"But unto yon that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings" (Mal. 4:2).

Bitter the foeman's onslaught, long the night,
And we, nor strength, nor skill, possess for fight:
His Name alone our trust, we longing raise
Unto the hills for help our wistful gaze;
And lo! afar the roseate hues of morn
The peaks in dazzling radiancy adorn.
Bursting from our enraptured hearts, the joyous paean
rings-
He comes! the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in
His wings!

Long, long hath seemed the conflict; every hour
More fierce-as we more frail-the opposing power.
Yet His almighty strength, in weakness shown,
Invulnerable buckler, shields His own.
The praise be His ! the glory and the might
For ever His alone who leads the fight!
Oh! from His blessed presence known, what balm and
comfort springs-
Himself the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His
wings.

What though some cease, and sleep ! the ranks we fill ;
He calls them to His rest, we praise Him still.
He keeps-Himself in mighty grace displayed-
Our hearts in perfect peace and undismayed.
Confiding in His love, we gladly own
The power, the strength, the conflict, His alone.
And thus,-unfathomed grace! each heart, in conscious
weakness clings
To Him, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His
wings.

What question then the issue! His the might,
His power alone, that puts the foe to flight.
The wicked overthrown, the burning flame
Consuming, swallows those that hate His name.
Nor root nor branch of all the evil found,
But purged by fire and trodden to the ground !
Ourselves, in perfect peace with Him, lo, He triumphant
brings-
The glorious Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His
wings!

A. D. S.

Legality converts the Lord's day into a. Sab bath; lawlessness rejects the day as being the Lord's, and uses it to gratify self. It is not a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath, nor is it a day to indulge in license for the flesh, but one in which we are called to walk in the liberty of the Spirit. Judaizing Christianity attaches to the Lord's day prohibitions which solely belong to the Mosaic economy, and legal minds are thus held in bondage. Let all such remember that" Sabbath " is another word for rest, and involves cessation from every kind of labor.

Inaugurated at the creation, after six days' labor God rested. But this first Sabbath was disturbed by sin, for God cannot rest where sin is, nor find repose where misery and death reign. After this, twenty-five centuries ran their course, but no mention is made in Scripture of a day of rest. Ingenious theories have been built on the mention of seven days being connected with the ark of Noah, but no formal declaration of God's mind was made until Israel was brought into covenant relationship with God. Then the Sabbath was instituted, and became an integral part of the Jewish system. It is mentioned one hundred and seventy times, and is especially linked with the giving of the law (Ex. 20:8), the setting up of the tabernacle (Ex. 35:2), and as a memorial of deliverance from Egypt (Deut. 5:15).

Strict injunctions are given as to its sanctity, and severe penalties were attached to its desecration. Alas! warnings and penalties were disregarded; the Sabbaths were profaned, their rest violated, until the last links with Israel were snapped when the Lord of the Sabbath lay in the grave on a Sabbath day (Luke 23:52-55). His death ended all relationship with men in the flesh, and at the same time with the Law and the Sabbath as a system adapted to such. The whole Jewish economy came to an end.

Christians belong to a new creation, and are identified with Christ risen from the dead; they are connected with a heavenly sanctuary. The Spirit of God came at Pentecost to form a company of spiritual worshipers. The Sabbath finds no place in the present ways of God with His people. Yet some Christians maintain that the Lord's day of the new economy is a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. Is this so ?

In vain we search the New Testament for the re-enactment of this ordinance; there is no command to observe the Sabbath in its pages; nor is there any threat for its desecration. The Sabbath and the Lord's day are totally different; they have many contrasts.

The Sabbath ends the week; the Lord's day begins it.

Sacred rest marks the one ; holy activity, the other.

Legal prohibitions burden the one; spiritual privileges characterize the other.

Death is connected with the one; resurrection, with the other.

During the Sabbath the Saviour lay in death; on the Lord's day He rose. The Holy Ghost also came on a Lord's day, and it is significant that the only time it is mentioned the Spirit is connected with the Lord's day (Rev. i:10).

We learn from what was done by the early disciples that it is a day to be devoted wholly to spiritual worship and work. On this day the disciples assembled to break bread, and laid their contributions aside; on it Paul preached, and John saw the apocalyptic visions. As to labor, our great Exemplar is the Lord:how unceasingly He toiled on that first Lord's day! Think of His gracious service to Mary. Ere day dawned she was found at the sepulcher:there she stands, sorrowful and disconsolate, the somber night outside faintly picturing the dark forebodings inside, when suddenly the eastern sun arose and dispelled the darkness; and as suddenly the light of a resurrection day dawned on her astonished vision, for before her eyes was Jesus risen! How He comforted and consoled her, and entrusted her to convey the most marvelous message human ears had ever heard, " I ascend unto My Father and your Father."

Next we find Him going to meet others, less disconsolate perhaps, but truly attached to Him; and they also bear a message to "His own." Then the wandering sheep! And, again, on the rugged Emmaus road, reproving, comforting and instructing these disappointed disciples, until, made known in the familiar act of blessing, their restoration is complete, and they retrace their steps. Although eight miles away, they testify to their recovery by their return to the assembled disciples when Jesus appears (closed doors are no barrier to Him). There He establishes and strengthens, fits and qualifies them to be His witnesses and messengers. From early morn until the shades of night our risen Lord-on the first Lord's day-is found in a constant round of unceasing service. Our Master's gracious activities are our warrant for working and not resting on that day.

Were it the Sabbath, no journey could be taken beyond a prescribed distance; no fire lighted; no food cooked; not a stick gathered. There must be absolute cessation from every kind of labor. One company alone were excepted. Aaron's sons offered the lamb; changed the showbread; trimmed the lamps; and placed the wood on the altar of burnt-offering, the fire of which was never to go out. Spiritual worship and priestly activities occupied the hours of the day.

Just so all service now should be as connected with the sanctuary-a priestly privilege, not a legal enactment. Christian labor should be the holy, happy outcome of hearts in the enjoyment of God's love-a spontaneous act. Having gathered to show forth the death of our Lord, setting Him ever first and foremost, in the enjoyment flowing from His holy presence, our glad hearts go forth into the world out of which He has been cast, to make known the love and grace which have reached us. So long as sinners need saving, backsliders restoring, and saints comforting, we may travel any distance, toil unceasingly, labor unremittingly, work continuously. Not of compulsion, but of a ready mind; not because it is a matter of bondage, but as a happy privilege, in the liberty, energy and power of the Holy Spirit.

No right-minded Christian will think lightly of its privileges or evade its responsibilities. Those who spend its hours in selfish ease, social gatherings, or what are termed "innocent pleasures," deny the claims of their Lord and grieve the Holy Spirit. If freed from the ordinary avocations of everyday life, it is that every moment of the day may be used in a special and peculiar way as an opportunity to serve in some way or other. We are to yield ourselves unreservedly to our Lord and Master, and respond to the supremacy of His claims.
We may travel a hundred miles to please our Master, we must not travel a hundred yards to please ourselves. Let us test our motives; they are the true tests-not merely our acts. Self last, Christ first, will keep our actions right. We trust a close study of the difference between the Sabbath and the Lord's day will enable every Christian to see that the Sabbath has to do with a rest day, while the Lord's day derives all its importance from a Person who claims us for worship and service. It is not only John, but equally the privilege of each and all of us, to be in the Spirit on the Lord's day. If we are, we shall be preserved from legal bondage on the one hand and self-gratification on the other.
H. N.

(An Extract from "The Christophanies" now publishing in Treasury of Truth )

It is worthy of note that the free, sovereign, and direct action of the Spirit, begins at the moment of this appearing. In the call of Stephen to the work, the Spirit acts above apostolic authority in the twelve. Their work is recognized in its place; but the Spirit in calling and fitting Stephen, acts independently of their authority. The Spirit is" dividing to every man severally (or in particular) as He will " (i Cor. 12:11). The twelve were called and sent by the Lord when on earth, but Stephen was called by the Lord in glory, and his fitting and sending was by the Holy Spirit, and no one else. Thus we have in Stephen an illustration of the principle of Christian ministry for all time. Only, we must go to the writings of the apostle Paul for the full development of this principle; but this is true of everything connected with the Church. Paul himself was an apostle by the personal call of the Lord in glory, and he was sent forth into the work, not by the twelve, but by the Holy Ghost (Acts 13:4).Man was not the source nor the authority of his apostleship ; he declares expressly that it was "not of man, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead" (Gal. i:i). Then in Eph. 4:7-14 he puts all ministry on the same basis, and shows that evangelists, pastors and teachers are called, fitted and sent, as he was. And he lets us know that this principle is to characterize all Christian ministry until the Church is completed. Christ as the ascended One, and head of His body, the Church, gives " gifts unto men, for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith."

Until Stephen is raised up, the miraculous signs-except the speaking with tongues and prophesying at Pentecost-seem to have been by the twelve only. But now "Stephen full of faith (grace, N. Trans.) and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people " (Acts 6:8). He had been set apart as one of the seven who were to serve tables in the assembly at Jerusalem. His devotedness had fitted him for this place, for before the hands of the twelve were laid on him he was "full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom" (chap. 6:3). His being put into the ministry was entirely apart from the laying on of hands.

Philip, another of the " seven," is also a signal example of the way the Lord is now fitting men and sending them into the work. He and Stephen illustrate what is to characterize the action of the Spirit in the new dispensation. But the principle is of universal application; for it is recorded that all they that were scattered abroad at this time "went everywhere preaching the Word" (Acts 8:1-4). The sovereign choice and action of the Spirit is to characterize all Christian worship, as well as all Christian ministry. Man's authority is not to intrude itself into the sphere of worship nor into the sphere of ministry. Christians "worship by God's Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." The Spirit is to be the leader and power of the Christian Assembly (i Cor. 12; Phil. 3:3). Thus in all the circumstances connected with Stephen atthis twelfth appearing is indicated what was to characterize the full revelation of the truth to be given later through Paul, the minister of the new dispensation. He comes into the history at once, first as Saul the persecutor, consenting to the death of Stephen and taking care of the clothes of those who killed him; then, as the Lord's chosen instrument in sovereign grace, to build up what he sought to destroy. He had witnessed the effect of the glory of Christ in Stephen's face, and may easily have thought of this when he wrote 2 Cor. 4:4.Even more than Stephen, he became a witness of the transforming effect of that glory. Paul, like Stephen, is to be a witness of the glory of Christ and a partaker of His sufferings.

Is it a wonder men talk of themselves as being animals, when they live as if this life were given them for the enjoyment which can be got out of it ? How little removed indeed this is from the animal! Our practice and our doctrine are bound to balance themselves, sooner or later.

CHRIST ALONE.

The above words spoken by our Lord, as the cross confronted Him in the great work of redemption, have been the source of great strength and consolation to many of God's dear children since they were first uttered. Many a wearied, tried soul, lacking the understanding and sympathy for which the heart has craved, has cried out in sorrow, "I am troubled and alone," only to be answered by the still, small voice within, "Not alone, for the Father is with me." We have known something of the sense of loneliness expressed in the first part, and also of the unspeakable strength and comfort derived from the last part. But have we ever considered the intensity of their meaning to our Lord when He uttered them in Gethsemane ?

In a very real sense, all through His earthly life He had been alone. Can we point to one person who fully understood Him, who felt as He did, whose sympathies were one with Him in His work and its object ? Was there one who could truly comprehend His loving heart ? James and John (" the disciple whom Jesus loved") were anxious to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who would not receive Jesus. His answer to them shows how feebly they understood either Him or His mission. And could there be any real friendship or companionship for our Lord without understanding His sympathy and having the fullest trust in His love ?

Let us only consider who and what our Lord really was when as a man He walked upon the earth,
and we shall see why it was impossible for Him to be otherwise than alone. We know from Scripture that He was the eternal Son of God, was with God before the creation of the world, the Father's delight from eternity. He came to earth from the Father's bosom; He alone knew God-knew the true nature and attributes of God; understood perfectly His mind and will. He knew what it was to dwell with the Father, in holiness, in light, in love. He knew the blessedness and glories of heaven, where there was no sin, but divine love and peace and joy; where angels and archangels delighted to do His bidding. What stores of knowledge, what resources of peace, were within Himself, in which even those who were most with Him, and knew Him best, could share but slightly ?

He was also the Creator, as John i; 3 and Col. i :16 tell us; and as Creator of man He "needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man" (John 2:25). In His knowledge of men He was alone. Man does not even know himself. Peter thought it an impossible thing to deny his Lord; and Paul thought he was doing God service when he was persecuting His Son in persecuting His members here:"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"

Yes, in His pure love, in the purposes of that love, in His devotion to His Father and zeal for His glory in every part of His service, Jesus was alone. He was misunderstood, misjudged, and never more so than when the people, unreconciled to God, would have taken Him by force to make Him their king. Yet, although man at the best could but imperfectly understand Jesus (and even that understanding was only by the revelation from God the Father), it was in men Jesus had delight, and from men that He chose those who were to be His companions here, to be trained to be His companions for eternity. They were also to be His witnesses when He was no longer on the earth. Of the twelve He chose, one was a traitor. Eleven hearts loved Him; but even with these how often did He have to rebuke their misunderstanding and unbelief! and when circumstances arose in which their loyalty was most needed, we read, "Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled" (Matt. 26:56).

Did Jesus feel this loneliness ? Was there no pain to His loving heart that those whom He came to save and associate with Himself, at such a cost to Himself, should be so slow to understand the things of God, so little in sympathy with His thoughts and purpose, so self-seeking often ? In the verse from which our text is taken, when He says, "Ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone" is there not a touching sadness and pathos about those words, and at such a time ? In contrast with this, what cheer and joy it must have brought Him when He asked, "Will ye also go away ?" and the loyal answer came, "Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." We are apt to forget that our Lord was God as well as man; but, on the other hand, we need no less to remind ourselves that He was as truly man as He was God; and that He was in all points tempted (tried) as we all are, except sin.

Following these words of Jesus, comes that wondrous high-priestly prayer beginning, "Father, the hour is come." Yes, He knew it; the Father knew it; but none else could enter into the awful solemnity, the unfathomable sufferings, of that "hour." As it is approaching, He repairs to the garden of Gethsemane with His disciples, and bids them, "Tarry ye here, and watch with Me." He goes a little farther to pray, prostrate on the ground; His agony so great that His sweat is as great drops of blood falling to the ground; and an angel is sent from heaven to strengthen Him. What were the disciples doing ? Watching? No; overcome, it may be, by sorrow and weariness, they slept, until the traitor Judas appeared with his band with swords and staves, and laid hold on Jesus. Then the disciples fled, and He is left alone-alone to face the false witnesses and the rulers' bitter hatred. Not one of the many whom He had healed and helped and blessed were present to raise their voice against the false accusations laid against Him. Alone He bore, silently, the spitting, mocking, and scourging. Alone! No, not alone. There was One whose presence was with Him-who from the moment of His birth up to this present hour had never for one moment withdrawn His satisfied and approving gaze from the well-beloved Son. When reasoning with the Jews previously, He could say:"The Father hath not left Me alone, for I do always those things which please Him;" so now, in this hour of forsaking and trial, when all that could have, humanly, cheered and helped was withheld from Him, He could still triumphantly say, "I am not alone; for the Father is with Me." Ah, if we could realize it as He did, how well we can dispense with the human help when we have the divine! Friendless, helpless? No; not while we can say, "The Father is with me."

But a more intense darkness awaited our suffering Lord. The nails pierced His hands and His feet, and He hung on the cross, numbered with the transgressors-between two thieves-to die. He was there giving Himself a ransom for all. Yes, He hung there as Sin-bearer, as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Now in all its awful depths He was to know what it was to be alone. His great comfort was withdrawn; no longer could He repose in the recognized presence of His Father; for He had voluntarily taken the place of the sinner, and was bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. The great, holy God could not look upon sin; therefore He turns from the Sin-bearer, though He was the Spotless One, the Son of His love. Ah, dear friends, let us not, in our most lonely, heart-aching moments, think that Jesus does not understand. We can never know it as He knew it; for we who have come to Him have His promise, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5).
But an awful cry rings out from His cross:" Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? "-that is to say, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?" It was the last stroke. With another loud cry, He dismisses His spirit. The work was done. The debt was paid. The sacrifice was made. Sin was atoned for. But at what a cost! Jesus dies;-not from the cruelty of man; not from natural causes, as the two other men by His sides. His glorious personality appears here in the midst of His deepest sorrow, as elsewhere:He had said of His life, "No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again."

This is why the soldiers find Him dead already, when breaking the legs of the two thieves who were crucified with Him. His work done, He dismisses His spirit, to recall it on the third day after; nevermore now to be alone.

Patience, dear friends:our Lord is now in glory, calling us from all the ends of the earth, and the time is coming soon when we too, seeing Him face to face,

" Shall know as we are known,
Nevermore to walk alone."

M. M. S.

(The next paper is to be "The Christian Alone.")

As a rule, the Lord chooses dependent men for His servants. To be cast upon Him for all the necessities of life (if there be that faith which forbids corroding care,, and which He bestows, no doubt, on all whom He calls to the ministry) is of great advantage.

On the other hand, woe be to those who, while profited by such ministry, in some form or other, forget, or neglect, its necessities, and make it toil in suffering. It will be serious matter at the end to be found having done this, while, perhaps, having laid up treasures upon earth. May the Lord's beloved people be wide awake concerning their eternal interests.

(Continued from page 24)

In my introductory paper last month, I quoted from Mr. M's pamphlet the two points to which he calls our special attention. We will now look at his first:"the place which the breaking of bread has in christian fellowship."

We will look at it first, as conceived by Mr. Mauro. He says :

" The breaking of bread is an act or event, each occurrence of which is complete in itself" (p. 4). Also,

"A proper meeting or gathering is constituted wherever two or more of these called ones assemble to the name of the Lord Jesus. Every meeting is thus distinct from every other, both as to time and place" (p. 8).

Then he counsels us, on page 13,

"To cease regarding the Lord's table as a continuing institution, and to treat it, as it should be treated, as a memorial act, to be observed from time to time ('As often as ye do this'), by those members of His body who are gathered in one place at the time. Every observance should be regarded as a distinct event, complete in itself, and disconnected from like observances at other times and in other places ; and the question of participation in it should depend upon the spiritual state at the time of those who are present. If it had been remembered that the breaking of bread is an event, or memorial act, and not a continuing institution, we should never have heard such expressions as, ' Setting up another table,' etc."

" The breaking of bread in remembrance of the Lord is, at each occurrence, an isolated event, complete in itself" (p. 21).

These quotations will suffice to give us a clear conception of Mr. M.'s idea as to the place the breaking of bread has in Christian fellowship. In connection with this is his idea also of a properly constituted meeting. Answering a correspondent he says:

"In this connection you say, however, that the breaking of bread in apostolic days was the practice of a company which existed as such all through the week; I must dissent from this, and would point out that the only company, which existed (has an existence) as such during the week is the entire company of the members of Christ's body on earth, and that those who may come together on the first day, or at any other time, constitute simply a meeting or gathering which derives its character as a Christian meeting solely from the presence of the Lord in the midst. It follows that such a meeting has no other or better status, authority, or sanction, than any and every other meeting-however small the numbers- at which the Lord Himself is present" (p. 17).

I do not need to quote more. It is evident to one who understands the fundamental constitution of the house of God, as set up by the apostle Paul, that Mr. M. 's reasoning mind has missed it. It is the believing mind which God teaches. Mr. M.'s conception of a properly constituted meeting is a denial both of the outward order and the internal arrangement of the house of God as Paul established them. It is a complete subversion of the relations of the assemblies to one another, as ordained by Paul. It is an entire denial of the place the breaking of bread has in Christian fellowship, according to the instruction of the apostle.

An examination of the teaching of Paul on these matters will make all this clear. A passage, quoted indeed by Mr. M., but not understood by him, has an important bearing on these points:"God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (i Cor. i:9).

We hear it sometimes crudely and unintelligently remarked, "I know no other fellowship but that of i John i:3, the fellowship that is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ." Now, this fellowship is a participation in the nature and life of the Father and the Son. Every one born of God, necessarily by that fact, is a sharer in that nature and life. Of course the flow of it maybe hindered in many ways and from many causes, but of this the passage is not speaking. Every one who is in the light, however feebly that light may be in him, shares in the nature and life of the Father and the Son. It is common to all who are born of Him. But Paul is not speaking of this in i Cor. i:9. He is speaking here of a fellowship which has been set up on earth, which elsewhere he calls "the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth "-the truth of the great mystery of the person of the Christ (i Tim. 3:15, 16). It is a fellowship set up to be the proclamation among men of the truth of Jesus Christ, and the upholder, the maintenance, of it. This is the fundamental character of the house of God. It is its fundamental character everywhere. Paul constituted the local assemblies alike in every place, depositing everywhere the same teaching, or doctrine, (i Cor. 4:17), ordaining the same customs (chap. 7:17; 11:16). He gave to the assemblies everywhere the same external order and the same internal arrangement.

He had divine authority for this, for an administration (Eph. 3 :2) was given to him. He was authorized to be the architect (i Cor. 3:10) of the house of God, to establish the pattern according to which the house of God was to be carried on and maintained. He was thus the authorized establisher of the fellowship of God's Son.

Now of this fellowship, the pattern of which was committed to and executed by the apostle Paul under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, I wish to make a few remarks. I believe they will prove helpful.

First:If we are in this fellowship, it is of grace. God hath called us unto it. Second:It is a fellowship of which God's Son is the Source. He is the establisher of it-the One who conferred on Paul the authority to set it up on earth-to build it. Third:As being the source of it, its establisher, He gives character to it. He not only participates in it, but He has originated it and given it its character. Fourth:This fellowship is an abiding, continuous fellowship, not intermitting-a continuously subsisting fellowship. It is not an occasional, but an abiding reality. Fifth; The Spirit of God continuously maintains it. He has never, during all the ages succeeding the apostolic, departed from the pattern He then set up through the apostle. Sixth:It is our responsibility to abide by the pattern the Holy Spirit then gave us.

Now, of course, we can understand that the fellowship of God's Son once set up here on earth should be the object of assault. Indeed, the first epistle to the Corinthians shows us the chief ways in which it is assailed, and which are to be refused:

In i Cor. 2:14-16 he exposes and expels worldly wisdom-the mere natural man. In chap. 3:16, 17 it is the destroyers-those fundamentally unsound. In chap. 5 :n it is lust-self-indulgence-which assails, and is refused; and in chap. 10:14-33 it is those in unholy associations. These are divine safeguards which we cannot neglect if we purpose to preserve the apostolic and fundamental character of the fellowship unto which by the grace of God we have been called.

We have seen that this fellowship is a continuously abiding fellowship. Our present purpose is to ascertain the place the breaking of bread has in it. It is most surely a feature-a prominent one-of the fellowship. What relations, then, has the breaking of bread with this continuously subsisting fellow-, ship-what is its connection with the fellowship of God's Son ? Does the word of God answer ? It does:and its answer is not in the least equivocal. It makes it plain that the breaking of bread is the very central feature of the fellowship God's Son has established here upon earth.

That fellowship is founded on, and centers in, the death of Christ. Our-blessing the cup and breaking the bread is the expression of that death which is the basis of the fellowship. The cup, containing the poured out wine, is the symbol of the poured out blood of Christ, and the loaf symbolizes the dead body of Christ. Our partaking of the cup and loaf expresses our identification with that death-the death that is the foundation on which the fellowship in which we participate depends (i Cor. 10:16-17).

Now the apostles and the saints of their days, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, met together every first day of the week for the purpose of breaking bread (Acts 20:7). Their custom is our rule. Each first day of the week we repeat the announcing the death (i Cor. 11:26) of the Lord. But every announcement of the death of the Lord is the expression of our identification with that death, and that we are partakers of a fellowship of which that death is the basis.

We have seen this fellowship is a continuing fellowship. It is not merely for the first day of the week. It is not merely for the time we are met together for the purpose of breaking bread. It is not in that way an intermitting fellowship. The fellowship is an established, continuously-subsisting fellowship, and the breaking of bread has a place that makes it the very center of it. It is its characteristic feature.

Surely, then, looking at the breaking of bread in the light of i Cor. 10:16, 17, it is impossible to regard it as an "act or event, each occurrence of which is complete in itself." It is not an "isolated event" or "meeting," to be regarded as "distinct from every other, both as to time and place."

But i Cor. 10 has still more to say to us on this point. I here wish to remind my readers that the apostle is speaking as the mouth-piece of God, as the exponent and interpreter of the mind of God. He is authoritatively giving what the will of God is. Well, then, he says:"I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils:ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils "(vers. 20, 21). He is speaking here, evidently, as verse 19 indicates, of the liberty some of them boasted they had to eat meat in an idol's temple (see chap. 8:9, 10). He does not deal with this matter here in chap. 10 as he deals with it in chap. 8. There he appeals to the effect it might have on a weak brother whose conscience still regarded the idol to be something. If he was emboldened to go in the idol's temple and eat meat sacrificed to it by the example of one who went in and partook on the ground of knowing the idol was nothing, it would mean for him a defiled conscience. The apostle denounces the use of this boasted liberty as inconsiderate destruction of conscience in the weak brother; as sinning against him, and as so sinning against Christ.

In chapter 10 the apostle looks at this matter from another standpoint. The act of eating the meat is the expression of identification with the fellowship of the idol, or the demon it represents. Such an act is in violation of the fellowship of God's Son. The one doing it would be regarded by all observers of it as connected with the fellowship of which the idol was the center. Now the fellowship of idols, or demons, is antagonistic in nature and character from the fellowship of God's Son. It follows therefore that eating meat in the temple of an idol on Monday is not merely inconsistent with breaking bread on the Lord's Day, but a denial of what the act of breaking bread on the Lord's Day is the expression of. If on the Lord's Day we are identified with the fellowship of God's Son, we are identified with it on Monday-on every day of the week. The fellowship of the breaking of bread is an expression of what does not end with that act or event. There is a very real and true sense in which the Christian is at the table of the Lord all the time-not only on the first day of the week, but all the days of the week. His daily, hourly life is inevitably linked with it.

To this point I may return again, but must now pass on to another. We have seen that the apostle insists on the principle that breaking bread expresses identification, continuous identification with a fellowship that is founded on the death of Christ. We have also seen how he applies the principle in reference to the fellowship of an idol. His application of the principle in this case is an illustration and example for us.

We are not surrounded with temples of idols, nor therefore with tables of devils. It will not do for us to say, however, we have no occasion for applying the principle revealed. Such occasions, alas, are but too common, and it is disloyalty to Christ who died for us, and a violation of the nature and character of the fellowship of which that death is the basis, if we are identified with what vitiates it.

While saying before that the Christian is always connected with the fellowship of which the breaking of bread is a central and characterizing feature, it does not follow that in existing conditions all Christians are to be allowed the privileges of it. We have noticed before those to whom it is denied. In i Cor. 5, the man to whom it is denied is owned a true Christian; and here in chap. 10 there is no question raised as to their reality. They even claim liberty on the plea of their strong faith, and they are denied the privileges of the fellowship with which they are connected as being Christians.

None denies the apostle as being the exponent and interpreter of the will of God ; his ruling is authoritative therefore. Those who are loyal to his legislation will be governed by it. If with him association and identification with the fellowship of a demon disqualified a Christian for the enjoyment of his privileges with his fellow-Christians, those who are subject to the apostle's authoritative ruling in the matter will observe the practice which he has thus directed to be followed by the Lord's people. Mr. Mauro resists it.

Much beside, in his paper, under expressions attractive to such as care little for the claims of Christ, yet are loud enough for their own, is but the boldest independency. Paul certainly regarded the gathering at Corinth as in relations with others in other places who "call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord " (i Cor. i:2). Mr. Mauro does not. His principles admitted by a meeting of Christians would forbid considering it a Christian meeting, or a company gathered to the Lord's name. They who profess to be gathered to the Lord's name should be subject to the Lord's order, as Wesleyans should be subject to Wesley's.

We may ask here, How does the house of God assemble? It certainly does not assemble as a universal house. There are many insuperable difficulties in the way of the universal house coming together at one time in one place. It should be manifest that the whole house assembles locally. The local gathering is the assembling of the house in the locality. The local gathering then is the representative of the universal house. To be that, however, the local gathering must be fundamentally the same everywhere. Again, the house of God is one. There are not many houses of God, but one house. Here again, we see a reason why the local assembly is the representative of the universal assembly. We may say also it is the representative in its locality of all the assemblies everywhere, but this necessitates the assemblies having everywhere the same fundamental character. But all this shows how close and intimate are the relations of the assemblies to each other.

That such is the fact, that the local assembly represents in its locality the universal house and also every assembly everywhere else; that such are the relations of the assemblies to one another in the Scriptures, is made manifest by the fact that the apostle insists that he gave to the assemblies everywhere the same fundamental character. Everywhere he established the same outward order. Everywhere he appointed the same internal arrangement. In i Cor. 4:17, he says, "As I teach every where in every church." In chap. 7:17, he says, "So ordain I in all churches." In chap, n:23, he tells us he received a special revelation as to the matter of the breaking of bread. He deposited this revelation with the saints at Corinth. Surely he delivered it to all the churches elsewhere, to "all that in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." A meeting, such as Mr. M. suggests, does not have this representative character. It is destructive of it. It is not Christian, but subversive of apostolic authority, and overruling the will and mind of God. It overthrows the nature and character of the fellowship our Lord has established and committed to the Church.

Mr. M. thinks his way would end much dissension. Very likely. Taking away Christianity from the earth would also end much dissension and division. And the apostle would certainly not have had to speak as he did of the heavy burden "which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches," had he had Mr. M.'s advice to follow. Independency is attractive, as it offers the privileges divested of their responsibilities.

Is not then the Lord present, and the table the Lord's table, in such a meeting as Mr. M. proposes ? This is not for man to determine. That which can neither be proved nor disproved is for God to judge, not us. Our province is to judge of principles approved or disapproved by the word of God; or of facts which can be proved or disproved by witnesses. Beyond that all belongs to God alone.* *But let us not be deceived:the precious privileges of God's house can only be retained and enjoyed in the connections with which and with whom God has put them.-[Ed.*
Mr. M. asserts much. He is fond of the expression "I maintain." Let God's people not be moved, but cling more than ever to His word. It will make them "wise unto salvation" in every subject; and every subject connected with Christ has serious issues.

My next paper will consider Mr. M. 's interpretation of 2 Tim. 2:20-22.

(To be completed in next issue.)

" Whosoever is Born of God Doth Not Commit Sin "; or,

THE BELIEVER'S TWO NATURES (Continued from page 94.)

We must now notice, somewhat at length, what is practically the only remaining proof-text for the theory we have been examining-that of perfection in the flesh. We turn to i John 3.

"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law [or, doeth lawlessness; lit. trans.]; for sin is the transgression of the law [or, sin is lawlessness]. And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not:whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him. Little children, let no man deceive you:he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him:and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil:whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother" (vers. 4-10).

Let the reader note well two points at the outset:First, This passage speaks of what is characteristically true of all who are born of God. It does not contemplate any select, advanced coterie of Christians who have gone on to perfection or obtained a second blessing. And it is folly to argue, as some hard-driven controversialists have done-in subject alike to Scripture and to reason-that only advanced believers, who have attained to holiness, are born of God, the rest being but begotten! This position is not tenable for a moment in view of the plain declaration in the same epistle that "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God."

Second, If the passage proves that all sanctified Christians live absolutely without sinning, it proves too much; for it also tells us that " whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him." Are the perfectionists prepared to own that if any of their number "lose the blessing" and fall away, it proves that they never did know God at all, but were hypocrites all the days of their former profession ? If unwilling to take this attitude toward their failed brethren and to place themselves in the same category when they fall (as they all do eventually), they must logically confess that "committeth sin " and " sinneth not " are not to be taken in an absolute sense, as though the one expression were "falls into sin," and the other, "never commits a sin."

A little attention to the opening verses of chapter 2, which have already been noticed in our previous paper, would deliver from radicalism in the understanding of the passage now before us. There the possibility of a believer failing and sinning is clearly taught, and the advocacy of Christ presented to keep him from despair. " If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." No interpretation of the balance of the epistle contradictory to this clear statement can possibly be correct.

John's epistle is one of sharp contrasts. He deals in abstract statements. Light and darkness we have already' seen contrasted. No blending of these is hinted at. John knows no twilight. Love and hatred are similarly contrasted throughout the epistle. Lukewarmness in affection is not here suggested. All are either cold or hot.

So it is with sin and righteousness. It is what is characteristic that is presented for our consideration. The believer is characteristically righteous:he does righteousness, and sinneth not:that is, the whole bent of his life is good; he practices righteousness, and consequently he does not practice sin. With the unbeliever the opposite is the case. He may do many good acts (if we think only of their effect upon and his attitude toward his fellow-men), but his life is characterized by sin. He makes sin a practice. In this are manifested who are of God, and who are of Satan.

The essence of sin is-not the transgression of the law, but-lawlessness! No scholar questions now the incorrectness of the Authorized Version here. Sin is doing one's own will-that is lawlessness. This was what marked every man till grace reached him. " All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6). He, the sinless One, was manifested to free us from our sins-both as to guilt and power. "In Him is no sin." Of none save Him could words like these rightfully be used. "The prince of this world cometh," He said, "and hath nothing in Me."

We who have been subdued by His grace and won for Himself no longer practice sin. To every truly converted soul sin is now a foreign and hateful thing. " Whosoever practiceth sin [literal rendering] hath not seen Him, neither known Him." This verse must not be lightly passed by. It is as absolute as any other portion of the passage. No one who has ever known Him can go on practicing sin with indifference. Backsliding there may be- and, alas, often is. But the backslider is one under the hand of God in government, and He loves him too well to permit him to continue the practice of sin. He uses the rod of discipline; and if that be not enough, cuts short his career and leaves the case for final settlement at the judgment-seat of Christ (i Cor. 3:15; 11:30-32, and 2 Cor. 5:10).* * Those who have trouble as to this are referred to a helpful paper by W. Barker, "Fallen from Grace ; or, Castaway." Price, 6 cents.*

The point of John's teaching is that one who deliberately goes on in unrighteousness is not, and never has been, a child of God. He who is by faith united to the Righteous One is himself a righteous man. The one persistently practicing sin is of the devil, " for the devil sinneth from the beginning " -the entire course of the evil one has been sinful and wicked.

The 9th verse gets down to the root of the matter, and should make all plain:"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit [or practice] sin; for His seed remaineth in him:and he cannot sin [or, be sinning], because he is born of God." It is the believer looked at as characterized by the new nature who does not sin. True, he still has the old carnal, Adamic nature; and if controlled by it, he would still be sinning continuously. But the new nature, imparted when he was born again, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible," is now the controlling factor of his life. With this incorruptible seed abiding in him, he cannot practice sin. He becomes like the One whose child he is.

The doctrine of the two natures is frequently stated and always implied in Scripture. If not grasped, the mind must ever be in confusion as to the reasons for the conflict which every believer knows within himself, sooner or later.
This conflict is definitely declared to go on in every Christian, in Gal. 5:16, 17. After various exhortations, which are utterly meaningless if addressed to sinless men and women, we read, "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust [or desire] of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth [or desireth] against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh:and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot [or might not] do the things that ye would." The flesh here is not the body of the believer, but the carnal nature. It was so designated by the Lord Himself when He said to Nicodemus:"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again" (John 3:6, 7). The two natures are there, as in Galatians, placed in sharp contrast. The flesh is ever opposed to the Spirit. The new nature is born of the Spirit, and controlled by the Spirit; hence it is described according to its character. Agreement between the two there can never be; nevertheless, there is no instruction as to how the flesh may be eliminated. The Christian is simply told to walk in the Spirit; and if he does, he will not be found fulfilling the desires of the flesh. This is the man who sinneth not.

The nature of the conflict is fully described in a typical case-probably the apostle's own at one time-in Rom. 7, which has already been before us. The man therein depicted is undoubtedly a child of God, though many have questioned it. Some suppose him to be a Jew seeking justification by the law. But the subject of justification is all taken up and settled in the first five chapters of the epistle. From chapter 6 on, it is deliverance from sin's power that is the theme. Moreover, the man of Rom. 7 " delights in the law of God after the inward man." What unconverted soul could speak like this? The " inward man " is the new nature. No Christless soul delights in what is of God. The " inward man " is opposed to "another law in my members," which can only be the power of the old nature, the flesh. These two are here, as in John 3 and in Gal. 5, placed in sharp contrast.

Paul is describing the inevitable conflict that every believer knows when he undertakes to lead a holy life on the principle of legality. He feels instinctively that the law is spiritual, but that he himself, for some unexplained reason, is fleshly, or carnal, in bondage to sin. This discovery is one of the most heart-breaking a Christian ever made. Yet each one must and does make it for himself at some time in his experience. He finds himself doing things he knows to be wrong, and which his inmost desires are opposed to; while what he yearns to do he fails to accomplish, and does, instead, what he hates.

But this is the first part of a great lesson which all must learn who would matriculate in God's school. It is the lesson of "no confidence in the flesh"; and until it is learned there can be no true progress in holiness. The incorrigibility of the flesh must be realized before one is ready to turn altogether from self to Christ for sanctification, as he has already done for justification.

Two conclusions are therefore drawn (in vers. 16, 17) as a result of carefully weighing the first part of this great lesson. First, I consent that the law is good; and, in the second place, I begin to realize that I myself am on the side of that law, but there is a power within me, with which I have no desire to be identified, which keeps me from doing what I acknowledge to be good. Thus I have learned to distinguish "sin that dwelleth in me " from myself. It is a hateful intruder, albeit once my master in all things.

So I have got this far (in verse 18), that I know there are two natures in me; but still, "how to perform that which is good I find not." Mere knowledge does not help. I still do the evil I hate, and I have no ability to do the good I desire. But nevertheless I am a long way toward my deliverance when I am able to distinguish the two laws, or controlling powers-, of the two natures within my being. After the inward man, I delight in the holy law of God. " But I see another law (or controlling power) in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members " (ver. 23). So wretched am I made by repeated failure, that I feel like a poor prisoner chained to a dead body-which nevertheless has over me a terrible control. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " This is the cry that brings the help I need. I have been trying to deliver myself. I now realize the impossibility of this, and I cry for a Deliverer outside myself. In a moment He is revealed to my soul, and I see that He alone, who saved me at the beginning, can keep me from sin's power. " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He must be my sanctification as well as my redemption and my righteousness.

In myself, with the mind, or the new nature, I serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the old nature, the law of sin. But when I look away from self to Christ, I see that there is "no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (chap. 8:i, 2). I will not therefore struggle to be holy. I will look up to the blessed Christ of God and walk in the Spirit, assured of victory while occupied thus with Him who is my all. " For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (vers. 3, 4).

What a relief it is, after the vain effort to eradicate sin from the flesh, when I learn that God has condemned it in the flesh, and will in His own good time free me from its presence, when at the Lord's return He shall change these vile bodies and make them like His own glorious body. Then redemption will be complete. The redemption of my soul is past, and in it I rejoice. The redemption of my body is yet to come, when the Lord Jesus returns, and this mortal shall put on immortality.

For the present, walking in the Spirit, the believer sins not. His life is a righteous one. But he needs ever to watch and pray lest in a moment of spiritual drowsiness the old nature be allowed to act, and thus his testimony be marred and his Lord dishonored.

I conclude with an illustration often used, which may help to clear up any difficulty remaining as to the truth set forth in i John 3. A man has an orchard of seedling oranges. He wishes to grow Washington navels instead. He therefore decides to graft his trees. He cuts off all branches close to the parent stem and inserts in each one a piece taken from a Washington naval tree. The old fruit disappears entirely, and new fruit is now on the trees in keeping with the new nature of the Washington navel inserted in them. This is a picture of conversion.

A few years roll by and we are taken by this gentleman for a walk through his orchard. On every hand the trees are loaded with beautiful golden fruit. "What kind of oranges are these ? " we ask. "These are all Washington navels," is the answer. "Do they not bear seedlings now?" we inquire. " No," is the reply; "a grafted tree cannot bear seedlings." But even as he speaks we catch sight of a small orange hanging on a shoot low down on the tree. "What is that? is it not a seedling?" we ask. "Ah,"he answers, "I see my man has been careless; he has allowed a shoot to grow from the old stem, and it is of the old nature of the tree. I must clip off that shoot; " and so saying, he uses the knife. Would any one say he spoke untruthfully when he declared that a budded tree bears Washington navels only ? Surely not. All would understand that he was speaking of that which was characteristic.

And so it is with the believer. Having been born again, the old life, for him, is ended. The fruits of the flesh he is now ashamed of. The old ways he no longer walks in. His whole course of life is changed. The fruit of the Spirit is now manifested, and he cannot be sinning, for he is born of God.

But the pruning-knife of self-judgment is ever needed. Otherwise the old nature will begin to manifest itself; for it is no more eradicated than is the old nature of the seedling tree after having been budded. Hence the need of being ever in subjection to the word of God and of unsparing self-judgment. "Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation."

To deny the presence of the old nature is but to invite defeat. It would be like the orchardist who refuses to believe it possible that seedlings could be produced if shoots from the old trunk were allowed to grow on unchecked. The part of wisdom is to recognize the danger of neglecting the use of the pruning-knife. And so, for the believer, it is only folly to ignore that sin dwells in me. To do so is but to be deceived, and to expose myself to all manner of evil things because of my failure to recognize my need of daily dependence upon God. Only as I walk in the Spirit, looking unto Jesus in a self-judged and humble condition of soul, will my life be One of holiness. H. A. I.

(To be continued.)

(Ps. 50:23.)

O blessed Saviour, Jesus, Thou
Upon the Father's throne;
Upon the cross once, long ago,
Thou didst for sin atone!

Thy love transcendeth all that man
Has ever heard or known ;
Ordained the Lamb by God's own plan
To suffer all alone.

None other could with Thee go down
Into those depths of woe ;
Thou only couldst endure God's frown
That grace to man might flow.

Thou, the forsaken One of God,
Didst suffer on the tree;
And drink that cup and bear the rod,
The chastening due to me.

Thine anguish who can ever know
Endured for sinners there ?
Oh, love that brought Thee unto woe
And grief without compare!

There, darkness hid those tears of Thine,
Tears that Love shed for me,
The wine-press trod by wrath divine
Brings joy and peace to me.

Yes, 'twas for me, condemned by sin,
Sunk down in shame, and sore;
That Thou didst suffer thus, to win
My heart to God once more.

And can it be, O Calvary,
That man, for whom He died,
Should e'en yet be the enemy
Of Christ, the Crucified ?

O blessed One, the Father's Son,
Thy ransomed worship Thee;
For Thou hast won, for us undone,
Eternal victory.

We claim Thy blood our way to God,
We trust Thy grace so free,
We long to see. Thee, blessed Lord,
And ever with Thee be.

W. H.

(Chap. 1:11-24.)

(Continued from page 209.)

Having pronounced the perverters of the gospel "anathema," the apostle next solemnly assures the Galatians that the gospel he preached was not according to man (ver. n). The element characteristic of every remedy proposed and announced from man as a means of deliverance out of the age of evil was unknown in the gospel proclaimed by the apostle. Every system devised by men to remedy the condition of evil in which men are insists on self-effort. Man is to rise up in the assertion of his so-called better self, cast off his sins, and cultivate his better qualities.

This principle, characteristic of every human scheme for the salvation of men, has no place in Paul's gospel. The announcement he brought to men imposed no toil on them, but declared the toil of a Substitute in their behalf. His message was concerned with a work already accomplished, and accepted by God. He declared the finished work of Christ as a provision of God, a provision of grace, in the behalf of man. He announced a full and free salvation by grace, to be received in faith. Hence the gospel Paul preached was not patterned after any of the humanly-devised schemes.

We must also notice another thing. Man was not the channel through which Paul had received the gospel he proclaimed (verse 12). The risen Lord Jesus Christ commissioned the apostles whom He had chosen to be His witnesses to go among the Gentiles and make disciples (Matt. 28:19). They were thus authorized directly by Himself to preach 'the gospel to all men (Mark 16:15). Receiving the Holy Spirit whom He had promised to give them, they were qualified as well as empowered to be His witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria, but also in all the world (Acts i:8). Surely they were competent to teach men the gospel -to be the channels of it to men. But Paul did not even receive it from them. They were not his instructors in the grace of Christ. This he learned, as he tells us here, directly from the Lord Himself. Jesus Christ on the throne of God in heaven revealed Himself to him, and thus made known to him His grace, and chose him as His instrument to preach it. It was thus he learned the gospel and received his call. The glorified Lord had taught him and sent him.

Thus the apostle Paul had divine authority for the gospel he preached. He knew its origin, its authenticity. It was an authoritative gospel. The "perverters" of it were preaching what was of man. They had not learned their gospel from God, nor from the twelve. It was as truly a perversion of what the twelve preached as of what Paul preached. It was after the pattern of the humanly-devised schemes for the salvation of men; on the. principle of self-effort; without the authority of God. Thus the apostle could establish both the authenticity of his gospel and the authenticity of his call to preach it. The perverters had neither the one nor the other.

The way in which he does this is not only interesting, it is edifying. There is rich and profitable instruction in it. First, he refers to the time when he was a student in a human school-a school in which instruction was according to man. We know, for he tells us elsewhere (Acts 22:3), that he was instructed by the great Jewish teacher Gamaliel. He was undoubtedly well versed in that system of the interpretation of the Old Testament in which Gamaliel was a great master. He had amazingly developed in "the traditions of his fathers," and "profited beyond many of his contemporaries" in the religious system of the Jews. As proof of his wonderful development in the religious system of which he was a sincere and faithful adherent, he appeals to his zeal in persecuting and wasting the Church of God (vers. 13, 14).

The brief summary of his former manner of life shows how thoroughly he understands the characteristic principle of the system of instruction which these troublers and perverters of the gospel had introduced among the Galatian saints. As he tells us elsewhere (Phil. 3:5, 6), it was his boast that "as touching the law " he was a Pharisee, and as touching the righteousness it required he was "blameless." Acting on the human principle of self-effort, he became a sincere blasphemer. He was a determined enemy of the free, sovereign grace of God. Blinded by the power of the human principle which was governing him, he resisted all testimony to the grace that had provided for men a Saviour.

It was while he was still pursuing his way of determined opposition to the free grace that had been proclaimed among men that the risen and ascended Lord showed Himself to him, revealed the gospel to him, and called him to preach it. It is this sovereign and divine call that he here insists on (vers. 15, 16). He would have the Galatians realize not only that his gospel is a divinely-authoritative gospel, but also that he himself was divinely commissioned to preach it.

But we need to consider more fully the apostle's appeal to his divine call. There is rich instruction in it. He says:"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace." Why does he refer to his natural birth ? Let us consider it for a little.

God conferred on man, His creature, the power to propagate himself (Gen. i:28); but if the creature propagate itself by power conferred on it by God, then that power is, not intrinsically, or essentially, in the creature. It is intrinsically, and essentially, in God, the creator of all things. It is dependently in the creature. It is by the power of God that men beget; that women conceive, and bring forth. All the so-called forces of nature are of God. The operation of every force in the material creation is by His power.

The apostle's point is that the same God who brought him into being according to His sovereign will, of His own will wrought in him when he was in the blindness of unbelief. Another apostle says (James i:18), "Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth." That is what Paul is here affirming as to himself. By the power of divine grace God had laid hold of his soul. He had spoken, not simply to him, but effectually in his soul. There had been thus a deposit in his soul of a word of truth-a saying of God. As he had been born naturally by the power of God, so also by the power of God had he been new-born, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible," by means of the living and enduring word of God (i Peter i:23).

In his new birth he was the pattern of every new birth. His new birth was a sample case. It was a new creation in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10). But while this is true, God had a special purpose in selecting him "to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess. a:13). He had "beforehand" (Acts 22:14, Greek) "chosen" him to "know His will," to "see that Just One," and "hear His voice." He had selected him to be the vessel of His grace to men; to be, as a personal witness of the risen and exalted Jesus, the bearer of His name, first "before the Gentiles and kings," but also "the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15). God, in the exercise of His sovereign rights, had purposed him to be a herald of the gospel of the glory of His Son-a preacher of this gospel among the Gentiles.

What man of himself knows this marvelous glory ? It is a glory the eye of the natural man has never seen. The report of it his ear never hears. The reality and blessedness of it never enters the natural man's heart (i Cor. 2:9). If then Saul, the unbelieving Saul, of his own will a hater of the name of Jesus, and an insolent persecutor of His followers, is to be transformed into His bond-slave and the devoted proclaimer of His glory, the apprehension of Him-of the glory that is His-must be wrought in his soul. It was not there naturally. The God who gave him his being, calling him by the power of His grace, effected in his soul this inward realization of the super excellent glory of His Son. It was a work of God in his soul; it was believing Him whom God had sent, and whom, on His rejection, He had glorified in the highest heaven.

He had, then, been divinely called to be a preacher of the gospel. He had been divinely qualified for preaching it by a divine deposit in his soul of the reality, blessedness and power of the gospel he had been called to preach. He had been preaching it (and was still) by divine authority. In insisting on his divine authorization he is exposing the culpability of the Galatians in giving up the gospel he had preached among them for a "different" gospel which the "perverters of the gospel of Christ" had since proclaimed among them.

But he carries his argument still further. He says, " Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." We read in Acts 9:20, "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God." He did this without consulting with man, and without his sanction. Nor was there any comparing of the gospel he had received from the Lord with what others preached. In vers. 17-19 he shows that the development of the gospel in his own mind was entirely without reference to others. In Phil. 3:7, 8 he tells us that when God wrought in his soul "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" he counted as refuse what hitherto had been gain to him. This surely included the interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures he had learnt at Gamaliel's feet. How useless he must have felt it all to be as he preached Christ in the synagogues of Damascus! How fully aware he must have been that his knowledge of them, his understanding of them, having left Christ and His sufferings out, had been altogether wrong!

Perhaps it was his consciousness of this that decided him to go into Arabia. There, alone in the school of God, he would, one cannot but think, be unlearning the interpretations of Gamaliel, and view afresh the Old Testament in the new light which the rejected but risen and glorified Christ, now in divine power in his soul, gave to it. As he thus read _and studied the Old Testament, how his soul must have been ravished in everywhere finding that blessed face before him! How plainly he saw now that "Moses in the law and the prophets" wrote of Him! How the gospel he had heard and learned from that super excellent Man in the glory of God expanded in his soul while thus alone with God in the desert! There he became familiar with the one only true and divinely-authorized interpretation of the Scriptures.

Thus furnished with light and knowledge, realized to be, not from man, but from God Himself, he returned to Damascus. His testimony as to Christ aroused the hatred of his fellow-countrymen, who sought to kill him. The disciples helping him to escape, "letting him down by the wall in a basket" (Acts 9:25; i Cor. 11:33), he went to Jerusalem for the first time since his conversion. He tells us it was three years after, and that the object of his visit at^this time was " to see Peter." But as he was now well established and confirmed in the gospel of the grace of God, as we have seen, this visit was not for the purpose of having the gospel authenticated by Peter. No human confirmation or authorization of it was needed. He possessed this already from God Himself. The fifteen days spent with Peter were days of communion with a kindred soul. It was a blessed time of fellowship of heart with heart; and how their hearts must have burned within them as they communed one with another! We may surmise what the great theme of their communion was -the man-rejected, but God-exalted, Christ.

It was on this occasion, as he tells us in Acts 22:17, that the glorified Lord again revealed Himself to him. At the time of his conversion he was told (Acts 26:16), "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." At the time of his conversion he was informed that the special sphere of his testimony was to be among the Gentiles. It would seem that at the time of his visit to Jerusalem to see Peter a strong desire possessed him to testify among the Jews. When the Lord appears to him, while he is praying in the temple, commanding him to depart " quickly out of Jerusalem," he reasons with the Lord against it; but he is told, "Depart:for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts 22:17-21).

Now during his fifteen days' visit at Jerusalem, besides Peter, he saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother (ver. 19). Evidently his opportunities for conference with those who were apostles before him were very limited. But if his authority to preach the gospel depended on apostolic sanction, this would have been a suited occasion for a conference of the apostles in regard to the matter. There was no such conference. There was no apostolic hand laid on his head, not even Peter's.

In verse 20 he solemnly assures the Galatians that his statement of the way in which he received the
gospel, and of the authority by which he preached it, was in no particular false, but in every way the truth. The apostle was not writing as lifted up with pride, or as boasting of his authority, but as being consciously before the face of God, soberly realizing the importance of what he is insisting upon, and the seriousness of the spiritual state in which the saints of Galatia were-a state which, alas, was henceforth to be a continual plague and menace to Christianity. In the remaining verses of the chapter (vers. 21-24) he completes his statement as to the Source from which he received his gospel, and the authority by which he proclaimed it, in entire independence of man, without human sanction altogether. We notice that after his visit to Peter he went "into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (verse 21). In Acts 9:30 we read of his being in '' Caesarea " and '' Tarsus." It was at Tarsus that Barnabas found him some years after, and induced him to go to Antioch to take part in the work of God going on there. During this period of his stay in "the regions of Syria and Cilicia" there was no interference with his preaching the gospel in the way in which he had preached it from the first. It is true we have no records of his labors during these years. It is probable that he was quietly witnessing for Christ while waiting for the Spirit's time for him to embark on the special mission for which he had been called. He knew what this mission was, for twice at least he had already been divinely told. But as yet he had not received the authoritative word to go. He furnishes us with an interesting example of not running before being sent. It was not until at least ten years after his conversion that the Spirit said, "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2).

During these years of waiting for the special call of the Spirit he is acquiring experience, gaining wisdom, and establishing his character. It is as one having an established character as a servant of the Lord that Barnabas seeks for him and brings him to Antioch (Acts 12:25, 26). He went to Antioch entirely untrammeled, free to preach and teach under the divine authority by which already, up to this time, he had proclaimed the gospel. All these years he was "unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea," though they well knew that he who formerly persecuted them was preaching the "faith which once he destroyed" (verses 22, 23).

He was preaching it with the authority received from the glorified Lord, without the authorization of man, and with the knowledge both of those who were apostles before him and of the churches of Judaea. No objection had been offered to it, either by the apostles or the churches. They had raised no question as to the authenticity of his gospel or the authority by which he proclaimed it.

Doubtless the "troublers" and "perverters" to whom the Galatian saints had given ear, and whose spurious gospel they were receiving, questioned both, and sought to represent that they had the sympathy and encouragement of the leaders of reputation at Jerusalem. The apostle's declarations, in this first chapter of his epistle to the churches of Galatia, definitely dispose of their representations, and expose the guilt of the saints in allowing themselves to be affected by them.

The churches of Judaea, instead of opposing him and resisting his work in entire independence of those who were leaders among them, "glorified God in him " (verse 24). There had thus been hearty fellowship with him in his work. C. Crain

(To be continued.)
" LIFT UP YOUR HEADS "

Dear Mr. Editor :

It may seem strange to those who have been long and well instructed in the things of God to hear what I am now about to communicate; but in our parts, where the assemblies have comparatively few opportunities, they need in a special way to learn that order which is pleasing to our God, who loves not confusion, but the peace which flows from a well-regulated people.

First of all, I would say that Luke 22 :8-13 teaches us due respect for our Lord in preparing the table in a suitable way before the hour of meeting. We do not want ceremony, but reverence, as becomes His Presence and His holy things.

Then, our meeting begins at the appointed hour, does it not ? The "Tarry one for another" of i Cor. 11:33 has ceased when the hour appointed for the meeting has come; so that the belated ones are those in fault, and not those who have begun the meeting.

Then everything has now a collective form, has it not? The praise and worship arising from each heart to God blend in one, so that a "favorite hymn," or a prayer referring to individual matters, would be out of place there, would it not? So "individual cups," would they not? We are there as members of "one body," and everything should characterize that:our temporal offerings as well. Heb. 13:15 speaks of our spiritual offerings, and the next verse of our temporal. If both are collective offerings, should not the basket by which we offer our temporal be treated in the same manner, and pass from one to the other, as the bread and the wine, by which we offer our spiritual? By reason of long habit in being begged from, some do not seem to realize that our temporal offerings are as truly a part of our collective worship as the spiritual, though it may be of a lower order; and that it is the Lord who accepts the one as He does the other. If the thought of begging instead of worship is associated with the temporal, are we not losers of God's benefit?

Without prescribing or laying down any rule, is not the remembrance of our Lord in the breaking of bread the chief and primary thing for which we assemble ? If so, it should not be, as it were, a finishing of the meeting, should it? but rather the great, central part of the meeting, the preliminaries leading the hearts of all up to it, and the various instructions or exhortations following after.

If these things be faithfully observed and maintained in the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe there will arise from it an order pleasing to God.

Yours affectionately in the Lord,

(Suggested by Rom. 6 :22.)

" Made free from sin "-oh, glorious fact!
This work is Christ's for me.
"The Lord my Righteousness!" I shout,
Rejoicing that I'm "free."

He went to Calvary, and paid
My dreadful debt to God;
No longer now I quake and fear,
And groan beneath my load.

As He was raised from death's dark wave,
Raised from among the dead,
I read in this my pledge of life,
And praise my living Head.

And now, "become " his happy slave,
His precepts my delight,
I onward move, praising my Lord,
To mansions fair and bright.

Then let my little "fruit" please Him,
Walking as sanctified.
Should not I please my Bridegroom fair,
I, chosen in His Bride ?

Eternal life lies just before;
Soon shall I see my Lord,
And rest in peace upon His breast-
Music His every word.

E. P.

At least two persons are in view when we speak of communion. One speaks, tells out his thoughts, and the other hears, enjoys them, and responds to them. Such is communion with God. In His word He has communicated His mind to us. We hear Him; we enjoy what He says; we respond in praise and prayer.

Then there is "the communion of saints." Each having communion with God, we come together to enjoy in common what we enjoy in private. This is a moral necessity to every healthy soul; for we are not merely children of God individually, but "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body," and thus made "members one of another." This makes us need one another.

Heaven Opened.

In Luke 3:21 we are told "the heaven was opened" over Jesus as He was being baptized, and praying. The Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, "and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased."

Here was one Man upon whom God could put His seal. Even His best men before had proved themselves sinners too well. In this One was no sin. Thirty years of a spotless, lovely life had He already lived, to God's delight. So He puts His seal on this by causing the Holy Spirit to descend upon Him.

But there is vastly more. He is being baptized; that is, He is identifying Himself (He who knew no
sin) with all the sinners who come to John the Baptist confessing their sins, and are baptized of him. He pledges Himself there to fulfil that righteousness which demands the death of the sinner. Only the awful baptism of the cross, three years later, could fulfil that. He bows in obedience to it, and expresses His obedience by praying. By that cross He will enable His Father to throw wide open to men the flood-gates of His love without trespass against His holiness. This, too, is delightful to God, and He seals His delight in it by the Dove alighting upon His blessed Son, and by opening the heaven over Him to proclaim that delight.

In Rev. 19:11-16 we see the "heaven opened" again. This time it is to let out of it, riding upon a white horse, and heading the armies of heaven, the same Person over whose head it had opened before. He comes now out of the opened heaven as ''King of Kings, and Lord of Lords," to clear the earth of all His enemies. They who have despised Him in the day of His cross; the "Beast" and his "False Prophet," who have usurped His crown, must now, with all apostate Jews and Christians who have followed them, prove that Jesus Christ is Lord, that He has the right and the power to execute judgment, and that He has come to use it.

Between these two great and marvelous occasions for heaven to open, there is another which is no less wonderful, though of a totally different character. It is recorded in Acts 7:55, 56. Stephen, a poor sinner saved by the cross of Christ, washed from his sins by the blood shed there, a subject of grace, "a man in Christ," who is bearing faithful testimony to those around him, being "full of the Holy Ghost," looks up into heaven and sees the glory of God, with Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and he says, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. "

Reader, every other sinner saved by the cross of Christ is "a man in Christ" as well as Stephen, and free to look with him into the opened heavens and, by faith, enjoy the glorified Jesus there, as by faith he enjoys the peace made by the crucified Jesus.

A wondrous time this is for believers, between the two openings of heaven for our Lord, with those heavens now open over us to gaze into them upon our adorable Saviour and Lord.

A Self-asserting Principle.

There is an extraordinary effort being made all over Christendom to hush up the undeniable declaration by Scripture of everlasting punishment. No amount of theories, however, of twisting and turning, or of quoting the Greek to carry along people who are ignorant of it, can do away with such plain words as, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal" (Matt. 25:46). Men, increasingly rebellious against God and every authority established by God, are everywhere pleading for love against justice, as though the two could not dwell together in one Being. That God is " a just God and a Saviour," having in love provided for man a means of escape from the inflexible claims of justice, they willingly ignore. The acknowledgment of this necessitates repentance; and pride forbids repentance. Rejecting the provision of God's love, they rebel against the judgment which justice demands. And this affects every other relation of man. It affects the government of the household, of the State, and also of the Church. It destroys justice-the foundation of everything that is good. It produces anarchy. It turns the popular feeling on the side of crime if crime does not come too near themselves; and the end is not yet. When the full results of this are come upon them, men, in terror and unspeakable anguish, will find that, already here, justice is an eternal principle which will not be denied. And if it asserts itself even here in awful retributions, what will it be in the day when, having returned to the hands of Him who sits supreme upon the throne, it summons at its bar every unforgiven offender, and metes out to each according to his deeds ?

Blessed be God for the provision of His grace, and for the present opportunity it gives! Blessed, also, be our Lord Jesus Christ for having so met every claim of divine justice by His cross that He can say to us, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life" (John 5:24).

QUES. 5.-Would you kindly give help on the following which offers difficulties to me?

In Rom. 3 :26, justification is assured to the believer in Jesus ; but in Rom. 4 :24, righteousness is imputed only to those who believe in God as the One who raised Jesus from the dead. How are the two reconciled ?

ANS.-In Rom. 3 :26, it is the basis of justification which is the subject, that is, how God can he just and yet justify a sinner. It is by faith in Christ Jesus, who has borne the winner's sins on the cross. No doings of grace can be questioned on such a righteous basis.

In chap. 4 :24 the subject is very different. It is this :Is salvation of works or of faith ? Is it of law or of grace ? It is of grace -the grace of God. It is of faith-faith in God who can do all things, even raise the dead. This was displayed in Abraham. He believed God's promise concerning Isaac spite all natural obstacles. He saw those promises fulfilled, even though asked to sacrifice that son of promise. He believed God, no matter how impossible the fulfilment of promise seemed to be. That is faith-faith in us who believe that God has raised Jesus from the dead, as in Abraham, who believed God could and would give Isaac back to him.

It is not at all another act of faith, as if believing in God were different from believing in Jesus. Faith in the One is inevitably faith in the Other:"Who by Him do believe in God " (1 Pet. 1 :21) proves this. As already mentioned, the subject here is not, as in the previous chapter, How can we be righteously justified ? but, Are we justified by works or by faith? By faith, is the answer. Well, if we are justified by faith, what is faith ? See it in Abraham, is the answer; and see it too in them who believe that God has raised Jesus from the dead.

QUES. 6.-Should a Christian rebuke the profanity he meets on his way ? When our Lord was here His rebukes seemed addressed altogether to the scribes and Pharisees, and never to the publicans and sinners. Does Prov. 9:7, 8, refer to this?

ANS.-It depends altogether from what standpoint we rebuke. A Christian workman in a machine shop was daily grieved with the profanity of a fellow-workman near him. Finally he said:"O Jim, if you knew how it hurts to hear yon constantly use the name of my best Friend in vain, you would never do it again." And he never did it again. He saw the secret of true Christianity, and it effectually reproved him. On the other hand, let the Christian rebuke as one who is set up to regulate the world, and he is at once the Pharisee-the man who is better than his fellow. Our Lord's course among men was regulated by His object in coming here. He had not come to govern the world, but to save sinners. His rebukes therefore were not directed to the evil conditions of the world, but to the scribes and Pharisees, who were ever standing in (he way of His purpose of grace. When He conies again He will govern. We are His followers, suffering with Him in grace to-day in a scene of evil; waiting for His return, when we shall reign with Him to the putting down of all evil.

No doubt Prov. 9:7, 8, bears on this subject. Let us never forget, however, that if our character and ways are not a constant, though silent, rebuke to sin in every form, they are not Christian. "Ye were once darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord ; walk as children of light" (Eph. 5:8-13). Evil of every kind is manifested and reproved by the light thus shed.

QUES. 7.-Does Col. 3 :16 teach that we should memorize the Word, or can it dwell richly in us without memorizing it?

ANS.-We know not a few who could repeat verbatim chapter after chapter of the Scriptures without ever having attempted to memorize them. The heart-interest they found in the Word made them so love it that it imbedded itself in their soul, and became as it were a part of themselves. It dwells richly in such. It meets their every need. It links their soul with Christ. It makes them intelligent in all the mind aud wisdom of God.

On the other hand, it might be memorized without its dwelling richly or even at all in us. It would simply be the memory, not the heart, stored.

If we love it, however, we shall seek to memorize it, and to have our children memorize it. It will thus be in them as the wood all set for the fire, needing but the spark of the Spirit to kindle it. " In all labor there is profit."

QUES. 8.-In 1 Cor. 15:29, what does baptizing for the dead refer to ?

ANS.-It means in the Lord's army just what recruiting means in the nation's army. A recruit is made, he puts on the required uniform and goes to fill the place of one who died in battle. So Saul of Tarsus was converted, thus made a recruit:then, according to the Lord's order, baptized for the place in the ranks which had been made empty by the stoning 01 Stephen. Thus is the army of the Lord kept up.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure " (1 John 3:2, 3).

There is no truth more fundamental to Christianity than this, that Jesus Christ is God; and for this reason, Satan is doing his utmost to nullify this precious truth and blind the minds of people to it. Such religious cults as Eddyism, Russellism, Unitarianism, Seventh-day Adventism, and Mor-monism, are his most glaring ministers to this end; since, in the ultimate analysis, all their teachings will be found to deny the deity of our holy Lord. We cannot afford to be neutral or indifferent here, for if Jesus be not God, we have no Saviour, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins, and are of all men most to be pitied (i Cor. 15:19); and to be neutral here is to be unfaithful to Christ.

The tremendous strides which this blasphemous sophistry is making towards permeating all our seats of learning, and all our pulpits and public utterances, is simply appalling, and it is high time that we "should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 3, 4). The New Trans. is rather more exact, "Denying the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

But Scripture is plain enough to those who have not already given it up. What saith it ? " What think ye of Christ ? Whose son is he ? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool ? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son ?" (Matt. 22:42-45). "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day:and he saw it and was glad. . . Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:56, 58). This was the name by which He would be known to His ancient people Israel, when He came down to deliver them (Exod. 3:14). There they were, a nation of slaves, in bondage to the Egyptians, and the time had come for the Lord to deliver them; so He sends Moses to them. This is evidently a crucial moment, and it is of the utmost importance that the people be assured who has sent Moses on this emancipating errand.

Moses realizes the importance of this, and seeks a definite name for Israel's God, one which shall carry weight, and express the intrinsic character of the One who had sent him, and at the same time be his credentials for coming to them.

The name given is eh-yeh asher eh-yeh, 1:e., kal first person singular imperfect of the verb hah-yah, meaning "to be," " to exist; " this is repeated with the relative pronoun between, which means "that," "I who, ""he who." The sentence might very properly be rendered "I am He who is"-the self-existent, self-sufficient One. The name Jehovah is from the same root, and might in brief be well rendered " The Eternal." So when Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I AM," the Jews, not believing Him to be divine, and well knowing the import of the words, took up stones to cast at Him. (Query, Are the deniers of His deity not ready to do the same today ?)

In Isaiah 6:1-4 the prophet sees '' the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up," and the seraphim crying one to another " Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts." (The reader no doubt understands that in the Old Testament wherever the word " lord " is in small capitals, it stands for "Jehovah" in Hebrew.) Again, in Isa. 53:i we read, "Who hath believed our report ? and to whom is the arm of the lord (Jehovah) revealed ?" The Spirit of God, by the apostle (John 12:37-41), applies this very distinctly to the Lord Jesus, saying "These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of Him." Thus we see very clearly that Jesus is the Jehovah of the Old Testament.

We turn now to a few scriptures which show conclusively His divine character.

" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God " (John i:i). He did not begin in the beginning; in the beginning He "was."In personality distinct-"with God," and yet Himself "was God."However far science may find it necessary to push back its beginning, He was there, and was "with God."("The same" is "He" emphatic.) "All things came into being through Him, and without Him came not one thing into being which came into being."This could not be said of a creature, however eminent or angelic, for even an archangel "came into being" through Him, and of course could not bring himself into being. Nor indeed could Christ, though from a very different cause, for in the beginning "He was." His birth and naming are the fulfilment of Isa. 7:14, "The Lord Himself shall give you a sign:Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel." "Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel; which, being interpreted is, God with us" (Matt, i:22, 23). This agrees with i Tim. 3:16-"God has been manifested in flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

Another very clear testimony is found in Isa. 9:6, 7-"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder:and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Father of Eternity, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."

The place of His lowly birth is thus designated by the Spirit of God, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Mi. 5:2). When Herod, and all Jerusalem with him, was troubled at the advent of the Messiah, and demanded of the chief priests and scribes where He should be born, they could refer him to the above scripture (Matt. 2:3-6), but they omit the portion which speaks of the eternity of His being, and do not themselves go to see Him.

"Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the lord of hosts:smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (Zech. 13:7). Who would dare to think of a mere creature, even an archangel, as Jehovah's "fellow?" He will not give His glory to another.

Rom. 9:5 renders a beautiful testimony to the divine glory of Christ:reading with J. N. D.'s translation, "Of whom, as according to flesh, is the Christ, who subsists God over all, forever blessed." The word rendered "subsists" is the participle of the verb "to be," and is substantially the equivalent of "Jehovah" in Hebrew. (Compare with this Acts Io:36-"He is Lord of all;" and i Cor. 2:8-"Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.")

In Heb. i:2 we have a very remarkable expression, reading with the new translation, as being somewhat more literal, and giving the sense more clearly:"At the end of these days has spoken to us in Son " (1:e., in the person of the Son). The thought being that in old time God had spoken by means of prophets, God speaking, prophets bringing the message. Now this is changed, God speaks, and God brings the message-God the Son, who "made the worlds" and "who is the effulgence of His glory and exact expression of His essential being, and upholding all things by the word of His [own] power." "Effulgence of His glory" is just the outshining of what could not otherwise be seen, as light shows what the sun is; and so with "exact expression of His essential being," in beautiful accord with " The Word " (John i:i). A word is the expression of an idea, so is the divine Son the expression of God, God manifest. He did not become the Word when He became flesh, He was ever the Word ("in the beginning was the Word"), but in due time He was manifested. "And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us (and we have contemplated His glory, glory as of an only begotten with a Father), full of grace and truth " (John i:14). " The image of the invisible God" (Col. i:15) is the same thing. " For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers:all things were created by Him, and for Him:and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist " (vers. 16, 17). " That in all things He might have the preeminence. For in Him all the Fulness was pleased to dwell" (vers. 18,19). " For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9). What wilful ignorance, or blasphemy, to apply such language to a creature ? and how dishonoring to the person of Him whom the Holy Spirit has come down to glorify; "He shall glorify Me" (John 16:14).

The first man would climb presumptuously from his status as man to be God. " Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" said the tempter (Gen. 3:5). But in strongest contrast with this, we read of the Second Man," subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it rapine to be on an equality with God " (Phil. 2:6). It was not something to be seized upon by Him, since He was intrinsically the Father's coequal; but He would empty Himself of this; descend into man's likeness, and become a servant, for God's glory and for man's blessing. As a result, "Every knee" is to bow, both of heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings, and every tongue confess Him as Lord, to the glory of God the Father (vers. 6 to 11). Having thus humbled Himself into man's likeness, His Person is more inscrutable than that of the Father; "No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son; and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him " (Matt, 11 :27). What creature, be he man or archangel, dare say "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30)? Only God's fellow could say it-He whose works testified to what He was (ver. 25)-He who was marked out Son of God in power by resurrection of the dead (Rom. i:4). The Jews well understood the force of the Lord's claim, for they at once take up stones to cast at Him (John 8:58, 59). Their thought being, as with many to-day, that He was a mere man, or an archangel.

Again, " I am the Alpha, and the Omega, saith the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty " (Rev. i:8).

Further:"And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding that we might know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God, and life eternal" (i John 5:20). It is the present office of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, to glorify Christ here on earth:" He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine:therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you" (John 16:14, 15). Satan is exercising all his craft and his power to rob Him of His glory, and he is most successful when he can use preachers, and so-called teachers of the Bible. "Such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light; therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness:whose end shall be according to their works" ,(2 Cor. n:13-15). How then may one be sure that a teacher is one whom it is safe to listen to ? Does the teacher exalt Christ ? That is the great test, an absolutely safe one. "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, if they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God:every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God; and this is that power of Antichrist, of which ye have heard that it comes, and now is it already in the world " (i John 4:1-3).

It is surely safe to listen to one whose general testimony is the exaltation of Christ; to honor Him is to honor the Father (John 5 :23). "He that abides in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9).

It is an awfully solemn thing not to believe in the deity of our Lord, as He says, "If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins, . . . whither I go ye cannot come" (John 8:24, 21). Jesus says, "I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). He is the key to Scripture, and no truth can be seen in its proper relation if He have not His place as God; and this is the great antidote to all errors which are leading souls astray today.

May it be ours to cultivate the spirit of the woman in Mark 14:3-9, who lavished her treasure upon the blesssed Lord Jesus, counting nothing wasted, whether of time or means, if lavished upon Him; earning that unique commendation of His,"Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." J. B. J.

God's rest in creation was disturbed and His Sabbath broken by sin. One of two things must take place:unsparing judgment, or forgiving mercy. It was in God's heart to show mercy, and He found a way whereby He could judge the sin and show mercy to the sinner. The answer to God's holy judgment, " Dying, thou shalt die," was found in Him who in the counsels of eternity had said, " Lo, I come to do Thy will." To accomplish that will Christ became man, glorified God in the work of the cross perfectly as to man's sin, and laid a righteous basis in His death for the fresh actings of God in grace. He would bring in a new creation and a new man. God's Sabbath being broken, He must work afresh.

The Spirit has recorded in Scripture seven miracles of Christ wrought on the Sabbath-a lovely picture of grace acting in the scene of man's ruin. That which the Spirit of God is now accomplishing is shadowed in these miracles. The beginning of God's work is to give spiritual eyesight. This was part of Paul's commission to the Gentiles, "to open their eyes." In John 9 a man blind from his birth becomes the subject of God's work. Jesus anoints his eyes with clay, and sends him to the pool of Si-loam. At the bidding of Jesus he washed, and came seeing. The sin of the man, or of his parents, was not in question here. The works of God were to be made manifest in him. The close of the chapter shows us that it was done in order that he might see and know God revealed in His Son. The Son was revealing the Father. The effect of opened eyes is that in the virtues and perfections of Jesus, God, in His own blessed nature and actings of grace toward man, becomes known to those who see.

In chapter 5 of the same Gospel we find a man without strength lying at the pool of Bethesda. Bethesda means "the house of mercy;" but it was mercy in connection with a legal system; hence an effort was needed to obtain it which was beyond the power of the man who lay there. In Jesus mercy abounded toward him, and when he was without strength the word of Jesus gave him power to rise and carry that whereon helpless he once lay. His reply to legal objectors was, '' He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk." Christ's reply to them was, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Thus we see not only the opening of the eyes-the giving of light- but the quickening power of the word of the Son of God, introducing to a path of life and obedience.

In Luke's Gospel we find five other miracles wrought on the Sabbath day. In chapter 4 a man possessed by a spirit of an unclean demon is found with God's people in the synagogue. He asks Jesus to let him alone. His only thought is that the Holy One of God had come to destroy. He had come to destroy the works of the devil, but not His creature, man. "Hold thy peace, and come out of him," proved that the stronger than Satan was there. He had bound him in the wilderness, and He was now spoiling his goods. In a far greater way He annulled his power at the cross. The believer is delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

Immediately Jesus left the synagogue He entered a house where lay a woman (Simon's wife's mother) taken with a great fever. A type of the tossing restlessness and feverish excitement of man's state. One word from Jesus and the fevered, restless state is over, and she finds her joy in ministering to the One that healed her, and to the household.
In chapter 13 we get a woman with a spirit of infirmity. She was "bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself." In her we see the power of Satan over a daughter of Abraham. Jesus laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight. What was the effect ? She glorified God. Bowed down to earth as she was, her head is now lifted up in praise, in response to the goodness and compassion of God which came to her in Jesus.

Turning back to Luke 6, it is again the Sabbath day. In the synagogue is a man with a withered hand. Watched by the Pharisees, Jesus asks, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good, or to do evil ? to save life, or to destroy it ?" There was no response. Man's heart was incapable of taking in God's goodness, shut up, as it was, in legal observance; but their badness did not hinder His goodness. "Stretch forth thy hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored whole. Finally, in chapter 14, we find a man with dropsy. Helpless and hopeless in himself, he also becomes an example of the compassionate goodness of God. The pleasure of God to heal and bless in whatever condition man is found is again expressed. Like as the owner of an ox in a pit would not have hesitated on the Sabbath to lift it out, so the blessed Lord shows that He was here to rescue perishing man, as an expression of God's goodness rising above all that sin had done, and for the delight of his own heart. Every miracle proclaimed that God is good, and doeth good. "He took him, and healed him, and let him go." It has been well said, Christ never claimed the service of those whom He healed; it was not legal obedience He sought. He moved about among men, restoring that which He took not away; and He allowed grace to do its own work. It was not the law-giver claiming, but God as a giver:the Father and the Son working. He would open blind eyes and unstop deaf ears. He would give ability to walk, and capacity to serve. He would deliver from Satan, and remove unrest from man's fevered heart and brain; and He can cause the love, grace and goodness of God to bring in a suited response. A worshiping heart and devoted service get their spring from grace. So Paul said, "I labored more abundantly than they all:yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." May this be the effect produced in us, as we contemplate the gracious ministry of the Son of the Father on the Sabbath Day! H. N.

QUES. 37.-In August number your remarks on the Kingdom and the Church have been a great help to me, especially the part concerning the first seven chapters of Acts. One expression, however, I do not understand and would like an explanation of. It is where you say that in connection with the Church baptism of water was in the background.

ANS.-We mean that since the ministry of Paul began, aud on till the rapture (1 Thess. 4:14-17), baptism of water is no more the leading ordinance of Christianity, as it was under the ministry of Peter. It is not removed, of course, as some have tried to make it appear ; for though the Kingdom has, by the rejection of the King, taken a different form, as Matt. 13 shows, it is going on, and baptism of water (its own peculiar ordinance) is going on too. It is the initiation into the sphere of subjection to the King of kings.

But throughout this dispensation-the church dispensation of heavenly and eternal things-the earthly ones take a back place, and the ordinance which belongs to them takes a back place with them. When the rapture has taken place, and the church dispensation is over, the heralds of the Kingdom will again appear, proclaiming the glorious advent of the King, and demanding subjection to Him. Then, we judge, will baptism of water have again the leading, prominent place.

A gospel preached now therefore, in which baptism has a prominent place, is usually of a Jewish cast, and more or less legal-that which marks the Kingdom.

QUES. 38.-Why is it that, as a rule, the gift of the Holy Ghost in the Acts of the Apostles was accompanied with miraculous signs, and is not now ?

ANS.-Because it was then the passing out of a closing dispensation and the introduction of a new one. God therefore marked it with mighty signs. When the new-the Christian-dispensation was fully established no such signs continued. The gift oi' the Holy Spirit is the acknowledged blessing of every believer. The children of God know by the word of God that the Holy Spirit dwells in them. In 1 Cor. 1:2 the whole body of believers in Christ Jesus, not only at Corinth, but from one end of the earth to the other, is addressed; and in chapter 6:19 He says to them :" What ! know ye not that your body (the body of each individual believer) is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own ? "

Not a single child of God now could affirm when he received the Holy Ghost, as a matter of experience; for not one receives any miraculous gift at the time. Nor does he need to affirm it, for the Scripture itself affirms it. It is an attempt at simulating the signs of the beginning, instead of exercising faith in the revelation of God concerning the actual blessings of Christianity, which has produced such wild and Christ-dishonoring things as the "Tongues Movement."

QUES. 39.-Is it true of every child of God that he has "crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts? "

ANS.-Most assuredly. When he believed in Christ as his Saviour did he not say, "I am a poor, vile sinner, and I hate myself?" There he crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts. He goes on into this in a deeper and deeper way, no doubt, to the end of his path, if he goes on with God in it; but his first breath in the divine life was in itself that.

QUES. 40.-Kindly give us the meaning of Col. 2:9, "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."

ANS.-In Him, Christ, that Man among men, seen, heard, handled by men, the Fulness (see chap.1:19, N. T.) was pleased to dwell, and to manifest itself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, were in Him perfectly revealed and seen. He could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father also." None in all the glories of heaven will know God better, or differently, than as revealed in the Man Christ Jesus.

How unspeakably blessed that the three glorious Persons of the Godhead, who planned and carried out the vast system of Creation and of New Creation, should have been pleased to dwell and manifest themselves in the meek and lowly Man Christ Jesus, accessible to all, more approachable than any other being, drawing so near to us, making known to us "the true God, and eternal life !"

Thus the way to know God-to form acquaintance with Him, more and more intimate-is to keep in the company of Jesus. For this reason, no doubt, God, in His word, makes us travel four times in the four Gospels with His blessed Son.

QUES. 41.-We all own that it is the assembly as a whole which receives any one who desires fellowship ; or puts away any one who walks in evil. We also own that the government of the assembly is with the men-not with the women. Are not, however, the consciences of the sisters to be respected as well as those of the brothers ?

ANS.-Most assuredly. Nor will it be difficult to ascertain the voice of their consciences in any assembly going on with God. The fact is, in all such cases it is always a very small number of the brothers-those most interested and experienced in the matters of God's house-who investigate and report; the action of all being based on their witness. But if a sister knows something which would contradict their witness, she should certainly make it known, and it should certainly be taken into account.

QUES. 42.-Is it not a reproach on the brothers in a meeting when a sister has to be brought into prominence by leading the singing? Might not some able brother give us in help AND food plain instructions about such matters?

ANS.-It is a reproach; for if there be spiritual activity, and not singing at the meetings only, but at home and in the joy of one's own heart in private, as a happy Christian will do, there are few voices, poorly endowed as they may be, that will not become sufficiently cultivated to lead a hymn. Why should not, in all assemblies, pains be taken to learn tunes-learn to sing them correctly, so that no culpable ignorance be displayed in the meetings? Music books have been prepared to that end at great pains ; and when they are faithfully used, the singing becomes a sweet and easy channel for the utterance of our praises. In many places meetings are held to this end, either at a private house where there is an instrument of music, or at the assembly-room, a half hour or so before the meeting. It is not beautiful music God asks in our praises. To make Him a concert would be an insult. But to be indifferent in the manner of our praises is not honoring Him.

As to your second question, you will see in the "Correspondence" of the present number that some one else has been of your mind.

As a proof of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, see Gal. 3:16, 29, where one of the most blessed truths in existence (the oneness with Christ of all believers) is shown to depend on one single letter.

To love Christ for what He did for me is natural and right. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me"; and love begets love.

But this has led into an acquaintance with Him which sets love on a higher plane, and I love Him now for what He is.

To our Contributors.

A number of excellent articles from our contributors are on hand waiting but for room. It is no little encouragement to be so abundantly provided with what we believe will be real "help" and real "food" to the Lord's dear people who are accessible to us. It is but just to our contributors that their papers should appear as soon as possible. This we do as fast as our space allows, having, however, for our primary object such a blending of subjects as will, in our judgment, render each number most edifying.

Hades and Gehenna.

The confusion in the translation of these two Greek words in our ordinary English Bible has given much help to the teachers of annihilation and the various deniers of the immortality of the soul. The two original words have very different meanings indeed, but being both usually translated by the same word, "hell," it hinders the ordinary reader from apprehending that difference.

Hades means the unseen, as in contrast with the seen. When a man has died he is no longer seen among his fellows. He has gone to an unseen place. It does not define his state-whether he is happy or unhappy. It is only a temporary condition-it will end with the resurrection of the dead, when all will again be in a visible condition.

Gehenna is final and eternal. It is God's penitentiary prepared (not for man, but) for the devil and his angels, and where men too must go who have turned away from Christ as the only Deliverer.

That there should have been a further opportunity for repentance given to Israel as a nation after the crucifixion of Christ seems a thing incredible to some. But if we look at the Gospel of Matthew, is it not clear that He came as Israel's King and Messiah; that John, His forerunner, was the herald of whom the prophets wrote (Isa. 40 :3; Mal. 3:1), and that every thing was presented indue order for the establishment of the earthly kingdom ? Is it not equally clear that after His crucifixion, His death having laid the righteous foundation on which the kingdom could then be established, the Holy Ghost makes a last appeal through the disciples, as recorded in the early chapters of Acts ?

The day of Pentecost was the Feast of Weeks, with which the Jews were perfectly familiar, as following fifty days after the Feast of the Passover and First-fruits. Christ was the true Passover Lamb; and His offering up was at the time of the Passover Feast-a striking fact;-for the leaders of the people, while plotting His death, had said, "Not in the feast, that there be not a tumult among the people " (see Matt. 26:1-5). But His hour had come, and, spite of themselves, their satanic purpose is carried out at the time they would not.

The Day of Pentecost was the fiftieth day from resurrection. As the resurrection took place on the first day of the week (answering to the sheaf of first-fruits), so the outpouring of the Spirit was on the first day of the week also (Lev. 23:15, 16). This marked the beginning of a new epoch in God's dealings, but whether for Israel or the Church did not at that time appear. At the birth of Christ the Gentiles came with their gifts to the new born King, thus owning their allegiance to Him-as in the kingdom all nations must do (Zech. 14:16). Similarly at Pentecost there were Jews gathered at Jerusalem from every nation, as, when the kingdom comes, they will be gathered from all countries (Isa. 11:11).

The outpouring of the Spirit at this time was no part of the yet unrevealed mystery of the Church, but was, as Peter tells them, that which the prophet Joel had predicted as taking place when the day of the Lord comes, which prophecy must yet be fulfilled in connection with that day when the nation will receive their King.

In Acts 3 Peter makes the healing of the lame man an occasion of appeal to the people, and doubtless
this miracle is a picture of what the Lord stood ready to do for the nation, both morally and physically, if they would repent and be converted, so that Christ might return to them, and the times of refreshing and restitution might come. " Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing" (Isa. 35:5, 6).

After His resurrection, Jesus ascended to the right hand of God. Stephen sees Him standing there,
even as prophesied in Hosea (chap. 5:15), "I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge
their offence, and seek My face." The confession of their guilt would open the fountain of cleansing
to them, as Zechariah tells (chap. 13:i).Therefore Peter exhorts them to repentance, that the times of refreshing should come and the promised kingdom be established.

But, it is objected, How could Israel have had opportunity to repent when the Church (that great mystery and purpose of God) must first be brought to Christ ? Among other answers, When God in His counsels of wisdom introduced the formation of the Church where He did, did He not foresee what Israel, in their national responsibility, would do ? What subject more attractive than to watch the fulfilment of God's sovereign purposes without interfering in the least with man's responsibilities. The two go side by side, as the two rails of a railway track. Had John been received, he would have been the Elijah of the prophets (Matt, n:14). He was not, and Christ must come the second time preceded by the Elijah testimony and by a second preaching of the gospel of the kingdom by Jewish disciples (Mal. 4:5; Matt. 24:14). So there must also be another day of Pentecost in the same immediate connection with the Jewish nation, when the Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh, when the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and notable day of the Lord come. So must there also be a fulfilment of that second psalm, which is partly quoted in Acts 4:25, 26.

Earth's kings and rulers have already plotted against the Lord's Anointed, and accomplished their wicked design in putting Him to death; but the second psalm anticipates the very opposite result of their plotting. This passage then, as also the quotation from Joel, will be fulfilled in the future. Then the opposing kings and rulers will be had in derision of Him who sitteth in the heavens, and the true King will be made King in Zion.

In Acts 5 Ananias and Sapphira are immediately cut off for their sin, as though the principles of the earthly kingdom were beginning to be enforced, when sin will meet with the speedy judgment of God (see Isa. 65 :20). In chapter 7 Stephen rehearses their whole history, only to meet with rejection, stoning, and death at their hands. They had resisted God when He spoke to them through the prophets; they resisted the Son of God when He came in person to them; and now they resist the Spirit of God, who had also come in personal presence into their midst. The Church is scattered from Jerusalem, the gospel is preached to the Gentiles, and though Paul, in his ardent love for Israel, continues his testimony to them to the end of the book, it is with the certain knowledge that they will not receive his testimony to Christ (Acts 22:18). With their three-fold rejection of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, they are nationally given up to reap the bitter fruit of their own choice.

And they have been reaping it through all the centuries to the present moment, when we are approaching the second coming of Christ, and the world is manifesting, perhaps, as never before, its dire need of the just and rightful Ruler over men. R. B. E.

SIMPLE PAPERS FOR YOUNG CHRISTIANS

BY H. A. IRONSIDE

" Fear not, Paul; . . . lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee."-Acts 27:24.

STANDING AND STATE.

No believer is likely to be clear on other lines, whose mind is in confusion as to the scriptural distinction between standing and state. If those who sail with Paul would but carefully consult his inspired letters on this, as on all other subjects, they would see that the two terms are very different in their application.

Standing refers to our ability to appear before God uncondemned; state has to do with our actual condition of soul. Standing speaks of privilege and contemplates what God, in His rich grace, has done for each believer. State is the measure in which one answers to this in his own experience. Standing is eternal and inviolable. State is variable and depends on how one goes on with God.

Paul is not the first or only Biblical writer to use the term standing. Several examples from other scriptures may help to make clear its application. "The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment" (Ps. 1:5). "The foolish shall not stand in Thy sight" (Ps. 5 :5). "They told Haman, to see whether Mordecai's matters would stand" (Esth. 3:4). "The great day of His wrath is come and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev. 6:17). To these one might add many more, but enough are before us to show how the word is used. To stand is practically synonymous with the ability to face the throne of judgment, proving that there is no condemnation. Now compare with these verses Rom. 5:1,2:" Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Note also i Cor. 15 :i, "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand."

The wicked cannot stand, but every believer has a standing that is unassailable. What is the ground of this standing ? Is it his good experience, his enjoyment of divine things, his energy in service, his happy state ? Not at all ! He stands in grace-the grace revealed in the gospel.

Our standing then is a most comprehensive term, embracing all that God has done for us in the work of His Son. In previous papers we have considered our forgiveness, our justification, our positional sanctification, our acceptance in Christ:all these blessings are connected with our standing. We cannot add to, nor take away from, what God has made us in Christ. Consequently we have for eternity a perfect and unassailable standing before God. Worlds may be wrecked and the heavens pass away, but the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ stands in absolute security, free of all condemnation.

Is this then to say that each believer's state of soul is all that could be desired ? Far from it. If it were, where would be the need for all the exhortations to godly living found in the epistles and other parts of the word of God ? Observe, for instance, the anxiety of the apostle that the state of his beloved Philippians might in measure answer to their standing.

He had no question whatever as to their standing. That, he knew, could never be altered. So he tells them he is confident that He who hath begun a good work in them will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. But he hoped to send Timothy unto them that he (Paul) might be of good comfort when he knew their state. Not all professed laborers in word and doctrine would naturally care for their state, but he knew this pastoral concern was characteristic of Timothy (chap. 2:19, 20).

Were Paul and Timothy concerned as to whether these saints were "keeping saved,"-to use an ignorant expression common with some to-day ? No, indeed. They knew God had settled forever the question of their salvation. But they desired to see fruit for God manifested in the lives of the saints. They wished to have them going on happily together as a company of redeemed ones should. And this is what state has reference to. It is experience; but experience and standing are two very different things. When God addresses believers as " saints," that is, separated or holy ones, He is speaking of their standing. When He exhorts them to be holy, even as He is holy, He refers to the state of their souls, as manifested in their outward ways.

We might think no one should be called a saint till he becomes perfectly holy in experience. But that is not God's way. He calls us saints from the first moment of our faith in Christ, and then bids us live as saints should live. He calls us His children, and then exhorts us to be obedient children. He sanctifies us by the blood of His Son, and then washes us with the Word that we may be practically sanctified.

He forgives us all our sins and justifies us from all things when we first trust in His Son. We are then eternally forgiven. This is our standing. Yet as our actual state is often poor, there is a forgiveness we may have need of every day. That is the Father's forgiveness, as dealing with the state of His family. The moment you trusted Christ, your responsibility as a sinner having to do with the God of judgment was ended for ever. From that moment your standing has been perfect. But at that same instant your responsibility as a child, having to do with your Father, began. If you fail in this, if your state is low and your Father is dishonored thereby, do not fall back upon the truth of your standing and say, " I have no sins to confess," but go at once to your loving Father and own all the failure, judge the low state and seek His grace to rise to a higher and better condition of soul in which He will be glorified by your life. Let it always be your aim to have your state come up to your standing, that grace may be magnified in all your ways.

(To be continued.)

"That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

Strange and mysterious theories have been built upon the above passage. As they do not harmonize with Scripture teaching, they cannot be accepted. Another effort to ascertain their true meaning might therefore not be out of place, so much more as the apostle wants us all to be "thus minded."

At his conversion the apostle had given up, or, in his own words, had suffered the loss of, all things that were gain to him before. These things were his natural advantages, in which he had trusted and gloried, and on which his own righteousness was built. He had given them up that he might have that righteousness which is of God, by faith in Christ, for both cannot go together.

After his conversion the same mind continued in him; he still counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, in order that he might win Christ, and finally be found in Him, righteous in Christ, not in himself.

Was he not yet in Christ at that time ? Certainly he was, from the moment of his conversion and on. But the position in Christ was not all that he wanted. He wanted to be found in Him on the day of Christ, when he would appear before God, before men and angels, in the beauty of that righteousness which is Christ Himself, and not be seen there in the filthy rags of his own. And this is what we all are looking for, while we are in Christ even now.

"That I may win Christ." How was this to be accomplished, and what end had he in view? To possess Christ in glory ? Not exactly. For this it did not need an extraordinary zeal and self-sacrifice. The most faithful and the less faithful, they all will at last possess Christ in glory. God takes care of that. The apostle couples the winning of Christ with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ (verse 8). To know Christ and to know Him better is to win Him. The better knowledge leads to deeper fellowship and enjoyment; and what has been gained here will not be lost hereafter. So, then, what the apostle was aiming at was this, to have the greatest possible enjoyment and benefit of the presence of Christ in heaven when, after this, he should be associated with Him in glory and see Him face to face. To know Him was the ambition of his life, and it is the key-note of his present discussion, which he strikes in verses 10 and n, when he says, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection," etc.

What is " the power of His resurrection ?" It is the power of God which is working in our behalf in order to conform us inwardly and outwardly to the image of the risen Christ (see Eph. i:17-20 and Phil. 3:21), in consequence of the believer's identification with Christ in resurrection. But this involves the destruction, or dissolution, of flesh and blood; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; and as the believer is identified with Christ in His resurrection, so is he also in His death. Some day he has to be made conformable to His death.

This can be brought about in different ways. One way is the changing of this vile body, or body of humiliation-the being clothed upon at the coming of the Lord. Another way is the putting off of this tabernacle at the hour of death; that is, dying in good old age. But there are some other possibilities. Taking up Paul's case again, in the course he pursued, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus and his outward man perishing, that is, decaying little by little, he was liable to have all his strength used up in a short while, so that an early death would have been the natural consequence. But in the way he pursued he might also have died a martyr's death. It is as if somebody had said to him:"You run a great risk, Paul, the way you go on; such things may happen to you if you do not stop, and you will not be alive at the Lord's coming." His answer is, as it were, " I care little about these things; there is a glorious resurrection ahead of me, and I am determined to pursue this course to the end, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead." This phrase, "by any means," can easily be misunderstood, as if it meant " at all events "-" at all cost;" I must see that I get there:sure of success I am not, but I try hard, and do what I can. This is not the meaning at all. F. W. G. translates:" If in any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead." This gives us the true meaning. It means, Some way or the other; to the clothing upon I would give the preference (2 Cor. 5:2); but if this should not be, any other way and manner will suit me; my zeal shall not abate on that account; and besides that, there is an advantage in having fellowship with Christ in His sufferings, and being persecuted for His sake.

Or does the apostle, perhaps, by these words mean to indicate (as some think) that there was a special resurrection for him in view, and consequently for all those who distinguished themselves from other believers by extraordinary zeal and self- sacrifice ? How could he mean this without upsetting all that he had taught on that subject before ? In Thessalonians 4 the apostle identifies himself completely with all the rest who either are alive or asleep at the Lord's coming, and have their share in the first resurrection ; and that in regard to fact as well as to time. He does the same in i Cor. 15, and other places (see especially i Cor. 15:51, 52).

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect:but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."

What was it that he had not attained, or apprehended ? Was it the resurrection from among the dead? Or what had he reference to when speaking of not being already perfect ? Was it that state of perfection that we shall enter into when we shall possess Christ in glory, and our bodies shall be fashioned like His own ? Not at all. This was self-evident, and did not need to be mentioned, much less to be emphasized as he emphasized it. A following, or striving, after this would have availed him nothing; for this he had to wait patiently (Rom. 8:25) till all the rest are ready; and, indeed, he is waiting yet. What he means was that moral perfection, or Christlikeness, which is attained to, or apprehended, by means of the increasing knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord. Nor is there material here for perfectionists; for if the apostle had lived a hundred years longer, he still would have said, " Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended it." His brethren, indeed, were liable to think that the most excellent apostle, who had seen the glorified Christ, to whom the whole counsel of God was revealed, and who already once had been caught up into the third heaven, could not improve any more, and was already perfect. But he assures them that this was not so. It could not be. We have here the same paradox as in Eph. 3:19:" And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge … to be filled with all the fulness of God." Here in Philippians it is, To apprehend what in its fulness cannot be apprehended now.
But the following, or striving after it, or the pressing forward, is not in vain; there is progress, increase, attainment (verse 16) and a getting nearer to the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, with conformity to Christ, or Christlikeness. The inward conformity comes first; then, at last, outwardly, He shall "change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His body of glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."

"Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded," is the apostle's exhortation.

J. Kofal

The Jerry McAuley Mission in Water Street, New York

The superintendent of this mission has appealed to us concerning our notice of it in the September number of our magazine. He claims that the report of the newspaper which had been sent us was a garbled report, quite unlike what had really taken place, and he assures us that the teaching at the mission remains orthodox.

We are unfeignedly thankful for this. It is always a pain to see the once strongholds of Christianity falling over to the enemy; for what is New Theology, or Modern Thought, or the "Bible Students' Convention" mentioned in same number of help and food, but covered apostasy ? What is the denial of everlasting punishment but saying that Christ died to no purpose, that our sins were not laid on Him, and that God trifles with sin if He receives men apart from the atoning sacrifice of His blessed Son ?

We rejoice, therefore, that the Jerry McAuley Mission has not fallen into these pitfalls, as the newspaper report in question claimed. A prompt, vigorous and public protest against the newspaper report was due, however, by the Mission, first, to our Saviour Himself, and also to all His friends who are friends of the Mission.

Special Attention.

We would call the special attention of our readers to the article in our present issue entitled, " Unity of Action in Christian Discipline." Those who of late years have mourned over the devastations of a proud and pretentious ecclesiasticism will realize the importance of the principle expressed in this article.

There is, indeed, nothing more adverse to the uniting bond of the truth of the One Body, nothing more essentially independent in principle and unholy in character, than a local assembly's act, the righteousness of which is seriously questioned, being nevertheless held as binding upon all others and without appeal. Every assembly of Christians gathered on the principle of the One Body of Christ is in duty bound by its relation to others to allow the fullest investigation of any of its acts by sister assemblies if that act is at all questioned and offensive to consciences. To disallow such an act without due and careful inquiry is lawlessness and confusion. To maintain it under cover of unimpeachableness of the local assembly is to make God the author of a system which binds Him to uphold sin. Who that has the knowledge of God will not abhor such a system ? Who that has upheld it in any measure will not repent of it, and seek afresh the path of holiness, of love and of righteous Christian unity, which follows the heeding of the admonition, "Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility" (i Peter 5:5).

A Contrast.

When the prophet Nathan came to David and set his sin before him, David frankly confessed, "I have sinned against the Lord " (2 Sam. 12:13). He made no excuses ; he sought no roundabout way to let himself down easily ; so he heard the forgiving grace of God which always follows an honest confession, and then humbly bowed to the solemn government of God which always follows our sins.

How differently Jacob acts as seen in Gen. 32. Instead of frankly owning to his brother Esau that
he has sinned against him, he sends present upon present to conciliate him. Even after the severe rebuke he has just received at the hand of God, and the grace shown him by his brother Esau, he still deceives him. "I come unto my lord unto Seir," he says; whilst, as soon as Esau has turned his back to go to Seir, Jacob is on his way to Succoth.

One shrinks more from David's errors than from Jacob's, but how much more refreshing are David's open confessions than Jacob's unexpressed and covered retreats!

The closing year.

The year is closing in dark clouds for this world. At the hour of our writing, the anything but peaceful " Peace Conference" has been followed, as usual, by a bloody war in the very heart of the prophetic earth. It foretells the nearing downfall of the Turkish empire – a necessity for the political conditions which are to prevail at the appearing of our Lord from heaven. It foretells too the great European struggle which is to revive the Roman empire with ten distinct kingdoms under one powerful head. All this tells of sorrows of no ordinary kind – sorrows which, because of the present affiliation of nations, cannot but affect every part of the earth.

How great the mercy of God to have promised to His Church (Rev. 3:10) to keep her out of that dreadful hour by her being "caught up" to heaven before it comes! (i Thess. 4:15-17.) May we value such grace, and prove it by our ways.

Correction of printers error. On the first page of last No. of Help and Food, the 2nd line of 2nd paragraph should read 1 Cor. -not 2 Cor.

(Continued from page 325, Vol. of 1911.)

What is it to be dead with Christ, dead to sin and to the rudiments of the world ? Upon the answer to this question hangs the truth or error of the perfectionist system.

In commencing our inquiry I would remind the reader of what we have already looked at (in chapter 2) as to the distinction between standing and state. Standing has reference to what I am as viewed by God through the work of His Son. State is my actual condition of soul. "That I may be of good comfort," says Paul, "when I know your state." He speaks elsewhere of "this grace wherein ye stand." The two things are very different.

Death with Christ has to do with my standing. "Reckon yourself dead" refers to my state. It should readily be apprehended that no one but the thieves on the cross ever died with Christ actually, and one of them was lost. Thomas on one occasion said, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him." He referred to a literal death with Lazarus and with Christ, for whom to go into Judaea seemed to the disciples to be imperiling His life.

But Christ is now living in glory; and it is nineteen hundred years too late for any one to die with Him, so far as experience is concerned. Supposing the "death" of Rom. 6 were state or experience,
therefore, it could not be properly described as dying with Christ, but as Christ, or for Christ. To many it may seem needless to dwell upon this; but no one would think so who is familiar with the misuse of the expression in the holiness preaching and perfectionist literature of the day.

In these death is made to be experience. Believers are exhorted to die. They try to feel dead; and if in measure insensible to insult, deprivation, and praise or blame, they consider they have died with Christ; never realizing the illogical use of the language in question. When did Christ have to die to these things ? When was He ever annoyed by blame or uplifted by praise ? How then could stoical resignation be likened to death with Him ?

One verse of tremendous import puts the scriptural use of the term beyond all cavil:"In that He died, He died unto sin once" (Rom. 6:10). If it be said that I have "died with Him," it must be in His death, and to the same things to which He died. What then are we to learn from so solemn a statement ?

Notice one thing very carefully. It does not- could not-say, "In that He died, His death was the end of inbred sin "! Yet this is what it should have said if my death with Him is the death of my inbred sin. But this could never be; for He was ever the Holy One in whom was no sin.

Yet He died unto sin. In what sense ? Manifestly as taking my place. As my Substitute, He died unto sin in the fullest possible sense-sin in its totality, the tree and the fruit-but all mine-not His! "He loved me, and gave Himself for me; " and in so doing He died unto sin, bearing the judgment of God due to me, the guilty one. God "hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). And having been made sin in my room and stead, and died for it, He has done with it forever-He has died unto it once for all, and in His death I see my death, for I died with Him!

When and where did I die with Him ? There on His cross, nineteen centuries ago, when He died, "the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." There I, and every other child of God, died unto sin with Him, henceforth to live unto God, even as it is written, "And He died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and has been raised" (2 Cor. 5:14, 15, N. T.).

Who, that desires to be taught of God and to learn alone from Scripture, need stumble here ? Christ's substitutionary death is accounted by God as my death, and the death of all who believe in Him; and through that death we are introduced into our new standing as risen from the dead, and seen in Christ before His Father's face. " He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. i:6). This is my new and glorious position because I have died with Christ. I need not try to die, or pray to die, or seek to feel dead (absurdity beyond expression!); but Scripture says, "Ye have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

The practical results of this are many. Learning that I have died with Christ, I see at once the incongruity of denying this in my practical walk, or in any way owning the right of sin, which indwells me still, to exercise control over me. It was once my master, but Christ has died to sin-root, branch, and fruit; and His death was mine. Therefore I must in faith reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord. Mark, I do not reckon the sin to be dead, or uprooted, or anything of the kind. I know it is there, but /am dead to it. Faith reckons with God, and says, "In Christ's death I died out of the sphere where sin reigns. I will not obey it therefore any longer." And while walking by faith, '' sin shall not have dominion over you:for ye are not under law, but under grace " (Rom. 6:14). What folly to speak of sin not having dominion if it be dead! The very pith and marrow of the apostle's teaching is that though it remains in my mortal body, I am not to let it reign there (Rom. 6:12).

While I live in this world I shall never be actually free from sin's presence; but I can and should be delivered from its power. God hath "condemned sin in the flesh" not rooted sin out of the flesh; and as I condemn it too, and refuse all allegiance to it, walking in the Spirit with Christ as my soul's object, I am delivered from its control.* *Let me here earnestly commend to the serious reader Mr. C. Crain's helpful "Readings on Romans," and "God's Salvation as set forth in the Epistle to the Romans," by John Fort. "Deliverance :What is it? " by F. W. Grant, might be profitably considered afterward.*

I reckon myself dead unto sin because in Christ I died to it; but it is only as I keep the distinction between the two phases of death clear in my mind that I am freed from confusion of thought.

Hoping I have been enabled of God to make this plain to any troubled one, I pass on to consider a question often asked at this point:"If what has been taught is the truth, how can I be perfect in love with sin still dwelling in me ?" For answer to this we must turn to i John 4:15-19. To avoid one-sidedness, we shall quote the entire passage; and may I ask the reader to weigh every word, observing too that I am using a literal translation in closer accord with the original Greek text than our much-prized Authorized Version gives in this particular instance. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love; and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Herein has love been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear:for fear has torment; and he that fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him, because He has first loved us."

Now, with the passage before us, allow me to ask the reader four questions:

1st. Whose love is it which we have believed ? See the answer in the first part of verse 16.

2nd. Whose love is it in which we are called to abide ? Read the latter part of the same verse.

3rd. Where do we find perfect love manifested- in me, or in the cross of Christ ? Note carefully verses 17 and 18.

4th. What is the result in me of coming into the knowledge of love like this ? The 19th verse supplies the answer.

Now let me attempt a paraphrase of the passage, in place of an exposition, which for so simple a scripture seems needless. "Every one confessing the truth as to Jesus is at one mind with God, having received a new divine life, and thus is enabled to enjoy fellowship with God, whose mighty love we know and believe, having, indeed, rested our souls upon the greatness of that love toward us. God Himself has been revealed as love; and in that love we dwell. Knowing its perfection as manifested in the cross of Christ, we do not dread the day of judgment, because we know that love has already given Jesus to bear our sins. His death was ours; and now God sees us in Him, and we are, in God's sight, as free from all charge of guilt as His Son. Therefore we have no fear, for it is impossible that there should be fear in love:yea, this perfect love of God has banished every fear which could only torment us if this love had not been apprehended. If any still are in fear, as they think of meeting God, it is because they have not fully seen what His love has done. Their apprehension of His love is still very imperfect. But where His love is known and rested in, we love in return, for perfect love like His cannot but induce love in its object, when truly enjoyed."

Need words be multiplied ? Is it not plain that there is no hint of that perfect love being developed in me, and thus my reaching a state of perfection in the flesh ? On the contrary, perfect love is seen objectively in the cross of Christ, and enjoyed subjectively in the soul of the believer. H. A. I.

(To be continued.)

PERFECTION, AS USED IN SCRIPTURE.

(Continued from page 42.)

It is a common custom with one-sided special pleaders to attach arbitrary meanings to certain words, and then press them as the only correct definitions. No terms have suffered more in this respect than the words "perfect" and "perfection," as found in our English version of the Scriptures. From the first publication of the revered John Wes-ley's "Plain Account of Christian Perfection" to the present time, it seems to have been taken for granted that by perfection we are to understand sinlessness. Yet Mr. Wesley himself did not exactly so define it, and he seemed to fear a radical use of the doctrine that would be hurtful to souls, against which he carefully sought to guard by distinguishing angelic, Adamic, and Christian perfection. To-day the average work on holiness pictures the perfect Christian as a man restored, to all intents and purposes, to the Adamic condition, save that the usages of society and the condition of men still in the natural and carnal state demand the continuance of " coats of skin! "

It will be well for us, therefore, to turn at once to Scripture and mark the use of the expressions and their connection as we have already done in regard to the word " sanctification." It is not by getting dictionary definitions or theological explanations that we learn the exact force of English words when used to translate Hebrew and Greek originals, but by observing the manner in which they are used in the Bible. For instance, in any ordinary sermon on " Perfection " the attention is generally first directed to Noah and Abraham. Of the former we read, "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God" (Gen. 6:9). The margin gives "upright" in place of perfect, though either word would properly express the original. Noah was an upright man, perfect in his ways. That is, he was one against whose behavior no charge could be brought -until, alas, this perfect life was marred by the drunkenness so shamefully exposed by heartless Ham. Who but a biased partizan could dream of Noah's perfection implying freedom from inbred sin! Yet many have been the sermons preached and exhortations based on this statement of the ancient record, in which he has- been held up as an antediluvian example of entire sanctification.

Even in ordinary conversation the word perfect is used as here. A teacher says of a pupil who has successfully passed an examination, with no errors to his charge, "He is perfect." Does he mean, " sinless ?"

To Abram, Jehovah said, " I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect" (Gen. 17:i). Again a glance at the margin would help to avoid a wrong conclusion. " Upright," or " sincere," are given as alternative readings. Yet the zealous advocate of a second work will overlook or ignore this altogether, and argue that God would not tell justified Abram to be perfect if He did not mean there was for him a deeper work which He was ready to perform in him, whereby all carnality would be destroyed and the patriarch would become perfect as to his inward state. But there is no such thought in the passage. Abram was called to walk before God in sincerity of heart and singleness of purpose. This was to be perfect.

The next proof-text generally referred to comes after the lapse of many centuries, and is part of our Lord's sermon on the mount:"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). These are serious words indeed, and we do well not to pass them lightly by.

At the outset we may observe that if to be perfect here means to be absolutely like God, then no Christian has ever yet attained to the state prescribed. Only one mentally unbalanced could pretend to such perfection as this. But a careful consideration of the preceding instruction will make clear at once what is meant. The Lord had been proclaiming the law of the kingdom, the compelling power of grace. He bids His disciples love their enemies and do good to their accusers and persecutors, that in this they may manifestly be children of their Father in heaven, whose loving favor is shown to just and tin just alike. He does not withhold the blessings of sunshine and rain from the evil-living or hateful, but shows mercy to all. We are called to be morally like Him. To love only our friends and well-wishers is to be on a level with any wicked man. To be kind to brethren only is to be clannish like the publicans. But to show grace and act in love toward all is to be perfect, or balanced, like the Creator Himself. Surely all Christians strive for this perfection-but who dare aver that he has fully attained to it, so that he is never unjust or partial in his dealings with others?

Perfection in its ultimate sense we all come short of. "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," writes the apostle Paul, "but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended:but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:12-14). Could disclaimer of perfection, as to experience and attainment in grace, be stronger or more distinct than this ? Whatever others may fancy they have reached to, Paul at least was not one of the perfectionists.

Yet in the very next verse he uses another word which is rendered " perfect" in our English version; and he says, "Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded." Is there contradiction, or inconsistency, here ? No. The error is in the mind of him who would so think. "Perfect" in verse 15 has the sense of "full grown," and refers to those who have passed out of the period of spiritual childhood. They are such as have become intelligent in divine things; and one way in which they manifest that intelligence is by confessing with Paul that they are not yet perfect as regards experience.

Christ Jesus has apprehended, or laid hold of, us with a view to our entire conformity to His own blessed image. We are predestinated to this, as Rom. 8:29 tells us. With this before us, we press on, forgetting the things of the past, and reaching forth to this glorious consummation. Then, and then only, we shall have come to Christian perfection. "We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is '" (i John 3:2).

In Heb. 6:i we read again of perfection; and in this instance one can readily understand how a person uninstructed as to the true scope and character of that epistle might easily misapply the exhortation, " Let us go on unto perfection." The contention of the holiness teacher as to this is generally as follows:These words are clearly addressed to believers. The Hebrews who are contemplated had already been turned to God in conversion. They were undoubtedly justified. [One might add, "and sanctified too" (!); but this is lost sight of; and little wonder, for it would not agree with the theory.] Therefore if such persons are urged to "go on unto perfection," perfection must be a second work of grace, to which the Lord is leading all the '' merely justified."

Now none could successfully deny the premise thus stated; but granting it to be sound and unassailable, the conclusion drawn by no means necessarily follows.

That the Hebrew Christians were exhorted to press on to something they had not yet reached is clear. But that this was identical with the so-called " second blessing " is not at all clear.

The truth is that the Greek word "perfection" in this instance is only another form of the word translated "perfect" in Phil. 3:15, which we have already examined and seen to be synonymous with
full-grown. " Let us go on to full growth " would be a true and just rendering, and is not at all ambiguous. It implies a proper spiritual development, such as should be before all young believers, but which it was needful to press upon these Hebrews, as they were dwarfed or stunted Christians, because of not having cut loose from Judaism with its withering, blighting influence.

Paul had already reproved them for this in the previous chapter. Note his words:"Ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God:and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness:for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age [or those who are perfect], even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil" (Heb. 5:11-14).

We learn from Acts 21 the reason why these Hebrew believers had become stunted in spirituality and knowledge. James, himself an apostle, together with all the elders of the church in Jerusalem, met together to receive Paul and his companions upon their returning thither; and after hearing of what God had wrought among the Gentiles, we are told "they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law " (ver. 20):and upon this they base an appeal for Paul to fall in with certain Jewish rites, in order that he may not be an object of suspicion. Anxious to propitiate his own nation, the great apostle agrees, and is only prevented by divine Providence from an act which would have been clearly contrary to the 9th and 10th chapters of the Hebrew epistle. Think what it would have meant for him who wrote, "Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin," if he had himself assisted in offering the sacrifices prescribed in the case of a Nazarite who had fulfilled his vow! (Read Num. 6:13-21, and compare with the whole account in Acts 21:23-26.) This failure God mercifully prevented, though at the cost of His dear servant's liberty. Afterward the venerable apostle,* by divine inspiration, wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, to deliver those Jewish Christians from the bondage of the law and their subjection to the ordinances of the first covenant. *I know some question Paul's authorship of Hebrews, but in my judgment Peter settles that in his second letter to the Jewish believers. See 2 Peter 3 :15, 16.*

"Therefore," he says, in chapter 6, "leaving the word of the beginning of Christ,* let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms (or washings), and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do if God permit" (vers. 1-3). *The A. V. is misleading here. They were not to leave any divine principles, but the word of the beginning; that is, all teaching that was not connected with Christ risen and glorified!*
This the apostle does in the balance of the epistle, as he unfolds the varied lines of truth connected with Christ's priesthood, the new covenant, the one sacrifice, the walk of faith, and the Lord's discipline. This vast circle of the truth of Christianity is the perfection to which they, and we, are called to go on to. He who comprehends and enjoys in his soul the teaching of Hebrews-chapters 7 to 13-is a perfect Christian, in the apostle's sense. He is now full-grown, and able to partake of strong meat, in place of being only fit to feed upon milk. Into that glorious outline of the faith of God's elect I dare not attempt to go here, for to do so would but divert attention from the subject in hand.* *Others have done this in detail. Mr. S. Ridout's "Lectures on Hebrews," and W. Kelly's "Exposition of Hebrews," are invaluable.*

It is only by reverent and continued reading of the Scriptures that any can thus become perfect. The exhortation to Timothy is of all importance:" Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15). In the same letter Paul writes:"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works " (chap. 3 :16, 17). This is no mystical, inward perfection, but that well-rounded knowledge of the mind of God which His word alone can give. He who does not neglect the appointed means will be enabled to enjoy the answer to the prayer with which Hebrews
closes:"Now the God of peace . . . make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen" (Heb. 13:20, 21).

One other passage we must examine before dismissing our brief study of perfection. It is James 3:1,2:" My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body." With what we have already gone over, this verse needs little explanation. James, clearly, did not possess, nor did he know of any one who did possess, the second blessing of sinless perfection. He speaks by the Spirit of God, and tells us that we all offend in many things. If a man can be found who never offends in word-who never utters an unkind, an untruthful, or an idle word -he is in very deed a perfect man; but has he all sin rooted out of him? Far from it! He is able to control his carnal nature in place of being controlled by it; he is "able also to bridle the whole body." What need of bridling the body if all tendency to sin is gone-if inbred evil is eradicated ? Is it not plain, on the face of it, that the perfect man is not a sinless man, but a man who holds himself in check, and is not under the power of sin that still dwells in him ? Read the entire chapter thoughtfully and prayerfully, and ask yourself what holiness professor has ever fully met the requirements of this standard of perfection:Who among all the people of God never has to confess failure in word ? If any do not, it will be because they deceive themselves, and the truth is not controlling the heart and conscience.

Briefly, then, I recapitulate what has been before us.

All believers are called to walk before God, as Noah and Abram, in uprightness and sincerity of heart. This is to be perfect as to the inward life.

In so doing we are called to manifest love and grace toward all, let their treatment of us be as it may; that thus we may be perfect in impartiality as is our Father-God.
All believers are called to pass from the primary classes, in the great school of divine revelation, on to perfection; that is, lay hold of the fulness of what God has graciously been pleased to make known in Christianity.

But none are perfect in the absolute sense; though he who can control his tongue is perfect as to ability to bridle every passion; for no evil thing that works in man is more wilful than the tongue.

When we behold Him who is perfect in wisdom, grace, and beauty, we shall be like Him where He is and be forever perfected, beyond all reach of sin and failure.

" Let us therefore, as many as be full-grown, be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing" (Phil. 3:15, 16). H. A. I.

(To be continued.)

"With worldly Christians I may, and indeed must, have to do; but with a worldly Christianity- a mixture of human and divine principles-not a single link, not a shred, of affiliation."

QUES. 21.-I would like to ask a favor of you, as the "labor unions" have been quite active around here lately. Will you state in your magazine what you consider the proper attitude of a Christian toward unions and labor questions in general ? Some Christians seem to think all is well by paying the "fees" and having nothing else to do with them ; but my conscience is not freed by this. It tells me that if I pay fees to any association I am responsible for their actions in a greater or lesser measure, whether I take active part in them or not. But this is no light question when one has a family to support. I pray the Lord may give me faith to trust Him and grace to act accordingly, when called upon.

ANS.-It is with fear and trembling we answer your question, for while we are in the fullest agreement with your convictions, we dread exciting any Christian beyond his faith. " Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers" is the pleading of Divine Love with its family. A more tender, touching appeal than is made in that paragraph in which the passage occurs (2 Cor. 6 :14-7:1) could not perhaps be found in all the Scriptures. It asks that the children of God should satisfy that love, so that the sweets of the relationship between Father and children may have no check to their outflow but be freely enjoyed. And has not God the right to expect this from His children, when it has cost Him so much to redeem and acquire them ? Can He be free with them and they with Him while linked up with His enemies? Impossible ! And there, no doubt, lies a large cause of the spiritual deadness and indifference of so many. Nor is the yoke with "labor unions" the only unequal yoke. There are others. How many Christians now-a-days seem to have no conscience about allying themselves in matrimony, or business, or church, or secret societies, with manifest unbelievers.

What loss to their souls! How little they must realize that, sooner or later, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

But, as we have said, we dread urging a Christian beyond his faith, especially when, as you say, the bread of the family is at stake. A true husband and father will feel this more than aught else of earthly things. To see his family suffer will make him suffer. He must therefore take the step-the good and needful step-of separation, by faith. He needs to be able to say, If my Father in heaven claims this of me, He will look after all the consequences; and if I trust Him for my soul's eternal salvation, I can surely trust Him for the daily bread of my family.

Brother, beloved in Christ, though unknown to us, if you can say this to God, not only will you never regret having taken the path of separation from evil, but you will experience the realities of your relationship with God as never before. Yon will learn and acquire things which will abide for eternity as you could not under an unequal yoke. You will also prove how true His promise is, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Read Luke 12:22-31. Those blessed words from our Lord's lips are true to the letter. Believe them. You will prove Him as truly interested in your daily temporal needs as He was in your eternal when He was bearing your sins in His own body on the tree.

QUES. 22.-Who is the " Man child " mentioned in Isaiah 66 :7, and when will the judgment announced in verse 15 take place ?
ANS.-The language is figurative in verse 7. It describes the suddenness of the deliverance the Lord will bring to the glad remnant amid the apostate nation of Israel at the time of His appearing. The first five verses of the chapter describe the condition of the apostate nation and their persecution of the faithful remnant. Then suddenly, in verse 6, deliverance comes and brings blessing with heretofore unheard of swiftness.

The judgment of verse 15 is what falls on the apostate nation at that time.

All your other questions on that chapter are easily solved in the light of the above. The day of grace has not ended of course ; that will not end till the millennium is over. But " the day of vengeance of our God" has come too in that chapter, to clear the earth of His enemies preparatory to the establishment of the kingdom of our Lord.

As to their brethren being brought as an offering to the Lord, will it not be a delight to Him to see His people brought back ? -even as to us, if any one returned a long-lost, valued treasure?