(Continued from page 12.)

In looking at the application of leprosy in a house to the local assembly, the first thing to remark is that the "owner of the house," is clearly a type of Christ. It is He who by His Spirit produces in the souls of those who seek subjection to the word of God, a sense of a condition of things not in accordance with the Word. But there must be no hasty judgment. Christ in us, like Joshua of old, is dependent on Eleazar-that is, on the exercise of the priestly service of Christ in heaven. The "owner of the house" telling "the priest" speaks of this dependence. There is to be no dealing, even with evil, apart from this priestly work-no having to do with it in independency of Him in whose blessed hands God has put all the affairs of His beloved people.

If there is this dependence upon the priestly service of Christ, there will be due consideration of the spiritual state of all in the assembly in undertaking to deal with the evil. The priest was to "command that they empty the house before the priest go into it" to inspect it. There should be no unnecessary occupation with the evil-no hasty publication of it, no occupying the minds and hearts of the saints with it-without regarding their ability to have to do with it, and endeavoring to protect them from contamination and infection with the evil. This speaks of the need of the ministry of the Word by which a suited spiritual condition of soul shall be maintained or established.

This done, the evil of which there is suspicion can then be investigated:"And afterward the priest shall go in to see the house."

But in investigating the matter there is need for the same patient care that we have seen was enjoined in all the other cases of leprosy. It should be manifest whether it is a real case of evil. There should be no procedure to judgment on what is merely suspicion, or on a matter that has not been made perfectly clear, so that any conscience enlightened by the word of God will be clear about it. It must be manifest that it is a real case of present activity of evil.

If now this is ascertained through priestly exercise, (the ministry of the mind of Christ, of His attitude towards the evil) the next question is, Is the evil merely local-that is, in some individual, or a few individuals? Or, is it fundamental-that is, is it in the constitution of the house? Does it permeate and characterize the assembly, or is it characteristic of some individuals only? To ascertain this the first step is to deal with the individuals in whom the evil seems to be-the centers and sources of it-the persons who seem to be this. The command of the priest was to be, "Take away the stones in which the plague is." This, put into New Testament language, is, "Put away from among yourselves that wicked person."The character of the holiness of God, who dwells by His Spirit in the house of God, is such that no profane person can be owned as being proper material for that house. It is not merely that the person is to be rebuked, or put under discipline, or even denied the privilege of breaking bread. He is to be put "into an unclean place," which means much more than all this that we have spoken of. It means that, as characterized by the evil manifestly working in him, he is unfit material for a place in God's dwelling. He is to be denied all Christian fellowship. Liars, railers, blasphemers, and such like persons are not Christians. If a believer be such, it is not his profession that constitutes him a Christian in practice. Even he must be "put away," denied all Christian fellowship, treated as unfit for Christian intercourse. For those who heartily submit to the claims of divine holiness, his place is the "unclean place without the city,"-that is the place of judgment.

Having put away from among ourselves the individuals in whom the evil seemed to center, it devolves in us next to seek to remove the effects of the presence of evil. Submission to the priestly exercise of Christ will result in what is typified by "scraping the house within" and "pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an unclean place." This will be solemn work, yet necessary and whole-some. There will be need of freeing ourselves, by conformity to the claims of the word of God, from all the influence that an evil that has been among us has wielded over us. We have not done all when we have put away the wicked person. Exercise of conscience, examination of heart in the light of the truth should not end here, but go on still. Alas! how general is the failure here! May the Lord stir us up to covet not only the removal of the wicked from among us, but deliverance also from the dust of wickedness-the unholy effects of its presence.

Getting thus into conformity with the mind of Christ as to what is suited material for the house of God, we will be able to maintain the claims of divine holiness. As those who are co-builders with God we will maintain the true character of His dwelling-place. "Stones" and "mortar" of divine formation (that is, those in whom, by the power of the Spirit through the word of God, the Christian character is formed) will be the material which we will regard as alone suited for the construction of God's house. The thought underlying our work as builders "together with Him " will be, The '' temple of the Lord " is not to be defiled.

But suppose now after all this effort to remove the evil, and remedy the effect of its presence, the evil again breaks out, and it turns out that the trouble is not merely local or in some individuals, but in the fundamental construction of the assembly, what then is to be done? We are still dependent on the priestly activity of Christ. When the priest found the plague broke out again he was told he must "break down" the house and "carry " all the material of it "out of the city into an unclean place." An assembly manifestly wrongly constituted, characterized by evil, the plague of evil being not simply in individuals, but in the constitution of the assembly itself, has no title to be owned as an assembly of God. Submission to the priestly service of Christ, by which we come into conformity with Him in His thoughts about such an assembly, will lead us to disown it, as representing the house of God in the locality where it is. To those whose thoughts are formed by the mind of Christ it will be a profane thing, and to be treated as such.

But some one says, Where is there any scripture for judging or cutting off an assembly? I answer, here it is in Lev. 14:45. It may be said, Oh, that is an Old Testament scripture, and does not apply. Well, the Lord and the apostles again and again used Old Testament scriptures to enforce New Testament doctrine. Following their example I do not hesitate to use the above passage in the way I have done. But further, we are told that Old Testament Scripture "is profitable" for us, was "written for our admonition," and this shows that even what is written about leprosy in a house has some application which is true and good for the present time. If we are able to gather what the application is, then we may legitimately use the passage in enforcing the application. If the application is right according to the mind of the Spirit, then the passage applied is authoritative, and demands our submission as to what has upon it the stamp of divine authority. It will be said, perhaps, the cutting off of assemblies is not taught in the New Testament, and cannot there-fore be New Testament doctrine. But is it not taught in the New Testament? Does not the apostle tell us to follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of an unmixed (Greek) heart (2 Tim. 2:22)? If then the unmixed heart ceases to characterize an assembly; if, while professing to be an assembly of God, it is characterized by unholiness, and is thus condemned by the word of God, how can I be obedient to Scripture unless I judge it or cut it off ? Is my hand tied to evil because it is an assembly, instead of an individual? Must I own in an assembly evil I condemn in an individual? Is not such an assembly a vessel to dishonor from which I am to separate? It is scriptural . then to cut off assemblies, if they become characterized by a plague of evil-to treat them as profane.

There are yet other lessons to be noticed. Even necessary occupation with evil in an assembly is defiling."He that goeth into the house all the while " that it is under inspection defiles himself. From this defilement even the priest, it would seem, could not escape. It was defilement which lasted only till the even. Spiritually, when occupation with evil is over, and there, is return to the rest that returning occupation with the word of God gives, the defilement passes away. If going into the house while it was under inspection was defiling, how much more "lying" in it, or "eating" in it! The defilement in the two latter cases, however, was of a different character."Lying"and "eating"in the house would seem to express a certain measure of fellowship with what is at least suspicious. It suggests the thought of carelessness about evil, if not of open opposition to what is being done to bring it to light. How much of this there is. It is plain that here we have the symbols of improper conduct in connection with an evil that is being inquired into. To. clear one's self of this, the clothes must be washed. One's conduct in connection with an assembly that is under inspection needs to be brought into the light of the word of God, and its judgment of it submitted to. May we all have grace for it!

How all this instruction with regard to leprosy solemnizes the soul. God is plainly impressing on our minds that holiness becomes His presence. He would have His people in the constant sense of it Let us hear His appeal to us to care for and guard the holiness of His name. C. Crain

(To be continued.)

"Truth and power are related to each other, both as to order and importance, as cause is to" effect. Truth the cause, power the effect. But today Christians want power without truth; and while resorting to all sorts of contrivances to obtain the former, they neglect and despise the latter. The religious press is daily pouring forth articles and books on Paths to Power, Secret of Power, Talks on Power, etc , which, in the majority of cases, are nothing more than a mere relation of anecdotes from the writer's experience, and exhibit but little knowledge of God's revealed purposes."
Selected

(First published about 1870; by F. W. G.)

THIRD LETTER.

Dear brother:-Having already taken up in some measure the subject of the Lord's Table, it is natural to go on to think a little of the Lord's Supper that solemn and precious remembrance of Christ Himself which puts us in the right attitude, if it be real with us, for looking at other things. It thus, as you will probably have noticed, precedes, in the epistle to the Corinthians, the whole question of gifts and of their exercise, and even of membership in the body of Christ. With our eyes really on Him, we are in communion, and competent to entertain these questions.

And therefore the great importance of seeing clearly, in the first place, the object and character of that great central meeting which gives its character to all other meetings. It is described for us in simple and familiar style in the Acts, but so as to show us what, in the mind of Christians, was its primary object:"On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread." As the Passover had changed for Israel the order of the months, and the year must begin with the sign of accomplished redemption, so, for Christians, time must begin its reckoning with the joyful celebration of the love that has visited them. On the first day, therefore, they came together to "break bread." It does not say, as we sometimes hear, "to a worship meeting." Worship, no doubt, they would; but that was not what was present to their minds. It was their Lord who was before them-Him of whom that bread spoke. So in i Cor. 11::'' When ye come together into one place, this is not "-it was a rebuke because their way of doing it destroyed its meaning -"this is-not to eat the Lord's Supper."

The purpose of coming together should be distinctly before our minds. We must be simple in it. In two opposite ways this simplicity may be destroyed, and the character of the meeting be lowered and souls suffer. Let us spend a little time in the consideration of this.

In the first place, when we come together, after six days of warfare in the world (would that it were always spiritual warfare, and that we realized the world as an enemy's country simply), we are apt to come full of our spiritual needs, to be recruited and refreshed. We may not use the term, but still the idea in the Lord's Supper to us thus will be that it is a "means of grace." We bring jaded spirits and unstrung energies to a meeting where we trust the weariness will be dispelled and the lassitude recovered from. We come to be ministered to and helped. We require the character of it to be soothing and comforting, speaking much of grace and quieting our overdone nerves for another week before us, in which we know too surely that we shall go through the same course exactly, and come back next Lord's day as weary as before, with the same need and thought of refreshment, with the same self, in fact, as an object, and scarcely Christ at all, or Christ very much as a means to an end, and not Himself the end.

This is the evil of this state of things-Christ is not in any due sense before the soul, but our need, which He is to be the means of supplying. No doubt there is a measure of truth in this view of the Lord's Supper. Can we come ever to Him without finding refreshment from the coming ? Does He not, blessed Lord, delight to serve us ? Do not the bread and wine speak of refreshment ministered- "wine that maketh glad the heart of man, . . . and bread which strengtheneth man's heart?" Has He not spread us here a table in the wilderness ? a table in the very presence of our enemies ? Is not His language still, "Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved ? "

Surely all this is true. But true as it is, it is not this that gathers us. "To show the Lord's death" -has not this deeper meaning ? Are not His own words, "Do this"-not for the satisfaction of your own need, not for the recruiting of your own strength, but-in remembrance of Me? " Thus this sacramental use of Christ, as I may term it (common as it really is, alas, among those who think that they have outgrown sacraments) essentially lowers the whole thought of the Lord's Supper. The remembrance of Christ is something more and other than what I get by the remembrance; something more than "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ," although in this secondary way indeed His body and blood may be remembered in the sacrament.

The purposed end is not, moreover, attained in this way. Of course, I do not mean to deny that Christ is gracious, and meets us oftentimes in unexpected ways. Sovereign He is, and beyond expression gracious. Still, if our blessing flows from the apprehension of Christ, how will such apprehension of Him as this shows ensure a blessing ? If we make ourselves our object, will that be a blessing ? What honor has Christ, and what place, in all this ? And what must be the character of meetings to which languid and wayworn souls come, seeking a stimulating cordial to return to what seems only too sadly indicated to be the main business of their lives ?

We may have to approach this subject from another side. Let us look now, however, at the other way in which our souls may be tempted from the simplicity of the remembrance of Christ.

Scripture does not speak of a " worship meeting:" it does not, of course, then, style the meeting to break bread this. The term may be used very innocently, I do not at all doubt; nor do I in the least oppose the thought that the atmosphere, so to speak, of the Lord's Table will be "worship." "In His temple doth every one speak of His glory." But we have need to guard against an abuse of this also-no imaginary, but a frequent one.

When we look at the worship of heaven, in that picture which so often tempts our eyes in Rev. 5:, it is the simple presence of the Lamb slain that calls out the adoration of those elders, in whom some of us have learned to recognize our representatives. Worship, with them, was no arranged, premeditated thing, but the pouring out of hearts that could not be restrained in the presence of Him who had redeemed them to God by His blood. And here is the mistake on our parts, when we think we can make worship a matter of prearrangement, while it is, in fact, a thing dependent upon another thing, and that the true remembrance of the Lord.

We can recognize the fact that in this thought we have a very different and a much truer one than in that which makes the motive to come to the Lord's table a motive of mere self-interest. Still, the mistake often leads to a similar result-that the very thing we are seeking becomes an impossibility. Worship itself becomes a legal claim, which, as such, we cannot render. We are in the presence of ourselves, not of the Lord, and the result is a strained and artificial service, painfully reaching out after an ideal which is quite beyond it, and robbed of power and naturalness.

Thus there will be blessing on the one hand and worship on the other in proportion as our eyes are taken off ourselves and fixed upon the object which both ministers the one and calls forth the other. Blessing there will be; for how can the sight of Him do otherwise than bless ? And worship there will be; for this is the true and spontaneous response of heart to the sight of One who, being Son of God, yet loved us, and gave Himself for us. The great point pressed, therefore, in Scripture, is discernment-remembrance- "This do in remembrance of Me.!' "Ye do show the Lord's death." "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." Earnestly, affectionately, solemnly, is this pressed, as the pith and essence of the whole matter.

Of course, we are not to forget that while our eyes look back upon the Lamb slain, it is from the hither side of His resurrection that we contemplate this. " The first day of the week " speaks of resurrection out of death, and gives Him back to us in all the reality of a living person. While we remember His death, we do it in the glad knowledge of His resurrection, and with the Lord Himself in our midst. Who could celebrate the Lord's death but for this ? who could sound a note of praise, did He not Himself first raise it? as He says, "In the midst of the Church will I give praise unto Thee." No specter- as the astonished disciples thought-not conquered of the grave, but Conqueror, Himself with us-this alone turns the most calamitous sorrow into exulting joy. Death, but death passed, do we celebrate; death which, thus seen, is only the depths of a living love which we carry with us, unexhausted, inexhaustible; unfathomed and unfathomable.

" Lo ! the tokens of His passion,
Though in glory, still He bears ;
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshipers."

"A Lamb as it had been slain" is the object of the elders' worship. The Living One bears with Him forever the memorials of His blessed death. The Cross is not only atonement effected for us, but the bright and blessed display of God manifest in Christ, and for us, in every attribute displayed.

One more letter relating to this subject will, D. V., be published in the next number of help and food.

I want to get before our hearts, beloved brethren, if I can, distinctly and clearly, what the interests of the Lord Jesus Christ are upon this earth today. We need to be clear about it; for if we don't know what His interests are, and where they center, we cannot act, individually or collectively, consistently with those interests and in suitability to Him. Scripture tells us that God loved the world:'' For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). I'm sure we are all familiar with and delight in that blessed truth. It lets us see where the love of God was centered. God loved the world. It is not some special individuals in the world, but the world itself-the world, looked at in its concrete form-the whole world. It takes in all, and shuts out none.

Then, for the display of that love, and the carrying out of the purposes of God's heart, the Lord Jesus came down here saying, " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God; " and by His one perfect offering of Himself on the cross, He glorified God about the whole question of sin, and opened up a righteous channel for God to act consistently with all that He is in Himself, and take poor sinners into favor and give them a new life and nature and eternal blessings with Himself. All that is very blessed indeed, and our hearts know it in some little measure, thank God. We have learned how He has satisfied His own heart in the way He has taken to satisfy ours, and we have found our rest in it. It says, "God so loved the world." It never says Christ loved the world. Nor does it say God loved the Church. It says, "Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." If we want to know what are Christ's interests to-day, where the circle of His interests lies today, we have the answer in this beautiful passage before us-it is the Church. The Lord thinks everything of the Church. The circle of His interests all centers there. He loved it, and gave Himself for it. He is engaged in active service on high to day on behalf of it, and He is going to take it to glory to be with Himself by and by, and then bring it back and display it in all the brightness and splendor of His own glory, with which He will adorn it, when it will shine forth as the Holy City, New Jerusalem, having the glory of God-the Bride, the Lamb's wife.

It is an immense thing for our souls to get hold of that, and find ourselves in the p6wer of it:especially is it needful for those who are young in the truth and ways of the Lord. It is a great thing for us all to see that the affections of the Lord's heart flow out at the present time to His Church, and not to the world. The second psalm says, "Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession." But the Lord has not asked for that yet. He says in John 17:, " I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given Me out of the world." By and by He will ask for them, and God will give the world to Him, and as Son of Man He will possess everything. Son of Man is the widest title the Lord has, and as such He will possess and reign over all things.

In connection with His love, there is a very beautiful passage in John 14:, last verse:"But that the world may know that I love the Father," etc. You see He is in the fullest fellowship with the mind of His Father, and He goes forth to accomplish His will and prove to the world that He loved His Father. And how did He prove it ? He said, "Arise, let us go hence;" and He went to the cross, and there laid down His life; and thus, in the very sorrows and agonies of death itself, He proved His perfect obedience, and devotedness, and love, to His Father.
Then there is another view of it which we had before us already:"The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me " (Gal. 2:20). Here it is seen in its individual character. We are each privileged to say it; and how blessed to be able to say it! "The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me." That is how it is seen, told out to each one of us; in going down into death itself-nothing short of it-in order to meet and put away forever everything that was against us, and thus win the affections of our hearts by that marvelous revelation of the love of His own heart.

But what we have in Eph. 5:is neither His Father, nor individuals; it is the Church. "Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." It is the Church as a whole, and His love is seen in the same blessed way; never stopping short of death-"He gave Himself for it." Blessed Savior!

We have another picture of it-you remember it, perhaps-in that beautiful passage in Matt. 13:45, 46. A certain merchantman was seeking goodly pearls. And "when he had found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it."It was just one pearl! But He knew its value! How wonderful to think of the Lord selling all that He had to buy it! That is just another way of reading, "Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it!"The pearl is the Church; it is the one thing of value to Him, and all His affection and interests center in it. He will have other interests on earth by and by; but meanwhile they center in the Church. The Church had its commencement, as we were seeing this afternoon, on the day of Pentecost-that was its birthday. Of course, there were saints prior to that. There were saints from Abel downwards, but they do not form any part of the Church. It is formed by the Holy Spirit indwelling each individual and uniting us to each other land to Christ the Head in heaven. It is "the Church which is His Body" (Eph. i, 33);and which will be displayed as His Bride in the day of glory (Rev. 21:).He gave Himself for it. He is sanctifying and cleansing it. He will present it to Himself by and by, and it will be the object of His love for ever and ever. All His interests center in it, and every one has to get to know that in his own soul, so that we may come into the power and enjoyment of it. I cannot be in the power or the joy of it, if I don't know it. How gracious of the Lord to make it known to us, in order that we may be in His mind about it!

It is a sorrowful fact that the majority of the Lord's people have not the slightest idea about it. If you doubt it, talk with them. You will soon see they know nothing about it. They simply say, "He saved my soul, and I'm going to be in heaven when I die. " And I say, Thank God for that! That is a great thing to be able to say! Some will add, " And now we must work for God, and do all we can to get others saved." Very blessed thing, surely! But is there nothing more than that ? Surely there is; and He would have us in communion with Himself about that which lies nearest His heart, and thus be able to act intelligently and consistently with it.

It may be objected, Surely the Lord died for more than the Church. Does Scripture not say He tasted death for every man? Certainly it does. "He tasted death for every man." We cannot be too clear as to the extent, the far-reaching extent, of the death of Christ. There is such value in the blood of Christ that it gives God title to bless all men. But we know, alas, that all men will not be blessed- many refuse it. It is only those who receive Christ that find the blessing; and it is they who constitute the Church; and it is that Church that He loved and gave Himself for. That is the pearl of great price; and however much it may be tarnished and encrusted with sin, He is going to make it just what His loving heart would have it-all He wants it to be; and then present it to Himself in all the glory He can put upon it and clothe it in, to be with Him in His Father's house forever. Is it not wonderful!
Then we have the way He takes in order that His thoughts about it may be accomplished. He has "given gifts to men " (Eph. 4:8); "set some in the Church" (i Cor. 12:), and for the benefit of the Church. "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." He has made the fullest provision for it so long as it is here. The evangelist goes and gets the stones out of the quarry, and the pastor and teacher square them and fit them into their place. Thus there is the Spirit guiding and controlling, so that every member of the body, and every joint and band, adds its share to the building up and edifying of itself in love. Nothing is left to human wisdom to invent as an improvement on the divine plan. Christ is the Head of His body, and He by His Spirit guides every member of it, and knows just what is needed so long as it is here in the place of need.

Thank God, there are some to be found who have grasped the truth, and seek to answer to the mind of the Lord, and are acting on these divine principles. We do not say we are the Church:we must never be so presumptuous nor so foolish as to say such a thing. We are a testimony to the ruin of the Church and in the midst of that ruin are seeking to carry out the principles flowing out of what it is; and we find the favor and blessing of the Lord in doing that. We seek to be in fellowship with the mind and heart of Christ; and if we seek souls, it is that they may be added to the Church. If we meet saints, we seek to instruct them with a view to their intelligently apprehending their place in the Church and acting consistently with it. We do not seek to restore anything, but in His presence, and according to His mind, seek to act with Him and for Him.

Just a word or two more. What is it the Lord has before Him in the future ? He is going to present the Church to Himself, "a glorious Church; not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but holy, and without blemish." Is not that a precious thought ? It lets us see who He is. Who could do that but a divine person ? Alas, there are many spots upon the Church just now-the marks and defilements of the journey and our failures in it. Then, there will be no spot. Wrinkles are the signs of trouble, and care, and worry, and old age. Just think, dear brethren, the Lord is going to present us to Himself without a trace of any of these! He will have no spot, no wrinkle, no furrow, on the brow of His Bride when He presents her to Himself. Blessed, precious Lord!

Yes, we are to be the true Eve of the last Adam. Eve was not presented to Adam as his body, but as his bride and wife; and while we are the body of Christ, we are to be presented to Himself, and by Himself, as His Bride; and we are to share with Him not only all His loving heart can give to us, but delight ourselves in viewing glories that are peculiarly His own, and because they are His own.

In Rev. 21:the Church is seen coming down out of heaven as the bride, the Lamb's wife, and figured as the holy city, New Jerusalem, "having the glory of God." As a light-bearer on the earth, the Church has sadly failed. The history of the seven churches in Rev. 2:and 3:makes that clear. The Church did not display Christ; nay, she glorified herself. But in the eternal state, all the blessed results of His work will be seen, and she will be seen then setting forth in every conceivable way all the perfections and glories of Christ. The light of the city is simply reflected light, and every precious stone that sets it forth is but different views of His glory. He is everything, and shines forth in all. May our hearts enter into it more fully, dear brethren, and live in the power of it, thus answering here and now to His heart, for His glory and praise. W. Easton
New Zealand

Love is the charm of God's holy book, as it will be our greatest wonder in eternal glory.

Its grand design, its matchless methods, its final triumphs, all unite to add charm upon charm to the story which fills the pages of Holy Scripture.

Not only is the story of God's own love recorded in the Book, but examples of the love of others, illustrating or typifying it, are found in abundant and engaging variety. Let us take a rapid glance at a few of these.

It was love to Joseph that made a pilgrim of aged, crippled Jacob, as with joy he exclaimed, "I will go and see him before I die " (Gen. 45:28).

Love to Naomi made a devoted follower of Ruth the Moabitess. She said, in effect, "Her company is better than my country, with every prospect it could possibly hold out to me" (Ruth 1:11-16).

Love made Rizpah, and Miriam, and Mary Magdalene, patient, self-forgetting watchers; and this at a time when the interests of their loved ones seemed at their lowest ebb. Love made all three bold and fearless in a dark and lonely hour (2 Sam. 21:10; Ex. 2:4; John 20:ii).

Love to David made a stranger of Mephibosheth. It was as though he had said, " If I cannot reach him in the place where he has gone, my separation from the order of things from which he has been unrighteously rejected shall be as distinctly marked as I can possibly make it." (2 Sam. 19:24-30).

Love led Jonathan to self-sacrifice. "He stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David; and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle" (i Sam. 18:3, 4).

Love made the Hebrew servant a slave forever. The company of those he loved was more to him than liberty without them. "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free " (Ex.
21:5).

Then think of triumphs and rewards of love.

Jacob's eyes got a feast of satisfaction in seeing royal honors covering his beloved Joseph.

Ruth got into the royal line of God's chosen people.

Miriam saw her brother brought into royal circumstances.

Rizpah saw her sons get a royal burial.

Jonathan got royal love in return for loyal affections ; and in love David exceeded.

Mephibosheth, when David returned in peace, was restored to royal associations.
Mary Magdalene got more than all earthly royalty could bestow; she got the first interview with the Lord of glory after He had risen from the dead; and she was, there and then, entrusted with one of the most wonderful communications that were ever listened to by human ears:"My Father-your Father; My God-your God." In seeking Him she got, like Miriam, a joyful message for those dear to Him.

Then Paul seemed, well-nigh, to compass them all.

Like Miriam, he watched with tenderest affection over those who belonged to the absent One, who loved both them and him (i Thess. 2:7, 8).

Like Mary Magdalene, he was entrusted with marvelous revelations for Christ's brethren (2 Cor. 12:7), and by special revelation it was part of his service, under inspiration, to "complete the word of God "(Col. 1:25).

Like Jacob, his desire was to depart and be with the One he loved, whose desires were towards him (Phil. 1:23).

Like Mephibosheth, he regarded the world as crucified to him, and he to the world (Gal. 6:14).

Like Jonathan, he counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Him to whom he owed everything-"Christ Jesus, my Lord" (Phil, 3:8).

Like the Hebrew servant, he was glad for the sake of others to remain here the bond-slave of Jesus Christ. He loved his Master. His heart went out in earnest for all God's saints, many of them his children in the gospel.

"To abide in the flesh is more needful for you," he wrote to the Philippians. "And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith, that your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:24-26).

This too had its present special reward. Paul's great comfort in the prison at Rome was the sense of having the Lord's company and support (2 Tim. 4:17).

All this was the fruit of responsive love. Behind it all was "the love of Christ that passeth knowledge"-the love that "constraineth us."

The love of Christ is the power behind all that He has done for us, and behind all that we have ever done, or ever shall do, acceptably to Himself. Oh, to know that love better! Oh that it may make its own peculiar world-convincing mark upon every reader! Geo. C.

"Beware of Hypocrisy." Why should we use hypocrisy? We are no more than what we are before God, and sooner or later God manifests us before men.

It is edifying to consider how the familiar references to the Old Testament in the New Testament take for granted that "the Scripture " is the word of God; and that it is the very air that faith breathes, and the food on which faith lives, and its light amid darkness. " It is written " put Satan to flight; it was the Lord's weapon against him.

"Take, my brethren, the prophets," says James, "who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of ten- der mercy." Thus Scripture refers to Scripture as what cannot be gainsaid – as a living reality – and something we are supposed to know, and to submit to. The "prophets" are living realities; and so is Job and his wonderful history:just as any well instructed child in a Christian family to-day, or in a Sunday-school, is taught and becomes happily acquainted with these precious sacred histories and teachings as the sure word of God.

" What saith the Scripture," Paul says, as we say, What says "the Book," that is, the Bible? "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). This one verse is enough for faith The same God speaks in Genesis who speaks in Romans. It settles the great question of eternal moment for the whole world – for all time – the one way of approach to God is by faith. Genesis 15:6 says so-that is enough; and the soul reposes in the word of Him '' who cannot lie."How wicked the critic who would dare to cast a shadow of doubt upon that Word :"Better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." Thus we have the believer's start marked out from the Old Testament; and we have already had before us the testing of the wilderness way, and encouragement from the example of the prophets and of Job. To this we add another quotation, setting our "hope" before us, to complete this portion of our article. "Again Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and He that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in Him shall the Gentiles trust (hope);" and then Paul adds, " Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may a-bound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost" (Rom. 15:12, 13). Thus our hope is presented, the "hope of the glory of God."In this same chapter, we learn that "whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."

We add here some more quotations, to show how full an outline of the Old Testament is contained in the references to it in the New; so that if the Old Testament were destroyed, one would have a considerable acquaintance with it by the quotations from it in the New.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews alone gives a general outline. "The worlds were framed by the word of God;" then, "Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; " "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death," and "By faith Noah …prepared an ark to the saving of his house."Then, "Abraham when he was called …went out;" and " by faith sojourned in the land of promise.""Through faith also Sarah . .. was delivered of a child when she was past age," and a multitude sprang from one who was "as good as dead."Then we have Abraham offering Isaac, and we are told that he had faith that God was able to raise him from the dead. Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and their crowning acts of faith are mentioned; and the faith of Moses' parents, and his own faith and separation from Egypt. Then Jericho is mentioned, and Rahab, and Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and David, and Samuel, and, last mentioned, "the prophets" take us on to the close of the Old Testament. And all this accompanied by comments by the Spirit of God. This is a precious consideration, that the Spirit of God should teach us in the New Testament by His own record in the Old. It is His own record all through; and so in chap. 3:7 we have, " as the Holy Ghost saith," and then follows a quotation from the Old Testament. Again and again, in Hebrews, instead of saying, "It is written," we have quotations from the Old Testament as the words of the Holy Ghost. Thus in chap. 10:15:"Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us," and then follows a quotation from the Old Testament concluding with, "and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more"-that is, this quotation from Jeremiah is the Holy Ghost's witness to us. This would have a special influence with Hebrews. It has no reference to the Spirit's witness in us, which is not presented in this epistle. What is presented is, rather, the perfect offering and the Great High Priest, and we the sons of Aaron.

In Heb. 3:the coming up out of Egypt is referred to, and the forty years in the wilderness. "For some when they had heard did provoke:howbeit not all that- came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was He grieved forty years ? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the
wilderness ?"

In Stephen's address we have mentioned Abraham's call, and reference to Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and the famine, and the oppression of Israel, and the birth of Moses, and his rejection by his brethren, and his being sent as a deliverer- a type of Christ Himself." This is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me, Him shall ye hear. This is he. . . . to whom our fathers would not obey." The tabernacle of the wilderness is mentioned, and also the fact that it was made "according to the fashion" that Moses "had seen;" a witness that accords with that of Heb. 8:5:"As Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle:for, See, saith He, that thou make all things according to the pattern shown to thee in the mount."All that is told us therefore about the tabernacle is a message from God-from heaven-as is every part of Scripture. The possession of the land under Joshua is mentioned, "the days of David" also, and his desire to build a dwelling-place for God, and how "Solomon built Him a house."Last, the prophets are referred to thus completing an outline of the Old Testament, as in Heb. 11:, already before us.

In Paul's sermon at Antioch, he passes rapidly over the calling of Israel out of Egypt, and their failure, or rather God's forbearing mercy towards them in the wilderness, and His giving them judges until Samuel the prophet, and then king Saul; and "when He had removed him, He raised up unto them David to be their king." And this is a resting point, arrived at after this rapid introductory review. The resting point is "Jesus." "Of this man's seed (of David's seed) hath God according to His promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus,"and thereafter it is the glad tidings. The rejected One is the Saviour. "God raised Him from the dead . . . and by Him all that believe are justified from all things."

Let us note the wisdom of the Spirit in this ministry out of the Old Testament Scriptures. In Stephen's farewell appeal to rejecting and unrepentant Israel we have prominently set before us the doings of the people; they rejected Joseph, and rejected Moses-a double type of the rejected Christ. Then Stephen brings home the charge, "As your fathers did, so do ye." In the previous rehearsal he had said, " Our fathers," taking his place with them in their sin; now he changes the pronoun and says, " As your fathers did, so do ye." He takes his place with Christ, outside the camp, and is stoned to death. This is the closing drama of the moral history of man. But now in Paul's address at Antioch, we are beyond the dark shadow of the history of the first man and his unchangeable enmity to God; and we have the glad tidings of the resurrection of Christ, and of forgiveness and justification by Him, for the worst of sinners. How suitable that he should pass rapidly over the early history of Israel, to arrive at the announcement of the glad tidings about Christ.

In comparing such portions of Scripture, characteristic words or phrases are interesting and instructive. In Stephen's address the phrase, "Our fathers," is prominent, and what they had done. In Paul's, God's doings are prominent, from His choosing their fathers, until He raised Jesus from the dead. In the one case, we have " the patriarchs moved with envy ' sold Joseph into Egypt," and "our fathers found no sustenance" and "so Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers;" and "another king arose" and "evil entreated our fathers." And he (Moses) supposed his brethren would have understood, but they understood not." And again,"This is he … to whom our fathers would not obey, . . . saying unto Aaron … as for this Moses . . . we wot not what is become of him." But in the other, we have, "The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers and exalted the people, . . . and . . . suffered their manners in the wilderness; and when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan . . . and after that He gave unto them judges . . . and God gave unto them Saul . . . and when He had removed him, He raised up unto them David … Of this man's seed hath God, according to His promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour," Jesus:and after speaking of His rejection and death, "but God raised Him from the dead."

The comparison is impressive and instructive:a contrast that is perfectly drawn by the hand of God
-it is the end of the Old, and the beginning of the New. In the one picture, we have the misery and wickedness of man; in the other, the glorious work of God:the Holy Spirit's ministry to us from the treasury of the Old Testament in the light of the New.

How all is bound together-the Old and the New

-as one glorious and perfect whole; bound together by indissoluble bands, as God's testimony to man- for God's glory and for blessing to man.

May we study this wonderful record with devout humility. "The humble (the 'meek' in A. V.) will He guide in judgment; the humble will He teach His way" (Psa. 25:9). E. S. L.

(Rev. 22:20.)

"Come, Lord Jesus, even now"-
Thus Thy waiting people say:
Center of their hopes art Thou;
To behold Thy face they pray.
Thy gracious promise now fulfil,
And stand again on Zion's hill.

"Even so, Lord Jesus," thus
All Thy faithful watchers cry:
In Thy love appear to us,
In Thy glory now draw nigh:
Regard this one sincere request
And make Thy presence manifest.

"Come, Lord Jesus,"-even so:
Let Thy servants hear Thy call,
For their spirits weary grow
As the shades around them fall:
"Lord Jesus, come" Thy servants say-
Let night give place to cloudless day.

" Come, Lord Jesus:" Nature needs
That which only Thou canst give:
With the Bride the Spirit pleads
For the One in whom we live:
Display at length the promised sign
And usher in the day divine.

"Come, Lord Jesus"-now appear:
End the reign of Israel's sin,
Cause their hearts Thy voice to hear,
Let their day of peace begin;
While we unto Thy promise cling
The House of Israel needs its King.

"Come, Lord Jesus "-take at length
Thine almighty power, and reign
In Thy majesty and strength.
Unto earth return again-
Yea, come! we pray with one accord,
And be by earth and heaven adored.
T. Watson

7. I AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. (Concluded,)

The threefold character of this title suggests fulness of manifestation. Christ as "the Way" is the One through-whom the Father is reached; as "the Truth," that which reveals and makes manifest-the perfect revelation of the Father. As "the Life," communicative and divine, He is the power and energy in which all is made real, and all is enjoyed by those who accept Him as the way of approach to God.

If we take Col. 1:14-20, in connection with this threefold title, we shall find a divine commentary upon each of these characters of Christ. These verses in the epistle divide into two distinct parts. The first (14-19) falls into three sections, each applying to the respective parts of the title before us. The second (ver. 20) is the uniting of these three sections in a brief but comprehensive summary which gives the full breadth of meaning found in them.

In the first section (ver. 14) "in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins,"we have Christ as "the Way." It is the avenue of approach to God so that those who take this way can say, We have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus " (Heb. 10:19). We know that every child of Adam is shut out of God's presence, for all have sinned and come short of His glory, and the result of this is death and consequent judgment. The wages of sin is death:and as death is banishment from this life, so is it the doorway to that judgment which banishes the rebel sinner for eternity from God and His blessing. This is the universal condition, and no way of escape can be found among men. But though God as Light must fully manifest this condition, yet He is also Love, and love ever acts on behalf of the needy, whoever they may be. Thus we hear the voice of Him, who came forth from the Father, sounding in the midst of the awful spiritual darkness in which He found men, declaring that He is "the Way" through which alone any one could come to the Father. But how He is this, is the question which naturally ensues. It is answered in the verse before us. He is the way of approach to God because He has obtained eternal redemption for us through His blood, even sins forgiven. All that which alienated us from God and brought the curse of His wrath upon our guilty heads has been met and fully answered by Christ suffering, the just One for the unjust, upon the cross.

Thus He has redeemed us from our lost condition, and on the ground of His perfect work we have all sins forgiven. Yea we are justified freely from all things by believing in Christ as our Saviour. Thus God has been fully satisfied, every divine claim of righteousness and holiness fully met.

In all this the light of the glory of God's love and grace bursts upon the anxious soul; and " the Way" by which access to the Father is obtained, is at once made perfectly plain-Christ is the Way.

He is also "the Truth," and thus is the manifester, the revealer, of the Father. This surely is just what truth is-that which makes known. This we have in the second section of our passage in Colossians (vers. 15-17), "Who is the Image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, because by Him were created all things, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships, or principalities, or authorities:all things have been created by Him and for Him." Christ, the Creator, having taken up creaturehood and been manifested before men, is the Image, the full expression of what God is. And, of course, by virtue of what He is, He be-comes in this place the "firstborn of all creation." As come into the world in this way He is the revealer of God; the "effulgence of His glory;" He fully presents God's glory; He is "the expression of His substance," or His essential being. Here the light of the glory of the knowledge of God bursts in upon the soul. How tender and blessed are the ways in which God has revealed Himself in Christ, May our hearts turn afresh to meditate upon that glorious Life manifested among men in which the truth is written in the indelible characters of mighty power, love, and grace. " The truth shall make you free" and "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:32-36).

Christ as "the Life" brings in now the next part of our passage in Colossians. "And He is the Head of the body, the assembly; who is the beginning, firstborn from among the dead, that He might have the first place in all things " (ver. 18). In His place of headship over the assembly, He is the beginning, firstborn from among the dead. He had gone into death and all the consequences of sin, out of which no creature could ever of itself come forth to life. But He, the worthy One, was raised up by the glory of the Father, thus becoming the glorious Firstborn. In Him, then, is life indeed; life beyond the touch of death. But we are told that in this character He is "the beginning"-therefore there must be others who are to follow in His glorious wake and become firstborn ones after the pattern of this blessed, mighty Beginner. And so it is. He is "Head of the body, the assembly." As the Firstborn among many brethren, with Him are linked an innumerable company to whom He has communicated the life which is in Himself. Thus, too, is the new creation formed and established.

This is the creation God owns; the old has been disowned. Christ is "the beginning of the creation of God "(Rev. 3:14). We find then here that perfect and divine order of life, in which we are to enjoy as our portion the place and position into which Christ as " the Way and the Truth " has brought us. The life of God is now our life; and that which we could not enjoy, or even approach unto, as natural men possessing only the natural life under condemnation, we can now take in to the full, because we have a life in accord with God. The natural man does not desire God or His knowledge. How then shall I enter into all this blessing? I need a new life in accord with it all. I turn to Him and find in Him " the Way, the Truth, and the Life,"and He gives it to me Now I have that which enables me to enter fully in all and have its fullest blessing. Thrice blessed Saviour! In Him, truly, "all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell," that it might thus be made good to our souls. Well may we say with the apostle, "O depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him and through Him and for Him are all things:to whom be glory forever. Amen." J. B. Jr.

(Heb. 1:3 ; 8:1, 2; 10:12; 12:2.)

There is no point, perhaps, which the Spirit of God takes more pains to press, in writing to the Hebrew Christians, than the connection of the throne of God with the Lord Jesus. And the immense weight of such a relationship must be evident, on the least reflection, to one who knows what God is and what man is.

There are two things that the Jew never acknowledges:One is, that God came down to man-God really and truly come down to man, and not that He merely made a revelation of Himself. This they could easily believe. All their old polity was founded upon a manifestation of the divine presence; but a real personal presence of God upon earth, to have God becoming a man, truly a man, they utterly refused, and perished in their war against it.

The other is that man was to go up and be with God. Judaism, as such, finds all its place upon the earth. In its best shape, it is earthly, not heavenly. According to God's intentions about it, and the glorious counsels that He has yet in store for Israel, it is the blessing of Israel upon the earth. There was therefore an immense barrier in their minds against the thought of a man being in heaven. Accordingly, in writing to the Hebrews, the Holy Ghost sets Himself to give the strongest possible expression to these truths.

In chapter 1:it is the glory of Christ's person. The Messiah was divine. It was not merely that He was raised there, that God exalted Him above His fellows, though this was true; but He was God. He
who was a man was God; He who was God deigned to become man. And now that He is gone up to heaven, He is not gone up as God only, but as man. In Him, therefore, God had come down and man had gone up. He had not ceased to be God; He could not cease to be what He is; but He had carried humanity on high, now bound up with His own person forever; humanity itself, in His person, being on the throne of God. It is this, too, which is shown here to be bound up with the work that He has done. For it is evident that the value of the work in the sight of God depends on the glory of the person that did it. It is so even among men. The man who supposes that an action depends merely on itself, and not also on the person who does it, knows nothing as he ought to know. The same words from persons of a totally different character, and of different measures of dignity, would have, and ought to have, altogether another effect. Now, this shows what an immense source of strength and blessing for the Christian is the holding fast the eternal glory of the person of Jesus. So it is said here, He is the brightness of glory, and the express image of His substance. Observe, by the way, it is not the express image of His "person," because each person was Himself; the Father was Himself, the Son Himself, and the Holy Ghost Himself. Christ is never said to be the express image of the person of the Father; He is the image of the invisible God. The word that we have here is given nowhere else. It is "substance." "And upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins." Creature could not mix in it; that divine and glorious person undertook the whole work alone, and He would not take His seat otherwise than as having perfectly accomplished it. He would only sit down there "when He had by Himself purged our sins." Then, and not before-not till sin had been perfectly put away-did He sit down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Thus our sins are gone according to the perfectness of the place of glory in which He is now seated. The Lord Jesus has not merely taken His seat on the throne of God as a divine person :He was, and is, evermore a divine person; and had He not been so, He could not have taken His seat there as He did; but He is glorified on that throne because He had, and when He had, by Himself purged our sins. What a perfect witness to the absolute putting away of sins for the believer!

Thus, God graciously, but with perfect wisdom, binds together our faith in His personal glory, our perception of His present place as man, and the joy of the perfect abolition of our sins before God. You cannot separate them. If one of these truths is shut out, there is weakness about all the rest. If one lets go the glory of Christ, how can he henceforth realize the efficacy of His redemption in the remission of sins ? If you hold fast His personal glory, you are entitled to know forgiveness according to the glory of His seat on the throne. If He was glorified on that throne after He had taken your sins on Himself, it must have been because they were all absolutely borne away.

But the throne is used in quite another way in chapter 8:We were once enslaved by sin, and we have still to deal with it, though entitled, by Christ's death and resurrection, to count ourselves dead to it. For, believing in the Lord Jesus, and in the forgiveness of our sins by Him, we are in living relationship with God, our sins blotted out, and inbred sin judged in the cross. Consequently sin is regarded as foreign to us, because in the nature in which we are in relationship with God there is no sin, and the other nature is a constant encumbrance, which we learn to look upon with hatred. But, as a matter of fact, we have the old nature still, though delivered from it by faith, so we are liable to Satan's using the world to act on our flesh. Consequently we need a priest, and we have a Priest-the best Priest that God can give, the only Priest that ought to be confided in. "We have such a High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." There we find the glory of our Priest:the very same glory is bound up with His Priesthood as with His atonement and His person. And we find that as a Priest He could not be on a less place than the throne of God. God has seated Him there. Such is the witness to the glory of Him who intercedes for us, and is engaged to bring us through the wilderness.

But in chapter x, we have the combination of the sacrifice with the priesthood. "This Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God." It was not a temporary seat, because the sacrifice was absolute in its consequences; and in virtue of this He takes His seat permanently, or in continuity, on the right hand of God, to prove that there was nothing else that needed to be done, as far as the blotting out of our sins was concerned. No doubt He will descend from heaven to receive His bride to Himself, as also to judge the world. But as to the question of purging our sins, He will never rise from that throne. His being there is the pledge of sin being put away. As I look up at the throne, and know that the Son of God is seated there, I ought not to have one question about my sins being gone. There are those who think that this would diminish our present abhorrence of sin; but it is an objection of unbelief, not of holiness. It may have an appearance of jealousy for what is good; but it really flows from ignorance of God, and unbelief of the power of the sacrifice of Christ. For the believer, the ground of hatred of sin and of guarding against it lies not merely in our having a nature to which sin is an aversion, but in the certainty that the victory is won before we start in our course as Christians. Therefore our business is to walk consistently with the truth that our sins are gone. If we trifle with sin after that, we lose sight of the deliverance which Christ has wrought for us; we are, so far, walking in unbelief of the blessed place into which Christ has brought us by His blood.

But there is a fourth place in which the throne is introduced. In chapter 12:2 Jesus is set down at the right hand of the throne as the witness that God is against the world and for Him whom the world cast out-the Captain of faith; not merely the sacrifice or the Priest, but the perfect pattern of faith as a man here below. Now, as such He was a sufferer. The more faith, the greater the suffering. The Lord Jesus was not only the object of faith for others, but He deigned to become a man (and a man of faith) Himself; and, as a man, He had all the suffering as well as the joy of faith, as it is said here, "Who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." It was not what He was going to receive, but His own grace, that brought the Lord here. He had all things, and needed nothing that could be given Him. Nor is it even true of the Christian that reward is the motive before him. The Christian does not start upon his career on earth because of the glory he is going to have in heaven. It is always the effect of divine grace made known to the heart, and this alone, which separates from the world and delivers a man from himself. It is the absolute work of redemption. He knows he is starting with God's favor, and he has the encouragement of the glory at the end of the course. It was the fulness of love that brought the Lord down. But when here in the midst of sinners, and of rejection and failure all around, this was what sustained Him in His errand of love; "for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame."

And here we have on God's part the answer to this humiliation:"He is set down at the right hand of the throne of God; " and this just when everything appeared to be ruined ; for the very last thing the world saw of Jesus was His cross. Apparently, as far as man could discern, a total victory was gained over the Son of God. God's purposes appeared to collapse in the cross of Jesus. He was the only righteous man, the only righteous judge, the appointed governor of the world ; yet He had not the throne, but the cross. He was the Messiah of Israel, yet the despised and rejected of men. He was the object of faith to the disciples, yet they all forsook Him and fled. All appeared to be one mass of ruin and failure. But faith looks not to the earth, nor to man but to God; and it sees that the Man who was rejected and crucified by the world is set down on the throne of the glory of God. And when the moment comes for God to display Him in glory, how He will reverse every thought of man, and prove that faith alone was always right ! And faith only is right, because it is the answer in man's heart to the revelation of God.

The Lord grant that, rejoicing in such a Savior; in such a portion as we have now in hope, if not in present possession; and in being actually glorified with Him by and by, we may look through all present shame and sorrow with joy to that throne whence He will come to receive us to Himself in the Father's house.

QUES. 11. In what way did manna humble the people of Israel, as mentioned in Deut, viii, 16? and, applied to us, in what way does it humble us?

ANS. According to verse 3 of the same chapter God allowed Israel to hunger for want of anything to eat. This in detail is given in Ex. 16:when, in their extremity, God gives them manna-bread from heaven. Nothing humbles man like being dependent for food, and nothing makes him cling more to the one upon whom he is dependent for it. Thus God wrought with His earthly people, that He might make them cling to Him, and thus educate them for the position He had given them that He might pour upon them all that was in His heart for them.

It is the same principle with us. The first sign of the work of the Spirit of God in a man is that he hunger. Pleasure, wealth, honor, or all the world together, are no longer able to satisfy him. "All is vanity" he cries, in his hunger for something which can satisfy.

The manna, the bread of heaven, is Jesus. That is the food God offers to the man who is humbled by such hunger. And from beginning to end He has no other food to offer. Is it a question of the burden of the guilt of sin? "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." Of power for a holy and fruitful life? "I am crucified with Christ:nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

Is it a question of lost communion? "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Of ending all the groanings of our present imperfect condition and circumstances of sorrow? "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Thus, and in a multitude more of the needs of God's people on their way home, the one remedy God has for them is Jesus. He lets them try this and that till they hunger-till they are humbled -then He teaches them that in every instance they are shut up to the provision He has made for them in Christ Jesus. And the full blessing of this we shall know only at our "latter end." It seems now an endless discipline, but its issue will be eternal rest -the Sabbath of God for His toiling people.

QUES. 12. Did the blood, carried into the holiest on the day of atonement, atone in type for the sins of the people for the year that had passed only, or was it an annual remembrance before God of all their sins? Is there a sense in which it would speak for the year then future? The question has come up in our Bible class and we cannot find anything in written ministry that exactly touches the point.

ANS.-The redemption from transgressions in Israel under the law was not once for all -eternal, but once for a year. Hence they came into remembrance every year. A temporary removal of sins is good only for the time for which they are removed. When that passed, the question of their removal came up again. Thus the yearly recurrence of the question showed that their sacrifices did not put away sins actually. Only the sacrifice of Christ does that, It was not simply that Israel needed the removal of the sins of the year in which an atonement was made :they needed the removal of their sins-all their sins, but they never got anything but a temporary removal. Thus they were taught to expect the sacrifice of which theirs was a type-the sacrifice that procures eternal redemption.

QUES.13. Is instrumental music out of place in the Christian home? I do not believe it should have any place in the Christian assembly, inasmuch as the Church is a heavenly body and its worship "in spirit and in truth,"as the Lord indicated in John iv, 23. But is there not a difference between the Christian family circle and the Christian assembly ?

ANS.-Most assuredly. The difference is very clear. The family circle is by creation ; the Church is by redemption. What is of creation therefore suits the family circle. All that God has made can be used there, and will not be harmful, but good, If used in the leaf of God. The Christian must need remember, however, that sin is everywhere; that Satan makes large use of the very best things of creation ; that music, one of the sweetest things God has created, is largely in his hands for evil. This being remembered and avoided, instrumental music in the household may help much in the proper social enjoyment of the family, and in furnishing the minds with tunes which will serve well in the Christian assembly.

Then, after all, there is nothing like the human voice, nothing like a happy heart which breaks out in praise to God through the lips. May there be more of this everywhere among God's people.

"The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him" Nahum 1:7).

Let us suppose that an influential portion of an assembly have put away a brother as a "heretic," without just grounds. Some seem to hold that under such circumstances they must submit to the " action; " apparently upon the following considerations:

The action was unscriptural and unrighteous, but those who have so erred are not wicked persons. It was the Lord's table before:is it not so still ? They were on scriptural ground before:are they not so now ? Can one refuse their action, and become separated from them, without departing from scriptural ground, and from the Lord's table ?

The answer to this is, Is it not raising a question, or making a difficulty, where none exists in Scripture ? Nowhere in Scripture am I called upon to decide the standing of those from whom I may become in this way separated. I am only bound for myself to "follow righteousness," as surely in Church relationship as in private affairs. Those who adhere to an unrighteous action are, so far, on wrong ground:they are no longer where they were, and I am by no means bound to follow them in their departure, whether it be ten feet or a hundred feet from the true path-to use a physical figure. I am not left to my own will or choice:it is not rebellion to refuse to follow them, but submission to the Word-a sure guide, but one calling for a sense of responsibility and true exercise of soul, each for himself, before the Lord.

We are to "follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." The one who does that, will be in the way of obedience and on right Church ground, no matter whom or what he is separated from. To conclude that my only safety is to cleave to an assembly that has been on right ground, though they commit unrighteousness, is, in measure, the spirit of a Romanist, and weakens our sense of responsibility to the Lord and our confidence in the Word as our guide. It opens the way for subjection to human tradition and creed and error. Error tends to become enthroned; and the truth, and liberty to inquire into it, is in measure shut out.

These issues are involved in such a crisis in the Church's history, and our eyes should be open to discern the enemy's devices, and how and when we are exposed to danger. If we are in bondage to the idea of following good men-and who is free from this danger ?-where may we not drift ? It is to the Lord and to His Word we are to cleave at all times, and at all cost; and in this path, with trials, we shall find the vigor of spiritual health. "I found myself," said one who had been entrapped in the way I speak of, and had revolted from it, "I found myself bound to identify the name of the Lord with unrighteousness.

We need to take to us the " whole armor of God against the wiles of the devil ;" and the first part of the armor is,' "having the loins girt about with truth," not error. Is it not plainly enough error to plead for subjection to unrighteousness ? No unrighteous judgment is bound in heaven.

" There is a principle at work which puts external unity before righteousness-uses unity to hinder righteousness. Now, to me, righteousness goes first. I find that in Rom. 11:, let grace be what it may in sovereign goodness, it never sets aside righteousness. … I do not think that any Church theory, however true and blessed when walking in the Spirit, can go before practical righteousness."* *Letters, J. N. D., Vol. III., page 184.*
Huss, the martyr of Bohemia, "caused a writing to be fixed upon the church of Bethlehem, charging the clergy with six errors, among which was, ' that every excommunication, just or unjust, binds the excommunicated." He declared that an excommunication which is groundless ' hath no effect.' " Thus, with our open Bible, we have to learn from a devout Roman Catholic of the year 1400 so plain a truth.

It is not for us to decide such questions as "Where is the Lord's Table ?" It might lead to perplexity, or to arrogant assumption, in our conclusions. What we have to consider is, "What is right?" That leads to true exercise before God, in the light of the Word.

To be subject, for the sake of unity, to unrighteousness in an act of excommunication, what can it be but wrong ? Because done in the Lord's name, does wrong become right ? We should have patience, and grace, but also have the "senses exercised to discern between good and evil." E. S. L.

A very precious thought is contained in Heb. 12:I. The thought is "looking away from all else unto " Jesus." What a remedy for discouragement. What a balm to the wretched. What a source of strength to the weak. What a relief to the soul oppressed by the miserable state of affairs all around us. When burdens bear heavy; when things languish; when the arid atmosphere of indifference distresses; when we long to leave this scene of strife and conflict, how soothing and reviving it is to look away from all this unto Jesus, and there feast our souls and feel the refreshing waters of life revive our lagging steps. What a change occurs from beholding Him to the exclusion of all else!

FRAGMENT

Matt. 3:16, 17; John 8:28, 29; Matt. 11:28-30.

The root of sin in us is self-will, independence. But in Jesus my heart has rest. A dependent Man in the midst of sorrow, but perfectly with God in all; in humiliation, or in glory, it makes no difference as to this:the perfect One is ever the dependent One. And when that blessed heart thus expressed its dependence, did He get no answer? "The heaven was opened." Does heaven open thus on me? It is open to me indeed, no doubt, but I pray because it is open; it opened because He prayed. I come and look up because the heavens were opened on Him.

It is indeed a lovely picture of grace, and we may be bold to say that the Father loved to look down, in the midst of all sin, on His beloved Son (John 8:29). Nothing but what was divine could thus awaken God's heart; and yet it was the lowly, perfect Man. He takes not the place of His. eternal Glory as the Creator, the Son of God-He stoops and is baptized. He says, " In Thee do I put My trust, Thou art My Lord" (Psa. 16:), . . . and the Holy Ghost descends like a dove on Him-fit emblem of that spotless Man!-fit resting-place for the Spirit in the deluge of this world. And how sweet, too, that Jesus is pointed out to us as God's object.

I know the way the Father feels about Him. I am made His intimate, and admitted to hear Him expressing His affection for His Son, to see the links reformed between God and man.

Thus I get rest, and my heart finds communion with God in His beloved Son. It is only the believer who enjoys it, but the link is there. And if I find that which, in and about me, distresses the soul, I have that in Him which is unfailing joy and comfort . . . With Him let heaven and earth be turned upside down, and still I have a rest. What blessedness for the heart to have the Object God Himself is occupied with!

"Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased " (Luke 3:22). J. N. D.

QUES. 7.-In what way especially do yon think that David was a man after God's own heart?

ANS.- In his steadfast trust in God, shown by his ready obedience. In that he always justified God and took sides with Him against himself. In that he submitted patiently, without murmuring, to His discipline.

His obedience and trust in God are so marked that, as in the ease of Saul's life, which be could easily have taken and gotten the kingdom, he could patiently wait for God's time and way, though it involved much suffering and reproach for him. In result he became so acquainted with God that God's praises filled his heart, and, breaking out of his lips, refresh and strengthen God's people to this distant day.

We must not confound "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," spoken over the head of the blessed Son of God, with "a man after Mine own heart," spoken of one whose perfection was to know how to hide in that same "beloved Son" of whom David prophesied.

QUES. 8.-Will you kindly give your thought on Rom. 11:12:"If the fall of them (the Jews) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles-" Why in one clause the riches of the world, and in the other the riches of the Gentiles f In our meeting for the study of the Epistle the above verse attracted our attention, and we failed to understand the difference between Gentiles and the world.

ANS.-The fall of Israel is the riches of the world:As long as Israel was acknowledged of God as His people on earth, the proclamation of God's glad tidings to all, indiscriminately, was hindered. Our Lord Himself said, " I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Their fall, then, became the riches of the world, according to Isa. 49:4-6, and Matt, 28:19, 20; Mark 16:20. But Paul was the minister to the Gentiles, the minister of the Church-the mystery revealed through him (Rom. 11:13; Col. 1:24, 25). This is the Gentile aspect of the testimony for God which the olive-tree represents. So; then, Israel's " diminishing " (there is yet a little remnant according to the election of grace) is the riches of the Gentiles now-that is, the plenitude of the heavenly blessing-the Church's blessing, in contrast with the earthly blessing of Israel.

" The world," then, stands in contrast with Israel as to the extent of the blessing ; "the Gentiles," as to its character.

QUES. 9.-Is the supper in John 12:2 identical with that in Matt. 26:6, and in Mark 14:3? Is there anything more known of " Simon the leper"? Was he connected in anyway with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus?

ANS.-Yes, we believe it is the same in each passage you refer to. Each passage, taken with its context, shows it to be at the very close of our Lord's ministry-near the time of His death.

We know of no other reference in Scripture about this Simon. One of the same name is referred to in Luke 7:, but is evidently another person, and the occasion a different one.
Save that he lived in the same village (Bethany) with Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and that he seemed to share their affection for the Lord, nothing more is said of him that we know.

QUES. 10.-Is the ordinance of Baptism figurative of resurrection as well as of death? Do not such scriptures as Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:3, 4; 1 Peter 3:21, teach this? The putting under the water is figurative of death ; is the coming out of the water equally significant? or, is the figure completed in burial, and the power of resurrection attributed to the Spirit's operation ?

ANS.-Col. 2:12 is the only passage we know in the Scriptures which associates resurrection with baptism ; but, as is well known, it is a question of translating the Greek words έv as correctly translated by "in whom," as "in which." We believe that the burden of the whole passage from the beginning of the chapter shows that the rendering "wherein" in the 12th verse should be "in whom," referring to Christ Himself, and not to baptism. In Rom. 6:3, 4, it is Christ who is risen, not the baptized person. In 1 Peter 3:21 Noah's ark passing through the judgment is the figure of the baptism through which Christ passed on the cross, by which we are saved, of which water baptism is also the figure. Christ rising out of this judgment proves our salvation completed, and gives us therefore "a good conscience."

We quite agree with your expressed thought that the purport of baptism is ended when the person is under water, though it is with resurrection in view.

Other questions remain, which will find place, D. V., in our next issue.

The Sadducee, denying there is spirit, consistently affirms the bodies of men will not rise from their graves. But there are others who affirm it also. Some tell us that the resurrection consists in the departed spirit forming a new body for itself. Others say a new body will be created, and accordingly hold that the resurrection is the creation of a new body.

It will be well to raise the inquiry, Does the word of God teach that the body will rise again ? To answer the question it will only be needful to examine those scriptures which refer to the resurrection.

In Acts 24:15 Paul, in his address before Felix, very simply declares, "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Did he mean that the resurrection would be a resurrection of the body? In Matt. 22:31 our Lord also speaks of "the resurrection of the dead." Did He mean the resurrection of the body ? Numerous other allusions to the resurrection are found in the Gospels and elsewhere. Is it intended that everywhere, where the resurrection is spoken of, we are to understand that it is of the body ?

Now the answer to this question is plain and unequivocal. We only need to weigh thoughtfully the various statements of Scripture to see that in its references to the resurrection it always means the resurrection of the body. Take, for instance, Matt. 27:50-53, where we read of the wonderful effects of the death and resurrection of Christ. It is said, '' And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection." Now we are not told who these saints were, nor in what age of the world they lived. It is going beyond Scripture to say that the bodies of these particular saints must have been but recently buried; that they could not have been long buried, and so have been entirely decomposed and gone to dust. This was probably true of some of them at least; but where Scripture does not speak we will not presume to do so. But there is one thing we may confidently say. If there were among this company of saints who arose at this time any representatives of, say, the age of Abraham, or the age before the flood, the bodies in which they appeared to the people in Jerusalem who saw them came out of the graves. If any of them were saints who lived in ancient times and whose bodies had undergone a complete process of disorganization, they were perfectly reorganized while yet in the graves, and thus came out of the graves.

Now this leads us to the doctrine of the reorganization of the body in the grave itself, prior to, but of course in order to, its resurrection. Is this the doctrine of Scripture ? Does Scripture really teach us to believe it ? Is the passage we have looked at in Matthew a sufficient foundation for such a belief ? Are there other scriptures which confirm it ?

Let us turn now to John 5:28, 29. " For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." It is clear that our Lord teaches that at the resurrection something comes forth from or out of the grave. It, of course, must be the reorganized body. The spirit is not in the grave, and does not come from there. It comes from the place of departed spirits. It is the body that is in the grave. It is to be reorganized for the spirit, that left it at death, to reoccupy it. The reorganization will take place in the grave. At the resurrection the reorganized body will come forth to be forever tenanted by its own spirit. The language employed by our Lord here certainly implies all this, and is in accord with the passage in Matt. 27:

But what we deduce from these two passages is clearly affirmed in i Cor. 15:35-58. There were some among the Corinthians who denied the resurrection of the dead. Ver. 35 makes it clear that they denied there would be a body come from the grave. They are ridiculing the very idea of a resurrection of the body in the questions the apostle puts into their mouths, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come ? " Now Paul answers them in a way to convict them of ignorance of the Scriptures and the power of God, as the Lord did the Sadducees. It is a question altogether of the power of God. Is God able to reorganize the body ? Even if it has dissolved and actually returned to dust, can He re-form it ? And if He is able to reorganize the body, can He not, in reorganizing it, make it such a body as it pleases Him ?

Now, that God can reorganize the body, nature itself demonstrates. The seed of wheat, or any other grain, when sown, becomes disorganized; but God, by processes which He has ordained, works in the disorganizing seed, and a body is formed, which comes up out of its disorganized state. A living body is raised up out of the dead body. If, then, nature witnesses to the power of God in death, why
should it be an incredible thing for God to raise dead men-to reorganize their bodies and raise them up out of their graves ? When once it is realized that it is simply a question of the power of God, there is no difficulty. He is able to work in death in the disorganized body, and organize it anew.

But that does not imply that the reorganized body will be just what the disorganized one has been. The body that has been disorganized is a natural body; the reorganized body is a spiritual body. The one is a mortal body, the other is immortal. The one is corruptible, the other is incorruptible. The former is a body of flesh and blood, the latter is a body of flesh and bones. As to this, the apostle appeals again to the testimony of nature. There are different kinds of flesh-one of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds. There are also bodies terrestrial and celestial, each differing from the other in character and glory. So, too, the reorganized body differs from the one that is disorganized. But here again there is no real difficulty if it be realized that it is a question of the power of God. The power of God was displayed in the formation of the natural body. The dust of which it was made was inert, lifeless, unorganized material. By the power of God it was organized into a body to be quickened by the breath of God. So, too, in the dust to which the natural body returns, God will work to reorganize it into a spiritual body. It will be reorganized in the grave, and come forth from there; but it will come forth to be no more a mortal body, but a body in which mortality is "swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. 5:4).

Thus we find that Scripture insists on a real resurrection of the body from the grave, and effectually disposes of the theory that the spirit forms a new body for itself, as also of the view held by others that God creates a new body and nothing at all comes from the grave.

There is one scripture which may possibly be quoted against me. It is 2 Cor. 5:2-"Desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." It is better to read here "of" heaven, not "from" heaven. The apostle is not teaching that our eternal house or body will be formed in heaven and come from there, but that it will partake of the character of heaven, and be thus suited for heaven. There is, then, no contradiction here to what we have gathered from Scripture elsewhere.

I wish here to guard another point. In using i Cor. 15:as I have done, it must not be taken that I hold that in that chapter the apostle is writing concerning the resurrection of the wicked as well as the just. I have not been giving an exposition of the teaching of the chapter, but availing myself of a principle which is there, and which the apostle employs in his arguments to establish the doctrine of the resurrection of the bodies of the believing dead. It is of them, and of them alone, that he speaks there. But while this is true, it is also true that the bodies of the wicked dead will be raised by the power of God as well as the bodies of the righteous. The gates of Hades are under the control of Him whom God has made Lord of all-both the gate in and the gate out. He will raise all the dead-both the just and the unjust. It will be at His voice that all the dead will rise; the just, at the resurrection of life; the unjust, at the resurrection of judgment.

Now before closing it may be well to call attention to the serious consequences of denying the resurrection of the body. It does not matter which form of the denial we take ; the consequences are equally vital. Of course it is easy to see that the Sadducean denial of resurrection in any form sweeps away everything. According to their view, there is no Christ any more, and there is no future life for men, no future blessedness for believers, no future punishment for unbelievers.

The theory that the spirit, after leaving the body, forms a new body for itself, is also fatal, both as to Christ and as to us. If Christ's spirit formed a new body, and the body that went into the grave did not rise, then His former body saw corruption ; it must have gone to dust, and Christ has not, then, conquered death. This only needs to be pointed out. The truth of the holy humanity of our blessed Lord is too important to suffer the loss of it by allowing the resurrection to be defined as the formation of a new body by the departed spirit. In the case of the saints, it will not do to allow this definition either, for resurrection would not be '' mortality swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. 5:4). For this to be true, redemption must have application to the old body. (See Rom. 8:23.) If, when the Lord comes, the bodies of the living saints are reorganized, there will also be a reorganization of the disorganized bodies of those who sleep in Jesus.

The same serious results follow from defining resurrection to be the creation of a new body. The truth of Christ's holy humanity is lost, and He is robbed of His glory as the Victor over death, and the saints are denied their portion of sharing that victory with Him; 1:e., their bodies remain forever the prey of death. In the resurrection, if they have new bodies created, they will be a new order of men- not children of Adam redeemed and saved, not children of God by redemption-but men by creation. How great the loss !

It will now be seen that it is of supreme importance to firmly hold to the doctrine of the identity of the old and the new body. This doctrine is clearly stated in the passage we have considered in i Cor. 15:"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body " (vers. 42-44). The apostle is here asserting the identity of the natural and mortal body with the spiritual and immortal body.

The same principle applies to the wicked also. If there is no identity of the body they have in this life and the body which they will have when they stand before the great white throne or have been consigned to the lake of fire, then they will not be the same men:it will not be the sinner that sinned that will be judged and punished.
Many other considerations might be mentioned, but perhaps it is not necessary. It is sufficiently plain that the doctrine of the Scriptures is that the body will rise again. Whatever the varying conditions of the bodies of men when the resurrection takes place, there will be a reorganization of the body:this will take place in the grave, and thus the reorganized body will come forth from there.
C. C.

Annihilationism is the doctrine of the final extinction of all the wicked. The believers in this doctrine are called Annihilationists. There are three grades of them. One is characterized by the belief that extinction takes place at death. Another class holds that it takes place at the judgment at the end of time. The third group maintain that after the judgment there will be a period of suffering, which will be terminated after a due amount of suffering has been borne, the suffering to be ended by extinction. The final extinction of the wicked thus characterizes all of them. Whatever the differences as to the time when it will take place, they agree in believing that extinction of being is the ultimate end of the wicked.

Is this doctrine, in any of the forms in which it is held, the doctrine of the word of God ? Do the Scriptures teach that wicked men become extinct, either at death, the judgment at the end of time, or at the end of a period of suffering beyond the judgment ?

We shall first consider the inquiry, Is it the doctrine of the word of God that when wicked men die, they become extinct ? One class of Annihilationists answer this question with an affirmative. They say unhesitatingly they do. Mr. Constable, in his book on '' Hades," says :

" If death reigns until the period of the resurrection, and if death during this period is exactly the same thing to the just and to the unjust, it follows, beyond any question, that both just and unjust are then wholly and altogether dead " (page 79).

What he means by " wholly and altogether dead " he makes perfectly clear, for he goes on to say :

"For no one contends that during this period the just are in a condition of misery; neither does any one contend that the unjust are in a condition of bliss:but that condition which is neither one of bliss nor of misery must be a condition of death or of non-existence."

Here it is plain that Mr. Constable, and of course all who hold with him, considers death to be the extinction of being. That he applies it to the just as well as the unjust will not concern us here. Our subject just now is, The extinction of the wicked at death :is it scriptural ? If the Scriptures do not teach that death means extinction for the wicked, it will be hard to convince people that it means that for the righteous.

Now we find the question of whether death means extinction was presented to our Lord. We must certainly accept what He taught about it. His teaching must be authoritative. He could tell Nicodemus with the most solemn affirmation, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen " (John 3:ii). Surely He knew whether death means extinction of being or not. What then does He say about it ? We will turn to the answer He made the Sadducees when they asked Him about the woman who had been successively the wife of seven brethren, saying, " In the resurrection whose wife of them is she ? " His answer, as recorded by Luke, is, "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage :but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:neither can they die any more:for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection " (chap. 20:34-36). Now if it is said the Lord is only speaking of the righteous, not of the wicked, I reply that is true thus far. As yet He has spoken only of those who are counted worthy to rise out from among the dead. But we have not quoted the whole of His answer. He goes on to say, '' Now that the dead are raised even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (ver. 37)." It may be asked, when He says, "Now that the dead are raised," does He intend us to consider that He is embracing the wicked dead as well as the righteous dead ? The only possible answer is, He does. In the next verse (38) He goes on to say, "For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living:for all live unto Him." Men die, both righteous and wicked. They are no more alive to us, but to God they are living. All the dead, both the good and the evil, are living to Him. They are not, then, extinct. Plainly our Lord does not teach that death is the extinction of being. It is impossible to appeal to Him as teaching the doctrine of the extinction of the wicked at death. His words clearly deny such a thought.

Another scripture may also be quoted:"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27). Now here we are taught to believe that the judgment will be after death. As long as men continue in the death condition they will not be judged. We must then believe there will be the resurrection of the dead before the judgment. Men do not receive their judgment in this life, and in this world. They do not receive it in the death condition; yet, while they are in the death condition they are not extinct, they are in being still-living beings for God.

Some may say the death state is one of insensibility, or unconsciousness. The discussion of this must be reserved for a subsequent paper. We only refer to it now to reply that even if it can be shown that the dead are unconscious, that is not the same thing as extinction of being. It will not avail to appeal to sleep as an argument for the extinction of the wicked at death. A man asleep is not extinct. A man in insensibility or unconsciousness, from whatever cause, is not extinct. He is still a living man.

We must pass on to consider the view of those who hold that the judgment of the wicked at the end of time is extinction of being. One quotation must suffice. Mr. Minton, in his "Way Everlasting," page 58, speaks of the casting into the lake of fire, of the beast, the false prophet, the devil, death and hell (hades), and those whose names are not found in the book of life. He goes on to say:" If these things be intended to predict the final doom of wicked men and wicked spirits, then their doom is set forth under images which point to nothing less than extinction of being."

All those who believe that when the wicked are judged at the great white throne and sent into the lake of fire, they become extinct, or cease to be, accept as the truth this statement of Mr. Minton. But is it the truth ? Is it said that they become extinct ? No such statement can be found. On the contrary, we read of two men who are cast into the lake of fire and exist there for a thousand years (Rev. 20:10). They are there all- this time, before Satan even is cast there. There are, then, two men who will be cast into the lake of fire, and it will not be extinction of being for them. Does it not at least suggest that their doom is a sample, or pattern, of the doom of all who will be sent there ? If it is shown, as Scripture does show, that in their case the lake of fire is not extinction, how then can it be shown in any case ? The plain, indisputable fact of two men existing for a thousand years in the lake of fire is a strong and terrible witness against the doctrine that the lake of fire is extinction of being.

But the testimony of Scripture is even stronger than this. We read that after Satan is cast there, they will continue to exist. It has been attempted to substitute "were cast" in the place of the word "are"in italics in our own common version. But even so, it does not alter the fact that they are still in existence; and this is made certain by the further fact that they, as well as Satan, are going to continue to exist, and that, too, forever. We read, "And they shall be tormented day and night for the ages " (new version). At all events, then, Satan and these two men do not become extinct in the lake of fire. But if this is so, what proof is there that anybody who goes there becomes extinct ? There is absolutely none.

And still it is claimed by some that while Scripture shows clearly that the wicked do not become extinct at the time of their being sent into the lake of fire, yet they will ultimately cease to be after a period of suffering. The advocates of this view are, it is true, comparatively few. They would seem to belong to a school that teaches that punishment is corrective and remedial, and allow that there is punishment after the resurrection of the wicked, just as one class of the Universalists do, but, like them, denying that punishment is everlasting, have invented the theory of ultimate annihilation for the small number that may be supposed to remain obdurate to the last. The ungovernable and uncontrollable will be finally destroyed. They will become extinct.

But Scripture says nothing of any such class. And besides, it never speaks of the lake of fire as corrective or remedial. It is always a final doom. It is the final disposition of the wicked. It is the place where Satan is finally sent. It is the place where the wicked, after their resurrection and judgment at the white throne, are finally banished. It is a banishment from which there will be no recall. It will be for ever. It will be everlasting torture, too. Unceasing and perpetual torment will be the doom of the wicked, for they have their part in the doom of Satan-the lake of fire, the everlasting fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41 and Rev. 21:8).

An attempt has been made to escape the force of the terms "everlasting" and "for ever" by giving them the meaning of "age-lasting." Now, while I am willing to admit that these terms may have this sense when they are used in connection with temporal or human ages, it is impossible to allow that therefore, when applied to the time, or age, of the duration of the doom of the wicked, they limit that duration. It is the last age, and it is an everlasting age-an age without an end.

No examination of the way Annihilationists use and explain various scriptures is necessary here. We have found three things clearly stated in the word of God:First, there is a final doom for the wicked; second, what that doom is-torture in the lake of fire; and third, the duration of it-for ever. No use of Scripture or explanation of it in conflict with this plain teaching, can be correct or of the Spirit of God.

Scripture, then, does not teach the doctrine of Annihilationism-that the wicked will ultimately be-come extinct. It is a doctrine diametrically opposed to the doctrine of the Bible. But if the wicked are to suffer torture for ever in the lake of fire, how blessed to know that God sent His Son into the world, and to the cross, that those deserving the eternal doom He has revealed as to be the portion of the wicked might be delivered from the need of suffering it!

Beloved reader, the same Judge who will by and by banish the wicked to the lake of fire has authority to forgive sins and give everlasting life now. He welcomes all men to come to Him. He will deny none that come. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved " (Rom. 10:13). C. Crain