Judaism is in its old seat, and they are in expectation (as almost necessarily they would be,) of the speedy fulfillment now of the promise of Messiah. When the Lord came in the flesh, there was just such an expectation, and just such fruit of it in the appearance of false Christs. And the words in Matthew show that such a time there will be again; only now with a peculiar power of deception which only the elect escape. Among these blasphemous pretenders is the full prophetic antichrist.

Let us turn to another picture, which the apostle puts before the Thessalonians. (2 Thess. 2:1-12.) Here we shall find what unites John and Matthew, connecting the developed evil of apostate Christendom with the revival of Judaism which the Lord's own words foreshow. And I quote from the Revised Version, which is in many respects an improvement upon the common one:-
" Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him, to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, as that the day of the Lord is now present:let no. man beguile you in any wise; for it will not be except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God. . . . For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work, only there is one that restraineth now until he be taken out of the way. And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth, and bring to naught by the manifestation of His coming:even he whose coming is according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and all deceit of unrighteousness for them that are perishing; because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

Thus the solemn end of Christendom is revealed. And already in the apostle's days the leaven of evil was at work, which but for a divine restraint upon it would before this have permeated the whole mass of profession. But the apostasy will come, if even now rather it is not begun, of which the issue and final head will be this lawless one, who will sweep away with him to common ruin all that receive not the love of the truth. They will believe a lie-literally, it is "the lie,"-and "who is the liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?" He opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or worshiped:certainly therefore " denieth the Father and the Son." But not only so:he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." How can we forbear to think of that abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, which the Lord has called our attention to from Daniel ?

But here is a notable instance of the need we have of the apostle's warning that " no prophecy of the Scripture is to be interpreted by itself." To those rooted in the idea that Judaism is gone forever, and that the Christian Church is now the only "temple of God," what more natural and necessary than to interpret this of the pope ? Nor do I for a moment say that he is not in the direct line of development; prophecy has oftentimes these incomplete anticipative fulfillments, which answer for the full and exhaustive one which is to come. But in the light of all that has preceded, we may be quite sure that any application to the head of Catholicism is only partial and anticipative. Popery has existed for too many centuries to be a sign of the coming day of the Lord; and one sitting as God in the temple of God is too simply explicative of the abomination of desolation in the holy place to make the application difficult or doubtful.

This wicked one, like the little horn of the fourth beast, finds his end also at the coming of the Lord. I do not mean by this that they are the same person, for they are not; but they belong to the same time, and are closely connected.

Thus, then, the New Testament agrees perfectly with the Old in its representation of the end of the age. But we have not examined yet its fullest and most decisive testimony, which we find, just where we would expect to find it, in the book of Revelation. But of this we propose a more extended examination; and we have been gathering together the Scripture-testimony elsewhere only as introductory to this which lies before us. May the Lord Himself direct our inquiries and govern our hearts by the truth of His Word. It is not a mere intellectual study that we propose. We seek to have for our souls the spiritual power of what is unseen,-the future as light for the present,-the judgment of the Lord in the day of the Lord, in order to self-judgment now,-the joy of heaven for present communion. May He who alone can purge from our sight the dullness and drowsiness that so cling to us, our eyes anointed with His eye-salve, that we may see !

What is the real significance of FRUIT? Every physiologist knows that the fruit of a plant is simply an arrested and metamorphosed branch. This is proved by the fact that all the parts of the flower,-viz., the calyx, the corolla, and the pistil, will readily change into normal leaves, and the peduncle into a normal branch; and also by the gradual transition of leaves proper into floral parts. In very wet or warm springs, some of the flower-buds of the pear and apple are occasionally forced into active vegetative growth, so as to completely break up the flower, and change it into an ordinary leafy branch. It is also by no means uncommon to see a green branch covered with leaves, growing out of the heart of a fully expanded crimson rose, or from the summit of a large and perfectly formed pear, or from a ripe strawberry, or from the apex of the cone of the larch. . . All those cases in which the terminal bud goes on to grow, even through the flower and fruit, clearly prove that the flower or fruit which, according to the normal method, arrests all further development of the axis that bears it, is a mere metamorphosed branch. The bud of a plant which, under the ordinary laws of vegetation, would have elongated into a leafy branch, remains in a special case shortened, and develops finally, according to some regular law, blossom and fruit instead. Its further growth is thus stayed; it has attained the end of its existence; its life terminates -with the ripe fruit that drops off to the ground. Whereas the bud that does not produce a flower or fruit grows into a branch, lives for years, and may ultimately attain almost the dimensions of the main trunk itself, clothed with half the foliage of the tree.

In producing blossom and fruit, therefore, a branch sacrifices itself, yields up its own individual vegetative life for the sake of another life that is to spring from it, and to perpetuate the species. Every annual plant dies when it has produced blossom and fruit; every individual branch in a tree (which corresponds with an annual plant) also dies when it has blossomed and fruited. Delay in flowering prolongs life. By nipping off the flowers as soon as they appear, the duration of some plants may be greatly extended; by converting single blossoms into double, and thus preventing their seeding, annuals may even become perennials. . .

The great spiritual principle which every blossom shadows forth is self-sacrifice. The plant produces a flower, and consequently a fruit, for the purpose of imparting life-yea, more abundant life, -and in the production of flower and fruit it dies. It gives its own life for another's-one life for the sake of countless lives that are to spring from it in long succession, generation after generation. And is it not most instructive to notice that it is in this self-sacrifice of the plant that all its beauty comes out and culminates ? The blossom and fruit in which it gives its own life for another, are the loveliest of all its parts. God has crowned this self-denial and blessing of others with all the glory of color and the grace of form, the sweetness of perfume, and the richness of flavor.

And is it not so in the kingdom of grace? Christian fruit is an arrest and transformation of the branch in the True Vine. Instead of growing for its own ends, it produces the blossoms of holiness and the fruits of righteousness, for the glory of God and the good of men. The life of selfishness, self-righteousness, and self-seeking is cut short, and changed into the life of self-denial. The believer who is united to Christ considers the time past of his life sufficient to have wrought the will of the flesh, and henceforth lives no more unto himself, but unto Him that died for him and rose again. The Christian life begins in self-sacrifice:"If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself." We can bring forth no fruit that is pleasing to God until, besought by His mercies, we yield ourselves a living sacrifice to Him. . . . Fruit in the natural and spiritual worlds originates from self-sacrifice. This is the arrest of the natural bud, the metamorphosis of the self-pleasing branch-the passage, as in the case of St. Paul, through an ideal death, through the martyrdom of will and deed, to nobler action, to a heavenly life even, on earth.

And in this self-sacrifice all the beauty of the Christian life comes out and culminates. The life that lives for another in so doing bursts into flower, and shows its brightest hues, and yields its sweetest fragrance. As the common coarse green leaf changes into the delicately formed and brilliantly colored petals in the conversion of leaf-buds into flower-buds, so in the conversion of lovers of pleasures into lovers of God-the common things of life, the gifts and attainments of the natural man, are taken up into a higher experience, and beautified and ennobled. Nothing is lost in the transference, but all is changed and enriched. All is given to Christ, and all is received back a hundredfold. Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed like one of those human blossoms on the tree of life, that can say, " I am not my own, but bought with a price, and therefore bound to glorify God in my body and spirit, which are His."

Every spot on which the disciple talks with Jesus of His decease, and is bound by the cords of love to the same altar, is verily a Mount of Transfiguration. There the glory of the inner life bursts through, and irradiates even the outer garment. The face of Moses, when he descended from the mount, shone with a supernatural splendor, because he yielded himself up for the good of Israel. The face of Stephen became like an angel's when he gave up his life a witness for Christ, and in imitation of his Master's wondrous self-forgetfulness, prayed for his murderers:"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." And has not many an unknown man and woman been similarly transfigured when becoming one with Christ's Spirit in sublime self-abnegation? Have we not seen the glory of self-sacrifice ennobling even the aspect of the countenance, the expression of the eye, the carriage of the form, making the plainest and homeliest face beautiful and heroic? Who has not beheld, with a feeling almost of awe, some lowly root out of a dry ground blossoming into a miracle of beauty as he entered into the cloud with His Lord, and was baptized with His baptism? The pain of martyrs, the losses of self-sacrificing devotion, are indeed the blossoms of life,-"the culminating points at which humanity has displayed its true glory and reached its highest level." In the sacrifice of self-will in its bud and root to God, a glory and a bliss are opened up of which the selfish worldling is utterly ignorant and destitute. We "prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

" For who gives, giving doth win back his gift;
And knowledge by division grows to more;
Who hides the Master's talent shall die poor,
And starve at last of his own thankless thrift.

" I did this for another ; and, behold,
My work hath blood on it! but thine hath none:
Done for thyself, it dies in being done ;
To what thou buyest thou thyself art sold.

" Give thyself utterly away. Be lost. [own;
Choose some one-some thing ; not thyself, thine
Thou canst not perish, but thrice greater grown,-
Thy gain the greatest where thy loss was most.

"Thou in another shall thyself new find.
The single globule, lost in the wide sea,
Becomes an ocean. Each identity
Is greatest in the greatness of its kind.

" Who serves for gain, a slave, by thankless pelf
Is paid ; who gives himself is priceless, free,
I gave myself, a man, to God:lo, He
Renders me back a saint unto myself."

(Hugh McMillan:"The True Vine.")

THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, Philadelphia:the Revival of the Word of Christ, and the Brotherhood of Christians. (Rev. 3:7-13.-Continued.)

It has been often observed, and is evidently true, that the person of the Lord is more prominent in this address than in any of the others. It is a beautiful testimony that He is being Himself sought after with a new earnestness, to which He with a full heart responds. And the character in which He displays Himself is that of holiness and truth; for there is no way of nearness to Him but by separation from the evil that He hates, and being formed by the truth which He reveals. The Word is separative and formative? The mark of its reception is, the abandonment of all iniquity, marked as such, not by the common conscience of men, but by the Word itself. This is the sign of entrance into the sanctuary-of the presence of the Lord realized, when in His light we see light.

Absolute truthfulness is rare indeed. The penalties attending it are so many, often to be escaped by so slight a swerving from the strict path,-a path often so lonely and without sympathy, and so barren as it might seem in its isolation. Even to Christians, Christ often appears to have deserted it. And then after all to break down there! and what so likely as to break down? In this way we may connive at self-deception; for what do all these reasonings amount to, but that the path is to be a path of faith to us now as it ever was, and difficulties are to be as ever the test of faith?

Here, then, is conscience challenged as we enter on this address to Philadelphia. Have we indeed the " courage of our convictions" ? or, perhaps, have we the courage to expose ourselves to possible conviction ?

And note that the " holy " goes before the " true." There may be " truth," or "genuineness" as the word means, where after all holiness is not maintained. Satan succeeds by some puzzle for the mind in diverting many from a true issue. Authority may be pressed and bowed to as from God, and the soul awed into subjection to what it dares not approach near enough to recognize in its true character. Conscience may act, but blindfold, at the bidding of another than its "one Master." With Him, on the other hand, the "holiness" it is that guarantees the "truth."

He who thus declares Himself invites after all to no path of uselessness:He has the key of David, is Ruler over the kingdom absolutely, opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens; and to those whom He addresses, pledges an open door, plainly for service, as the whole tenor here implies, and as the apostle three times over uses the expression (i Cor. 16:9; 2 Cor. 2:12; Col. 4:3). Who could be in Christ's company without finding on the one hand His rejection, on the other how human hearts recognize their Lord? Here is no contradiction, but what every page of the gospels bears witness of to us.

Assuredly faith will still be necessary, and a judgment by results will be often much mistaken.
If we wait for these to authenticate our course to us, we must in the meanwhile walk doubtfully, and not in faith. These words are an assurance rather to those who may be pursuing what to sense seems doubtful enough as to its issue. He affirms it to them. If they have the character here,-if they are with the Holy and the True,-holy with the Holy, true with the True,-then precisely because of this assurance, they need not ask, Will this be fulfilled- is it being fulfilled to us? Our eyes must be upon the path and the Leader. Success, where it seems fullest, must yet be tested rather by the future than the present-rather by eternity than time; and he who follows it most will be most distracted by other voices than His who speaks here. What tempter lures indeed the servants of Christ like this? For how many does success, rather than the Word of God, sanction their measures, while alluring them into direct opposition to the Word! If even gained in true obedience, how often does the flattery of great achievement unbalance a soul which adversity could only school to more endurance ! These things are but common-places of experience; and in view of them, we need not wonder if God has, in general, been sparing in measuring out to His people great success.

And yet finally the success is great indeed, as it is certain to those who conform to the rule laid down as of old to Joshua:"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein :for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success." Alas! how much oftener is this thought to be insured by a supple and worldly wisdom than by a close and undeviating adherence to the Word of God!

The Lord now gives here, as elsewhere, what He approves in them:" For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name."

A little strength He marks and approves; yet it is but a little. No Pentecostal energy revived, no faith that can move mountains, shall we find here. The "day of small things," in the Christian as in the Jewish history, is not at its beginning, but at its close. It is a great mistake to confound the day of Ezra with the day of David. And although it may be said, and truly, that eternal life and the power of the Spirit know no decrepitude, yet our day and generation leave their imprint on us. They should not; we are not blameless in it; yet they do. Still "a little strength" is here approval.

And how is this marked? Surely in what follows,-" Thou hast kept My word, and not denied My name." It is not in gifts restored to the Church, as some claim now; it is not in ecclesiastical position, nor in numbers, nor in place among men;-in none of these things is there strength before God, but in obedience and devotedness.

We have seen in Thyatira Jezebel's word claimed as inspired and authoritative; we have seen, too, in Sardis, a separation from and refusal of such claim:yet the Church, though no longer inspired, teaches still. There is, as men say, an open Bible, (blessed be God for it!) and with this, a certain necessary diffusion of light. The Reformation creeds insist upon the fundamental truths of the gospel, and these have been sealed by the lives and deaths of the martyrs. At the first, also, these
creeds are in harmony with the convictions of those who subscribe them, although very soon dissent has to be embodied in a separate creed. Then a strife of creeds begins which has been the shame and reproach of Protestantism,-which has added schism to schism and sect to sect.

For the creed in Protestantism,-the pretension to catholicity, as in Rome, being gone,-means sectarianism. Who that has the thought of Christ's Church would undertake to frame a confession or constitution for it? Hence all such things now are local, and professedly for a part only. It is a fencing off of a greater or less number from the rest. If you cannot agree, you are at best dismissed to go elsewhere, and find or make a party for yourself.

But he who will keep Christ's word can bind himself to none,-must preserve his individuality of conscience, subject to one Master only ; as much so as if there were no other Christians but himself on earth:and in a true walk with God, the knowledge of Himself, acquaintance with His Word increases with each step of the way. The light brightens to the perfect day, and in this brightening light we are called to walk, true to it, and to Him whose light it is. An immense thing it is, in a day like this, to be keeping, with an exercised heart, the word of Christ! Not a word here and there; not following it until the cost may be too much; but through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report. For is there right obedience any where, when there is not in our purpose obedience every where? Can He whom we serve accept a compromise to His own dishonor, when we really tell Him we will do this, but not that, at His bidding? Solemn questions these, which may His grace keep ringing in our ears, until they wake up only harmonies of joy and peace within our souls, and not self-accusation.

Let us understand that keeping Christ's word means, if it mean any thing, honest subjection to the whole of it:to that of which we may not even perceive the importance, as if we did; calling nothing little which He enjoins-of what has equal authority with the weightiest to emphasize it for us. Herein is often the truest test of a right spirit in us, when we obey not in uncertainty, but in darkness; and go out upon His leading, not knowing where.

We have need to remember, too, that our own contrary wills are often the most effectual hindrances to receiving what is really Christ's word. How solemn it is to think that of the mass of things in which we differ from each other as Christians, this contrariety must needs account for very much the larger part. The Lord's words are plain enough, and universally applicable, that " if any one will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." It is due to Him to own that as the blessed Spirit of God could not lead into contradictory beliefs, these differences must be of us, and not of Him. But then, found as they are in so many whom we must esteem as godly men, what a warning they give us of how much that is not of God,-of real in subjection-may be found even in such. So far as we have indeed whole-heartedly followed Him, who can doubt that He has led us right? But then how little really unreserved following of Him there must be after all!

And who can measure the loss even now? and who then can measure the eternal loss, when we
thus let slip communion with Himself? And how many are trying to win it back, or make up for its absence by filling their hands with work for Him, as if they were almost persuaded that "to obey is" not " better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

How plainly perceptible it is when a soul reaches the barrier line beyond which he will not go! Activities may go on, and the whole outward man be no other than it was, yet there is something gone from the soul which at once one with God will discern as hindering fellowship. How sorrowful to lose one another's company this way, while yet perhaps the feet go on together! But if we lose Christ's companionship, what shall replace it?

Naturally and necessarily connected, then, with "Thou hast kept My word," is this:"and hast not denied My name." Christ's name expresses what He is. " They shall call His name ' Emmanuel,' which being interpreted is, 'God with us.' " And to fulfill this, He is named "Jesus"-"Jehovah saving;" for save He must, that God may dwell among us. Thus, again, He is "Christ." the Anointed One, to fill the Mediator's place,-with God for us, with us for God. Who that knows it would deny this blessed name?

What does it express, what does it emphasize for us but communion with God? He hath come out after us, left His place and glory, to let the light of that glory in upon our hearts. It is in Him, this glory, in-

" The person of the Christ,
Enfolding every grace."

Justified we must be, to be able to draw nigh ; and without sanctification " no man shall see the Lord;" but the Lord Himself is thus the end and sum of all. " Christ is all," says one whose life spake with his lips; and " I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom 1 have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him."

It is, as often said, what gives the peculiar glow to the picture of Philadelphia here, that it is Christ personally who fills the scene of their vision, and who associates them with Himself. This is what gives them their name, surely, in its spiritual power and value; for never was Christ welcomed into a heart but He made room in it for all His people. This is true linking with one another when we are united by the Center,-when our association is first of all with Christ, and this determines the measure and character of all other associations. For indeed there is much, even among the people of God, that is not Philadelphian, but only a corrupt and evil counterfeit. If our "part" is first of all to be with Christ, let us hear Him say, " Except I wash thee, thou hast no part with Me." And this is not spoken of the first general " washing" when we are born anew, which the Lord expressly distinguishes from this washing of the feet, the cleansing from all defilement by the way. If He washes, there can be no compromise with defilement; our feet must be in His hand; there must be surrender to Him at all points, so that He may be able to show us all that is evil in His sight. Thus alone can we have part with Him; and therefore in this way only can we have rightly part with one another.

To this such union as can be obtained by compromise is in essential contradiction. It is mere confederacy, whatever may be the end proposed. God has one method for us by which we may walk together according to His mind, and only one. We are to "follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." By taking the same road, we are necessarily brought together. The road is guaranteed to us by its four decisive marks; and here there can be no compromise, we must not give up any one of these. Moreover, it is thus by a path in the strictest sense individual that we find our company; yet it is wide enough to contain "all that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart." Its characters are, first of all, "righteousness," and this must be maintained before we can properly speak of " faith " at all. But then "faith" marks the conscience in the presence of a living Lord, as well as a heart confiding in Him; and so it is only that we can have this restful, practical confidence, as we walk in conscious recognition of and obedience to His will. Here "love" then comes in due place,-we can now let our hearts out; and in this atmosphere love will develop itself. While lastly, " peace " characterizes it in view of opposition and conflict and trouble:the Lord is over all the uprising of the water floods. In all this, it may be said, there is nothing but the most complete individualism ; yet here it is we find the divine law of association. There is no confederation, no agreement, no prescription of terms to one another. One Master prescribes to every one his place, and in accepting that place we find the true law of co-operation with one another. United to Him as members of His body, we are, to begin with, "members one of another." This is not a question submitted to us, whether we shall be one; and to form other unions, while it may be ignorance, is none the less complete opposition to His will". Alas! in our day it is not "union is obedience" that is the motto, but "union is strength;" and for whatever purpose men may have, they combine. Strength of a certain sort is found, no doubt; but it is not where he found it who says, "When I am weak, then am I strong;" " I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me."

Individuality is thus lost, a majority decides for the remainder; for the advantage gained, certain things which we do not approve must be acquiesced in. Conscience, at first uneasy, becomes more tolerant. More demands made upon it find less and less the power of resistance. Christ's word is given up, and what is due to His name forgotten. How many have thus lost in their souls the sensitiveness to sin they once had; yet the apostle insists, " Let him that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." Blessed, thrice blessed are they who, if they have but a little strength, yet have kept His word, and do not deny His name.

(To be continued,)

What a revelation we have in this third John, beloved! – how wonderful it is! Though so familiar to us, it grows greater and fresher as the Spirit of God gives us to understand more the depths of its meaning. Fresh from the lips of the Son of God Himself, it, burst forth upon the darkness of this world:"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son"! Think of it!-the whole world lying under the power of Satan,-in the darkness of distance from God; in the misery brought in through sin and the solemn judgment of God upon it,-then it is these blessed words burst forth from the lips of the Son of God Himself, like the light of a glorious sun, breaking forth upon the darkness of this world:"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Precious, wonderful revelation! yet how received by man? We were singing a while ago,-

"When we see Thee as the victim,
Nailed to the accursed tree"-

The Son of God nailed to the tree!-yes, by man whom He had come to save! Is not this another wonder, declaring under what power of Satan and depths of darkness man was fallen in rebellion to God? Yet this declaration comes to the whole world:"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son."

Is it not, beloved, a wonderful revelation?-this break of a glorious light upon this benighted world.

Bless God for it, all ye who know Him! My soul worships and blesses God for it.

Ans. 26-John 10:27-29 is plain as divine love would make it. The Lord gives unto His people eternal life, and they shall never perish. There is no condition here, and we must make none. If, as people say, they could pluck themselves out of His hands, then they would perish; but He says they shall not. There is no other Scripture that clashes with this in the least. Falling from grace in Galatians, is abandoning it as one's ground before God, as the Galatians were doing,-adding the law to the gospel,-the very thing those do who urge the text so much. Let us take "Scripture as it stands, and we shall be safe; where it speaks of conditions, insist on them; where we find a glorious unconditional promise, receive it simply.

Ans. 27.-Acts. 2:18, like 21:9, shows undoubtedly that women might have prophetic gift, and i Cor. 11:5 prescribes as to its use. i Cor. 14:34 shows that it was not to be in the public assemblies where the whole church came together. There is nothing to forbid a women's prayer-meeting, but they must do nothing un-suited to the modesty becoming women, or the place which nature gave them (comp. 11:14).

Ans. 28.-Heb. 13:17 should be as in the margin "those who guide you." Of course this must be by the Word, or it is not real guidance.

Ans. 29-We must surely take care in whatever we put our hand to that we have the authority of Scripture for it. If in any thing we do, or in the way we do it, we violate Scripture to secure what we suppose greater good, we do indeed adopt the terrible principle, " Let us do evil that good may come." On the other hand, our hearts are not right if they do not own and delight in what is of God wherever we may find it, though it may be mixed with much that we could not ourselves take part in. Our prayers, at least, are every-where due, and often we can be free to give practical help to what on the whole we can believe to be of God, while sorrowing over and refusing for ourselves what may be mixed up with it. Here we need to be much before God in order to find our way in times so difficult as the present.

Ans. 30.-As to Deut. 33:12, another has said of these blessings, that they show " the relationship of Jehovah with the people as in possession of the land;" and as to the verse in question, that "it would seem that the place of Benjamin, in relation with Jehovah, was in his favor, being kept near Him, as has been the case with that tribe within whose limits was Jerusalem."

Ans. 31.-In Isa. 26:19 it should read "My corpses shall arise." The word for "corpses" is a "word without a plural, but frequently used in a plural sense, as in chap. 5:25," says Delitzsch. The passage is to be interpreted, no doubt, as Ezek. 37:and other passages, of Israel's resurrection as a nation. God claims them, dead as they are, as His, and quickens them from the dead.

Ans 32.-In Matt. 24:28, the "eagles" are the executioners of divine judgment, which find the corrupting object wherever it may be (comp. Luke 17:37). "They shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity."

Ans. 33.-In Jno. 2:17, the "zeal of Thine house" is surely Christ's zeal for what was the habitation of Jehovah.
Ans. 34.-2 Tim. 2:12 is a general principle, and of wide application. In the full sense the denial of Christ would be apostasy, and the " us " take in all that profess to be Christians; but there are important applications to those that are truly Christians, who, in proportion to their open confession of Him or not, find correspondingly or not His open countenance. I do not doubt that the boldest confessors are (if they be real) the happiest possessors (comp. i Pet. 4:14).

Ans. 35.-" Eternal life " in Rom. 2:7 is not a principle of life possessed here, but a state into which men go finally as in Matt. 25:46. It is a life which they will live, not the life by which they live it.

Ans. 36.-Luke 14:26:"If a man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother," simply means that he must be prepared to act as if he did this; there was to be no balancing between Christ's claims and those of the very nearest relationship.

2. THE KINGDOM IN THE HANDS OF MEN.

The kingdom in its present form is established and ruled by the word of an absent King. Being absent, it is clearly His Word which speaks for Him,-which represents His authority. His kingdom is a kingdom of truth, according to His own words to Pilate, who asks Him, "Art Thou a king, then?" And He answers, "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice." (Jno. 18:37.)

" Master "-or " Teacher "-" and Lord " are necessarily associated in thought. "Ye call Me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am." (Jno. 13:13.) "Master" implies, of necessity, an authority, in Him absolute:and in this full sense He says to His disciples, "One is your Master, even Christ." (Matt. 28:8.) To receive His word is thus to bow to his authority:His word is, as in the parable (Matt. 18:19), "the word of the kingdom." His subjects are thus nothing else than His disciples, and discipling is now into the kingdom of heaven-" every scribe which is instructed into the kingdom of heaven," in the end of the same chapter (5:52), is literally, "discipled."

In the parables of the kingdom thus we find pictured the sphere of discipleship, embracing true and false alike. There are tares and wheat, fishes good and bad, wise and foolish virgins, guests that have not on the wedding-garment, servants that have never truly served at all. The end declares the difference; and in the end the Son of Man purges out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. Till the harvest (which is "the end of the age"-not "world"), the tares and wheat, the good and the evil, are found together.

The kingdom, then, covers the whole field of profession. Those in it may be or may not be what they assume to be; and thus blessings of it are conditional accordingly. People may enter it in two ways; there is an outer and an inner sphere, as it were, in the kingdom itself. There is a mere outward belonging to it, not in heart:there is an inward and real entering in, to which salvation attaches:"Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." It is here, of course, not merely a " Lord, Lord," but a true subjection of soul to Him.

All this will come out more as we go on with our subject. Yet it is well to realize it at the outset; for it makes simple much that otherwise would be dark and difficult enough. The conditionality of every thing is in accord with the general idea of a kingdom, where government, though it be gracious, is not yet pure grace; and where grace is shown, not in setting aside requirement, but in enabling for its fulfillment. This is how the children of God, as subjects of the kingdom, manifest themselves; and there is a whole class of passages in Scripture which, speaking in this manner, are often misread alike, yet in two opposite ways, by those who would maintain and those who refuse the full reality of divine grace toward men. The one class would take Paul's expression, " I keep under ray body, and bring it into subjection, lest after having preached to others I myself should be a castaway," as meaning only that his service might be disapproved; while the other will have it that Paul fears here for his ultimate salvation. Neither view is correct:the term "castaway" is that translated "reprobate" in 2 Cor. 13, and it is of himself he speaks, and not his service. While the New Testament assures us, in its whole testimony in many concurrent lines of careful teaching, that true Christians "are not of them that draw back to perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul" (Heb. 10:39).

The kingdom of heaven, then, in the form in which we are now considering it, is a kingdom of the truth, by subjection to which its true disciples are manifested. We are now to look at it as committed into the hands of men, the Lord being absent. It is plain that He uses men to minister "the word of the kingdom," and that a certain administration of its affairs is intended in the words, " whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," " whose sins ye remit, they are remitted to them." The nature and limit of these assurances we shall have to inquire into immediately, but that the disciples are in some sense commissioned to represent their Lord, is clear and unequivocal.

The first of these we find for the first time in a promise given to Peter, when in the midst of nearly universal unbelief he confesses his faith in Christ as the Son of the living God:" Blessed art thou, Simon bar Jonah," replies the Lord, " for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 16:17-19).

The keys of the kingdom are symbolic of authority over it; and almost the same language the Lord uses of Himself in the address to Philadelphia-" He that hath the key of David; that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." The Pharisees He denounces for shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men:"Ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in" (Matt. 23:13). And to the lawyers He says similarly (Luke 11:52), " Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge:ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

All this agrees with what we have before seen-that the kingdom is a kingdom of the truth:thus the key speaks of entrance into the kingdom, and the entrance into such a kingdom is by the key of knowledge. The key speaks thus really, if not exclusively, of the power of discipling.

The power of binding and loosing, according to the Rabbinical writings, belonged to and described the office of a teacher. " The Rabbi set apart to 'loose or bind' might authoritatively declare what was binding on the conscience and what not; and in Talmudical writings, the phrase continually recurs by which a teacher or a school is said to loose or to bind,-1:e., to declare something obligatory or non-obligatory." Edersheim's " History of the Jewish Nation," p. 405. It is plain, then, that if the
power of the keys speaks of entrance or admission into the kingdom,-of discipling,-that of binding and loosing applies to the regulation of the conduct of those already admitted or discipled, whatever may be the limits of this power. The latter naturally connects itself with the former, and follows it.

There remains the question, Was the power of the keys personal to Peter only? The Romanist, it is well known, not only makes him the rock upon which the Church is built, but gives him in a special way the keys of heaven. The Church is, however, as distinct from the kingdom as the kingdom of heaven from heaven itself. With the former we have nothing to do just now:as to the latter, it is well to remark that the promise itself limits itself to earth as the sphere of this binding or loosing. "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth" does not mean " whatsoever thou, being on earth, shalt bind," but just what it says. The earth is where only the binding applies; and "shall be bound in heaven" means simply that heaven being for the kingdom the seat of authority, it would confirm the act of its representatives on earth. On earth,-for earth,-alone is there power, though he who rebels against it rebels against the authority of heaven. It is as where the Lord says, " He that receiveth you receiveth Me " (Matt. 10:40). The delegated power on earth represents the authority behind it.

But even for Rome, the keys belong not simply to Peter. There are successors to his chair. And the Protestant view, in which they represent the power of administrating the Word and sacraments, must of course admit others as participants in this. Nor need there be a doubt that as Peter's faith was but the faith of the other disciples, so they as well as he participate in this promise. No doubt as his energy makes him foremost in confession, so also he retains a foremost place throughout; and so at Pentecost he opens the kingdom of heaven to the Jews, as afterward he is chosen of God to open it to the Gentiles in the person of Cornelius. But we can scarcely think of these two instances as being the only use made of the keys of the kingdom. The power of binding and loosing which is here also explicitly promised to Peter, we find in the eighteenth chapter of the same gospel (5:18) extended to others also; and if the power of the keys be the power of administration or of discipling into the kingdom as we have seen, then the commission in the closing chapter explicitly extends this also:"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth,"-the kingdom was just ready to begin,- "go ye, therefore, and teach" (or, as the margin and the Revised Version now, " make disciples of") " all nations." And that here successors are contemplated is plainly taught in the closing words:" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

Thus the administration of the kingdom is committed to men. They are to initiate and receive others into it; they are to regulate it for and under Him. So completely is it intrusted to their care, that in the gospel of Mark the Lord represents the kingdom of God to be "as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day", and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how" (chap. 4:26, 27). Not, of course, that His care over His people sleeps; but outwardly things happen in that which is. professedly in subjection to Him without any open interference on His part. " But when the fruit is brought forth " (or " ripe," in the Rev. Ver.) "immediately He putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." So will He presently put in the sickle; for, spite of man's doing, the harvest comes in its due season.

Yet in the meanwhile the kingdom takes strange shapes, and because it is true that He will have His harvest, and because it has been forgotten that the seed springs and grows up He knoweth not how, it has been taken for granted that if the kingdom of heaven is in the Word of God said to be "like" such and such things,-"like" mustard-seed, or "like" leaven in a woman's hand,-this decides that all is according to His mind. In fact, it is far otherwise; for this expression, "He knoweth not how," if it does not mean to convey, as we know it does not, any real ignorance, then does certainly imply that the growth spoken of is strange, irregular, as if He knew not. So it is said, " The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish " (Ps. 1:6). And if it be the fact of course that He knoweth the proud, yet to distinguish it from this approving knowledge it is added, " The proud He knoweth afar off" (Ps. 138:6).

So of the growth of His kingdom in man's hand it may be truly said, He knoweth it not, or He knoweth it afar off; no new thing, alas! of that which comes of man's responsibility; here the words of the Psalmist surely apply, if any where, "Man being in honor abideth not" (Ps. 49:12). Dispensation after dispensation has illustrated this rule:none have confirmed it more signally than the present.

Thus in the second parable of Matt. 13:it is "while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat" (5:25). Thus, " while the bridegroom tarried," the whole company of professed watchers, wise as well as foolish, "all slumbered and slept" (Matt. 25:5). But the history of this declension we shall look at, if the Lord will, at another time. We have yet more precisely to see first how the kingdom of heaven is entered, and what are the divine regulations for it. To appreciate the disorder, we must learn first of all the order; for it is plain that God has not committed it to man's mere will, but to his charge. He is to bind and loose, not despotically, but as himself in subjection to the will of Another. We must return, therefore, now to the subject of the keys.

(To be continued.)

The prophecy of a millennium we find only in the final book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation ; but for the detail of the blessing with which the earth is to be filled at that time, we must go to , the prophets of the Old Testament. And here we find, as the apostle of the Gentiles assures us, Israel's promises (Rom. 9:3), as in the New Testament we find the Christian ones. As we are " blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places" (Eph. 1:3), so Israel has as to the earth by the sure word of God, whose gifts and calling are without repentance, the adoption as first-born among its families (Ex. 4:22). Hence, wherever the picture of earthly blessedness is presented by the prophets, Israel is in the forefront of it. The destination of the Church is to heaven, but Israel is to " blossom and bud, and fill the face of the earth with fruit." (Isa. 27:6.) And "out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem " (chap. 2:3).

The blessing of the world is thus bound up with the blessing of Israel; and while Israel is an outcast from her land, and under the rod of the divine displeasure, the world also waits, and the prophetic history is suspended. The whole present time is a gap in Old-Testament prophecy, in which God is doing no doubt a more wonderful work, and in which the "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" bring out "things kept secret from the foundation of the world." (Matt. 13:II, 35.) When these shall be finished, and the fullness of the Gentiles now gathering for heaven be come in, then the broken-off thread of this history will be resumed, and followed to its completion.

In the present time, Israel is thus as it were dead and buried, and when she appears again, her appearance is spoken of as a resurrection from the dead. " Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel ; and ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land :then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord." (Ezek. 37:12-14.)

But not only does Israel come up again as by a resurrection; the same thing is true of the nations of the earth with which she was in connection when her obliteration from the map of the world took place; they too have had their decay and dissolution, and been succeeded by others in the field in which they flourished ; and they too are to revive and take their place again as of old, and with Israel receive their judgment and their blessing from God. This it is important to understand, as ignorance of it is leading many into confusion, in applying to the physically dead these figures of national resurrection. Thus God says to Israel by Isaiah :" Thy dead shall live, My corpses* shall arise. *"Nebelah:a word without a plural, but frequently used in a plural sense, as in chap. 5:25, and so connected with" the plural verb.- (Delitzsch.)* Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy . dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead" (chap. 26:19).

So also Hosea:"After two days He will revive us:on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight" (chap. 6:2).

So Ezekiel, in the passage just now quoted ; and so Daniel, who is perhaps of all most commonly misunderstood :"And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
It is not my purpose now, nor needful to it, to prove the application of these scriptures or fix their meaning. It is not of Israel that I purpose now to speak, but of the nations in historic association with Israel when as yet she held her place among them. And it is not a question of the symbols under which in Scripture their revival is spoken of, but of the fact of the revival itself as Scripture declares it. A comparison here of Daniel and Revelation will very quickly show that it is a fact, parallel to and synchronous with that of that revival of Israel in the latter days, of which, it cannot be denied by any simple reader of it, that scripture speaks.

The theme of Daniel is evidently the " times of the Gentiles,"-that is, of their domination over Israel. It begins with the Babylonish captivity, and the setting up of the first of the four Gentile empires, and predicts their course until the setting up of the kingdom of the Son of Man, and the subjection of all to Him under whom Israel will yet find deliverance and blessing. The second and the seventh chapters, in the visions of Nebuchadnezzar and the prophet himself, span this whole period. The second chapter shows us the image in its continuance until the stone cut without hands smites and destroys it, and then fills the earth. The seventh yet more plainly shows the fourth beast existing till the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven, and supreme and everlasting dominion is given to Him.

Now a great difficulty here seems to present itself as to the application of this. The fourth or Roman empire, according to this, lasts until the coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven. Yet if we are to take this in its simple apparent meaning, it might well be asked how this can be shown to be consistent with the fact. Christ is not so come, and yet the Roman empire is in fact passed away; and that not smitten in its height with a sudden blow, but after a long process of corruption and decay. How shall we account for this, then ? For the Word of God is perfect, and "Scripture cannot broken:" heaven and earth shall pass away, but His glorious Word shall never pass away.

The gap in Old-Testament prophecy, of which we have spoken, is not, of course, revealed by the Old Testament itself. We must look to the New Testament for it. And here it is the book of Revelation comes in to supplement the book of Daniel. No one doubts, or can doubt, that the first beast of Rev. 13:, found again in 17:, is in fact the fourth of Dan. 7:Yet there is this that at first sight would seem inconsistent with it, that in Revelation the prophet, writing in the times of the Roman empire, sees it yet as rising once more from the sea. This, it may be said perhaps, is but a glance back at its original beginning:the seventeenth chapter, however, negatives this, while it explains the apparent anomaly; for here, the beast as seen by the prophet is identified with its own eighth head, while he yet recognizes what seems to be again a contradiction to this, that he is under the sixth head. " The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. They are also seven kings:five are fallen, and one is"-the sixth,-"and another is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition."

Thus the empire that he sees is a future form of one then existing; and not only so, but it is also one which "was, and is not" but which appears of course again, as it is stated in the eighth verse :"And the beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and shall come." (R.V.)
The matter is fully cleared, then. The Gentile empire which had enslaved and scattered Israel itself breaks up and falls into ruin, but, with Israel, also revives in the latter day. Then indeed in a new form, and as the instrument of the enemy, so that it revives but to go into perdition. This I do not follow out now. It is enough to have shown that the time of the end is marked by the restoration of the Roman empire.

In the eighth chapter of Daniel, we have a similar prophecy as to the third of the Gentile beasts, continuing its history also to the coming of Christ. Imperial rule indeed passes from it, but the kingdom of Alexander has its representative among the notable powers of the latter days. The prophecy has been applied, indeed, to Antiochus Epiphanes, but can only apply to him as a type of a greater, for he who interprets the prophet's vision declares distinctly it is for the "time of the end;" and this is emphasized by repetition:-"Understand, O son of man, for at the time of the end shall be the vision." And again, "Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation, for it belongeth to the appointed time of the end' (5:19, R. V.) He too, like the last head of the Roman empire, stands up against the Prince of princes ; and like him also is "broken without hand."

This, there need be no question, is the last "king of the north" in the eleventh chapter, a Grecian king throughout, whose course and end are just like those of the king of the eighth chapter. Zechariah also refers to Greece as in conflict with Israel, when God at last interferes for His people "(chap. 9:13).

But here also the gap in prophecy prepares us for a lapse and revival, similar to what we have seen with regard to Rome; and history already affirms both the one and the other.

The revival of the Roman empire we do not yet see :a remarkable note of preparation has been sounded, however. Rome is once more the capital of a united Italy:and this national resurrection has been witnessed by the present generation ; so sudden and unexpected also was it as to manifest the hand of God in a remarkable way. In but ten years from the commencement of the movement, the disunited states, sundered for centuries, and in continual conflict with one another, had come together. The "swift and comparatively bloodless conquest of the Two Sicilies is one of the most extraordinary incidents in modern history." Venice was gained from Austria; the papal states from the pope. Bone had come to bone, and sinews and flesh covered them, by what might well be deemed a resurrection from the dead.

The revival of Greece, though as yet but partial, had already taken place. Greece had been for a much longer period in a state of utter prostration. From nearly a century and a half before the Christian era, when it succumbed to Rome, for almost two thousand years her history had been but that of her conquerors. Yet Greece is again a kingdom, free, aggressive, growing, and yet to have an eminent though still dependent position in the time near to come :"his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power" (Dan. 8:24).

These two witnesses, Greece and Italy, should be enough by themselves to show us that the time of the end is fast approaching ; but our Lord in the gospel of Luke carries us further, and extends indefinitely this principle of the revival of nations as a sign of this. Not only does He say here, " Behold the fig-tree," as in Matthew,-words of which we have already seen the significance,-but He adds, "and all the trees:" "Behold the fig tree and all the trees ; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand; so likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." (Luke 21:29-31.)

Inasmuch, then, as we have seen that the fig-tree is the figure of the Jewish nation, and its putting forth leaves speaks of its awakening, as it is awakening out of its sleep of centuries; the shooting out of all the trees can only intimate a general outburst of national life and feeling, especially in the lands which come directly into view in Scripture,-the prophetic earth. Is there any thing answering to this, then, to be found among the nations of the present day? If so, in proportion to the breadth of the field of view will be the significance of the sign.

And just now it is not difficult to trace this written in broad characters right across the face of the political heavens. To a united Italy succeeded with scarcely an interval a united Germany, under the leadership of German-Prussia, instead of the less than semi-German Austria. On the other hand, Belgium had some time before seceded from her union with Holland on the same principle:Belgium being Celtic, and Holland Saxon. And the same under-current is at work in the claim of "home-rule " in Celtic Ireland, the cry of "Ireland for the Irish!" already waking up a faint echo of "Wales for the Welsh ! "

Lastly, Russia aims (and has almost attained) to be the head of a Slavonic union, a people whose settlements extend from the Elbe to Kamtchatka, and from the Frozen to the Adriatic Sea, the whole of eastern Europe being mainly occupied by them.

Assuredly, then, the trees are putting forth their leaves; and this spirit of the age will doubtless operate in restoring Israel to her full place among the nations. A foreign element every where, they do not assimilate with the populations among which they sojourn, while their land providentially lies vacant for them. The Word of God assures us of the issue, and it cannot be far off.

The rise of Russia seems not an example of the resurrection of the nations. It is the development of a new power, as significant as any resurrection, and if not known among the nations of the past in Scripture, it is known in the prophetic vision of the future. More and more are interpreters constrained to recognize in Russia the power depicted as coming up against restored Israel in Ezek. 38:and 39:. It is now widely admitted that we should there read (as the Septuagint and lately the Revised Version), " Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal." The connected names in the passage speak for themselves. " Rosh " we have modernized in Russia; "Meshech," in Moscow, Muscovy; "Tubal," in Tobolsk. Of other nations in Gog's company, Persia and Armenia (Togarmah) at least are plain :we need not, for our purpose, examine the rest. How plainly the rise, so late in the world's history, of this last enemy of Israel- spreading down continually nearer toward the " land of unwalled villages," as it is,-is depicted in the challenge, "Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time, by My servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years, that I would bring thee against them ?"

This fact, that Gog is spoken of not merely here by one, but by the prophets of many years, necessarily leads us to look for him under another name in their writings. Accordingly it is believed by some that he is that power which represents the old Assyrian (as in Isaiah and Micah,) in the last days. As to his position, he may well fill it, and it is even claimed that the title "czar " is "Assyrian." If this be so, Russia also is an example of the resurrection of nations. But we cannot pursue this topic here.

But, at any rate, the indications of the "time of the end " are plain. The trees are putting forth leaves. The winter of the world may struggle fiercely yet, but it is doomed. We know, blessed be God! that "summer is nigh" ! But for this the summer's sun must come. The world's winter is arctic,-winter and night in one; but Christ as the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings ; and then the Sun shall not withdraw itself; the days of darkness shall be ended.

THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, (Continued.)

Sardis:Sleeping Among the Dead. (Rev. 3:1-7.-Continued.)

But is not here the history of the churches of the Reformation-of Protestantism, in fact,- during the three centuries of its existence? Is not this the true account of its divisions, for which it is reproached ? The Spirit of God is not, indeed, the author of confusion, but of peace,-of unity, and not disunion. But when people talk of schism, they should remember to what that term applies. As found in Scripture, it is " schism in the body" that is reprobated, and the body of Christ is not a national church. When men have joined together the living and the dead,-when they have subjugated consciences to formularies instead of Scripture,-to hierarchies instead of God, or to hierarchies in the name of God, what have they forced the blessed Spirit to do but to draw afresh the line they have obliterated between the living and the dead, between man's word and God's, between human authority and divine?

And His mode of doing this has been constantly to bring out of the inexhaustible treasure of His Word some fresh or forgotten truth, which would do that which the popularized truth in the creed had almost ceased to do-would test the souls of His people as to whether they were indeed the descendants of those who confessed Him of old, whose tombs they built, and whose memories they had in honor. The fresh truth calls for fresh confession; costs, and is meant to cost, something; brings its confessors into opposition to the course around them, and separates them at once from those whose only desire is to go with the stream, and with whom the profession of Christ and the cross are widely separate.

Doubtless the division may separate between true Christians themselves; and this is in itself an evil, that true Christians should be separated; but! the responsibility rests with those who are not quick-eared enough to hear God's call when it comes,-not single-eyed enough to discern the path in which the Lord is leading His own. We are bound, by the honor we owe to Him, to maintain that He cannot possibly be leading His own in contradictory paths-cannot possibly refuse the needed light to walk aright, however simple or ignorant the soul may be. No one strays and no one stumbles because God denies him light. But "the light of the body" practically "is the eye"- the inlet of it, and there the hindrance is. Thus a severance, sorrowfully enough, is made between real Christians; but the sin of it is not with those who separate from that which God has shown then to be evil, but with those who remain associated with the evil which is. forcing out the true in heart. Separation from evil, so far from being a principle of division, would, if honestly followed, make for unity and peace, as leading upon a path where God's Spirit, ungrieved, could really unite arid strengthen His people. With evil He cannot unite; and this, indeed, therefore, wherever admitted, is a principle of division.

I am not, therefore, upholding or making light of schism. The divisions of Protestantism are its shame, and to glory in them is to glory in one's shame. Error is manifold, contradictory, schismatic. Truth, however many-sided, is but one. Sects, in their multiplicity, may accommodate, no doubt, the religious tastes of man; but that only would show how purely human they are, how little divine.
The unity of the Spirit may be maintained, and allow indeed for growth in knowledge, and in unity of judgment as to many things. The Church of God has room for all that are God's, of whatever stature-fathers, young men, and babes. It can allow of-nay, insists upon the largest charity for those who differ from us in aught that would not link the name of Christ with His dishonor. But that is a very different thing from what is implied in a creed, and indeed I may say, is its fundamental opposite. For the creed defines, in a way that, if rigidly adhered to, shuts out toleration as to points of confessedly minor importance, where the Spirit of God would teach, not indifference, indeed, but the largest charity,-forcing its definitions upon all in a way most felt by the most conscientious. It is as necessary, as far as the creed goes, to believe in a child's being regenerate when baptized as it is to believe in the Son of God Himself. I grant there may be practical laxity, but for a soul before God that does not do. For such an one, with his eyes open, the subjection to human institutions in the things of God is just what he cannot and dare not yield.

"Schism in the body" then, is always wrong. Separation from evil, at all costs, is a necessity, and
always right. And from this have been gathered the freshness and power which have plainly characterized so many movements of this kind at the beginning. They began in self-judgment and devotedness. The evil at least they saw, and were exercised about, and the measure of truth they had was held in power. It was soon systematized, and in that proportion its power began to fail. The founders, if you look at their lives, were men of faith and power, suffering and enduring. The manners of the adherents were chastened, simple, primitive. Organized, popularized, with a large following, the freshness waned; and in the third or fourth generation, another sect had taken its place among the many, boasting of a history which it did not discern to be a satire upon its present condition.

The organization, the creed, are to preserve the truth. But did these give them the truth they are anxious to preserve? Surely not, as they must own. God in His love, God in His power, has given what man had proved his incompetency to retain. They cannot trust Him to retain it for them, after He has given it. He has used His Word to minister it; they turn round and use, for that blessed Word of His, a creed of their own manufacture to preserve it. The generations after follow their fathers' creed, and not the Word. The truth popularized is gone as " Spirit and Life." God has to work afresh and outside of what a little while ago He had Himself produced.

And the spiritual life of the time has come more and more to manifest itself in "revivals," which, so far as they are really such, are the protests of the Spirit of God against prevailing death continually
creeping over every thing; and oftentimes connected with fresh statements of truth, when the old have lost their power. The Lord's warning to Sardis points out this constant tendency to death. " Be watchful, and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die." " Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent."

It is scarcely too much to say that every true revival, whatever the blessing for individuals,- nay, I might even say, in proportion to the blessing for individuals,-weakens the national system; and this for reasons we have been considering. The Spirit of God must needs work in opposition to the death produced by the system, and therefore against the system which produces the death. Souls quickened by the Spirit of God cannot go on contentedly under deadly and unchristian teaching, comforting themselves with the assurance of the article that "the evil" who sometimes "have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and sacraments" do yet "minister by Christ's commission and authority;" nor will they always be able to accept the ecclesiastical "yoke with unbelievers," because the system requires "every parishioner" to communicate, irrespective of any other security as to his conversion than his baptism and confirmation may imply.

It will be no marvel, then, to find, what any one with spiritual understanding must own, that at least the large proportion of those who could be said to "have not defiled their garments" in the history of Protestantism have been in some way or other dissenters from the national system. The first generation of English reformers were dissenters from Rome, and Rome did her best to keep them pure, in the fires she kindled for them. In the second and third generation from these, a people began to be separated, who from their honest endeavor to be right with God were nick-named " Puritans." I need not tell you what great names, which after-generations have learnt to love and honor, are found among this class,-a class with whom fine and pillory and imprisonment were familiar things. Every body knows that Bedford gaol was the " den " in which John Bunyan dreamed his memorable dream. In Scotland, the attempted enforcement of prelacy gave a succession of martyrs and confessors to the Presbyterian name, with whom, as elsewhere, their time of persecution was their time of real blessing, while the Episcopalian-ism which was riding rough-shod over them had gone already more than half way back to Rome.

With the movement under Wesley and Whitefield, nearer to our own times, we are naturally still more familiar; and that which issued in the Free Church of Scotland is still within the memory of a generation not yet passed away. All these, and many others, will exemplify the truth of what I have been saying; until, in our own days, the national systems are showing evident signs of decrepitude and breaking up; and Romanists and infidels are beginning their pagans on the downfall of Protestantism. We who are able to see it all in the light of Scripture can easily understand why all this is, and see only the truth of God's Word more and more manifested in it. Christianity flung as a cloak over a corpse can surely not warm it into life. Corruption will go on underneath, eating away the form of life, the only thing it ever had, until at last the cloak will more or less fall off, and what was all along true become apparent.

When the Protestant churches shall be gone altogether, or gone as such, their protest will not be gone, but only transferred to another court. Heaven will take up what they have dropped. Babylon the Great will fall under divine judgment; and apostles and prophets, and God's people every where, will rejoice at her fall.

(To be continued.)

O praise Him in the dance ! O glorious day !
The pilgrim journey done-
No more press forward on the weary way,
For all is reached and won.

His hand at last-the hand once pierced for me-
Forever holdeth mine ;
O Lord, no songs, no harps of heaven will he
Sweet as one word of Thine !

Lord, altogether lovely, then at last
High shall the guerdon be ;
Thy kiss outweigh the weary ages past
Of hearts that brake for Thee.

Yet now I know Thee as the hidden Bread,
The Living One who died ;
Who sitteth at my table-by my bed-
Who walketh by my side.

I know Thee as the fountain of deep bliss
Whereof one drop shall make
The joys of all the world as bitterness,
My Lord, for Thy sweet sake.

Lord, Thou hast loved me ; and henceforth to me
Earth's noonday is but gloom ,
My soul sails forth on the eternal sea,
And leaves the shores of doom.

I pass within the glory even now,
Where shapes and words are not;
For joy that passeth words, O Lord, art Thou,
A bliss that passeth thought.

I enter there, for Thou hast borne away
The burden of my sin ;
With conscience clear as heaven's unclouded day,
Thy courts I enter in.

Heaven now for me-forever Christ and heaven-
The endless now begun :
No promise, but a gift eternal given,
Because the Work is done.

Henry Suso.
From " Three Friends of God."

(Acts 27:)

We have in this chapter the prisoner become the savior. The vessel goes to pieces. The lives of all are preserved. But it was not the vessel, but the promise that preserved the travelers. They had been committed to the ship ; but the ship breaks asunder, and the promise, not the ship, becomes their safety. All stewardships fail, and prove unfaithful. The Church as the witness, or candlestick, is broken and removed; but that which is of God Himself-His truth, His love, His promise-survives, as fresh and perfect as ever ; and none who trust in Him, and in Him alone, shall ever be confounded. The voyage may end in complete wreck,-the dispensation may end in apostasy; but all who hang on the promise of God through God's Messenger, though man's Prisoner, are brought safely through. Some swim, others float on planks. Some may be strong, and work their way more in the solitary strength of the Spirit; others, weaker, may hang about fragments that float around on the surface here and there inviting the timid and the unskilled :but whether they swim, or rest on the planks, all-strong and weak together, reach the shore. They cannot perish, for the God of the promise has them in His hand, and no wind or wave can dash them thence.

This is not Paul's voyage only, but ours. It is the safety of wrecked mariners,-the safety of all believers who trust in the promise-the God of the promise, the covenant sealed and made sure, the purchased as well as promised blessing and security of a poor ruined, helpless, and tossed soul who has by faith found his way and taken refuge in the sanctuary of peace, though all props and stays here fail him. Cisterns may be broken, but the fountain is as fresh and full as ever. Chorazin and Bethsaida may disappoint Jesus, but the Father does not. Hymenaeus and Philetus may disappoint Paul, but God's foundations do not. "All men forsook me," says he on a great occasion, "but the Lord stood by me." And the Psalmist in triumph exclaims, " If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do ? The Lord is in His holy temple !" Yes, the way to magnify our security is, to see it in the midst of perils and alarms. The very depth of the waters around honored the strength and sufficiency of the ark to Noah; the ruthlessness of the sword in passing through Egypt glorified the blood that was sheltering the first-born of Israel; and the solemn terrors of the coming day of the Lord will but enhance the safety and the joy of the ransomed, whether with Jesus in the heavens, or as the remnant in their "chambers" in the land.

It is well to be poor, when the knowledge of our poverty serves but to unfold to us the exhaustless riches of divine grace. That grace can never suffer any one to go empty away. It can never tell any one that he is too poor. It can meet the very deepest human need; and not only so, but it is glorified in meeting it."

The countless multitude on high,
Who tune their songs to Jesus' name,
All merit of their own deny,
And Jesus' worth alone proclaim.

Firm on the ground of sovereign grace,
They stand before Jehovah's throne ;
The only song in that blest place
Is, " Thou art worthy ! Thou alone ! "

With spotless robes of purest white,
And branches of triumphal palm,
They shout, with transports of delight,
Heaven's ceaseless universal psalm.

Salvation's glory all be paid
To Him who sits upon the throne ;
And to the Lamb, whose blood was shed,
"Thou! Thou art worthy ! Thou alone !"

For Thou wast slain, and in Thy blood
These robes were washed so spotless pure;
Thou mad'st us kings and priests to God,
Forever let Thy praise endure.

While thus the ransomed myriads shout,
"Amen ! " the holy angels cry ; "
Amen ! amen ! " resounds throughout
The boundless regions of the sky.

Let us with joy adopt the strain
We hope to sing forever there,-
"Worthy's the Lamb for sinners slain !-
Worthy alone the crown to wear."

Without one thought that's good to plead,
Oh what could shield us from despair
But this :though we are vile indeed,
The Lord our righteousness is there !

You know, dear children, that if you want fresh, pure water, you can get it best from the spring. The water that runs away in the pipes becomes warm and muddy.

God is the fountain-head of the true and living stream, and to Him alone can we go to drink our fill of the pure, bright water. " The king has brought us into His banqueting house, and His banner over us is love."

Oh, children, well and wisely does He order all for us, leading us by strange wild ways, to bring us at last into the great depth of love, unto Himself, the unfathomable blessedness. And that which there we learn to know is beyond all imagining and all understanding-the foretaste of eternal joy.

All that He does for us, and all the hidden ways of God which no eye can see, are in order that He may bring us into the holy and blessed delight of His presence.

Hear how He calleth with His mighty voice, " Whosoever is athirst let him come and drink of the water of life freely."

Children, the thirst is first in Him; He thirsteth for the souls that are athirst for Him, and when He findeth us, He giveth us to drink so gloriously, so freely, and so fully, that from us there floweth the living water, a spring of everlasting life.

It is not reading of God, or hearing of Him, or knowing Him by sense or reason that will satisfy us, but it is receiving Him, drinking deeply of the blessed fountain that springs from the eternal depths-drinking from Himself where He is, and no other.

You know what a spring is, children, and what a cistern is. The cisterns become foul and dry, but the spring leaps up, and sparkles, and flows freely, fresh and sweet and pure.

Thus does the soul know God in a nearer and a better way than all masters and teachers can tell of Him. He is a good teacher who tells you to go straight to the school where the Holy Ghost is the schoolmaster. He loves to find the scholars there who are waiting to receive the high and blessed teaching that flows forth from the Father's heart.

If we hindered not His blessed work, how gladly, how fully would the tide of life and joy flow down, as a mighty rain filling the valleys and the depths, as the blessed rain for which Elijah prayed, when the earth was dry and thirsty, so that naught could grow and blossom.

Children, it is the dry and thirsty land that calls for the great rain. And it is because we seek to satisfy our thirst with other things that the Holy Ghost is hindered.

Do you find that your heart is dry and barren? If you do, see that you do not run off to your confessor, but flee to God. and confess to Him. And He will lay His divine hand upon your head, and make you whole.

Oh how great, how inexpressible, how blessed, how immeasurable, is the gift of the Holy Ghost! Were you to compare a point, which has no dimensions with the whole world, the difference would be as nothing to that of heaven and earth and all that therein is, compared with the gift of the Spirit of God. The least that we can conceive of the Holy Ghost is a thousandfold more than all created things.

The Holy Ghost prepares the house in which He comes to dwell. And He fills the house with Himself, for He is God. Every chamber, every corner is filled with His presence, though often we are not aware of His presence and His work, because we are taken up with outward things, and He will not let us know the sweetness of His presence till we have closed the doors, and sit down in the stillness of rest, to listen to His voice. The disciples shut the doors for fears of the Jews.

Ah, dear children, beware of the dangerous Jews, who would take from you the secret of the Lord, and the sweetness of the company of God the Holy Ghost. The Jews in the disciples' clays could only hurt their bodies, but this present evil world will hurt the soul, and take from you the blessed intercourse of the heart with God. Go into company and join amusements where God is not and His honor is disregarded, and then will the presence of the Holy Ghost be lost to you, and His gifts will be powerless in your hand.

Do you say, " I only go to harmless amusements! I mean no 99:I must have pleasure and enjoyment at times " ?

O God, Thou blessed, Thou precious, Thou eternal God! how can it be that Thou art not to the souls Thou hast created, the sweetest, the most beloved-the most glad and blessed joy? And rather than enjoy Thee will the soul turn to the sad, dark, polluting, deadly pleasure and enjoyment of this poor world, there to find peace and joy!

You say, it does you no harm? Go and say that to God; for, if that is true, your case is sorrowful indeed. It is that you have no delight in Him, and see no beauty in Him that you should desire Him.

In three ways, dear children, did the beloved Lord attract to Himself the heart of John.

First, the Lord Jesus calls him out of the world, to make him an apostle.

Next, did he grant to him to rest upon His loving breast.

Thirdly, and this was the greatest and most perfect nearness, when on the holy day of Pentecost He gave to him the Holy Ghost, and opened to him the door through which he should pass into the heavenly places.

Thus, children, does the Lord first call you from the world, and make you to be the messengers of
God. And next, He draws you close to Himself, that you may learn to know His holy gentleness and lowliness, and His deep and burning love, and His perfect unshrinking obedience.

And yet this is not all. Many have been drawn thus near, and many are satisfied to go no further. And yet they are far from the perfect nearness which the heart of Christ desires.
St. John lay at one moment on the breast of the Lord Jesus, and then he forsook him and fled.

If you have been brought so far as to rest on the breast of Christ, it is well. But yet there was to John a nearness still to come, one moment of which would be worth a hundred years of all that had gone before. The Holy Ghost was given to him-the door was opened.

Do you ask, "Have I gone further than John had gone when he had reached the second nearness?" I answer, "None can go beyond the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you may ask the question in another way. " Have you passed beyond all that is your own? all that has its sweetness in your enjoyment of the sweetness?"

For there is a nearness in which we lose ourselves, and God is all in all. This may come to us in one swift moment,-or we may wait for it with longing hearts, and learn to know it at last. It was of this that St. Paul spake, when he said that the things which the eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart conceived, God hath now revealed to us by the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

The soul is drawn into the inner chamber, and there are the wonder and the riches revealed. And truly he who beholds them often must spend many a day in bed-for nature must sink beneath the exceeding weight of the great glory. John fell down as dead before Him. Paul knew not whether he were in the body or out of the body, when the door into this inner glory was opened, and he saw the face of Christ.* * These are the words of a Dominican monk, Dr. John Tauler, of whom Mrs. Bevan has told the story in her hook lately published, " Three Friends of God :Records from the lives of John Tauler, Nicholas of Basle, and Henry Suso." We need not recommend the work more to those who value communion with God, and the memorials of His work in His own in the darkest days.*

The wilderness is yet to "bud and blossom as the rose."This is to be a literal fact, no doubt. Like all other such it conveys to us also an assurance that is full of comfort. The wilderness is the familiar type for us of the world in its present aspect, which the history of Israel has made our own in a multitude of precious lessons never to be forgotten. Who would blot out that inimitable record which Exodus and Numbers give first, and then Deuteronomy recapitulates, for practical wisdom when the land at last is reached, and the people of the Lord enjoy their heritage?

True, it is a record of difficulty, danger, and privation; of weakness, failure, and defeat. Little there is to minister to the pride of man. From Marah to Abel-shittim, the road is marked with monuments and sepulchers of those whose carcasses had fallen there. Every hand, from infancy to feeble old age, seems to have been writing only epitaphs with this inscription:" Cease ye from man!" But this is the first necessary lesson for us, and the only painful one. Once we have put our seal to this, we need not carry the crape of the funeral any longer. "Out of death life "is the voice of all nature round us. " Let the dead bury their dead," utters a greater Voice:" Go thou, and preach the kingdom of God."

Then look again at this wilderness, and see how on its barren sands you can every-where trace the pathway of the power of the Almighty. Day by day, the utter weakness manifests and glorifies the unfailing Strength. Everlasting arms are round about. The guiding Pillar, always nature's opposite, shuts out the scorching rays of midday,-lights up at night into a blaze of glory,-that by day or night they may go forward at its bidding. And all this not merely to meet need ; that could be done with such economy of power as in general God's wise and holy government displays:but here with a lavish miracle which witnesses of One meaning to make His people know His nearness and His transcendence over nature. "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and He carried them all the days of old." (Isa. 63:9.)

How precious all this, when we learn that all this amazing forth-putting of power in their behalf "happened to them for types, and is written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come"! As type is less than antitype,-as the natural pales before the spiritual,-so the wilderness, for the eye that can take it in, must be for us a scene of wonderful unvailing of the divine glory indeed! and the meanness of our lives, with what significance it is invested! For faith-for faith- this is how God is with us! how He seeks to make known to us His presence and His love.

A celebrated philosopher undertook to show that this world, notwithstanding the sin and evil of it, is the best of possible worlds. We may say that for its purpose it is surely the best. None other could so exhibit the weakness of the creature in contrast with the omnipotent love of the Creator. In no other could it have been so said, " We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." (2 Cor. 4:7.) And this same earthen vessel has given to the bird of heaven a capacity for suffering and death (Lev. 14:), in which the grace of God has found its only adequate expression.

Here is the great example of matchless obedience that has been given us, "that we should walk in His steps;" and what angel might not covet the opportunity to do so? In what other world could all the graces of Christian life be so exhibited, where power is manifested in renunciation and self-sacrifice? Read the list in Colossians (chap. 3:12-16), and see how this spirit characterizes it:" Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another:. . . even as Christ for gave you, so also do ye."How little reason have we to complain, if God has given us an opportunity to develop and exhibit such things, and in this follow and glorify our common Master! Trial this means, of course:what else? But the trial of a faith more precious than of gold, that it may be found to praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. A trial which now works patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.

The world is a wilderness; and just the good of it is that it is a wilderness. To the men of the world it is not that, but an Egypt, through which the judgments of God sweep indeed and desolate it, but leave it Egypt still. To the redeemed it is a wilderness; but as that, not orderless, not meaningless, not unfruitful; but whose harvests are reaped for eternity, and whose harvest-song is sung in heaven.

" Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." (i Cor. 16:2)

The text before us refers no doubt to a certain collection for the poor at Jerusalem, and may seem, and has seemed, to many, on this account, to speak simply of what was suited to a particular occasion, and not at all of an habitual custom to be observed. There is just so much truth in this as to make the deception easy; and yet it is but a deception. Why observe the first day of the week? Why break the bread then rather than at any other time? Why break it so often as once a week? There is no law about any of these things:nothing more than what might seem a casual statement of what the disciples at such a place did at such a time. Here, in fact, people have found, and find, occasion to object, and will find. The Christian has no positive law about such things as these. The thing God values is not enforced observance of rites and days, but a heart that prizes opportunities of service and the privileges of His love. For such, there are guidance and encouragement:he who requires more is not in the spirit to serve or to enjoy.

For surely these words, as all else in Scripture, are " written for our learning." They are not mere records of the past, but the voice to us of the Living One, present with us as with those in the apostles' days. We are by grace Christians as they were. In all the principles which govern our path eighteen hundred years can make no difference.

And the word before us is no mere arbitrary or reasonless injunction. It contains principles of very great importance, which bear upon our spiritual life, which we cannot without loss neglect, and that a loss which it would be hard to estimate. He who has forbidden idle words, Himself speaks none. It is my purpose now to show, as He enables me, how great significance there is in these.

For those to whom this epistle came, it is plain that there was a direct apostolic injunction, leaving much indeed to the conscience of the individual, but bringing him face to face with his responsibility before God; making him view it also in the light of the grace shown him. " Upon the first day of the week"-the day in which Christ rose again from the dead for our justification,-he was to consider how God had prospered him, and estimate what would be a proportionate return to Him, such as would manifest his sense of the divine goodness shown him. How healthful a thing to be brought to consider this, and to be called in a practical way to show at what we value the grace that has visited us!

Is it too much to express a fear that many and many a child of God never does face seriously his accountability in this way? and that few there are indeed who habituate themselves to such a reviewing again and again of benefits received, and of response invited to? In a loose way it may be easy to say, "We give what we can afford;" but who without such a reckoning with himself, seriously carried out, can undertake to say what he can afford? And how profitable this summoning before one, from time to time, of receipts and expenditure, in view of our stewardship! What sort of a steward is he who keeps no particular account?

The question must be thus raised, not merely, How much have I in hand out of which to lay by for Him to whom all belongs; but rather, How. How does He who looks upon all my life here as elsewhere view it all? Would I have Him the Auditor of all these accounts,-the income and the outgoing? What a time for these questions, the day of rest and quiet in His presence, the day of remembrance of my Lord's immeasurable outlay, giving Himself a ransom for my soul!

Seriously this is to be weighed and decided. Am I giving [not what others give, not what many would think right, or perhaps a great deal; but] to please Him really,-what with an honest, upright, and thankful heart I can put into His hand, and count upon Him to receive at mine?-a hand anointed with the blood of sacrifice?

Seriously,-not hastily; not under sudden im-pulse:"that there be no gatherings when I come." Yet how much the apostle's presence might quicken the spirit of giving among them! How much in the present day is known to depend upon the presence and exhortation of some one of recognized power and influence, and the oratorical appeal to human sensibilities? All this the apostle disclaims. For it he substitutes the power of the divine presence, and the deliberate purpose of heart derived from realization of God's wondrous grace. The common mode today shows, alas! wise calculation, if the amount of a collection from a promiscuous audience be the thing under consideration. We may reckon upon the stirring of man's emotional nature under outside influence brought to bear upon him. He to whom the earth belongs, and the fullness of it, values but the fruit of His own Spirit in the heart of him who is a worshiper in truth.

This laying by week by week is not, then, the response merely to some appeal pressingly urged, and affecting me emotionally; but the effect of recognized principle, and a heart weighing things in the presence of God. And this alone is the true guard against being betrayed by mere emotion, while it will leave us only the more open to be affected by every holy and right one.

The casual appeal, moreover, may easily find one really unprovided, if we have not, as a matter of principle, taken care to make provision.

Little by little, with constant and steady increase, we may easily come to possess what, except in this way, would be entirely beyond us. And this without exhaustion or distress. Men pay easily in regular, small installments what in one sum, apart from this, they would never have competency for. And the apostle has in mind, as he tells the Corinthians elsewhere, that they shall not be burdened. On the other hand, on this very account, how many small sums, thought little of because small, slip away from us in mere self-indulgences, which in the aggregate would be an amount to startle us, or, put into the treasury, might be a matter of how much thankfulness to God!

At the best, he who gives casually gives fitfully, and in general scantily enough, even though often he may be lavish. On the other hand, the store laid by from week to week soon makes itself felt as a call to wise economy. The Lord's fund is to be managed and dispensed in the sense of stewardship, which it will surely foster in the soul. It will not be then the question merely how to relieve some need which is at hand, and which looks perhaps on this account larger or more imperative than it really is, but how to put out what is intrusted to us in the best possible way. The wisdom that is from God will in this way come to be habitually sought more also, and surely found.

A store, such as we are speaking of, instead of being reserved for casual demands upon it, comes itself to demand channels for its outflow. Instead of merely being sought by the occasion, we should become seekers of it. And having tasted the joy of this, the heart becomes enlarged:"he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully"- or, as the word is, "in blessing." Enlargement of heart will surely find enlarged opportunities. Active sympathies will become practical activities. And to him that is with God, God's power will manifest itself. This will be found a path on which if one has truly entered, there will be no turning back; one of those ways in which men go from strength to strength. But how few have entered it!

The tithes in Israel were not all that God demanded from His people of old. The rest of the sabbatic years was another large demand upon a faith in which He would have them practiced. Beside all this, there were various offerings upon special occasions, while voluntary offerings were encouraged beyond these. How poor, in comparison with all this, is in general the scale of giving among Christians! a mere fraction out of superfluity often, and in no recognized proportion at all! An uncertain, intermittent, dribbling out from a half-choked spring. The very freeness of the giving-"every man as he is disposed in his heart"-taken as a permission for withholding even! with no account made of what this speaks of the heart that can thus abuse God's precious grace; no consideration given to the balancing truth so solemnly urged by the apostle, " But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly,"-no care about the harvest in this field!

Brethren, has God need of us and our money ? " If I were hungry, I would not tell thee," He says. Yet this is of divine grace to the heart that God is attracting to Himself,-as to the woman of Samaria from the lips of love incarnate," Give Me to drink!" What answer shall the bride give to the voice of her Beloved when He seeks the pleasant fruits of His garden? Have we given Him His answer- fitting answer? Or when shall we give it Him?

My persuasion is, that if we would be really right with God, we must return to the apostolic rule in this matter. And also that in proportion as we do return heartily to it, we shall find how God has cared for us also, in seeking this from us. The voice of another dispensation still speaks to us:"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in My house; and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

AS FORESHOWN IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION.

THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, (Continued.)

Sardis:Sleeping Among the Dead. (Rev. 3:1-7.)

In the address to the Church at Thyatira, we have found the Lord announcing His coming, and bidding His saints wait to share with Him then the authority which the false church was assuming to have already. Thyatira presents us thus with a phase of things which goes on at least till the Lord comes for His saints; not, indeed, till the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon the world, but until He comes as the Morning-Star, the herald of the day before the day appears.

In Sardis, we have, therefore, not a development of the Thyatira condition, but in many respects, as it is easy to see, what is in entire opposition to it. Thyatira, or popery, is the last phase of the church in its Jewish hierarchic and ritualistic growth; and although there has been all through a remnant different in spirit, and becoming finally more or less distinctly separate, even outwardly, as among the Waldensian and kindred bodies, yet up to this point there has been in fact a certain unity:it could claim to be, before the eyes of men at least, the Catholic church.

True, there had been already a separation; not now of others from it, but of this latest development itself from others. Rome had separated herself from the churches of the east-the Greek and Syrian churches, which remained in the condition we have traced at Pergamos. The Catholic church of the west had become the Roman Catholic. Yet, in character, the system was the same throughout; here more, there less, developed-that was all. But now we come to a new thing,-a breach and a new beginning. There is now in Sardis, not the claim of infallibility, not (as what is prominent) corruption of doctrine, not persecution of the saints, not the exercise of authority in the same sense,- none of these things characterize Sardis. What characterizes is sufficiently definite in the Lord's charge here:it is lack of spiritual power,-nay, in the body as such, of life itself. " Thou hast a name to live, and thou art dead."

Yet they had " received and heard," and are bidden to "hold fast" this, "and repent." Just as Ephesus had been, at the commencement of decline, called back to remember their first state, so here there has been a fresh beginning in God's grace, a recovery of His word and truth, a new beginning, from which (alas!) already there is decline. Again, they have not answered to His grace, and those things which remained among them from this revival were languishing and ready to die. And no wonder, when the charge against them is considered. The body addressed is a professing but unconverted one:with a name to live, it is dead.

There is but too little difficulty in applying this. A breach with Rome, a restoration of the Word of God, a fresh revival of truth, ending, however, in a system or systems characterized by a fatal defect of spiritual power, and churches with an unconverted membership, God's saints being scattered through the mass,-living themselves, but unable to vitalize it:such are the characteristics, easily to be read, of the national churches which sprang out of the Protestant Reformation.
Let it be well understood:it is not the Reformation itself that is depicted here. So far as it was this, the Reformation was the blessed work of God, and the Lord does not judge, and can never need to judge, His own work. He refers to what His grace had done for them-to what they had received and heard. Their responsibility was, to take heed to it, and hold it fast; and already they had failed in doing so. This was therefore the ground of judgment.

Notice how Christ is represented here. He has "the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars." There is no failure in the fullness of spiritual energy on His part, no possibility of failure in His love and care for His people. Yet this power is not found practically in that which has sprung out of the seed sown by the Reformation. With more pretension than before, for they have now a name to live- name assumed to be in the book of life, the actual condition of the mass is that of death:not feebleness merely, but death.

Yet there are exceptions:not simply those alive, but still more-that have not defiled their garments; and of these the Lord speaks in the warmest terms , of praise. " They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy." Indeed, these are only "a few names." Others may be alive, but in a scene of death (and the defilement which results from contact with the dead is emphasized in the symbols of the Old Testament) the many of those alive even are defiled. But the mass are dead altogether- dead, with a name to live.

In His promise to the overcomer, the Lord further refers to this:"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life." The book of life is understood by the majority of people to be only in the Lord's hands, and all the names written in it to be written by Himself. Hence, those ignorant of the gospel stumble over this blotting out of the book of life, as supposing it is the blotting out of the names of those once saved. But there is no such thought here. There is not the slightest hint that those mentioned ever had life at all:they had a " name to live "-only a name.

On the contrary, you find in Rev. 13:8 the very opposite thought as to those " written," as we ought to read it, with the margin of the Revised Version, " from the foundation of the world in the book of the Lamb slain." There, this fact of their being written in the book from the foundation of the world is given as their security from being deceived by and worshiping the beast. Sovereign grace, that is, is their only and sufficient security.

Here, on the other hand, the book has got into man's hand, and he writes names in it as he pleases. It is a figure, of course, all through. The Lord, in His own time, corrects the book, and then He blots out the names of those to whom only the name belongs.

Now the " name to live " has a very special meaning in connection with Reformation times. The putting people's names into the book of life (while here on earth) is in no way characteristic of popery. Saints, for them, are only the dead, and not the living. The living she warns that " no man knows whether he is worthy of favor or hatred," and that it is not safe to be too sure. Her pardons, indulgences, sacraments, only show by their very multiplicity how difficult a thing she believes salvation is. Darkness is the essence of her system, and she thrives upon it.

On the other hand, the Reformation recovered the blessed gospel, and the word of reconciliation was preached with no uncertain sound. The doctrine of assurance was maintained with the utmost energy, and was stigmatized by the Council of Trent as " the vain confidence of the heretics." They even pushed it to an extreme, asserting (at least, some of the most prominent reformers did,) that assurance was of the very essence of saving faith itself, and that unless a man knew himself to be forgiven, he might be sure that he was not forgiven.

It is plain, then, that Protestantism put a man's name in the book of life in a way that popery did not at all.

Two immense things the Reformation gave us, which have never since been wholly lost,-an open Bible, in a language to be understood; and on the other hand, the gospel, at least in some of its most essential features. These are inestimable blessings, which would that we had hearts to value more.

Of the men, too, who were the dear and honored instruments in handing them down to us we cannot speak with enough affection and esteem. God honored them-how many!-taking them to Himself in fiery chariots, from which their voices come, thrilling us with the accents of the heaven opening | to receive them. Those who disparage them will have to hear, one day, their names confessed and honored by Him they served, as those of whom the world was not worthy.

But on the other hand, we must not make, as many are doing, the Reformation the measure of divine truth. They are not loyal to the Reformation really who accept any thing beside Scripture as the measure and test of this. The broken and conflicting voices which are heard the moment it is a question no longer of the gospel but of the church and its government, assure us that if here Scripture has spoken, the churches of the Reformation do not in the same sense convey to us its utterances. Lutherism is not Calvinism, the Church of England is not the Church of Geneva here. We must needs, whether we will or not, take Scripture to decide amid claims so conflicting; and when we do so, we find, with no great difficulty, that no one of these takes us back to the Church as it was at the beginning-the body of Christ, or the house! of living stones-at all.

Instead of this, as is well known, the churches of the Reformation were essentially national churches Not in every country, of course, able to attain the full ideal,-as in France, where Rome retained its
ascendancy by such cruel means,-but always of that pattern. Rome had herself prepared the way for this. The nations of Europe were already professedly Christian nations, and it was not to be expected that those who escaped from Jezebel's tyranny would give up their long hereditary claim to Christianity. The adoption of an evangelical creed did not and could not change the reality of what they were. They learned the formula, put their names upon the church-books as Protestants, learned to battle fiercely for the gospel of peace, and how could you deny their title to be Christians? Yet, as to the many, it was but the "name to live."

We must learn to distinguish two elements in the ecclesiastical revolution of those times. There was, first of all, a most mighty and most manifest work of God. The Scriptures, released from their imprisonment in a foreign tongue, began to speak to responsive human hearts with the decision and persuasiveness that the Word of God alone can have. Christ began once more to teach as one – having authority, and not as the scribes. The blessed doctrine of justification by faith every where brought souls held fast in bondage into liberty and the knowledge of a Saviour-God. The ecclesiastical yoke could not hold any longer those whom the truth had freed; and where Christ had become thus the soul's rightful Lord, the yoke of Rome was but the tyranny of Antichrist.

This was the first and most powerful element in Protestantism; not a political movement, but a movement of faith. Luther, solitary at Worms, in the presence of the mightiest political power in Europe, was the testimony that the work was of Him. His strength was manifest in human weakness. Had that place of weakness been retained all through,-had but God been allowed to show that power was of Him alone, how different would have been the result! And it is due to the foremost name of Protestantism to acknowledge that, as far as carnal weapons were concerned, Luther would have rightly refused them a place in a warfare which was God's. At any rate, to think of Protestantism as essentially a political movement is to do it glaring injustice, and to contradict the plainest facts.

On the other hand, we cannot ignore the political element which so soon entered into it. Rome had made the nations every where feel the iron hand of her despotism, and the national reaction against her was the natural result of her intolerable and insolent oppression. The notorious wickedness of her chiefs had long destroyed all real respect. Her power stood now in an excessive and degrading superstition. She lived upon men's vices and their fears; and where the light fell and removed the darkness, the fears were removed also, where the vices were not. Men learned to look upon the power they had cringed to with contrary feelings, deep in proportion to their depth before. Their interests, political and otherwise, coincided with the spiritual movement which divine power had produced. Soldiers, politicians, governments, made common cause with the men of faith. It was hard not to welcome such apparently God-sent allies, when on every side persecution raged. The movement increased in external power and importance, but its character was in just that proportion lowered and perverted.

And now there was need of defined principles to give cohesion to elements which the Spirit of God no longer sufficed to bind together. Outside, there was the pressure of Rome, a compact and immensely powerful body, armed, drilled, and intensely hostile. Organization was soon a necessity; of what or whom? To proclaim the true Church would have been to cast off their allies, to insure the continuance of persecution and reproach, to leave Rome unchecked, triumphant, I do not say that the true thought of the Church ever dawned upon them; but I do say that their alliance with the world was a sure means of hindering their seeing it. There were formed instead national churches, with evangelical creeds, used as pieces of state-craft, and political power to back them, not divine.

ft is simple enough, that if a creed had been a necessity for His Church, the wisdom of God could easily have given us an infallible one, and His love could not have failed to do so. On the contrary, He has given us that which He testifies to as able to furnish the man of God thoroughly unto all good works, but which people feel at once to be as different from a creed as can be.

Why do people want a creed ? As something more plainly and easily read than Scripture. Scripture is infinite:the need must be definite. Of Scripture, every one makes what he likes; what is wanted is something different-something that shall not be capable of two meanings, plain to all-spiritual and unspiritual, Church and world alike.

It has been before contended that Scripture is clearer, plainer really, than any word of man; and so indeed it is; beside being, in divine wisdom, written so as to meet, as nothing else can meet, with perfect foresight of the future, all the thoughts of men. It is thus the only sufficient guard and protection against heresy to the end of time. And yet it is no contradiction to this to own that there is some truth from the point of view taken by those who contend for this, between the creed and Scripture.

From their point of view. For the apostle's words limit us somewhat when we speak of the intelligibility of Scripture. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,"-but for what?-"that the man or God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

So that Scripture, profitable for doctrine as it is, does need a certain state of soul for its proper apprehension. It needs not indeed great attainments, human learning, deep research,-although all these have their use, and are not despised by it; but it absolutely requires (what may be found in the lowest and poorest just as well,) devotedness-that we be God's men:what by possession and profession all Christians are, but alas! not what all, even of true Christians, always practically are. This is the single eye, which we must have for the body to be full of light.

But this being so, we can easily see that the Bible is not just the book for a court of law, and it is not the suited thing for a national creed. The truth is not meant to be accessible to the merely natural mind. Nay, ''the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."The Bible is not crystalized for us into doctrines, but it’s truths are exhibited and only known as living realities to those who are in the true sense alive. It is so essentially unlike a creed, that we may be assured that nothing like a creed was in God's design. He did not mean to give what might serve as a motto for political partisanship, or a banner for any other than spiritual warfare.

Nationalism, then,-the union of the living and the dead-was never in His mind. He meant spirituality to be a first necessity, and an absolute one, for the discernment of His thoughts:and men, when they substitute in this respect the blessed word of God for their plainer creed, show really that herein they are at cross purposes with Him.

" Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead,'' is the exact moral description, as it is the plain condemnation of nationalism. Of more this, no doubt, but still of this. It is not the idea of the Church of God at all, but a Christianized world, with Christians scattered through it:a place so defiling, that but few indeed can keep their garments undefiled. Connected with the truth, as popery is not, such a system betrays the truth which it professedly upholds. The character of the last days is developed by it:"Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, proud, blasphemers," the retaining all that is natural to them under the garb of Christianity; "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."The direct command is, "From such, turn away."

This is the effect of popularized truth,-popularized as God never meant His truth to be. Of course this is to be distinguished from the preaching of His truth, than which nothing assuredly is more in accordance with His mind. His gospel is to go forth to every creature, and the blessings of an open Bible we could scarcely exaggerate. But by "popularized truth" is meant, what we have already been speaking of, truth made into a party badge, so as to be accepted by those with whom Christ is not; for He was never really popular, and still is not.
Popularized truth means, truth that has lost its power. It may be that for which martyrs died, and which when first given of God, or when afresh given, was full of quickening power. Popularized, it is so far lifeless. No exercise of soul in receiving it; no cross in professing it; men have got from their fathers what their fathers got from God:to their fathers it was shame, to them it is honor. There is nothing to test conscience, nothing to make them ask, Dare I take this without human sanction to commend-nay, in the face of all human discountenance? Yet only thus have we got it truly from God. The martyrs they talk of took it thus and suffered for it:they take it from their fathers-a principle which would have condemned the martyrs; and they take it without the slightest thought of being martyrs.

Truth is proclaimed as powerless by the unholy lives of its professors, while unholiness is recommended by the practice of those who are orthodox as to truth. And thus truth tends to die out of itself, as valueless, remaining all the while in the national creed, embalmed as a memorial of the past. " Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, which are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God." This has been long experienced with regard to all national systems too manifestly to need more than a bare allusion.

It is a system designedly adapted to worldly minds, and to be worked by political machinery. The Word of God is no necessity to it, except, it may be, to furnish a table of lessons; for the authoritative standard is the creed. The Spirit of God is not necessary to it; for colleges can manufacture preachers, and ecclesiastics ordain and send them forth apart from this. Christians are not necessary to it; they are too uncertain as a constituent part of a nation or its government to be capable of being reckoned on; nor is there any means of certainly determining who they are. A sacrament,- baptism or the Lord's supper,-takes here the place of less manageable tests.

And the grieved and insulted Spirit may be besought to breathe upon the lifeless mass, and fill the sails of the ship of state. But He must keep within the bounds prescribed by ritual, hierarchy, and parliament, or He will be treated as schismatical. And it must be remarked how often in this case a schism springs out of a large and manifest revival. Souls brought near to God, and made to feel the value of His Word, are not made thereby the more docile servants of a state-religion. The new wine will not be held in the old bottles. Statesmen are not thus favorable to such fresh enthusiasm, and no wonder:it divides the house which it is to their interest to keep as one.

(To be continued.)

4. THE BREADTH OF THE KINGDOM.

There is no need to produce further proof that the kingdom covers the whole profession of Christianity. A glance at the parables should settle this. But we have to see yet that it goes beyond even what we can properly call profession; that discipleship goes beyond this; the kingdom being indeed exactly commensurate with this last,-ideally, with the whole of the baptized. And here I am reminded that in what I shall have to say I must speak contrary to the convictions of many beloved brethren, and seem, perhaps, even in speaking, to make light of these. I do not in the least, but sympathize fully with the strength of their feelings regarding the dishonor done to Christ, and the injury done to men's souls by views widely current as to baptism. Babylon the great has been built up by the use of bricks for stones, and slime for mortar,-the substitution of human manufacture for divine creation,-of a "sacramental host, of God's elect" for those "baptized by one Spirit into one body." And in the hands of these builders baptism has been made to build up a "great house " with vessels to dishonor, from which we are called to purge ourselves if we would be "vessels unto honor" (2 Tim. 2:20, 21). Protest against this false ritualistic system can hardly go too far or be too strongly maintained.

The baptism of water has been confounded with the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and infants have been supposed to be regenerated by it, and made partakers of a life that gave no sign, and bore no fruit for God, and but deluded those who trusted in it. Then, as they could not say that every one so baptized was fit for heaven, they had to send a large part of these man-made children of God to hell, and most of the rest to purgatory to be purified by fire there. While yet, without this baptismal regeneration, not even a little babe could go to heaven.

The fundamental error here is twofold:first, in confounding, as already said, the natural and the spiritual spheres. Water cannot cleanse a soul, nor impart spiritual life. It may be "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," but not "a means whereby we receive the same." Secondly, in confounding heaven and the kingdom of heaven, or again, the kingdom of heaven and the Church. And from these last two, Protestantism has not in general, any more than Rome, escaped. The distinction between the two leaves a place of privilege and conditional blessing, which is not the Church, and yet which is not the world either, save as it is untrue to its character, and the principles of the world may leaven it. And this is what Scripture attests would happen, and history shows has happened.

But man's unbelief cannot make the faithfulness of God without effect. The kingdom of heaven, with its message of peace and reconciliation, remains the testimony of a love which goes out to all, and would gather in to God wherever the will of man is not hardening itself in opposition. We do not, in fact, in Scripture meet with that long delay of baptism, and that preparation of catechumens, which came in as baptism itself came to be looked upon as reception into the Church, and the symbol of the full Christian state. In the New Testament the catechumens were inside, not outside, the sphere of discipleship. Instead of being kept waiting at the threshold, the applicants were met with a generous and unsuspecting welcome. Three thousand were baptized on the day of Pentecost:how much preliminary instruction had they? And if, as at Samaria, a Simon Magus were received, with his heart not right in the sight of God, his reception had not defiled those tender arms of mercy which had been flung around him, and from which he had, as it were, to burst, to pursue the headlong path to everlasting ruin. I say, it is evident upon the face of Scripture, that baptism was not then fenced round, as many now would fence it round. It was a door, not carelessly, but readily and with a full heart, opened to the applicant for it. No question of Christ's heart, no "if thou wilt" was to be permitted.

But notice also, no hint of the Church of God is connected with this, its occurrence even in Acts 2:47 in the common version being a copyist's error. The doctrine of the Church was revealed to Paul much later, and he who "received of the Lord" (i Cor. 11:23), as to the institution of the Supper, had no commission to baptize (chap. 1:17). In the first is involved the question of communion; in the second, the responsibility is only individual.

This wider character of the kingdom we see further in our Lord's words as to the little children brought to Him. "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," are words which become very plain when we have seen what the kingdom is. In these little ones is no resisting will, and divine love would lay hold upon them for its own. Once see that the kingdom is not heaven, but a sphere of discipleship on earth, you can no more stumble at the thought of baptizing them than of taking them into your Sunday-schools. They belong, the Lord says, to His school at all times, and here He would meet them, put His hands on them, and bless them, as when on earth He did. The great arms of the Redeemer will not wait even for their final choice of Him to be made manifest, but would win them, prevail upon them by their tender clasp, mark them as His in His will, whatever even in the end may be their own. How precious is this thought of His, which then He turns to us to help carry out:"Bring them up," He says, "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4).

They are His disciples, taken into His school, and to be brought up for Him. And who would, as such, reject them? Is it not because of the superstition which has been connected with the thought, and the confusion between the kingdom and the Church, that so many now reject the baptism of infants as a popish figment, while they would do for them gladly the very thing which baptism implies, and rightly think it any thing but popish?

Let them remember that baptism is not to take them to heaven as a charm, but to mark them as belonging to Christ's school on earth; that, as far as it goes, it is "baptism unto death" not life; burial, the putting the dead in death, where they belong; but in that touching confession of their need, baptizing them " unto Christ," " to His death," looking for all to come to them, not from the water, but from Christ, through His work for them, which we thus own. Find me in this one shred of popery or superstition, any one that will. It is only the sweet and suited, open and apparent action of One who says in it what He says of old:" Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven":words that charm our hearts, beloved brethren, and command our allegiance.

This character of the kingdom, then, is a beautiful one, that it represents to us the very character of Him who is on the throne of it,-the grace that casts out none that come, that would fain receive all, even those who break away at last from its shelter. Yes, such is the love of Jesus; and to me, while I own the difference of the dispensation, and do not want to press uncertain analogies, yet it seems only the more suited that He, who in the days of law recognized the children of His people in the mark of circumcision, should now, in the grace that is come in with Christianity, not leave them without some corresponding, mark. I am assured He has not done so ; and the confusion and evil in His kingdom cannot affect the grace of it, or make it less certain that His kingdom it is. And when the limit of His patience has been reached, love it will be still that will act, the rod of iron will be the Shepherd's rod.

But we must now consider more attentively the distinction between the kingdom and the Church.

( To be continued.")

HE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, Laodicea:What Brings the Time of Christ's Patience to an End. (Rev. 3:14-22.)

We come now to the solemn close of these addresses, the Lord's last word to the churches; and it is very striking that we come to that close here, just after that epistle to Philadelphia, in which we have seen recognized a certain real return of heart to Christ, and a true revival by His Word and Spirit. Now, there are, on the contrary, procrastination and collapse:and the most serious thing is that these are the infallible signs of the failure on the part of Philadelphia itself. Laodicea springs out of Philadelphia. The blessing there leads to the judgment here.

In the states of the professing church which these addresses have already pictured, there is not only historical succession, but development. Even Protestantism sprang out of the bosom of Romanism, as Philadelphia out of Protestantism. In neither case is the one absorbed into the other, however. Romanism continues, outside the Reformation. The signs of a remnant are unmistakable in Philadelphia. Moreover, "overcomers" are implied in each case until the coming of the Lord. In Thyatira, thus, they are exhorted to "hold fast till I come; and he that overcometh, and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations." In Sardis, " If therefore thou shalt
not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief." In Philadelphia, " I come quickly." In this way, Protestantism, springing out of Romanism, runs henceforth side by side with it to the end. Philadelphia springs out of Protestantism, and similarly accompanies it. And so Laodicea, we may conclude, springs out of Philadelphia, and runs its course parallel with the rest.

But there is more positive proof. For if in Sardis there has been the absolute coldness of death, in Philadelphia, the glow of revival, in Laodicea there is the fatal lukewarmness which shows at once the effect (and the limited effect) of one upon another. And this is why the cold of Sardis itself is preferable to the lukewarmness of Laodicea. All God's grace has been spent in vain upon it.

Laodicea gives us, then, the failure of Protestantism, as Thyatira of that which assumes to be the Catholic Church. It is the complete failure of Christendom the second time; and now, in the full light of an open Bible, and after repeated intervention of God in wide-spread and protracted revival and blessing. The full end of patience has at last been reached, and the time to display also the results of the divine work, which no failure or opposition of man can in any wise hinder.

But before entering upon the details of this address to Laodicea, let us inquire as to the name itself. It was given to a city by Antiochus II., after his enlargement of it, in honor of his wife Laodice, and is a compound of two words-laos, "people,"and dike. "Dike" is given by the dictionaries as having the three meanings, closely connected together, (i) of "manner, custom, usage;" (2) of " right;" (3) of " requirement," and so " vengeance," punitive justice. We have thus three possible meanings:"custom of the people," "people's right," "judgment of the people." And these three things have equally plain and solemn connection with one another.

For it is indeed the "people's custom" that is here unfolded. If under popery it is rather the usurpation of the leaders that is the question, in Protestantism, with its open Bible, the people are tested as never before. The earliest ages of Christianity, dependent upon the toilsome labor of copyists for the multiplication of copies of the Word, had in no wise the privileges of which the Reformation, with its providentially furnished printing-press, at once came into possession. Hence, also, responsibilities as great, and brought home to the door of every man. People may still be ignorant, but it is now assuredly a willing ignorance. They may still seek to cast responsibility upon others, and blindly follow still leaders as blind, but this has necessarily now another character from what it had before. Hence it is the people who are now being manifested,-their way which is being made apparent; and judgment, however delayed, must at last follow with proportional energy. Thus two significant applications of this word "Laodicea" are made evident.

But again, and connected with this, there is a feature of the last days which Scripture puts prominently forward,-the self-assertion which indeed on man's part has never been lacking, but which now pervades, in a manner not before seen, the masses of the population. That Protestantism has favored this, is one of the reproaches of the Romanists. And it is undeniably true that in one
sense it has favored it. The breaking of ecclesiastical yokes,-the yoke of a tyranny more prostrating than any other,-with that awaking of the mind of man which is ever found where the light of the Word of God has penetrated,-has produced a state of things in which, if Christ's yoke be not accepted, man's will assuredly assert itself as never before. And so it has proved; and so Scripture long before declared that it would be. " Laodicea," in its third sense, as "people's right" has become, morally, spiritually, and politically also, the watchword of the times. On the one hand, there is an immense march of civilization, a predicted running to and fro, and increase of knowledge; on the other, an uprise of what threatens civilization, and is ominous of an approaching end of the whole state.

"People's right!" The rights of the masses! and which the masses themselves mean to define and pronounce upon. Here is that condition of things which Hobbes, more than two centuries since, declared to be the national condition, and which he rightly said meant universal war. For who is to judge as to these conflicting interests? and who is to enforce the judgment? Class will disagree with class,-nay,.individual with individual:every man's hand will be against his brother; might will make right upon a scale the world has never seen, until out of this surging sea a power rises strong enough to command once more. Then they that will be lords shall have a lord, and they that will not receive Christ shall have Antichrist. So the Word of God declares. For this ominous watchword, "people's rights," in the end of centuries of divine long-suffering, is a terrible claim in the ears of a God, strong, if yet so patient, and who is provoked every day.

It is a claim which denies the fall, and the sentence confirmed by countless individual sins,-the claim of a world which has refused and crucified the Son of God come into it in simplest loving mercy;-which would take the earth out of its Maker's hand, and enrich itself at His cost and to His dishonor. What wonder if they should quarrel over the spoils of victory, and the nations be quaking, as they are, over the success of their policy of liberty and equal rights? When democracy meant only the curbing of the despotic power of rulers, when it meant still respect for wealth and rank, and law and order, they could rejoice over it, and cite it as the evidence of morally improved times. Arbitrary power only was to be restrained:there was to be equal justice, and quietness and assurance as the effect of righteousness. Certainly the abuse of power had been great enough to provoke reprisals, and make the downfall of absolutism an apparent real advancement. But man was and is the same; and the mistake has been ever to suppose that alterations of this kind could really heal or touch a moral state which was the essence of the trouble. The leprosy, skinned over here, would only break out elsewhere, for it was deeper than the surface,-in the blood, in the vitals of humanity itself.

Who can say where the movement for men's rights shall stop? If they be rights, must it not be unrighteousness to stop any where? Who can say to the restless, resistless, surge of the sea, Come no further! here shall thy waves be stayed? There were, there are, most real and gigantic evils,-tyrannies which no form of government yet devised has taken into account, or probably can take. What does every man's right to his own imply? What is " his own "? How can you take from wealth the power which wealth implies? or allow power without allowing the abuse of it? Settle all inequalities, make one general plain of all the mountains upon earth, you have stopped the fertilizing rivers also which the mountains roll over the plains and in the valleys which you deprecate, but for whose benefit, spite of all, they rise.

Rights! what scale have you of rights? Listen to the voices from a lower level than you desire, which will interpret for you, and enforce their interpretation,-socialism, communism, nihilism,- dread names, not merely for the monarch, but for the man of property also, and for the law-abiding citizen. People's rights are already in terrible conflict with one another, and in their name how many wrongs may be inflicted yet! This Laodicea of politics is destined to be the rock upon which all governmental reform will end in anarchy and chaos. He who can read the great typical book of nature may read the scriptural presages upon a scroll written with lamentation and mourning and woe:"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth, distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the earth:for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken" (Luke 21:25, 26).

But the removal of the things that can be shaken will only make way for a kingdom, not such as they anticipate, absolute beyond all the tyrannies of old, a "rod of iron," which shall break as potsherds all the opposing powers of man, yet be the shepherd's rod under which the poor of the flock will lie down at last in peace, and none shall make them afraid. How refreshing to turn from what has been engaging us to contemplate such a rule as the world has never seen!

" He shall judge Thy people with righteousness, and Thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people; He shall save the children of the needy, and break in pieces the oppressor. … In His days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace as long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. All kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him" (Ps. 72:2-4, 7,8, II).

But, it may be objected, this is altogether political:what has this to do with Laodicea as a condition of the churches ? It would have little indeed to do with it if only the Church realized its separation from the world. As it is, it has very much indeed to do,-so much, that in Christendom a political Laodicea involves, as a matter of course, an ecclesiastical one. The world and the Church are so allied, so mingled, so permeate each other now, that ideally alone will they endure separation. And as a matter of fact, "people's rights" has become scarcely less an ecclesiastical than a political watchword. In this sphere, the masses are rising up against the long rule of their spiritual leaders, and claiming their rights at their hands. The oldest and best established oligarchies are accepting popular methods and forms upon all sides. The few must yield to the many. They choose their pastors as they choose their lawyer or their doctor, and insist upon having what they pay for. What can be a better "right" than that? Thus, however, it is clear, they "heap to themselves teachers," if you must not assume that they have "itching ears." But, in truth, the ear it is that is largely consulted; and necessarily so, where the very idea at the bottom is a commercial equivalent, and popular majorities rule, as quantity instead of quality. Even in the Church, and at its best, most spiritual have never been the larger number. How much less in churches demoralized by heterogeneous mixture, competing for power and popularity!

Think of it, however, as we may, there is no doubt that, in church as well as state, "liberal" thoughts are prevailing,-democratic forms are succeeding to the old aristocratic ones. And here certainly Philadelphia has prepared the way for Laodicea. Distinctive priesthood, and the vested rights of clerisy, have in measure yielded to the free evangelization going on, and the equality of Christian brotherhood, and it is impossible not to rejoice that this should be so. But yet who can doubt that the overthrow, such as it is, of these ecclesiastical superstitions has favored claims that are no more of God than they? The laity may dispossess the clergy, and dominion pass from one class to another without reverting to the hands to which it really belongs. Christ is alone Master, not clergy, and not people. Ministers are indeed servants, as the very name imports, yet not servants of men,-a thing against which the apostle so vehemently contends. " Ye are bought with a price; be ye not the servants of men:if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ." Thus these two things are in essential opposition. Christ needs to be in His true place,-a thing which so marks Philadelphia, but from which Laodicea excludes Him as does Thyatira. Bring Christ in, and the ministers are His servants. Bring Christ in, and the people are His people. His service, on the part of all alike, is true and equal freedom at once to all.

But the spiritual phase of Laodicea we are now to follow. May we do it honestly, with hearts open to receive rebuke; remembering that, not ecclesiastical place, but spirit, is in question. It is an old deceit to pride one's self on possession of the truth, while yet the sanctification by the truth is unknown. And this indeed makes a large part of the character of what is before us.

The Lord presents Himself here as the One who amid the general failure is " the Amen, the faithful and true witness:" He has not failed.

He is the Amen:"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ," says the apostle, " who was preached among you by us, even by me and Sylvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in Him was yea. For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God by us" (2 Cor. 1:19, 20). No uncertainty, no doubtfulness, is there in Christ or His Word. He is always simple, positive " Yea," speaking one thing, absolutely to be depended on. If we have but a word of His, it is a blessed reality, given us in God's infinite love, which we may rest our souls on for eternity, and which can never fail us. This is a resource which the denial of verbal inspiration would completely take from us; but His own assurance is, "Scripture cannot be broken" (Jno. 10:35). If it be a question, as in the case which the Lord is speaking of here, of but a title applied by an inspired writer to a certain class of men, there must be perfect suitability and divine wisdom in the application. " If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken." How precious is this assurance! Coming where it does, is it not itself a significant warning, this claim of His as "the Amen, the faithful and true Witness" to such a generation as the present? Does He not in it challenge the unbelief so common all around us?
But this presentation of Himself as a true and faithful Witness is in contrast with the failure of the Church, which has been any thing but that. He is just about to remove the candlestick because it has been unfaithful and untrue. But His people's shortcoming is not His own. Infidelity may seek to justify itself by the failure of Christians; and even Christians, alas! are almost capable of taking it as in some sort a reflection upon Himself. But "if we are unfaithful, he abideth faithful," as the Rev. Ver. rightly puts it now (2 Tim. 2:13). And He is just ready to rise up and bring in that day in which, with the revelation of all things, this faithfulness of His will appear abundantly. In the general wreck, this only now remains to Him.

He proclaims Himself with this:"The Beginning of the creation of God." The old creation, spoiled by sin, is passing away; its history is nearly completed; its judgment has been long since pronounced in the cross, and in Christ risen from the dead is begun all that God owns as really His,- first and always in His thought, and for which the ruin of the old only prepared the way.

When the Psalmist lifted up his eyes to heaven, and in view of God's glorious handiwork there exclaims, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" the answer is, " Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honor; Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." But of whom is he speaking? As the apostle in the second of Hebrews assures us, not of the first, but of the Second Man. " We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor." It is Christ in whom the true ideal of man is realized, and of whom the first Adam was but the fleeting image, and in many respects the contrast.

Now in Laodicea, with Christ outside, it cannot be the new creation in which their riches are. Yet they say they are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing. Thus there are things which are gain to them which they have not counted loss for Christ.

It is an exceedingly solemn thing that the very truth which with all its grace judges and sets aside man most thoroughly is the very truth which he is prone to take and use for the purpose of self-gratulation. Take the law:God gave it "that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God" (Rom. 3:19). But how has man used, and how is he using it? Always to establish his own righteousness by it. The large part of the Christian world, so called, to-day is taking the "strength of sin" (i Cor. 15:56) to accomplish holiness by it, and are taking salvation itself to be, "not" indeed "by the merit of works, but" yet "by works as a condition."

So, exactly, with Christianity:God has brought in the truth of new creation, the world before Him lying under death and judgment. Yet man takes the blessed truth of Christianity to patch up the world with it, and make it better if he can. And in the very presence of the ruin and break-up of things on every side, men are vaunting the success of the effort. On the eve of judgment, they are fulfilling the Scripture-portents of such a time by their smooth auguries of prosperity and peace.

No doubt God's Spirit is really and largely working; but His end and man's thought are diverse, in that, while He is converting souls to " deliver them out of this present evil world," man's thought is an improved world, a Christian world:the effect of which is, to amalgamate Christians and the world, and spoil the scriptural character of Christianity altogether.
But in these last days God has given many to recognize the truth of the Word as to this. He has revived the truth of new creation, and revealed to us the practical and fruitful consequences which result from a place in Christ, where He is, in the heavens. But the question for us is, What are we doing, then, with the truth we recognize? Shall we talk of being in Christ a new creation, old things passed away, and all things become new, and yet cling to what has in it all the moral elements that make up the world-"the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life"? Is it theory with us, or practical reality, to have " put on the new man, who is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him:where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is ALL, and in all"? Has the Lord need to appeal to us as the One who is " the Beginning of the creation of God"? If so, is not Laodiceanism with us in that proportion?

To Laodicea, as to the rest, He says, " I know thy works" Here is the test,-the only true one. " I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot:I would that thou wert cold or hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth." This is the certain and near end of professing Christendom. Of course He will not spew His own beloved people out of His mouth. He must take these first of all to Himself before He can reject the whole mass as nauseous. And we have already seen, in the address to Philadelphia, that the Lord tells them He will keep them out of the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world:-not merely out of the temptation; He might hide them in the desert so, but out of the hour of it. For this, He must take them out of the world altogether. And that is what the " I come quickly " connected with this also intimates.

Here, then, we have the brief, solemn pause before the Lord takes His people to Himself. He must do this before the professing body can be spewed out of His mouth. He cannot so reject even the poorest, weakest, most wayward of His own. And it is important to insist upon this, because there is abroad a view according to which only a class of better than ordinary Christians will be taken up when the Lord comes, while the rest will be left upon earth to go through the tribulation which follows this, when the earth is enduring the vials of His wrath. They point to the promise to Philadelphia as in this way the promise to a special class; and the ten virgins of our Lord's parable they maintain to be all Christians, as they bring forward the fact of their being "virgins" to prove;- only foolish ones, unwatchful and unready, with indeed the oil of the Spirit in their lamps, but no extra supply in their " vessels." Thus their lamps, which had been burning, cease to burn at last, and the fresh supply of oil they get is obtained too late for admission to the marriage. The Lord rejects them only as the bride:they lose their place in this, and are shut out to be purified by tribulation, and made ready for the kingdom afterward.

But how many precious realities must be denied in order to hold this view! Is it our faithfulness, then, that gives us a place among those who are admitted to the dignity of the bride of Christ? Is the Lord when He comes indeed going to discriminate in this way between less and more faithfulness? -between ordinary and extraordinary Christians? What an engine is this for turning the blessed and purifying hope into a means of self-occupation and despair! If things are so, where is the line of acceptance to be drawn? and on what side of it are we? Is my joyful expectation of this blessed time to be based on the belief in my own superiority to many of my brethren? What comfortable Pharisaism, or what legal distress must such a view involve!
If true, why should such a discrimination be made between the living saints alone? Why should
it not equally affect the dead? And then, is there to be a purgatory to purify these?

As to Scripture, the support it gives to any such view is only apparent, and results from an interpretation of single passages, which is at issue with its whole doctrinal teaching. The coming of the Lord to remove His saints is not in Scripture ever connected even with our responsibilities and their adjudication, but with the fulfillment of the hope with which grace has inspired us. Our responsibilities and the reward of our works are connected with that which is called the "appearing" or "manifestation" or "revelation of Christ,"-His coming with His saints, not for them. At the door of the Father's house to which He welcomes us when He comes, no sentry stands, no challenge is required. We go into it as purged by the precious blood of Christ, and in Christ. Already are we not only entitled, but " meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

When He comes to the world, and His people take their places with Him as associated with Him in government, then dignities, honors, rewards of work, will find their place. It will be " Have thou authority over ten"-"be thou also over five cities." But salvation, righteousness, the child's place with the Father, membership of the body of Christ, our relationship to Christ as His bride,-nay, even our being kings and priests unto His God and Father, are things which, as they are not gained, so they are not lost by any work of ours at all. Christ has procured them for us, and grace bestows them,- grace, and grace alone.

When, therefore, the Lord descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and
the trump of God, is there discrimination among those in Christ?-of the dead who shall be raised? of the living who shall be changed? Nay, but the " dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; so shall we be ever with the Lord." Blessed words! how they pierce and scatter the chilling fogs of legalism, and make the "blessed hope," not a means of sorest perplexity and doubt, but hope indeed!

Nor are the passages which these writers build upon in contradiction with this at all. The promise to the overcomer at Philadelphia is one of a class which, as the eye runs over them throughout these apocalyptic addresses, show plainly that they apply more or less to every true believer. Take the promise to him at Ephesus, and ask, Will any believer not "eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God"? Take that to Smyrna, and ask, Will any " be hurt of the second death"? And so on through the remainder. Their special significance in relation to the overcomer in the cases there pointed out is not in the least diminished by their general application to all believers.

Again, as to the ten virgins, it is a mistake to suppose that in that character (according to the par-able,) Christians are represented as espoused to Christ at all. Those who go forth to meet the bridegroom are not the bride; and to make them this, disjoints the parable. According to the whole tenor of the prophecy in these chapters, the Jewish people and the earth are in the foreground, and the parable of the virgins only parenthetically brings in the connection of Christians with these.
According to the common language of the Old-Testament prophets, the Lord is coming to take a Jewish bride; and on His way to do this, His people of the present time are called up to meet Him and return with Him. So much is implied in the expression in the Greek. It is thus when He is come to earth that the foolish virgins are rejected, and cast out of His kingdom altogether. The parable is a parable of the kingdom; and the kingdom, in all the parables, speaks of earth, not heaven, and of the whole field of profession. "Virgins," "servants," and the like titles, merely intimate responsible profession, not necessarily the truth of it. He was a servant who had laid up his lord's money in a napkin, and never really served at all. He was a servant, but a wicked one; and so with these "foolish" virgins.

Oil they are explicitly stated not to have; and though their lamps are only represented as "going out," when the cry is raised, "Behold, the bridegroom!" this is the constant style of these parables, in which the inner thoughts of the soul are mirrored and exposed, not dogmatic truth taught. In their own imaginations, the Pharisees were the "ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance; "not in dogmatic reality. Moreover, the Lord's words of rejection, " I know you not," are decisive from One who " knoweth them that are His," and can never disown them.

No, He cannot spew His own out of His mouth, but must have them with Him out of the world before the first drops of the storm of judgment fall. Even then it will be made manifest, before He rejects the public professing body, that they have on their part rejected Him. Christendom ends in
open apostasy. The day of the Lord will not come except there come a falling away first, and the man of sin be revealed. Popery, evil as it is, and anti-christian too, is not the last evil, nor the worst. It is the sinful woman, not the man. It has been revealed over three hundred years as this, and the day of the Lord is not yet come. The Antichrist will deny the Father and the Son alike.

(To be continued.)
"THE MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN."-186

I. WHAT THE KINGDOM IS.

'There is perhaps no term in Scripture so largely used and so little understood as that of "the kingdom of heaven." Yet its importance must be (in some measure at least,) proportionate to the frequency of its use. It is only, indeed, one book-the gospel of Matthew,-in which it is found, though there thirty-one times; but the kindred expression, " the kingdom of God," is used much more extensively, and in some parables in other gospels is found in its stead. Taken together, these expressions have a very large place in the New Testament, and their interpretation will correspondingly affect a great deal of Scripture. I propose, therefore, a serious examination of the doctrine of the kingdom as covered by these terms, and to inquire as to the practical bearing of the doctrine also, which assuredly there must be, for "all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

"The kingdom of heaven" is a New-Testament term, then; but it has its roots in the Old Testament. The idea is found in the germ in Daniel, in the prophet's words to Nebuchadnezzar, who, effectually humbled by his durance among the beasts, should learn by it that "the heavens do rule" (chap. 4:26). This is expanded afterward into the thought that "the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (5:32). Here we have but the idea, however,-the rule of God, supreme necessarily over men. Here there is no thought of a special, limited, dispensational kingdom. This " dominion," as the king himself says, "is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation " (5:34).

But the book of Daniel carries us further than this in the direction we are seeking. Historically and prophetically both, it has for its scope "the times of the Gentiles," of which the Lord speaks (Luke 21:24),-that is, of Gentile supremacy over Israel. But this is the consequence of her sin, and of God's controversy with her, and it means the interruption of His own dwelling in her midst, as of old He did, and as He yet will do. For Jerusalem shall yet be, saith the Lord, "the place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever." (Ezek. 43:7.)

The "place of His throne" had been given up before Nebuchadnezzar could lay waste the city and the temple, and a notable change, therefore, is found in the Old-Testament books which give us the history of that solemn and important time. The ark had been the symbolic throne of Him who "sitteth between the cherubim;" and as "the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth " it had passed through Jordan to take possession of the land. (Josh. 3:11.) Now the glory had left its dwelling-place on earth, as Ezekiel had seen (chap. 10:18; 11:23), and the very decree which ordains the rebuilding of the temple is that of a Persian king to whom the " God of heaven has given all the kingdoms of the earth."(2 Chron. 36:23 ; Ezra 1:2.)

This is no mere casual expression. It is characteristic of the books of the captivity-of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel. Although the eternal throne of God can never be given up, yet a dispensational throne is now removed; and this is what characterizes the times of the Gentiles,-a responsible throne on earth which is set up by God, and yet not God's throne, not the kingdom of God. For the kingdom of God men must wait, but in hope; for the kingdom of God shall come.
Daniel accordingly shows us the end of these Gentile empires, and beyond them all a wholly different one:"In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." (Chap. 2:44.)

This is in Nebuchadnezzar's vision, but the features of this final kingdom he is not able more distinctly to see. The vision granted later to the prophet (chap. 7:) develops, as we may easily see, the spiritual significance both of the Gentile powers and of that which supersedes them. For the king, the image has the form of a man, though with no breath of life in it; and there is brilliancy enough, though increasing degeneracy. But to the prophet's eyes there is no human form, no unity; plenty of life and vigor, but bestial. On the other hand, as to the final kingdom, though not much is seen as to detail, one feature newly given is of the sweetest encouragement. It is that the government is in the hands of One like a son of man, under whom the saints too possess the kingdom.

Here, then, is a " kingdom of heaven "-a heavenly rule on earth,-a final world-wide triumph of righteousness and peace. We recognize it as that of which all the prophets speak, the expansion of the first prophecy of the victory of the woman's Seed, -the unforgotten goal and purpose of the ages.

Old-Testament prophecy soon comes to an end after the voice in Daniel has uttered itself. There is a long pause of expectancy, and then one more than a prophet takes up the burden of those many years past, and announces the kingdom of heaven as at hand. But the people are not ready:and the voice is of one crying in the wilderness, a priest who has forsaken the sanctuary, and stands apart from men. The baptism of repentance must precede the remission of sins. The mountain must be leveled with the plain, that the way of the Lord may be prepared.

Then there is another Voice, and He who was announced is come. The kingdom is presented, now with the signs and powers which make good its claim, and are ready to establish it among men. Nothing is wanting, except, alas! the loyal hearts that should greet their divine King; but here is a lack that nothing can compensate for. The more fully manifested, the more fully He is rejected. He finds in a Gentile the faith He cannot find in Israel. (Matt. 8:10.) And thereupon declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The steps of His rejection it is not necessary here to trace. The twelfth chapter of Matthew already shows it complete. His mighty works, instinct with the power and love of God, they ascribe to Beelzebub, and He warns them that for blasphemy against the Holy Ghost there is never forgiveness. They sought signs, but none should be given them but the sign of the prophet Jonas, the Son of Man three days and nights in the heart of the earth. The chapter ends with the solemn disowning of natural ties:whosoever did the will of His Father in heaven, the same was His brother and sister and mother.

This introduces the thirteenth chapter, in which seven parables give us the prophetic character of the kingdom of heaven as it now is, the King rejected and away. Instead of finding fruit in His vineyard, He goes forth to sow the seed of fresh fruit among the Gentiles. Speaking in parables, because hearing they heard and understood not, He instructs His disciples in the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (5:11),-that is, in things not forming part of what had been revealed in Judaism, things which had been kept secret from the foundation of the world (5:35).

We see, in fact, in these parables that while the essential idea of the kingdom of heaven is preserved, the form of it is widely different. It is still a kingdom of heaven, and in the hands of the Son of Man; not yet, however, established in power, but committed into the hands of men, and of men who fail in the administration of it. Thus there is disorder, and a possibility of evil even in" high places,-purging and rectification needed when the King comes in power. " He shall send forth His angels, and they shall purge out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity." The mysteries of the kingdom terminate thus in its manifestation. The kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:9) looks on to His kingdom and glory (i Thess. 3:12), when the fruits of the present sowing-time are husbanded.

These two forms of the kingdom of heaven need to be distinguished carefully. The Lord's address to Laodicea very plainly distinguishes them:" Him that overcometh will I give to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father on His throne." It is as Son of Man He is seen in these addresses; His own throne, therefore, is clearly what is His as Man, in contrast with the Father's throne, the divine one. It is plain at once that while His saints are promised to sit with Him upon the one, none but One Himself divine could sit upon the other.

The Lord has, then, a present kingdom; but in it we can serve only and not reign. We are "translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son." (Col. 1:13.) The time for Christians to reign cannot be yet; cannot be till He takes the kingdom in the form in which the Old Testament shows it,-comes as Son of Man, and reigns publicly.

It is with His present kingdom we are now occupied. This is established in a very different way, namely, by the sowing of the seed-"the Word of the kingdom." The kingdom extends no further than as this is, in some way, "sown in the heart." Yet it may not be savingly. It is the sphere of profession and privilege that is before us. The devil may take away that which was sown in the heart. The man may have no root in himself, the heart being a " heart of stone." Or the springing up of what is native to the soil may choke the good seed so that it is unfruitful. By and by, among the wheat also the enemy sows tares. All this is a picture of the kingdom.

There may be other aspects of it, and there are. We may be called, as in the last three parables of this series, to look at the divine plan and purpose, which cannot fail of accomplishment; but from the human side there cleaves to it ever the idea of condition, of possible failure, of a mixture of evil with the good, of coming judgment needed to rectify this. If the idea of mercy come in, it is still conditional, never pure grace, as witness the parable which closes the eighteenth chapter of the same gospel.

The King is away, the administration in the hands of man in the meantime:this accounts for most of the characters we are considering. It is the distinctive, fundamental feature of this " mystery "form; and as such, we must now examine it more attentively.

(To be continued.)

INTRODUCTION

In Peter's first epistle the heavenly inheritance in its holy and imperishable character is announced to Jewish Christians, to whom, as the apostle of the circumcision, he was appointed to minister, and whose earthly national hope had faded before their eyes, however sure to be revived in the last days. Those whom he addresses are spoken of as " sojourners of the dispersion " in five provinces of Asia Minor, – that is, they were away from their proper home and center – Jerusalem and the land of their fathers.

This is their humiliation ; but the resurrection of Christ, whom their nation had crucified, gave these believers, by that cross and resurrection, a new and living hope that could never fade. The character of the ministry in both these epistles is of a kind foreshadowed in the words of the Chief Shepherd to Peter, "Lovest thou Me?" – "Feed My lambs." – "Tend," "feed my sheep;" but this first epistle has its own rich and peculiar character in leading the soul by the still waters, and in green pastures. There is an absence of the defense of doctrine against corrupters, and an absence even of the development of doctrine compared with the consolations and encouragements, with of course needed exhortations as to holiness and the fear of God.

In John's first epistle, and in the epistle of James, there is an entering almost at once upon warnings and tests of false profession and seducing doctrine ; and as to almost all Paul's epistles, their breadth
and compass in meeting and arming the saints against an incoming tide of evil is well known.

Excepting this first epistle of Peter, and Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, may we not say there is no other epistle in which evil within the Church is not more or less dealt with. But in those, though they are warned, as those ready or liable to fail, evil is not treated as having made headway within. The storm is without:they are sheltered within- a place of soul-rest. The enemy is shut out, and is to be withstood, in his wiles in the one case, and as a roaring lion in the other.

In the Ephesians, we are led on by a victorious Leader to enjoy the fruits of the heavenly land; and in the epistles of Peter, we are watched over of the Shepherd, and incited to diligent progress through the wilderness. And this comparison suggests a parallel comparison between the addresses to Smyrna and Philadelphia. In these alone of the seven churches is there a company addressed to whom no failure is imputed; and in the latter, " Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown," reminds us of the Ephesians " Be strong in the Lord;" and in the former, " Be thou faithful unto death " suggests or calls to mind the "fiery trial" in Peter;-again the wiles on the one hand and the roaring lion on the other.

It is worthy of note that it is in the gospel of John, in which the Lord is presented as the Good Shepherd, that we find recorded the commission to Peter to feed the sheep. In the other gospels, we have the commission to preach the gospel; but in John, the absence of such a commission, and this special one to Peter introduced, by which he was specially appointed to feed and care for the flock.
Let it be noted too that it is in that gospel that speaks of the Lord as Shepherd that we are told throughout of His divine glory and power. He is the Good Shepherd, and lays down His life; but He lays it down of Himself-no man takes it from Him-and He takes it again, having given up His spirit when all was accomplished and He had said, " It is finished." He is the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. It is very precious to us that the divine glory and power should especially shine out in that gospel that tells us,-nay, in which He Himself tells that He is the Good Shepherd. "All things were made by Him" is recorded in that gospel. He that dwells in the bosom of the Father -such an one is our Shepherd. We may well say, "I shall not want!" and rest fully in Him.

We have, then, in these epistles, the Chief Shepherd speaking to us through a chosen and prepared under-shepherd-one who was instructed, disciplined, chastened, matured by years of suffering, and now ripe for martyrdom. Such an one subject to God, the Spirit of God uses in his old age, as it were, leaning upon the top of his staff to pronounce a blessing on his brethren-to tell us of the exceeding great and precious promises, and of the gospel preached to us with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.

Peter, as well as Paul and John, like Caleb, maintains vigor in old age, bears fruit and flourishes.

For these examples, these witnesses to the power of God through faith, let us give thanks and glory to God, and take courage, and follow in their steps. It is not necessary to decline in the Christian course. We know it is not, but we fail, and see it all around; but let us, therefore, dwell upon these precious examples, that we may show diligence, and have renewed strength as the journey lengthens.

The new position in Christ prominent in Paul's writings is only referred to by Peter in the benediction at the end of the first epistle. It does not appear as a doctrine in Peter, nor resurrection with Christ and being in Him in heavenly places; nor do we get here the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer and in the Church; nor the doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ, of which Paul was the minister specially (Col. 1:25); nor the doctrine of eternal life.

Even the term "forgiveness of sins" does not appear in Peter's epistles, while of course the fact is always present in his doctrine.

These differences and omissions are interesting to note-deeply interesting to the devout mind- as showing the overruling hand of the Spirit in leading the writer to record only that which was consistent with his own voice of ministry and subject.

However well versed he was in kindred truths, they are not introduced by him; they are found elsewhere. This shows the hand of God, and is precious to contemplate. The writer communicates only what God gave him to communicate. Therefore each part agrees with the whole in divine precision, and fits into its place like the stones in the temple.

Peter ministers the salvation spoken of by the prophets of old (chap. 1:10), while Paul, beside this, ministers also about the Church-a mystery not made known before to the sons of men-a new revelation (Eph. 3:4-10). Naturally, in Peter's as well as in Paul's epistles we have the heavenly inheritance and the hope of eternal glory. It is not higher truth in Paul and lower truth in Peter, but divinely perfect parts of a perfect salvation-a perfect whole; it is deep and high and broad. "To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" (Eph. 3:19) is a deep experience; so also in Peter, " Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

According to the character of the epistle, there are numerous references to or quotations from the Old Testament (verses 2, 10, 11, 12, 16 of chap, 1:, and so on throughout), and the last verse of chap. 2:peculiarly indicates what class of people are addressed. " For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." Even when astray, they are spoken of as sheep,-that is, nominally the people of God; not Gentiles, but Jews. Gentiles were not as sheep going astray. We do not find such a mode of address in Paul; they were simply afar off, and without God, and without hope; but as to the Jews (as of all Israel), relationship is acknowledged even when they are afar from God, as in Luke 15:both the Pharisees and the publicans and sinners are compared to sons in a family-the elder and the younger,–while both classes depicted refer to the unconverted state.

To the flock, Peter speaks of the Shepherd; to the elders, of the Chief Shepherd, who would reward the under-shepherds. Paul, in addressing the uncircumcision, no where speaks of the Shepherd, only in the Hebrews again appropriately the Shepherd is mentioned in closing the epistle.

As we have the Shepherd in Peter, so also the roaring lion,-the one caring for the sheep, the other seeking to devour. In the New Testament, we are warned to contend against Satan, not in the Old. This again is an interesting feature, and shows, what appears more and more, the distinctness of character of the New Testament from the Old. In the New Testament, God's people are, as it were, full-grown men-soldiers in conflict in the field- the world subject to Satan as its god-Christians called out from it, witnesses for their absent and rejected Leader. The world was not stamped with its character in the Old Testament as it is now. One nation was chosen, and put on trial by the law, as in a sense representing all men-not yet condemned, but under trial,-the verdict not yet rendered. But now it is otherwise. The trial is ended, the law broken, and the Son of God put to death on the cross. Satan, who was behind the scenes, is brought to the front; the world is marked for judgment. It has chosen its leader; and the world, the flesh, and the devil are ranged against the follower of Christ.

Surely, in the Old Testament as now, Satan was against the saint, and the saint armed against him by the Word; but now "all is out," so to speak,- all publicly declared, sides taken, and an increased power, no doubt, of Satan in the world; and an increased energy called for in the saint, and supplied by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. .

Naturally, therefore, in such a world, the followers of Christ become strangers (sojourners) and pilgrims, as was the Lord Himself. Before the eyes of the Jewish saints, their nation's hope for the time had faded and gone, the nation at large persecutors of the faithful, their city about to be destroyed, the wrath was come upon them to the utmost; but these were begotten again,-such is the force of the term ; collectively begotten again to a new hope, a living hope, by Christ's resurrection, which would never fade. The hope of an inheritance in heaven replaced the earthly national hope, which however sure to be revived in the last days, yet for the time, and on the ground of human responsibility, had utterly perished. It was what Stephen specially realized when he saw the people stoning him to death, and the heaven opened above him.

One feature of Stephen's address may be appropriately mentioned in this connection. In his brief outline of the history of the nation, he says, " our fathers," associating himself with the nation as a matter of fact; but when bringing home the charge against them at the close, he significantly changes the pronoun, and says," As your fathers did, so do ye," – that is, he takes his place outside the nation, who were the religious people of the earth, the chosen people of God. He goes forth to Jesus, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. Immediately he beholds the opened heavens-the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

This we find it hard to do-to give up what we have been brought up in, and which has become as it were a part of ourselves. So Samuel found it hard to give up king Saul, and yet the one after God's heart is soon persecuted and hated by Saul, the self-righteous misuser of power, while the true king is an outcast in rejection. So Paul found it hard to give up Jerusalem, and yet Jerusalem had crucified the Lord, and scattered His lowly followers, and had the brand of Cain. So Abraham found it hard to give up Ishmael and Hagar, and yet Ishmael was a mocker of the son of promise, and Hagar was of Egypt, the country that was to set itself up against God, to keep the promised seed from liberty and groaning in bondage.

Abraham, Samuel, Paul, cling to that which proves to be enmity against God,-and with devout religious intent, and themselves true children of God. Alas for the best of men in themselves! How utterly should we distrust ourselves and our feelings and attachments, religious and otherwise, and diligently seek grace that we may not be deceived, but be ready to forsake all and follow Christ-to go forth to Him again and again if called to-from that which tends to cluster round us and more or less to shut out Christ (Rev. 3:20) while bearing His name!

Such the suggestions of the term "begotten again" to the living hope of the inheritance in heaven.

In comparing the first epistle with the second, we find in the first the Father's government of His children, judging without respect of persons (1:17); judgment in the house of God (4:17); and in the second, God's judgment of the world-of the ungodly. Therefore in the first epistle the flood is mentioned as a type of salvation (" saved by water "), and in the second as a type of judgment ("the world . . overflowed with water, perished"), and used as a premonition of " the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

So also in the second,-excepting the reference to the testimony of Christ on the mount, the name of the Father is not mentioned:it is " God " and "the Lord." E. S. L.

(To be continued.)

A WITNESS for God is the most uncompromising man on the face of the earth. He never lowers the flag. He never adapts his testimony to altered circumstances. General unfaithfulness only nerves him-braces him up to a more complete surrender to his Master's interests. No surrender of the truth is ever thought of. He 'may die, death alone being the check to the course and testimony of the witness, but he will never sacrifice one iota of his testimony. He is a man who counts not his life dear to him if he may but finish his course with joy. A witness is essentially a martyr, the word for both being the same in the Greek. " God, and His glory!" is his watchword. Would you be a faithful witness for God-another Antipas, "one against all"? Then you may have to seal your testimony with your blood, as Stephen in the midst of religious Israel, or Antipas amongst the professing people of God. (Acts 7:and Rev. 2:13.) A true servant of God never defends his character-that the Lord takes care of-and woe be to the man who wantonly takes liberties with the character and ways of God's witness. He enters into a controversy with God, as Num. 12:solemnly intimates. A witness for God is a man who meekly bears reproach, suffering, and distress, but is consumed-yea, burns when the glory of his Master is in question (Ex. 32:). May the Lord lead to increased and unswerving faithfulness to the Master and His mission.

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION 4-22

PART I. Introductory.

(i) Prophecies leading up to these.

Our title to the following pages indicates our adherence in some sense to the interpretation of the book of Revelation which makes the body of it-the nineteen chapters upon which we are entering-apply to what is still for us future. Those who so apply it, whatever differences in detail there may be among them, are on this account called "futurists," in contrast with the large school of " Presentists" or " Historicalists," who find in it a progressive history of the Church from the beginning, and interpret it naturally by that history.

They are usually and strongly opposed to one another, as might be expected, although there is no necessary opposition in the views themselves. Both may be held, and have been held together, by some who hold that there is an incipient, real, though incomplete fulfillment of divine prophecy, as well as a final exhaustive one; the first being often an assurance and help to the meaning of the latter. And this I accept for myself as at least generally true, and true in the case before us, and that (to use the words of another) "they are both alike practically wrong who have slightingly rejected the one or the other [application], and thus respectively deprived the Church of each."

But while I thus would keep in mind and seek to profit by this double interpretation, the latter is what I desire, as God may enable me, to develop and insist upon, and this for more reasons than one, but especially just because it is that which is alone complete and final, and still lying in the future for us; whereas the historical interpretation occupies us largely with the past,-a past still fruitful for us assuredly, but less full of personal appeal. This will indeed be questioned, and it is not yet the time to answer the question.

Clearly the first point now is to prove, if it can be proved, the futurity of the fulfillment of the prophecies which we are to examine,-that such fulfillment is required by the inspired language of the book itself, and by a comparison with other Scripture. This ascertained, we can look better at objections which have been made to it, and realize also the profit of what is to engage us.

The first principle to be got hold of is that given us by the apostle Peter, that " no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20). It is prophecy that is in question here, not, all Scripture, as the Romanists would apply it. But also "private interpretation" is literally "its own interpretation." No single prophecy must be read alone,-as if it stood apart from the rest; but in connection with the whole plan of it in the Word. " For prophecy came not in old time by the will of man,"-is not therefore the expression of the many minds of men; "but holy men of God spake as the ' were moved by the Holy Ghost:"-there is One perfect mind throughout it.

Now the violation of this will be found to be largely the cause of the failure of expositors. They neglect a rule which the apostle emphasizes as of first importance -"knowing this first." It is comparatively easy to find some plausible application of a single passage; it is quite another thing to make this fit with a general prophetic-testimony. Comparison of passage with passage on this subject is what we are invited and compelled to therefore, if we would have truth instead of theory, realized certainty rather than conjecture. What we hold must be tested and retested by the application of similar Scripture, so that at least " in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word" may "be established."

Moreover, it will be plainly of importance to find some comprehensive prophecy connecting itself with some fixed point, or points, on Scripture, with which others may be then securely connected. Such prophecies we may find again and again in the book of Daniel, a book in the closest relation also to the book of Revelation, as all expositors of whatever school are agreed absolutely. Turn we, then, in the first place, to the second of Daniel.

We have here Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the four Gentile empires under the symbol of a great image, which is brought to an end by the sudden descent of a stone cut without hands out of a mountain; the stone becoming then a great mountain which fills the whole earth. This stone is interpreted for us as the kingdom of God, which is seen thus in victorious opposition to the kingdoms of the world, suddenly and totally destroying them. It is after this only that it grows and fills the earth. The world-kingdoms are not pervaded or "leavened" by the kingdom of God, but run their course first, and are then at once destroyed by it. This fall of the stone is one of those fixed points for which we are looking, and it is future without doubt.

In the seventh chapter the prophet has a vision of these same four empires, now seen very differently as four wild beasts, while the kingdom of God is introduced by the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven. And here it is, if possible, still more plain that this kingdom only commences with the destruction of the former ones. There is no possibility of any side by side development. Of the "little horn" of the last beast it is said :" And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws, and they shall be given unto his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time; but the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it to the end. And the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions should serve and obey Him."

Thus it is evident that the kingdom of God here is that which will be set up only when the Lord returns in the clouds of heaven; that till then the kingdoms of the Gentiles continue, and then they are once for all broken and set aside. In connection with the last beast, moreover, we have just before the end the rise of a power which shows itself a blasphemous and persecuting one, and which by this brings judgment down upon itself and the beast, or empire, with which it is connected. This horn lasts, moreover, (in this character) just three and a half prophetic times, and then the judgment sits, and his dominion is taken away.

Carrying, then, these things with us, let us now go on to the ninth chapter, a prophecy which, for intelligence in the general plan of divine wisdom, is central in importance, and, interpreting as little as we can help, let us put this in connection with what we have already seen.

It is the well-known prophecy of the seventy weeks. In it we have an answer to Daniel's confession of his sin, and the sin of his people Israel, and his supplication for the holy mountain of his God; and he is told :-

"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy."

The meaning should be plain, that at the end of seventy determined weeks. Jerusalem's transgression would be finished, and her sins would be at an end, her iniquity being purged (kapper, with the simple objective, speaks of atonement taking effect upon the object), and everlasting righteousness brought in for her; and her holy place, now desecrated, be once more anointed. At the same time vision and prophecy would be sealed up* by a fulfillment in which it would reach its end and disappear. This last statement alone is enough to show that we have to do with what is future still. "

*The figure of sealing is regarded by many interpreters in the sense of confirming, and that by filling up, with reference to the custom of impressing a seal on writing for the confirmation of its contents; and in illustration these references are given:1 Kings 21:8, and Jer. 32:10. 11, 44. But for this figurative use of the word to seal, no proof-passages are adduced from the Old Testament. Add to this that the word cannot be used here in a different sense from that in which it is used in the second passage. The sealing of the prophecy corresponds to the sealing of the transgression, and must be similarly understood." (Keil.) To "make an end of sins" is literally to "seal up sins." The words "vision" and "prophecy" (literally "prophet") Keil says, " are used in comprehensive generality for all existing prophecies and prophets. Not only the prophecies, but the prophet who gives it,- 1:e. not merely the prophet but the calling of the prophet must be sealed. Prophecies, and prophets are sealed when, by the full realization of all prophecies prophecy ceases, no prophets any more appear." (Keil on Daniel.)*

The angel goes on to give Daniel more in detail the events of these seventy weeks. "Know, therefore, and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks :the street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times."

There is no need for our purpose to inquire for the exact beginning of this time. We are not tracing exactly its fulfillment. It is enough for us that the prophecy itself assures us that at the end of sixty-nine weeks, Messiah shall come. The weeks must be weeks of years, therefore, as almost all orthodox commentators agree,- all, in fact, who recognize in them any real specification of time at all.* *Keil regards the numbers as to be symbolically interpreted, which I do not doubt, while this does not in the least affect their chronological character.* And with year-weeks the Jews were, as we know, perfectly familiar. The whole period is thus ten jubilees.

Four hundred and eighty-three years, then, from the commencement of this period Messiah comes, and but seven years remain in which the full blessing should come in. It is this which has doubtless stumbled many as to the fulfillment to Israel and Jerusalem which the first words of the angel yet so clearly promise. Startling it is to have to recognize a break of over eighteen centuries in a period of time which seems so strictly defined. The next verse, however, prepares us for this, and accounts for it. Messiah comes to His own, and His own receive Him not. Thus the blessing is delayed, although, of course, the purposes of God are unrepenting.

" And after the threescore and two weeks"-as the Hebrew reads,-" shall Messiah be cut off, and shall hare nothing:" so rightly the margin and the R. V. give. Instead of reception by a willing people, He finds rejection and a cross, does not therefore yet receive the promises. The city is not restored, but desolated :" And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." All agree here that there is the destruction of the city by the Romans; most, therefore, assume that Titus is the " prince that shall come," but against this there are many reasons. For why in this case should the people be mentioned at all ? Would it not be enough to say that the prince shall destroy-it being a matter of course that it would be through his people? Is it not plain that while the people and the prince are both emphasized for us, it is the people alone that are said to do this, only they are the people of the prince that shall come?

What importance attaches to Titus that he should be given this prominence, and in so concise a prophecy, in which every word seems measured out with greatest economy? Certainly no where else does he appear at all. Why, too, the " prince that shall come " ? against the city ?but this would be strange tautology for the word of God ! Of course if he were a leader of the host he would come against the city. 'But the expression is the very one which would be used to point out some great person predicted to arise, of whom Daniel had heard before.

But there is another mark attached to this person:"And his end shall be in tin:Hood." Here our common version has indeed " the end thereof." But the end of what then ? Not of the destruction of the city ? Not of the city, for this is feminine in Hebrew, and would not agree with the pronoun. Not of the sanctuary, which could not be detached from the city in this way. Moreover, the article with flood-" the flood," as it should be- speaks again of some definite and known catastrophe. The whole passage is to be regarded as some relative clause, and connected with "shall come:" "the people of the prince that shall come and find his destruction in the flood." (Keil.)

This, of course, it is impossible to apply to Titus. Let us see how it does, in fact, apply.

The "people of the prince that shall come" we know historically as the Romans; the fourth beast or empire of the seventh chapter, it is conceded by the mass of interpreters; and susceptible of the most abundant proof, was also Roman. And now, looking at the prophetic history of the empire, surely it is not difficult to recognize in the little horn, whose actions bring judgment upon the beast, the prince that shall come whose end is in the flood. The closing statements in the chapter seem as if they should make doubt as to this really impossible.

We return for a moment, however, to what characterizes the rest of the period. The R. V. renders it well :"And even unto the end shall be war; desolations shall be determined."

The last verse of the prophecy now gives us in connection with the doings of this little horn the last of the seventy weeks:"And he shall confirm a covenant with the many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease; and on account of the wing of abominations there shall be a desolator; even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate."
I have made in the translation some small and yet important alterations, which will be justified as we proceed. The first point to notice is that the last week is here divided in half, and that a half week of years-three and a half years-gives us another link which seems decisive with the history of the little horn. For "a time, times, and the dividing of a time" are times and laws given into the hands of this blasphemous and persecuting power, and here he causes sacrifice and oblation to cease for what is evidently this very period. This surely is a striking example of how times and laws have been given into his hands. And as the whole seventy weeks are determined upon Israel and Jerusalem, we see that the sacrifices must have been restored there. This naturally carries us back to the previous clause :" He shall confirm a covenant with the many for one week." It is not the covenant but a covenant:the definite article, misplaced here, has made people think of God's covenant with His people, and thus given aid to a false conception of its being Messiah that confirms it. But the antecedent to the pronoun "he" is certainly "the prince that shall come" as every other mark points in the same direction. On the other hand the article does stand before " many," making it "the many,"- 1:e., the mass of the Jewish people. The covenant becomes thus a political agreement with the mass of the Jewish nation for seven years; but in the week he breaks it, changes times and laws, and his tyranny begins.

Why he makes sacrifices and oblation to cease is easily seen from the seventh chapter. Every detail fits in the most exact way possible. The little horn speaks great words against the Most High, and wears out the saints of the Most High. It is as sacrifice to God that he stops the Jewish service. And in perfect agreement we read here:"And on account of the wing of abominations there shall be a desolator." This is quite literal, as our common version is not. The R V. differs from it by translating "upon the wing," which is the more usual rendering of the pronoun, my own being simply the equivalent of "for" in that with which we are familiar, " For the protection of idols" is, I do not doubt, the sense sufficiently. A desolator comes in consequence of idolatry introduced, and this lasts until the decreed time expires-until the full end of the seventy weeks.

Notice another point where the seventh chapter not only confirms but explains the ninth. We have seen that the latter declares that at the end of the determined time the blessing comes for Israel. But the details of the seventy weeks show nothing but disaster and evil, right down to their expiration. How the blessing comes it does not show; but this the seventh chapter already supplies. The horn prevails against the saints for the three and a half times or years of either prophecy; but this is "till the Ancient of Days" comes (5:22), which in a moment changes all. Let the reader only turn to Zech. 14:, and see how, in the very midst of Israel's distress, the Lord appears :" For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city." And why? "Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as when He fought in the day of battle. And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, …. and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee."

We see, then, how, as in a moment, the desolation ends. There is entire harmony thus far, and this in itself is one of the most convincing arguments for the truth of that which unites and harmonizes these different statements. But we have not yet completed the review of Daniel's testimony, for in the final prophecy (chap, 10:-12:) we have what again in the clearest way supplements and confirms what has been gathered from the previous ones. We take it indeed from the long prophetic history with which it is connected, as yet not able even to glance at this, but trusting to the clearness of its own evidence for the relation it bears to what we have just been looking at:-

" And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate" (chap. 11:31).

"And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore by Him that liveth forever that it shall be for a time, times and a half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.

" And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand, two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand, three hundred and five and thirty days. But go thou thy way until the end be, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days" (chap. 12:7, "-13).

Here it is clear that we have an equal period to the time, times and a half, if taken as three and a half years, as we have already taken them;* that first thirty and then forty-five days more are added successively to this period; the twelve hundred and ninety days date from the setting up of the abomination, and therefore we may conclude that the twelve hundred and sixty also do this; and that at the end of the longest period Daniel stands in his lot, implying surely that the resurrection of the saints has taken place. *The year, of course, is to be calculated according to the Jewish reckoning at 360 days.* Thus all of these dates are connected with the end as were the former ones-with the coming of the Lord, and the setting up of His kingdom.

And the taking away the daily sacrifice and setting up the abomination of desolation which is connected with these dates, interprets clearly the causing sacrifice and oblation to cease, and the desolation on account of the wing of abomination, of the ninth chapter. It is a confirmation of what has already been our conclusion from the previous prophecy alone, which one may well believe irresistible to any unprejudiced mind. And yet it is far from all that Scripture has to give us with regard to a period to which evidently it attaches the very greatest importance.

( To be continued.)