I. PROPITIATION.- (Continued.)

And first, let us notice that the purification of the sanctuary is, in Hebrews as in Leviticus, what the blood accomplishes. "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Chap. 9:22-24.)

Thus Christ enters into the heavens to cleanse them for us; not as if His sacrifice had not been accepted already, but He brings in the power of the accepted sacrifice to give us entrance there. Of entrance indeed on our part the Old Testament type said nothing; there was yet no rent veil, the "first" or outer "tabernacle was still standing." This the later revelation adds to the earlier.

When He enters (once for all) He enters how? " By (Δια, "by means of," chap. 9:12) His own blood," says the apostle-" in the power of it.* *Εv, "in" instrumentally, "in the power of,"-"with blood of others," ver. 25.* "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place; having obtained eternal redemption." And again, " Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high-priest entereth into the holy place every year with"-or "in the power of,"-"blood of others; but now, once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."

In the last case we have indeed but the inference from the type, "in the power of blood of others;" but the first quotation is direct proof. He entered (as High-priest, of course,) by His own blood. Thus the power of the blood was proved by His very entrance. And this is seen by the fact that literally He carried in no blood ; He simply went in Himself. Acceptance of His work preceded entrance, and thus in triumph and in power He entered.

At what time, and in what manner was this entrance for all? I answer, it was assuredly as risen from the dead, not otherwise. Take one of I lie beautiful and emphatic types of the Old Testament,-that of the two birds. The second bird, released after the death of his fellow, is the well-known symbol of Christ risen from the dead. But it bears with it, as it spreads its wings toward heaven, the precious blood which speaks of atonement finished. This, it may be said, is a matter of interpretation. This is true, but the interpretation is not doubtful; the sprinkling of blood upon the leper before release shows that He is raised again for our justification before entering heaven as thus viewed. It shows that this last is by ascension.

And the doctrine of Scripture is every where of one piece with this. If it is for our justification that Christ is raised, we are quickened and raised up with Him and after this follows "seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Would it be Scriptural or consistent, to disturb this order, and to make the seating in the heavenly places precede the being quickened and raised up with Him?

Again,-" Wherefore He saith, when He ascended up on high He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men;"-and again:"That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." (Eph. 4:8; 1:19, 20.) Is not this the same entrance into heaven as when the apostle speaks of "the forerunner for us entered". and "an high-priest set on the throne of the majesty in the heaven," who "by His own blood entered in once into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 6:20; 8:i; 9:12)?

If it be "once"-that is, "once for all," He entered in, is not this His entrance? or could we say, that God set Him twice at His right hand?

Is not all this consistent? Has it not one voice? And is it not abundantly confirming of the immediate acceptance of the precious blood which needed only to be shed to be accepted? For "Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost, and behold, the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." (Matt, 27:50-53.) Christ having been in the distance, there is none ; and dying, death gives up its prisoners.

What, then, is the Scriptural doctrine of propitiation?

We have seen that propitiation and atonement are in fact identical:atonement is propitiation or satisfaction of the divine nature; apart from it wrath rests upon the sinner, even although God loves and seeks us when we are dead in trespasses and sins. This propitiation is by Another standing in our stead, bearing the wrath necessarily upon us, and then dying for our sins; His blood, therefore, the witness of complete satisfaction.

In the type the application of the blood propitiated as to whatever it was applied to:altar, throne, person were cleansed by its being sprinkled on them. In all this the blood itself was never in question, but manifested its power, and was borne witness to, in this application of it. In the antitype it is spiritually, not literally applied, of course:our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience ; by His blood Christ enters the heavens for us.

And this propitiation is manifested in progressive steps, in which all its value is brought out and made over to us.

First, by His passing out of the darkness into the light, the wrath borne and ended, which means satisfaction found.

Then the rent vail which follows His death, in which the way into the holiest is shown to be prepared.

Next, resurrection is the public justification of those that are His own.

Then He ascends to heaven, our forerunner and representative, and the Holy Ghost coming out is a witness to us. (To be continued.")

PROF, DRUMMOND AND THE TEACHING OF NATURE (Continued.)

Yet I have already stated that there is truth in Prof. Drummond's book ; and it is this which has laid hold upon so many; it is truth, too, which we cannot give up because of the association in which we find it there. But it needs limiting and defining, both:it needs, in fact, re-statement; and this, if we get the right standpoint, I believe it not to be difficult to give it.

Really we cannot give up nature to the infidel, nor the facts of nature, where truly that; no, nor the study of nature, as if it were God's witness no longer, and could only deceive the one who listened to it. It is true, godless science can even manufacture "facts,"-just by reason of its supreme faith in theories which necessitate them; while it is certain to select them according to the " law " of which Mr. Lewes speaks, " that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition," and which thus "causes the mind to select its evidence." How great in this way must be the evil done by text-books in which not all the facts, but a chosen number of them only are presented to the learner, who perhaps never goes beyond these, unable, save as to the merest fraction, to. verify them at all! But this only shows the danger of leaving science in the hands of unbelievers. Shut men's minds out from the study of nature, we cannot if we would. It is God's own witness, expressly appealed to by Scripture itself as that, and that witness it would be a terrible thing to have to renounce as if it were false witness, and to answer the apostle's question, " Doth not nature itself teach you?" with a negative of this kind. Shut men's minds out from it, therefore, we would not if we could.

Yet the danger is terribly increased by the fact which this book of Prof. Drummond's so alarmingly illustrates, that not only from unbelievers comes this perversion of truth, but that Christians so easily can be carried away with what is not science, but usurps its name. This ought surely to make us ask, Is there not some guiding principle of interpretation, which may be a safeguard to us ? Has God not provided such ?-some clue-line by which to thread our way through the forest whose depths we can never fully explore, yet where we should be able to pause and worship, without danger of being lost ? Such a clue indeed there is, if only we will accept it, and it lies near where Prof. Drummond's error lies, in the adoption of that " Principle of Continuity," or, as we may better call it perhaps, the principle of Unity which pervades the works of the one God,-Creator and Redeemer.

I cannot express myself better here than I have done in the pages of a MS. which may, if the Lord permit, one clay see the light. Its argument at this point is just the continuity of nature and Scripture,-the unity of the first with the later witness for God; and that, according to the very principle of nature itself, the later revelation must interpret the earlier,-not indeed without getting back from it some of the light which it throws upon it, as we may easily understand, yet keeping ever its own higher place.

"The God of revelation has but one Revealer. Christ it is in whom, from first to last, He has manifested Himself to us. He is the Word, His Living Utterance. ' By Him,' little as it may be even yet believed,' were all things made ; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.' Creation is thus part of revelation, as indeed we are distinctly told:the primary one, but as that, the least distinct, and not the most. The written Word itself begins obscurely, brightens as it goes on, and ends in mid-day splendor, which illumines all before it. Thus here also not the beginning gives us to know the end, but the end rather the beginning. So not creation interprets the Word, but the Word creation. And for this last, Christ must be known. Not the seed interprets, but the flower and fruit.

" It must be one revelation, for the God of whom it speaks is one. Thus, as one has argued, the law of continuity is not broken. The types and parables, and indeed our common speech as well, are all based upon this essential unity. It is thus we argue from the natural to the spiritual, and are really just as much entitled to argue from the spiritual to the natural, instinctively accepting the truth of analogies which a more deliberate judgment approves and confirms. But, as I have said, the usual way is, to take the natural as illustrating and enforcing the spiritual, and for obvious reasons. The analogy must needs work both ways, if it work one, that is clear. But it takes, we think, only nature to know nature:to know the spiritual, we must be spiritual. True this is, but not the whole truth. Conviction of spiritual truth may be impressed on natural men,-the very parables are witnesses of this. And then-however unwelcome the thought may be,-nature itself can be only deeply known by the spiritual understanding. In the end, which is Christ, we find the beginning. He is both ; Lord of all worlds, whom when the elders praise, the heavens and earth and all therein break out in harmony. (Rev. 5:9-13.)

"This is the attractive truth in what we have heard much of lately, the presence of ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' It is only the order of apprehension which troubles us in this. Put in the reverse way, you have more the order of fact; and from ' Spiritual Law in the Natural World,' no believer in Christ would for a moment shrink. We may put it in a better form still, and call it, 'The Unity of Divine Manifestation every where.' But this would no doubt bring our wonder to an end. The attractiveness of novelty would be lost in such a proposition ; and novelty there is in the author's view, as well as truth also, as I have said. But the trouble is here:not that the earth should be, down to its elemental foundations, part of its Maker's universal kingdom, but that, in the way of statement, nature should seem rather to govern than be governed, and actually be put in the interpreter's place to read the riddle of spiritual things. Here, indeed, there is room for plentiful confusion, which our author has not escaped; and when the chiefs of an agnostic evolutionism are elevated to the rank of professors in the college of spiritual truth, it is not strange if many should refuse it, it is rather strange that any should accept.

" Yet nature remains unfallen from its place as the eldest of revelations. Corrupted indeed in man, even this has only, in a sense, confirmed its witness to us as from Him to whom man's ruin was no surprise, and redemption no after-thought. Assuredly, such a world as is around us would to an unfallen being be an inexplicable mystery; and we do not wonder to see the yet unfallen parents of our race shut off from it in a specially prepared and sheltered Eden of delight, which might be for them a better witness of creating Love,-a memory of blessing to them when fallen. And when sent forth into the earth then, they could find still amid conflicting elements around the assurance from this strange sympathy with the new strife within them, of omniscient foresight, undeceived and un-dethroned.

" Has science altered this when she bids me note that the very ground they trod on was already but the wreck of former worlds? yet that mountain-upheavals and glacier-plow, and the long list of catastrophic forces, had been used of Him who is the God of resurrection to prepare and fertilize and beautify their yet wondrous dwelling-place? 'Out of death, life' was already the grand redemption-hymn, prophecy and promise of an infinitely grander one.

" ' Doth not nature itself teach you ?' asks a guide we may not refuse. What shall we answer him ? If man has filled Olympus with his deities, the sky is still serene as ever there, and we may worship there without suspicion. But for this, the later revelation must fill up the gaps and interpret the parables of the earlier one, and then with fear dispelled, neither the demons of the mist shall hurt us, nor the earth be filled but with the whirr of soulless machinery, using souls for its material,-an infinite and remorseless prodigality without return. Nay, with one of old we will sit and sing,-

" ' Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there!
If I make my bed in hades, lo, Thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall Thy hand lead me !
And Thy right hand shall hold me ! ' "

This principle of continuity (or of unity) we may well accept, then. God's work and His Word are thus one, and it does not need for this that we should apply the law of gravitation to spirit, as even Prof. Drummond allows us to escape from this, if spirit be in no sense material, which we take to be the fact. We might and should make other limitations, but which detract nothing from the truth that God's work and His Word have a real and beautiful correspondence, of which Mr. Drummond gives us in his first example, "Biogenesis" (or, Life from life alone), an instructive illustration. He is here on the safe ground of fact, as wide as the whole field of organic nature. It is quite otherwise when he undertakes to define "eternal life" by Herbert Spencer, and say of the Lord's words in Jno. 17:3, " For eighteen hundred years, only one definition of eternal life was before the world. Now there are two."

Even the Lord's words are not a definition of what in itself it is, but only of the character by which it is manifested in the soul that receives it,-a very different thing. And Herbert Spencer's definition would necessitate the annihilation of the wicked, a result which indeed to many now would be not unwelcome.

The doctrines of science must not be allowed to recast the doctrines of the Word ; but the Word must mold our science, and enable us to interpret aright the teachings of nature.* *Take but one fact,-that of the fall; how are we to have any true science or philosophy if we ignore this ''. The evil that is here, if man take not the shame of it, must he imputed to God as weakness at least, as one well-known man of late explicitly imputed it. He thought God had done the best He could ! Of old, Gnosticism and Manicheism had said similar things:mutter was, in their eyes, too intractable.* And this will give us lines large enough to inclose and give its true position to every fact with which nature can furnish us; while thus the whole will be transfigured into new and spiritual beauty, fit for the display of Deity to us, and surrounding us continually with admonitions of His presence and encouragement of His love. How would " day unto day " thus " utter speech, and night unto night tell knowledge"! The argument that Scripture was not intended to teach us science would be then seen as a partial truth miserably misused. Who indeed shall dare to say what Scripture cannot teach to him who is before God to learn ? And once let all truth be claimed for God as that which must needs testify for Him, the opposition between secular and sacred will end here as it ends in every true Christian life devoted to Him. Here, if the business be secular, can the life be as it should be-sacred? Have we not seen enough to know that a merely secular means a merely godless science? The realm in which Scripture has no voice is a realm in which God is not the King. Woe to the man who enters there !

Still more evidently is it true, then, that " where He speaks, whatever be the subject, it must be truth He speaks. ' Satan is a liar, and the father of it.' God is no more 'a man, that He should lie,' than He is 'the son of man, that He should repent.' And this applies equally to all subjects. He could no more give me false physics than false argument,-untrue statements as to sun or moon or firmament than as to Christ or salvation. Once admit a possibility of error, though it be infinitesimal, it must shake one's conviction as to the whole. 'If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?' Take away the truthfulness of Scripture in matters in which it can be tested, how shall we accredit it where it cannot be tested ? 'He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.' Such is the declaration of the Lord Himself. And with the Word of God, what may be pleaded for man may not be pleaded. Man is fallible and ignorant where yet he may be honest and true. With the Omniscient, mistake is impossible, and we dare not urge it."

To conclude, the work of God is as really a revelation of God as His Word is. The principle of continuity (or unity) requires that they should speak one language, and they do throughout. Spiritual law reigns in the natural world. While just as the plant in its flower and fruit interprets the seed, and just as the New Testament is the interpreter of the Old, so is the Word of God that which must give the proper understanding of creation. A science careless of God is none. It cannot be permitted to "recast" for us the truths of Scripture ; but Scripture is adequate to "recast," purify, and perfect science. The clue to the natural is to be found only in the spiritual, for which indeed alone it exists.

Q. 5 – "Do you think that the star which directed the Magi was a true star, such as we are to see this year?"

Ans. – I don not see how such a star could stand over the particular house in which the young child was. This would surely point to some special phenomenon, and not to any of the ordinary heavenly bodies.

Q. 6.-The translation of Mark 9:44, etc., is perfectly accurate. The expression " their worm dieth not," speaking, no doubt, of the gnawing tooth of conscience, shows clearly that it is eternal torment, though from within, but to which the fire (of God's righteous wrath) answers from without,-eternal, therefore, as the other.

Q. 7.-" How do you explain Matt. 21:38 ("They said, 'This is the heir,' " etc.) in connection with Acts 3:17,- ' I wot that through ignorance ye did it.' "

Ans.-I apprehend that their willful ignorance partook of both characters-ignorance acknowledge:so that while grace could count it one, their responsibility was that of the other. Perfect, demonstrative proof had been given them, but the eyes are in the heart, (as Eph. 1:18 reads really,) and the world had seduced and hardened their hearts, and their minds were blinded. At bottom, it was the claim of God upon them which was the motive of their resistance, as the Lord tells them. But with this disposition of heart, they could easily gather many an argument against submission, and be really blind. If we shut our eyes, we do not, in fact, see; but then why did we shut our eyes?

Q. 8.-"Please explain Jno. 19:II, last clause,- 'Therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin.'"

Ans.-Is it not that Judas, knowing as he did Christ's power to be beyond all that could be brought against Him, had availed himself of what He had declared as to the will of God concerning His death, to give Him up to it? Terrible was indeed the condition of heart which could pervert that blessed will for its own purpose. Compare the connection, Matt. 26:12, 14.

Q. 9.-"How do you reconcile Gen. 11:12 with Luke 3:35,36 ? In the first, Arphaxad is said to be the father of Salah, and in Luke, Cainan."

Ans.-Cainan is found in the present copies of the Septuagint in the genealogy of Shem in Gen. 10:24, 11:12, and i Chron. 1:18 ; but not in i Chron. 1:24, and is nowhere named in the Hebrew copies, nor in any of the versions made from the Hebrew. Its insertion in the Septuagint is thought to be modern, and to harmonize with Luke. Beza's MS. (of the sixth century) does not contain it either, nor (it is thought) did the copy of Luke used by Irenaeus. It is probable, therefore, that it is a very early interpolation.

Q. 10.-"What does Lev. 27:28, 29 teach? a man devoted was not to be redeemed, but put to death ?
Ans.-Yes ; but this necessarily applied only to cases where the law pronounced the penalty, as in the judgment of idolatry. Otherwise, the life even of slaves was carefully guarded.

Q. 2:-"Would not Jephthah's offering up his daughter be an abomination, as in Deut. 12:30, 31 ?"

Ans.-Certainly, if a real burnt-sacrifice is intended. But there is, after all, a question as to this on this very account. Keil's objections are worthy of consideration, and they are briefly these :-

(I) From the form of his vow, Jephthah must have contemplated the possibility (to say the least,) of a human offering. Yet not only did the law prohibit a sacrifice of this kind, but to have been offered, it must have been by a priest, upon the altar, or before the ark, and it is incredible that this should have been. Nor is a confessedly illegal offering to be thought of as designed to procure Jehovah's favor.

(2) Jephthah in his conduct toward the Ammonites shows no rashness nor want of knowledge such as this would have shown and this latter in all round about him.

(3) It is her virginity alone that she laments with her companions upon the mountains, and after the vow was fulfilled it is said, " she knew no man." Would not this point to a dedication to the Lord of another nature?

(4) The word " burnt-offering " is not the literal meaning of the Hebrew :it is literally "what ascends"-all of it; a whole-offering, and is at least susceptible of a spiritual meaning.

Such reasons as these cannot but make doubtful the performance of so atrocious a deed as the literal sacrifice of his daughter, by one of those judges of Israel raised up of Jehovah to deliver them, and on whom His Spirit came. Q. 12.-"How do you account for the apparent discrepancy between i Kings 16:6, 8 and 2 Chron. 16:i, as to the time of Baasha's reign ?"

Ans.-The text of Chronicles is here apparently incorrect, the letters "1" (30) and "i" (10), which are somewhat similar in the ancient Hebrew characters, having been interchanged by some copyist. It should be "the sixteenth year." In the same way the "forty-two" in chap. 22:2 is a mistake for "twenty-two" (Keil).

Q. 13.-"Does Isa. 22:22-24 refer to Christ? If so, what does ver. 25 mean,-the nail removed and cut down?" Ans.-Eliakim and Shebna are surely (typically) Christ and Antichrist. But the last verse applies to Shebna's removal to give place to Eliakim. The nail that is fastened (at the time the prophet speaks) gives way to the nail that God will fasten.

Q. 14.-"In Num. 20:9, Moses took the rod from before the Lord,-Aaron's almond-bearing rod, I take it,- and in the eleventh verse, with his rod smote the rock. Was this Aaron's rod, or Moses'? C. H. M. makes it Moses' rod. Is this correct? and can it be made plain from Scripture?"

Ans.-The most literal interpretation would seem to be the best. The only question that can be raised is, Could the rod of the priesthood be called "his (Moses') rod"? Loosely it might, no doubt, as the rod he was then using, be called his, but strictly it was not so; and the spiritual meaning seems best to agree with the strict sense.

Q- 15–"In i Sam. 17:12-14, we find David was the eighth son, but in i Chron. 2:15, he is the seventh :why is this?"

Ans.-Keil supposes that one of Jesse's sons may have died without posterity, and so be omitted from the list in the latter place. I have nothing better to offer.

Q- 16.-"Why is no blood carried into the holiest in Lev. 8:9, while it is in chap. 16:?"

Ans.-No blood was ever carried in, except on the day of atonement, in which alone the entering of Christ into heaven once was represented, as far as could be under the law, by this entrance of the high-priest into the holiest "once a year." The sacrifices of this day were exalted over all the rest, and took place for " all their transgressions in all their sins," as if no other sacrifice had any efficacy. It is this day which the epistle to the Hebrews, therefore, dwells upon throughout; and it shows the one effectual offering which displaces all others. Yet, as being only the type, it was itself repeated year by year :its own witness that it spoke merely as a shadow of the coming substance.

Q. 17.-"What is meant in Lev. 8:10, II by the anointing with oil of the altar and laver, as well as the tabernacle, before the sacrifices were offered? If the anointing of the tabernacle without blood indicates the Spirit's witness to Christ's personal glory throughout the created universe, does the anointing of the altar, etc., as well link it with redemption, and also indicate that by the eternal Spirit He offered Himself?"

Ans.-The altar and laver are of course the way (by blood and water) into the presence of God ; the tabernacle, His dwelling-place with men. All is consecrated and prepared by the Spirit of God according to perfect holiness, His necessary character. Then the same Spirit marks out and sets apart the One who is to make all this a reality for us; necessarily, therefore, Himself anointed without blood. The order of the anointing seems to me rather to connect these things (tabernacle, altar, and laver,) with Christ as Man, coming forward in due time and place to give effect to what was ordained of God for blessing.

Q. 18.-"How would you explain the scriptures which speak of God repenting, as in Gen. 6:6, 7, and other places?"

Ans.-In Jer. 18:7-10, God openly proclaims the principle:" At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Nineveh spared, as in the book of Jonah, is a case in point. God acts as a man would who did repent; while in fact "God is not a man, to lie, nor the son of man, to repent." (Num. 23:19.) Yet the whole truth is not in this change of action. God is not indifferent and without feeling, although we must take care not to impute imperfection to Him; but indifference would be the saddest of imperfection. The language used by Scripture is a necessary accommodation to our understanding, but, as a writer well says, " If it is an accommodation, let us be accommodated by it; since here all human minds are very much on a ,par. Our right feeling is much more concerned in this than our right understanding. We cannot rise to God, and we should reverently adore the effort, if we may so call it, which He makes to come down to us, to think our thinking, and thus to converse with us in our own language."

MOTTO FOR 1888:-"For to me, to live is Christ,"

"And he put all upon Aaron's hands, and upon his sons hands, and waved them for a wave-offering before the Lord. And Moses took them from off their hands, and burnt them on the altar upon the burnt-offering; they were consecrations for a sweet savor; it is an offering made by fire unto the Lord." (Lev. 8:27, 28.)

It has been often remarked that "consecration" in this passage is filling the hand. Aaron and his sons are practically consecrated to God by the putting into their hands the fat and shoulder of the ram, with cakes and wafer of the meat- (or meal-) offering, and waving them for a wave-offering before the Lord. Then they are taken and burnt upon the altar as a sweet savor.

Before this, and in order to it, we must remember, they have been washed (these priests) in water, and sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice; and this has been put upon the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of the right foot. Even so must we, if we are to be priests
to God, be washed with the " washing of regeneration," and have our "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience," being set apart to Him as His by the power of the same cleansing blood which has bought us, that we should be no more our own. Thus cleansed from sin, and become the servants of God, we have our fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life.

As priests, our occupation is with the holy things; and this practical consecration is just occupation. All Christians are priests to God, and it is our business to attend to these things. The hand, in the type before us, speaks of all our activities, our labor. The ear is that by which we receive instruction; the foot speaks of our individual walk before God; but the hand is that by which we lay hold of things around, and mold and transform them. By the hand, man shows himself the natural vicegerent of God upon earth; and thus, while the ear and foot have been equally set apart to Him by the blood of atonement, the hand it is now that is to be filled for consecration:we are to be taught our business. Blessed be God, it is indeed true that-

"With Him is all our business now."

Some one may object, indeed, that in saying this we go much too far. Our circumstances in the world will not allow of any thing like this; indeed, it is our mere secular employment that we habitually call our "business." And it is true that as Christians, alas! we not only pick up the language of the world, but sanction its thoughts. Nevertheless, it is also plainly true, and easily to be proved from Scripture, that the Christian's business is with Christ. No less than Paul's is our motto to be, "To me to live is Christ;" and what does that mean, except that all that makes up our life-the whole business of our life is Christ?

By this it is not denied at all, as it would be absurd and impossible to deny, that each one of us has his earthly calling, duties to fulfill which carry us into the world, and require a large part of our time to be spent in their discharge. We have families to provide for, and that is often a work of much toil, yet "he that provideth not for his own, specially for those of his own house, has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Christianity loses sight of none of these claims, but enforces them all upon us:they are as many as our links of connection with other men ; every link is a responsibility ; every responsibility toward man a responsibility to God also.

This is sufficiently solemn; and it is nothing but a misuse of grace to make it lessen for us its solemnity. Life is full of seriousness; the more serious our sense of it the better.

Yet while "all things are full of labor," as the preacher says, and the Christian does not escape from this, yet "Labor not for the meat that perisheth" is the Lord's own word to us; a word of simpler meaning than we may have apprehended in it. For, in truth, we are never to labor for the perishing food, but are privileged rather to labor for Him who has appointed our path, and to whom our duty is. Our duty thus becomes to us that yoke of Christ which is easy, and in which we find rest. Our business is with Him:its recompense from Himself; and if we had to toil ten or more hours a day for Him, would it be a spiritual weight to drag us down from communion with Him, or rather a service in which for all our need and in all our weakness His power and fullness should be more than sufficiency?

Alas ! for these Christless businesses in which self-will is rampant, and the "gain to me" is not "loss for Christ"! When shall we learn that there is no spot on earth in which there is not a battle between two forces? no course that we can take which is merely neutral between Christ and the world, between God and mammon? Here is a spiritual leprosy which pollutes the whole life and secularizes it:for if the business be secular, no part of the life can be kept sacred.

How significant a thing, then, is this priestly consecration, in which our hands are filled with Christ. Our hands are to wave before God the fat and the shoulder and the cakes of the meal-offering. We are to keep Him thus before God, presenting Him in the energy of His devotedness (the fat), in the burden-sustaining "shoulder," in the perfection of His life of holy balance and consistency in the power of the Holy Ghost. God is to see in us this memorial of His beloved Son, whatever we put our hand to; not merely an imitation of Him, but a devotedness derived from the apprehension of His, a power which is His strength made perfect in weakness,-a life, in short, which is but the life of Christ, developed by the power of the Spirit in us. For "out of His fullness have all we received, even grace upon grace."

Is it not of our priestly consecration we are reminded, when, from week to week, on the first day of the week, before its toil begins, we, as His disciples, come together to break bread? Is He not for faith put afresh into our hands, that we may receive Him in the place He has taken for us, and in occupation with Him begin again and again the henceforth of our lives? He thus claims possession of us every way, fills our eyes, our hands, makes Himself ours that we may be His, that henceforth whatever we look at, it may be Christ we see; whatever we handle, we may touch Christ in it. How sweet to be reminded ! how solemn the need of being thus reminded!

Christian reader, have you so learnt Christ? To see Him in every thing, find Him every where, have your whole business with Him, take in nothing any other yoke than His yoke? This is rest, liberty, power. To come short of it is distraction and confusion. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."

" That I am Thine, my Lord and God,
Sprinkled and ransomed by Thy blood,-
Repeat that word once more,
With such an energy and light,
That this world's flattery nor spite
To shake me never may have power.

" From various cares my heart retires,
Though deep and boundless its desires ;
I 'm now to please but One :
Him, before whom the elders bow,
With Him is all my business now,
And with the souls that are His own.

" This is my joy that ne'er can fail,
To see my Saviour's arm prevail,
To mark the steps of grace ;
How new-born souls, convinced of sin,
His blood revealed to them within,
Extol the Lamb in every place.

"With these my happy lot is cast!
Through the world's deserts rude and waste,
Or through its gardens fair;
Whether the storms of trouble sweep,
Or all in dead supineness sleep,
Still to go on be all my care.

" See, the dear sheep by Jesus drawn
In blest simplicity move on ;
They trust His Shepherd's crook.
Beholders many faults may find,
But they can guess at Jesus' mind,
Content if written in His book.

" O all ye wise, ye rich, ye just,
Who the blood's doctrine have discussed,
And judge it weak and slight:
Grant that I may (the rest's your own)
In shame and poverty sit down
At this one well-spring of delight.

"Indeed, if Jesus ne'er was slain,
Or aught can make His ransom vain,
That now it heals no more,-
If His heart's tenderness has fled,
If of a Church He is not Head,
Nor Lord of all, as heretofore,

" Then,-so refers my state to Him,
Unwarranted I must esteem,
And wretched all I do.
Ah, my heart throbs, and seizes fast
The covenant that will ever last;
It knows, it knows, these things are true.

" No, my dear Lord, in following Thee,
And not in dark uncertainty,
This foot obedient moves :
'Tis with a Brother and a King,
Who many to His yoke will bring,
Who ever lives and ever loves.

" Now, then, my Way, my Truth, my Life,
Henceforth let sorrow, doubt, and strife
Drop off like autumn leaves;
Henceforth, as privileged by Thee,
Simple and undistracted be,
My soul which to Thy scepter cleaves.

" Let me my weary mind recline
On that eternal love of Thine,
And human thoughts forget;
Childlike, attend what Thou wilt say,
Go forth and do it while 'tis day,
Nor ever leave my sweet retreat.

"At all times to my spirit bear
An inward witness, soft and clear,
Of Thy redeeming power ;
This will instruct Thy child and fit,
Will sparkle forth whatever is mist,
For exigence of every hour.

"When all the sequel is well weighed,
I cast myself upon Thine aid,
A sea, where none can sink ;
Yea, in that sphere I stand, poor worm,
Where Thou wilt for Thy name perform
Above whatever I ask or think."

(Gambold.)

" Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift."

In the heart of London city, '
Mid the dwellings of the poor,
These bright, golden words were uttered,-
"I have Christ! what want I more?"

By a lonely, dying woman,
Stretched upon a garret-floor;
Having not one earthly comfort,-
" I have Christ! what want I more ?"

He who heard them ran to fetch her
Something from the world's great store :
It was needless-died she, saying,-
"I have Christ! what want I more?"

But her words will live forever;
I repeat them o'er and o'er.
God delights to hear me saying,-
"I have Christ ! what want I more ?"

Oh, my dear, my fellow-sinner!
High and low, and rich and poor,
Can you say with deep thanksgiving,-
" I have Christ! what want I more?"

Look away from earth's attractions,
All earth's joys will soon be o'er;
Rest not, till each heart exclaimeth,-
" I have Christ! what want I more?"

M. J. W.

The learning the place that grace has given us in Christ risen has brought very great delight, for the sense of the blessed nearness to Him which it gives us remains a settled thing. Yet how needful to remember that the power for resting the head on His bosom is through our having our feet in His hands. Nor does all this alter the fact that as the moment of His coming draws near, and our longing hearts repeat, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus," the sense of His absence grows too. We cannot be satisfied till we see His face, and are forever with and like Him.

The fig-tree is used by our Lord as a figure of the Jewish nation. It was to enforce upon them the necessity of repentance that He uttered His well-known parable, in which a fig-tree planted in a vineyard, fruitless after three years' visitation, is made to shadow the peril of their condition.

Israel had been of old God's vine, planted in a very fruitful hill, fenced and cared for as He only could care. But they had repaid it all as only man repays the toil of the divine Husbandman. They had brought forth but wild grapes; and He had to take away the hedge, and break down the wall, and lay the vineyard waste.

Out of the Babylonish captivity a remnant had been allowed to return to their land once more, and to be planted, not as the vine that once was, but as a fig-tree planted in the vineyard. This it was that God had now visited. Christ had come to His own, but His own had not received Him. He found but a cross; yet at the cross intercedes, like the dresser of the vineyard, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." So after the cross, Jerusalem gets the gospel, and, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, is digged about and dunged. Nationally, there was rejection still, and the Roman ax cut down the tree.

But there is still hope of a tree, though it be cut down ; and for Israel there is hope. The same prophetic Word that centuries before its occurrence predicted her long dispersion declares its end, their national revival, their partial return (still in unbelief) to their own land, the consequent judgment of God, inflicted by the hand of surrounding nations, which befalls them there, the deliverance of a repentant remnant in their last extremity by the coming of the Lord from heaven, and their final complete restoration and blessing.

It is only with a small part of this that we shall be occupied at present. The large part of it waits for fulfillment at a time which (near as it may be,) will find the present dispensation at an end, and when Christians will be with their Lord. Let us trace briefly what has been fulfilled only, and look at what is being fulfilled before our eyes, the witness given by a nation in its unbelief to Him whom it has rejected and still rejects.

Seven hundred years before it came to pass, the prophet Micah foresaw this rejection. Looking on to a day even yet future, he beholds the last trouble of Jacob, out of which they will be delivered, and announces the reason for all this coming upon them:"Now gather thyself in troops, thou daughter of troops :he hath laid siege against us :they smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. . . . Therefore will He give them up." (Ch. 5:i, 3.)

Here is a plain declaration of the reason why Jehovah delivers His people into their enemies' hand. But who is this "Judge of Israel"? The verse between the two that I have quoted gives a perfect explanation :" But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me who is to be Ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting!" Born at Bethlehem, yet the Eternal, spite of man's rejection, ordained of God as Israel's King,-could it be more perfectly declared that for their refusal of the Lord Jesus Christ they have been nationally given up?
But there is a limit to the period of this setting aside of the people:"Therefore shall He give them up until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth ; then the remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

Israel herself is this travailing woman :when she hath brought forth for God, (as yet she has not,) then will the purpose of His chastening be attained, then will He withdraw His hand and speak comfortably to her; and then, mark, "the remnant of His"-the divine Ruler's-"brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

That is, Israel will have again, as of old, her distinct place with God. Now, if a Jew be converted, he becomes a member of Christ's body, and there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In the time of which we speak, the present dispensation will be over, the body of Christ complete :a converted Jew will be henceforth once more a Jew.

The cause of Israel's long abandonment by God is here fully revealed in those very Old-Testament Scriptures which they own to be of God. But we see also distinctly that on their repentance they will be received nationally once more. In the meantime, as the apostle says, "Blindness in part is happened unto Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in ; and so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, ' There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." . . . As concerning the gospel, they are enemies,"-treated by God as enemies,-"for your sake; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake ; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." (Rom. 11:26-29.)

As long as the gospel-our Christian gospel-goes on, then, Israel (far from being brought in by it,) remain as enemies. The least true sign of national revival among them is a sign, therefore, of the gospel dispensation nearing its close. It is a sign that Christ is coming, that the blessing of the earth which comes with Israel's blessing (Rom. 11:12,15) is at hand ; and therefore that Christians shall be soon gathered home to be with Christ. And so the Lord says; after having announced His appearing in the clouds of heaven, He adds, " Now learn a parable of the fig-tree:When his branch hath now become tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh ; so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors." We do not see, indeed, nor can we as Christians expect to see, all the things of which He speaks, for His words clearly contemplate a Jewish remnant in Jerusalem after the Church is removed ; but the fig-tree beginning to put forth leaves we do surely already see.

In a book which has been recently issued in a second edition,* Dr. Kellogg has so well summed up the evidence of this that there can be no need to do more than refer to its deeply interesting pages. *"The Jews:or, Prediction and Fulfillment." By Samuel H. Kellogg, D. D. May be had from Loizeaux Brothers, 63 Fourth Avenue, New York. Price, $1.25, post-paid.* He there first of all reminds us how literally have been accomplished the prophecies of the long season of Israel's humiliation. They were to be scattered from one end of the earth even to the other; to go into captivity; serving their enemies in hunger, thirst, and nakedness; and among these nations they were to find no ease, nor the sole of their foot to have rest, with a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind,- great plagues, and of long continuance. They were to be left few in number, an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations (Deut. 28:41-67).

Their religious condition is pictured in a few striking words by Hosea :"The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." Thus, while not idolaters, they would be without the ordinances of their own religion. A strange thing indeed, but which must be the case while they are not in possession of the place where alone their offerings can be offered. It is significant that according to their own ritual atonement for their sins can be no longer made. How clear a testimony to them that the true atonement has been made !

As to the land itself, the predictions are no less exact. It was to become "utterly desolate." "The land shall not yield her increase, neither the trees of the land their fruits." (Lev. 26:20.) "I will bring the land into desolation ; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it." (5:31.) " Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house shall become as the high places of the forest." (Mic. 3:12.) "And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24.)

Details as to the accomplishment of these things are given by Dr. Kellogg; but it scarcely needs to follow him here, for they are facts more or less familiar to us at the present day. He goes on to consider the promises of their restoration to their land " in the latter days," the reunion of the ten tribes with the two (Jer. 30:31; Ezek. 37:), this restoration being final (Jer. 31:40; Am. 9:15) and complete (Ezek. 36:8, 10 ; Isa. 27:12). He notices also their political condition to be an independent one (Jer. 30:8), and (the history of their long apostasies at an end,) the sanctuary of God to be in the midst of them for evermore (Ezek. 37:28). In all this, he is still upon ground familiar, through grace, to an increasing number of believers in the literal truthfulness of such prophetic Scripture in the present time.

Our practical interest begins with Dr. Kellogg's book when he asks the question, "Have any signs and beginnings yet appeared of a literal fulfillment of the ancient promises to Israel, such as, if the literal interpretation of these promises be correct, we have sooner or later to expect?" He adds,-

"The answer which history gives to this question is clear as the sunlight. That answer is without doubt affirmative. It is the indisputable fact that for now more than a hundred years the Jews have been steadily rising out of that depth of subjection and abasement in which they had lain for centuries; and that, concomitant with this have appeared among both Jews and Gentiles many other exceptional phenomena predicted by the prophets, as to accompany or usher in Israel's final restoration. The facts which support this assertion are most impressive when we look at the past, and full of very solemn omen as to the swiftly approaching future."

The emancipation of the Jews from civil and legal disabilities began in the middle of the last century, the first act being the enfranchisement of the Jews in England in 1753, though parliament was compelled to repeal this the next year. About the same time, a Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, in Germany, by his influence upon his own people, and the effect of his life and writings upon the European nations, began the breaking down of hostile feelings on both sides. On the other hand, in France, as the result of manifold oppressions, both civil and religious, began the propagation of the reactionary doctrine of the absolute equality of men which brought about the revolution which convulsed at a later period, not only France, but Europe. In 1776, the United States of America embodied in their constitution this principle, that all men, without regard to creed or race, Gentile and Jew, should be held equal in right and privilege before the law.

"In Europe, the new and decisive movement began in 1783, when Joseph II. of Austria sounded the signal of the approaching revolution in an edict of toleration liberating the Jews throughout his dominions from the oppressions of centuries. By this decree, the odious 'body-tax' was abolished, and most of the vexations restrictions upon them (such as, for example, forbade the Jew to wear a beard, or to leave his house on the festival days of the church, or to frequent places of pleasurable resort, etc.,) were removed. All the schools and universities of the Austrian empire were thrown open to the Jews. The spirit of revolution was now abroad. The air was full of voices presaging impending change. In 1784, Louis XVI. of France also abolished the body-tax, which reduced the Jew, as far as possible, to the level of a beast. In 1787, Frederic William of Prussia repealed many of the oppressive laws against the Jews which Frederic the Great had enacted ….

"So things were going on, when the French Revolution, with all its unprecedented terrors, burst upon bewildered Europe. The Lord had said by the prophets that when the hour of Israel's deliverance should come, He would make them that had oppressed her 'drunk with their own blood' (Isa. 49:24-26), and that He would then take the cup of trembling out of the hand of Israel, and 'put it into the hand of them that had afflicted her' (Isa. 51:22,23). And so, as every one knows, it came to pass at that time. The great timepiece of the dispensation struck the predestined hour, the great revolution began, and Europe was straightway filled with fire and blood. Throne after throne went down in flame and judgment; and as the thrones of the Gentiles fell, everywhere fell with them the chains of ages from the limbs of Israel."

Space will not permit further detail. Dr. Kellogg next points out, from the thirty-seventh of Ezekiel, that a "tendency to external organization in the scattered nation was to be looked for, antecedent and preparatory to their actual reinstatement in their land and their conversion to God by the power of the Spirit of life." And he says, " In this again do we find fulfillment answering to prediction in the age in which we live." He adduces especially in proof of this "the formation, in 1860, of 'The Alliance Israelite Universal,' an organization which has for its object the promotion and completion of the emancipation of the Jews in all lands, and their intellectual and moral elevation, as also the development of the Jewish population of the Holy Land."

He proceeds to speak of their predicted wealth, to be derived from the Gentiles that oppressed them (Isa. 60:9; 61:6), and points out the startling way in which they are becoming the actual or virtual owners of the soil through a large part of Central and Eastern Europe.

"One of the liberal papers of Germany is quoted by the New-York Tribune as saying that ' the rapid rise of the Jewish nation to leadership is the great problem of the future for East Germany.' The writer justifies this opinion by the statement that 'all the lower forms of labor, in the workshops, the fields, the ditches, and the swamps, fall to the lot of the German element, while the constantly increasing Jewish element obtains enormous possessions in capital and land, and raises itself to power and influence in every department of public life.' "

Again, we are told,-

" ' It is a fact which can no longer be denied, that the population of the remote districts of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Roumania are only the nominal possessors of the soil, and, for the most part quite strictly, cultivate the land only for the Jews, to whom they have mortgaged their estates for their liquor debts.' 'In Russia, it is said already in 1869, seventy-three per cent of the immovable property of certain provinces in the west, where the Jews are the most numerous, had passed from the hands of the Russians into those of the Jews.'"

"According to Le Telegraphe, Constantina, Algiers, and Oran belong almost completely to the Jews. The whole trade of Algiers is in their hands; and, in consequence of high and usurious rates of interest, a large proportion of the natives are fallen into the power of the Jews."

Again, in the matter of education, " Every where, they have entered eagerly into the intellectual contest; and already, as compared with Christians, are found in a much larger proportion of their total number, among the educated and educating classes."In Berlin, where the Jews are but five per cent of the population, they are thirty per cent of the students. In the University of Berlin, at a recent date, out of 3,609 students, 1,302 were Jews. In the High Schools of Vienna lately, of 2,448 students, 1,039 were registered as Jews. Prof. Treitschke, of the University of Berlin, is quoted as saying that, " while in the whole German empire the proportion of Jews is only one in seventy-five, yet in all the higher institutions of learning the proportion of Jews is one in ten. Prof. Von Schulte argues, from the educational statistics of the German empire, that "it needs no prophet to foretell that the offices of state, the legal and medical professions, trade and industry, will pass in ever-increasing proportion into the hands of the Jews;" and he adds, "The educational returns show the same state of things in Austria also."

After the statement of many like facts, Dr. K. gives the opinion of M. de Lavaleye, the eminent publicist of Belgium, that "the rapid rise of the Jewish element is a fact which may be observed all over Europe. If this upward movement continues, the Israelites, a century hence, will be the wasters of Europe."

The increase of the Jews is another prediction (Isa. 60:22; Jer. 31:27; Ezek. 36:37), according to the book before us, being now remarkably fulfilled. Basnage, a hundred and seventy-five years ago, estimated their number to be about 3,000,000. The lowest estimate at present more than doubles this. A high authority reckons them at not less than 12,000,000. There are said to be among them a larger proportion of births, and an exceptionally low average of mortality.

There is much more of exceeding interest in Dr. Kellogg's book, but it must suffice us now to mention one thing only-the preparation for their restoration to their land which is evidently being made. The crippling of Turkey, the power in possession of it, the increased and increasing interest in the " eastern question " on the part of the powers of Europe, the effect of recent Russian hostility in directing the eyes of many of the Jews in those parts to the land of their fathers, lying nearly vacant for them,-with these things almost all are familiar. We are all aware, also, that they are increasing in number in the land. Dr. Kellogg's statement, however, will add definiteness to our knowledge. I quote briefly, and fragmentarily only :-

"Until the year 1841, only three hundred Jews were permitted to live in Jerusalem. In that year, this restriction was removed, though the Jews were still confined by law to a narrow and filthy district of the city, next to the leper quarters. In 1867, however, by a firman of the Sultan, this restriction also was removed, and the Jews were allowed, in common with all foreigners, to purchase and own land in Palestine without becoming subjects of the Sultan." " Many Jews began at once to avail themselves of the right. The movement was further accelerated in 1874 by the adoption by Russia of the German system of military conscription, whereby the Jews-for the most part previously exempt from military service-found themselves all obliged to serve in the ranks for their worst oppressor. At once began a movement of the Jewish population from Russia to Palestine." "The outbreak of the Jewish persecutions in Europe, especially in Russia, has still further quickened this Palestinian movement." "Mr. De Haas, lately U. S. consul at Jerusalem, numbers those there as high as 20,000. This estimate, which takes no account of Jews found in other parts of Palestine, is yet nearly one-half the whole number that returned in the restoration from Babylon. " Even before the recent Russian persecutions had given new impulse to the movement of the Russian Jews toward the Holy Land, The Jewish Chronicle wrote, "We are inundated with books on Palestine, and the air is thick with schemes for colonizing the Holy Land once more.'""There is abundant evidence that the desire for the restoration of the Jewish nationality in Palestine, however it may have died out with most of the comfortable Jews in Western Europe and America, is keenly alive and active in that larger part of the nation which is found in Eastern Europe. A writer in the Jewish Chronicle says,
'Israel must once again take up the staff of the wanderer, and abandon the graves of his ancestors. Where are the poor people to go? This question the Jews of Russia have themselves answered. The greater portion have determined to proceed to Palestine, the scene of our former glory and independence. 'The Russian Jews number about 4,000,000, or about a third of the whole Jewish race.'The Russian and Roumanian Jews,' again says The Jewish Chronicle, 'are bent on going to Palestine.

Whatever we may think or say as the practicability of the new exodus, it is evidently to take place. To all the objections that can be pointed out, the Jews of Russia and Roumania have one all-sufficient reply,–We cannot be worse off there than here! The movement is irresistible.'"

We close these extracts from Dr. Kellogg's book with sincere thanks to him for it. May our hearts be stirred as we realize in this budding of the fig-tree the sign of the summer at hand. While no signs are necessarily to precede the coming of our Lord, but we are to watch as not knowing the time, yet who can deny that there is all abroad in the air the voice of One who speaks in human history as the Governor of all its course; and that this voice says to us now, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"
"Surely, I come quickly."May His whole church be roused to give Him welcome, as it should!

I. FRANCE.

In drawing attention briefly to the work of the Lord in the mission-field, it is hoped to interest those who know little as yet as to it to look further into what He is doing in the present day. It is not my thought to be able to add any thing to the knowledge of those who have been already aroused to inquiry, as the means of satisfying it are now so abundant. But with very many yet of the people of God, there is a lack of interest which is largely due to ignorance-an ignorance which should no longer any where exist. " The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein." His work in the salvation of souls is what must have preeminent claim on all who are themselves the subjects of it. And His ways of carrying on this work are worthy of adoring observation.

In speaking of France as a mission-field at all, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, we cannot but realize that the Church has not fulfilled the condition upon which alone the goodness of God is assured toward her:"Toward thee, goodness," says the apostle of the Gentiles to the Gentile profession, "if 'thou continue in His goodness, otherwise thou also shall be cut off." (Rom. 11:22.) France has been a professedly Christian country (one brief terrible period excepted) for many centuries, and however gratifying it may be to hear of the success of missions in it at the present day, yet we cannot escape from the thought of what the need of them implies as to that long lapse of time in God's forbearance.

Since the Reformation, France has been in constant struggle with the gospel. She has had her religious wars and days of savage persecution, her St. Bartholomew and her dragonnacles. Again and again the cause of Protestantism seemed about to triumph, but its apparent victory which set Henry IV. upon the throne was its worst defeat. In the Edict of Nantes, it accepted toleration and compromise,-with these, retrogression and decay. Then followed the Revocation of the Edict, the slaughter and dispersion of the Protestants, and Rome reigned once more absolute over the desolated land.

But she had prepared the scourge for her own back. Allied with the most cruel and oppressive civil despotism, she nursed the spirit of revolt into a flame, and the reaction aroused in one frantic outburst overthrew Church and state together. Since the Revolution, Rome has never been able to recover her old supremacy. The hand that reinstated controlled her too, and Protestantism has been from that time tolerated. But it was no more in its old vigor; it too was controlled by the state, leavened by the infidelity that was now abroad, and with little life or hope in it. From this time, France became really a mission-field, her help from without rather than from within; and though this help was given to some extent, and workers of many sorts entered into the field, yet there was for long no very marked success. Of late, however, an encouraging change has taken place, and it can now be said, by one well qualified to speak,-

" Never before has there been such liberty in France to spread the gospel. There is now freedom for meetings of all kinds. . . . Protestantism-rather let us say, the religion of Christ-is now, so to speak, in the air one breathes in France. A breath of revival has passed over our torpid population, and the gospel is every-where welcomed."
It is my purpose to speak here of two special movements in which it is impossible not to recognize the power of God, sovereign in the instruments it employs, working in a way to give confident assurance of widespread blessing begun, which, if the Lord tarry but a short time, may be expected to manifest itself much more abundantly. Both are already well known to those whose eyes are on the fields of God's eternal harvests; but there are many of the Lord's people whose eyes are not yet there, and who are thus deprived of so much fellowship with the Lord in His blessed work, and of matter both for thanksgiving and prayer, if not of more active sympathy, I can, of course, but briefly summarize what has been said by others.

The first of these movements is that of the McAll mission, of which a much better account than I can give will be found in Mr. Loomis' interesting volume on "Modern Cities."* My own is extracted principally from that of Mr. McAll himself, in his "Cry from the Land of Calvin and Voltaire." *"Modern Cities and their Religious Problems,"by Samuel Lane Loomis. For those who would go move at length into the subject, there are " The White Fields of France," by Dr. Horatius Bonar ; and "A Cry from the Land of Calvin and Voltaire; " "Records of the McAll Mission," London, Hodder & Stoughton; with "French Protestantism in the Nineteenth Century," by Louise S. Houghton; published by the American McAll Association, Philadelphia.*

Mr. McAll was a Congregational minister, the pastor of a church at Hadley, England. In 1871, he was with his wife for the first time in Paris, during a short summer vacation. It was just after the Franco-German war, and the horrors of the Commune were linked in vivid memory with the quarter, on a street in which they took their stand to distribute tracts to the passers-by. They stood alone there:such was the repute of the district that their friends, having warned, declined to accompany them.

"The 'blouses,'" says Mr. McAll, "were all around us. As yet, few evidences of Christian interest had reached these remote and dreaded 'citizens.' What had been done was chiefly in supplies of food, etc., sent from England. No sooner was a friendly purpose on our part recognized than large and eager groups gathered around us, desiring the tracts. . . . The ' man of Macedonia, awaited us. My wife having offered a tract to the waiter of the large corner wine-shop, he begged her to enter, ' for,' said he, each customer wished to possess one.' Just as she emerged from the door, a working-man, French, but marvelous to say, speaking excellent English, stepped forward, and in the name of the bystanders, addressed to me the identical words with which this volume commences. I never saw him afterward so far as I know, but his earnest bearing, each word, his very countenance, were engraved indelibly in my memory."

The words were, " Sir, are you not a Christian minister ? If so, I have something of importance to say to you. You are at this moment in the very midst of a district inhabited by thousands and tens of thousands of us working-men. To a. man, we have done with an imposed religion-a religion of superstition and oppression; but if any one would come to teach us religion of another kind-a religion of freedom and earnestness,-many of us are ready to listen.'"

Five months later, Mr. and Mrs. McAll returned to devote themselves to the work in Paris. There were many difficulties to surmount. He was past fifty, quite ignorant of the French language, unacquainted with the people or their ways. He had but two sentences of French to begin with,-" God loves you," and " I love you." Their very meetings were illegal, as was the giving away of tracts, religious notices, etc.

"We chose for our residence," he says, "a humble lodging in the very midst of the workmen's habitations. The very day we had hired our rooms, a friend gave us the pleasing intelligence that it was a most dangerous quarter, and that nothing was more probable than our being assassinated in the streets."

The work began at once. From twenty-eight at the first meeting, the attendance grew to over a hundred at the second;-

"and if to-day we were again brought face to face with that Belleville workman, we could point him, as the direct fruit of his appeal, to nearly one hundred stations of our own mission, besides not a few others more or less connected in origin with the impulse then received. . . . And we should have to bid him look beyond the boundaries of France proper,-to Corsica, to the African colonies, to Switzerland, to the French-speaking people of America."

The means have been very simple.

" There was no novelty in the character of our meetings, except for these poor neglected ones, unused to religious services of every kind before. We had hymns, reading the Bible, short, pointed gospel-addresses (usually two in an hour's reading,) prayers, with the added feature of free lending libraries, children's religious gatherings, etc. . . . And the same simplicity of organization and procedure characterizes the entire work to this day."

As to the meetings,-

"Ordinary shops fronting on frequented streets are usually rented and fitted up for this purpose. The halls are thus always comparatively small. . . . Great advantages are claimed for this system. In the first place, such rooms are easily secured in any part of the-, city where they are needed. … It is furthermore claimed that they are much more easily equipped with speakers than great ones. A large audience can only be effectively addressed by a man of extraordinary power; but a man of smaller caliber can do equally good work in a smaller meeting. Other things being equal, many little meetings are more useful than a few large ones. In the former, the speaker is brought into closer contact with the hearer, his influence is more forcible, his message more personal, and each auditor involuntarily takes a larger share of it to himself. In a small meeting, it is also possible, as it never is in a great assembly, to extend a cordial welcome to every one who enters, to observe the effect of the discourse upon all, and to follow up the preaching by personal effort.

"Shops have still another advantage for mission purposes:they are much more accessible to the throngs of the street. Made so as to be easily entered-but a single step from the sidewalk-they open their inviting doors to those who, fatigued with walking, desire a few moments rest; to those who are prompted by curiosity to enter, and to all who for any reason care to go in. An illumination, suspended over the sidewalk before the door, announces, in blazing letters, the name and character of the hall, and the time of the meetings, and extends to all a cordial invitation to attend them. … A gentleman stands on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, and distributes printed invitations to the passers-by, enforcing their message as often as possible by a kind word of welcome. Those who enter are received by the inner door-keeper-a lady, who politely welcomes each one as a guest, shows him a scat, and provides him with a hymn-book.

"All polemics are, by an inflexible rule, forbidden. Not one word derogatory to the Roman Catholic Church, or even to rationalism, must be spoken. The addresses are not to be learned, rhetorical, or philosophical; their single aim must be to present, simply, clearly, vividly, and positively, the great facts of our faith." The McAll mission "meets the questions of the papacy and of infidelity, not controversially, but by constant insistence upon gospel truths, so that thousands listen with sympathy whom controversy could never reach."

Mr. Mr All speaks of two great hindrances to the spread of (he gospel in 'France,-the deadness of conscience fostered by the long prevalence of Romanism, and the "actual and prevailing oblivion of" the Bible. Among those devotedly attached to popery, this is lamented by the intelligent. He gives an instance:-

"A gentleman high in the legal profession in Paris, on occasion of arranging recently the deed of a mission-hall, inquired from me our purpose in opening it. On receiving my reply, he said, with heart,-felt emphasis, 'Sir, do all in your power to persuade my fellow-countrymen to head the bible. If you can induce them to do that, you will bring to France the only power which (tan save us from decadence and ruin.' After attending the opening meeting in that hall, this notary sought me out, and grasping both my hands in the characteristic French manner, said, ' I, a Roman Catholic, desire to assure you of my entire sympathy,-my fervent wish for your success.' "

This was written in 1886, and it is striking that at the end of the same year another movement began, initiated by a Roman Catholic of the most devoted type, whose object was, to give the Bible to the people. The story, strange in itself, and with a stranger ending, if we can say it is yet ended, is told by Dr. Wright in a pamphlet from which I borrow all that I have to say.* *The Power Behind the Pope:A Story of Blighted Hopes."* Many have read it, reprinted and commented upon it more or less in different periodicals of late; but many are yet ignorant of it too, and the narrative needs must confirm our belief that God is working in a remarkable way in France at the present time,-our hope of blessing to numbers through it.

Henri Lasserre is a well-known name just now, and was indeed before the last and most truly notable part of his history. He is a lawyer, descended from an ancient family, and till lately connected specially with the fame of "Our Lady of Lourdes." She had cured, as he believed, his sore eyes. In gratitude, he wrote the history of the appearance of the virgin to the peasant-girl of Lourdes.

"The book created 'Notre Dame de Lourdes.' The Archbishop of Albi wrote this to M. Lasserre:' Sir, our Lady of Lourdes owes you a recompense.' In fact, she owed him every thing. He may safely be considered the patentee of the whole business, for without his prismatic and potent pen, the wonders now so famous would scarcely have been heard of beyond the little Pyrennean village."

In five years, the editions book had run through eighty-seven editions.

But God had something better for him than this.

" On a happy day he discovered the four gospels. He felt the spell of the simple but profound narratives which reveal Jesus of Nazareth in all the tenderness and loveliness of perfect manhood, and in all the might and majesty of Godhead. He saw that the fourfold story of Jesus was the very book that the French people needed. He believed that the gospels would be received with joy by his countrymen, and he resolved to prepare for them a version worthy of their acceptance.

"Prompt and zealous, he began the work of translation; his aim being, not to render the gospels in the French as it ought to be, but in the French as it was. The result was, a living translation. . . . Every page said, ' Read me.' The arbitrary divisions of chapters and verses which trip up Frenchmen who attempt to read the Bible for the first time, had wholly disappeared. The narrative fell into natural clauses and paragraphs well spaced out, and the current of the Book of Life flowed on the page in abundant light."

It was, of course, a Roman Catholic translation. The perpetual virginity of Mary, the primacy of Peter, and other doctrines are maintained; but-

" In questions of larger importance, M. Lasserre breaks away from the traditional renderings of the papal church. With splendid courage, he translates the Greek word 'repent' by 'be converted, repent,' instead of by 'do penance;' and he declares in a note that the Latin rendering (Paenitentiam agite) fails accurately to represent the Greek original, 'which means, change your sentiment, repent, be converted,' and does not like the Latin, bear the idea of voluntary austerities with the object of expiation. . . . The same fearlessness is manifest in the translation ' Adore the Lord thy God, and do not render worship to any but Him alone;' and ' We are servants without merit,' etc."

But the preface to the book is as remarkable. He deplores in it the notorious fact that the gospels are scarcely ever read by those who profess to be fervent Catholics, and never by the multitude of the faithful. He declares that the Bible was not always so neglected; that all the fathers of the Church urged the people to read both the Old and New Testaments; blames the Protestants1 , » (for their free handling of it, which led the Council of Trent to decree that every translation should have episcopal sanction and explanatory notes, and considers that in consequence, through the suspicion of heresy, the Bible ceased to be a household book. And he laments the substitution of other books of a different character for this, and declares " We must lead back the faithful to the great fountain of living water which flows from the inspired book. . . . We must put the earth again face to face with Jesus Christ."

The book was published with a dedication to " Notre Dame de Lourdes " ! " But there was something still more strange. The book appeared with the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Paris, and the approval and benediction of the pope ! " the latter in a letter from Cardinal Jacobini officially communicated through the Nuncio of France. " The imprimatur of the- Archbishop of Paris placed Lasserre's version regularly in the hands of the French people. The pope's letter placed the stamp of authority, not only on the translation of the gospels, but on the terrible preface which is expressly mentioned in it."

The ages might seem to have returned upon themselves. The unchangeable Church of Rome was giving up her cherished traditions, and putting the -Word of God in the hands of the people. Rather, it was God to whom man's bulwarks are as nothing, bringing down the wall which had shut out the light so long from millions, that many might receive, perhaps, His closing testimony to them. But infallibility had pronounced its benediction on the reading of the gospels, and the people read them. Within a year, twenty-five editions had issued from the press commended by priests and prelates far and wide, and welcomed into the homes of Frenchmen every where. What must have been the effect ? Let him who knows the Word of God answer. Eternity will disclose it. Time may yet disclose it also.

The permanent acceptance of the work was secured, if papal infallibility could secure it. It was God's will, however, to expose its pretensions, and after having allowed the power of His Word to be proved in the hearts and consciences of many, to show that Rome was still and ever in hostility to it. One morning, Frenchmen waked up to find the translation of the gospels, papal benediction and all, upon the Index ! As a book of "degraded doctrine," it was proscribed and condemned, forbidden to be published, read, or retained by any one, under the penalties proclaimed in the Index of forbidden books.

Little more is known than this. It is said that M. Lasserre has bowed, called in all copies of his book, and suspended the translation of the whole Bible on which he was engaged. Upon the issue, we will not speculate; but it is clear that the Lord's design in all this will not be disappointed. God is moving. What are popes and "sacred congregations" before Him? But we can pray with a new hope-can we not ?-for France, for Henri Lasserre, and for this missionary work which has been so owned of Him. Shall we be with God, and not awake to realize our sweet sanctuary responsibilities as to all this? The Lord enable us !

And shall we not take lesson and encouragement from the McAll mission ? Have we not responsibility to bring the precious truth which God has given us in this earnest and familiar way before those to whom the Lord would send it? "Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; she crieth in the chief place of concourse." Ought not we ?

Could we but have these missionary stores, with their fronts proclaiming the truth they know not to the gaze of those who would not go even a step to seek it,-tract-depots, reading-rooms, inquiry-rooms, preaching-rooms in one,-how might we trust God to bless this earnest, face-to-face dealing with the multitudes around? I do, not hesitate to say, that I believe it would be a beginning of such new and wide blessing as now we have not faith even to imagine.

If we give to laborers only when we meet them, or because we desire them to come to us, will not those going to remote parts be left to want, and a premium be set upon going to certain centers? Proper exercise about this, and true interest in the ministry of the Word every where, with earnest petitions for guidance from the Lord of the harvest, will result in a right distribution of what is given. Let no one undertake to patronize the Lord's servants; and may none seek it. If not in prayerful communion with God, we are blunderers often in the holy things of His service. But the Lord is gracious, and encourages the cheerful giver. E. S. L.

A correspondent writes, perplexed, as many more have been, to reconcile the forgiveness which every believer has in Christ, and the baptism for the remission of sins which the apostle Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, and which Ananias pressed upon the repentant Saul of Tarsus :" Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord."

It is a point of real importance, and as to which many interpretations are given which disfigure the precious gospel of Christ, and even destroy its efficacy. The Romanist uses the latter class of texts in behalf of a sacramental system in which the grace of Christ flows only through the channels of church-ordinances. The ritualist of every grade agrees substantially with the Romanist. The so-called Disciple body, with many more heterodox, though making faith in some sort a necessary prerequisite, take otherwise the same ground, while one at least of the smaller and wilder sections of Adventists argue for them the necessity of the baptism of infants on exactly the Romanist ground, that without it there is no salvation. Many Protestants, on the other hand, overlook or practically deny this class of texts.

They become simple when we learn to separate the actual remission of sins through the blood of Christ to those who believe in Him, from that testimony of it upon earth which He has ordained to be preached, not only in the gospel to all, but individually to every one who owns Him as Lord in the day of grace. " Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved" is the apostle Peter's text in the second of Acts. The application of it in both the cases mentioned is the same. The convicted Jews, repenting of their rejection of the Lord, are baptized in His name for remission of sins. Saul washes away his sins calling on the name of the Lord. But the cleansing by blood and the washing of water are distinct, and the latter saves in " figure " only :" The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us." (i Pet. 3:21.) It is a preaching in act to the individual who had received the word of the gospel -a beautiful, definite making over to him who believes in Christ of the effect of Christ's work.

But this is necessarily, on man's part, declarative and conditional only. Man cannot read the heart, nor has he heaven's treasury of grace in his hands. He can but witness to it. Hence baptism is but initiation into the kingdom on earth of which men have the "keys." Not of heaven, but of the kingdom of heaven. Baptism and the Word, as these two keys, are thus the means of discipling (Matt. 28:19, 20.) But the parables of the kingdom and the warning as to discipleship fully show that the blessing here is conditional, not absolute, as in the case of remission itself (Matt. 18:32, 34.) In this line, all the conditions and warnings of Scripture will be found.

Mischief will result to the soul who confounds this declarative remission of the disciple on earth with the absolute grace of Christ to the believer, which is apart from all ordinances, complete and eternal. Never is a child of God, justified and accepted in Christ, the possessor of eternal life, put as such upon any doubtful footing. And no rite or ordinance can impart these blessings.

DEUTERONOMY 8:7-9; 11:10-12.

I was musing a little on the beautiful description given to Israel of the land (before they entered it) by Moses in Deut. 8:7-9; 11:10-12. He exhibits it to them in its positive and comparative excellencies-as it was in itself, and in contrast with Egypt. In itself, it was to be full of all manner of good things-wheat, wine, and oil (8:8); of which good things another scripture says, " Wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." (Ps. 104:15.)

And not only was the soil, or land, itself to be thus the storehouse of these most needed and best things, but their hills and stones were to be warehouses of brass and iron, wanted in the common traffic and use of life in their place as well as the other (8:9).

But in contrast with Egypt, the character of the promised land is very blessedly described. Egypt was watered by the foot,-1:e., the common industry of her people drawing off the water of the Nile upon their fields and gardens (11:10). Their river was every thing to them-and all they wanted was to be busy round its banks, and they could supply themselves out of it.

But Canaan was to be tilled by the Lord. He would water it from heaven Himself-His heart would care for it, and His eyes would rest on it from one end of the year to the other (11:11, 12). As another scripture says, "Thy land shall be married." (Isa. 62:) A strong figure. The Lord was Himself the husband, or the husbandman, (kindred words, no doubt,) of the land of His people.

But, beside, Canaan was to be a land "of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills " (8:7). Egypt had a mighty river that was every thing to it, but the source of that river was unknown. Canaan, on the contrary, had no mighty river. A "brook," as it were, was its largest stream-even Jordan, compared with the Nile, was but as a streamlet of a river. But it had "fountains" springing up in all its hills and valleys. Its currents and channels may have been small, but it was full of the source and springs of those currents. This was just the opposite of Egypt. There, the current was mighty, but the source unknown; here, the channels were small and unimportant, but the sources were all known and enjoyed, together with their waters and streams.

And, as we know, beloved, that these two lands were mysteries,-the land of Egypt representing the world, or the place of nature, out of which the redeemed are called, and Canaan, the scene of communion with God, into which the redeemed are brought,-so we may learn that these features of the two lands have meaning also. For the world can go on supplying itself from the great current of daily providential mercies and leave the source or parent of it altogether a secret, while the believer, or the Church, has to do with the great source or parent in all things and in every place; a fountain is to be known in every hill and every valley; and if the little tiny brooks be tasted, it is well known where they rise, and from what recess in glen or mountain they broke forth. Has not this a voice in it? The Nile itself commanded the notice of the world, while its birthplace was a mystery. No river in Canaan was worth the geographer's notice-at least, in the scale of rivers, but every hill and valley there had its fresh and sweet springs. And we may ask ourselves, In which land are we more at home? Do we like to walk in a place that is full of the presence of God-like Canaan? or would we choose a place like Egypt, where we may get all providential supplies, while keeping the great source of them at an unknown distance.

The character of heaven too is signified by this Canaan. It will be a rest, surely so; it will be deliverance from a dreary wasted wilderness, but it is to be a rest full of the presence of God, and of the incessant and abiding witnesses of that presence. The fountain is to be every where. (Rev. 7:17.) May we the more welcome it, because of this! and the more we can dwell in the presence of the fountain now, may we be the better pleased. If we go up a hill or down to a valley, may the fountain meet our gladdened eye! J. G. B.

2. PRIESTHOOD.

"Propitiation we have seen, then, to be the immediate effect of the work here; the work itself was the propitiation. It would be certainly impossible, according to Scripture, to separate from the work any presentation of it as making this. Quite as impossible to separate it from substitution, save as a different aspect only. The whole work was a substitution-Jesus standing in the sinner's place. The whole work was a propitiation-what satisfied God as to sin. Faith, in either case, is needed in order that it shall avail. If we be believers, Christ is a substitute for such. If there is not faith, there is no real propitiation. Christ, says the apostle (Rom. 3:25), is "a propitiation through faith." That is the necessary condition either way, and there is no real difficulty in the matter. Substitution is as broad as propitiation ; or, if you will, propitiation as narrow as substitution. Otherwise, if upon the "gospel basis" of propitiation one sinner should come to God for whom there had been no substitution, could he be saved? If he could, substitution were unneeded; if he could not, then propitiation is no more real basis of appeal to all than substitution.

There is no scripture for this separation of Christ's work into two different works for different classes. There is no work for unbelievers at all, but one equal precious work for all upon condition of faith. There is no propitiation for all or any apart from the value of a substitutionary work. There is no inefficacious work which does not avail for those for whom it is offered. The work is for believers, and all men are most truly invited and responsible to believe.

Propitiation and atonement are absolutely one. A substitutionary work is what atones or propitiates. Christ offered for men is the propitiation. The blood offered is the blood shed; and its sprinkling here or there is but propitiation applied to this or to that; not a part of the work, but an application of it, a propitiation for this or for that.

It is the priest's part to make propitiation. Christ became " a merciful and faithful high-priest to make propitiation for the sins of the people." When, then, did this high-priesthood of Christ begin?

If Aaron be the typical high-priest, then, it is certain that he made propitiation not merely in the holiest. Upon one occasion only he did this:the regular offering of the blood was upon the altar. " For the life of the flesh is in the blood :and I have given it you upon the altar to make atonement (or propitiation) for your souls" (Lev. 17:11). If the type, then, thus emphasized as it is for us, is to speak to us in the matter, it would seem to say that propitiation,-and priestly work-might be done outside the holiest. And certainly the priest was that outside.

But it may be argued that in these things the law " was not the very image " of the things it spoke of. Then, I ask, when the darkness over the cross passed, and the Lord said " Father," was propitiation, satisfaction, thus far accomplished? Was the wrath gone? and how? If we take the truth affirmed in propitiation, when did the wrath pass? Will any one say, Only when He entered heaven,-that in fact He entered it with God yet unsatisfied, to satisfy Him there? Surely, none could believe that!

So the epistle to the Hebrews speaks of His entering by His blood, as we have seen; and, as to His priesthood, of "a great High-priest that is passed into"-or through-"the heavens" (chap, 4:14), and of a " High-priest made higher than the heavens" (7:26):words which naturally speak of the exaltation of One who was high-priest before.

But it is urged that chap. 8:4 distinctly states that our Lord was not a priest on earth:"For if He were on earth, He should not be a priest." Let us, then, for a moment, suppose that He was not, and follow this out to its consequences.

When, then, did He become a priest?

He must have been a priest to make propitiation, clearly ; of course, before this,-before propitiation had been made. But that means, in the mind of some, while atonement was being made, and before acceptance! This is, however, in complete contradiction to what we have seen as to the time of His entrance-that He entered upon ascension. But it is a contradiction also to what is urged from chap. 5:7-9, that not till after He was perfected He was saluted of God a high-priest. Then that perfecting was acknowledged, was it not? So that it would be, not He was saluted high-priest and made propitiation, but in the reverse order:He made propitiation, and was saluted high-priest. Every way, we stumble over Scripture.

It should be plain that if His high-priesthood be based upon His work, He could not obtain this till His work was acknowledged:which would mean, according to the general thought, till propitiation were made. This would set aside absolutely His being high-priest to make it. On the other hand, if He be high-priest to make it, then His priesthood must be based on something else than His work.

But does the passage produced say that Christ was not a high-priest upon earth? The answer must be, it does not. The apostle is not looking back, but looking up. "We have such a High-priest," he says, " who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." Now, then, "If He were upon earth"-if He were now there,-"He would not be a priest." And why ? " Seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law." He does not speak even of sacrifices now. The sacrifice is offered, and the Priest is in the sanctuary:for such a Priest there could be no room on earth, for the earthly sanctuary is in the hands of the priests ordained by law!

Surely this is no question of what He was on earth. But what of Heb. 5:7-9? Could He be priest before He was made perfect? Was it not as being made perfect He was " called (or saluted) of God a high-priest after the order of Melchisedek " ?

Yes, that is plain. Only let us observe that the word "called" here is never used for calling to an office; whereas the word for that is used at the beginning of this chapter:"And no man taketh this honor unto himself but He that is called of God as was Aaron."

Mark, then:"So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made a high-priest, but He that said unto Him, ' Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.'"

Is this, however, the actual call, or only the Person by whom He is called? No doubt we might understand at first sight the latter. We have exactly the same form of speech, however, in the seventh chapter:"But this with an oath by Him that said unto Him, The Lord sware, and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever." Now here it is not only the majesty of the Speaker that is affirmed:we find the oath in what is quoted as His saying.

Not only so. For if His priesthood were not founded upon His work, upon what, then, is it founded? Upon His person, surely. This is the glory of His person, then, which the epistle to the Hebrews dwells upon in its first chapter:"Unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee?" Here is affirmed a personal glory higher than that of angels, yet of a Man, begotten upon earth in time.

Is it not just this wondrous manhood of His whereby indeed He becomes the high-priest of His people ? able to take a place in their behalf in things pertaining to God, the Mediator by His twofold nature? The priest is the very fullest type of mediation, and in this Son of God in perfect manhood we have assuredly, then, the Priest.

But it is not even His blessed person that constitutes Him priest. He must be called, for His path is the path of obedience; and He must be anointed, for the high-priest has for his designation " The Anointed Priest." And if, again, through the Eternal Spirit He offer Himself without spot to God, here are three marks by which, if we find them together, we may find a threefold divine testimony to Him as consecrated by God for His propitiatory work.

The type of the passover-lamb will here assist us much. We may remember that it was taken on the tenth day of the first month, and kept up till the fourteenth day of the month at even. Then it was sacrificed.

Now 10 is the number of responsibility as seen in the ten commandments, and this time is allowed to pass, the lamb of sacrifice not yet being marked out as such. There was clearly such a period in the Lord's life-a time of private life, as we may say; of which Scripture says little therefore, while the apocryphal gospels (one expressly called "The Gospel of the Infancy") fill it up with fabulous narrations. Thirty years of the Lord's life pass thus, in which He lives as a private person; then He comes forward for His appointed work. It was the age at which the Levites in the wilderness took office, and the priests, it is believed, similarly. This 30 has, again, the number 10 in it, and it evidently characterizes the Lord's time of retirement as that in which He is fulfilling as man in His own personal responsibility. Then He comes out publicly before the eye of God, and is owned of Him as the unblemished One-the Lamb designated for the sacrifice.

Notice, then, how it is He comes forth.

John has been calling the multitude to his baptism of repentance, baptizing them in Jordan for the remission of sins. Jordan is death, as we all know well; and John's baptism is a baptism to death (Rom. 6:4). They (and we) have merited death:it is appointed unto men once to die:the wages of sin is death. They come out to him owning this place as theirs; they are all baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

Then the Lord comes also:having no personal need, as a baptism of repentance it has necessarily no significance for Him; but if death is the due of these sinners, and yet they are to have remission of sins, He must come into death for them, Jordan for Him the type of that greater baptism with which He was to be baptized. He offers Himself without spot to God.

And without spot is He owned. It is there the Father's voice breaks out in the words which at once own the relationship of the Man Christ Jesus (which is, according to Heb. 5:, the call to priesthood), and the Lamb without blemish for the sacrifice, "Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased."

Here is the Priest, then, to make propitiation, and at the same moment, with the call to the priesthood, the heavenly anointing comes upon Him for it:"the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him." It is the anointing without blood which is the special sign of the high-priest in Lev. 8:12, an anointing which is not found again in the Lord's case until, gone up on high (ascended), He receives from the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:33).

Here are the three signs, and they meet nowhere else. He is now the Lamb kept up, and the Priest to make propitiation; not yet, indeed, as it seems to me, after the order of Melchisedek, or in the power of an endless life. He gives up this life. There is a cloud for awhile over all, until perfected by suffering, and risen from the dead, He is greeted of God as priest after the order of Melchisedek, priest upon the throne. His priesthood is re-affirmed and exalted; by the oath of God He is " consecrated for evermore," and the Holy Ghost afresh anoints Him.

There He abides, and as such, blessed be God, we know Him, ever living to make intercession forus. Well may we, "seeing that we have a Great High-priest who is passed into the heavens, Jesus,the Son of God, …. come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find graceto help in every time of need."

I. PROPITIATION.

The subject of our Lord's High-priesthood has been exercising many hearts of late. I propose to look at it, as He may enable me, not in the spirit of controversy as I trust, but as seeking the Scriptural solution of certain questions as to it which have been raised.

First, granting, as all must, that it is heavenly in character, where did it begin to be exercised-on earth or in heaven?

Secondly, what is propitiation? is it true priestly work? and when and how has it been effected?

In awakening attention to these subjects, God has surely purposes of blessedness for us-more blessing, perhaps, than we can realize yet at all. Nothing but good can come from the free discussion of them. To shun to follow where He leads would be cowardice or indifference. Satan would turn it indeed to conflict, drive away the timid by the noise of battle, incapacitate others by the heat of it, and divert us from the blessing. But we are not ignorant of his devices; and if by grace we have conquered our own spirits, we need not fear him, nor with Isaac yield our wells of water to the Philistine. Faith may turn even Eseks and Sitnahs to Rehoboth’s; the living water is God's gift to all.

We come then to Scripture to seek its teaching as to priesthood and propitiation. And the first question we have naturally to ask is, what is the idea of priesthood, and what the office of the high-priest, as to this ?

Now the high-priest is, of course, only the priest par excellence; and his office in its essential character is defined for us in the epistle to the Hebrews, where alone indeed the doctrine of our Lord's priesthood is unfolded. "Every high-priest taken from among men," then, we are told, "is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant and them that are out of the way, for that he himself is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so also for himself, to offer for sins." (Chap. 5:1-3.)

Here we have only the Jewish high-priest, " taken from among men," and are warned afterward not to apply to the Lord, the being compassed with infirmity, on account of which he must offer for his own sins as well as others. Our high-priest is one " holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." " The law maketh men high-priests which have infirmity, but the word of the oath maketh the Son." (Chap. 7:26-28.)

With these exceptions, then, manifestly the description applies in the fullest way to the Lord; and we have it so applied in chap. 2:17-18:"Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation"-so rightly the R. V.-"for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted."* *The last sentence has, with some, raised a question of the meaning of the preceding one, and in the English there is perhaps some real difficulty. The succoring those that are tempted is a very different thing from making propitiation for their sins ; and the Lord's sympathy here is not with men as sinners, but with saints in resisting sin. But the difficulty proceeds from want of knowledge of the language, in which the "for" is not an explanation of what precedes, but a further deduction from His being a merciful and faithful High-priest. We might render it more clearly perhaps by "indeed." Examples of this use of "for" (Har) may be found in the following passages, where it is omitted in the A. V. " [for] neither can they die any more" (Luke 20:39); " [for] neither came I of Myself." (Jno. 8:42.) In the following it is translated "indeed:" (1 Thess. 4:10), "And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren;" (Rom. 8:7), "Neither indeed can be." Many similar cases could be given, but these are enough to show the use.*

These two things are ascribed to the Lord in His character as High-priest-the making of propitiation, and succoring the tempted. The first has to do with men as sinners, the second, as saints. For both these things He had to be made like unto His brethren, to be a partaker in flesh and blood. Both these things are the work of the High-priest as such, and the making propitiation, or offering sacrifice for sins, is distinctly marked out as belonging both to the typical and antitypical priest. In particular it is pressed as to the Lord Jesus, that His being a merciful and faithful High-priest was to make propitiation.

It is impossible, therefore, to maintain that propitiation is not a priestly act; that indeed it was the priest who did it, but only because what Christ was in Himself cannot be separated from what He did. On the contrary it is distinctly, positively asserted that Christ was the High-priest to do this; it was part of His strictly official work, if any thing was.

But we must now ask further, what was it to make propitiation ? The expression we have not again in Hebrews; but in 9:5 the mercy-seat is indeed by its equivalent in the Septuagint, and what far better than our English word represents the Hebrew,-" the propitiatory," or place of propitiation. This is found also in Rom. 3:25, where Christ is called " a propitiation through faith, by His blood." So the R. V. better translates it, as it shows what propitiates,-the blood which was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and made it such.

Twice, also, in the epistle of John we have Christ named as "the propitiation for our sins." (i Jno. 2:2 ; 4:10.)

The use of the word for " mercy-seat" extends our view to the Old Testament, in which, by the help of the Septuagint, we find that the word "propitiation " is a regular equivalent for what in our common version is "atonement," and there is no other word to express this. We may thus easily follow out the study of the word with our English Bibles only.

It is to the day of atonement that the epistle to the Hebrews refers all through. It was then that the high-priest entered the holiest with the blood of atonement, and the whole work of the day except only the letting go of the scape-goat, and the burning of the sin-offerings (Lev. 16:26-28), fell upon him. No other could intrude. Even the killing of the victims, which ordinarily was not priestly work, was on this day committed to his hand (10:11-15.) Now, if we follow the ritual of that day as we find it in the 16th of Leviticus, and only substitute "propitiation" for "atonement," as we are entitled to do, we shall realize in what way propitiation was made,-in what way the passage in Heb. 2:is to be interpreted.
First, then, (5:6) " Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and make propitiation for himself and for his house " . . . . (5:10); "but the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to make propitiation with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness."

Then follow the details of the sin-offering work:"And Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin-offering which is for himself, and shall make propitiation for himself and for his house, and shall kill the bullock …. and take of the blood and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward."

So with the goat for Israel,-" he shall sprinkle the blood upon the mercy-seat, and before the mercy-seat, and he shall make propitiation for the holy place, …. and there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation when he goeth in to make propitiation in the holy place, until he come out and have made propitiation for himself and for his household and for all the congregation of Israel."

But this does not end the work:"And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the Lord, and make propitiation for it, and take of the blood of the bullock, and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about."

After the dismissal of the scapegoat further, Aaron "shall wash his flesh with water in the holy place, and put on his garments, and come forth, and offer his burnt offering, and the offering of the people, and make propitiation for himself and for his people."

Thus "propitiation" is made both in the holiest and outside it, by sin-offering, burnt-offering, and even scapegoat. Did we pursue our inquiry further this wide application of the word would be shown continually, but we need not go beyond the day of atonement.

What is "propitiation"?

" Propitiation" is " appeasal," " satisfaction." This is undoubtedly the ordinary force of the Greek word outside of the New Testament. Here, too, the Lord puts in the mouth of the publican in the temple the prayer, " God be propitiated," as it literally is, "unto me a sinner. (Luke 18:13.) In the Old Testament we have similarly the use of the Hebrew word where Jacob says of Esau, " I will appease (or propitiate) him with the present going before (Gen. 32:20). There are no more instances of this use in Scripture, but these suffice to show the analogy of the two words used in the original.

Every sacrifice was a propitiation then, whether or not the blood was brought into the holiest. The blood was given for propitiation, and given upon the altar for propitiation, so it is expressly stated (Lev. 17:11). Yet no altar stood in the holiest. And while the slaying of the victim was not necessarily priestly, and was not propitiation, as it has been strangely taken to be, the offering of the blood was strictly confined to the priest.

Only the blood of the victim burned without the camp could enter the sanctuary. Neither trespass-, peace-, nor burnt-offering could be represented there. Yet the blood of the goat for Israel enters as freely as that, of the bullock for the priestly house (the Church typically). The burning without the camp is the well known figure of wrath and distance from God, which, borne by a substitute, are removed, and the soul brought nigh to God in peace. It is this exhaustion of wrath which allows the blood to enter the sanctuary. So the apostle clearly states, "For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin are burned without the camp; wherefore Jesus, also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate (Heb. 13:11, 12).

Another expression of this solemn reality we find in the darkness which fell in mid-day like a pall over the cross, and out of which the Lord's voice was heard in the question of the 22nd psalm-a
question not unanswered though,-" My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Darkness is the withdrawal of light, and " God is light." Here was indeed the outside place of sorrow, hopeless save to Him who could there illumine it with His moral glory, and glorify God in the depths of unequaled distress. For three hours-from the sixth to the ninth*-He remains under it, passing out from it to die indeed, but with the assurance, " It is finished," and the cry of " Father," once more upon His lips. * Those who can read the spiritual meaning of Scripture numerals will realize it here. Six speaks of evil under the hand of God, limited and restrained; 9 is 3 x 3, the number of divine manifestation intensified by self multiplication. With this the darkness passes, the same number 3 measuring and characterizing its whole duration. (See "The Numerical Structure of Scripture," pp. 33-34.)*

We must learn to distinguish here, if yet we have not, two very distinct parts of the Lord's atoning work. Death and judgment were upon man. He must take them both in order to redeem. But with man, death introduces him to judgment, which is thus final and eternal. The Lord takes them in inverse order, judgment first, which, having fully borne, glorifying God in stooping to the full penalty of sin, He dies-atonement is completed.

Let us remember, then, the wrath is borne, exhausted, before He dies. The blessed Substitute has been presented to God as that, sin laid on Him by Jehovah as such, wrath poured out, an actual dealing of God with His soul in view of sin; and that is ended, the burden in this respect removed; and why removed? there is one answer possible- only one:because the work is accepted; if not, could He who had laid on Him the heavy burden lift it off? Thus He can say, "It is finished"; for though He had to die, death is nothing now. Needed for atonement as the governmental penalty of sin, He can meet it with the weight from off His spirit, for the cup He feared is drained.

And now comes a main point for consideration:Is the acceptance of the atoning work looked at in the type as taking place in the sanctuary ? or does the entrance of the blood there imply that it is already accepted ?

Scripture shows clearly that the latter is the truth. Could the entrance of anything questionable be permitted in the holy place? Assuredly not by God. The blood enters, not under suspicion, but by its own power and value with Him. It enters "to make propitiation for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins ; " but this implies no question of the blood which does this! The dwelling-place of God has been in the midst of a sinful people, spite of all their sins accumulating for a whole year, and the blood comes in its power to vindicate His throne in remaining thus. Notice, that after it has been sprinkled on the mercy-seat, it passes out from thence to the altar, exactly in the same way to be sprinkled upon it, and make propitiation for it, "to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel." Is this, too, for the acceptance of the blood a second time ? and if not, why then the first time?

How is this expressed, in the sprinkling of the mercy-seat, as it is not expressed in the sprinkling of the altar? In both oases it is for propitiation; in both it is cleansing for sin. By the one the throne is established; by the other the altar. How does either raise or show a question as to the blood which does this? The only answer can be, in neither case is there any.

The propitiation in the holy place is only the application to the throne as to the altar, of satisfaction rendered to God, not in the holy place but outside it. Confessedly it is this as to the altar; equally must it be so as to the throne. And with this the interpretation in the New Testament agrees fully. The type is in the epistle to the Hebrews put side by side with its fulfillment. Let us look at it as stated there.

(To be continued.)

CHAP. I. 6-12.

We are now, so to speak, upon a hill-top from whence we view the " city that hath foundations," and the country that is heavenly,- and what a prospect is before us!

Nothing that the eye has seen can be compared to it; for " it is written,' Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.' But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." (i Cor. 2:9.) This being our hope, it is added, in the chapter before us, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice," as in Rom. 5:"we rejoice in hope of the glory of God."

But let us pause here to consider, What is it we are speaking of? A prospect such as no eye has seen, opened out before us, made known to us by the Spirit of God, and wherein we "greatly rejoice."

Mark the words, and their strength,- "greatly rejoice." In what? In that which is always before the eye of faith, and ever the same, in hope of which we are said to greatly rejoice. The occasion of this great joy, then, never changes, only we are constantly getting nearer to its realization.

Now, we live by the food we eat, and spiritually we live by every word of God. But are we living by this word? do we greatly rejoice? If we are rebuked, we are comforted as well; for is it not deep comfort to know that we may constantly rejoice in this certain and blessed hope, since we are called upon to do so? All Christians have inward and deep joy at the unutterably blessed prospect before them; but how fluctuating is that joy in most of us, which ought to be a strong and steady tide bearing us onward in the power of God for worship and for service! Why are dying Christians often specially lifted up, but that the dross has been rapidly purged away by their chastening, the gaze being set upon glory, and the world receding from view? But why should not this be our abiding state?-why should we not abide in Christ, and resist the first allurement to depart from that place of abiding peace, though we have to cut off the right hand or pluck out the right eye? But no policy or philosophy can keep us there,-only the obedience of faith, and holy fear, by His grace.

The Lord Himself,"for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross."

First, the energy of hope, ever nearer its realization-"the day is at hand;" then, readiness to forsake all and follow Him.

But now comes the trial of the faith as gold is tried in a furnace. We have to descend into the valley of experience-of experience of suffering, for there is a needs-be, and there the heart rests. But though we descend into the valley, yet we abide on the hill-top; for the human figure fails, because by the grace of God we are to abide in our hope while we pass on through the trial; and the right word here is not " heaviness," which might imply failure, but "put to grief"-"Though now for a season, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temptations."

"Grief" we cannot avoid; but we need not be cast down, and in this there is great power and comfort from God. If we had been told in the Word that gloom and heaviness were a necessity, it would be hard indeed; and yet, by strange inconsistency, we are ready to impatiently refuse the exhortations that comfort-as if it were a privilege and a right to be at times overcome with sorrow and the trials of the way. Let no one make light of sorrow, in their own case or that of others, or aim or pretend to be easily above it:a superficial and flippant reference to comforting scriptures, or imposing them as a law upon sorrow, is but an insult to sorrow-sacred depths with which a stranger can't intermeddle. Such an effort, however sincere, is not true ministry to sorrow; "Jesus wept" is the divine rebuke to such an error.

But neither extreme justifies the other:sorrow is not to be made light of; nor, on the other hand, are we to view it as if God's hand were not in it, either in sullen or shy seclusion, or in that imperious spirit of grief that would have the world clad in blackness because of our own woe. He would have us rather come forth brighter and stronger to love and serve others by the refining; and when we have learned to say, " Thy will be done," He delights to draw very near, and to minister deep and sweet consolation.

There are two things that men think little of that God highly esteems,-the " meek and quiet spirit" is one, in the sight of God, of great price (chap. 3:4), and " the trial of our faith, which is more precious (R.V.) than of gold which perishes." This precious word in Peter makes plain to us the reason for sore trials that we experience. The faith tested and proved genuine, as was Abraham's is acceptable to God. The pure metal gratifies the refiner,-the pure gold; but gold is perishable after all, but faith has fruit that will endure forever. And He who tests and refines supplies the strength to endure, as at the burning bush; but there must be the testing, and only that which is of God can endure. In Gen. 15:, Abram beheld, when the sun had gone down (significant of the darkness of this world), a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp passing between the pieces of the sacrifice. God was marking out the basis and conditions of a covenant with His people:salvation by the cross-by a sacrifice, the Word as our lamp, and the furnace of trial. But whether it is the burning bush, or the three in Daniel in the burning fiery furnace, or the martyr's faith amid the flames of many fires, that which is of God endures, and it will be to His praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Christ, and to the praise and glory of His people; for "glory, honor, and peace" (Rom. 2:) await any one that worketh good.

The appearing of Jesus Christ is the time when all will be brought to light. Nothing is of real value that will not shine then. That which is of faith_ that which is by the grace of Christ-that which is the denial of ourselves, and submission to God, and love to our brethren, and humbling of ourselves, will be honored and exalted then-before God, the holy angels,-the great examination and exhibition day. Therefore nothing that we do is unimportant. "Every man shall give account of himself to God." This will always encourage to diligence every true heart, like a faithful servant who labors with both -interest and zeal when he knows that his master's eye will survey every part of his work, and that he will bestow approval and reward.

Faithful servants "love His appearing" (2 Tim. 4:8.) for they seek to walk honestly, as in the day, knowing that they are made manifest unto God. They are letting the light of the coming day into the secret corners of their heart already, that the ways and maxims of darkness may not prevail with them. We do not need to wait for that day to know what will please the Lord. He has told us in His Word and according to that Word all will be judged.

May we delight to view all things in our hearts and in our lives in the light of that coming day.

" Whom not having seen ye love, in whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." To these precious words, every truly converted heart responds with deep delight, as the lame man leaped and walked and praised God. We love Him, we
rejoice in Him, with joy deeper than can be told. And then the expression used is too full to be easily otherwise expressed, " full of glory,"-that is, a joy looking on to the glory, as it were already lit up with the light of the coming day, like Stephen's face as the face of an angel. This joy must have filled Paul's heart when he said, " I am ready to be offered." How great the difference between the world and the Christian! Of the one it is said, " They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father;" of the other, that in that same One so hated, he rejoices with joy unspeakable. What a striking suggestion of the new nature in contrast with the old-the carnal mind, which is enmity against God! May the love of Christ possess our hearts, and draw them out every hour.

And now the soul's salvation is spoken of as received by the believer, and this is the salvation spoken of by the prophets, who were themselves interested to inquire into the scope of their own prophecies. What they declared was revealed to them from on high-from God. With reverent minds, they inquired, and searched diligently, about the sufferings of Christ, and the glories to follow. It was the Spirit of Christ in them that testified of those things. These statements are of deep interest, telling us of the power by which the prophets spoke, and of their own exercises of heart about the things foretold. God used them as instruments, by a power beyond themselves, but their souls were in communion with God; and thus, devoutly waiting upon God, God revealed to them that they were ministering things for those who were to come after. " Not unto themselves, but. unto you did they minister those things." The words "unto you" are frequent and emphatic in this chapter, to remind this feeble remnant of faithful ones that though despised and feeble, yet rich and precious things were now in Christianity being ministered unto them by the gospel. The prophets looked eagerly forward to these things. John the Baptist said, " This my joy, therefore, is fulfilled." Simeon said, " Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace; . . . for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." And the Lord Himself said (Matt. 13:) to His own, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and you ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them (did not see them); and to hear those things which ye hear, and did not hear them." And in this verse before us, we are told the angels desire to look into these things. Thus are we graciously encouraged to value what has been brought to us by the gospel. Naturally, these Jews, dispersed in foreign lands, and in humiliation, would look back to the times of the prophets, and to the times of David and of Solomon-glory, as times of greater blessing and power. And such is our own tendency; but in reality, those of Old-Testament times looked forward with deep longing and wonder to what we now enjoy. Do we consider this? The consideration of it is thus pressed upon us by this holy Scripture; and as we think of it, the soul is filled with holy awe and deep joy, and the present is filled up for us with the presence of God. " Old things are passed away:behold, all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." And this glad tidings is preached to us with or in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

The power that brought us from death to life, even that power that brought Christ from the dead (Rom. 8:11), is the power by which we receive the gospel. And that works in us to enjoy the things freely given to us of God.
If we are seated at the gospel-feast-the royal banquet, the fallings killed, and clad in the best robe, with sounds of heaven's joy about us, may our hearts be filled with the joy of heaven, and with abhorrence of sin, and with the calm but deep persuasion that the power of God is with us, to give entire victory over all that we have to meet. E. S. L.

When first I heard of Jesus,
It seemed some mystic tale,
A root of barren dryness,
No fragrance could exhale ;
But as I came to know Him,
His precious name grew sweet,
And, like a perfumed rainbow,
Love arched the mercy-seat.

At first, I saw no beauty,-
No captivating spell;
Felt no divine emotion
In my cold bosom swell:
But when, through beams of glory,
God shone in Jesus' face,
All other objects tarnished
Before His matchless grace.

I read that He was wounded,
And bruised upon the tree,
Yet felt no thrilling wonder,
As though He died for me ;
But since, oh, since I know it,
And saw Him bear my load,
I cannot cease from praising
My great redeeming God.

O Rose of rarest odor !
O Lily white and pure !
O chiefest of ten thousand,
Whose glory must endure !
The more I see Thy beauty,
The more I know Thy grace,
The more I long unhindered
To gaze upon Thy face.

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII

PART I.-(Continued.)

The Throne in Heaven. (Chap. 4:1-3.)

We come, then, to our theme, the book of Revelation. Our glance at prophecy has been for the purpose of putting this last and fullest of all in connection with the earlier ones, that we might not make it of "private interpretation." And when we come so to connect it, we find unmistakable evidence that a large part of the book is occupied with that predicted last week of Daniel, the events of which we have been considering. That the last "beast" of Daniel appears again in Rev. 13:and 17:is acknowledged, and must be, by all. -But there is noticed as to it here, what history has made plain to us, that it was not to continue without interruption from its first commencement to its overthrow. It was to have its period of non-existence, and then come up again in greatly altered character as "from the bottomless pit." This is the blasphemous form in which we have seen it to end at the coming of the Lord ; and the exact time of its prevalence in this way is given us as in Daniel-"forty' and two months," or three years and a half (chap. 13:5). And again and again this period confronts us. In the eleventh chapter, we find it as the time of sackcloth testimony of the two witnesses; in the twelfth chapter, stated as in Daniel, as "time, times, and a half," and again as "a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days," as that of the woman's nourishment in the wilderness from the face of the serpent. Much before this also we hear of an immense company of Gentiles as " come out of the great tribulation" (chap. 7:14, R.V.-quite evidently that spoken of in Daniel and in Matthew, the only one that could be, in view of what is said there, announced as "the great" one. Thus from the seventh to the seventeenth chapters the last of the seventy weeks is clearly before us. But this implies, as we have seen, much. It shows that when this large portion of Revelation shall be fulfilled, the Christian dispensation will have passed away, Christians will be forever with the Lord, and the earthly people will be again those owned of Him, whatever the sorrows they may have yet to pass through, before their full blessing comes.

The appearing of the Lord in the clouds of heaven we find only in the nineteenth chapter, but then (as the apostle says,) "we shall appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3:4). Our removal from the earth will therefore necessarily have taken place before :and thus he writes to the Thessalonians, that "the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God :and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord " (i Thess. 4:16,17).

Here it is plain how "those that sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him." There is no promiscuous resurrection of the dead; there is no picking out by judgment of sheep from goats, such as the twenty-fifth of Matthew very plainly teaches will take place when the Son of Man comes in His glory and be sitting on the throne of His glory. Here, on the contrary, we find but one company of raised and glorified saints caught up to meet and be with Him. Scripture is clear as to this blessed fact, which in itself affirms and emphasizes the gospel assurance that those who have Christ's word, and believe on Him who sent Him, shall not come into judgment. (Jno. 5:24, R. F.) This is, by such a text, made clear and certain enough.

But from this no one would understand that between this gathering up of the saints to meet the Lord and His appearing in glory with them there should be an interval of months and years of earthly history. Nor can one be blamed, therefore, for being slow to assent to such a statement as this. Yet it is the truth ; and one which can be perfectly well established from Scripture, although there is no single text which states it. And here is the place to give this some final consideration.

We have seen elsewhere that as the Old Testament ends with the promise of the " Sun of Righteousness," so the New Testament ends with that of the "Morning Star." Christ Himself is both, and in both His coming is intimated, but, as is plain, in very different connections. The sun brings the day, flooding the earth with light, and this is in suited connection with the blessing of an earthly people, whose the Old-Testament promises are (Rom. ix-.4). The morning-star heralds the day, but does not bring it:it rises when the earth is still dark, shining as it were for heaven alone. And this to us speaks of our being with Christ before the blessing for the earth comes.

In the promise to Philadelphia also we find the assurance, "Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I will also keep thee out of the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." Here, out of a universal hour of trial some saints at least are to be kept. How simply explicable this in their being taken out of the world to be with their Lord before the hour commences ! how difficult to understand in any other way !

Accordingly, in those pictures of the world's trial which we have had before us, we have had no trace of the presence of Christians. All, as we have seen, speaks of Jews and Judaism as once more recognized,-a thing inconsistent with the existence of Christians and Christianity at the same time. As long as the present gospel goes out, "they are enemies for your sakes." (Rom. 11:28.)

So also the antichristian snare, in the form it assumes, shows the same thing. Christ is looked for in the desert, or in the secret chambers, as appearing not from heaven, in the midst of the people; and the false Christ, when he comes, sits with divine honors in the temple of God.

Explicitly is it stated also in Isa. 60:, that when the Lord arises upon Israel, and His glory is seen upon them, "darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples," a thing impossible if Christianity existed at the same time, yet perfectly plain in what we have been looking at. Indeed, the difficulty with these passages has been to realize the fact of such darkness as succeeding the present day of gospel light.

Again, the important scene in Matt, 25:, so misconceived by most interpreters even now, and for centuries taken as a picture of the general judgment, becomes thus perfectly intelligible, as it is only consistent with this view. It is the judgment of the living upon earth, after the Lord has come and set up His throne here; and the passage in Thessalonians, cited but a while ago, makes it absolutely certain that Christians will not be among the nations upon earth then. The dead are not in question either. There is no hint of resurrection, and they have their separate judgment, at the end of the thousand years of blessing, when the earth and the heavens flee away from before the face of Him that sits upon the throne (Rev. 20:12).

But if the Lord called up the saints to meet Him in the air, and then immediately came on to the judgment of the earth, there could be no "sheep" to put upon His right hand. Universal judgment alone could follow. The fact of an interval between these two, such as we have been considering, at once clears the whole difficulty.

But the most convincing proofs of such an interval we find in the chapters that are now to engage our attention. Coming as they do between the history of the dispensation with which the addresses to the churches have already made us familiar, and the prophecies of the last week of Daniel, which follow so promptly and occupy so much space in the latter portion of the book. All through the later addresses the announcement of the Lord's coming sounds with more and more urgency. In Thyatira, for the first time, they are exhorted, " Hold fast till I come." In Sardis, He is coming upon them as a thief, and they shall not know what hour He comes upon them. In Philadelphia, it is now, "I come quickly." And finally, Laodicea is ready to be spued out of His mouth, the last individual appeal being given, when the church as a whole has now rejected Him. In the fourth chapter, the "things that shall be after these" begin, and the apostle is at once caught up to heaven.

But we are now to proceed more leisurely. In so precious and wonderful a communication of divine grace we would gladly ponder every word, and allow nothing to escape us. But we are absolutely dependent upon the Spirit of Clod for aid, lest, after all, the very essence of them be lost. The various and contradictory interpretations that they have received may well teach us self-distrust, but not shake our confidence, that in proportion to our real simplicity and real desire to be taught of God, His truth will be discovered to us. He that seeks shall find. He will not for bread give us a stone, nor for a fish a serpent.

The "things that are" have come to an end. The voice that spake on earth' is silent, but presently resumes from heaven. "After these things, I saw, and, behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, as of a trumpet speaking with me, saying, ' Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must come to pass after these.' "

Both the Common and the Revised Version have " hereafter." But this is vague. It would allow the prophecy that follows to be, after all, contemporaneous in its fulfillment with that of the addresses just completed. But the words are definite, and allow of no such idea. In the first chapter, the apostle had been bidden to " write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which shall be after these;" and now he is reminded that he is come to this distinct division of his prophecy-"the things which must come to pass after these." The prophecy is orderly and successive, at least thus far.

Looking at the addresses to the churches, therefore, as depicting the phases of the professing church during the present dispensation, the meaning of the words would be, " The things which must come to pass after the history of the Church is ended." If, then, such an interpretation of the two previous chapters is correct, the time we have reached is clearly enough defined. And how significant, at this point, the translation of the seer from earth to heaven ! The voice with its trumpet-call is the first voice which he had heard-the voice of Jesus. No longer occupied with His lamps of testimony upon earth, He calls His servant up to Himself above.

And "immediately," he says, "I became in the Spirit." The distinctness of the new beginning is evident. Just so had he been, rapt in this ecstatic state, when he had had the former vision. It had not continued throughout, but now began afresh, his whole being absorbed in that which the Spirit of God communicated. He is, as it were, not in the body, as another apostle says of visions that he had received, that whether he was in the body or out of the body, he could not tell. (2 Cor. 12:2):the Spirit of God was, so to speak, eyes and ears and all else to him.

And now by the Spirit he is rapt into heaven,-a new thing for a prophet, and as such, exceptional to John alone. Doubtless the heavens had opened before, even in Old-Testament times, though with reserve, and never to invite an entrance. Enoch, and afterward Elijah, had been taken there indeed, and comfort and blessing it was to know this. Still this was not an opening of it to men on earth. Heavenly visitants had appeared too among men, but they had no disclosures to make of the unseen sanctuary from which they came. Even in Job one might read also how the "sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them." And Micaiah at a much later day could say, "I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him, on His right hand and on His left." Ezekiel, moreover, after this, that " the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God." All this betokened, indeed, heaven's interest in earth, but it only serves to make evident the contrast with what we find here-a witness taken into heaven to bear testimony of what he found there.

The opening of the heavens is characteristic of New-Testament times. At the outset, the heavens are indeed, in the truest sense, opened when the Son of God lies in the manger of Bethlehem. And as He who reveals the Father is revealed, we are brought into communion with what spiritually constitutes heaven-with the Father and the Son. At the Lord's death, the vail of the sanctuary is rent asunder for us, and when He has ascended up, our Representative and Forerunner, the Holy Ghost sent down becomes in us the witness and earnest of heavenly things.

But the earnest shows that we have not yet possession, which John anticipatively brings us into. Paul also had been caught up into the third heaven-into paradise-and heard unspeakable things, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. (2 Cor. 12:4.) But John finds utterance:he carries his writer's inkhorn into heaven, and reports what it was he saw there. He is bidden "Write," lest in his entrancement he should forget it. And how has the power of these communications been felt by those who have become heirs since to what has been thus written! Even those that have known least, have they not felt much ? And how much more, then, should flow from deeper knowledge !

But then the character of this prophecy before us, in the very charm 'of its face-to-face vision, may assure us of what it speaks of and anticipates. It is our own call home this call of the prophet up to heaven, and how well it may thrill our hearts and gladden them as we listen to it!

Enter, then! Heaven is before us. Enter ! It is the sanctuary. Not speculation do we seek, but enjoyment- holy and hallowing enjoyment. Not a thing here forbidden to us, and not a thing upon which the lusts of the flesh can fasten ! To breathe this pure air, is to live indeed. To abide here is to make all the world can proffer an unmeaning emptiness, to brighten the dullest heart into glory, and make the tongue of the dumb to sing for joy.

Heaven! And the first thing the apostle sees is "a throne," and "One sitting on the throne."

It is the first necessity for all blessing, for, all stability, for all rest of heart. It is the assurance of order, of peace, of concord, of congruity :over all, a real, personal, living, and sovereign God. Not a democracy, but an absolutism; not laws which execute themselves, but the will of the All-wise, All-holy :fixed rule in free hands. It is this that sin would have overturned, and which has proved itself impossible to be overturned; whose eternity alone insures the absolute security of all else. Well may all crowns be cast before this throne, by which all are sustained and served. The sovereignty of God is surely the joy and triumph of every redeemed soul.

He who sits upon the throne is not and cannot be pictured, and the jasper and sardine stone to which He is compared have as yet yielded but little to the interpreter. As jewels, like those of the high-priest's breastplate, they represent, no doubt, the "Lights and Perfections" (Urim and Thummim) of God, unchanging, but seen, not in the inapproachable light itself, but in manifestations such as can, be given to His creatures, and which display to them a various beauty they could not otherwise enjoy. " God is light," and the "Father of lights." The one colorless beam, broken up into the various colored prismatic rays, clothes the whole earth with its beauty. And the precious stones enshrine and crystallize these various rays.

If the "jasper" here be rather the diamond, as many believe, then there does seem to be in it a most appropriate thought, and one it is hard to give up after having received it. The diamond is the brightest of gems, the nearest to the pure ray of light in its luster, the most indestructible in character,-eminently fitted (as one might think) to be a symbol of the glory of Deity. But these are not its chief points of significance after all. The diamond is, as every one knows, but crystallized carbon, which we find in a pure form as graphite, the black-lead of our pencils. Carbon exists in these so opposite conditions, the symbol of divine glory (as it might be) on the one hand might on the other be that of evil and ruin and sin. And has not divine grace wrought in the transformation of our ruined humanity into the brightest display of divine glory ? And could there be any thing of which we could be more fitly reminded here?* *Carbon is also the clement characteristic of all organic products; so that organic chemistry has been called " the chemistry of the carbon compounds." It is thus connected with living forms, whether vegetable or animal. And I add, though this be a distinct thought, that crystallization is, as it were, the organization of the mineral.*

God has forever displayed Himself in Christ, His perfect and glorious manifestation. He is " the effulgence of His glory, the express image of His substance." (Heb. 1:3.) It is not meant by that, what some have argued from it, that we shall see the Father only in Him. Scripture speaks of those who " in heaven always behold the face of the Father who is in heaven." (Matt, 18:10.) But the cross will not on that account lose its significance, nor the glory of the incarnate Son be the less needful for us.

And when we look on to the end of the book, and see the "city which hath foundations" in her eternal beauty, not only do we find the jasper as the first of these foundations, but the light-the luster-of the city also is "like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal." (21:2:)

This is at least all perfectly consistent. Its consistency and beauty may well plead for its acceptance by us, until, at least, something that more commends itself can be produced.

The "sardine stone," or rather "sardius," is our carnelian, a stone much prized by the lapidary, and especially in the east, its most valued form being an unmixed bright red. The association with the jasper or diamond would suggest an association of thought; the diamond flashing with the red hues of the carnelian would necessitate almost the idea of the cross. Incarnation and redemption unite to make known the sovereign God.

It is not an objection, I believe, that in the next chapter we find explicitly the Lamb slain. The connection there is different, and God is never weary of Christ. Here it is the One upon the throne who is declared; and apart from Christ He could not be declared to us. The full radiance of divine glory are thus in the jasper and the sardine stone, or, as we have taken them to be, the diamond and the carnelian. The connection of the two throws light upon each, and the truth of its interpretation must rest on its verisimilitude.

Thus the One who sits upon the throne is declared to us. It is the " God of our Lord Jesus Christ," perfectly known and alone revealed in Him. The throne is His throne; the supreme will and power are His :and this is what makes us delight in that supremacy. Absolute in power and control, there is no mere arbitrary will in Him. Omnipotence never acts but with omniscient wisdom, perfect righteousness, holiness, and love. His pleasure is good pleasure :" Worthy art Thou, O Lord," is the adoring cry of the hosts of heaven.

The One who sits upon the throne is disclosed and-characterized for our hearts before the throne is. And when we come now to the throne itself, we find as the first thing, what is addressed to our hearts no less, "a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald." The natural and historical associations here are full of precious suggestions.,. The bow we all know as the token of God's covenant with the earth, and with every creature in it. The flood had just passed over the earth and desolated it, and now the sun was shining out in the retreating storm of judgment. God declares He will no more destroy, as He had destroyed. If He bring a cloud, it shall be for purification and blessing, not any more "a flood to destroy all flesh."

Where we see it now, the bow is used symbolically, of course, and therefore with a wider, deeper meaning. It is still of the earth it speaks, where alone storms are purificatory and for blessing; but these are no longer merely natural. It is not limited to this or that divine act, but characterizes the throne in its general action. Blessing for men, and rest of which the emerald speaks, with the suggestion of the springing grass after the rain, are to be accomplished; even the judgment maybe the necessary means of their accomplishment. And in this, too, God will manifest Himself in the glory of the light which He is, as the prismatic colors of the bow symbolically display it.

To those who realize the character of the period which follows the present one, nothing could be plainer than the language of this bow-encircled throne. God is now calling out for heaven the objects of His grace. And while He is doing this, the fulfillment of His promises as to the earth is suspended; the earthly people are set aside:it might seem as if He had forgotten that which fills the pages of the Old-Testament prophets. So much so, that as if in despair of their accomplishment, men would turn them all into figures of other things. The knowledge of dispensational truth, so little regarded even yet by most Christians, relieves the whole difficulty, and puts every thing into its own place. Ours is a heavenly calling; ours are "all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 1:3.) When we are, according to His promise, gathered up to Him, then the Old-Testament promises will be fulfilled to Israel, to whom they belong (Rom. 9:4). and the predicted time will come when the "earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Heb. 2:14.)

For this the "sons of God," now in suffering and sorrow, must be revealed in glory when Christ our life shall appear, and we shall appear with Him in glory. " The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation should itself also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." (Rom. 8:19-21, R. V.)

The bow of promise for creation, girdling the throne of God in heaven, speaks, then, of God's covenant with the earth remembered in a way which goes far beyond the letter of it. He is going now to bring it into perpetuity of blessing through another judgment, in which His glory will be displayed in a peculiar way. It will soon be said among the nations that the Lord reigneth, and the world be established that it cannot be moved. " Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field exult, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy' before the Lord:for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth; He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth." (Ps. 96:10-13.)

( To be continued.)

3. THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM.

The mere expression, "keys of the kingdom," I shows clearly that there is a definite mode of entrance, and that the kingdom is not in its present form territorial, as the kingdoms of this world are. A Christianized country, for instance, is not by this, or any the more for it, a part of the kingdom of heaven. Men do not come into it by natural birth, as they do into these. There is a mode of entrance, a method of discipling, not in the hands of the men of this world, but in the hands of disciples only. There is a door by which to enter, and which is in their keeping.

Moreover it is a double door. There is not merely a key, but there are keys to it. We need not be afraid to insist upon the Lord's words in their full meaning; nay, we are bound to insist upon this. His words are precise, and require loyal acceptance; we must neither add to nor yet take from them.

This sets aside (as any sufficient application) what is often taken as explaining this commission to
Peter that he was the first to preach the gospel to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, and to the Gentiles in the person of Cornelius afterward. It does not take two keys to open the same door twice, that is plain. And the proclamation of the gospel to men outside is by itself no real admission of any. It is the offer of its blessedness, but men must be received in individually, and for this a distinct form of admission is prescribed.

We have seen that the Lord speaks of the key of knowledge, that the kingdom is a kingdom of the truth, its sphere that of profession, of discipleship; that people are discipled into it. But the key of knowledge is plainly only one key, and we need yet another before the door will open. The other we find in the commission given by the risen Lord to the eleven after His resurrection, in which He is about to ascend to the throne of the kingdom,- all authority given to Him in heaven and in earth; He instructs them as to discipling the nations:for so it really reads, " Go and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:19, 20).

Here there are two keys:"baptizing" and "teaching" are the joint methods of discipling. In the one we have the key of knowledge; in the other that which as the outward part authoritatively admits into the body of disciples upon earth. Without this latter there would be no proper recognition of the body as such, nor of individual relationship to it, nor representation of the King's authority on earth.

Baptism is "unto Christ" (Rom. 6:3), "unto the name of the Lord Jesus " (Acts 8:16), a putting on of Christ. (Gal. 3:27.) It is a separation to Him as Master and Lord, as by the cloud and the sea the Israelites were marked off as followers of their divinely-appointed guide,-"baptized unto Moses." (i Cor. 10:16.) " Unto the name of the Lord Jesus"-not "in"-defines it as the recognition of His Lordship-of the throne as His. Thus Paul also is exhorted by Ananias, " Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. (Acts 22:16.) Thus also in Eph. 4:5, " one Lord, one faith, one baptism," are joined together.

And thus as a" baptism unto death," Christ having died for us, it is a "being buried with Him by baptism unto death, …. that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead …. so also we should walk in newness of life." It is thus for us the passing out of the old into a new condition; a change in which our sins are washed away ; as the apostle, " Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins;" and as Ananias, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins."

" Whose sins you remit they are remitted to them," the Lord had said before this ; words which cannot be applied, as some would apply them, to the preaching of the gospel. We do not, in the gospel, remit any one's sins. We do what is more blessed:we declare on God's part the terms upon which He remits. " Through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things." (Acts 13:38, 39.) It is the declaration of the forgiveness of a certain class, but it does not declare any one to be of that class, or to have received the forgiveness. And when a soul through grace believes the gospel, and receives forgiveness,-though it were I that preached it, it is still not from me that he receives it in any wise,-it is not I that remit. Here is a thing in which God and the soul meet personally, and not by representatives. And it is of the greatest possible moment to maintain this. It is just here that popery brings in her falsehoods, and builds the Church up into a barrier wall to shut God out into the old darkness.

Disciples have no place in the administration of such forgiveness. They are no more the channel than the source of it. God has not given this glory of His to another; and after this manner none can forgive sins but God alone. Let us only keep clear the distinction between heaven and the kingdom of heaven, and it will be impossible to make such mistakes as these. The kingdom of heaven is but the shadow of heaven upon earth. It witnesses to what is heavenly, finds its authority and sanction there, but remains still only the shadow. Useful and important in its place, it becomes only so much the more important that it retains that place. To confound the shadow with the substance is to degrade and displace both.

" I baptize with water," was John's answer to those who would have implied that, not being the Christ, to baptize was to invade His office. No use of water could possibly do that; and with water " Jesus Himself baptized not." No water can wash the soul; no spiritual transformation could be wrought by it. Divine power never works such marvels. The Creator uses His creation according to the sphere to which it belongs; for which He made it; and Creator and Redeemer are but one blessed God. The mysteries of Babylon the great are no Christian mysteries, but magic. The perversion of truth manifests them as not from above but from beneath.

When, therefore, baptism is spoken of as for the remission of sins, and when the Lord says," whose-soever sins you remit they are remitted unto them," it is certain that He does not mean that the water of baptism has power to wash the soul. What then is this remission? To understand this we must recognize it as the entrance into the kingdom, that in which one is received out of the outside world into the ranks of Christ's followers and subjects. It is plain that ideally the crossing of the line here is salvation-" the like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us." (i Pet. 3:21.) To cross the line in spirit is true salvation, and to this grand truth the whole figure witnesses. The controversy with the world is for the rejection of Christ; submission to Him means the controversy over, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Acts 2:21.) Yet the activity in salvation is all on His side; men baptize not themselves, but are baptized. And this is the confession of guilt, of being under death; it is burial, yet to Christ, to His death :there is the power of life, not in baptism, but in Him to whom we are baptized :" Buried with Him by baptism unto death, that, as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life." (Rom. 6:4.)

There is thus really a witness to the gospel in baptism which is beautiful in its simplicity. No subtlety of understanding is needed for entering into it. No complexity of thought is here. Man's guilt and helplessness, and need of the work of Christ are vividly portrayed and powerfully enforced in it; while also the freeness and certainty of salvation are fully declared, and the blessing appropriated on God's part to the one received. Wilt thou have Christ for thy Lord? wilt thou indeed take thy place as His subject and disciple? Then here is remission of sins, here is salvation for thee, through the work of Christ which He accomplished for thee ; take thy place among His disciples a saved man!

It is to be no doubt if He receives thee. He casteth out none. As surely as thou comest thou art received. " Repent and be baptized every one of you unto the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." (Acts. 2:38.)

Thus the preaching of baptism is a clear, simple, straightforward gospel, with good holdfast for the fingers of drowning men. There are no refinements, and there is no doubt. So only could it represent the salvation of Christ, which is yea only, and not yea and nay,-rest, and self-torture.

But then it is evident also that this is but the shadow, the witness of salvation, not the salvation itself. Not all that are baptized are saved, alas! and this from no uncertainty in the gospel terms, but from uncertainty only as to the reality in the soul of the disciple. And in regard to many, how much uncertainty must there be. And this is expressly contemplated in those parables of the kingdom, in which the mysteries of it are shown forth. Ten virgins go forth alike to meet the Bridegroom; but five of them are wise, and five are foolish. The wedding is furnished with guests, but among them comes the one who has not on a marriage-garment. And in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, at the close, this very matter of forgiveness is taken up, and we are taught in the person of the pitiless servant that forgiveness in the kingdom is not the full and absolute forgiveness which the gospel preaches, but conditional upon character. If the professed disciple turn out to be not one in heart, then the remission grounded on the supposition becomes finally no true remission. The blessings of the kingdom are all conditional and reversible.

Baptism, then, is admission into the kingdom of Christ, out of a world of sin, lying in the condemnation of it. It is reception among those to whom as His own remission belongs. But, as administered by man, the blessings and privileges of it must be received by faith or not received. And this reconciles the fact of baptism as admission into it with what the Lord says as to the necessity of conversion:"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18:3.) This is indeed the necessity for the class to whom the Lord addresses Himself. Discipleship means no less than this, if it be real. To enter into the kingdom is not merely to come into it in an outward way, but to come into it in spirit also, to be really subjects and followers of the Lord of the kingdom.

But this does not at all imply that people cannot be in it except as converted. The parables that the Lord uttered as to it show the reverse of this. Tares are in it as well as wheat; foolish virgins, as well as wise; in the end of the age, the Son of Man will send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all that offend, and them which do iniquity. Thus the kingdom will be freed:but they must be in it to be gathered out.* *Our Lord's words to Nicodemus on the other hand are really different; and I do not ground this upon its being the " kingdom of God," of which He there speaks. While the kingdom of God gives a somewhat different aspect, it is true, it is nevertheless not a different thing. Parables of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew's gospel are in the other gospels parables of the kingdom of God, and among these are those of the leaven and the mustard-seed. But what makes the words of John's gospel different is that the Lord is speaking in them to a Jewish teacher with direct reference to Ezekiel's prophecy of Israel's conversion in the latter day. (Ezek. 36:24-26.) And this is how in fact they will be brought in, the sinners still remaining such being consumed out of their midst by judgment. Thus Isaiah speaks also of the time (chap. 4:3, 4,)-" And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem ; when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion. and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning."

That the Lord's words had a wider application than to Israel I do not for a moment question, but it is of the kingdom in its future state He speaks, when that which offends, and those who do iniquity, are removed from it. A teacher in Israel should have known the absolute necessity of such a change as new birth for the enjoyment of the blessings the prophets had declared.*

But the breadth of the kingdom we must look at more fully now, and together with this the relation to what by many is strangely confounded with it, -the Church, of which the Lord speaks to the apostle in the words preceding those we have been seeking to explain.

(To be continued.)

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

The next verse seems somewhat strangely to connect Philadelphia with Smyrna:" Behold, 1 will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee." Here again comes before us that class through which Satan had wrought the downfall of the already declining Church. Judaism, set aside by God, is now one of Satan's best weapons and most subtle snares. Great Babylon has built her superstructure upon this foundation, and displaced with the ritualism, the sacerdotalism, and the legal-ism of an earlier time, the simplicity and open speech, the equal priesthood and completed sacrifice, the free grace and full salvation, of Christianity. It is not after all so strange, therefore, that if in Philadelphia we find the heart fresh awakened after Christ, His Word preached with fresh energy and held with more appreciation, on the other hand Satan's old attempt should be renewed. And this the words here seem to indicate. They assure us also, no doubt, that for the true Philadelphian it will end only in defeat, and the acknowledgment of their enemies that they are objects of Christ's special love, yet this does not assume that the onset will have no success. God permits these things for the trial of His own, and there was only One who could say, " The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me."

In fact, if we look at the history of the movement which has been for years going on, we shall find that along with revived study of the Word, and energetic evangelizing, and the drawing of Christians to one another, there has been an undoubted revival of ritualism also, and that not in Rome where it never had slept, but in Protestantism. The Puseyite or Tractarian movement, as it used to be called, had all the freshness and energy of a revival, and its success was marked. At the present time, it is less noted only because its influence is become a thing of course; and Protestant Episcopalianism is largely leavened with it.

This may be thought outside Philadelphia, according to our definition of it, but it is one of the things it is called to meet. Nearer home, however, in less developed forms, the same spirit is manifesting itself. The fruits of many a revival and separation from the church-establishments of Protestantism have been blighted by a spirit of conformity to that which had been left. The chapels have become churches, the ministry a priesthood, the congregations multitudinous and indiscriminate under this influence; and the desire for Christian union has been perverted into a desire for denominational union, a more or less ignoring of differences which were once matters of conscience for the soul, but have become rather matters of dispute left to the champions of conflicting creeds.

Even for those most widely removed (as it might seem) from all this, the same influences are at work, and should be no less dreaded. Ecclesiasticism, clerisy, the substitution of corporate for individual conscience,-these are all elements of a return-movement, the ebb of the tide which once seemed as if it could not so soon fail. But they are elements also of that Judaism with which man's mind, if it slip away from God, so readily assimilates. In fact it is all that is natural to man, and of himself he never gets beyond it.
Let us take heed, then, that we be true Philadelphians. Tested we shall be assuredly all round, and in different forms if the spirit be not different. The Word here is the assurance, is it not? for the faith that might quail and question as the results of the trial become apparent. Not now, but by and by, things shall be manifested, and where Christ's heart is shall come out openly.

Meanwhile there is another promise:"Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."

Here is still the keeping of Christ's word:all blessing lies in the track of obedience; but it is now a peculiar character of that Word, and as manifesting a character of Christ Himself,-His patience, or endurance. It was of course a character of His on earth; it is also a character that He is manifesting where He sits now, upon the throne of heaven. He has but to ask, and the rod of iron shall be His to dash to pieces all opposition, like a potter's vessel. Yet He waits; not unobservant of the trials of His saints, not surely as unsympathetic with them. But He waits, that God's purpose may be fully wrought and the discipline of His people fully accomplished. It seems to me another mark of Philadelphia herself being tested by that of which the previous verse has spoken. They have needed patience:they have learnt it in the apprehension of that patience of His who Himself exercises it, with power in His hands which could change the face of things as in a moment. They have kept that word of His patience,-feeling the trial, but learning the consolation. Then, when the hour of trial
for the dwellers upon earth shall come, they shall be out of it! Suited all this is, surely. And that word even, " dwellers upon earth," suits exactly the Judaized synagogue of Satan of which the Lord has spoken. For the expression has a moral force, like that where Pergamos is described as "dwelling where Satan's throne is." The hour is the hour of terrible tribulation, which, involving Israel first (Matt. 24:21), will extend also to the Gentiles (Rev. 7:14, R. V.), and reap with its scythe of destruction the tarefield of Christendom; God's wheat having been removed from it.

Into this time of judgment no saint, indeed, of the present time can come. And this has been with some an objection to such an interpretation of the words before us. But it would be only be that, if they were to be confined to Philadelphia, which is not the case. The promise to Smyrna is equally such to every child of God that ever was. Will any of these be hurt of the second death? Assuredly no; and yet not the less suited to the sufferers in Smyrna was that word of comfort. So here:doubtless God's people have all been in various ways made to apprehend the word of Christ's patience, and will be kept out of the hour of trial for apostate Christendom.

But the word is suited especially here, because that which separates the saints from it, and from the possibility of sharing its judgments, is at hand. More decisively now He announces, " I come quickly." The day of grace is running out with the day of patience. Soon it shall be Christ's presence and glory. The centuries of delay have come to years, the years are soon to be months, the months days, the days moments. "I come quickly:" this is to be shown in its power for the soul by its keeping the exhortation, "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown."

But all shows it to be a time of drift,-a time of declensions as well as revivals:overcomer is he only who holds fast. The Spirit of God moving, the Word manifesting its power, conscience responding; yet every where the ebb after the flow, the trial which sifts, separates, individualizes. By and by comes the terrible back-flow of Laodicea. Think not Philadelphia is a haven of refuge where we may lie at anchor and never feel it. Not so,- oh, not so:this is the fatal delusion of Laodicea itself:"Hold that fast which thou hast!" The tug, if it has not come, is coming:hold thou fast!

But to what?-hold what fast? The word, and the name, and the patience of Christ. Not the word of even the leaders of God's raising up. The truth must ever commend the man, never the man the truth. One great danger is, lest, having begun with the former principle, we slip into the latter. Even the truth they teach is not truth received till it has been gotten at the Master's feet and in communion with Himself,-till you can hold it, not with the eyes shut, but with eyes open,-till you can maintain it for truth against the very instrument used of God to give it you, if need be. " If WE, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." Then, HOLD fast! When it is no longer a question if it be the truth, but only of its consequences. Hold fast:though those who have held it with you, or before you, give it up; though it separate you from all else whomsoever; though it be worse dishonored by the evil of those who profess it; though it seem utterly useless to hope of any good from it:in the face of the world, in the face of the devil, in the face of the saints,-"hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown!"

For many a crown has been lost, and many a crown will be lost, if the Lord should tarry. Yet he who will hold fast shall find Christ's arms underneath him, Christ's hands upon his hands. He shall not only keep, he shall be kept; in the might. of Christ's victory he shall stand, and the crown given he shall cast before the Giver of it as a trophy of His own conquest, and the fruit of His grace.

" Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God; and he shall go no more out. And I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God, and I will write upon him My new name." A fixed eternal place in the sanctuary of God; identification with the display of God as revealed in Christ forever; identification with the abiding-place of His affections, in which heaven and earth shall meet at last in an eternal embrace of love; identification with the manifestation of Christ, in His new eternal relationship to this whole scene:- this is what seems to be expressed in the promise here. But who shall give it proper utterance? What an end for the weak one who under trial still holds fast to Christ and His word! How blessed the stability of this scene by which He would establish our hearts amid the perpetual flux by which we are surrounded. How sweet the identification with Himself of the feeble one who has but owned on earth the authority of Him whom heaven and earth will own in joy in but a moment! It is a text to be expounded by the Holy Ghost to the heart of the overcomer, rather than to be spread out upon the page here. It is a sanctuary word, and the ear receives but a little thereof.

(To be continued.)

(Eph. 4:3.-Continued.)

The unity of the Spirit is to be kept, then, only by an earnest, active linking ourselves with what is of God among His people, with a steady refusal of all that is not of Him, however inseparably connected with it may seem. With a whole heart for the people of God, just on that very account an intense opposition to all that hinders the full subjection to Christ's claim upon them -to holiness as measured by the Word, and therefore to fellowship in divine things among them. In maintaining this, what need of "all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love"! We are not permitted simply to withdraw ourselves, and escape from a conflict in which the strife is for men against themselves. Love, while it abides, whether Godward or man-ward, will not suffer us to with draw ourselves. " The whole Church of God for God,"-this and nothing less must be our banner, even though nothing seems so hopeless:for in truth we shall never see it until that day when the Lord's voice shall call us up out of the earth-mists that surround us, to unite us forever in the clear bright sky above. What we want to realize is, that the unity of the Spirit means activity, not passiveness; that to keep it there must be an exercised conscience, as well as a heart aglow with spiritual energy,-love, the spring of power, of courage, and of endurance,- clear-sighted, as true love ever is. How blessed and peaceful a path after all, in fellowship with and under the control of the almighty Worker, upon whom all things wait, and who is working out unfailingly the blessing of His own! Faith with the light of this triumph in its heart finds in its way no invincible difficulty, and can go forward, confident and assured.

The method of compromise for the sake of union can never, it is plain, be taken or acquiesced in by one who would keep the unity of the Spirit. Liberty for the conscience, of course, there must be, which compromise forbids. We can neither bind our own nor that of others, for conscience owns but one Master. In our day, the want of unity is being felt increasingly, and efforts after union are the order of the day. "Union is strength " it is felt; but just here lies a serious danger for the soul. " In quietness and confidence shall be your strength " is the Lord's word to us. Organization and machinery are substituted for the work of individual faith and conscience. The weakness is thus not felt, to which God is so absolute a necessity. Conscience finds other masters, or expediency dictates subjection to them. " Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" becomes, as of old, the fashion, even though it be more openly owned than of old that they are but commandments of men.

There is indeed one organization, and but one,- "one body; "there is one power for its growth and edification, and but one,-"one Spirit;" and there is "one Lord" alone. To add to these is but, in the spirit, of it, if it be not ignorance, rebellion. The addition is a fatal subtraction. And that which was to help becomes an opposition to God, and an open door for the enemy. The little seed may thus become a tree, but the birds of the air will lodge in the branches of it.

"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. 8:9.)

After ten days of special meetings in a town in New Zealand, I was on the way to the railway station with my luggage. A man, working in a garden where I was to pass, observed me approaching. Quickly making his way to the fence, he reached over his hand, saying, " Let me shake hands with you." " Most gladly," I replied, as it then came before me that he had been to the meetings, though we had not had the opportunity of conversing before.

"Man," he said, grasping me very warmly by the hand, "I've lost seven years' enjoyment."

" How is that?" I inquired.

He went on to tell how he had been converted seven years before. He had felt and known that it was a real change, but he was also conscious that he had been occupied with his feelings, and had never enjoyed peace. His time had been taken up with trying to hold on to what he had received, lest it should slip, and he should fall away. He knew that he had something not known before, though it was an unsatisfactory experience. He prayed, read, watched, attended meetings, always fearing that unless he was careful and persevered he would lose the blessing. But he said,-

" I have been hearing you at these meetings, and I now see that it is what God has said about Christ, and I'm a free man."

The simplicity, the earnestness, the gladness of the man give his words more than usual significance. A little reflection upon them readily suggests some very practical lessons as to how the gospel ought to be preached, heard, received, and enjoyed.

Much that is preached fails to bring out what one might call the divine side of the gospel. Too frequently what is heard is much more what might suit man rather than God. Human need is more considered than divine holiness. What the sinner needs and receives on believing is pressed so much, that what was needed for and rendered to God, in the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ, is frequently overlooked. But self-interest often plans and prepares its own punishment. Being absorbed with the thought of the sinner's need, we may forget or even fail to take in the importance of what is due to God. The prodigal thought of bread and a servant's place instead of what alone would suit a son with the father. But hearers naturally fall in with what is put to suit themselves. Yet such preachers and hearers have often such poor times of it that it would almost seem as if the blind had been leading the blind, and both had fallen into the ditch. They have not only lost enjoyment, like the young man mentioned, but have had the positive misery of having to say-

" "Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord, or no,
Am I His, or am I not?"

A live sheep bleating in a ditch, or in a bog, or in a thicket, is better than a dead lion. The young man had better have lost seven years' enjoyment than to have been all that time dead in trespasses and sins. But there is a more excellent way than being left to either alternative. The full gospel may be told out and received with its proper results of life, peace, liberty, and enjoyment. It need not only be that the sinner should come forth like Lazarus, " bound hand and foot with grave clothes;" the Lord still delights to say, " Loose him, and let him go."

What the young man heard, what set him free, was that God had considered and undertaken the work that was needed, not merely to satisfy the sinner, but what was needed to satisfy God. In giving His Son, and in accepting the work accomplished by Him in offering Himself without spot to God, it is evident that God satisfied Himself. He has shown it by rending the vail from top to bottom, and by raising Christ to His own right hand.

He has said it by sending the Holy Spirit to testify concerning all that believe, as He does, saying, " Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." (Heb:10:17.)

God knew best-yea, He knew perfectly, what sins deserved. He also knew what would suit His own holiness and righteousness. God alone could authoritatively set forth what would maintain His own honor and glory. It will yet be seen that " He hath done this." (Ps. 22:31.) Then it should be clear at a glance that if what is needed for God, on account of sin, is provided and accepted by God, there can be no doubt about the need of the sinner being met. Human things are poor, feeble illustrations of such a divine transaction. But say the utmost demands of creditors are satisfied by one of the partners of the firm paying the sum required from his private to the firm's business account, the debtor should be satisfied when he is informed of this, and receives the receipted account. One who was his creditor, as his friend, has satisfied the legal claims of the firm. The friend's position as a partner in the firm, is a guarantee that the arrangement is satisfactory. The debtor will surely then fall in with and rejoice in the settlement. The friend may be poorer as to his private means, but the firm has not sustained any loss, and so a clear receipt can be given consistently. The debtor has simply to hear, read, believe, and give thanks for being righteously cleared through the grace of his friend. It is an illustration of grace reigning through righteousness. (Rom. v, 21.)

In some such manner, where the young man had been present, I had been showing that God had estimated what was needed, not only on the human, but on the divine side, and had provided His own Lamb, and had accepted, as He surely would accept, the sacrifice of His own provision. All had hitherto been done between Christ and God. This being so, God was free, in harmony with all that He is, as a holy and righteous God, to proclaim forgiveness to sinners, to justify him that believeth in Jesus. (Rom. 3:26.) When the blood had been shed on the great day of atonement, it was first presented to God by being put on the mercy seat once, and then before the mercy seat seven times. (Lev. 16:15.) When God's nature and claims were met, the needs of the people were more than covered.

Thus, what God has provided, and found in, and said about, the work of Christ, is the good news announced to sinners. Indeed, it is what God is as revealed in grace that needs to be proclaimed and believed to give settled peace.

Then it is no longer merely a question of your doing, your feeling, or your realizing. If these things were true, if you felt all right within yourself, if you could conclude that you had attained to an improved state of soul, this would be good news about you. But that would not be the gospel. The gospel is about what is outside yourself -it is good news about God. It is not what you are to God, but what God is to you, now that Christ has died and risen. If not to be disturbed, this must be the ground of your peace. The One who thought, the One who wrought, the word that declares that all is done, are all outside of, and apart from, yourself, Then peace with God is not, in the first instance, a question of your experience. If one may so speak, God is telling you what has been the experience of Christ, and the experience of God, in connection with the accomplishing, and the acknowledging of the accomplishing, of a perfect atonement. It is then for you to hear, and hold to be true, what God has said about Christ. Bowing to it as the testimony of God that cannot lie, and as one who will not deceive, you may gladly say, if you cannot sing:-

" Rest, my soul the work is done,
Done by God's eternal Son;
This to faith is now so clear,
There's no room for torturing fear."

It was to this conclusion that the young man had come by hearing the gospel otherwise than he was wont to hear it preached. He learned that God was satisfied. Now he saw that his acceptance did not depend on how he felt, or how he held on. In all such thoughts he had himself before him. His mixed-up ideas as to the way he was accepted, and the means by which he was to be kept in God's favor, had caused continual anxiety. While believing on Christ to begin with, he was trying to believe in himself to go on with, and so it was no marvel that he had lost seven years' enjoyment. But with his newly-found enjoyment, instead of growing careless as to how he acted, he had a new and powerful motive for seeking to please the Lord. Instead of being on himself, his eye was now on the Lord; his ear was open unto God ; his thoughts about acceptance, instead of turning in upon his feelings, were governed by the thoughts of God about Christ as written in the Word. He now saw that, rather than it being a question of his having rightly accepted Christ, it was a question of God having accepted Christ, as having done the work for him, and having seated Christ at his own right hand in token of being perfectly satisfied with the work of atonement. Indeed, as we have seen, God had satisfied Himself. Hearing this, believing this, the young man troubled about peace was satisfied. He then knew the truth, and the truth set him free. He might well say with joy and gladness, " I am a free man."

If not before now, why should you not see and say the same? You need not lose years, or months of enjoyment. You may have settled peace, blessed rest, even now. You may be free indeed. You may then have leisure to be occupied with the Person who has saved you, so as to have the heart filled with praise, and your lips opened to commend your Redeemer. Then, as there is no longer any need for the miserable work of trying to hold on, your hands will be free for the service of the Lord. Yielding yourself up to Him, you may say, "O Lord, I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds."
W. C. J.

There are ten millions of souls in Mexico alone, without speaking of regions vast and populous of Central and South America, who are without the gospel, save in a very limited degree.

Mexico has had no reformation. Romanism has reigned supreme over heart and conscience, body and soul, and left with scarce a ray of light these millions, save as Protestants have done some of love's labor among them. God has, in His wisdom, and with purposes of grace, smitten the power of the pope of Rome, and through liberalism, (often another name for infidelity,) opened the door for the proclamation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Statistics, lately published, give as the number of workers, of all shades of opinion, foreign and native missionaries, schoolmasters, etc., 442; and of communicants, 12,135. Some devoted men, according to the light they have, are found in the ranks of these workers, whom Christ will reward in that day, and of whom we dare not say they do not serve Him, though they follow not us, nor are in, as far as ecclesiastical position goes, the truth. All honor to those who with less light have risked their lives to make Christ known! Of these, 62 have won the martyr's crown, while others still languish in prison upon false charges, in places where Rome has most power left her. On the other hand, some unworthy men and means have been used, which has of course hindered the work. These millions know, for the most part, absolutely nothing but certain Christian names which are connected, in their minds, with superstition and falsehood, and which convey to them no fragment even of the truth of the gospel. Purgatory is their expectation after death, out of which the prayers and masses of the priests alone can deliver, and this only obtainable through the last cent extortion can wring from them, though it be the bread of their children, which yet Rome calls them to give up in exchange for her lies.

(At a place in New Mexico, the native missionary read Jno. 14:, and his hearers ridiculed it, and said, " We did not know He had a Father;" and went to him afterward and asked what he meant by saying His Father had a mansion?)

When the prophet was convicted deeply of his sin in the presence of the glory of Christ, and the live coal from the altar had touched his lips and cleansed them, he heard a voice saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" The ready answer came, "Here am I:send me." Paul gives us as the spring of his service this:"The love of Christ constraineth us," etc. How many who have learned that to give their hearts to God is not the gospel, who yet have not practically learned what Paul writes of the Macedonians, viz., " They first gave their own selves to the Lord." Neither Isaiah nor Paul kept back from the Lord what was His by the double right of creation, and what was infinitely more costly-redemption.

Much of the sorrow and division so ripe among saints to-day has its root in the spirit of the world, which has had so large a place in the church.

The mass of the population round us has had and refuses the truth. Where this obtains, God commonly sends a famine of the Word. The ten millions in Mexico have had no such trial, and are in danger of learning the corruption and infidelity of apostate Christendom before they hear the truths of redemption and the love of God. Who will help tell them of Him who came to seek and save what was lost? and who has left behind those wonderful words for us to reflect on, " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.""And how shall they hear without a preacher" that gospel which brings "repentance unto life"?What I have written is with no desire to distract from their work the Lord's servants laboring in other fields. Still less to urge any to go unsent where disaster and defeat at the hands of the enemy will meet them as quickly as any where, and perhaps in a worse way. But are there none who are holding back from what the Lord has laid upon them, and who would do well to search their hearts as to this, and seek His mind? The day, one hopes, is not far distant, if the Lord tarries, when the difficulties which still hamper the work will be further relaxed. What is intended by the reform laws as a check upon popery hinders also the progress of the truth, undesignedly. But the popish effort to regain control will probably lead to a further blow at her power, and the removal of the restrictions upon the efforts of others. May we not also pray for a fresh working of the Holy Spirit of God, to cause the seed sown to spring up,-"to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." Robert T. Grant.

El Paso, Texas, May 17th, 1888.

THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, Sardis:Sleeping Among the Dead. (Rev. 3:1-7 A few words now about another thing. If the Church reigns in the absence of Christ, what then? Why, then there must be something representing Him down here;-He must have a vicar. He is not present (even the world cannot mistake that), except spiritually. He is at God's right hand. That is the common faith of Christianity, and it is the faith even of Rome. Although, in spite of that, her altars are continually proclaiming Him corporally present, the faith of Christianity is that Christ is away.

But a visible kingdom requires a visible head; and I need not tell you that such they have given it. The pope is, for Rome, Christ's vicar; and this is only the natural development of the thought of church-government which historically preceded and led on to it, and which extends far beyond Rome. Presbyterianism, prelacy, popery, are but three steps in the same direction. Apostles are no more; and the Church is orphaned, if not governed in a visible manner. Hierarchical government in some form is a necessity to it.

Now the Lord has indeed a Vicar during His absence-a perfect, infallible Guide for His people, as well as a guide-book absolutely perfect. The Church has not only a perfect body of discipline, but One also who is the Interpreter and Administrator of it. It is the characteristic of God's people that " as many as are led by the Spirit of "God, they are the sons of God." So distinctive and so wonderful a blessing is the presence of the Holy Ghost with us now, that, although the disciples in our Lord's day were blessed, by the fact of His presence with them, beyond all the generations previous, yet He could say to them, " It is expedient for you that I go away:for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you."

His presence in the believer makes even his body the temple of the Holy Ghost. So His presence in the church makes it also "the temple of the living God." Looking at the Church, again, as the body of Christ, He is the one Spirit animating the body. As all the members move under the control of the spirit in the natural body, so in the body of Christ also:if the members do not understand and move in harmonious subjection to the spirit, we speak of it as disease; and it is not less, but more truly, so in the body of Christ.

If we open the Acts, we shall find every where His presence-greater than apostles, higher than the highest there. From the day of His descent at Pentecost, He is supreme over all; and that supremacy becomes the harmony of action, the unity of spirit in the lower sense. Sovereignly, He calls instruments as He will, and as sovereignly uses whom He calls. " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul," He says to the prophets and teachers at Antioch, "to the work whereunto I have called them. . . . And they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed into Seleucia." How strange to read as power conferred on man to convey office what is really the naming of individuals by the Spirit Himself, as called and sent forth by Him:one of them being the man who asserts his own apostleship to be, "not of men, nor by man"!
" Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia, . . . they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not.""And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days; who said to Paul by the Spirit that he should not go up to Jerusalem." Not ordinarily, indeed, perhaps not often, was the bidding of the Spirit expressed as audibly; but the manner of communication was but circumstantial, and not of the essence of the matter. He was present, Comforter, Guide, Teacher, Witness; Spirit of the body, " dividing to every man severally as He will;" a divine Person, with divine power and divine authority.

Yet unseen! I grant the fatal flaw in all this for most. The Bible they can see, but it is not definite enough. The Spirit of God they cannot see, and, alas! cannot believe in, in a practical way. " Whom the world cannot receive," says the Lord Himself, of the Holy Ghost, "because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." And when the line between the Church and the world is gone, who can wonder that this unbelief should be permeating the mass of what is professedly Christ's? It is not only Rome that refuses to the blessed Spirit the place He has come to fill. The unbelief which has denied the sufficiency of Scripture, and supplemented it by creeds which come soon to supplant it, has denied in the same way the sufficiency of the Holy Ghost, and supplemented His-authority with hierarchical governments to which (whatever the theory) He is practically unnecessary.

If you ask people what they mean by " church-government," you will get various answers, no doubt; but they will all agree substantially in one thing. That one thing is, in an omission of what is, indeed, the key-stone of the arch. They will tell you, some, that they believe in an episcopal form of government, some a presbyterian, some a congregational. And if you ask them further, Where do they put the Holy Ghost? you will find the mass of people even denying any special presence of the Holy Ghost as characterizing this dispensation. They will tell you (so far, truly,) that the Spirit of God has always been acting in the world, from the creation of it; that the new birth has always been His work, from Abel, or from Adam, to this time. They believe, too, in certain special gifts at the day of Pentecost, and for some time thereafter. A distinctive "coming" in the place of Christ, a coming so important in character that it was expedient for Christ to go away that we might have it, they do not understand and do not believe in. One well-known man, an evangelical divine, Dr. Hugh McNeile, of Liverpool, when he had to admit that a personal "coming" of the Holy Ghost after the ascension of Christ was taught in the Word, could only account for it by the supposition that during the Lord's lifetime upon earth all the operation of the Spirit was limited to Himself alone, so that the three and thirty years of our Lord's presence were years in which no conversions could take place at all,-a barren time in the world's history, a unique and utter desolation otherwise of spiritual influences!

And thus you will find that the practical faith in the Holy Ghost's presence now is scarcely faith in a Person. It is " influence," like rain, or dew, or gentle breeze,-and these are true and scriptural figures so far, but quite impersonal. They talk of a "measure of the Spirit," and every fresh stirring of heart they find is a fresh " baptism " of the Spirit. The evident and necessary result is that they lose the first requisite for faith in Him as One come down to take charge for Christ on earth, to dwell as God in the house of God, to animate and govern the body of Christ, as the spirit in man guides and governs the natural body.

Hence church-government, in people's minds, has nothing to do really with His presence here. Bishops, priests, and deacons may need, and of course do need, His influences. So, in theory, does the pope. But practically the ordering of things is (within certain limits, whether of church-tradition or of Scripture, so far as Scripture is supposed to serve,) in human hands, and subject to human wills. "The Church has power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." " And those [ministers] we ought to judge lawfully called and sent which be chosen and called to this work BY MEN who have public authority given unto them in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard."But the Holy Ghost may not have " called or sent" them! Well, that, of course; and that is provided for:for "although in the visible church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and sacraments, vet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and DO minister BY HIS COMMISSION AND AUTHORITY, we may use their ministry both in hearing of the Word of God and receiving of the sacraments "!!

Thus they may have Christ's commission although the Holy Ghost hath not "called or sent" them:Christ and the Holy Ghost are made to be at issue, and the Church can go on ordering and ordaining in despite of the Spirit Himself!

And this is order; while those who desire to yield subjection to the Word and Spirit of God alone are convicted of being rebels against proper authority, and sure to end in confusion and (as some have said,) in " atoms "! Yet faith will follow where God leads, owning indeed that in His path all will be confusion that is not subjection; and that, leave Him out, we at least have no resource. Let it be so:we will abide the issue.

But let us contemplate a little while now the other side of things. We have had before us what is intensely sorrowful, more provocative of tears than Jezebel's corruption. There, the very malignity of the evil roused the whole soul against it:here, there is the fruit of what was in the beginning a movement of God. He can speak of what they had seen and heard, and exhort to hold it fast. There are still "things that remain," although "ready to die." And how can we but sorrow intensely over what was so fair in its earliest promise, and received its baptism in the blood of martyrs ?

Yet the word to the overcomer, once again recurring here, comforts us with its recurrence. It links us, if we have ears to hear, with the same little remnant that has ever been finding its way, through storm and flood, to Him from whose love neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword can separate, and in which they have approved themselves, through Him, more than conquerors. The overcoming may be now in a new sphere, and separation may have to be from brethren, in some sense, of a common faith, heirs of great names in faith's records. Yet, in the overcoming, only over-comers are their true successors. Not those who, in our Lord's days, built the sepulchers of the prophets, represented them, or were linked with them, in His account, but those whom He sent forth to be persecuted by these same admirers of antiquity.

And God must teach us independence, even of one another,-that rightful independence which springs from real and lowly dependence upon Him. In His presence, what were even the greatest of His followers? How can I say to another, "Rabbi, Rabbi," when I must take the honor from Him that I deck another with? If I had not Him, it were lowliness; if I have Him, it is dishonor to Him.

It is not schism, this separate path, when not my own will leads me, but His Word and Spirit! It is not separation in heart from brethren, if Christ be dearer to me still than they. Nay, love to them approves itself only thus, as the apostle teaches us, " when we love God and keep His commandments." (i Jno. 5:2.)

Faith's victories are not in applause wrung from a multitude, but in the path of One, true Joseph, separated from His brethren; and God has overruled the presence of evil (which, I need not say, He has not caused) to the giving us a path, at least in its circumstances, the more Christlike. We are not left to the subjection to evil:He calls us to rise above it. The difficulties of the path are only to carry us through them all. Every encouragement throughout these epistles is held out simply to the overcomer. The Lord give us only the needed energy. The time is short:the end is at hand. The grace that is now sufficient for all daily need will soon be manifested in the crowning of the conquerors. Then those that are poor shall have the kingdom; the mourners shall be comforted; the meek shall have the inheritance; the hungerers and thirsters after righteousness shall be filled; above all, the pure in heart shall see God- the God whom sin for the time has banished from the earth He made.

(To be continued.)

NOTES ON PROPITIATION

Q. 37.-"The spirit in which the article in Help and Food for September introduces the subjects of 'Priesthood and Propitiation' is very commendable. As one who has had much exercise as to these questions, and not yet clear, I make some notes, more in the way of inquiry than in the spirit of controversy, and more as looking into than teaching on the subjects.

" In the article, it is asked, ' What was it to make propitiation?' It is said to be 'appeasable'-'satisfaction.' Rom. 3:25 is quoted (R. F.), 'A propitiation through faith, by His blood.' This 'shows what propitiates.' It is the blood. This is very distinct. In what follows, where it shows that we have 'only to substitute propitiation for atonement] things are not to me so clear. It looks rather like a begging than a solving of the question. But let us test it. The scape-goat is ' presented alive before the Lord to make propitiation with him.' Now we have it from Scripture that it is the blood that propitiates. Then the death of the victim must have taken place before the blood is obtained. This animal is alive,-there is no blood shed, hence this is propitiation without blood. Does this not show that the substitution of ' propitiation ' for 'atonement' will not answer? Is the one term the real equivalent of the other? Is 'atonement' not a generic, and ' propitiation' not rather a specific, term ? That is, does ' atonement' not apply to all in Lev. 16:, while ' propitiation ' only applies to one element-the presentation of the blood on the mercy-seat ? It seems simplest to think of propitiation when that which propitiates is actually applied to the place of propitiation. Then, strictly speaking, if this is so, we would have propitiation only when these two things are brought together. Then propitiation would not be made 'both in the holiest and outside of it,'and certainly not by the scape-goat. It would be made in the holiest, on the mercy-seat alone.

"Now as to the antitype. The article says, 'Let us remember, then, the wrath is borne, exhausted, before He dies. The blessed Substitute has been presented to God as that. Sin laid on Him by Jehovah as such, wrath poured out, an actual dealing of God with His soul in view of sin ; and that is ended, the burden is removed; …. Thus He can say, ' It is finished ;' for though He had to die, death is nothing now. Needed for atonement as the governmental penalty of sin, He can meet it with the weight off His spirit, for the cup He feared is drained."

"Then, bearing in mind that it is the blood that propitiates, and that the mercy-seat, not the altar, is the propitiatory in the wrath-bearing as just described, there is no blood, no mercy-seat, hence no propitiation. ' The life of the flesh is in the blood,' so can it be said that there is blood till the life is taken, or given up? 'Without shedding of blood is no remission.' But we are told of 'wrath poured out,' 'the burden in this respect removed,' and that 'death is nothing now.' Then we have 'appeasal'-propitiation-before death, without blood, apart from the mercy-seat, and outside the sanctuary. But we have seen that it is the blood that propitiates ; that, as the life is in the blood, death is necessary; that the mercy-seat is the propitiatory ', and that is inside the sanctuary. These seem fatal objections to the paper.

" It is asked, as to the sprinkling of the blood on the altar after it has been sprinkled on the mercy-seat, ' Is this, too, for the acceptance of the blood a second time? And if not, why, then, the first ? How is this expressed in the sprinkling of the mercy-seat, as it is not expressed in the sprinkling of the altar ?' One might regret and indeed object to the reasoning, yet reply that the mercy-seat is the propitiatory, which the altar is not. The former was God's throne, which the latter was not. This makes a decided difference.

" Then the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy-seat was not always associated with entrance into the holiest. The idea of access to and acceptance with God, as usually connected with propitiation, seems to be rather overlooked in the paper. The case of the publican, as quoted, indeed, is in point:' God, be propitiated unto me a sinner' gives the thought of acceptance before God on His throne. This important feature drops out of view rather when propitiation is connected with the altar, and also when viewed as taking place before the death on the cross.

"The question of the high-priest one may leave, as the paper is to be continued; but so far, it does not clear me on the important subject of propitiation."- W. C. J.

Ans.–I am unfeignedly thankful for our brother's communication. The Word is able to resolve all questions as to its own teaching, and on our part we ought to be able to submit all our own views to the test of the Word. Nor is this at all what can be rightly termed a fundamental doctrine. Where Christ's blessed work upon the cross is owned on all sides as that which alone brings us to God, a difference of understanding as to some lesser points cannot be fundamental. And it is well if examination of the subject leads to a clearer realization of this. Scripture is plain as to it. While it speaks as clearly as possible of the sacrificial work of Christ as the only resting-place of the soul before God, it leaves many a thing as to it of .great importance to be learned individually as we go on with God. To raise the cry of "fundamental error" wherever a doctrine dissented from relates even to fundamental truths is itself a grave mistake, and tends only to prevent a fair and full investigation of the matter. It acts upon many true souls by their fears, and like the cry of "heresy," is often the resort of weakness and ignorance merely. If there be fundamental error involved, we are in duty bound to show it not only to be " error," but to be "fundamental" also; but if it be, its full examination in the light of Scripture is only the more necessary.

Now for the first point raised by our brother,-the equivalence of " atonement" and " propitiation." The facts stand thus :In the Old Testament, we have but the one word for both; that must be conceded. In our version, there is no " propitiation," but " atonement" only. It is atonement in the holy place, atonement out of it, atonement by the scape-goat, and so on. Now the word for this is uniformly rendered in the Septuagint version–in every place in which our version gives "atonement"- by the word "propitiation." It is propitiation in the holy place, propitiation out of it, propitiation by the scape-goat:this cannot be denied.

Turning, then, to the New Testament and the Revised Version-confessedly more exact than the common one- we find this same Septuagint word "propitiation" used as translating the Old-Testament word for "atonement," and no other word used for it at all:"atonement" has dropped out, and "propitiation" takes its place. In other words, so far as we have any thing at all to guide us, the New-Testament and the Septuagint use is one. Surely, then, this is some ground, to begin with, for believing that they are one. If one, the question is not "begged" at all; it is settled-perfectly settled. If not, then reason must be adduced why it is not. It is well known that in general the Greek of the Septuagint is that of the New Testament. That here we have an exception, it seems to me impossible to prove.
Now as to propitiation without blood by the scape-goat, it is surely no greater difficulty than atonement without blood. Let us remember that in the Old Testament there is, all through, one word for atonement, and that the positive statement of Lev. 17:is, "It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul." How is there any difficulty as to "propitiation," then, which there is not as to "atonement" ?

Although it is the " Mood that maketh atonement for the soul," yet in the lowest grade of the sin-offering, it is made by an offering of "fine flour" (Lev. 5:11-13), all(J in Num. 16:46, 47, by incense. Have we any warrant for saying that the same word shall be translated in the one case "propitiation," in the others, "atonement"? Surely none.

May not the difficulty be settled in this way, that whereas the, blood was the ordinary and proper showing forth of what was required to put away sin, yet in certain cases another method might be adopted, not at the will of man, but of God ?

At least, the word is the same-confessedly the same :the Old Testament indicates no difference; and the New Testament, so far as I am aware, none.

"It seems simplest," W. C. I. says, "to think of propitiation when that which propitiates is actually applied to the place of propitiation." Yet God says, " I have given it you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls." Now, granting, for the moment, that atonement may be generic, propitiation specific, the generic term must include, all the species:the smaller must be included in the larger. But it will be said, This clashes with propitiation in the holy place in any way. I answer, It makes the altar the first necessity, that is all; but that is very important for our purpose.

The mercy-seat was God's throne in the midst of Israel- where He dwelt between the cherubim. Thus it was of all importance that there should be a special testimony to the atoning work. The sevenfold sprinkling before it shows what is in question. We have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." No wonder, then, that here we should find a special "propitiatory." But the altar, it is said, was not that. Here, the point is, then, what does this mercy-seat, or propitiatory, imply? Surely for this we must look to the day of atonement, when alone the blood was sprinkled there, and see for what purpose it is stated to have been sprinkled. This, it seems to me, should be decisive. " He shall make propitiation for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins, and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness."

Thus the mercy-seat is a propitiatory, because it enables God to remain, in mercy, among a sinful people. The blood sprinkled there propitiates the holiness of God in this respect, for them surely most important. But this is only a special application of the blood, already acceptable and accepted for the putting away of sin before this, -a propitiation as soon as shed,-propitiating, therefore, as to whatever it was applied to.

No doubt, then, there is a difference as to the mercy-seat and altar ; but the blood was put on each for an exactly similar reason, and so it is stated. This, our brother does not seem to have taken fully into account.

And now, lastly, as to the blessed Antitype:what I have said, should clear this. But I would press only that there was wrath borne, (was there not ?)-a cup of wrath actually drained before death. When He cried, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," was He still under wrath ? Nay, did He pass out of the body and bear it up to the throne of God, only there to be accepted ? Let it be but a moment, if you please:principle, there is no difference between a moment and an age:I ask earnestly, Did He do this?

I believe no Christian heart will say He did. And if He did not, the question which we have been here considering is completely settled.

Of course, apart from death atonement could not be:so I have said. Propitiation required man's full sentence to be borne. Yet it is true that when the cup of wrath was drained, propitiation was thus far accomplished. That is not, surely, " propitiation without blood," when it is said that death was still "needed for atonement." But I believe our brother must agree that, in comparison with the cup of wrath, "death was nothing." Is it not just this that makes the cross different from any mere martyr's death ?

But I would add that the difficulty in all this matter seems rather a difficulty of clear interpretation of the Old-Testament types, and of the phraseology employed, than a difference as to the atoning work itself. No one of us really doubts that the Lord bore sin only upon the cross, not after it, or up to heaven. Thus, even in the type, the offering was always "before the Lord." (Lev. 1:3, 5, etc.) He was not afar off in heaven, or shut up in the holiest merely. Offerings that in no way went in there were distinctly owned as accepted of him, and sin removed from him who offered them. No one can question this, and it entirely corresponds with all our thoughts as to atonement.

But the difficulty is here:that wherever the blood is sprinkled, in the Mosaic ritual, "atonement" is said (as it were, afresh) to be made by it. It is a definite application of atonement to this or that person or thing; but this is with us differently expressed. A Jewish priest could in this way "make atonement" again and again with the same blood; bat for us, how would this repetition of atonement consist with our thoughts of it? For us, the purging would be manifold, but the atonement one. The thought is the same, however,-the expression different.

Now when we approach the subject of the propitiatory, or mercy-seat, we must keep this in mind. There is here this added difficulty, that approach to God on the mercy-seat is now ours, as it was not theirs. The way into the holiest is for us made manifest, and our blessings are in the heavenly places. For them, the mercy-seat was God's throne on earth,-His dwelling-place in the midst of His people. They approached there only by a representative, and never freely, while on this account their ordinary meeting-place with God was at the altar of burnt-offering. (Exod. 29:43.) This is very significant, that God could meet them elsewhere, and that at the very place where He gave the blood to be an atonement for their souls. An entering into the heavenly places was for them unknown.

But the mercy-seat exhibited to them the atoning blood as perpetuating God's dwelling-place among them,-hence was the true propitiatory, or place of atonement, in that sense of which I have just been speaking. For upon this, all their manifest relationship with God as His peculiar people depended. Thus, on the day of atonement, the blood was sprinkled first here, and then upon the altar, but for the same purpose in each case, to preserve them to the people by the purging of their sins.
For us, there is entrance into the heavenly places, and Christ Himself is our Propitiatory, or Mercy-Seat. Gone in, a Man, into the presence of God, His being there thus shows how indeed the precious blood by which He has entered abides before God forever. And by it we have boldness to enter into the holiest.

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

Confederacy is, politically and socially, a character of the times. In mercantile affairs of every kind, companies are getting to be more and more every where the rule. The strength realized by union is here well recognized. In the rise of the popular element, combination is not merely an advantage; it is-an imperative necessity. By its means alone can the poor man make his voice be heard upon nearer equality of terms with the capitalist, the laborer with iris employer. Yet here the true individuality which God would have,-the individuality of conscience with which alone real uprightness of conduct can be maintained,-has to be lost and give way to the will of the majority. No power can be attained by the body at large thus except by ruinous self-sacrifice on the part of its members. It must have unity, the unity of a machine, or nothing can be effected; but for this, heart and conscience must be leveled down to wood and iron. It is essential that freedom of individual action there should be none; and thus there is no tyranny so great as the tyranny often here exercised,-no more ruthless treading down of the most sacred and personal rights than with those in whose mouths the cry of " People's rights!" is oftenest and loudest.

Religious associations may seem often in their laxity as opposite to this as can be, and yet the laxity itself be as contrary to God, and bind me as much to His dishonor. What seems the largest liberality may thus be the very spirit of disobedience, and to this it is that every thing in the present day is tending. Satan can press upon us the evil of division just there where division is not an evil, but a right and godly separation from evil; and he can point out good to be accomplished, to make us little careful as to the means by which it is proposed to accomplish it. A united Christian church which should become so by making it a matter of indifference whether Christ were God or only the highest kind of man would certainly be his greatest achievement. The startling thing to-day is, that men considered evangelical can accept associations of this kind; and the platform upon which they stand widens continually:what would have been liberality a short time since is now narrowness. The world moves; but the unbending word of God which moves not, against this it will dash itself only to its destruction.

Amid this concourse and confederacy of men, communion with God becomes continually more restricted:" Behold, I stand at the door, and knock:if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." This door is plainly individual,-not of the church, but of the heart. But then it is as plain that the church-door is shut against Him; not that He has shut it, or Himself spewed the church out of His mouth. He is still lingering in His love,-still saying, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten:be zealous, therefore, and repent." But they do not repent. He is as when at Nazareth in the days of His earthly ministry (rejected by those who should have known Him best,) it is written of Him, "And He could there do no mighty work, save that He laid His hand upon a few sick folk, and healed them." He could not do what He would; He would do what He could:"And He marveled at their unbelief; and He went round about the villages, teaching." So here, rejected by the body at large, He tries one door after another, in this solemn pause before the end. He would not judge in the mass; so He tries in detail. And if any heart responds,-for all seem to have shut Him out, but He will not take it yet as final,-then He will come in there, and sup:that soul shall yet to its everlasting joy entertain its Lord.

But the time hastens, and the nearness of the end is shown by the closing promise to the overcomer:" To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me on My throne, even as 1 also overcame, and am set down with My Father on His throne." He speaks, as He appears to the apostle, as Son of Man here. It is His kingdom as Son of Man He is about to take:that special throne from which as with a rod of iron He will break in pieces all opposition, and bring every thing into subjection to God. For it is His to do this. He has laid the foundation in the work of the cross:His hands shall finish it. All judgment is His, because He is the Son of Man. And judgment itself now is the only work left for mercy to accomplish. So there comes-most terrible of all wrath, the wrath of the Lamb,-the wrath of love itself:the wrath of Him who has been watching all these patient centuries the oppression of the meek, in whose ears have been the cries of the fallen in the terrible strife; He of whom the wicked hath said in his heart, He will not require it; yet who beholdeth mischief and spite to requite it with His hand; to whom the poor committeth himself, who is the Helper of the fatherless. he now riseth up. "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord:I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."

In a word, the present day of grace is in this promise marked as just at its end. And with this the Church, as the vessel of the testimony of that grace, is being removed from the earth. The "present things "at which we have been looking are just over. The Christian dispensation has run its course. The saints removed to heaven, the rest that are left are but reprobate, and fall soon into utter apostasy. Then comes the earth's great trial-time, the time of Jacob's trouble, out of which yet he shall be delivered; the heading up of unbelief in gigantic forms of evil, dimly (and but dimly) now looming up amid the shadows of the horizon. Beyond it yet the glory of a brighter day, when the redeemed of the Lord shall come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head; when a King shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment; and a MAN shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Sweeter than all and brighter the joy above, when in the mansions of the Father's house that promise shall be fulfilled, " I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

PROF. DRUMMOND AND THE TEACHING OF NATURE

"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased," says the inspired Word :how wonderfully fulfilled none can surely doubt. Let us notice too, if we have not, that these are not independent, but strictly connected statements :the running to and fro is, and is represented to be, the cause of the increase of knowledge.

Knowledge consists, to a large extent at least, in the observing of differences, bringing out thus the essential features of each object before the mind, as well as its relation to other objects. Comparison is thus the great means of knowledge. Whatever the provocative of a running to and fro upon the earth, an age of traveling means opportunities of comparison, and the fostering of a spirit of research. Thus the present facilities of travel connect with the undeniable growth and spread of every kind of knowledge.

I say advisedly " of every kind of knowledge." Of course I do not mean by this that there will be more conversions to God, – this is in the power of the Spirit of God alone to effect ; yet I do mean that the knowledge of divine things, or (if you will,) the opening up of them to knowledge, cannot be excepted from this necessary increase. Scripture is always indeed the true and only key to every thing. Without it, there would be, as to all that is of real importance for man to know, nothing but utter darkness – a darkness that might be felt. Nay, more ; the voice of prophecy declares that upon all the present increase of knowledge shall come such an eclipse ; for "behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples," when the glory of the Lord rises upon Israel. (Isa. Ix.) Thus the pride and idolatry of intellect will yet meet its terrible rebuke from God.

And yet, I repeat that no kind of knowledge-objective knowledge-can be excepted from the prophet's statement. Indeed, if it be allowed to apply at all,* it can scarcely be doubted that the application is mainly to spiritual things. *Keil thus (in his Comm. on Dan., p. 486,) remarks:" Shut signifies . . . to go to and fro, to pass through a land in order to seek out or search, to go about spying. . . . From these renderings, there arises for this passage before us the meaning, to search through, to examine a book." But no examples are given. For my purpose here, I need not examine the application further; for it is still true, whether Daniel speak of it or not, that this has actually been fulfilled.* Nor could one suppose, surely, an increase of natural knowledge without some corresponding increase in this direction. The various departments of knowledge so depend on one another,-the world of nature, the history of men, even their sins and errors (spite of themselves) so testify for God,-Scripture touches the whole circle of knowledge in such various ways, that we may be well assured this would be impossible.

It is this connection that exposes revelation to attack also from all sides. Man being what the cross has proved him to be, it was inevitable that there would be such attacks. On the other hand, that God should use these to bring out and manifest the power of His word, we might well expect. It has been always so. Science is now the battle-field, but the foe is not science ; it is as ever the unbelief of man, driven out of other refuges, and concentrating its forces behind the shelter of forms but dimly seen as yet. In darkness, more plainly than ever, is their retreat, hypothesis, mystery, agnosticism, are their weapons. Their advocates have themselves most plainly pointed out the issue to be between revelation or despair, -the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Unknowable.

Is it worth while to dispute with them the field of which they vaunt that they have secure possession? With revelation ours, need we contest the field of science? So much has this been dragged through the mire of evolutionistic infidelity, that in the mind of many it is useless to try and save it now. Why go outside of Scripture on to a doubtful ground of nature and observation and reasoning where so many stumble ?

Just this last is, no doubt, the most forcible of arguments. It is not the attacks of infidelity that we have so much cause to dread as the well-intentioned efforts of those who, seeing the ship of revelation laboring in the tempest, hastily come in to help her by throwing out her precious freight into the sea. Inspiration, creation, and other capital doctrines of the Word have been thus again and again laid hold of for destruction, and no wonder if there should be fear of any new attempt at reconciling what never was opposed with the loss of what never was in peril.

Prof. Drummond's book* is one of these late attempts, and it is certainly not one of the feeblest. It has had a very wide circulation, has been greeted with enthusiastic praise, and denounced also with special energy. " *Natural Law in the Spiritual World." By Henry Drummond, R. S. E.; F. G. S.* By Henry Drummond, This perhaps is only what might be expected in the case of a work of real talent upon so important a subject by a man not unknown. But it makes it difficult for one to speak who sympathizes with both sides, and therefore, as a matter of course, with neither.

There was real cause for alarm. Prof. Drummond tells you at the outset that science with him has brought about "an entire re-casting of truth" (p. 8:). His "spiritual world before was a chaos of facts;" "it was the one region still unpossessed by law. I saw then why men of science distrust theology; why those who have learned to look upon law as authority grow cold to it-it was the great exception " (p. 10:).

While his spiritual world was thus a chaos, nature alone appeared to him firm. "And the reason is palpable. No man can study modern science without a change coming over his view of truth. What impresses him about nature is its solidity. He is there standing upon actual things, among fixed laws" (20:). "There is a sense of solidity about a law of nature which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure, . . . one thing that holds its way to me eternally, uncorrupted, and undefiled" (13:). "In these laws, one stands face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable" (p. 4.).

Yet it seems they are not easy to define, and must be taken on authority. " The laws of nature are simply the statements of the orderly condition of things in nature, what is found in nature by a sufficient number of competent observers. What these law's are in themselves is not agreed. That they have any absolute existence even, is far from certain"! (p. 5.)

Thus "theology" is delivered into the hands of a sufficient number of natural observers ; and science thus offers if in the first place "to corroborate theology, in the second, to purify it" (18:). "And while there are some departments of theology where its jurisdiction cannot be sought, there are others in which nature may have to define the contents as well as the limits of belief" (21:). And "men must oppose with every energy they possess what seems to them to oppose the eternal course of things" (21:).

No wonder if by this process there should be in result "an entire re-casting of truth." No wonder rather if there be a casting out of truth. " The old ground of faith, authority, is given up" (p. 26.). Yet what is the testimony of a "sufficient number of competent observers"? Is it impossible that Scripture, with its innumerable lines of proof-"many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3.)-should be equally trustworthy ?

The principles of Prof. Drummond's book, then, are alarming enough for the Christian. And he carries them out consistently. All through you will find, side by side, 'quotations from the apostles of Christ and the apostles of evolution, and treated, one would think, with almost equal reverence.

The result is very much what might be anticipated from all this, although there is a certain looseness of language which allows one to hope that what is said may not after all convey his real meaning. Yet, if it be so, he has had time to disclaim what has been imputed to him, and we cannot hear that he has done so. Whatever, then, his own views, the words remain with all their mischievous effect for the many who have been captivated by the brilliancy of the presentation, as well as (I must add) the truth that they contain ; for that they contain truth is to me incontestable. And it is this mixture of what is true and valuable with what is false and evil, that is to be dreaded; for by it the enemy of our souls obtains a double victory; either he prevails upon us to reject the truth because of the falsehood mixed with it, or else to receive the two together. God's word to us, as to Jeremiah, is, " If thou shalt take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth."

Here are some of the statements in question:- "We should be forsaking the lines of nature were we to Imagine for a moment that the new creation was to be formed out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil-nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestructible; nature and man can only form and transform" (p. 297).

Here there is that looseness of statement of which I have spoken. "Matter is uncreatable and indestructible; " but he is speaking of the new creation, the divine work in a soul. Is this, then, " matter " ? and cannot God create or destroy matter, if it were ? "Nature and man can only form and transform;" but what, then, is "nature"? Is it God, or what He has created ? If the latter, what marvel? if the former, did not God, then, create the world ?

Again we have (p. 236),-

"This primary idea. ..leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in the formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and resting upon premises and conceptions altogether different. In fact, it can dispense both with the philosophical" thesis of the immateriality or indestructibility of the human soul, and with the theological thesis of the miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person:theses, the first of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second, absolutely opposed to reason."

It is true that this is a quotation from a German author (Reuss), but it is quoted with approbation by Prof. Drummond, who certainly endorses here the materiality of the soul and the denial of the resurrection. And this confirms the worst meaning of the extract made before. Annihilationism naturally goes with it also, and this the definition of eternal life which he accepts from Herbert Spencer distinctly corroborates, for eternal life is, according to it, nothing but eternal material existence, and the whole question with Prof. Drummond in his essay on it is, how to escape extinction at death. That he who does not receive eternal life must become extinct seems surely the inevitable conclusion.

Again we have (p. 281),-

"The completion of life is now a supreme question. It is important to observe how it is being answered. If we ask science or philosophy, they will refer us to evolution."

And he goes on to speak of struggle for life, etc., the elements of the most extreme Darwinian form.

Thus it is very evident that the denunciation of the book before us has not been without reason. That is denied in it which involves all Christianity in its denial; for " if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised ; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins" (i Cor. 15:16, 17.)

The denial of the resurrection, the immateriality of the soul, the creation of matter, and the advocacy of full evolution in its extreme Darwinian form, are surely enough to startle the dullest Christian into refusal of a book which deliberately proposes these for our acceptance. Yet its author was accepted at Northfield and at Chautauqua.

(To be continued.)

Q. I.-"In 'Eight Lectures on Prophecy' I read, 'Into this new earth the new Jerusalem, the glorified Church, will descend,' etc. I have just looked at Rev. 21:, but it does not seem clear to me. Will not the new earth be for the earthly people, and the new heaven for the heavenly people?"

Ans.-First, as to the expression "new heaven," in Rev. 21:i, it is evidently the atmospheric heaven only, and not the " third heaven " of Paul's vision and the paradise of God. It is when the great white throne is set that the earth and the heaven flee away from before the face of Him who sits on it; and Peter describes the same change:"The heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."

But it is true that the heavenly people will always remain so, as Israel and the millennial saints in general will always remain an earthly one. Nor does the descent of the new Jerusalem militate against this. We have to remember that the pictures in Revelation are not to be taken as literal description, and that in the heavenly city is the throne of God and the Lamb ; moreover, it is said as to the new earth, " The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them." This does not imply that God will forsake heaven for earth ; and the Lord's promise to us is, "Where I am, there ye shall be also." Nor is it even said that the new Jerusalem will be on earth. Near and intimate connection there will be, assuredly ; and this is all that the expressions can, without straining, be made to mean.

Q. 2.-"In Ex. 22:28, who are the 'gods' mentioned ? and why are they not to revile them ?"

Ans.-It is the same expression as in Ps. 82:6, which the Lord quotes in Jno. 10:34 :"I said, Ye are gods," and of which He says that they are called gods to whom the word of God came. The force is doubtless that of "judges," divinely commissioned, and thus representing God. Those who reviled them thus spoke against God's authority in the judge. And the same principle now applies. Jude speaks of some as " filthy dreamers," who " defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities ; " and Peter has a similar warning :both in connection with evils which should characterize the latter days. The application to the present time is only too plain, and Christians should lay it to heart in the midst of a state of things when so much license with the tongue is claimed and given.

Q. 3.-" What is meant by the expression ' baptized for the dead ' in i Cor. 15:29,-' Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all ? why are they, then, baptized for the dead? ' "

Ans.-The expression may be rendered, "baptized in place of the dead." The preposition translated "for" in both the Common and Revised Versions (ύπέρ) is, in 2 Cor. 5:20 and Philem. 13, translated "instead of," although the Rev. Ver. has corrected it to "in behalf of" in both places. But the meaning "instead of" is admitted in the lexicons.

It might also be, and has been by many, translated "ever the dead," according to the root idea of the preposition, without any change of meaning, perhaps even more vividly. For the thought in the mind of the apostle, as is evident by the whole passage, is of a battle-field, in which fresh combatants are taking the place of those removed by death. In those days, to become a Christian was to expose one's self to death; and why thus fill up the ranks decimated by so fierce a conflict if there be no resurrection ? For then Christ is not risen, as he argues, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. " Over the dead " would be in this way vividly pictorial. But the meaning is, in any case, plain.

Q. 4.-"How am I to understand 2 Pet. 2:12? Annihilationists regard this passage as a strong proof of their doctrine."

Ans.-The point pressed by annihilationists is the resemblance drawn between beasts and evil men. Says one of their leaders,-

" They resemble them in irrationality, and will be like them in their destiny. The beasts are made, or born, for φθoράv (extinction"), and wicked men will suffer φθoράv also (Gal. 6:) ; but if this word signified endless misery, it could not be said that the 'natural irrational brutes' were 'made' for that."

Now it is freely and fully granted that φθoρά does not mean "endless misery." I am not aware of any one having ever contended that it did. No one doubts, I suppose, that it means, in general in the New Testament, "corruption," physical or moral; and so it is always translated in the Common Version (Rom. 8:21; i Cor. 15:42, 50; Gal. 6:8; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2:12, 19), except twice,-Col. 2:22, "to perish," and in this place, "to be destroyed." It is derived from the verb φθείρω, which is similarly translated "to corrupt" (i Cor. 15:33; 2 Cor. 7:2; 11:3; Eph. 4:22; Jude 10; Rev. 19:2), except in i Cor. 3:17, which I shall presently notice. In the passage before us it also occurs, though in a stronger form in the text King James' translators followed, and is therefore rendered "utterly perish." It is the word used once again in 2 Tim. 3:8, "men of corrupt minds."

"Corruption" is evidently, then, the leading thought in the New-Testament use of the word. But the passage in i Cor. 3:" 17 presents the word in a double sense, apparently, which it is hard to give in a translation, and the Common Version uses for it two words, "defile" and " destroy:" " If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." The one word, however, defining the sin and the punishment, is surely significant. It speaks solemnly of repayment in kind, which is a noticeable principle in the divine government:" Reward her even as she rewarded ; and double unto her double, according to her works :in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double." (Rev. 18:6.) We can retain this thought in Corinthians by a slight amplification :" If any man corrupt the temple of God, him shall God give over to corruption ;" and this will be more really literal than the other translation.

If we now look again at 2 Pet. 2:12, we shall find a like thought:"But these, as irrational beasts, made naturally for capture and corruption, speaking evil of things that they understand not, in their corruption shall also be given to corruption, acquiring for themselves the wages of unrighteousness." I give here again as literal a translation as I can, retaining throughout a uniform rendering of the words in question. The Rev. Ver. gives in this place, "shall in their destroying surely be destroyed," and similarly in Corinthians,-" If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy," preserving the due connection of sin and punishment, but losing that with "for the temple of God is holy:"-the thought of the sin as the corruption of a holy thing.

But in this way the whole interest of annihilationists in the passage is taken away. I do not mean, but deny, that it serves them as it stands in our translations ; for what they have to prove for this, and can never prove, is, that the destruction of a man is extinction, as that of the beast is. In itself, destruction never means this, but the removal out of the place for which the beast, or the man, or whatever else, was originally made. The beast, indeed, was only made to fill a temporary place. It was made, therefore, for destruction when its time runs out. Not so with man, and destruction for him means judgment.

Phthora, in the New Testament, seems always, however, to mean "corruption," which in the case of the beast is physical, of course; but it does not follow that because man is likened to the beast in his end, that the end is the same. Likeness is not identity, nor does it imply it. And what forbids the thought wholly is, that as applied to men in the passage here, the corruption is not physical at all, but spiritual; and to this, as having chosen it, they are given up. They are recompensed in kind; they reap as they sow:having sown to the flesh, they will of the flesh reap corruption. Judgment delivers them up to this:"he that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still."

(Eph. 3:8.)

Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. 8:9.)

Aye, rich, with all the wealth of heaven's store,'-
The gift of grace divine.
So rich, that earth, with all its treasured ore,
Fades into insignificance ;-nay, more ;-
Is utterly contemned, and spurned away,
By every heir of God and child of day.
How comes this wealth to sinners lost, undone?
It comes to us by grace, through God's dear Son,
Who saw our lost estate, and bare our woe,
That we might with Him dwell who loved us so.
Said I, "to dwell with Him?"-ah, there's the key
That unlocks all God's treasure-house for me !
In Christ I am, His boundless wealth I share,
God's Word declares I am His Son's coheir.
Blest saint of God !-earth's glories fade away
Before th' effulgence of eternal day.
Now let thy soul in Christ forever find
That wealth unsearchable.

Rt. S.

Lytham, England,
Sept. 15th, 1888.

Ans. 25.-The difficulty as to Rev. 20:4-6 is an old one, but arises merely from a want of understanding as to the language of Scripture, to which, nevertheless, our own very nearly conforms. We speak of "souls" when we mean " persons," and so does Scripture, only more largely. "My soul" is used there as an emphatic "I." Thus Balaam, "Let me (my soul) die the death of the righteous." And Abraham, " My soul shall live." Again, in Isa. 46:2, "Themselves are gone into captivity," margin, "their soul;" in Ps. 78:50, "He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;" and again, in i Chron. 5:21, margin, "They took away . . . of souls of men a hundred thousand." Thus there is no real difficulty in " I saw the souls of them that were beheaded, and they lived."

But there would be a very real difficulty with our common use of soul. "Risen with Christ" is indeed a truth for us already, but it is not ever represented as a resurrection of the soul. It is we who are dead in trespasses and sins, and who are risen with Christ. You may say it applies to the soul. Granted, if you analyze it, but Scripture never uses an incongruous thought, as this would be. It was not Christ's soul that rose (in this sense of soul), and it is with Him we are risen. To say "risen in soul " would not give the proper thought.

Moreover, we have in ver. 4, 5 (first part), a vision, and in 5 (last part) and 6, the interpretation of the vision. Now the interpretation needs no interpretation; and it shows how literally the vision itself is to be understood. This, like the name of a picture underneath it, assures us that it is a true resurrection that the vision represents. Nor is it of martyrs only. There are those, first of all, who are sitting on thrones; then a special company of martyrs is raised, and added to these. All of them together constitute " the first resurrection," in which every one is "blessed and holy" who "has part." It is a resurrection of saints alone (comp. Luke 20:36).

Q. 19.-"Will you please explain Gal. 6:8? How can we sow to the Spirit and reap life everlasting, since everlasting life is the gift of God ?"

Ans.-You have the two thoughts brought together in the last verses of Rom. 6::"Ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life ; for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." Here what is the end of a holy course is none the less the gift of God. It is only its being the latter indeed could secure its being the former, for who could demand it as "wages"? So it is "they that have done good" that come forth to the "resurrection of life" (Jno. 5:29). Scripture is full of such things. God has ordained for us the end, and thus there is no uncertainty about it; but in grace also He has ordained the way by which we should reach it.

But eternal life is not merely an end in the future; it is also a thing existing now in the believer,-"eternal life abiding in him" (i Jno. 3:15). We go into it as a condition by and by, but it is in us already as born of God.