In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, we have three wonderful scenes brought before us by the graphic pen of the inspired writer. A fitting sequence to the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven revealed in the thirteenth chapter is this fourteenth chapter ; bringing before us as it does the pathway to be trodden by those who in reality belong to the kingdom. Notice these three scenes, we have,-

First, a palace and a dance, connected with a murder and a burial, (10:1-12.)

Second, a desert and a famine, followed by a feast. (10:13-21.)

Third, a mountain and a stormy sea, followed by a great calm. (10:22-36.)

In all, there is one central figure-Jesus.

We find in the first scene John the Baptist sealing his mission with his death. He was the forerunner of the blessed Lord, and now that Jesus had come, and fully taken His place, God must have Him as the center. There could not be two centers, and John the Baptist passes off the scene by a martyr's death, to receive a martyr's crown. And who could have chosen better for that faithful witness of Christ? A faithful Enoch of the early days of the world's apostasy "walked with God" right into heaven. An Elijah, "man of God," a faithful witness in the days of Israel's apostasy, was rolled triumphantly into heaven in the chariot of fire. And for this rugged, stern, and uncompromising forerunner of Christ was reserved the signal honor of being the last martyr before the "Great Martyr" gave Himself " for the life of the world " that slew Him. John the Baptist, the last of the old ; Stephen-that grand witness, the first of the new ; between them, the Christ, the Son of God ! Oh, what greater honor could servants of God have than this ? And in these days of latitudinarianism, how these examples should stir our hearts, that we might be, at all costs, true and faithful witnesses for Christ!

But notice the result. The disciples of John bury his dead body, "and went and told Jesus." Their leader is taken away. His dead body they put out of sight, and for them henceforth there is one Leader, one Center -the living Jesus.

Oh, brethren, is there not a voice in this for us ? Has not God been saying to us, in a way that we cannot but understand, " No center but Jesus" ? " He will not give His glory to another." Let us therefore, each one, examine ourselves in the light of God's presence as to this. Brethren, is it a reality that Christ, and Christ alone, is the object of our hearts,-that His glory is the aim of our service,-that His coming is the hope of our souls,-that He is the pole-star of our lives-our Center-our "all in all"? May we be able truthfully to say and sing,-

" From various cares my heart retires,
Though deep and boundless its desires,
I've now to please but One.
Him before whom each knee shall bow,-
With Him is all my business now,
And those who are His own."
But we must look a moment at the palace and the dance. In this we have a picture of the world in its glory and its pleasure, guilty of the blood of the servant of God :a true picture of this world under condemnation, being guilty of the murder of God's Son.

In the second scene (10:13-21) we have another picture of the world. A desert, and a multitude of famishing people, with Jesus and His little company . of disciples ministering to them. If in the first scene we have our separation from the world, in this we get our service to the world. When we are brought to Christ, the world changes for us from a palace and a dance to a desert and multitudes of starving people.

The disciples come to the Lord with the wretched selfish cry of unbelief that is so common to the natural heart, "Send the multitude away;" and the Lord turns upon them with "They need not depart. Give ye them to eat." He does not say, I will give them to eat. He puts the disciples in their place of responsibility and privilege-"Give ye." But again the cry of unbelief comes out, "We have here but five loaves and two fishes; " and again grace triumphs over unbelief, and the way of service is shown :" Bring them hither to Me." He takes what they have, blesses it, and then breaks it, having first made the multitude to sit down, so that they could be conveniently served. Then He hands the broken bread to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. " And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full."

Is not the lesson plain ? Have we not said, " Send the multitude away"? 'Have we not both thought and said, "We have so little, that it could be of no use "? and thus left Christ out. Brethren, let us take what we have, little though it be, and bring it to Christ. Notice the order :First, " He took." So let us yield ourselves to Him. His word to us to-day is, "They need not depart. Give ye them to eat." O brethren, let there be a wholehearted surrender of ourselves and all we have to the Lord. Let Him " take " us.

Second, " He blessed." And that always follows if we yield ourselves to Him. He will consecrate, " fill our hands full,"-He will bless us and make us a blessing.

Third, " He brake." And now comes the old pathway of the cross. Euclid once said to the son of a king, " There is no royal road to learning," and there is no royal path to service for the sons of God. How slow we are to recognize that it is the broken vessel God uses for His glory! The old pathway is laid down in 2 Cor. 4:6-12. If it is life for others, it must be death working in us. If we serve the Lord, let us follow Him. The corn of wheat must die to bring forth fruit (Jno. 12:24-26). The measure of suffering is the measure of patience, and the measure of patience is the measure of power, and the measure of power is the measure of blessing. (See 2 Cor. 6:4 ; Col. 1:2 ; 2 Cor. 1:4-6.)

This is the divine order. Oh what natural thoughts we have as to God's service often ! Natural ability and intelligence are not to be despised. "He gave to each man according to his several ability," but they are not to be built on. When Paul became a fool in glorying, the two things he mentions especially are his sufferings and his revelations. The more we are broken, the more we can be used to feed others ; and the more we are used to others, the more fragments are there to gather up. This is divine arithmetic, not human. May the Lord enable us to comprehend it, and live in the power of it for His glory and the blessing of others. Around us are the multitudes to-day. And the Lord is ever ready to command them to sit down. Brethren, are we ready to obey His word, " Give ye them to eat" ? Are we ready to yield ourselves to Him, for Him "to take," "to bless," and " to break "? Thus only can we feed these multitudes of perishing souls. May we be aroused to our privileges and responsibilities.

The last scene gives us a picture of the Church in the world, and the necessary discipline we pass through. Doubtless the Lord sent His disciples on that dark and stormy sea that they might learn to have fellowship with Him in " His compassion." They were to learn compassion for others by being put in a place where they needed it for themselves. In it all we have a blessed picture of the Church sent through the stormy sea, with her blessed Savior in the glory interceding and caring for her, and coming, in the time of trouble and sorrow, to end forever her weeping. And have we not in Peter a little remnant, knowing His coming, going to Him on the troubled waters in obedience to His word ? And have we not seen the waves, and our faith almost failed us ? and is not our cry even now going up, " Lord save ! or we perish" ? But let us be of good comfort. His hand is stretched forth to hold us, and in "a little while "-oh, how short! – we shall " come with Him into the land whither we journey." And we can say,-

' My bark is wafted from the strand
By breath divine,
And on the helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.

" One who was known in storms to sail
I have on board :
Amid the roaring of the gale
I have my Lord.

" He holds me when the billows smite :
I shall not fall
If sharp, 'tis short ; if long, 'tis light :
He tempers all.

" Safe to the land ! safe to the land !
The end is this ;
And then with Him go hand in hand
Far into bliss."

J. J. Sims

DR. WALDENSTROM AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

II.-Concluded.

No one of those whose doctrine Dr. Waldenstrom is opposing would think of denying that Christ's blood cleanses from all sin. If they were bold enough or ignorant enough to do so, it would certainly be easy work, with but a single text such as he quotes, to refute them. As it is, his first arguments, when he comes to the New Testament, are but another instance of the strange half-sightedness which so constantly afflicts him. Why should it result that because the blood of the Lamb cleanses, it cannot atone? or that cleansing and atoning should be but the same thing ? Surely it cleanses, purifies, sanctifies (we affirm it with all our hearts), and yet it atones ! And more:its power to atone is just what gives it power to cleanse, as we shall see.

Even as to cleansing, the washing of water and the sprinkling of blood have to be distinguished as he does not distinguish them; and likewise the sprinkling of blood upon the person from the sprinkling of blood upon the altar or upon the mercy-seat. All this he entirely confounds ; and to disentangle the confusion is enough completely to destroy his system.

He begins with what is indeed an important text- Heb. 2:17, 18, where the common version gives, "to make reconciliation for." The Revised has, rightly, " make propitiation." He says, Christ's "work as High-Priest was to make propitiation for the sins of the people." The apostle does not say, "to propitiate God," but "to make propitiation for the sins of the people.'' Dr. Waldenstrom turns back to the Old-Testament sacrifices to explain this in the manner already familiar to us, adding, "As John says, 'The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. (i Jno. 1:7.)' But to cleanse is to cleanse, or purify, and nothing else. . . . and when once all His work shall have been consummated, then there shall stand around His throne a great multitude which no man can number-a multitude of human beings, pure and holy like Himself. And were you to ask how they have become so pure, they would answer that they ' washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb! (Rev. 7:14.) Mark, mark, not that they by the blood of Jesus have appeased God; no, but that they, in the blood of Jesus, have washed their robes."

The style of argument I have already indicated:"The apostle does not say, 'to propitiate God' "! Not, it must be confessed, in so many words; but does he say, to make propitiation ? It is the only possible rendering of the text. whom, then, does He propitiate, if not God ? How did He make propitiation at all-that is, appeasal, -if there were no one to be appeased ? If there were, who was it but God ? Surely, if He is not named, the reference is, plainly enough, to Him.

Mr. Princell, as we have seen, is bolder than his leader. Hilaskomai here "plainly" means only "to show mercy with respect to"-that is, "to pardon '! But this is only assertion, against which we have the whole doctrine of the Old Testament, as we have seen, as well as the regular use of the word. In Luke 18:13 the correct force of the passive is also " be propitiated." The sacrificial system shows any thing rather than simple " forgiveness " without atonement made, and the sinner's repentance was not the atonement.

Then the quotation from John can scarcely, one would think, be meant for proof. Of course, to cleanse is to cleanse, but " to make propitiation " is not "to cleanse.' The latter is the effect of the former-not the same thing. And even to cleanse here is not to make inwardly pure, in the sense of regeneration, or communicating a new life, but answers to Heb. 10:22-the" heart sprinkled from an evil conscience." The meaning of purging by the blood Hebrews will presently show us.

As for the blood-washed throng in Revelation, they are witnesses against Dr. Waldenstrom, not for him. For the white robes are (διχαιώματα) " the righteous acts of the saints" (Rev. 19:8, R. V.), which cannot be meant, therefore, to have been internally purified, but freed from the imputation of the evil which had been in them after all; the washing here was from guilt, and it is by its atoning power that the blood of Christ avails for this.

But the doctrine of cleansing by the blood is in the ninth and tenth chapters of Hebrews, to which Dr. Waldenstrom now goes on, having quoted chap. 9:13, 14, he asks, " What, then, according to the idea of the apostle, were the sacrifices of goats and oxen meant to do ? Answer:To appease God ? No; but to sanctify the unclean unto an outward cleansing. To effect any spiritual cleansing, or to make the worshipers perfect as touching the conscience, that they could not do. (5:9.) ' For the law made nothing perfect.' (chap. 7:19.) But the sacrifices of the Old Testament were only types. In the New Testament, there is a better sacrificial blood-the blood of Jesus Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit has offered Himself unto God ; and what was its significance according to the idea of the apostle ? Did he say, " How much more, then, shall the blood of Christ appease God, so that, again, it may be possible for Him to be gracious unto us?' No; but he did say this:' How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.' . . . To cleanse, to cleanse from sin, that is the power of the sacrificial blood in the New Testament."

Now, what is the theme of the apostle in all this part of Hebrews ? It is the cleansing of the conscience, so that we can now do what under the law they could not-draw nigh to God. The vail before the holiest showed that under the law,-that is, by its works,-this was impossible. The vail is now rent, and Christ has, by His own blood, entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. What does this mean, entering in as high-priest by His own blood ? Does it mean power in the blood Godward, or simply manward ? How has He obtained redemption ? Does the blood speak of death here, or of life ? Now, immediately following the verse which Dr. Waldenstrom has quoted we find this:"And for this cause He is the mediator of the new testament, that, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."

Why has not Dr. Waldenstrom quoted this ? Would it have helped his argument, or spoiled it, to have done so ? And the apostle goes on to insist upon the necessity of death, and to connect with it what was, indeed, the testimony of it-the blood so necessary even under the law, and without shedding of which was no remission? We see that this shedding of blood does not stand alone in this chapter; but that it is connected with the doctrine clearly announced, of the necessity of the death of Christ for redemption, and that the shedding of blood must (of course) furnish the blood which now sprinkled upon the heart purges it from a bad conscience. The knowledge of redemption through Christ's death sets the soul at rest, and enables us to draw near to God.

But more :by the same precious blood the heavenly things themselves are cleansed for us,-"that is," says Dr. Waldenstrom himself, "the heavenly sanctuary." He catches at this to say that whatever may be meant by it, " yet surely we must see that [the apostle] sets forth the meaning of the sacrifices to be that of cleansing." If he had said 'a' meaning, who would have contested it ? But he thinks he has gained all when he states thus a half-truth for a whole. Nay, it is no matter to him what the heavenly sanctuary means; nor, therefore, what the cleansing itself is, for that must be affected by it. His view imperatively requires, as we have seen, that it should be internal cleansing,-the communication of life, for the blood is the life; but how can the heavenly sanctuary be cleansed thus? It cannot, and cleansing from defilement has no real place in Dr. Waldenstrom's thoughts.

Yet he can venture to tell us that the apostle " explains this cleansing as meaning that Christ once for all, now at the end of the ages, has been manifested ' to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (5:26);' " and that " in verse 28, he repeats the same thought, saying, ' Christ was once offered to bear [that is, for the purpose of bearing, or taking away] the sins of many.'Thus, what in other places is called atonement for sins through sacrifices, that is here called a putting away of sins, or a bearing them away"!

This is bold enough :the two words are quite different, the " putting away " of sins the effect of atonement, the bearing of sins, the essential element of atonement itself. The last is the same word that Peter uses when he says, in a text which seems, like some other important ones, to have escaped our author. " Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree … by whose stripes ye were healed." (i Pet. 2:24.) Is this the same as 'bare away our sins in His own body " and that " on the tree "? Even if it were, awkward as would be the conception, it could scarcely obscure the vicarious character of atonement here ; but it is not, as Dr. Waldenstrom must know it is not:it is "bare up," "sustained," bore the burden of. How nearly the repetition of Isaiah's words:" He shall bear their iniquities; . . . He hath poured out His soul unto death ; and He was numbered with the transgressors ; and He bare the sin of many " !

Thus alone could sin be taken away, " the chastisement of our peace " being " upon Him." How vain to deny it ! how terrible to slight or deny the need and value of a work so precious ! It is needless to follow Dr. Waldenstrom into the tenth chapter of Hebrews, where his argument is but a monotonous repetition of the same half-truths. The sacrifice cleanses, therefore it does not atone ! it sanctifies, therefore it does not atone ! What is supposed to be a part of our intuitive knowledge he does not seem to have apprehended, that a whole is greater than its parts. Let us repeat it for him, that it is just because the blood df Christ atones for us that it can cleanse,-that it is just because He bare our sins upon the tree that they can be taken away from us. The truth he refuses is the natural, necessary complement of the truth he sees.

Nor does it need to take up the passages cited from the first epistle of John, which even all his effort cannot make otherwise than clear. It is only when he introduces such thoughts as that of " propitiating sinners from their sins "-to which he rightly enough appends the doubt, " if we could use such an expression "-that there is any difficulty at all. He does not, as we have seen, even mention the passages in Peter. His arguments, with the most wearisome reiteration, do but affirm and reaffirm these two things, that because the blood is the life, blood poured out, or sprinkled is still life, not death ; and secondly, that once prove that the blood sanctifies or cleanses, you have disproved vicarious atonement. Meanwhile, he has scarcely attempted to meet the arguments on the other side, or looked even at the texts upon which they are founded ! And while he admits, in a general way, that Christ died for us-I suppose, for our sins,-yet why He should have died, we cannot, in the two books we have been examining at least, understand at all. It may be that it was for the moral effect of it:Scripture says it was " for redemption." That "the chastisement of our peace was upon Him;" that ''the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" that thus "He was made sin for us," "bare the sins of many," "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," "suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust," "redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us;" that He "tasted death for every man;" that "the Son of man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,"-all this, and much more, must be for him as inexplicable as, in fact, by him it is unexplained.

We do not propose to follow him into the last three chapters of this book, where, from the common confusion between reconciliation and atonement, he gains some points against those who make it. In this there is little interest for us, and in much that he says we should have to agree with him; but it is striking and characteristic that, when he has shown us how, in those who are ambassadors for Christ, God beseeches men, as it were, and they pray, in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God,- there, as if a mountain lay across his path, he stops and goes no further. From his book you would never learn that the ground of the appeal for reconciliation lies in this, that "God has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

And this mountain, though with the eternal dawn bright upon its summit, lies still as an insurmountable barrier across the path of Dr. Waldenstrom and all those who plead the cause of non-vicarious atonement.

Lecture II.-i Kings 17:2-9.

Now we have, from the second verse of the chapter, the Lord's discipline of His servant. We have his character in the first verse,-what he was, how he stood before the living God, the God of Israel. We see him in the presence of God's enemies with His word; one of those who had learned His mind, and therefore who could be used as Jehovah's mouth. He is now called away into the wilderness, himself to be disciplined; to learn some needed lessons under God's hand.

Discipline is needed by us from the first moment of our lives until the last. The discipline of the Father is ours because we are children. And the discipline of the Lord is ours too in the character of servants; for He has as much to do in shaping the instruments He uses as He has by them when they are shaped.

That discipline of the Lord never ceases; but still there are special seasons of it, and a special season we have here in Elijah's life. He has scarcely stood forth publicly before the world before the Lord takes him away again, apart by himself. No doubt it was not a new thing for Elijah to be alone with God ; but there are yet some new features in his present isolation. He is bidden to turn eastward and hide himself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. You know what "Jordan" means,- the great typical river of death. And " Cherith " means "cutting off." The Lord brings him to that significant place, and there makes him drink of the brook, sustained by the ravens, which feed him there.

We have to take these illustrative names to help our understanding of the Lord's dealings here. They show us Cherith as the prophet's Mara, where he had to drink in, as it were, the death from which as judgment he escapes. Miraculously sustained himself, he learns for himself "the terrors of the Lord," and how sin has wrecked the first creation. And it is a lesson we have to learn. We have to pass through the world, knowing, as far as outward circumstances go, no exemption from the common lot of men. God would not sever us from it. His own Son has come down into the world, as we know, in order to go through it Himself; the One who was ever pleasing to the Father, and had no need of discipline, and could not possibly have to say to judgment except as bearing it vicariously on the cross. Yet, in His grace, He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, and passed through all the trials and troubles proper to man. Free from the callousness which sin engenders in us, He entered into them in a way we can little realize. "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." His mere presence in the world was enough to make Him a " Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." It did not need that He should personally be subject to it:it was enough for Him to be in the world to realize what the world was. He had come from God and went to God, and He was with God all the way through. That was sufficient to make Him pre-eminently a Man of sorrows, just because He was not a man like us. How little of the misery around have our hearts room for ! How even familiarity with it deadens our sense of it! And how our own personal sorrows absorb and abstract us from those around ! Think of One all eye, all ear, all heart, for all of this. The Lord knew it divinely, and felt every thing.

Personally, however, He gave Himself up to that which sin has made our condition. His probation was not. in Eden, but a wilderness; nor did He use His miraculous power to relieve His hunger there. He had come into the world only to do God's will in it, and His hunger was no motive to act, when that will was not expressed. In His answer to Satan, He just takes the ground of man, but perfect man:-" Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

And the word of God, whatever trial were involved, whatever suffering it called for, that word was to Him meat and drink. He lived by it. It ought to be that to us. The bare fact of having the word of God to fulfill, whatever it call for ought to be enough, surely, to sustain us. The bare fact of being in His path ought to be enough, as we realize it, to furnish us with the endurance and faith needed for it.

Thus, then, the Lord passes Elijah through the suffering and sorrows coming on the land. He brings him to Cherith, and Cherith yields him water for his thirst. Just as, in the beautiful language of the eighty-fourth psalm, it is said, as to the blessing of those "in whose heart are the ways "-the ways that lead to the presence of God, " Who passing through the valley of Baca," (of tears) " make it a well". Cherith becomes this to the prophet.

Thus God makes things most contrary to work together for good to them that love Him. It is not loss to learn what that world is through which Christ has passed before ; nor to be proved by it as He was proved; nor to have had in it the discipline He could not need ; nor the opportunity of doing in it, as He did, the Father's will, in the face of suffering and of sorrow.

By and by, it will certainly be no sorrow to have known, in whatever measure, the circumstances of his path down here, in which God was glorified as nowhere else. How could we be so prepared to see, as now we may see, but soon shall fully, what His perfection was, or what the grace that brought Him into the world for us ? And then to have shared, in whatever smaller measure, with Him the trial, and with Him the victory ! Manna is no mere wilderness food, though it is that. In our Canaan home at last, and forever, it is written that he that overcometh shall eat of the hidden manna.

This is another thing from discipline, of course; but we do need discipline at God's hand continually too ; and that discipline is really what God uses to strengthen and bless. You have it in a beautiful way in Balaam's unwilling blessing of the people. "Who can count the dust of Jacob ?" Jacob is looked at in the figure of dust. What does that mean? It means that they had been as dust trodden under the foot of the Egyptians. And yet Egypt was the place in which suddenly Jacob had grown into a nation. " The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." It is the rule in all dispensations that have been, for all God's people. Thus Balaam says, "Who can count the dust of Jacob?" "Jacob" is designedly said. It was his natural, not spiritual, name,- Jacob, the " supplanter." And Jacob needed humiliation, but grew by it.

That is what we find in the first place as to the prophet in this chapter. In the second place, God takes him away from the brook, when it fails and dries up, to Zarephath, outside of Israel altogether. Israel had rejected the Lord, and were feeling His hand in consequence. He takes him outside of Israel to be witness that the grace of the Lord will not be dammed back by human barriers, or restricted to the narrow limits to which man would confine it. That is the way the Lord uses that story of the widow of Zarephath. And the gospel in Luke commences with His testimony at Nazareth, that if in Israel the outflow of His goodness is restrained, God will have His witnesses in spite of that. Grace will only show itself the more gracious. Outside of the whole field of privilege, He takes Himself a witness among the Gentiles.
For the Lord's words recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke are not a mere arbitrary expression of God's sovereignty;_they have been so taken, but they are not. " Of a truth," He says, " many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land ; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow." (10:25, 26.) Now you must remember that what they had been just saying, after they had borne witness too of His gracious words, and wondered at them, was, " Is not this Joseph's son ?" Before this, He had been declaring to them the acceptable year of the Lord, and the power of the Spirit there in Him for their healing. It is when they were saying, "Is not this Joseph's son?" in spite of the gracious words they were conscious and witness of,-it is then that He warns them that God cannot be shut up by their unbelief:if they reject Him, He will go outside to the Gentiles.

That is what Elijah has to learn in the case of the widow of Sarepta. He has to learn to go out with God outside the" limits to which natural ties, and even religious associations, would confine him, and recognize in a woman of Sidon the work of God's sovereign grace,- there in its fullest and most wonderful display. I do not believe we have bottomed the need of man (or, therefore, our own,) until we have learnt the absolute sovereignty of divine grace,-shown, however, let us remember, in a scene where man's rejection of it compels Him to be sovereign, if He show grace at all. Man's will, alas ! is in opposition to that will of God to which, if all yielded, all could and would be saved. But if some,-if we have yielded, is it because of betterness in us?-were our hearts naturally more docile or obedient ? Scripture shall answer for us:"As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." Therefore, beloved brethren, was it needful that we should be born again, "not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God " alone. The very figure speaks of this ; for in our natural birth, was there aught of our own will ?-were we consulted ? Or in creation, has the thing called into being its choice? And we are not only born of God, but His creation, " His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works."

But then this sovereign grace is grace in its fullest display. It is divine love overtopping barriers that might well be thought, even by it, unsurmountable. It is the heart of God manifested,-His will shown indeed to be but the energy of His nature who is love.

I know what rises in the mind of some :" Why not, then, save all ? Could He not as well save all ?" But I can only answer, The necessary limit even to divine goodness is its own perfection. God has solemnly assured us He would not have men perish. What infinite wisdom can do, I must be infinitely wise myself to know.

Elijah's second lesson is one that it indeed imports the man of God to have learnt well.

All the way through, Elijah has to learn the lesson of dependence. Dependence, of course, is nothing else than faith ; and the Lord puts His servant where faith shall be a continual necessity. Thus, what He seeks from us, He gives us practical help toward producing for Him. Faith grows by exercise. God ordains for it, in Elijah's case, continual exercise. He has no stock of his own, we may say, ever to subsist upon. The ravens bring him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening ; and the next day, and still the next, it is the same thing again. And then when he comes to Zarephath, there you find, in the same way, the widow is called upon to sustain him, and there is a little oil in a cruse and a handful of meal in a barrel. The meal does not fail in the barrel, and the oil does not fail in the cruse. It does not increase, however,-it continues a handful of meal and a little oil ; and he is kept, in that way, in constant dependence upon God.

And that is the way the Lord would have us spiritually. He never gives a stock of any thing-of grace or of gift- so that we can say, " I have got enough to last me so long, at least." That would be taking us out of the place of faith, and depriving us of the blessing God has for us. He covets to show us what He is,-His power, His love, His unforgetfulness of us. As it is said of the people whom in His love and His pity He redeemed, " He bare them and carried them all the days of old." It is a great thing to get this in a real and practical way for ourselves with God. If He keeps us low down here,-and you know it is His way, in more senses than one, to call and choose the poor,-it is not because His hand is niggard, (God forbid !) but that we may not miss realizing this great blessing of His care. Often all we think of is, having our need met; but how little a thing is that with God ! It would cost Him nothing, we may say, to meet the need of a lifetime in a moment; and a lesser love than His would supply it at once, and get rid of a constant burden. But that is not His way. To supply the need is a small thing ; but to supply it in such a way as to make us feel in each seasonable supply the Father's eye never withdrawn from us, the Father's heart ever employed about us,-that is what He means. "Give us day by day our daily bread " is the prayer the Lord taught His disciples; and thus we ask Him continually to be waiting on us. Is it not much more than to ask, Give us now, that we may not have to come again ?

What a place the wilderness was to Israel, where the constant manna was a daily miracle, and the cloud of Jehovah's presence led them in the way ! It was the place, alas! of constant murmurings ; but in God's design, and to faith wherever in exercise, how wonderful a manifestation of the living God ! Yet that wilderness journey is but for us a type,-only a shadow, therefore short of the reality of what faith in us should realize to be ours. What a spectacle to the heavenly beings, to whom is " known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God "! what daily miracles of grace for eyes that are open to it!

And of course these were types (as the manna and the water from the rock,) of spiritual blessings ministered to us. And here, the same rule applies. No stock given into our hand; all funds in God's treasure-house, but therefore unfailing; and a daily, hourly, ministry of strength according to the need, which not only meets it, but tells of the tenderness of a Father's care, and of the faithfulness of our High-Priest gone in to God.

Precious lessons for more than Elijah the Tishbite !- fresh for our hearts to-day.

(To be continued.)

This chapter furnishes us with some important warnings against man's interference with so wonderful a revelation as God has given. It is well for the heart to have firm hold of the grand truth that all is from God, and therefore not to be reasoned about, but received in faith; and the more unquestioning that faith, the more apprehension there will be of the mind of God. For this, we need, as in the prayer of the apostle in Eph. 1:, that God would give the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of the heart being enlightened, etc. Here, too, Paul expresses the desire of his heart that there might be in the saints every where this knowledge of the mystery of God, which would so satisfy the soul that its search after other things would be stopped. The common participation in these things by saints would knit their hearts together in love. It was not alone for those at Colosse the apostle desired these things, but for as many as had not seen his face in the flesh. His ministry was in the whole Church, and what he desired for one he desired for all, longing after them in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

To him a special dispensation, or stewardship, of the mystery of God was committed; and this was not alone taken up as responsibility-" Woe is me if I preach not the gospel," but his heart's affections had been won to Christ as the One who had died and risen for him, and whose love, thus shown toward him when in sin, now constrained Paul to live to Christ.

In the mystery of God are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If this be apprehended, man's enticing words will not beguile one. He may offer what to the unwary and uninstructed may appear fascinating, but it is only at best a poor substitute, and is introduced by the enemy in order to divert from Christ.

A little word of commendation is graciously added,- words of encouragement in the path of right for those already in danger of being warped from it. This, in the wisdom of the Spirit, was the true way to gain access to their hearts; not by blaming them for their failings, but commending their order, and the steadfastness of their faith in Christ.

But there was not lacking the exhortation to walk in Christ and not to be satisfied with present attainment, but to be gaining firmer hold of the One that they had already known. " Rooted and built up " speaks of growth in every way,-a firmer hold of the One already known through grace; such as the picture given in Phil. 3:-Christ at the right hand of God as the source of all grace and blessing, and as an object for the heart in heaven, and Christ in His lowly path down here as the One whose mind we shall thus have.

Only as we get the object right will the path be right,- all else is but fleshly effort; and however sincere the soul in its desires, it must surely succumb to the pressure from outside and within; and what is produced becomes the piety of nature, sanctified flesh, and not the manifestation of the life of Jesus in our mortal bodies. How fruitless the attempt to be any way walking as approved unto God save as we take in, in faith, this blessed object-living by faith,-"the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me! Self-judgment may clear the eye from the mists which have obscured it, and in this we need constantly to be exercised; but only as we see Him in the unclouded light of the glory of God can there be energy communicated to maintain our ground against the enemy, or go on to perfection.

But human philosophy-the mere working of mind and imagination about moral principles, which to the pride of the heart might seem an easier or, at least, a needful way of settling many points, the faithful needed to be warned against. Tradition, law-keeping, and such-like things would approve themselves to the mind or conscience, but they were after the rudiments of the world; and when God had given up dealing with man upon that ground, they were but "beggarly elements."

By the law, God had taken up man in the flesh, and educated him in certain moral principles. If he heartily adopted these principles, and accepted them as a proper definition of human righteousness, they led to the discovery of his own incapacity to keep them, and guilty and without strength was in consequence man's proved condition by them. They became the ministry of death and condemnation. But this was not now God's way with man, still less were mere human traditions, however sanctified by the appearance of antiquity. Christ, a heavenly Christ, was now revealed-the revelation of God's perfect love to man in all his proved need, and the remedy for all the sin in which he was found, through His atoning death and sufferings, as well as now risen and glorified, was the measure of man's place and acceptance in the heavenlies. In view of Christ, how all man's traditions, and even the law, holy as it was, and God's purpose in giving it, sink into nothing in comparison !

How wonderful the statement that follows !-" For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the Head of all principality and power." How suitable to the condition of those who were in danger of looking another way, to remind them of this! Divine fullness-the fullness of Godhead dwelling in a man! As to the cross itself, how striking the way in which it is presented ! " For in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell; and, having made peace by the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto itself." How well and completely must that work be done which had thus been taken up !

From ver. 10-15 is a statement of some aspects of that completeness, and it seems as if the Spirit of God anticipates all the ways in which need could be felt, and shows how fully they are met. Thus are the avenues guarded by which these human devices would gain access. The divine remedy being known, the human is not needed.

A Jew would come with his circumcision, and press it as a divine institution, and how early this was done, and how successful the snare, Galatians and other portions of the Word prove. But in Christ I have the true circumcision,-the body of the flesh put off, all that to which the law applied gone, through the death of Christ. But I have more:I have been buried with Him in baptism; yet not left in the grave either, though I, as a poor corrupt and corrupting creature, needed to be put out of sight. But faith in the working of God, who raised Christ from the dead, has linked me, identified with Him, in this new place with God.

My history closed, as to the ruin I was connected with, and a new beginning made for me-a risen man in Christ. Next, as to my condition in nature as dead in sins, I am made alive together with Him, and as to all the sins which were the expression of that state, they are all forgiven. How thorough the deliverance His love has wrought, that the conscience, free from all guilt, the heart might delight itself in God, and now no longer dead to Him, "alienated from the life of God," but alive with Christ, my privilege is, to live to Him who has thus rescued and redeemed me !

But there remain two other things, which, though they are not my personal condition, which has thus been so blessedly met, were yet opposed to me, and operated to shut me out from blessing. The first is the law, not now looked at in its rule over me and the consequent results, but as that which, given to the Jew as his distinctive privilege, if it shut him into the place of privilege, shut me, the Gentile, out. This, then, is taken out of the way, nailing it to His cross, as now fully entered into in Eph. 2:, the barrier has been removed, and no longer withstands the entrance of the Gentile into the full favor of God, and place of nearness such as was never known to a Jew or could be for a man in the flesh.

Lastly, principalities and powers, under whose dominion I was, have been triumphed over through the cross. We are delivered from the authority of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Thus every aspect of need is met. But not alone that:every blessing conferred which the blessing of God, working according to the perfection of His wisdom, could plan to give us. How wonderful His ways! Well may we say, "What hath God wrought! "

Such being our established place of blessing, the exhortations that follow are simple. I am to refuse man's ordinances, and the things whereby he would infringe my liberty, and to accept them is to deny Christianity. What have meats and drinks and holy days to do with risen heavenly life? Yet such is ours. Eternal life begun is not so limited or marked, and the body is of Christ, and belongs to a different scene from this, in which that life is now for a season displayed. Yet holy days are shadows of things to come, but for the earth, and will be kept and enjoyed by those whose calling connects them with the earth in a scene of millennial blessedness.

Neither is the intrusion of some other being, under the plea of a humility which is false, to be allowed. Those who would put angels or saints or priests between me and Him have interposed a fatal hindrance to my growth, and even secured my downfall. True humility is an accompaniment of the faith which puts God in His true place as the Giver and myself as the receiver of His benefits. And if God, acting from Himself, is pleased to bestow the highest blessings freely on the least deserving, what becomes us is to take with thankful and rejoicing hearts what He gives. When, too, we know that all comes to us as the fruit of God having been glorified by Christ, we find ourselves in happy liberty before Him, as identified, through grace, with all the sweet savor of that precious offering. But the thickness of a gold-leaf between the Head and the members is as fatal, though not as manifest, as a great chasm.

May we be kept sensible that all the fullness is in Him, and open to us continually to draw upon with the faith which honors and gives Him His true glory. Dead and risen with Him, we are cut off, on the one hand, from all the evil in which man in the flesh, religious or otherwise, is found, and, on the other, brought into that new scene where "old things have passed away, and all are become new, and all of God." Our privilege is, to live to God, and seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God ; living in the scene which rejected Him, as strangers and pilgrims and unknown, but waiting for Him who is our life to be manifested, when we shall share His joy and glory and its unending bliss forever. R.T.G.

As to reward, as motive or merit, it is clear that any A such thought destroys the whole truth of devoted-ness, because there is no love in it. It is self, looking, like "James and John," for a good place in the kingdom. Reward there is in Scripture, but it is used to encourage us in the difficulties and dangers which higher and truer motives bring us into. So Christ Himself, 'who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame." Yet we well know that His motive was love. So Moses:"he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible, for he had respect to the recompense of reward." His motive was, caring for his brethren. So reward is ever used, and it is a great mercy in this way. And every man receives his reward according to his own labor.

The spring and source of all true devotedness is divine love filling and operating in our hearts :as Paul says, " The love of Christ constraineth us." Its form and character must be drawn from Christ's actings. Hence grace must first be known for one's self, for thus it is I know love. Thus it is that this love is shed abroad in the heart. We learn divine love in divine redemption. This redemption sets us too, remark, in divine righteous-ness before God. Thus all question of merit-of self-righteousness-is shut out, and self-seeking in our labor set aside. "Grace," we have learnt, " reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ." The infinite perfect love of God toward us has wrought,-has done so when we were mere sinners,-has thought of our need-given us eternal life in Christ when we were dead in sins-forgiveness and divine righteousness when we were guilty,-gives us now to enjoy divine love-to enjoy God by His Spirit dwelling in us, and boldness in the day of judgment, because as Christ, the judge, is, so are we in this world. I speak of all this now in view of the love shown in it. True, that could not have been divinely without righteousness. That is gloriously made good through Christ, and the heart is free to enjoy God's unhindered love,-a love shown to men in man. For the very angels learn "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." This knits the heart to Christ, bringing it to God in Him, God in Him to us. We say nothing separates us from this love.

The first effect is, to lead the heart up, thus sanctifying it :we bless God, adore God, thus knows ; our delight- adoring delight-is in Jesus.

But thus near to God, and in communion with Him,- thus not only united, but consciously united, to Christ by the Holy Ghost, divine love flows into and through our hearts. We become animated by it through our enjoyment of it. It is really "God dwelling in us," as John expresses it; " His love shed abroad in our hearts," as Paul does. It flows thus forth as it did in Christ. Its objects and motives are as in Him, save that He Himself comes in as revealing it. It is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord ; not the less God, but God revealed in Christ, for there we have learnt love. Thus, in all true devotedness, Christ is the first and governing object; next, "His own which are in the World;" and then our fellow-men. First their souls, then their bodies, and every want they are in. His life of good to man governs ours, but His death governs the heart. " Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us." " The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead :and that He died for all, that they which live should not live unto themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again."

We must note, too, that as redemption and divine righteousness are that through which grace reigns, and love is known, all idea of merit and self-righteousness is utterly excluded, so it is a new life in us which both enjoys God and to which His love is precious ; which alone is capable of delighting, as a like nature, in the blessedness that is in Him, and in which His divine love operates toward others. It is not the benevolence of nature, but the activity of divine love in the new man. Its genuineness is thus tested, because Christ has necessarily the first place with this nature, and its working is in that estimate of right and wrong which the new man alone has, and of which Christ is the measure and motive. " Not as we hoped," says Paul (it was more than he hoped), speaking of active charity; "but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us by the will of God."

But it is more than a new nature. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and God's love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. And as it springs up like a well in us unto eternal life, so also living waters flow out from us by the Holy Ghost which we have received. All true devotedness, then, is the action of divine love in the redeemed, through the Holy Ghost given to them.

There may be a zeal which compasses sea and land, but it is in the interest of a prejudice, or the work of Satan. There may be natural benevolence clothed with a fairer name, and irritated if it be not accepted for its own sake. There may be the sense of obligation and legal activity, which, through grace, may lead farther, though it be the pressure of conscience, not the activity of love. The activity of love does not destroy the sense of obligation in the saint, but alters the whole character of his work. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." In God, love is active, but sovereign; in the saint, it is active, but a duty, because of grace. It must be free to have the divine character-to be love. Yet we owe it all, and more than all, to Him that loved us. The Spirit of God which dwells in us is a Spirit of adoption, and so of liberty with God, but it fixes the heart on God's love in a constraining way. Every right feeling in a creature must have an object, and, to be right, that object must be God, and God revealed in Christ as the Father ; for in that way God possesses our souls.

Hence Paul, speaking of himself, says, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." His life was a divine life. Christ lived in him, but it was a life of faith, a life living wholly by an object, and that object Christ; and known as the Son of God loving and giving Himself for him. Here we get the practical character and motive of Christian devotedness-living to Christ. We live on account of Christ:He is the object and reason of our life (all outside is the sphere of death); but this in the constraining power of the sense of His giving Himself for us, So, in a passage already referred to, "the love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, if one died for all, then were all dead :and He died for all, that they which live should not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again." They live to and for that, and nothing else. It may be a motive for various duties, but it is the motive and end of life. "We are not our own, but bought with a price," and have to " glorify God in our bodies."

What is supposed here is not a law contending or arresting a will seeking its own pleasure, but the blessed and thankful sense of our owning ourselves to the love of the blessed Son of God, and a heart entering into that love and its object by a life which flows from Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost. Hence it is a law of liberty. Hence, too, it can only have objects of service which that life can have, and the Holy Ghost can fix the heart on ; and that service will be the free service of delight. Flesh may seek to hinder, but its objects cannot be those the new man and the Holy Ghost seek. The heart ranges in the sphere in which Christ does. It loves the brethren, for Christ does ; and all the saints, for He does. It seeks the all for whom Christ died, yet knowing that only grace can bring any of them; and "endures all things for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." It seeks "to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus; " to see the saints grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, and walk worthy of the Lord. It seeks to see the Church presented as a chaste virgin unto Christ. It continues in its love, though the more abundantly it loves the less it be loved. It is ready to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

The governing motive characterizes all our walk :all is judged by it. A man of pleasure flings away money ; so does an ambitious man. They judge of the value of things by pleasure and power. The covetous man thinks their path folly, judges of every thing by its tendency to enrich. The Christian judges of every thing by Christ. If it hinders His glory in one's self or another, it is cast away. It is judged of not as sacrifice, but cast away as a hindrance. All is dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. To cast away dross is no great sacrifice. How blessedly self is gone here! "Gain to me" has disappeared. What a deliverance that is ! Unspeakably precious for ourselves, and morally elevating ! Christ gave Himself. We have the privilege of forgetting self and living to Christ. It will be rewarded, our service in grace ; but love has its own joys in serving in love. Self likes to be served Love delights to serve. So we see, in Christ on earth, now; when we are in glory, He girds Himself and serves us. And shall not we, if we have the privilege, imitate, serve, give ourselves to Him who so loves us ? Living to God inwardly is the only possible means of living to Him outwardly. All outward activity not moved and governed by this is fleshly, and even a danger to the soul-tends to make us do without Christ, and brings in self. It is not devotedness, for devotedness is devotedness to Christ, and this must be in looking to being with Him. I dread great activity without great communion ; but I believe that when the heart is with Christ it will live to Him.

The form of devotedness-of external activity-will be governed by God's will and the competency to serve ; for devotedness is a humble holy thing, doing its Master's will; but the spirit of undivided service to Christ is the true part of every Christian. We want wisdom. God gives it liberally. Christ is our true wisdom. We want power:we learn it in dependence, through Him who strengthens us. Devotedness is a dependent, as it is a humble, spirit. So it was in Christ. It waits on its Lord. It has courage and confidence in the path of God's will, because it leans on divine strength in Christ. He can do all things. Hence it is patient, and does what it has to do according to His will and Word :for then He can work ; and He does all that is done which is good.

There is another side of this which we have to look at. The simple fact of undivided service in love is only joy and blessing. But we are in a world where it will be opposed and rejected, and the heart would naturally save self. This Peter presented to Christ, and Christ treated it as Satan. We shall find the flesh shrink instinctively from the fact and from the effect of devotedness to Christ, because it is giving up self, and brings reproach, neglect, and opposition on us. We have to take up our cross to follow Christ, not to return to bid adieu to them that are at home in the house. It is our home still if we say so, and we shall at best be "John Marks" in the work. And it will be found it is ever then "suffer me first! " If there be any thing but Christ, it will be before Christ, not devotedness to Him with a single eye. But this is difficult to the heart, that there should be no self-seeking, no self-sparing, no self-indulgence ! Yet none of these things are devotedness to Christ and to others, but the very opposite. Hence, if we are to live to Christ, we must hold ourselves dead, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Collected Writings of J.N.D.)

In pastures green ?Not always; sometimes He
Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me
In weary ways, where heavy shadows be-

Out of the sunshine, warm and soft and bright,-
Out of the sunshine, into darkest night;
I oft would faint with sorrow and affright-

Only for this :I know He holds my hand.
So, whether in a green or desert land,
I trust, although I may not understand.

And by still waters ?No, not always so ;
Ofttimes the heavy tempests round me blow,
And o'er my soul the waves and billows go.

But when the storms beat loudest, and I cry
Aloud for help, the Master standeth by.
And whispers to my soul, " Lo, it is I."

Above the tempest wild I hear Him say, "
Beyond this darkness lies the perfect day :
In every path of thine, I lead the way."

So whether on the hilltops high and fair
I dwell, or in the sunless valleys where
The shadows lie-what matter ? He is there.

And more than this ; where'er the pathway lead,
He gives to me no helpless, broken reed,
But His own hand, sufficient for my need.

So where He leads me I can safely go;
And in the blest hereafter I shall know
Why in His wisdom He hath led me so.

Dr. Waldenstrom and non-vicarious atonement.

I.-Continued.

Dr. Waldenstrom's additions to Lutheranism necessitate an important modification of it. The Lutheran creed is, that "the unworthy and unbelievers receive the true body and blood of Christ, so that, however, they shall not thence derive either consolation or life." Dr. Waldenstrom, believing that the blood is the life, cannot, of course, hold that unbelievers receive it. "This participation in the life of Jesus " is " by the believers in Him " only. Faith he presses as a necessity, yet it is in the sacrament that "through the bread and wine we really become partakers of Christ's body and blood,-that is, we become one body with Him, and are made partakers of His life." Whether this is possible apart from the sacrament I cannot find that he has said. Our Lord's words are absolute, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ; whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life." (Jno. 6:53, 54.) Dr. Waldenstrom may not take these words as referring to the Supper, and he would be surely right in this; but then it is possible to eat and drink thus by faith alone, and there is no ground for maintaining any other presence of Christ in the sacrament. As for membership in the body of Christ, that is by the baptism of the Spirit (i Cor. 12:13; comp. Acts 1:5), and not by any sacrament at all. Thus all is confusion in these views from first to last.

Dr. Waldenstrom lays stress in this connection upon i Cor. 10:16, 17, the last verse of which he translates " more literally :It is one bread ; we, the many, are one body, for we all have part in that one bread." "Paul," he adds, "says, in effect, 'Here is a communion, a partaking of Christ's own life, given for us in death ; here is a uniting of believers into one body, by their partaking of Christ's body, thus making common cause with Him.' "

But it is unfortunate for the argument that the apostle as much speaks of being χoιvωvo, or communicants, of the devils(5:20, Gk.), and of Israel being (χoιvωvo) "partakers of the altar," as he speaks of the (χoιvωvία) communion of the body or of the blood of Christ. In either case, he is thinking evidently of association, and so identification, whether with the altar or worship of Jehovah, or with the devils to which under their idols the Gentiles sacrificed. And just so at the Lord's table, they were associated and identified with the wondrous revelation of God whose central part is the cross of Christ. Dr. Waldenstrom's views really displace the cross, turn the supper of the Lord from a memorial of the past into what is wholly inconsistent with it. True, he speaks, forced by what is so evidently there, of a " life given up in death," but it is not for him the giving up of life, the death itself, for participation in death (in his sense of participation) could have no meaning. For him, it is participation in life,-not death, but its opposite. For the apostle, in this same epistle, it is a remembrance, and a showing forth the Lord's death.

I have before said, believers are not united into one body by partaking of Christ's body, but by the baptism of the Spirit; and the apostle's language, which our author builds upon, suits better the thought of partaking of the one bread being the expression of the one body than it does the idea of the body being formed by this. For it is' of outward association he is speaking, and not of something entirely hidden save to faith. The doctrine of the body is further on in the epistle (chap, 12:), and there quite different, as we have seen.
"The life that the Son of God gave in death " becomes thus for Dr. Waldenstrom the truth intended in every passage where the blood or the death of Christ is spoken of in connection with justification, remission, redemption, or whatever else has been procured for us by it. An un-scriptural expression is introduced every where for the purpose of making death mean the opposite of death. True, it is admitted, He gave His life in death, but the necessity of that death, the meaning of it, we are never given to know. It reminds us of those who tell us, as to the old sacrifices, that the death of the animal was only needed because the blood could not be otherwise procured! Thus that which cannot be altogether ignored is annulled in its deep reality. The awful cry, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me? "finds no answer. God's making His Son to be sin for us is explained to be only this, that God " allowed Him to be treated by men as a sinner." In this light loose fashion, Dr. Waldenstrom might easily, as he promises to do, "consider briefly all the passages in the New Testament which speak of the blood of Jesus as a means of salvation," secure that if death can be only made to mean life, all is simple. The very texts which most plainly say the opposite become at once the strongest in his favor.

Thus, if the apostle says that " God set forth Christ to be a mercy-seat through faith in His blood," this is by such a process easily made to mean that " by faith sinners are made partakers of the blood of Jesus, or of His life, which He gave in death for them." He does not argue about this, nor need to show it from the context. We have only to bring in the new vocabulary, and read " blood " as " life," and we see it at once. It is not pretended that the passage in Romans proves that the blood means life, or that it says any thing about life. Plainly it does not, but that is no matter.

But why give any consideration to texts that can teach us nothing, and when we have the means of so reducing the most refractory into subjection ? In this all too easy work we need not follow Dr. Waldenstrom. It will be only needful to look at any new argument that may present itself. And here we have what perhaps he would call that:-

" Paul says that' God set forth Christ to be a mercy-seat through faith in His blood,-that is, God has made Him to be a mercy-seat by His giving His life in death. … So far from the case being such that Christ through His blood should be a shield for sinners against God and His righteousness, on the contrary, God Himself has set Him forth to be a mercy-seat for sinners, in order that He might save and bless them through Him.'"

Does Dr. Waldenstrom really believe that Christ's death is maintained by any of those he opposes to be a "shield against God and His righteousness"? Is He not uniformly presented by them as "the Lord our righteousness"? (Jer. 23:16.) Can righteousness be a shelter against righteousness ? At any rate, we need not, and dare not, undertake the defense of any one who does not believe that God "gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But there is a deeper question. God gave His Son, assuredly; but why to death? why to the cross ? why to be made a curse for us ! Why must the Son of Man be lifted up? Why is it that " except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"? It is this need which Dr. Waldenstrom seems never to have realized.

That blood-sprinkled mercy-seat of which the apostle speaks here,-for " mercy-seat," I believe, with the Swedish translators, to the proper rendering of the word,-should surely be the very thing to show Dr. Waldenstrom his error. For here, if the blood sprinkled speaks of life, it is life taken, not communicated. It is sprinkled before God, not upon men. It is sprinkled to make the throne of God a " mercy-seat; " to cleanse, not sinners, by any impartation to them, but their sins, so that God may be able to abide among them. (Lev. 16:14-17.) I am aware of Dr. Waldenstrom's comments upon this elsewhere (The Reconciliation, p. 55), but it is not true that the tabernacle, ark, or altar represent or typify the people, as he says. No instance can be shown, and any one who reads the chapter can see the case to be as I have represented it.

Dr. Waldenstrom next takes up Rom. 5:9, 10.; and here he makes (rightly enough) "by His death" to be essentially the equivalent of "by His blood; "and then the usual transformation is effected. But thus he makes justification to be also grounded upon a work in ourselves, instead of the work of the cross:" In the blood of Jesus by faith they had become righteous. By faith they had become partakers of the life of Jesus, which He gave in death for them, and thus had their justification happened." And he is bold enough to add, "Here again, therefore, the same doctrine. There is never in Scripture any thing about the obtainment by faith of any reconciliation or grace or righteousness acquired or purchased by the blood for the world,-no, not one single passage with any such idea can be shown to exist in the Bible"(!)

Yet even Dr. Waldenstrom must admit that the Lord Himself said that " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish," and that this refers to the cross on which "the Son of Man was lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish," as also that He says that for this the " Son of Man must be lifted up." Why "must"? and was nothing in the way of grace even procured by this? It was for the world surely, for it was the fruit of God's love to the world ; and many similar passages might be quoted. Here, the blood indeed is not spoken of directly, but the cross is, and is illustrated as to its meaning by the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness :why a serpent lifted up ? It is a type, and we may differ about the significance, but it must mean something ; and if you say, " It just means the 'old serpent' overcome," how does the "lifting up" do this? That is not a picture of life, is it ? it is of death, certainly. Why must the death take place that the life might be received ? Even the author is compelled by Scripture to repeat, though it seems to have no meaning for him, " life given up in death:" well, why " given up in death " ? Could we, then, receive it in no other way than by His dying that we might receive it? Must He lose it that we might obtain it? Nay, He laid down His life that He might take it again ? Why was it, then, that He must lay it down ?

Dr. Waldenstrom cannot answer this:he has no answer. He catches at what is in itself true, that we are recipients of life in Him; but if you ask, Why through death ? why " made a curse for us " ? how did He " bear our sins in His own body on the tree " ? how is it " through His stripes we are healed? he does not know-has nothing that will stand a moment's question. The value of Christ's death seems for him only to win the hearts of men, if at least I read aright all that I can find upon it in this tractate:'"By the death,' 'in His blood,'" he says. That Christ by the grace of God had given His life in death for them, that was what had broken their enmity, and reconciled them to God." All well; but is there no more?

To this we shall return, if the Lord will. The strength of Dr. Waldenstrom's position, it will be seen, is just the utterance of half-truths for whole ones, and the reiteration of a bald sophistry, that blood shed in death stands for life. This he repeats and re-repeats, and it would be idle to repeat the exposure of it. What makes against him, he omits to speak of:as where, in Heb. 13:12, the apostle dwells upon the truth that "Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate," Dr. Waldenstrom insists upon what every one knows, that to be sanctified is to be "cleansed from sin." It is more, but it is that; and so when he says that "the work of Christ was to remedy just the injury which sin had occasioned," that is a truth, though a partial one. We may agree too that " neither is it said that the blood by its merit should move God to consider us holy, although we were not holy." Few, it is to be hoped, believe any such thing ; and there is confusion apparently between holiness and righteousness. That God "justifieth the ungodly" Scripture does say plainly, righteousness being "imputed without works" (Rom. 4:5, 6); but that is the very way in which God produces holiness,-not acts as if it were no matter.

But the gist of the passage in Hebrews Dr. Waldenstrom never notices at all, though it is plain enough in the verse as he quotes it. Why must Jesus, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffer without the gate ? It is this evidently that gives the very blood of Christ power to sanctify, as in the type he tells us that the "bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin are burned without the camp." (5:2:) Why that? If the blood be the life, in the way the author puts it, and the impartation of life be the whole thing, how does the burning without the camp help the blood to sanctify ? Dr. Waldenstrom has not a word-does not entertain the question. Though with the apostle of all importance, with him it seems to have none:why but that he and the apostle are not in agreement ?That is the simple reality.

The apostle is speaking of death, and not of life; and even here, he tells us, death alone would not be enough. " Outside the camp " expresses what " outside the gate " of the city of God does afterward-distance from God, because of sin ! Nay, one expression of it in the cross is not enough, but the darkness which throws its pall over the scene must also testify with the agonizing words of the Sufferer which break out from it, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " " Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law," says the apostle, "being made a curse for us, as it is written, ' Cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree.' " (Gal. 3:13.) The due of sin is not death alone. The bearing of our sins requires more:and to the real subject of the experience of the twenty-second psalm, the agony of agonies is that which again and again He deprecates-" But be not Thou far from Me, O Lord ! "

Dr. Waldenstrom's system has no place for this :vicarious atonement he refuses. But why this, then?-" Our fathers trusted in Thee; they trusted in Thee, and were not forsaken." Why this exception in the case of the One only absolutely righteous ?

Here, then, we may leave the consideration of Dr. Waldenstrom's first pamphlet on the blood of Jesus. There is nothing more in it that presents any difficulty, if we have clearly mastered what has been before us.

(To be continued.)

1 CORINTHIANS X.

In a day of widespread declension such as this, it may be useful to trace the steps by which a low point is reached, as the discovery of our real state and its exposure by the Word is one of the means God uses in order to extricate from it.

No one sets out on a downward path with the idea of its being that, though God may allow many warnings to come, and even the discipline of His hand to be felt, to awaken from its lethargy the soul that is indifferent. Neither can any one who is pursuing that way tell how far he will go, though of course his own purpose is, to keep within certain bounds. But the power of the enemy is such that we have no ability to stand against him, unless we are going on with God, in the strength He gives to those who are dependent on Him.

In i Cor. 10:1-13, we have the steps in the course of declension very fully pictured, and they present a striking contrast to the apostle's own way, as given at the end of the previous chapter. Some have difficulty in understanding Paul's words, because they have in some degree disconnected the life-eternal life-from the path in which those who have it should (and more or less do) walk. For some, alas! the deliverance from judgment, because of failure in responsibility as children of Adam, by the cross of Christ, it is to be feared, deliverance also from responsibility itself. But this is surely not God's way. Nay, He puts us by redemption upon higher ground than we had left, and with, as a consequence, higher responsibilities. If we are saved by grace,-" not of works, lest any man should boast,"-yet we are " created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath afore prepared that we should walk in them," and he who does not more or less walk in that path disproves his title to eternal life. It is still true that " without holiness, no man shall see the Lord," and one part of Scripture is not in conflict with another, but all is in harmony. (Comp. also 2 Tim. 2:19.)

The outward participation in the things of Christianity was no guarantee of attaining to the rest of God, and it is this that is insisted on in the first verses of chapter 10:They all stood on new ground, and partook of what was God's provision for their need,-the bread from heaven and the water out of the rock,-yet with many of them God was not well pleased, and they fell in the wilderness -they did not reach Canaan. These things are expressly said to have "happened to them for examples (types), and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."

The first step in the downward course is lust. If God had been retained in their thoughts, they could not have doubted that He would give all that was needful. To desire something different from what God sees good to give shows that the heart has turned from Him, and lost its confidence in His love. To desire what is according to His will is not lust, and He has not limited us as to what is really for our good. " No good thing will He withhold from them which walk uprightly." The restless craving of desire is itself a witness that we have turned away from the only One who can satisfy. " He that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst."

What follows next is idolatry-a god that suits the low state :with Israel, of course, the golden calf is referred to. It may be only a limitation of the God of revelation-an ideal which suits the fancy or tastes, but which is therefore only a reflex picture of the one who forms it-of myself. Hence men deified human passion, which was a large part of heathenism. But it is only a human sentiment or idea, for God can only be known through revelation, and is far from being what man's imagination would paint Him:"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." Unrestrainedness of ways is the result:" The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." "Aaron had made them naked" should probably be, "let them loose." (See 2 Chron. 28:19.) If God is turned from, how soon the heart is turned to folly ! How like the prodigal going off into the far country to indulge himself in every evil ! If piety toward God is neglected, then no amount of truth can keep us, or be a check upon the flesh.

Next, worldly alliances are formed. If we are down upon the world's level, it will soon be glad of our company, and, little by little, will take away all from us that savors of the fear of God. It is easy to acquire a liking for what conscience at first refused as evil. If it is not judged, but tolerated, however spurious the plea, it will soon be accepted, and delighted in. And it is striking that from Peor Balaam was forced to speak the highest blessing of the people, when he took up his parable the third time; and it was there the people fell into alliances with the Midianites. God's best thoughts, and grace toward them, are seen in contrast with their own low state and acts. How seductive is the world !How few of us have grace to refuse it, especially in the shape in which it pleases us !For each of us it has a different aspect, exactly adapted to our tastes, and what would be an attractive bait to one would not be to another. But "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life are not of the Father, but of the world," and "whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God."

We then have Christ despised-the manna esteemed as light food. If I share the world's tastes, I shall not see much in the lowliness of Christ to attract me, and the connection between despising the manna and the fiery serpents is important. If He is rejected, the work of death goes on unhindered. It is sin become exceedingly sinful, manifestly by the rejection of Him who came to relieve from it, and death working unhindered in those that despised Him who came in lowly grace to seek and save the lost.

Finally, the dissatisfaction of heart is openly expressed in their murmuring, which brought the judgment of God; no doubt, a reference to Num. 13:, 14:,-their refusal of the pleasant land, and in heart turning back to Egypt. It was this that brought the full sentence upon them of exclusion from the land which they had openly refused. How solemn the warning! How it should stimulate us to diligence and carefulness to watch against the coming in of what would, if its results were fully known, end in entire separation from God ! And "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Self-confidence is a very different thing from confidence in God, though it may carry one on a good way without the discovery being made of what it really is. "We are kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation." But this is the confidence of one who, knowing his own weakness, has learned to trust Him, and everything else must fail and break down. How beautiful the encouragement given to one beset with the very wilderness-trials which the enemy would use to discourage and drive from God into the meshes of his own net !

Do not think your trials are greater than others, true as it is that "the heart knoweth its own bitterness." "No temptation hath taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful." What a word – "But God is faithful"! Yea, think of Him who is still interested in your welfare, and who, though He may try your faith for your good, will never forsake. Only wait on Him, as One who is entitled to the confidence of your heart, and who will make a way to escape, that you may bo able to bear it, and will give you that for which to praise Him when His delivering hand is seen. To have these exercises is true gain, as to be without them would indeed be loss ; and those who seek to fortify themselves against the trials by their own inventions will find how much they have lost in the weakening of their faith and the consequent obscurity of all that is most precious. To leave the path of faith because of its exercises, to seek one that seems smoother, is to insure one's own downfall, and the missing of even that we aimed at. R.T.G.

And from thence they went to Beer:that is the well whereof the Lord spake unto Moses, ' Gather the people together, and I will give them water.' Then Israel sang this song:' Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it. The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves.' " (Num. 21:16, 18.)

Spring up ! spring up, O well!
Hard-digged (divinely given),
With staff in hand, out the dry sand,
By journeyings on to Canaan's land ;
Foretaste of heaven,
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

Amid those distant hills
The water-brooks run clown ;
River and rill the valleys fill,
And the glad land the Lord doth till,
With plenty crown.
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

Savior from thraldom past,
God of the promised land,
Thy desert love, here, here, we prove !
Boasting in Thee, we'd onward move,
Till there we stand.
Spring up ! spring up, O well !

(1 Sam. 25:)-Concluded.

Very often, beloved friends, the state in which we are would forbid our thus praising God. I mention this, not at all to discourage, but rather that we may be able to separate between what we are in Christ and our own practical condition as overcomers. Look again at David. He was in clanger, not only of not overcoming, but of being overcome and falling into deep sin. How did he act ? as the servant of God, bearing meekly Nabal's taunts and cutting reproach?-did he take it up in the name of God? No, it was in the spirit of his own wounded pride.

There was one, however, in the house of Nabal, and bound to him, too, by a tie which none but God could break, of altogether a different character to Nabal,-one who belonged to the Lord-a woman of faith. Abigail was able to discern in David (outcast and needy wanderer though he was,) the anointed one of the God of Israel,-him whom God was surely about to bring to greatness, as the chosen head of his people. "The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord." Abigail was able to follow the path of David with the eye of faith, and to put herself on to the hour of his glory. Now this shows that her soul was deeply taught of God. But then the very circumstance of her being thus taught of God must have made her situation in Nabal's house most painful, and her connection with him a yoke. Harassed every day,-finding hindrances from, but having no communion with, him to whom she was bound,-able to see the folly of Nabal's position, and to contrast it with that of the man of faith ; she might have felt this to be a strange dealing of the Lord toward her. But her heart was being prepared for a service which before she knew not. She might have said, " Why is it thus with me ? Were I in other and different circumstances, what blessing-what happiness should I feel in serving the servants of God ; but here I am hindered."Many a soul is thus brought (not by self-chosen paths) into a very trying and painful position, distinctly from the desire to serve God. Now no real desire to serve God will ever be in vain. God may make some way for its being answered, even now, and the time will come when this will be fully the case. Meanwhile, there is great profit and discipline of heart in having our neck bowed to the yoke-in being brought to submit to God. Moses was not bound to Pharaoh's house, and therefore in faithfulness he quitted it for the Lord's sake. So with Abraham and his father's house. But there may be circumstances, as those of Abigail, which must be endured, where the soul is called to bear the yoke and to wait upon God. Yet these will be full of abundant blessing. There is in them a secret breaking of the will and bruising of the flesh which will be found most profitable in after-service to God.

Abigail, in her place of quiet retirement, stood much more in the place of communion with the truth than David in the circumstances of this chapter did. She was able to check the wrong feeling of even the man of faith. Whilst David was lost, as it were, in the mist of his own thoughts, Abigail brought in the clear light of the truth to bear on his actions. And David owned and thanked God for her counsel." Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me ; and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand." (10:32, 33.)These were the words of David when alive to the sin in which his pride had set him.

Now, beloved friends, who would have thought that Abigail would ever have been the counselor of David,- one suffering so much for, so beloved of, God, so distinctly His servant, high in grace and in faith,-one far beyond Abigail, as she would have thought. And yet she was tried and kept where she was alone, until the time came for her to be the effectual monitor of David and intercessor for Nabal.

Observe the teaching of God. She took the blessed place of intercession. David, in his wrath, was just about to give the blow-to avenge himself with his own hand, instead of leaving the case in the hand of God. Now this would have taken away one of the most blessed features in the character of David-the leaving all things to God. In Abigail's words we see the strong power of faith. She said, " The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God ; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of the middle of a sling. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have done to my lord according to all the good that He hath spoken concerning thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel, that this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offense of heart unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself ; but when the Lord shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember thine handmaid." (10:29-31.)

If David had placed himself forward thus to the time of his glory, he would never have thought of raising his hand to give the blow, or of shedding causeless blood ; whereas we know that his hands were nearly imbrued in that of the very young men who spoke so kindly of him to Abigail (10:14-17). Had he thought, How, in the hour of my glory, will this action appear to me? he would have been checked.

The place of faith is, always to look beyond present circumstances-on to the time of the end; then we begin to see and judge of things according to God. Thus it was with Abigail. And when we realize our association with God, and the appointed end of glory, we shall act as she did. In the most trying things which happen to us, if we can by faith associate ourselves with God,-if we can see Him with us as our friend-the One who hath said, "Vengeance is Mine:I will repay, saith the Lord," we shall never feel disposed to avenge ourselves, or think of any thing save intercession as it regards those who may have grieved and wronged us. The present actings of God are in grace and mercy. We should rather seek to bring down and subdue and melt."Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."There is nothing so suitable now as taking the place of grace, and desiring to bring under its power whatever meets us individually.

How highly honored was this poor tried and solitary witness for God in Nabal's house !

The hour will come when the hand of God will give the final blow. Nabal was spared by David, but God was about to deal with him in His own way. He cared for none of these things that were transpiring around him. He understood them not. Intercession had been made for him, he was careless about it ; the recipient of mercy, he passed that by." He held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken."(5:36.) But when that was over, his wife simply told him what had happened,-a tale of mercy and of grace. Yet though told in the simplicity of truth, it was as words of death to Nabal-it withered his heart, and "he became as a stone." (10:37, 38.)The hand of God was against him. Now this is intended to throw a very solemn shade over the chapter. Such is the end of all that is not of faith. The very things that are truly blessed turned into the power of withering. This will be felt to the full by and by, when persons are able to look back at mercies received, but see themselves entirely separated from all blessings and from God that gave them. This is remorse. There is nothing so painful as remorse-the sense of circumstances of mercy which have eternally passed away, and the person who has received them forever separated from God.

Nabal's way was "folly," and his end was that of "the fool." But thus will it be with every thing around that disowns communion with the ways and with the lowly place of David. He said, " Shall I take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give them unto men whom I know not whence they be?" (5:2.) Abigail knew whence they were, and she thought lightly of all these things compared to the service of God. Now although we may not be like Nabal, yet we have each of us this Nabal propensity to watch against-the habit of soul which would incline us to say, "my bread," "my goods," "my reputation," "my standing," etc., wherever the word "my" comes across the blessed privilege of being identified with Christ in the lowly place. No heart can be more miserable than one having the Spirit condemning its ways, and, if there be this seeking of our own things and not of the things which be Christ's, the Spirit of God must condemn and be against it. Very often you will find in saints who have sought to serve God, that when they come to die, they have not the same joy as those who have been just converted. Look at the thief, who believed in Christ after He hung upon the cross, and at one who has served God, it may be, for twenty years. Though both are equally accepted and made complete in Christ, yet the latter ought to be able to say, in addition to that which the poor thief said, " I have kept the faith." It is a thing of deep importance even to the practical peace and joy of the saints to be in circumstances where the desires of the Spirit are met. This is not said to hinder or take away the joy of the feeblest saint. If there be need for humiliation, let it be ; but whether we be led to prayer or praise or humiliation, let it have the character of truthfulness before God.

We see, then, the end of Nabal. Nevertheless, awful as that end was, it freed Abigail from her painful situation, and she became associated with him upon whom she knew the blessing of God to rest (10:39-42). She gave up her house, her riches,-all, it would seem, to cast in her lot with him who was yet a wanderer, hunted for his life " as a partridge in the mountains."

But soon the scene is changed ;-Abigail is taken captive, and apparently about to be separated forever from David (chap. 30:).How strange, after a little moment of blessing, to be placed in circumstances more terrible than before !But this only opened a further occasion for faith. Supposing there had been any undue feeling of elation-any unsubdued thought in Abigail's mind, how must this trial have been felt by her as chastening from the hand of God. Otherwise, she may have acted in very distinct and holy faith, receiving the blessing as directly from God. Blessings must be received in one or other of these ways. If exalted, and walking in the flesh, she must have felt the blow as chastisement, and been taught by it to humble herself, to judge her ways, and consider the difference between resting in the creature and in God. But suppose she had received and sustained her situation in the power of faith, this trial would only strengthen her faith, and thus God would be glorified, whilst she was taught a lesson of the weakness of nature, and of of resting in the creature
instead of in God. Sooner or later, the time must come when we are brought to feel the nakedness of the creature When flesh and heart fail, none but God can be our strength.

It is for us to consider which of the places brought before us in this chapter is ours. We may not be able to take the forward place of David, but then there is that place of Abigail,-at least, we can look at that which is suffering for the sake of Jesus, and give it all, or a portion of that we have. It is not the measure or amount, the question is, whether there be the link between us and them. I trust, through the Lord's mercy, all are able to see distinctly what was the place of Nabal, and to turn from it, as Abigail did. We should be conscious of the trials and difficulties of others, and never think lightly of them, or of any evil in Satan's world.

I know of nothing that will so open the Scriptures, and guide our thoughts as to passing events, and as to those with whom we should seek to become identified, as acquaintance with these things. Seek, then, to have your souls deepened in the knowledge of them,-to judge of present circumstances as placing yourselves on, by faith, to the time of the end. David will then have to see standing before him Uriah; and Paul, Stephen, to whose death he was accessory. It is a marvelous thought,- but will Paul's or David's joy be less on this account? No :there will be a power of blessing, such as none but God can give, that will take away every such bitter sting. I say this, believe me, not to make light of sin, but to associate your minds with that hour. Past sins cannot be undone-seek not to have those things or persons about you now that you might not be able to think of with joy. If you bring in the thought of that day on your ways, you will soon be able to discern the nature of all around. There never is a soul that seeks to bring in God's judgments on its ways, that does not glorify God. Faith, though feeble, must lead to the glory of God. There may be faith about trivial things,-about things that we could not speak of to another ; and here we find the nearness of God to us. So, whether you are threatened by coming danger, or tried by past or present circumstances, seek to bring in the power of faith-let God be your counselor. The character of the enemies of God is that of "children in whom is no faith." May your refuge and strength be distinctly in God. This alone can sustain the soul. "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have received the reconciliation."

It is our privilege to know, not only that we have peace with God, but that He also watches over us, and leads us in the paths of service. May we be able to learn this as being under His hand. Would we desire to be brought into practical fellowship with Him in His ways, let us seek it by prayer and supplication.

Do you love Christ?-I ask not if you feel
The warm excitement of that party zeal
Which follows on while others lead the way,
And makes His cause the fashion of the day ;
But do you love Him when His garb is mean,
Nor shrink to let your fellowship be seen?
Do you love Jesus 'midst blind, halt, and maimed ?
In prison succor Him-nor feel ashamed
To own Him,-though His injured name may be
A mark for some dark slanderer's obloquy?
Say not, "When saw we Him?"-each member dear,
Poor and afflicted, wears His image here.

C.H.M.

"And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments."

"But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him."

" We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." (1 Jno. 2:3, 5; 3:14.)

It can never be held too simply that the foundation upon which our souls alone can rest is a work wrought for sinners, so that as sinners we may build on it. We have not to look in at ourselves for the evidences of being born again, in order to know we are. The moment we do so, we are off the ground of simple faith, and involved in a process of reasoning which naturally and necessarily produces doubt and anxiety of soul. Have we not deceitful hearts? Have we not a subtle adversary ever ready to take advantage of our readiness to flatter ourselves,-to hush our souls into a false peace ? Thus, while the careless may be readily persuaded that all is well, the more sincere and earnest we are, the more perplexed and anxious we must be. No word of God seems there to be to throw its light into the gloom and dispel it. Granted we are "justified by faith," who shall assure me that I have it? Granted, "he who believeth on Him hath everlasting life," what word of God settles for me that I believe in Him ?

True, there are marks-evidences:Scripture gives such. The application of them to myself is the difficulty. Scripture does not settle that I have the marks. That must be a reasoning of my own, prejudiced naturally in my own favor, blind as I often find myself, and with the solemn utterance of divine wisdom before me, " He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." (Prov. 28:26.)

Thank God, to no such reasoning are we left. He who " justifieth the ungodly," because for ungodly ones Christ died, has assured me that, without need of further reasonings, all who trust in Him are blessed. (Ps. 2:12.) Without any trust in myself of any kind, I may trust One who died for the ungodly. My title to confide in Him, my Savior, is thus not my godliness but my ungodliness. And "to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly,, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Rom. 4:5.) Observe, it is not here, "that justifieth the believer"-true as that is,-but justifieth the ungodly; for what my faith sees if it look within is not itself or its virtues, but that ungodliness which is but the dark background on which shine forth, in all their glory, the virtues of Him who loved me and died for me when I was only that.

Sweet and precious faith, solid and unshaken, that trusts not itself but Christ ! My ungodliness is no delusion. No deceitful heart betrays me there ! No word of the old liar am I listening to in that, but the true and faithful word of the living God. So, too, that Jesus died for the ungodly, that same word is my warrant. Once again, then and there it bids me " trust in Him," and tells me it is no deception-can be none-to know my blessedness. Test every link there as you will, it is a threefold cord, not quickly broken.

Various are the objections, however, raised to this. The truths of Scripture themselves, torn from their proper connection and misapplied, become apparently the most formidable of all. Texts, too, no less than truths, used after (I must say) the most careless fashion, lend seeming authority to what is simply sad, injurious error. Who has not heard, for instance, the words, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith ; prove your own selves," taken and dwelt upon as the plainest possible command to look into one's self for evidences of being born again ? And how many even now need to be told that the whole sentence, as the apostle wrote it, conveys exactly the opposite thought ? And yet that is the truth. We have only to remember that a certain part of this sentence is a parenthesis, and, for the moment laying it aside, we have, " Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, . . . examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves." They had got in themselves the proof of Christ speaking by the apostle, for themselves were the fruit of it. How could they doubt whether Christ had spoken by Paul, when through Paul He had spoken to them? If they questioned that, they might well question the reality of their own conversion. But that he was persuaded they could not do ; and so he goes on to ask, in the very next sentence, "Know ye not, your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you ?" As much as to say, Do you need to look?

This passage, then, so often quoted for it, certainly does not prove what it is quoted for-that it is right and needful to examine ourselves to see if we be Christians. To look in for peace is never right. It is the sure road to doubt, with the earnest, and to get off the ground of real confidence ; for it is always well to doubt self, and we are never called to have faith in ourselves. There is no word of God that I am born again; but if I know myself a sinner, there is abundant assurance that I may trust Jesus as one. If I cannot trust myself-even my faith,-I can trust Him.

But then, are there no evidences? I have already said, assuredly there are. The texts that stand at the head of this paper are the undeniable proof of it. The question is simply, When and how do I obtain them ? and what use do I put them to ?

It would be a poor thing to say that this faith we are speaking of wrought nothing one could be conscious of in the soul. It would be a poor account to give of faith, and no honor to it, and no comfort to the possessor of it to believe or find it so. Would it be comfort to say or think that I should never be conscious of true love to God, or true love to my brethren ? I think there would be as little of comfort as of truth. " We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." We know, then, we are conscious of, our love.

But how differs this from building upon evidences ?

In this way, that such evidences are only possible to one who is already building upon Christ.

Let me prove and illustrate this. The seventh of Luke may supply us both with proof and illustration from our Lord's own words.

" A certain creditor had two debtors:the one owed him five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both."

There is the divine picture of divine forgiveness. Two debtors, differing in the amount of their debt, differing not at all in this-they had nothing to pay. Beloved reader, have you ever stood before God so? If you have not, you shall. In the very truth of your condition as He knows, and as He has pronounced it. Solemn, most solemn anticipation, that! What must be the reality ? But it shall be; and your entire lot for eternity depends upon this, when and where you shall meet Him so-whether in the day of grace and salvation, or in the day of account and doom.
But, O beggared and bankrupt soul, thou hast not even a promise to make more, thou art so lost! not a right feeling, nor a sigh or tear that thou canst take comfort in any more ! bring that hard heart thou canst neither break nor soften, and set thee down in the presence of this Speaker, and see and own thy God in Him ! Listen now, and let thine ear drink in those precious words, "When they had NOTHING to pay,"-was ever a sad truth so sweetly uttered ?-" he,"-mark who this "he" is in our Lord's intent!-"HE frankly forgave them both."

How sweet and simple this utterance ! Does it need, think you, the ransacking of my thoughts and feelings with reference to it, to know it is for me ? Nay, the Lord cuts off the thought of that by the question that follows. "Tell me, therefore," says He to Simon, "which of them will love him most?" A question that even a Pharisee has to answer with " I suppose that he to whom he forgave most." Jesus said unto him, " Thou hast rightly judged."

Thus even human experience is competent to give the answer as to how love is to be produced in the soul. By the knowledge of love. "We love Him because He first loved us." And here in the seventh of Luke, how is this love shown ? By full and free forgiveness. The knowledge of forgiveness it was that caused in the heart of the debtor the love of him who forgave him to spring up.

Now, weaken the certainty of that knowledge, and you weaken the spring of all this feeling. If I am doubting the reality of the forgiveness which I have from God, will it have no effect in hindering the outflow of my love to Him? According to our Lord's words, it surely will. Or will my heart go forth in full, conscious delight in Him at the very moment I am doubting whether He may not banish me from His face forever ? And if I am not doubting, I have surely no need to examine my heart for evidences.

No, Scripture has, in perfect knowledge of what we are, and in perfect wisdom as to how we need to be dealt with, decided this. An apostle who came short of none in entireness of devotion to One blessed object, he who could say, " To me to live is Christ," gives us the very secret of that life given to Him, in the words, "And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Nay, it is "as the elect of God, holy and beloved," we are exhorted to " put on" the things which suit such. (Col. 3:) It is God's way, and good, to give all the blessing freely, which is ours in Christ, and then say, " Now walk worthy." How different from spelling out, or seeking to spell out, in the worthiness of my walk, whether I have the blessing !

It is as the love flows in, the love flows out. "If any man thirst," says our Lord again,-thirst, mark there is your title to Christ in all His fullness,-" If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink; and he that believeth in Me (so having drunk, remember), out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." (Jno. 7:)

Well then, we must drink,-drink,-DRINK ! Man can create nothing,-no, not love in his own heart! he must receive and enjoy, and the living waters shall flow forth. We shall be conscious of love as we are conscious of His love, and how it has been manifested in His giving Himself for us.

But how about, then, "We know we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren "?
Why, simply, so we do. But it is not the first way of knowing. It is the knowledge of a saint who has drunk in the love of Christ into his soul, and knows what he has got. But it is not the way a doubting soul acquires peace. Peace is got by believing, not our own feelings, which as a foundation are all untrustworthy, but the word of God about the blood of Jesus.

But still there is a solemn use and need-be for the apostle's statements here. Who can read his- words, " Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments," without feeling he surely is thinking of some who say they know Him, and are not keeping His commandments. So indeed he is; and if there were need in the apostle's days of testing the tree by its fruit, how much more is there now? Thus, if I find still professors, orthodox enough in form of speech, but whose lives show nothing of the power of the gospel, I am entitled to take them up upon the ground of their professed confidence in Christ, and say, Are you keeping His commandments ? Do you love the brethren ? No other ground is it possible to take with such, for their profession is all right and orthodox. Now, if the soul is really firm in Christ, it can afford to look at itself, and stand a shake. If after all it is not building on Christ, the conscience may get alarmed, and the man find out his condition.

But it is quite another thing to say to one who does not take the ground of confidence, but of doubt, " Do you keep His commandments ? " There I should be doing positive mischief and wrong to speak so. Such a soul wants Christ to confirm, not self to shake, him. And I must deal with him accordingly. Only can he keep commandments when he keeps the first of all-the loving God. Only can he love God as he knows he is loved. Only can I exhort him to holiness when I can do it upon the ground of his being " elect of God, holy and beloved." Otherwise Christ is made to men a more vigorous law than the law of Moses ; but not so of God.

What we want is " rightly to divide the word of truth "- to apply it as itself teaches. The Lord Himself apply it, beloved reader, to every one who has need, and whose eye may rest upon this paper.

Lecture I.-I Kings 16:29-17:1:

I have just read these closing verses in the sixteenth chapter, beloved friends, in order that we may have before us in some measure the times in which Elijah stood forth. My desire is, if the Lord will, in this, or a lecture or so, to look at what, in the most striking features, the man of God is. We find, in the times of Israel, that word "man of God" coming up repeatedly in connection with Elijah and Elisha. The title, while actually found, as the character itself is prominently brought out, in times of failure, is still really applicable to all the Lord's people, as what they are all, I may say, positionally, and as purchased by the blood of Christ. They are surely God's men ; but the "man of God " is the title here of one who is practically that,-one whose practical character answers to his position.

We have, in a very striking way, in the second epistle to Timothy, the man of God spoken of as the one for whom, in a sense, all Scripture was written, and whom alone it would profit as it ought; and so it becomes a very serious thing with us whether we have that character. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." (2 Tim. 2:16, 17.)

There you find that Scripture only has its proper effect on the man of God; and though, of course, no child of God is shut out, and it is written for all in this sense, that all may be and should be such, yet of necessity the profit of it is limited to those who have, in a measure at least, the character of the man of God,-God's man; of those who stand out for Him-those who are manifestly and practically His.

The character naturally becomes only the more distinct as the times are trying. Even in the apostle's time it could be said, "All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." (Phil. 2:21.) Just in proportion as that is so, of course it makes more striking the reality of one who is a man of God ; it makes him shine out in the darkness ; as it is said of John the Baptist, who in his day took up Elijah's mission :' He was a burning and a shining light,"-not merely a shining light, mark, as the dead and decaying wood may shine, but a burning light as well. And it is a great point to understand, that while, of course, the darkness is not of God,-surely it is not!-yet, at the same time, it is used of God to make His light more apparent. We should accustom ourselves to think of it in that way; not excusing the evil, or thinking lightly of it, but as certainly not sinking down under it, or being controlled by it. For God's lights, as such, are made for the darkness, which does not hide or put them out, but manifests them. Such a light, in the very darkest days in Israel, was Elijah the Tishbite.

In the chapters before this, how little one seems to find one's way amid the discordant shapes of evil that fill the page, where the son is but spiritually the "brother of his father," as Ahab's name imports, and that which is born of the flesh is only flesh again. It is so beautiful that you get God at once brought into the scene when Elijah steps into it. Then, while there is still darkness all around, it is not unrelieved darkness any more. If you consider, you will see how largely God's people have lived in such times as these; how from the very beginning of all dispensations that which was intrusted to man's care he failed in, and the ruin of what was set up became a settled thing. If you take Israel, God says of their course in the wilderness, "Ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them; and I will carry you away beyond Babylon." (Acts 7:43.) The failure in the wilderness is there connected with the Babylonish captivity, though a great number of years intervened. The whole thing failed there, and Babylon was the necessary result of the failure in the wilderness.

Take, again, the Church, before the apostles had passed off the scene. It was the mercy of God that they had not passed away before we get His judgment through them of the condition of things. One of them can tell us, "It is the last time ; and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." (i Jno. 2:18.) Another, "The mystery of iniquity doth already work" (2 Thess. 2:7); and a certain hindrance has only to be removed for the man of sin to be fully manifested. Look into the writings of those called " fathers," but a generation or so after the apostles. There was a sudden dropping down into the very depths of darkness, we may say, at once. From that time to this, nearly eighteen hundred years, has been a time in which God's people have had to walk with God alone. It is what we ought always to do, of course, but still more does a time of general departure call on those who would be overcomers to walk alone with Him. If the stream be adverse, we need more spiritual energy, that is all.

If you compare the second epistle of Peter, the first chapter, with the first chapter of the first epistle, you will find such a difference. There is a call in the second for greater energy; because God does not leave us to the influences of every kind about us. He does not fail, if man does. Yet it is so astonishing that we should be ready almost to credit Him with failure, because we fail. And at a time of general failure, as if delivered up to it, we claim it as even a sort of humility, not only not to pretend to be Pauls, but even to take his path at all.

Yet such as he were men of like passions with ourselves; and we, as they, are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. The Spirit of God was no more in them than in us; because if the Spirit of God is in us, it has no measure from God. You find everybody almost imagining that there is a "measure of the Spirit," whereas there is not, in that sense, a measure of it at all. That word which the apostle gives in the epistle to the Ephesians, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit" (5:18.), is to all Christians. If we were filled with the Spirit, should we be any thing less than men of God ? Elijah had a special mission, of course, and so had Paul ; but still, as to spiritual character, should we be any other than even these ? If the night is dark, will not even the faintest light be brighter ?

The times in Israel were not times in which we, should look for such a light as Elijah the Tishbite; it was, exactly, God's time. God delights in showing, in the very midst of it all, that He is quite as sufficient for the darkest times as for the brightest. Elijah's name shows where his strength was. "My mighty One is Jehovah "is its full significance. "Eli" means "my God,"but yet also "my strength," or "my mighty One." It is the word used by the Lord upon the cross,-" Eli, Eli,"-" My God, My God ;" but the very force of it there is, that He is appealing to One who has got abundant power (if it were only a question of power,) to bring Him out of all the difficulty in a moment; instead of which, the mighty One, His strength, forsakes Him. So here, it is "Jehovah is My mighty One," and it is the power of God we see in Elijah,-a power as available for you and me as for him. " Tishbite " is said by some to mean " the converter,"-

the one in whom there was power to turn men from the way in which they were unto Himself, and who sought to bring a nation back to God. In his own lifetime there might seem to be little apparent success in that; even so there is the lesson for us. For while God never allows His Word to fall fruitless to the ground, and we may surely trust Him for that, on this very account we may leave success to Him,-not indifferent, but still not daunted, if it do not much appear; and anxious, first of all, that the seed and sowing should be to His mind, rather than to see results which perhaps the day of manifestation will alone disclose.

That is what God would have before us:success is in His own hands, and God is content sometimes to work in a way to us inscrutable. Look at the Lord's life :how many apparently were converted?-a few disciples gather in an upper room after His resurrection. There was quite a number at Pentecost, and a mightier work ; but as you go on, you find no such large success, even in apostolic hands, as you would expect perhaps from the gospel. Very various indeed it is :in many places to which the apostle Paul went, instead of having, what people expect now from a few weeks' revival-meetings, converts by the score, very often but a few, so far as we can see. And only in a few places at first was there large response. In an exceptional one, you find the Lord saying, " I have much people in this city;" but in no wise was that the rule. And the Lord, in His own parable of the mustard-seed, indicates that the growth of the little gospel-seed into the "tree" was as little likely a result as it argued little for Christianity. Alas ! the great spread of this took place in proportion to its adulteration; and as it became popular, so it became corrupt.

Why do I speak of this? Because if we make success our object, it will become a snare to us. We shall get our eyes upon the results, and by this, test our work untruly. For if that were the test, what about His who said, " I have labored in vain :I have spent My strength for naught!" "Yet surely," was His confidence, "My judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God." God, on the other hand, would have us look, in the most careful way possible, at walk and work and life, and as to what comes of it,-the issue of it all,-leave that to be made manifest in the day fast approaching, which shall make every thing manifest. Are you content to leave it to that ? Care for souls and love to them is of course another thing. God forbid that I should say one word which should make that a matter of little moment! but beware of what on every side people are doing ; and beware of thinking that quantity, with God, will atone for quality.

Now with Elijah, while God honored the man in the most remarkable way, as you know,-put Himself along with him, authenticated his word, and gave the fire from heaven which consumed the sacrifice,-yet there ..seemed no adequate result. Did the nation turn to God ? " Hear me," Elijah prays,-" Hear me, O Lord ! hear me ! that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their hearts back again." (i Kings 18:37.) In the very next chapter, he is fleeing from the face of Jezebel, because she had said, " So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time." (Chap. 19:2.) There you find, perhaps, how the ill-success of his mission affected one like Elijah. When he looked at that, he was asking, "Would God I might die!" and sank down in discouragement. There he was, just the man that was not going to die,-just the man who, as you know, was taken straight into heaven without seeing death at all, vanquished by the apparent want of success, after all this wonderful display of power. Is this not to us a most wholesome warning not to look at the success so much as at the being with God which will insure success? If we are to wait for the success-for the end-in order to see what the thing is we do, is it not manifest that we must do it in the dark in the meantime, as to whether it be of God or not ? Yet only as knowing this can we do it in communion with Him. What comes of it is God's account, not ours. We need not be afraid that His purpose will not be fulfilled, or that which is of Him not prosper.
Now let us look at Elijah in the attitude expressed here in a few words. " Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, 'As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word.'" (Chap, 17:) He stood before the living God :God was for him that-the living God. That is the first thing. "As the Lord God of Israel liveth," be says. He can find no way of expressing assurance equal to that. It was the surest thing he knew, the most vividly realized, that the God of Israel lived. And that is just the thing that we want to realize on the way down here. The living God is what we want in the midst of scenes like this; in the midst of all so full of life and activity, the life around and about, brushing us on every side, how we do want to realize the living God !

I know, when you look at Elijah's life, you may say, " Certainly God did manifest Himself to Elijah in a marvelous, miraculous way, which we do not see at all now. To only some is it given to work in that way with God. We cannot see these things now." Yet God is the same living God ; and we may be sure of this, that while it is true we do not realize what Elijah did, the failure is clearly our failure, and not God's. I do not mean to say there are what people call miracles in the self-same way now ; that is not exactly what I am speaking of. We do not expect fire to fall from heaven, or any thing of that sort, very likely ; but while all this is true, as we see how the drought of fishes could bring the living God home to a soul ready for the announcement, so we may see, and should be prepared to see, Him acting in every little event of our lives. We only need to look:just as with those people who are not prepared to find great things in the Word, so are never able to find great things in it. The open eye is faith. It is the new sense of the child of God, and more certain than any other. In proportion as this is in exercise will the Word be permeated by. a living Presence. "Quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," it will bring us under the eyes of "Him with whom we have to do."

So with God's presence about us. The earth is still full of Him. What has drawn a vail over His presence ? Really, it is unbelief,-that is all. Unbelief! I grant you that vail is perfectly impenetrable unless the Word has approved itself to us as His revelation in the way we have spoken of. But then creation becomes, from mere materialism, spiritualized and transfigured. Our own history becomes the story of an omnipotent love, under which " all things work together for good to them that love God." He counts the very hairs of our head, goes beyond all our thought and care for ourselves, and fills our loneliest moments with His presence.

It is only that which will make our lives at all what they ought to be; it is only that which will redeem them, so to speak, from the littleness and meanness and unimportance otherwise attaching to them. The meanest life in His presence ceases to be drudgery, and becomes ennobled ; the noblest without it, what is it but utter vanity ?

You must not imagine that Elijah's life was made up of miracles. How small a part of it these miracles were!

And when he stands forth here to answer for the living God, we do not find that the faith he manifested had been nurtured upon miracles. It is not God's way. Those who believed in Christ's name when they saw the miracles He did were not those in whom He confided. It is when we have faith in His presence and nearness that He will respond to the faith we have. It would be merely tempting God to want Him to show Himself in this wonderful way just to prove He was with us. To question is to tempt Him. He is near us, and we ought to know it; and when we realize that, then we may see, perhaps, what to unaccustomed eyes may look not unlike miracle even in the present matter-of-fact day.

But again, to Elijah, the living God was not merely his God:He was the God of Israel. That is a beautiful thing, quite characteristic of the man of God. Israel were God's people. He was not standing before Israel, remember; he stood before the Lord God of Israel, not before Israel. But Israel was something to him, because his God was Israel's God; and because the Lord God was the Lord God of Israel, therefore Israel was in his thought connected with the Lord God for whom he spoke.

Now, that is of immense moment to us, to whom God has revealed the mystery of His Church. We may easily have the Church before us, and be monopolized with the thought of the Church in such a way as really to take us out of the presence of God. What is the Church without the God of the Church? We may easily be making much of the Christian and leaving out the God of the Christian, and leaving out all that gives Christianity or Christians the least importance.

On the other hand, let us understand that to stand before the God of Israel implies this, that we are linked in heart with what is God's cause in the world. " Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it,"-not for a fraction of it, even the most intelligent,-aye, or the most devoted. Every one of the tribes had its name upon the high-priest's breast-plate ; and even so all His saints are upon Christ's heart now. Can we be God's men and yet not in active earnest sympathy with that with which His heart so intimately concerns itself ? Surely it is impossible. " I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ," says the apostle,"for His body's sake, which is the Church."

Thus, while God, who forgets not the smallest in His care for the greatest, nor one of His people in His concern for the rest, is to be for us personally and intimately ours, at the same time, He is to be the Lord God of Israel to us, and we are to stand before Him as such. Now, this standing before Him, what does it mean ? It is not an expression of confidence-there is abundant confidence you see at once-or of rest, or of peace. Too often we make that the whole thing. He stands before the Lord God of Israel. This is the attitude of service. He is waiting, ready at His bidding. Not merely walking before Him; not running about, surely, with the restless hurry of many, too busy with His service to listen to His word. "Standing" is waiting to have His will expressed. We stand before the Lord God when we are waiting for Him to direct us, and do not move without His guidance. There may be much more standing than moving even, no doubt. If you take Elijah's life, how much more of standing, or waiting, or being alone with God, than there was of acting for Him ; but the acting for Him, in consequence, came just at the right time. So should we be ready to serve, not merely occupied with the service, much less hurrying about, as if to be doing was the whole matter, but to be in His path, to be doing His will, conscious that all else is worse than idleness.

Now notice how God identifies Himself with the men who stand before Him in this way. "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." What a bold thing to say ! Of course, Elijah did not mean to assert that because of his word the Lord would do these things. It was not that the Lord was going to accomplish Elijah's will, but that Elijah was accomplishing the Lord's. " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. . . . The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" (Amos 3:7, 8.) The prophet and the man of God are nearly identical. Would He keep back any thing from those who stood before Him, seeking to be servants of His will and toward the people of His choice? What a wonderful place that is to be in ! For God to identify Himself so with one, not to be ashamed of him, as it is said in the eleventh of Hebrews of those old worthies; not ashamed to identify Himself with, and uphold before the face of the world, the word of a poor, un-titled man, but to whom His word and will were all. Thus was it with Elijah, and so he became linked with the fulfillment of the purposes of One to whom the universe is but the scene of the display of a glory which transcends it still.

Now, that is the character of the man of God. Do we know what it is to have the living God before our eyes in this kind of way ? Do we know what it is to be able to see, not only His actings in our lives, but what He is doing in the world, and toward His people, because we are with Him and therefore have His mind ? Do we know what it is, as sons of God, to be His servants, working with the zeal and intelligence of those who both know the Father's will and know the Father ?

Of course, we must be sons before we are servants; but, being sons, do not let us imagine that this is every thing ! People put service in the wrong place often. They are serving before they are sons, or before they are conscious of being sons ; and slipping, therefore, into that hired service for which God has no place. On the other hand, it is surely the right thing when sonship ripens into service, and the full reality of sonship can hardly be enjoyed when this is not so.

Even so, rest from labor develops into rest in labor, or it is not the full rest Christ gives. Rest for the conscience is attained when we have known that the work of Christ is what God alone accepts, and has accepted, as justifying us before Him. Therefore He gives rest."Come unto Me all ye that labor; and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28.)Does He stop there? Is that all? No; "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls." (5:29.) That is the only way in which rest in the full sense is attainable. It is rest, not apprehended by the conscience merely, but laid hold of by the heart; rest from all restlessness,-perfect and complete repose. But notice, it is His yoke and His burden. It is not a yoke of our own making or imposing. It is not setting ourselves to so much work for Him. It is another thing to take Christ's yoke and His burden, and learn of Him, the Doer of the Father's will, and whose meat and drink it was to do it. In Him, the true Son was the perfect servant. Have we apprehended that because we are sons, from the very nature of the child's relation to the father, we are necessarily and always servants? The child is never released from it, as a mere ordinary servant may be. His very relationship makes him a servant to his father. A servant of love, no doubt, and thus completely one.

Our service, from first to last, is to have His Word to justify it. Our own wills religiously are no more really right than irreligiously. God has one path for us to walk in, one work at any moment for us to be about. While the Word guides, it must be a living guidance-guided by His eye.

The Lord grant it to us, for His name's sake.

(To be continued.)

The order of Scripture is every where most important, and no where more so than in its practical exhortations. We can only read the Word of God aright as we have faith in its absolute perfection, and therefore study it in its connection as well as in its separate sentences. It is not a mosaic of beautiful but unconnected utterances,-even the book of Proverbs is not that, and Scripture in general is not a book of Proverbs either. Nor is it like a creed, or a text-book of theology, or a code of laws, or a digest of practical rules. It differs from all these as a field of living plants from the botanist's herbarium. The latter may have its uses, but it is dry and artificial evidently. The truth as given in Scripture is instinct with life, and clothed with the inimitable freshness and beauty which belong to it. To tear it from its connection is to deprive it of its vitality.

The connection is always practical:it is the highway by which you must travel if you would reach the point to which it leads you ; you can view it, no doubt, from other points, but you cannot reach it,-and that is what is to be your constant aim.

So, then, with the passage before us. To " follow faith," we must "follow righteousness," and it is the relation of these to one another that I would dwell on a little now.

It is, of course, in the adoption of it for ourselves, and not in the exaction of it from others, that we are called to "follow righteousness." This should be plain; and yet it may not be needless to remind ourselves of it. There are those who imagine what the apostle exhorts the Corinthians to-"Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded ?"-to be really inconsistent with the following of righteousness. They think that we are called to maintain righteousness upon the earth, and that we are therefore morally bound to make war upon unrighteousness ; whereas it is grace of which we are the witnesses, as having received grace. Yet this also may be [not carried too far,-that is impossible, but] misunderstood and abused therefore.

Suppose I hid a thief from the officers that were in pursuit of him, or refused to give him up into their hands, this would not be grace, but a perversion of it. It would be unrighteousness indeed on my own part, for I should be interfering with that which God has established for the restraint of evil. Nor have I liberty to show grace, nor would this be grace, where another's rights are concerned and not my own. In my own case alone can I show it or talk of it aright.

But in my own case I am to be the witness of it, as the Lord's words as to the non-resistance of evil so emphatically enjoin :words indeed so little akin to the spirit of the world in which we are, that if we drink into this at all, we shall not be able to understand them. The maintenance of rights has all the logic of common sense in its support, and except we are ready to maintain them, we shall be counted cravens, and recreants to the truth. The Lord, indeed, has said, " If My kingdom were of this world, then should My servants fight" (Jno. 18:36), and the mass have decided that His kingdom is of this world.

But of this it is not my purpose now to speak. I only notice it, that none may infer a contradiction between following righteousness and showing grace. Guarding this point, then, it is of the utmost importance to see that in our personal conduct, in what we do, and in what we go with, righteousness is the very first necessity. No question can be rightly allowed to precede it or to interfere with it. What is not righteousness is not of God, and to sanction it as of Him in any conceivable case is nothing else than blasphemy against His name and nature. It involves, in fact, that " Let us do evil that good may come," of which the apostle says, as to those who say it, "their condemnation is just" (Rom. 3:8).

"Righteousness" defines, then, for the Christian a circle beyond which he cannot go-a boundary-line he dare not transgress. He must therefore know precisely the limit, and in no case move until he is sure that he is within the limit. Here is need for continual exercise, for the line is not always perceptible at first sight, and to be unexercised is the sure way to transgress it. Nay, more :he who is careless is already in spirit a transgressor.

God has denounced an emphatic "woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (Isa. 5:20.) There must be no blurring of the moral boundary-lines. And here, therefore, is the first question always for us. We may not put "faith" before "righteousness." We may not argue, "This is of God, and therefore it is good." We must argue the other way,-"This is good, and therefore it is of God." "God is light," and "light is that which doth make manifest" (Eph. 5:13). Thus, only as walking in the light, and with our eye single to take it in, can we walk without stumbling.

But, alas ! how common a thing it is to allow ourselves in that of which the character is all uncertain to us ! How many think it enough to stop where they are convicted of evil, rather than require to see first before they move that what they do is good ! Such souls are not in the presence of God, and cannot therefore attain to any clear vision. It is already "evil" to walk in the darkness, and the rule is first "Cease to do evil," and then " Learn to do well."

We have further to consider, before we can pass on from this, that righteousness always has respect also to our position and relationships :it is to act in consistency with these. Thus, to show grace is for a Christian only righteousness. " Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me :shouldst not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee ?" The manifestation of grace is not something over and above what is required of us,-something which (because it is grace,) we can refuse without unrighteousness. Righteousness embraces the whole sphere of conduct, for "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (Jas. 4:17). How solemn, how penetrating, are such words as these ! There is no "work of supererogation," as the papists say. Purchased with the precious blood of Christ, we are His in all things, His absolutely. The "consecration" of ourselves to God, of which so many are speaking now, is nothing else than that sanctification by the blood of Christ supposes, of which the epistle to the Hebrews speaks. His we are by that blood shed for us, and to take our own way in any thing is simply to deny in that respect His title. Yet how many indeed think it the liberty of grace to be free to please themselves in some particulars !-as if it were " liberty " to mire ourselves in the ditch instead of walking on the well-made road, or to serve a weak and foolish tyrant rather than the wisest, noblest, meekest, of masters.

" Consecrated " we are, every one of us:"called saints," -that is, saints by calling ; sanctified in Christ Jesus. Only let us walk as saints.

"Righteousness," then, is the first thing to follow; but it is not all,-it is only the first thing. This secured, we are next to follow "faith."

And this contracts materially the road we travel. It is in this that we first perceive that it is indeed a " narrow way." So narrow, indeed, that, in whatever situation we may be, there is but one spot upon which we can rightly put our foot next,-one, and one only. There is no choice, in that sense, permitted us.

" Faith" supposes more than a mere rule of conduct, however perfect. Faith is in a person; not a rule (though there may be a rule), but a ruler. " I commend you to the word of His grace," says the apostle to the Ephesians (Acts 20:32). Is that all? No, but "to God and the word of His grace." There is a living God whose eye is upon us, whose heart goes with us, whose hand holds us. Ah, if there were not such, we should indeed be orphans! As with Israel in the wilderness, where there was "no WAV." the way was marked out for them by the pillar of cloud and fire, which showed the presence of Jehovah with them,-this was but the vailed presence of One who for faith is found without a vail by the Christian now. These things happened unto them for types (i Cor. 10:ii), and are written for our admonition. The glorious presence that goes with us is the Antitype, and faith is more to us than was the sight of the eyes to them.

Faith, then, for us puts under a living Leader, from whose love we cannot for a moment withdraw ourselves. His eye ever upon us, His heart ever occupied with us, there cannot be a step that we can take in which He is uninterested or has not a mind for us. Perfect wisdom has employed itself about the path we tread, and it is for us to consult that unerring wisdom, and to govern ourselves according to the will of Him who is both Master and Lord. The path is indeed narrow, but who could wish it wider-some room for our own wills to act, some room in which our ignorance may display itself, and in which our folly and frailty may work disaster for us ? How blessed to be saved from this! How great the grace that will thus patiently instruct us ! " He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learner." (Isa. 1. 4-Heb.) This is the language prophetically ascribed to our blessed Lord Himself. Himself the perfect example of faith, He has gone before us in this path in which we follow Him,-a path thus doubly endeared to us, by its own intrinsic blessedness and by our fellowship with Him in it.

It is in following "faith" that we find our true individuality before God, for faith is of necessity individual. How earnestly the apostle insists upon this ! To induce another to do so innocent a thing as to eat meats, to the Christian perfectly clean, but where he could not eat in faith, was in his mind to "destroy" him:"Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died" (Rom. 14:15). "For meat destroy not the work of God. . . . He that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin " (10:20, 23).

Thus the doing of what in itself was no evil-of what in another might be an act of Christian liberty-yet without faith would be only sin, and an act of real self-destruction. That the mercy of God might avert this in any particular case alters nothing as to the essential character or inherent tendency of the thing in itself, and this is what the Spirit of God by the apostle would press upon us. How often in a presumptuous way we bring in God's care for His own, and His eternal purposes of love toward them, to blind ourselves as to the character of our own ! But if I put poison upon a man's plate, I am responsible to the full extent of all that would naturally be the result of it, I should be a murderer, though he were never murdered. Oh that the Word of God may have thus its edge for us ! " Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died " !
What a view of our responsibilities does this open up to us! and what a sense should it give us of the necessity of faith in every step that we take in our path down here ! "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." If, then, as is most certain, God our Father has so deep concern for us as to make our every step a matter of importance and interest to Him,-if He has His own mind for us in all things, His way for us to walk in,-then what a necessity there is for us to seek and learn that mind ! and what disaster must result from inattention as to it! Is not here the secret of many otherwise inexplicable failures where the end sought seems right enough, and the way to the end also to be irreproachable ? Is it not the secret that it was but poor halting reason that we followed,-that we mistook the road because the torch-light that we walked by did not throw its light far enough for guidance, and we waited not for heaven's illumination? "Are there not twelve hours in the day ? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world ; but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him." (Jno. 11:9, 10.)

Will any call it legality, or tedious strictness, to have to walk in the full light of the day alone,-to have need ever of a Father's counsel,-to be made to seek ever a wisdom higher than one's own, and to be subject to a will that rules all things, and that carries with it unfailing power and victory ? How strange that we should count as liberty the license to go astray-to bring down upon ourselves sorrow and suffering, and regret that cannot recall the past, or undo what is once done, or avail to turn away the inevitable consequences !

We do, indeed, perhaps recognize in matters of greater importance the need of knowing and following the divine will. But life is made up mainly of smaller matters. From how much, then, of our lives we must banish God ! and as we look not for His will to declare itself, so, naturally enough, we have no eyes to see it when it does most plainly do so. The joy and sweetness, the ineffable delight of a walk with God, are concentrated upon a few days of our life's course, in which we rather met than "walked with" Him. And then what mistakes we make as to what is of importance ! how little we realize, often, what are the controlling points of our own history! we enter all unconsciously upon what we should look back upon with the keenest emotion. Only, then, in cleaving closely to our Guide and Guardian can we be a moment safe. In this sense, truly "happy is the man that feareth alway."

Here, too, we have need to remember that "there is a way that seemeth right to a man, and the end thereof are the ways of death" (Prov. 14:12). Alas ! how often are we seduced by the right seeming of a way, which has only against it that which is its sufficient condemnation-that it is our "own way"! How many a man is busy with things in themselves most excellent, and yet wholly out of his place and astray ! Man may do nothing but praise him, and his own conscience also approve him, and yet he may be thus astray. The light is not in us :in the light of God alone we see light.

I leave this now with the one remark that nothing, therefore, must be allowed to interfere with this maintenance of our individuality before God. All that would conflict with it condemns itself as evil by the very fact. The Lord has bought us for Himself. He is "both Master (or Teacher) and Lord." We may help each other in ascertaining His will, but no more. "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." (Matt. 23:8.)

" If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned." (Can. 8:7.)

The pride of man's foolish heart is ever carrying him away from the grace sent to him in Jesus, which must meet him as a beggar-helpless and undone, to some requirement that he may satisfy, which will, as he thinks, enable him to meet God on better terms ; or, he does away with the richness of the grace, and makes it inefficient to meet his real necessities, and then strives to make up the inefficiency by his own change of conduct. On the other hand, the soul taught of God is taught its entire helplessness, (not merely to avow it with the lips, but to know it in the experienced weakness and wickedness of the heart,) but it is taught also to turn away from this to the brightness of grace, that has reached it in its wickedness, and met it in the truth of its condition, evil as it was, with the full consolation, the desperate necessity of that condition sought-Jesus made unto it of God, " wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."

That man is ever attempting to make God as ungenerous as himself-to limit the greatness of His gifts by his own unbelief, and thus to dim the glory of His abounding grace, is not only the necessary result, but the proof, of the unchangeable evil of his heart. It is this, simply this, which has driven the Church into the world, lowering the standard of obedience to the habits of its new associates. Vain would be the search of that man who might try, in the pride of his heart, to bring evidence from the word of truth that any one other motive but love was reckoned on there to bring back to God and guide in His ways the heart of a self-willed and wayward sinner.

There can be no union with God, in thought or act, save in love; " He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." (i Jno. 4:7, 8.) A service of constraint is no service to God. Any thing that would impede the flow of the living waters-the fresh streams of love, peace, and joy into the weary heart of a God-fearing sinner, is just that which would hinder fruitfulness, and leave it a sterile and thorn-bearing thing still.

Now the scriptural word " sanctification " is a fair title, assumed by error, and one so apparently authoritative in its claim, that many are led captive by it, who, while, they feel and know their slavery, are unable to account for it. " If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed " is the happy assurance of our Lord ; and any thing that would limit the love He came to prove is but keeping fast the fetters that bind to earth, and holding us back from the happy, and therefore free, obedience of children. What is " sanctification " (as now used,) but uniting that which God has so graciously, so carefully, separated- salvation and its holy consequences ?

If there is one statement of truth more clear than another in Scripture, and more uncompromising in the language in which it is put, it is this, that redemption is exclusively the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not that of the Holy Ghost. That faith is the work of the Holy Spirit is another question. As a Savior, and a perfect Savior, putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, Jesus says, Look unto me, and be ye saved. " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (Jno. 3:14, 15.) If what is so extensively termed " sanctification " (1:e. progressive advancement in holiness) is necessary to salvation, it might well be asked, How much would do ? He who knows God, will know also that he must be as perfect as He is perfect, or neither God nor himself could be satisfied. But not only is this robbing the cross of Jesus of its power, and making His blood inefficient, but, as its result, (how completely, in this as in every thing, is wisdom justified of her children!) we have nothing but an unhappy and an unfruitful Church, hardly knowing whether it is saved or not, knowing enough of itself to understand that it comes short of God's glory ; and therefore, to get itself into peace, (as looking to sanctification and not to Christ,) it must reduce the standard of obedience, bringing down God's character, that it may, somehow, come up to it, and so be satisfied with itself. Thus the ingenuity of unbelief will torture the simplicity of God's Word into something that will impose a burden, when God's love has sought to remove it; and those who are thus self-tasked, or taught by another gospel than that of full and unconditional love, have to run in fetters, with the brightness of the prize for which they contend obscured by intervening clouds of fear and doubt as to God's willingness to bestow it on them. But thus saith the Lord. " Whosoever believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." (Jno. 3:36.*) *See also 1 Jno. 5:11,12; Jno. 5:24; 20:31; Mark 16:15, 16; Acts 16:31; 13:38, 39; Rom. 3:20, 28; 4:3-8, 21-25; 5:8-11, 18 20; 10:4-13; 2 Cor. 5:19-21; Heb. 10:5-18.* The whole Word, in its testimony to the Lord Jesus, speaks of Him as manifesting God as a Savior; and. it is in the face of this that the troubled spirit gets peace, not to be found elsewhere. It sees the God it feared, becoming, in His love to the sinner, the sinner's Savior, and therefore it has confidence toward God :for who can doubt, if God becomes a Savior, the perfectness of the salvation? Its completeness is the soul's security; and faith in it, as perfect and complete, gives peace, and instant peace too. It was thus the gospel (which is "glad tidings"-the expression of God's love to sinners as sinners,) was received when it was first believed on in the world. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved" was the Spirit's, reply to the trembling jailer (Acts 16:), and he rejoiced in God. Philip " preached unto him Jesus " and the believing Ethiopian " went on his way rejoicing."

That salvation, then, is utterly irrespective of what we have been, or of what we are, or of the measure of sanctity we may attain, is, and must be, the conclusion of the heart that trembles at God's word. The simple fact that " God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," is the proof that nothing but unbelief can hinder any sinner's participation in all the rich blessings God has to bestow. What is sin but estrangement of heart from and disobedience to the authority of Him who proved, by the gift of His Son to those who were so estranged and in open rebellion against Him, that though sin was reigning unto death, His grace could reign triumphantly above all sin ?

In the death of the Lord Jesus Christ we learn what God is to sinners as sinners. "Without shedding of blood is no remission " of sin. (Heb. 9:22.) Death is the wages of sin :death was the portion of Jesus, therefore, as made sin for us.

It is the blood of Jesus alone that cleanseth from all sin (i Jno. 1:7):it is by the blood of Jesus alone we have boldness of access into the holiest (Heb. 10:19):it is by the blood of Jesus a/one, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God, that our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:).

Here, then, is our secure, our only, resting-place :the blood of the holy Lamb. If the Spirit beareth witness to the sinner, it is to show the cross as his salvation; to the saved sinner, indeed, He reveals glory, far deeper glory, in the face of the crucified One, as well as the glory of the inheritance (Jno. 16:); but in imparting peace to the conscience,-in delivering from the dread of death and of God's anger, the testimony is one and unvaried- Jesus delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. He who believes this is saved. Let him come ever so exalted in the evident favor of God, to that must he recur for his peace and salvation,-" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Nor is this merely a pardon given in dependence on future obedience. Alas! to those who know how their service is hindered by the heavy bondage of a sinful body how the flesh ever " lusteth against the Spirit,"- who know that all their obedience, while so hindered, is, in God's estimate, "unprofitableness," (surely, unprofitableness can be no claim to heaven,) where would be the joy? Oh how would man pervert God's liberal and most wondrous grace ! how does he ever try to escape the full blessing of being saved altogether by grace, in his ignorance of that God who, having not spared His Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will with Him freely give us all things ! (Rom. 8:32.) What saith the Lord ? " There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," etc. (Rom. 8:1:) One with Him who hath died unto sin once, and over whom death hath no more dominion, the believer is called on to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God ; as knowing that his old man is crucified with him ; baptized unto His death, and raised with Him again to walk in newness of life ; dead, and therefore freed from sin. (Rom. 6:1-7.) It is in the knowledge of the true position of freedom into which he is put before God, as one with Christ, where He is at the right hand of God, that he is enabled to overcome sin in his daily and hourly conflict. Faith in the perfect victory of Jesus over all that was man's enemy is the alone power by which we can become victors too.

It is the freedom of the happy spirit abiding in a Father's love which alone can give power to serve Him who is love ; and upon this rests all the instruction of our Lord, delivering, by the power of that name- " Father," from every bondage, freeing from every other master-man, the world, the flesh, the devil, and all the anxious cares of our fearful and doubting hearts-into the energy of spirit by which alone we can serve in newness of life ; being careful for nothing, taking no thought for the morrow, with the eye single in its object, the heart single in its subjection and service, having no master but Christ, no object but His glory, having present fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, led by the Spirit of God, abiding in Christ, and having, as so abiding, His peace and joy. (Jno. 16:27.)

Jesus came to declare the Father. He spake not from Himself ; He was the Father's Servant. So the Holy Ghost is the Servant of the risen Jesus. He takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. Whether it be the first entering into the sheepfold by that Spirit's quickening, or subsequent increasing power over the world, the flesh, and the devil, the witness is the same – " the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:4.) Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor. 3:18.) However mighty the work, the object of faith is the same as to the weakest believer – Jesus, and not what He (the Spirit) is doing in the believer's heart.

Oh, yes ! the heart must love ere it will serve Him readily, – it must know His mind and will ere it can serve Him faithfully ; but it can only love Him as knowing where His love is seen – in Jesus; it can only serve Him truly as knowing Him who did serve Him faultlessly and faithfully in this same world. All is the witness of the Spirit; but Jesus, the exhibiter of the love which wins the heart – Jesus, the faithful Servant – is that to which He testifies.

It is a wonderful thing that God should bring the heart of a poor, proud, self-seeking man into delight with that which is utterly opposite to every feeling of flesh. And how tenderly and graciously He does it ! He does not say, " Give up the world – deny thyself – crucify the flesh – become abased" (that would be hard indeed, though it would be righteous ; and we all know those who have fancied He has so said, and they have tried every self-inflicted penance and monkish austerity, but the world was loved still, self was the only object of exaltation through it all). He speaks in gentleness, and tells us of the greatness of His love in the midst of our alienation and rebellion,-tells us He loves us, though our hearts are worldly and proud, and our practices selfish and base, and wins us by this love. The testimony of Jesus is the story of this love-the proof of God's love to the sinning man, the ungodly, the proud, the worldly man ; the proof that sin was not a sufficient barrier to shut out love,- that it has broken that down, and can now flow unchecked into the sinful heart. The heart where this is credited, and therefore received, must return an answer of love, and will know, surely know, that God asks nothing from us to prove our love but what will secure to us increased and increasing peace and joy. It is grace the sinner wants, for that alone can be the connecting link between him and God ; and where is the grace but in Jesus humbled, broken-hearted, and crucified ? This is where God has come down to the sinner, and the sinner's step-ping-place to get back to God ; the hand of God stretched out to us in our wretchedness, lifting us up again to Himself, and clasping us to His heart. In truth, there can be no service to God except by the sweet constraint of love. The obedience of heaven is the obedience of love, for there can be nothing but love there ; there is only one will there – obedience to that will is the unity and harmony of heaven. The results of self-will are clear enough around us in the full tide of misery which is flowing over this rebellious world. It is the same power which rules in heaven, reaching, by the Spirit's presence, the heart of a self-willed sinner, that brings it to subjection, and gives (when it has the mastery there,) the joy of heaven, freeing it from its many turbulent and unrighteous masters, and giving it but One, and that One- Love, for God is love.

The more, then, this love is known, and shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us, the more constrained will the heart be to this happy service, because it will thus judge, that "if one died for all, then were all dead, and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again."

And oh ! where is it that we get daily strength but in tracing the love and the glory that can be only seen in the Father's righteous Servant, whose service was both to the Father and to us ? Every step so traced will unravel the depths of that grace which has given the heart its peace, and assured it of everlasting glory. And it is this, it is this, that the Holy Ghost does engrave day by day, deeper and deeper, on the willing heart of the believer, showing him his Lord-Him who was in the beginning, with God, and was God, but " who was made flesh, and dwelt among us;"-marking the circumstances of evil which surrounded Him from His birth onward, and so the untiring love which could not be overcome by those circumstances, but which shone the brighter, and showed its depths the more, as it was scorned and trampled on, while pressing on in its might through them all, to finish that work which alone could meet the necessities of the sinner. It is not the cross only, but the character of the evil, which in its power overwhelmed the Lamb of God, and the unconquered compassion which ever shone forth from Him on the darkness which surrounded and would have quenched it,-the every day's pitying endurance of the " contradiction of sinners against Himself," even to the moment when the readiness of His heart to bless was seen in the prompt reply of forgiveness to him who had reviled Him during His bitterest agony on the cross. (Comp. Matt, 27:44 with Luke 23:43.) It is this that shows the depth of the love,-a love that existed ever, a love that ordained the Victim, that gave the Victim (and that Victim His only Son) to and for those who hated and disregarded both the Giver and the Gift.* *It is not, as some suppose, that the necessity of the sacrifice of Jesus is lessened by the assertion here made that God loved us as sinners, and the sacrifice was but the proof of that love. No, but while nothing but the complete erasure of every charge, the cleansing from all sin, could bring the sinner back to God, with boldness into the holiest of all, yet it was a previous, exhaustless, and self-existing love, which expressed itself to the sinner it loved in the very way the sinner needed it,-by giving him that which would answer his necessities to the full. God loved the sinner and therefore found him the sacrifice he needed. And oh! God so loved the sinner that He spared not His well-beloved Son to be the sacrifice.*

He who delights to trace the steps of Jesus in this grief-stricken world will see in every step the holiness, the moral glory, and the love of the unseen God made manifest to him in a form that he can apprehend.

Oh, yes! it is knowing God in Jesus-in all the exquisite detail of His most dignified yet condescending love – a love that could and that did descend to the depths of degradation and shame, to minister its sweet consolation to the wretchedness of its object,-that came into a world of sin and sorrow, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; to be the lowest and the poorest, to be associated with the most needy and despised of men-the leper, the publican, and the Samaritan ; giving His back to the smiters, His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; "learning obedience by the things that He suffered ;" taking part in our sufferings, that, when perfected in His lesson of love, He might be a sympathizing Intercessor for those whose companion in sorrow He had become. It is this-the weakness of Jesus, the poverty of Jesus, the depths of poverty both of spirit and of circumstances-that shows us how far His love can reach, and what that love would do to bless its object,-that shows us God.

Upon the ground of the soul's present and perfect salvation by the blood of Jesus the believer stands to meet the practical question of following Him, as made even now, by His gratuitous grace, free and ready to serve Him in love, as having but one object-that of showing forth His praises in the world that rejected and still rejects Him. There will be no singularity in the confession of the name of Jesus in heaven ; none will be ashamed of Him or of His words there ; He will be fully glorified and admired there. But it is here, in " this present evil world," in the midst of a crooked and perverse people, that the sinner separated by the blood" of the Lamb to all blessing is called on to stand forth and declare how Jesus " gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

1. The Nature of Man.- Adventists and Conditionalists alike teach that it is the body of the man, living or dead, which carries personality. Scripture shows that personality is attached rather to that which dwells within the body. We get the truth "as the truth is in Jesus" (Eph. 4:21). Jesus distinguishes Himself from His body (John 2:19-22; 10:15-18; Luke 23:43). The Person, the "I," "Me," of Jesus, could be apart from the body, and have power to raise it up, and meanwhile be with the "thou" of the thief in paradise. So with Paul and believers (2 Cor. 5:1-8; 12:1-3:Phil. 1:21-25; 2 Pet. 1:13, 14; 1 Cor. 2:11; Zech. 12:1). The texts usually quoted to prove that the body is all give only a materialistic view of man, and are only half the truth; or it would follow that between His death and resurrection there was nothing of the Savior, except what lay in Joseph's tomb. For three days the world was without a Savior. Incarnation would be needed again, rather than resurrection, and the Savior on the fourth day would not be the same Person. This would be to blaspheme (Heb. 13:8).

2. Eternal Life and Immortality.-Adventists make these the same thing, and teach that they are a future reward of good works at the Lord's coming. Free, sovereign grace, as taught by Paul (Rom. 4:4, 5; 5:17; 6:23; Eph. 2:7, 8), and the gift and present possession of eternal life, as taught in the gospel and epistles of John, are denied, though so true and blessed (John 3:36; 5:24; 6:54; 10:27-29; 1 John 5:11-13, 20; 3:15). Just as " no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him," the sons of God have eternal life abiding in them even now; and of this it can be said, " Which thing is true in Him and in you." But as to their bodies, they will only put on immortality when the Lord comes (1 Cor. 15:53, 54). Jesus showed what "eternal life was (John 17:3), and credited the disciples with the possession of it then, in knowing the Father and owning that He had sent the Son (Jno. 5:25, 26). Yet they died; so they had eternal life though not immortality, as they will have that at the resurrection. But this leaves untouched the fact that though "mortal" is applied to the body, it is not said of the soul. That "God only hath immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16) does not prove that men's souls and spirits are mortal, or the same may be said of angels. God alone possesses immortality in Himself, un-derived; but by and in Him men and angels subsist (Acts 17:28; Heb. 1:7; Col. 1:17).

3. Death and Existence and Consciousness Thereafter.

-Adventists teach that the state of the dead is that of "silence, inactivity, and entire unconsciousness." Scripture applies " dead" to the prodigal, and to sinners active in sin (Luke 15:24; Eph. 2:1-5). The one that lives in pleasure is dead while she liveth (1 Tim. 5:6; John 5:25). The germ in the grain of wheat, nor the human personality in Jesus, did not cease to exist by death (John 12:24; 1 Cor. 15:36-3.8). By virtue of the new life he has in Christ, the believer is free from the law of sin and death (Jno. 5:24; Rom. 5:18; 6:11; 8:2; Col. 3:3, 4). If the "me" of Rom. 8:2 died in Rome, that scripture is untrue; but if it is true, Adventist teaching is false. False it is, as the new man is of the last Adam, new creation, incorruptible, and from heaven (1 Pet. 1:23; Eph. 2:10; 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:45-48; 2 Tim. 1:10). For the believer, Christ has abolished death; he can say, " Death is ours." So Lazarus, Stephen, Paul, like the one who was a thief, have been in the conscious enjoyment of the Lord's presence for about eighteen hundred years. Even the unsaved, though dead, as to men, all live unto God (Luke 20:37, 38). That " the dead praise:not," or "know not any thing," is spoken from where we are-"under the sun," and does not take in the unseen condition of spirits (2 Cor. 4:18; Luke 16:19-31; 9:2!)-36; Rev. 6:9-11).

4. Destiny of The Wicked.-Adventists say that the wicked, finally, will be "consumed root and branch, becoming as though they had not been." The proofs are mostly from the Old Testament, which treats of the cleansing of the earth by judgment in the setting up of the earthly reign of Christ. Scripture says explicitly that it is "in the earth" not when it has passed away (Ps. 8:6-11; 101:6-8; Mal. iv). This is the judgment of the quick, the living, previous to the millennium; whereas Adventists take the texts and apply them to the. judgment of the dead, over 1000 years afterward, and in eternity. So, to prove annihilation, they are convicted of "handling the Word of God deceitfully." "Destroy," in Scripture, means the ruin of the thing as to the purpose for which it was designed, not that the thing is rendered as though it had not been. The steamer " Quetta " is destroyed, but divers have seen her at the bottom of the sea. The destroyed antidiluvians are the "spirits in prison " in Peter's day (Gen. 7:23; 1 Pet. 3:19-20). So as to Israel (Deut. 25:61-63; 30:1-3). Likewise, "everlasting destruction" and "to destroy both body and soul in hell," are not annihilation; but as the condition of the impenitent remains unchanged, the punishment will of necessity be eternal (Matt. 10:28; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 15:11 ; 2 Cor. 4:18). It may be urged, " God is love," but love is not God. Did His wrath come on Jesus? Yes. Then dare you say that if a finite being suffers forever, he will suffer more than the infinite and eternal Son suffered while He was under divine wrath? A God of love caused the latter, why not the former, especially if you reject His Son? (1 Cor. 16:22; Heb. 10:28-31; 12:25-29.)

In the course of his wandering among the pyramids of Egypt, Lord Lindsay, the celebrated English traveler, accidentally came across a mummy, the inscription on which proved to be at least two thousand years old. In examining the mummy after it was carefully unwrapped, he found in one of its closed hands a small, round root. Wondering how long vegetable life could last, he took the little bulb from that closed hand, and planted it in a sunny soil, allowed the dew and rains of heaven to descend upon it, and in course of time, a few weeks, to his astonishment and joy, that root burst forth and bloomed into a beautiful flower. This interesting incident suggested to Mrs. S. H. Bradford the following thoughts upon the resurrection:-

Two thousand years ago, a flower
Bloomed lightly, in a far-off land;
Two thousand years ago, its seed
Was placed within a dead man's hand.

Before the Savior came on earth,
That man had lived, and loved, and died,
And even in that far-off time,
The flower had spread its perfume wide.

Suns rose and set, years came and went,
The dead hand kept its treasure well;
Nations were born and turned to dust,
While life was hidden in that shell.

The shriveled hand is robbed at last:
The seed is buried in the earth;
When, lo ! the life long hidden there,
Into a glorious flower burst forth.

Just such a plant as that which grew
From such a seed when buried low,
Just such a flower in Egypt bloomed
And died, two thousand years ago.

And will not He who watched the seed
And kept the life within the shell,
When those He loves are laid to rest,
Watch o'er their buried dust as well ?

And will not He from 'neath the sod
Cause something glorious to rise?
Ay ! though it sleep two thousand years,
Yet all that buried dust shall rise.

Just such a face as greets you now,
Just such a form as here you bear,
Only more glorious far will rise
To meet the Savior in the air.

Then will I lay me down in peace
When called to leave this vale of tears;
For " in my flesh shall I see God,"
E'en though I sleep two thousand years.

(From "Waymarks in the Wilderness")

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS. (Chap. 8:2-11:18.)

The First Four Trumpets.(Chap. 8:2-13.) (Continued.)

The third trumpet sounds, and a star falls from heaven, burning like a torch."And it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is called Wormwood:and the third part of the waters became wormwood ; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."

The heavens are the sphere of government, whether civil or spiritual; a ruler of either kind might be here indicated therefore, and the historical application is in general to Attila, king of the Huns; yet the fall from heaven, the poisoning of the sources of refreshment, as well as the parallel, if not the deeper, connection with the sixth trumpet, seem to point much more strongly to an apostate teacher, by whose fall the springs of spiritual truth should be embittered, causing men to perish. With all the misery that has hitherto been depicted as coming upon men under these apocalyptic symbols, we have not before had any clear intimation of this, which we know, however, to be a principal ingredient in the full cup of bitterness which will then be meted out to men. Because they have not received the love of the truth, that they might be saved, God will send them strong delusion, that they may believe a lie; and here would seem to be the beginning of this.

In the French revolution at the end of the last century, the revolt against the existing governments linked itself with an uprise against Christianity ; and the socialistic and anarchical movements which have followed, with however little present success, are uniformly allied with infidel and atheistic avowals as extreme as any of that time. Russian "nihilism" fulfills its name in demanding "No law, no religion-nihil!" and as the first thing, "Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence of God." Here is forestalled the one "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped ;" nor is it a contradiction to this that one with such nihilism on his standard should exalt himself into the place of God :the atheist Comte devised for his followers a new worship, with forms borrowed from Rome, and a peremptory spirit, which have gained for it from a noted infidel of the day the title of " Catholicism minus Christianity." This was his proposition, as stated by himself:" The re-organization of human society, without God or king, through the systematic worship of humanity."

This was a delirium ! True, but such dreams will come again, as the Word of God declares, in that fever of the world to which, with its quick pulse now, it is fast approaching. Apostasy is written already upon what men would fain have the dawn of a new day, and the being who has raised himself from the chattering ape to link the lightning to his chariot of progress, what shall stay him now? These are the words from the lips of Truth itself:"I am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."

We have already considered in a measure the doctrine of a personal antichrist yet to come, and we shall be repeatedly recalled to the consideration of it as we go on with Revelation. Here it is only the place to say that his birthplace in the book seems to be under this third seal, though his descent more strictly than his rise. He is born of apostasy, as the second epistle to the Thessalonians (chap. 2:3) would lead us to anticipate.

And now, under the fourth trumpet, a scene occurs which may be compared with that under the sixth seal, but which in the comparison reveals important differences. Then, a convulsion affected (as would appear) the whole earth:now, it is only the governing powers that are affected by it; and that, not every where, but a third part of the sun and of the moon and of the stars, so that the day shines not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. These last words in connection with the similar limitation to a third part in the preceding seals, seem plain enough. The day does not shine in a third part of the sphere of its dominion, nor the night (in its moon and stars) either. Certainly this would not be the natural result of the darkening of a third part of sun and moon, and intimates to us that we have not here a literal phenomenon such as is represented, but figures of other things. Royal or imperial authority has collapsed, with its train of satellites, within such limits as a " third part" may designate; and with this, the first series of the trumpets ends. As ordinarily in these septenary series, the last three are. cut off from these first four, which have a certain oneness of application, as the use of this " third part" employed in them throughout also would imply; for the next trumpet has no intimation of this kind. The sixth has it again, but the seventh refuses all such limitation.

The meaning of this trumpet, then, is simple; but its proper significance must be gained from its connection with the series of which it forms a part, and indeed with any prophecies elsewhere which by comparison may throw light upon it.

In general, also, the historical application attains here a consistency which claims attention ; and that there is some substantial truth in it (though not the full truth) there is no need to doubt. The minds of so many of the Lord's people as have explored the book of Revelation by this light have not been left so utterly dark and untaught of the Spirit as to have allowed them to wander utterly astray. Scripture is larger in compass than we think, and this is by no means the only part of prophecy in which a certain fulfillment has anticipated and, as it were, typified the final and exhaustive one. In this very book, those who receive the addresses to the seven churches as prophetic of the history of the professing church at large can surely not deny, or seek to deny, a primary application to churches actually existing in the apostle's day. And here the foundation of the historical interpretation is already laid. The stream of prophecy in the seals and trumpets in this case naturally has its germinant fulfillment from that very time; and if we refuse it, we refuse not only the comfort we should gain from seeing the Lord's control of the whole course of man's spiritual history for so many centuries, but also lose for the final application a guiding clue with which the grace of God has furnished us. That it is not a full, exhaustive fulfillment will not in this case either affect its being a fulfillment. It will be in perfect keeping with its place that it shall not be a complete one ; for were it this, no room for the final one would be left.

Now the general interpretation of the first four trumpets applies them to the breaking up of the Roman empire by the barbarian inroads of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, until its final extinction in the west by the hands of Odoacer. The eastern half survived to a latter day, but it was henceforth Grecian rather than Roman, Rome itself, with all that constituted its greatness,-nay, its being, in the days of its ancient glory, having departed from it.

This application agrees with the unity of these trumpets, while it gives a sufficient reason for the series coming to an end, and the fifth and sixth trumpets turning now to judgments upon the eastern half, by the hands of Saracen and Turk, the seventh being in its character universal. The Roman empire, let us remember, as the last empire of Daniel's visions, and that which existed in the Lord's lifetime upon earth, and by the authority of which He was crucified, stands as the representative of the world-power in its rebellion against God. (Comp. Ps. 2:with Acts 4:25-28.) No wonder, therefore, if its history should be given under these war-trumpets, the last of which gives the full victory of Christ over all the opposition.

It is consistent with this that Satan in the twelfth chapter of this book should as the dragon be pictured with the seven heads and ten horns of the Roman beast. He is the spiritual prince of this world, and in this way is clothed with the power of the world, which we see here again is Roman.

So again, the "earth," which both in Greek and Hebrew may mean " land," and is often by no means the equivalent of the world, seems almost constantly in these prophecies, till the final one, to be the Roman earth, the territory of the Roman empire in its widest, and of which the western part seems to be the "third part" mentioned in the trumpets. As to this third part, Mr. Elliott urges, that during the period of these early trumpets, "the Roman world was, in fact, divided into three parts,* viz., the Eastern (Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt); the Central (Moesia, Greece, Illyricum, Rhoetia); the Western (Italy, Gaul, Britain, Spain, north-western Africa); and that the third, or western, part was destroyed." *I quote from the American edition of Lange on Revelation, p. 201.*

Others would make the "third part " equivalent to the territory peculiar to the third beast of Daniel, or the Greek empire; but this seems certainly not the truth:for in this case, according to the historical interpretation, the end of the eastern empire must be found under the fourth trumpet, whereas the fifth trumpet goes back before this, to introduce the Saracens !

Of all interpretations, that only seems consistent which applies the "third part" to the western part of the Roman earth, and in this way the term may have a further significance, as that part in which the Roman empire is yet to revive again, as it will revive for judgment in the latter days,-the "third " being very often connected in Scripture, as is well known, with the thought of resurrection.

The Roman empire has indeed long been extinct, both in the west and in the east, and it is of this very extinction that the historical interpretation of the trumpets speaks, yet the voice of prophecy clearly assures us that it must be existing at the time of the end, when, because" of the words of the little horn, judgment comes down upon it. (Dan. 7:.2:) The nineteenth chapter of this book unites with the book of Daniel in this testimony:for it is when the Lord appears that the beast is seen, along with the kings of the earth, arrayed in opposition against Him. Thus it is plain that the Roman empire must be existent at the end. It has yet, therefore, to rise again, and in the thirteenth chapter we see it, in fact, rising out of the sea:while in the seventeenth, where the woman Babylon has her seat upon it, it is said, " The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition." (5:8.) So it is called, " The beast that was, and is not, and shall come." (5:8.,R. V.)

Nothing can be much plainer than the fact that the Roman empire will revive again.

But not only so; it is also declared by the same sure Word that it will revive to be smitten again in one of its heads,-and apparently to death, yet its wound is healed and it lives, (chap. 12:3, 12, 14.) It is after this that it becomes idolatrous, as Daniel has intimated to us it will, and all the world wonders after it. (10:3, 8, 12.)

It is not yet the place to go fully into this, but so much is clear as enables us to see how the historical interpretation of these trumpets points, or may point, to a future fulfillment of them. One other thing which the book of Revelation notes will make more complete our means of interpretation.

The beast, as seen in Revelation, has seven heads, or kings; and these are successive rulers-or forms of rule -over the empire :for " five," says the angel, " are fallen, and one is, and another is yet to come ; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space." The heads, then, in this primary view, are seven, but five had passed away -commentators quote them from Livy-the sixth, the imperial power, existed at that time:the seventh was wholly future, and, in contrast with the long continuance of the sixth, would continue only a short space.

But there is an eighth head, and the beast himself is this. The last statement has been supposed to mean that the head exercised the whole authority of the empire ; but it would seem nothing strange for the head of empire to exercise imperial authority. Does it not rather mean that the beast that is seen all through these chapters is the beast of this eighth head ?

But the seventh head, where does it come in ? There are some things that would seem to give us help with regard to this. For the empire plainly collapsed under its sixth head, and the seventh could not be until the empire again existed. There are. questions here that have to be settled with the historical interpretation; but in the meantime the course of the trumpets as we have already followed it, confirmed by their historical interpretation also, would suggest that we have in them, and indeed from the commencement of the seals, the history of the seventh head. The rider upon the white horse, to whom a crown is given, may well be the person under whom the empire is at first re-established. And of such an one Napoleon, though not (as some have thought) the seventh head himself, may be well the foreshadow. The sixth seal does not point to his overthrow:it is a wider, temporary convulsion which affects all classes-high and low together; and in the pause that follows, they would seem to recover themselves. The trumpets begin, however, at once to threaten overthrow. The very escape of the governing classes under the first trumpet seems to prepare the way for the outburst under the second, which is an eruption from beneath,-fierce with passionate revolt; to which is added, under the third, apostasy, the giving up of the restraint of divine government, soon to grow into the last, worst form of Christianity according to Satan- Antichrist:the opposition to incarnate Deity of deified humanity.

The result is, under the fourth trumpet, as it would appear, the imperial power smitten, the seventh head wounded to death, and with it the recently established empire overthrown beyond mere human power to revive again. But this brings in the help of one mightier than man-the awful power of Satan, working with an energy proportionate to the shortness of the time which is now his. The beast arises out of the abyss, its deadly wound is healed ; the dragon gives him his power and throne and great authority; and all the world wonders and worships, (chap. 13:2-4.)

Then indeed it is " Woe ! woe ! woe ! to the inhabiters of the earth."

(To be continued.)

THE LESSON OF THE AGES AS TO HOLINESS .
Genesis 4:

From the beginning of the world this history comes to us, a sample and a parable of its whole history since. It is a chapter, with all the gloom of it, of priceless value. No where does Scripture in its mere chronicle-character show itself more prophetic. No where do we see more plainly, as taught of Him who only can show it to us, the end from the beginning. No where is it more apparent that with Him what seems defeat is victory,-that He is " King of the ages," and all things perforce serve Him. Thus it reverses the prophet's experience for us:that which is bitter in the mouth, as we first taste it, is sweet in the belly, as it is well digested. Blessed be God that He is God !

The history is a type,-not merely a single, but a double one. It is fulfilled in the world at large. It is fulfilled in the lesser world of our own bosoms. The one fulfillment underlies the other. The lesson is one:the testimony is double. Each confirms the other; and for this reason we shall da well to look at both.

The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. Faith says this, and it says true:God has pledged His word for it. But because it is still faith that says it, this is even yet among the things unseen. What is seen is the other side of the prophecy,-the heel of the woman's seed bruised by the serpent. The cross is more than the central fact of history; it is, as to its human side, but the epitome of it,-its meaning concentrated and emphasized in one tremendous deed. The conflict between good and evil has been long protracted, and its issue, so far as the eye can take note of it, has been by no means victory for the good. Nor, so long as " man's day " lasts, does Scripture give any expectation of it. The coming of the Prince of Peace alone can bring peace. Until then, His own words remain applicable, " I came not to send peace, but a sword." Thus, when He asks, and the nations are given Him for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, His power must act in putting down the opposition :" Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Ps. 2:8, 9). And this power His people too shall share with Him. (Rev. 2:26, 27.)

Till then, their portion is with Him the cross :"heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." (Rom. 8:17.)

God's present triumph over evil is thus in using it as the necessary discipline of His people, and in making it work out, spite of itself, His work:" Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain" (Ps. 76:10). Thus we may look evil in the face and fear not,-nay, rejoice to see in it all, as in the cross itself, God's mastery over it. What will not turn to praise, He suffers not to be. What is, is to glorify Him.

Abel is in this history a type of Him whose blood "speaks better things."In its efficacy Godward, it is seen in that sacrifice by which God declares him righteous, "testifying of his gifts" (Heb. 11:4). In its human side, it is seen in his own death at his brother's hand, as Christ received His at the hands of Israel, His kindred after the flesh. Cain is indeed the perfect type and pattern of those Pharisees who were ever His bitter antagonists:religious after his fashion, and by his very religion proving himself far from God,-a worshiper, and his brother's murderer. And this "way of Cain " the Jews have walked in to this day, like him, outcast from God, fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth, with the mark upon them which still manifests them as preserved of God, spite of their sin and its penalty. How strikingly in these national judgments is the handwriting of God "writ large" for man to read! and how inexcusable if he does not read it!

The world has got rid of Christ, and to-day it rejects Him still. Not Israel only; but in Christendom His rejection is as plain, and more terrible. They may keep His birthday, and build a pile over His sepulcher, and so did Israel, on the Lord's day, build the sepulchers of the prophets whom their fathers slew, and were witnesses to themselves, as He assures them, that they were the children of those who slew the prophets.

Meanwhile the progress is undoubted :the " many inventions" abound by which man's nakedness is successfully covered, and the cities of the land of Nod show by their adornment that the wanderers there mean to stay. Lamech, the " strong man," a title in frequent use to-day, is the common father of all these men of genius, and he, with the inspiration of a poet, prophesies, taking for his text Cain's security, to argue for himself greater security than Cain's. How unmistakable a picture of our civilized world to-day!

But then God comes in again, and Seth is appointed in the place of Abel whom Cain slew. And in the genealogy that follows, Cain and his descendants have no place. Enosh is born-" frail man "-the antipodes of the strong one, Lamech; but then men begin to call on the name of the Lord. The weakness of man, demonstrated and confessed, exalts God who is now so necessary to him; and man also finds his place of blessing in dependence, where it ever is.

This goes beyond present history, but prophecy is clear as to its fulfillment. It speaks of a day of manifestation, a day of the Lord, which shall be upon all the pride of man, bringing down all that is high, in order to exalt the lowly. "And then," saith God, "will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent … I will also leave in the midst of them (Israel) an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord." But when is this ? and when shall a Seth mighty to accomplish this replace in the history of the earth the murdered Abel ? Only Christ glorified can replace Christ crucified; and then it is that the humble Enosh shall displace the haughty Lamech. So the prophet goes to declare,-" Sing, O daughter of Zion! shout, O Israel! be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem ! The Lord hath taken away thy judgment; He hath cast out thine enemy:the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more." (Zeph. 3:).

Here, assuredly, is the true Seth, and the day to which the history in its typical character points us on. This is what alone fulfills for the earth the promise of woman's Seed in its reality. The serpent's head is now bruised.

All this, in its underlying principles, witnesses plainly to that lesson which we now go on to learn from it in its individual application. It is indeed the lesson of the ages; a lesson beginning before the ages, and the wisdom gained by which shall last eternally.
In the individual application, the same struggle between good and evil is revealed as taking place in the world within us as we have seen to take place in the world without us. " That which is first is natural, and after-ward that which is spiritual." Cain, therefore, is the first-born, and not Abel. The names too are significant. "Cain" is "acquisition," "possession," and he lays hold of the earth to retain it. " Abel " is "vapor," "vanity," significant to us at least in connection with the brevity of his life. Personally righteous, and though dead yet speaking, he seems to accomplish nothing, and leaves the evil in triumphant power. It is just the experience of the seventh of Romans-a hopeless incapacity for good in one who wills what is good:"the good that I would I do not; the evil that I would not, that I do."

Nor only so:he uses the strong word "death," as descriptive of his condition. Identifying himself with the good within, with that which desires and seeks this, he describes his state thus:"Sin revived, and I died. And the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Here is the interpretation of what is most perplexing in the type before us. We naturally ask, " How can that die in us which is of God and good? and how can the defeat of the desire for good be a lesson of holiness ?" Yet to how many traveling in this path would it be a ray from heaven indeed, could they believe it! Let us, then, seek earnestly to apprehend this strange experience, and see if in it God is not leading the blind by a way they know not to the very haven where they would be.

Before man was created, sin had been in heaven. The conflict between good and evil did not begin on earth. Strange enough, and terrible to realize, that beings created upright, in a scene where all bore witness to the goodness and love of God, could without temptation fall from purity, and become all that is expressed for us in the word "devils"! " How could it be?" we ask. Scripture may not afford us all the light we would desire upon such a question, but some light it assuredly does give, and that which is most needful for us. It assures us that the "condemnation of the devil" was for pride (i Tim. 3:6):"not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil." The "lifting up" of the creature is its fall. Forgetting its absolute dependence is the sure and speedy way to ruin. "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

The process is given us in the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, in which we have, as it would seem, under the vail of the " king of Tyre," Satan himself before us. "Prince of this world," the Lord calls him; and in Revelation he is pictured as the "dragon," with the seven heads and ten horns of the empire, the power of which he wields. Thus the king of Tyre might well represent him in Ezekiel. And much of what is said seems in no way else really explicable.

" Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, 'Thus saith the Lord God, Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering . . . thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.' "

We are indeed, in a world like this, familiar enough with such a process. The startling thing is, to find it as the account of sin in its beginning in a creature of whom God could speak in such a way. It is an intelligible account, however, of how when there was yet no evil, the contemplation and consciousness of what was good could become evil, the germ of all that has developed since. Here is the germ. Let us mark and lay it to heart, for we shall find here what will explain the mystery of God's ways with man ever since. A wonder of wonders it is that inasmuch as the consciousness of good has been to the creature the cause of evil, God will now in His sovereign wisdom make the consciousness of evil the cause of good! Simple this is too; but how great in its simplicity. The thought of it at once brings conviction into the soul, that so it is, and so it must be. And how important that we should realize it. Already upon this experience of the seventh of Romans a bright ray of light has fallen.

The next thing after the fall of the angels, so far as our knowledge reaches, comes the creation of man. And how clearly now we see that if Satan had fallen through pride, God would hide pride from this new creature of His. A spiritual being he must be, and in the image of God thus, His offspring. Only so could he respond aright unto God that made him. Only thus in any proper way could He be his God. Yet He does not now make another angel. He does not merely repeat Himself. Angels have fallen, and through pride. God takes up the dust of the ground, and wraps in it – one may almost say, hides-the spirit of man. All that materialism builds itself upon is just the evidence of this. Though the breath of the Almighty is breathed into him, he is yet a "living soul;" and the beast too is a living soul. He acquires his wisdom by the organs of sense; his mind grows with his body:there is ordained to him a long helpless infancy, beyond even the beasts. He needs food, and is constantly reminded of his necessity. He needs help, and it is not good for him to be alone. No independence can be permitted him; and yet every want is met in so tender a way,-every avenue of sense is so made to him an occasion of delight, that every where he is assured of One who cares for him,-to whom he is constant debtor. As independence to him would be plain ruin, so dependence is endeared to him in every possible way.

Evil is yet barred out from him:he knows as yet nothing of it. Though it exists, God does not suffer it to show itself as evil till he invites it in. The question by which the woman falls is as innocent as she is, and from a beast, -what is below her, not above. The prohibition of the tree, which the devil uses, is good also as a warning of their dependence, and the penalty as guarding the prohibition. Who would lose all this blessing to gain none could say what ?could there be indeed a gain?

Yet man falls, as we well know, and with the lust of the flesh and of the eyes, the pride of life gains possession of him. On the other hand, with sin, death enters into the world,-the great leveler of the pride of man. His eyes open upon his nakedness. Conscience becomes his accuser .In the sweat of his brow he must eat his bread, gathering it from the midst of the thorns and thistles, which are the sign of the curse. And when a man comes into the world, it must be amid travail and sorrow.

Thus his history begins, and for four thousand years 4 afterward, until the coming of the Deliverer, there is but one long sorrow-one tale of sin and misery.

The "due time" for Christ to die is when, after all this, man is still without strength and ungodly. (Rom. 5:6.) It is his trial-time, the period of his education under the school-master, and the one lesson to be learned is of spiritual nothingness. His sin is kept ever before him. "None righteous,-no, not one;" "none that doeth good, -no, not one;" and this applied to all,-Jew and Gentile, saint and sinner a like. In the book of Job, the best man upon earth,-a saint, surely,-is taken up to bear witness of this. His efforts to wash himself white are impressively told, and how God plunges him in the ditch so that his own clothes abhor him. It is a saint who learns the lesson:so it is a lesson for saints. And all the way through the centuries the burden is repeated, "There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Eccles. 7:20). "Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin ?" (Prov. 20:9.)

All the way through those ages, it is with the evidences of man's sin that God fights sin. To abase him, this is to exalt him. To wean him from himself, this is to make God his joy, his strength, his riches. " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." God educates him in the knowledge of sin. His history begins as it ends, and ends as it begins-with failure. It seems the celebration of the triumph of Cain ; the strong men are of his line :that which is of God takes no root in the earth ; a Nebuchadnezzar is king of kings ; a little remnant return from the captivity in Babylon, only to exhibit their poverty, and to fail as thoroughly as before. There is no hope but in Another:when we are yet without strength, Christ dies for the ungodly.

(To be continued.)

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-THE TRUMPETS.-Concluded.

The Witnesses.(Chap. 11:1-14.)

The last words of the preceding chapter receive their explanation from what we have seen to be the character of the little open book. If this be Old-Testament prophecy that is now " open," then we can see how John has at this point to"prophesy again"not "before" but "over,"-that is, "concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings."He is to take up the strain of the old prophets, not, of course, merely to echo their predictions, but to add to them a complementary and final testimony.

Accordingly we find now what carries us back to those prophecies of Daniel which were briefly reviewed in our introductory chapter. The mention of the ''beast," and of the precise period of "forty-two months," or "twelve hundred and sixty days,"-that is, the half-week of his last or seventieth week, previous to the coming in of blessing for Israel and the earth, is by itself conclusive. This week we have seen to be, in fact, divided in this way by the taking away of the daily sacrifice in the midst of it (Dan. 9:27). It is by this direct opposition to God also that the man of sin is revealed. Hence it would seem clear that it is with the last half of the week that we have here to do.

A reed like a staff is now given to the prophet that he may measure with it the temple of God. If a reed might suggest weakness, as in fact all that is of God lies at the time contemplated under such a reproach, the words, " like a staff" suggest the opposite thought, God's care for his people implied in this measurement is to unbelief indeed a mystery, for they seem exposed to the vicissitudes of other men, yet is it a staff upon which one may lean with fullest confidence. His measurement of things abides, perfect righteousness and absolute truth, abiding necessarily as such.

The temple of God is, of course, the Jewish temple, and though not to be taken literally, still, as all its connections here assure us, stands for Jewish worship, and not Christian, though a certain application, as in the historical interpretation, need not be denied. The altar, as distinct from the temple proper, is, I believe, the altar of burnt-offering, upon which, indeed, for Israel, all depended. It was there God met with the people (Ex. 29:43), although, as we contemplate things here, the mass of the nation was in rejection, the court given up to the Gentiles,* the holy city to be trodden underfoot by them, only a remnant of true worshipers acknowledged. *Which shows, I think, that it is not the court of the Gentiles, which belonged to them of right.* It may be said that the altar of burnt-offering stood in the court ; but the idea connected with each is different. The court, however, being given up, the worshipers recognized must have the sanctuary opened for them:in the rejection of the mass, God brings the faithful few nearer to Himself. This is His constant grace.

"And the holy city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months."The " holy city " can speak but of one city on earth ; nor can there be justifiable doubts as to the place in prophecy of this half-week of desolation. The mixture of literal and figurative language will be no cause of stumbling to any one who has carefully considered the style of all these apocalyptic visions, which are evidently not intended to carry their significance upon their face. All must be fully weighed, must be self-consistent, and fitting into its place in connection with the whole prophetic plan. Thus alone can we have clearness-and certainty as to interpretation.

As a man, then, who has been sunk in a long dream of sorrow, but to whom is now brought inspiriting news of a joy in which he is called to have an active part,-as an Elijah at another Horeb after the wind and the earthquake and the fire have passed and He whom he had sought-the Lord-is not in these, but who is aroused at once by the utterance of the "still, small voice,"-so the prophet here is bidden to rise and measure the temple of God. Not so unlike, either, to the measure given to the elder prophet, of seven thousand men that had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. How speedy and thorough a relief when God is brought into the scene ! and from what scene is He really absent? How animating, how courageous a thing, then, is faith that recognizes Him!

And where He is there must be a testimony to Him. We find it, therefore, immediately in this case:" And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive-trees, and the two candlesticks which stand before the Lord of the earth."

The reference is plain to Zechariah (chap, 4:), but there are also differences which are plain. There it is the thing itself accomplished, to which here there is but testimony, and in humiliation, though there is power to maintain it, spite of all opposition, till the time appointed. The witnesses are identified with their testimony-that to which they bear witness. Hence the resemblance. They stand before the Lord of the earth,-the One to whom; the earth belongs, to maintain His claim upon it:in sackcloth, because their claim is resisted ; a sufficient testimony in the power of the Spirit, a spiritual light amidst the darkness, but which does not banish darkness. " And if any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies; and if any man shall desire to hurt them, in this manner must he be killed. These have power to shut the heaven that it rain not during the days of their prophecy ; and they have power over the waters, to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague as often as they shall desire."

Here is not the grace of Christianity, but the ministry of power after the manner of Elijah and of Moses :judgment which must come because grace has been ineffectual, and of which the issue shall be in blessing, for " when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world shall learn righteousness." (Isa. 26:9.)

The association of Elijah with Moses, which is evident here, of necessity reminds us of their association also on the mount of transfiguration, wherein, as a picture, was presented " the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Pet. 1:16-18.) They are here in the same place of attendance upon their coming Lord. It does not follow, however, that they are personally present, as some have thought, and that the one has had preserved to him, the other will have restored to him, his mortal body for that purpose.

The preservation to Elijah of a mortal body in heaven seems a thought weird and unscriptural enough, with all its necessary suggestions also. But the closing prophecy of the Old Testament does announce the sending of Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Is not this proof that so he must come ?

Naturally, one would say so ; but our Lord's words as to John the Baptist, on the other hand,-" If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come,"-raise question. It has been answered that his own words deny that he was really Elias, and that Israel did not receive him, and so John could not be Elias to them. Both things are true, and yet do not seem satisfactory as argument. That he was not Elias literally, only shows, or seems to show, that one who was not Elias could, under certain conditions, have fulfilled the prediction. While other words of the Lord-"I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed"-show even more strongly that for that day and generation he was Elias. Why, then, could not another, coming in his spirit and power, fulfill the prophecy in the future day?

This Revelation seems to confirm, inasmuch as it speaks of two witnesses who are both marked as possessing the spirit and power of Elias, and who stand on an equal footing as witnesses for God. Had it been one figure before the eyes here, it would have been more natural to say it is Elias himself; but here are two doing his work, nor can we think of a possible third behind and unnoticed and yet the real instrument of God in this crisis. The two form this Elias ministry, which is to recall the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers, and who both lay down their lives as the seal of their testimony. Put all this together, and does it not seem as if Elias appeared in others raised up of God and indued with His Spirit, to complete the work for which he was raised up in Israel ?

Much more would all this hinder the reception of the thought of any personal appearance of Moses, while there is no prediction at all of any such thing. Jude's words (which have been adduced) as to the contention of Michael with Satan about the body of the lawgiver may well refer to the fact that the Lord had buried him, and no man knew of his sepulcher. Satan may well, for his own purposes, have desired to make known his grave, just as God in His wisdom chose to hide it. Yet the appearance of Moses and Elias in connection with the appearing of the Lord, as seen on the mount of transfiguration, seems none the less to connect itself with these two witnesses and their work,-both caught away in like manner into the " cloud," as the twelfth verse ought to read. And Malachi, just before the declaration of the mission of Elias, bids them, on God's part, "remember the law of Moses My servant."Moses must do his work as well as Elias ; for it is upon their turning in heart to the law of Moses that their blessing in the last days depends ; and thus we find the power of God acting in their behalf in the likeness of what He wrought upon Egypt:the witnesses " have power over. waters, to turn them to blood." It is not that Moses is personally among them, but that Moses is in this way witnessing for them ; and so the vials after this emphatically declare.

God thus, during the whole time of trouble and apostasy, preserves a testimony for Himself, until at the close the final outrage is permitted which brings down speedy judgment. For "when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called ' Sodom' and ' Egypt,' where also their Lord was crucified. And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations do men look upon their dead bodies three days and a half, and suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And they that dwell upon the earth rejoice over them and make merry ; and they shall send gifts to one another ; because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth. :And after the three days and a half, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which beheld them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them,' Come up hither.' And they went up into heaven in the cloud ; and their enemies beheld them. And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons :and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven."
If the twelve hundred and sixty days of the prophetic testimony agree with the last half of the closing week of Daniel, they coincide with the time of the beast's permitted power, and the death of the witnesses is his last political act. That a certain interval of time should follow before his judgment, which takes place under the third and not the second woe, does not seem to conflict with chap. 13:5, where it should read, " power was given unto him to practice"-not "continue,"-"forty and two months." The last act of tyranny may have been perpetrated in the slaying of the witnesses; and indeed it seems a thing fitted to be the close of power of this kind permitted him. With this the storm-cloud of judgment arises, which smites him down shortly after.

If, however, the duration of the testimony be for the first half of the week, then the power of the beast begins with the slaughter of the witnesses, and the three and a half years' tribulation follows, which does not seem to consist with the judgment and its effects three and a half days afterward. Then, too, " the second woe is past" (v, 14), and the third announces the kingdom of Christ as having come. But we shall yet consider this more closely when we come, if the Lord will, to the interpretation of the vials.

Here, then, for the first time, the beast out of the abyss comes plainly into the scene. In Daniel, and in Rev. xiii, he does not come out of the abyss, but out of the sea ; but in the seventeenth chapter he is spoken of as "about to come up out of the abyss," showing undeniably that it is the same "beast" as Daniel's fourth one,-the Roman empire. In the first case, as coming out of the sea, it has a common origin with the other three empires-the Babylonian, Persian, and Grecian-out of the heaving deep of Gentile nations. Then we find in Revelation what from Daniel we should never have expected, but what in fact has certainly taken place,-that the empire which is to meet its judgment at the coming of the Lord does not continue uninterruptedly in power till then. There is a time in which it ceases to be,-and we can measure this time of non-existence already by centuries,-and then it comes back again in a peculiar form, as from the dead:" the beast that was and is not, and shall be present." (Chap. 17:8.) This rising again into existence we would naturally take as its coming up out of the abyss,-out of the death state,-and think that we were at the bottom of the whole matter. The truth seems to be not quite so simple, but here is not the place to go into it further.

For the present, it is enough to say that the coming up out of the abyss is in fact a revival out of the death state, but, as a comparison with the fifth trumpet may suggest, revival by the dark and demon-influences which are there represented as in attendance upon the angel of the abyss. It is the one in whom is vested the power of the revived empire who concentrates the energy of his hatred against God in the slaying of the witnesses.

The place of their death is clearly Jerusalem :"Their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called ' Sodom ' and ' Egypt,' where also their Lord was crucified." Certainly no other place could be so defined:and thus defined and characterized for its lusts as Sodom, for its cruelty to the people of God as Egypt, it is not now called the "holy," but the "great" city,-great even in its crimes. In its street their bodies, lie, exposed by the malice of their foes which denies them burial, but allowed by God as the open indictment of those who have thus definitively rejected His righteous rule. The race of the prophets is at an end, which has tormented them with their claim of the world for God ; A and the men of the earth rejoice, and send gifts to one another. Little do they understand that when His. testimony is at an end, there is nothing left but for God Himself to come in and to manifest a power before which man's power shall be extinguished as flax before the flame.
And the presage of this quickly follows. "And after the three days and a half, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet ; and great fear fell upon them which beheld them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, 'Come up hither.' And they went up into heaven in the cloud ; and their enemies beheld them."

If this is the time of the addition of the saints martyred under the beast's persecution to the first resurrection, of which the vision in the twentieth chapter speaks, then it is plain that we are arrived at the end of the beast's power against the saints, and of the last week of Daniel " Two" is the number of valid testimony (Jno. 8:17), and these two witnesses may, in a vision like that before us, stand for many more,-nay, for this whole martyred remnant in Israel. We cannot say it is so, but we can as. little say it is not so ; and even the suggestion has its interest:for thus this appendix to the sixth trumpet seems designed to put in place the various features of Daniel's last week, the details of which are opened out to us in the seven chapters following, with many additions. And this we might expect in a connected chain of prophecy which stretches on to the end; for under the seventh trumpet the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of His Christ, and the " time of the dead to be judged " is at least contemplated.

The resurrection of the witnesses is not all:a great earthquake follows, " and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons ; and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven."

Thus the sixth trumpet ends in a convulsion in which judgment takes, as it were, the refused tithe from a rebellious people. There is a marked similarity here between the trumpets and the vials, which end also in an earthquake and judgment of the great city:as to which we may see further in its place. The rest that are not slain give glory to the God of heaven. It is the unacceptable product of mere human fear, which has no practical result; for God is claiming the earth, not simply heaven, and for the affirmation of this claim His witnesses have died. They can allow Him heaven who deny Him earth. And judgment takes its course.

The second woe ends with this, and the third comes quickly after it.

The Kingdom.(Chap. 11:15-18.)

The third woe is the coming of the kingdom!

Yes ; that to greet which the earth breaks out in gladness, the morning without clouds, the day which has no night, and the fulfillment of the first promise which fell upon man's ears when he stood a naked sinner before God to hear his doom, the constant theme of prophecy now swelling into song and now sighed out in prayer, that kingdom is yet, to the " dwellers upon earth," the last and deepest woe.

The rod of iron is now to smite, and omnipotence it is that wields it. "And the seventh angel sounded, and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, 'The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.'"

Few words and concise, but how pregnant with blessed meaning! The earth that has rolled from its orbit is reclaimed ; judgment has returned to righteousness ; He who has learned for Himself the path of obedience in a suffering which was the fruit of tender interest in man has now Himself the scepter ; nor is there any power that can take it out of His hand.

There are no details yet:simply the announcement, which the elders in heaven answer with adoration, prostrate upon their faces, saying, " We give Thee thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and who wast, that Thou hast taken Thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give their reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear Thy name, small and great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth."

There is nothing difficult here in the way of interpretation, except that the " time of the dead to be judged " seems to come with the period of the earthly judgments which introduce millennial blessing. We find in the twentieth chapter full assurance that this is not to be. The explanation is that we have here the setting up of the kingdom in its full results, and that the order is one of thought and not of time. The judgments of the quick (or living) and of the dead are both implied in the reign of our Lord and of His Christ, though they are not executed together. God's wrath is mentioned first, because it is for the earth the pre-requisite of blessing, and because judgment is not what He rests in, but in love. It is therefore put first, that the realization of the blessing may come after, and not give place to it. But this wrath of God which meets and quells the nations' wrath goes on and necessitates the judgment of the dead also. Death is no escape from it:the coming One has the keys of death and hades.

With this the holiness of God is satisfied, and the love in which He rests is free to show itself in the reward of prophets and saints, and those who fear His name, little as well as great. This seems as general in its aspect as the judgment of the dead on the other side unquestionably is. The foremost mention of the prophets, as those who have stood for God in testimony upon the earth, is in perfect keeping with the character of the whole book before us. And the destruction of those who destroy the earth is not noticed here apparently as judgment so much as to assure us of the reparation of the injury to that which came out of His hands at first, and in which He has never ceased to have tender interest, despite the permitted evil of " man's day."

(To be continued.)

A Small sheet before me, which has been circulated extensively in this town (in California), professes to give the distinctive features of the system, and other points of supposed interest. I propose, with the Lord's help, to define more clearly what they really are.

Passing over some things which scarcely need comment, I learn that, whilst advocating the truth of the second coming of Christ, they excuse themselves from any share in the blame due to those who have repeatedly failed in their attempts to foretell the time of that great event. We are told that they "held to the position that their computation of the prophetic dates was correct, but they had been mistaken in the event."

They do not tell us in this of the unclean device the enemy furnishes to help them to escape conviction, so I invite the reader's attention to it. They tell us that then Christ went, for the first time, from the holy place into the most holy, to cleanse it from the defilements brought in there by His work about sin in the holy place, so carnal are their thoughts on this point. Inspired writers tell us that Christ, "after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God." (Heb. 10:12; see also Acts 2:33, 34, and 7:56.)

Thus is the truth perverted in their hands who come professedly to give us light. It will be seen that in reality they are seeking to overthrow the very foundations of faith.

Further on, they tell us that they keep the Sabbath, or seventh day, and that this and the Second Coming are the two important doctrines. For them, " all other doctrines are, in a sense, subsidiary to those; " and a little further on. in this noteworthy sheet, we are informed that, " whilst they do not underestimate the importance of obeying the whole moral law, they believe that the fourth commandment is especially neglected," so that we are to understand that to keep the Sabbath is more important than to abstain from idolatry, murder, lying, and covetousness; and all other doctrines are so subsidiary that even the Atonement – the central truth of Christianity-is, with them, completely in the shade, if, indeed, it be really held at all, save in name. Scripture makes the true confession of the person of the Son of God the foundation of every thing. With them, of course, it is only subsidiary to keeping Saturday as Sabbath, and a belief in the Lord's return. These and other equally important truths are of very small consequence with them, whilst the paper informs us that abstinence from tobacco and alcohol is necessary for their fellowship.

Fragments of neglected truth are mixed up with errors, and are the sugar-coating to the pill of heresy they wish to have taken without question by their deluded victims. Eternal life as the reward of the faithful is so put as to seem to savor their doctrine of annihilation. For they believe man does not possess an immaterial spirit and soul, capable of being unclothed and clothed upon (2 Cor. 5:8), but is simply a breathing mass of clay, existing only in the shape of senseless dust in the grave after death, and until the resurrection. In an eastern city I knew one who had been a firm believer in their doctrine as to this, but the Spirit of God exercised his conscience, and he could get no peace; for how can one have peace with God under law, and with these views, for they say the judgment is to determine who is to have eternal life, and therefore it cannot be known till that is passed. But to continue,-the one of whom I speak, sitting in their meeting, heard the preacher say that "nobody has eternal life until the resurrection; " a voice seemed to speak in his soul and say, "That's a lie, for the Lord Jesus says, 'He that believeth hath everlasting life, and shall not come into the judgment, but is passed from death to life.'" (Jno. 5:1, 8.) In deep anguish, as one who feared to be deceived in a matter of eternal moment, he lifted his heart to God, and prayed for deliverance from these errors; on returning home, he found a little volume, that taught the way according to the Word, lying on his table, and he sat down to read it, and, to use his own words, read himself "out of darkness into light."

Another interesting piece of information given us is to the effect that the " remnant of Israel" means the "Church." Most people who read this perhaps will not know what is meant by the term "remnant of Israel," but an attentive student of Scripture will soon find that the calling and hope of Israel, as given in the Old Testament, is an earthly one, and the calling and hope of the Church is a heavenly one. They will learn that Israel, given up to judicial blindness for their sins and rejection of Christ, will be taken up again by God in grace, and a remnant of the nation will be restored to divine favor and blessing, because " the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" on His part. That "He that scattered Israel will gather him." (Jer. 31:10, 11; 33:1, 8; 30:11.) The prophet Ezekiel giving even the detailed description of the millennial temple (Ezek. 11:, 17:), and the arrangement of the twelve tribes in the land. And the universal testimony of the prophets being to the fact of Israel dwelling once more in peace in Palestine,-the moral center then of the world-and the Gentile nations coming up to worship the Lord at Jerusalem.

But the Church of God has other hopes and destiny. Gathered out of Jews and Gentiles, quickened with the life of Christ risen from the dead, and by one Spirit brought already into oneness with Him, she waits to share His headship over the new creation, heaven and earth being then subject.

But these "say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie," and they are looking for Israel's blessing as their portion, and mix up things, Christian and Jewish, in a way that betrays them as untaught by the Spirit of God. Romans 11:should be enough to refute their errors on this point. In keeping Saturday as their Sabbath they are quite consistent with their position, for they openly proclaim that they are under the law,-the law of Sinai, and therefore under its curse, and without a Savior (Gal. 3:10; 5:5). In other words, they are open apostates from Christ, having carefully eliminated from their belief every vestige of what is proper to it, except the name.

They ask you to consider "what is truth," but they dare not face the truth with any one who knows and reverences, as the only light from God this poor world has, the precious Word of God, and we may leave them where the word of an inspired apostle puts them in that solemn sentence, "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them'" (Gal. 3:10), with the prayer that God may, in mercy, awaken their dead consciences, that they may learn what sin is before Him, and to value that blessed One whom now they put a slight upon, and to give up seeking to clothe themselves with the "filthy rags" of self-righteousness.

Reader, if you have a vestige or regard for divine things, will you listen to those who teach such things, and who, under the garb of lovers of truth, are substituting the most deadly infidel errors? What do you think of men who, to save their own reputation, could invent and propagate such wickedness as that the precious blood of Christ washed the defilement of sin in the inner sanctuary, so that he had to go there in 1844 to cleanse that away, as if one should, in cleansing a floor, wash some of the dirt into another chamber, and need to go in there to finish His work? What ideas can they have of Atonement? You may believe this at their lips; you may give up Christ and redemption for works of law; you may deny man's having a soul and spirit distinct from his body; in fact, it is hard to say what truth you may not deny, and as long as you keep Saturday for Sabbath, and believe in the Lord's coming, you can have fellowship with them. The denial of precious truth is nothing with them, but to touch tobacco or alcohol is to incur excommunication. Truly, they " strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." R.T.G.

There is a constant tendency to follow, in our reading of the Word of God, certain lines of teaching:those most easily discerned by us, or that have most impressed themselves upon our minds and hearts perhaps ; and these, engrossing the attention at the expense of others, become the limit of our spiritual horizon. How many Christians of years standing are still where they where when perhaps they began to live to God- only that where this is the case, the old truths will have lost their freshness and real interest for the soul. Theology comes in to develop this tendency, and to limit the pasture of the flock of God often in such a way as to keep believers always babes in the faith, instead of proper growth being attained to full manhood. But the loss and damage to the soul is immense; and for the lack of knowing the distinct and definite teaching of the Word, souls are exposed to the blighting effect of the " winds of doctrine," which are so many and so various. How well does Rome know the advantage to her that is gained by keeping souls in ignorance of the Word of God, of which she proposes to be the sole interpreter! but may we not with an open Bible, and perhaps keeping up the daily reading of it, yet be much in the dark as to the teaching of the Spirit of God concerning the greater part of what its blessed pages contain ? How many souls would have to acknowledge this to be their state, and that they have little intelligence of the scope of the Word, or of the plan so perfect and harmonious which it contains, which God in His infinite wisdom is working out in this world of sin, and which He is pleased to communicate to His beloved people by the Spirit and through the Word !

All truth is so linked together that you cannot leave out-one part without marring or losing something else ; whilst here, surely, it must be ever true that "we know in part, and prophesy in part," awaiting the time of full and perfect knowledge when we shall see face to face the One who died for us, and of whose glory all truth is but a ray.

The key to the dispensational lines of truth is, of course, prophecy :a subject many consider too deep for them, and from which others are frightened by the rash speculations of those who, not content with humbly and reverently searching the Word, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good, have set out to be prophets themselves, or who, for lack of light on certain points of importance, have perhaps overlooked dispensational distinctions, and so gone quite astray. It may be the fruit of traditional teaching with many an upright soul, which perhaps has missed the mind of God through receiving from man, and not having learned to cease from the creature, and trust only in the living God. How few have really been brought to that, and have to do with God directly about what they hold, so that even if it is truth they have on any point, it is held but weakly, so that they are not able " to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in them!

There is no portion of truth which is so neglected by the mass of believers as prophecy. Yet we are told it is "a light that shineth in a dark place," and that we do well to take heed to it. Do we not, then, do ill to neglect it? Would God advise the study of that which was hurtful or dangerous ? In a dark place is it not dangerous to go without the light ? So God has told us that it is a light shining in a dark place. But so many are taken up with human advancement and progress that they do not any more consider the world a dark place ; it is regarded as growing more and more enlightened. For such, I need not say the light shines in vain ; they are in spirit identified with the progress of the age; they have not yet learned the lesson of the cross, nor can they say with Paul, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Yes, perhaps many would answer, I can glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; it is that by which pardon and justification are procured me. Well, so be it; this is surely matter for thankfulness truthfully to own that. But it is not this that Paul says here; he adds, " By which the world is crucified to me and I to the world." This is another story, surely,-a step beyond the other, and an important one indeed-important in the practical side of Christianity. It puts the cross between us and the world which has rejected and still rejects the Son of God. It puts us on God's side of it, as sharing in the rejection of His Son, and as sharing too, through grace, in the love which prompted Him to give that Son, and that still is holding back the wrath so long and well deserved, that the message of grace may be preached, and God's servants may still, in Christ's stead, be beseeching man to be reconciled to God. But it shows the world as lying in the wicked one, as enslaved by sin and Satan, though passing on insensibly to its doom, asleep in false security. The Christian's path is through the world to the glory of Christ as a stranger and a pilgrim. How many, alas ! are deceived by morality and religious profession, all which Nicodemus had when the Lord Jesus said to him that night, "You must be born again."

But if my reader is a believer, and it is for such this is written, I entreat him or her to consider if the greater part of the Word is not really locked up from sight, and beyond its history, perhaps, and the truths of the gospel necessary to be known for salvation, hardly any thing of its wonderful and blessed contents is understood. Beyond the Sunday-school lesson, perhaps, the interest in it is small, just because the soul has not been laid hold of by the precious things which need to be searched for as for hidden treasure,-treasure compared with which all that the world has is not worth considering, because it is "the unsearchable riches of Christ,"-an expression often quoted, but little understood.

For the present, then, I press upon my reader the great fact that the subject of the Bible is Christ, the Son of God; that the burden of the prophets is "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." The first is past, and the last, it may be, near at hand ; but the One who has been crucified will surely come to reign. Let him remember, in view of the prevailing opposition or indifference to the coming of Christ again, that at His first coming such blindness had fallen upon the professed people of God-the Jews-that they rejected and crucified Him, thus fulfilling the very scriptures they were ignorant of; so too to-day, how many are sharing in the unbelief which has substituted something else for the coming of the Lord! How many are saying, "My Lord delayeth His coming"-the mark of an evil servant; and besides all this, how scoffers abound, saying, "Where is the promise of His coming?" Men will be saying, " Peace, peace, when sudden destruction cometh upon them . . . and they shall not escape."

Do the armed hosts of Europe look like progress? does the present strife between labor and capital augur well for the future ? do the corrupt practices in trade; the increasing crime; the ascendency of the Jesuits, which is increasing rapidly; and the blindness of politicians to the growing menace to their boasted liberties, assure us of peace ? Assuredly not! And if it be said that the world is now open to missionary effort as never before, yet this, too, does not promise the world's conversion, but exactly fulfills the word of Christ, who said, " This gospel of the kingdom must first be preached among all nations for a witness, and then shall the end come." All this fulfills His word as every thing must, for He knows the end from the beginning. In succeeding papers, God willing, some points will be looked at with a view to present this truth for the consideration of the Lord's people, with the assurance that it is a subject full of blessing for those who are simple and upright in heart, and who, casting aside human sophistry and reasonings, have learned in faith to take God at His word, and if blessing for them of glory to Him who always links together His own glory and His beloved people's welfare. R.T.G.

DR. WALDENSTROM AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

I.

The work of Dr. Waldenstrom may well take its place among the Current Events which deserve special notice at our hands. It is one of the signs of the times-sad signs of the departure from the faith which is going on every where, and will go on to the apostasy predicted as that in which the dispensation ends. (2 Thess. 2:) I do not take it up, however, merely to notice it as that, but to give full examination to the views themselves, which, having been widely accepted already among Scandinavians generally, are now being brought before the English-speaking public for an acceptance which they are but too sure to find with many. Dr. Waldenstrom's writings have in them a tone of piety which will attract, while they assume to deal exhaustively with Scripture on their several topics. It is something which assuredly they are very far from doing, a partial truth being very commonly mistaken for the whole, so that we have but to fill in the gaps to find the antidote. But the appearance of doing so will be enough with many to carry their convictions, at least for a time. Among his own countrymen, we are told,-

"The promulgation of the author's views on the atonement occasioned a very general and earnest searching of the Word of God by all classes of Christians, and as these so-called 'new views' were plainly found just in that Word, they were accepted by the majority of Swedes, in their own and in this country [America] ; also by many among Norwegians and Danes, by preachers and people in and outside the state church. Notwithstanding the cry of heresy raised in some quarters at the time against Dr. W–, he passed triumphantly (in 1873), by a discussion before the bishop and consistory of the diocese, his examination for admission into the higher orders of the clergy. In 1874, he was appointed professor of theology (including Biblical Hebrew and Greek) in the state college at Gene, one of the largest cities in Sweden. This position he still holds, while at the same time he is serving his second term in the Swedish parliament."

It is with the treatise on the "Blood of Jesus," the key-note to his views as to atonement, that we naturally begin. It leads us at once into the heart of our subject.

He tells us, first of all, that if, according to the law of Moses, "almost all things are purged with blood " (Heb, 9:22), "the purging itself was accomplished, not by the slaying of the victim, but by the sprinkling with the blood. This has a profound typical significance. In the New Testament also it is said that cleansing from sin is effected by the blood of Jesus-notice :not by the death of Jesus, but by the blood of Jesus."

This is true, and the reason is plain also:by the blood of Jesus our "hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience." (Heb. 10:22.) And this sprinkling is just the application to the person of Christ's blessed work Useless would His death be to us if it were not to be applied-that is, appropriated to us ; and the blood speaks of death, but of a violent death, not of a natural one; of a life taken, not merely ended. A natural death the Lord could not have died, and such a death could not have availed us, because it implies sin in the one who dies.

But, says Dr. Waldenstrom further, by the blood of Christ we cannot mean His bodily or physical blood ; but the blood must be a type of something:we have to ask ourselves, therefore, what the blood typifies.

This is a very serious mistake. The blood of Christ is not a type of something else. It is used metonymically, as the rhetoricians say,-that is, to express such a death as has been pointed out; but that is a very different thing from its being a type. This would deny the blood of the cross to have any real place in our cleansing from sin at all. It would be simply in such relation to it as was Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, and nothing more. Dr. Waldenstrom seems to have borrowed from Swedenborgianism here.

But he asks what is meant by the saints having "washed, their robes in the blood of the Lamb," or our eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood. " Every one understands," he says, "that the blood here is a type of something." I can only answer that, for my own part at least, I have never thought so. Figurative, of course, the expressions are; but it does not follow that every expression in a sentence is figurative even because some are. The washing and the garments, the eating and the drinking, may be figurative ; and are, surely :but it does not make the blood simply a "type." When the Lord says, "He that eateth me shall live by Me," is Christ Himself only a type ? It is strange that a professor of theology should make so rash a statement.

He bids us, again, observe that it is not "faith in the blood" which cleanses from sin, but the blood itself. And that it is not the " value of the blood in the sight of God," but only the blood. And again, that the blood of Christ is never represented as a payment to God for our sins; nor in the Old Testament is the blood of the sacrifices ever represented as such a payment.

What all this is to prepare the way for is pretty clear. But is it true? and is it the whole truth ?

For it is plain that if our hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience – and sprinkling is to cleanse, as Dr. Waldenstrom insists,-we read, on the other hand, of God "purifying hearts through faith" (Acts 15:9), and of " peace "-that is, a purged conscience-" in believing' (Rom. 15:13); just as we read of justification by faith, sanctification by the truth,-that is, of course, by faith in it,-and so on. Surely it is true that faith has for its object, not faith, but Christ, and His work, and that its power for blessing is in this very thing. Thus this is just how faith necessarily must say, "Not faith, nor any thing in myself, but the blood of Christ cleanseth." And that is true ; and yet without faith there would be no cleansing.

Now, when he says, It is not the value of the blood in the sight of God that cleanses, he makes another mistake . of the same kind. Whatever the value of a remedy, of course, it is not its value that acts in the cure. It is the remedy itself that acts. It is indeed the blood that cleanses, and by its being sprinkled ; but if we ask, how is it the sprinkled blood can cleanse? we shall then find that its cleansing power depends upon its atoning power,- that is, upon its value in the sight of God. Dr. Waldenstrom confounds here cleansing with atonement, while in general we shall find he makes atonement to depend upon cleansing, instead of making, as he should make, cleansing depend upon atonement. These two things are widely different. Cleansing is for man, (it is man who is cleansed), while atonement is for God. Once let us make this easy distinction, Dr. Waldenstrom's doctrine will appear the mere confusion that it really is.

As to the blood of Christ being payment for our sins, the expression, it is true, is indefensible, although those who use it have, after all, a truer thought than Dr. Waldenstrom. It is true that the sacrifices of old were not represented as payment for sin, and that this would be a gross, low thought, unworthy of God ; yet our author seems to have forgotten that there was such a thing as atonement-money (Ex. 30:12), and that this was said to be a ransom for their souls. It is to this also that the apostle refers when he says that we " were not redeemed with corruptible things, as with silver and gold,'. . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and, without spot." (i Pet. 1:18, 19.) Here, undoubtedly, the blood of Christ is regarded as the true atonement-money.

The thought, then, is, of a price by which we are redeemed; and with this, all are purchased. (2 Pet. 2:1:) Christ's sufferings are thus a price He paid for all, though only a ransom-price, for His people. Purchase must be distinguished from redemption, although every one that will may find in the first general truth what enables him to realize the special and distinctive one. Christ tasted " death for every man." (Heb. 2:9.) Here is the price paid, and for all:it is for faith to lay hold of this, and say, as it has title to say, "Then I am His." To him who receives this precious grace, the purchase is found to be redemption.

What, then, is the mistake in saying that Christ has made " payment for our sins"? This, that in Scripture the price is for us, not for our sins. He has bought us as that which had value in His eyes. True that the price He had to pay was really that of making atonement for our sins :here is the way open for the confusion, if we are not as careful as, in matters such as these, we should be; and yet we ought to be able easily to distinguish what is very different. Price paid for us speaks of where His heart is:price paid for sin conveys the thought of God being able to tolerate it if His demands are met. Yet no renewed soul could mean such a thing or think of it. The expression to him is only intended to convey that there was an absolute necessity for satisfaction to God's righteousness in order to our salvation, and Christ has given this. Blessed be God, He has! but price for sin is a different thought, and one to be rejected utterly- which every true soul brought face to face with it will assuredly reject.

But Dr. Waldenstrom sees no need of satisfaction to divine justice, as Mr. Princell on his part explicitly assures us ("The Reconciliation," p. 5, n.). Thus-with him there is not merely confusion of thought, but fundamental error, as will be clearly seen in the issue.

For him, the blood of Christ is a type, as we have seen; and he thinks that very commonly " Christians hear and speak and sing about the ' blood of Jesus ' without making it clear to themselves what this expression means," and so it is not "of any use to true edification" ! If this be so, it is surely sad enough. Think of it, that very commonly to true Christians (we must suppose) all their hearing and talking and singing about the blood of Jesus is really a vain and idle thing ! They do not even know what the blood of Jesus means ! What then ? do they not know that it is that which was shed for them upon the cross for their sins? And is the belief of that wondrous fact unedifying to the one who bows prostrate in adoration before God because it is so ?

What is, then, for Dr. Waldenstrom the meaning of the blood of Jesus ? He goes on to tell us,–

"In Lev. 17:11 (according to the original), we read, 'The life [or soul] of the body is in the blood, and I have given it you to sprinkle [or pour] upon the altar, that thereby atonement may be made for your lives [or souls]; for the blood maketh atonement by reason of the life [or soul] which is therein.' And again in ver. 14, ' The life [or soul] of all flesh is in its blood, and it [the blood] constitutes its life [or soul]. For that reason the Israelites were forbidden to eat blood. From these words we understand that the blood is a term for or expressing life ; and this immediately sheds a beautiful, heavenly light upon the language of the Bible concerning the blood of Jesus,"

The blood means, then, the life, for Dr. Waldenstrom:that is evidently not death, but its opposite. And the blood of Jesus of course means, not the death, but the life of Jesus !

Let us first of all examine Dr. Waldenstrom's translation of the passages to which he refers us. Would it be imagined that, he has more than once inserted words which are not there, but which are his commentary merely, and even emphasized what he has inserted, as if part of the text? Yet it is so:the words, "to sprinkle [or pour]," and "which is therein," the last of which is emphasized for us in his book, have absolutely nothing corresponding to them in the Hebrew; and the last of these additions is one of special importance for his argument. "For the blood maketh atonement by reason of the life which is therein." Therein, when? Remember that it is the blood sprinkled or poured upon the altar to make atonement of which this is said. Is the life in it then 1 That would seem perhaps too foolish a question to be asked. Yet the nature of Dr. Waldenstrom's argument requires one to say, Yes ; and he actually makes Scripture say so too ! The blood sprinkled makes atonement by the reason of the life which is in it!

Strike out the interpolated words, and we have Scripture, and what is consistent with the fact. The blood does make atonement by reason of the life, but not of a life which is still in it, but of a life rendered up. That is, it speaks of death, as every Christian perhaps before Dr. Waldenstrom has understood it. If "the blood constituted its life"-the life of the body,-it is surely in the body that it does so, and not out of it. "The life"-not soul-"is in the blood;" or, as this means, and is said further on, it is the blood that is the life. What, then, does the blood shed mean but life poured out? and what is life poured out but death!

But our author would put it rather thus, that the blood being the life of the body, when shed out it still represents its life; nay, he says this is a very common representation in the Bible. The instances he gives are singular enough:Jonathan's words to his father, "Wilt thou sin against innocent blood, to slay David without a cause ? " David saying (Ps. 94:21), "They gather themselves together against the soul [or life] of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood;" Ezek. 3:18, The blood of the wicked required at the watchman's hand ; Pilate's words, " I am innocent of the blood of this just person ; " the people's answer, " His blood be upon us and on our children ;" Judas's confession, "I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood ; " and then he curiously remarks,-

"From all these Scripture-expressions we thus see that it is very common for the Scriptures to say Hood instead of life; and especially is this very common when the question is of a life sacrificed in death, as we have seen already from the examples quoted" !

Truly we have. So that a life sacrificed is still "life" for the Swedish professor, and not death at all; and we may read, " His life be upon us and on our children," etc., etc.! What can one say? What need one say? The life which is not death turns out to be a " sacrifice in death; "and he even ventures to quote, "The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many," as explaining "we have redemption through His blood," and to say, as the conclusion of it all, "The blood of Jesus is nothing else than His life given in His death for us." Of course it is; but what is "life given up in death" as distinguished from death ?

All the texts in which "blood" is spoken of here speak of death, yet Dr. Waldenstrom would teach that it is not death at all that is meant. What is it, then ? " Life given up in death"! ! And this is proved by the very texts which were to show us the difference.

To what is all this leading us ?We shall soon see:-

" In Matt. 26:28, the Lord says, while He hands the blessed cup to His disciples, ' This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.' In and with and under the wine He gave them His blood, made them partakers of His life, which He was now about to lay down for them in death. When He handed them the bread, He did not say, This signifies or represents My body;' but, ' This is My body;' and when He handed them the wine,"He did not say, 'This signifies or represents My blood;' but, 'This is My blood.' Thus, while giving them the bread and wine, He made them real partakers of Himself, joined them to Himself as members of His body, and made them partakers of His life."

Here, then, is the key of Dr. Waldenstrom's position. He is, as we see, thus far still a Lutheran, though with a strange gap in his defenses as that, through which the enemy will surely find an easy way. Go back to Marburg and the table-cloth, and conceive, if you can, Luther maintaining his thesis with the admission made that the blood of Christ was a figure, though the drinking it was literal! Dr. Waldenstrom apparently must believe this, although the Lord actually speaks of the shedding of His blood in the text quoted ; but this means, he tells us, His life laid down. Let us meet this straightforwardly, then:is it true that the Lord made His disciples then (or that He makes them now) partakers of that human life which He laid down for us ? It is not true ; or, if it be, it should be shown us plainly. It is "everlasting life" of which we, blessed be God ! are made partakers :was it everlasting life that the Lord laid down for us ? Can everlasting life become extinct in death ? Will even Dr. Waldenstrom say so?

Thus simply is the whole argument overthrown. As for the Lutheran view itself, it is as contrary to Scripture as it is to. reason; and Scripture is never contrary to reason, though it often transcends it. But Scripture plainly says that the Lord's Supper is a remembrance, and a remembrance of His death. The bread and the wine thus represent Christ's body and blood separate, as they are in death :the blood is shed; we show forth Christ's death till He comes. He Himself says, with reference to such a misunderstanding of like words elsewhere, "Doth this offend you ? What if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?"-as if that would end all thought of this kind,-" it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing :the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (Jno. 6:61-63.)

(To be continued.)

There will be a scene of glories when the kingdom comes. We commonly speak of " glory " as if it stood in that connection only. But this is wrong. Glory then will be displayed, it is true ; glory will then be in the circumstances of the scene. But a much more wonderful form of glory is known already – and that is, in the gospel. There God Himself is displayed ; a more wondrous object than all circumstances. The glory of the gospel is moral, I grant, not material or circumstantial. But it is glory of the profoundest character. There, again I say, God Himself is displayed. The just God and yet the Savior is seen there. Righteousness and peace shine there in each other's company – a result which none but God Himself, and in the way of the cross, could ever have reached.

The gospel calls on sinners to breathe the atmosphere, as I may say, of salvation, to have communion with God in love, and to maintain it in liberty and assurance – and there is a glory in such thoughts and truths as these which indeed excelleth.

Satan interfered or meddled with the work of God, and ruined it in its creature-condition. God at once interfered or meddled with Satan's work, and eternally overthrew it, bringing meat out of the eater, and sweetness out of the strong.

The three earliest receivers of God's gospel – Adam, Eve, and Abel – strikingly illustrate souls that apprehend the glory of the gospel in different features of it.

Adam was blessedly, wondrously emboldened by it, so that at the bidding of it, he came forth at once from his guilty covert and entered the presence of God again, naked as he was. And his boldness was warranted, for he was welcomed there. Eve exulted in it. She sang over it. "I have gotten a man from the Lord," said she -in the joy of the promise that had been made her touching her Seed.

Abel offered the " fat" with the victim. He entered with happiest, brightest intelligence into the promise, and saw that the Giver of it would find His own blessed delight in it,-that the gospel, while it saved the sinner, was- the joy as well as the glory of God. The fat on the altar expressed this.

And such apprehensions of Christ as these-the faith that gives boldness-the:faith that inspires with joy-the faith that penetrates the cross-are full of power in the soul.-(From "Short Meditations," by J. G. Bellett.)

No pen can write, no tongue can tell, what the blood-shedding of Jesus has accomplished. The wondrous fruits of that one sacrifice, both Godward and manward, are infinite in their variety. The intrinsic value of that blood has fully and fairly met all the claims of God-every demand of the law-and the whole need of roan. It has laid a foundation, or rather, in itself forms the foundation for the full display, throughout eternity, for the glory of God and the complete blessedness of His people. Its virtue is felt throughout the highest heights of heaven, and appreciated there in a way that we can have no conception of here. But in due time its power shall be manifested throughout the whole universe. The vernal bloom of every leaf, and flower, and blade of grass-the playful, lambkin, and the harmless lion-the reign of peace and plenty throughout the whole creation-in the day of His millennial glory, shall alike proclaim the redemption-power of the blood of the cross. And on the other hand, the awful consequences of sinners despising that precious blood shall be endured forever in the deepest depths of unutterable woe. Its power must be felt every where.

But to the believer, the truster in that precious blood, it has opened the pearly gates of heaven, and shut forever the gloomy gates of hell. It has quenched the flames of the burning lake, and opened up the everlasting springs of God's redeeming love. It has plucked him as a brand out of the fire, cleansed him from every stain of sin, and planted him in robes of unsullied brightness in the immediate presence of God.-An Extract.

(1 Sam. 25:)

In order to have practical communion with the mind of God, through the Scriptures, whilst the conflict still remains between the flesh and the Spirit, it is needful that the soul be established in grace. Now Satan seeks to hide the simplicity of this grace ; but it is simple grace toward those who were dead in trespasses and sins that has met us. As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so was Jesus on the cross, and He is presented to us by God as the object of our faith. When we look to Him, God says, "Live." The next thing that Satan seeks to hide from us is God's preserving grace; and this he does by bringing in many inventions of his own. God preserves us by something hidden in heaven. We may be looking at our experience-to outward observances-to an outward priesthood, and the like ; but if it is not that which is hidden in heaven, connected with the precious blood of Jesus, and His priesthood, to which we are looking, it must come from him who is the "father of lies." All those things which tend at all to promise the soul preservation, apart from this, lead astray.

There is, then, to all believers, sure and everlasting acceptance, because of the precious blood of Jesus which has been shed for them. " Christ being come a High-Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands,-that is to say, not of this building; 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." (Heb. 9:11, 12.) This secures their blessing and peace forever. Nothing can shake or alter the peace that subsists between the Father and the Son,-nothing that crosses our path here, none of the circumstances of earth, can alter the peace of the sanctuary. It is established forever between the Father and Jesus. So that, whenever a believer seeks it, whatever the condition of soul in which he may turn toward God, the peace of the sanctuary is there-unchanged. How precious the assurance of this! The soul that has learned any thing of God and of His holiness knows how, every hour, many a thing crosses the path likely to affect this peace-that soul must prize the unchanged peace of the sanctuary.

But we know other blessings also. God would have the saints understand and love Him and His ways here- His actings in the midst of an unholy earth, where Satan's seat is. He (God) desires that we should have communion with Himself in His thoughts about all around. By and by the Church will participate with the Lord in the exercise of power toward the earth-we shall share His glory, for we are "joint-heirs with Christ." But besides this, there is the place of present association, in service. And this must be in humiliation. Jesus served God in the midst of circumstances of evil and the "contradiction of sinners."

We read of the apostle Paul saying, " By the grace of God I am what I am ; and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Now, very often (our thoughts are apt to dwell so much and so exclusively on acceptance), this passage:" By the grace of God I am what I am," is looked at as only having to do with acceptance ; but the Lord desires that we should abundantly serve Him in the midst of Satan's world-having, it may be, to conflict, not only with evil in ourselves, but with evil in others ; and nothing but His grace can enable us to do this. It is as much the " grace of God" that has given us to serve, and the " grace of God" that strengthens for service, as it was the " grace of God" that saved us at the beginning.
When "Christ ascended up on high," He "gave gifts unto men. . . . some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints ; for the work of the ministry, to the edifying of the body of Christ." (Eph. 4:8-16.) You. will perceive how the grace of God leads that way, viz., to strengthen and qualify for service. Thus, if any teach you, they do it that you may be blessed, and so blessed as to become servants to others-life in you ministering to life in them, and strengthening that which needs to be strengthened. Now, suppose this be not understood-that I do not see it to be my privilege, I may be very thankful to have one to teach me, but my faith will be weak, and my prayers hindered, I shall not have the right object before me. Teaching amongst the saints is not intended simply to open up truth to them, to tell them what salvation is, or to give them comfort; but also to open out, and direct the soul to, those things which God desires should be the object of service in faith, as it is said, "Your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father." I need not say, beloved friends, how often we stop short of this, and rest in our own personal blessing. When the soul once recognizes it to be the intention God. has in view in strengthening us. that we should serve Him in serving others, it gets quite a new motive for which to live-something worth living for.

Now, I know nothing more important or more blessed than the being able to discern the true servant of Christ in the world. Nothing more marks the difference between a soul taught of the Spirit and one untaught of Him than this. It was a blessed thing-the great test of faith, when the Lord Jesus was here, to be able to discern and confess Him as what He really was-the Son, and Sent One of God. And so, at the present moment, the leading of the Holy Ghost is always toward the distinct recognition of that which is of God in the world. Till Jesus comes again, this will be found in the lowly place, that which the flesh likes not to own, but which the Holy Spirit loves to recognize. He leads the enlightened soul to say, There will I cast in my lot, for there blessing is.

Such parts of Scripture as that on which we are now meditating bring us into communion with the servants of God-the family of faith, in past ages. They show us that, in principle, their trials were like our trials, their conflicts like our conflicts, and thus knit our hearts to them in a way which nothing else can.

David had gained the place in which we find him here because he was of faith, and because Saul was one who was not of faith. He represents the person with whom the truth and the calling of God is. As a simple stripling David had been taught to trust in God-the God of Israel. When the lion and the bear came, he had faith to meet the lion and the bear, and to overcome them. This was a matter between David and God in secret. But very soon after, David's faith enabled him to come forward, not for his own deliverance, but for that of God's Israel. Faith led him to take up the current of the counsels of God. As a Christian goes onward in his career, though the trials he has to encounter may be greater, he goes on in the current of the counsels of God ; and thus, as Paul says, he is led about in triumph in Christ. Greater things may be done, yet, in one sense, they are felt to be easier, because he becomes more acquainted with the strength of God. But this path must begin in secret, and then shall we be led onward of God.

To return to the scene before us. God had anointed David king. Saul was still in power, having offices, etc., which none but one who was of faith ought to have had. David did not lift his hand in vengeance against Saul,- he left all that was connected with the place of the flesh, and took his place as an outcast, simply and singly in the wilderness. There he was glad of any countenance, of any support. Just so is it at the present hour with the servants of Christ who seek to walk in the truth-those, in a spiritual sense, of the lineage of David. The more they walk in it, the more sensitive will they become to any thing of kindness and love which comes in their way, for their hearts will be often worn and weary. I suppose there is nothing more gladdening to the soul that desires the good of others and the glory of God than to see any uniting with itself for the truth's sake. The " cup of cold water"-any little act of kindness connects such with the truth of God. In this there is distinct and precious service-" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." God only sees the heart; but where there is one who says, I receive and countenance, and desire to cast in my lot with, persons who are walking in the truth, suffering for righteousness sake,-there, blessing will be.

David was in need :here was another not in need. Rich in the earth, surrounded by this world's goods, living in abundance,-such was the character of Nabal (5:2). David grudged him not his prosperity (nay, doubtless he felt that he would not have exchanged his place for Nabal's); it was no hard message that he sent-"I do not ask thee," he says, "to leave thy riches and follow me ; I say, Peace both to thee, and peace to thy house, and peace unto all that thou hast ; only wilt thou show kindness unto me; wilt thou give me that which I deed?" (10:6-8.) The heart of David was large enough to have rejoiced in any thing that would have identified Nabal's place with his. And so ever, when the heart of a saint is in a gracious state, there will not be the grudging of those around, nor yet the disposition to say, " See what I am and what you are not." No, that heart will rather seek to bind the connecting link between another and itself.

God deals in grace. He knew what the end of Nabal would be, yet this was the gracious test which he put to him. And if there had been a spark of grace in Nabal's heart, of any thing according to God, it must have answered to the test. But there was not. His eye was fixed upon outward circumstances; his rough, outward thought about David's position was this :"Who is David ? and who is the son of Jesse ? there be many servants that break away now-a-days, every man from his master" (5:10). Now we must remember, dear friends, that we have all of us, naturally, this Nabal feeling; there is no heart without it as well as other evil; and about this, even as believers, we have to watch and judge ourselves. I ask you whether, because you desire to serve God, there is ready willingness, in full freedom of heart, to give all that countenance and fellowship which you are able, to others who may stand in need of it. This may be done in the way of support, or comfort, or sympathy, either in temporal or spiritual things. Love will find out many a way.

In the present day, there are not a few who, it may be, seem to some of us, to shrink from and shun the circumstances in which they find themselves placed. But about this we may misjudge them, and be saying, in principle, the same thing that Nabal said, little aware of the deep inward struggle and anxiety there has been. David had given up much ; many a tie had been broken, many a struggle gone through, ere he took this position. So that, though it was true, in one sense, that he had " run away from his master," how different was the act in the eyes of God and of man. That which is outward soon attracts the eye, when perhaps it requires patient, diligent investigation to find out the truth. If the soul desire fellowship with God in His thoughts and ways, there must be this diligence, otherwise we shall never know what to encourage and what not. Depend upon it, all truth, the more it is known and acted on, the more will it lead into the isolated place.

But we may learn a deep and practical lesson from what is shown out here of David's heart.

The flesh was still in David, and (as many of us are often found, when any thing comes upon us unexpectedly) he was unprepared to meet, in steadfastness of grace, that which God allowed to be in His path.

No doubt he considered the slight and dishonor put upon him by Nabal " most uncalled for," " most unjust," " rather too much to bear." But he was wrongly roused. And how often is this the case with the saints of God ! They dwell on circumstances, instead of turning from circumstances to God and then acting amidst them according to Him. They say, perhaps, "How unkind! How unjust! do I deserve this treatment? Is it not quite right to be angry ? " Thus the place of grace is lost. Day by day a thousand things act on our spirits, in one way or another, which are calculated to produce trying and painful effects. Now, if these be met in fellowship with God, they afford an occasion for bringing forth blessed fruit; but if not, we ourselves become contaminated, and have to confess sin. So that, instead of (as the hymn says) Satan trembling and fleeing from us in every conflict, he often thus gains advantage over us. It is a blessed thing to be able to praise God for having enabled us practically to triumph and overcome. And this we should seek to attain. The apostle Paul could say, " I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith," and " none of these things move me," etc. We can always praise God for what He is in Himself, and for what He has made us in Christ, but we might also praise Him for our own practical victory over Satan and over the world.

" 'Mid mightiest foes, most feeble are we;
Yet, trembling, in every conflict they flee:
The Lord is our banner, the battle is His,
The weakest of saints more than conqueror is."

(To be concluded in our next.)

AN EXPOSITION OF REVELATION IV.-XXII.

PART II.-Continued.

The First Woe. (Chap. 9:1-12.)

At the sound of the fifth trumpet a star is seen, not to fall, as the common version put sit, but already fallen from heaven to earth. This seems naturally to connect thus with the apostasy under the third trumpet, nor is it likely that the apostasy of any other should be as noteworthy as his whose course is recorded here. At all events, it is an apostate, surely, that is before us, and to him is committed "the key of the abyss."

The force of the words have first of all to be considered. A " pit" is in the Old Testament often a synonym for a dungeon, and every thing unites to show this to be the meaning here ; while the "abyss " is not other than the pit itself, but only a further definition of it* -the dungeon which is the abyss. *The genitive of apposition, as Jno. 2:21, " the temple of His body."* So the demons pray that they may not be sent into the deep, or " abyss " (Luke 8:31), and Satan is, in the twentieth chapter, shut up there. In the Old-Testament parallel to the same in Revelation, it is said, " They shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison." (Isa. 24:22.) Here the abyss is the " pit," or prison, clearly. The key is used in this place as in the later one-here, the " key of the pit of the abyss;" there, simply "the key of the abyss."

The abyss is not, however, "hell"-the "lake of fire," -as we may see by the fact that it is, in one passage (Rom. 10:7), used in connection with the Lord:"Who shall descend into the deep (the abyss)?-that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead." Here, as the heavens are inaccessible to man for height, so is the abyss for depth. The literal meaning (" bottomless ") must not be pressed, as our own use of the word shows, and the Greek was similar ; the Septuagint use it for the " deep " upon which darkness rested on the first day.

The connection of the " pit" with the state of the dead in the Old Testament is similar to that of the "abyss" here in the New. We have this again in Revelation, where the " beast," in its last phase, is said to come up out of the abyss. This seems naturally to refer to the wounding to death, and revival (chap. 13:3, 12, 14). Some have even contended, seeing the identification of the beast (the empire) with its last head (chap. 7:ii), for the literal resurrection of a person in this case; but this is only a wild extravagance:for resurrection literally could only be from God, and the beast in its last form is wholly under the power of Satan, (13:i, 2). The rising up out of the abyss is figurative, therefore, as the beast itself is; and indeed the use of the word seems figurative throughout.

Now Christ has "the keys of hades and of death" (chap. 1:18); and it is not to be imagined that He should give up into the hand of an apostate, whether man or spirit, any portion of His own authority. We must not think, therefore, (as has been done,) of a literal opening of hades, and an irruption of the spirits of the lost upon the earth. Fancies like these easily gain ascendency over a certain class of minds; and yet who could seriously maintain such an outbreak of wickedness on the part of those shut up, like the rich man in hades, to await judgment? Were it so, there would be "deeds done" out of the body, as well as " in the body," to give account of in the day of judgment. But, in fact, the locusts are not said even to come out of the pit. Nothing is said to come out of it but the smoke which darkens the sun and air; and out of the smoke the locusts come. It may be natural to think that, after all, they cannot be bred of the smoke, and that they must come with the smoke out of the pit; but naturalistic interpretations may easily deceive us, where the spiritual sense is the whole matter, and for the spiritual meaning there is no difficulty. The smoke is not, as in other places, the smoke of torment, but the fumes of malign spiritual influences which darken the air and the supreme source of light itself. Out of this darkness we can easily understand the locusts to be bred.

It is quite in accordance with their origin that their power should be represented as that of the scorpions of the earth-that is, in their poisonous sting-and their distinction from natural locusts is seen in this, that they do not touch the locusts' food, but are a plague only upon men, and these the unsealed. Remembering that it is in Israel that the sealing is found, the inference seems just that these unsealed ones are Israelites, and the sphere of this plague is in the east. They do not kill-as, in general, the scorpion does not,-but inflict torment to which death is preferable ; and their power lasts five months.

We next find them pictured as warriors-a military power subordinated to what is their grand interest and aim, the propagation of poisonous falsehood. Thus "the shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared unto battle;" and, as in the certainty of triumph beforehand, "upon their heads were as it were crowns like gold." Little matter of real triumph had they, as the limiting words here show. "Their faces were as faces of men" also,-they had the dignity and apparent independence of such; while yet "they had hair as the hair of women," being in the fullest subjection to the dark and dreadful power that ruled over them. " Their teeth as the teeth of lions " show the savage, tenacious grip with which they can hold their prey; their breast-plates of iron, perhaps, the fence of a hardened conscience; the sound of their wings, like that of the locust-hosts they resemble, conveys the hopeless terror which they inspire. Finally, we are again told of their scorpion-stings, and their power to hurt men five months.

They have a king over them-the angel of the abyss, whose name is given, almost exactly the same in meaning, in Hebrew and in Greek. The use of the Hebrew unites, with other indications we have had, to assure us that it is upon Israel that this woe comes, while the Greek no less plainly indicates that the angel here has also to do with the Gentiles:according to both, he is the " destroyer;" and it is natural to think of Satan in such connections, while it seems not probable that the angel of the abyss is the same person with the fallen star.

The historical application in this case is one in which there is great unanimity among interpreters. They apply it to Mohammed, and the Saracens, whose astonishing successes were manifestly gained under the inspiration of a false religion. They came in swarms from the very country of the locusts, and their turbaned heads with men's beards and women's hair, their cuirasses, the sparing of the trees and corn, and even «f life where there was submission, with their time of prevalence, according to the year-day reckoning, one hundred and fifty years,- all these things have been pointed out as fulfillment of the vision. It has been objected, on the other hand, that such points as these are below the dignity of Scripture, and that the terms are moral. While this is surely true if we think of the full intention, it is to be considered, on the other hand, whether God does not allow and intend oftentimes a correspondence between such outward things and what is deeper, just as the face of a man may be a real index to his spirit. Just because they are external, they are well fitted to strike the imagination; and the parable is, as we know, a very common method of instruction every wherein Scripture. Thus God would open our eyes to see what is indeed all around us; and to stop at what is external, or to ignore it, is alike an error. In any case, and for reasons which we have already considered, we cannot take this Saracenic scourge as any complete fulfillment of the locust-vision. Nor can we, on the other hand, connect it as fully and certainly with other prophecy as would be necessary for very clear interpretation. What seems indicated, however, with regard to its final fulfillment in a time yet to come, is the rise and propagation of that delusion to which we know both the mass of mere Christian profession and of the unbelieving Jews will in the end surrender themselves. (2 Thess. 2:)The antichrist Of that time will be, there is little doubt, both an apostate from Christianity and from the faith of his Jewish fathers (Dan. 11:37); and his apostasy will remove (under divine permission) the present restraint upon the power of evil. It will be as if the abyss had opened its mouth to darken the light of heaven; a mist of confusion will roll in upon men's minds, which will under Satanic influence soon find definite expression in forms of blasphemy and a host of armed adherents ready to force upon others the doctrines of the pit. As has been said, it is apparently with Israel that this trumpet has to do, but yet the Greek name of the leader seems to speak also of the connection with the Gentiles. If the application here made be the true one, then we know that the "wicked one" will not be a Jewish false Christ merely, but will also head the apostasy of Christendom. In this sense also it may be that the " beast " under its last head-the revived Roman empire -is said to come up out of the abyss, its actual revival being due to the dark and dreadful power which is presented to us here,-so exceeding in malignity all that has preceded it, that its advent is called, in the language of inspiration, "the first woe."

Jesus, let Thy presence with me
Set my heart's affections free ;
Lead me, teach me, keep me near Thee,
In Thy love for me.

Once I lay beside the water,
Once I stood beneath the tree,
Once a leper, once a beggar,
But Thou calledst me.

Once I sat in nature's blindness,
Once I wandered o'er the tombs,
Once I fell among the robbers,-
Thou didst heal my wounds.

Jesus, Lord of life and glory,
Set my heart's affections free ;
Teach me well the wondrous story
Of Thy love for me.

Oh, what wonder ! oh, what mercy !
Thou didst touch the bier for me ;
Thou didst bid them loose the grave-clothes,
In Thy love for me.

Once the Sycamore I clambered,
Thinking thus Thyself to see ;
Once in sin the city wandered,
All was dark to me.

Jesus, let Thy presence with me
Set my heart's affections free ;
Teach me, lead me, keep me near Thee,
In Thy love for Me.

Q. 21.- " Can you give any light upon 1 Cor. 1:18 – 'But unto us who are being saved, it is the power of God' ? (R.V.) King James's version gives "are saved," My Greek New Testament confirms the rendering of the Revised Version. Will you please give what you consider authority? Does not the rendering of the Revised Version clash with the truth of a known present salvation?"

Ans. – There is no doubt about the reading:all manuscripts agree. It is the present participle passive, and may well be rendered as the Revised Version, though the American revisers put it in the margin, and restore the old translation in the text. There is really no question ,of doctrine, however, as, being in the plural, it simply speaks of the successive salvation of the individuals of this" class, – " To us who are being saved [one after another]." This, of course, in no wise denies the completeness of the salvation to one who has received it, but only affirms that the salvation of men at large is not complete. Grace is adding to their number day by day.

At the same time, it is true also that, as to the individual, his" salvation is not in every sense complete. Prom guilt and condemnation it is, but there is a salvation which we work out day by day (Phil. 2:12, 13), as well as one we shall receive when the Lord comes (1 Pet. i, 5).

* From Mrs. Bevan's new book, " Sketches of the Quiet in the Land,' now publishing.*

Come, children, on and forward!
With us the Father goes;
He leads us, and He guards us
Through thousands of our foes :
The sweetness and the glory,
The sunlight of His eyes,
Make all the desert places
To glow as paradise.

Lo! through the pathless midnight
The fiery pillar leads,
And onward goes the Shepherd
Before the flock He feeds.
Unquestioning, unfearing,
The lambs may follow on,
In quietness and confidence,
Their eyes on Him alone.

Come, children, on and forward!
We journey hand in hand,
And each shall cheer his brother
All through the stranger-land.
And hosts of God's high angels
Beside us walk in white:
What wonder if our singing
Make music through the night?

Come, children, on and forward,
Each hour nearer home!
The pilgrim-days speed onward,
And soon the last will come.
All hail! O golden city!
How near the shining towers!
Pair gleams our Father's palace:
That radiant home is ours.

On! Dare and suffer all things!
Yet but a stretch of road,
Then wondrous words of welcome,
And then the Face of God.
The world, how small and empty!
Our eyes have looked on Him;
The mighty Sun has risen,
The taper burneth dim.

Far through the depths of heaven
Our Jesus leads His own-
The Mightiest and the Fairest,
Christ ever, Christ alone.
Led captive by His sweetness,
And dowered with His bliss,
Forever He is ours,
Forever we are His.

G. Tersteegen.

Being Lessons from the Gospel of Matthew.

I. WITH GENEALOGY AND WITHOUT. (CHAP. I.)

It has been many times said, and is now understood by many, that the gospel of Matthew presents to us Christ as King. We may see by the first verse that this is true. Jesus Christ as " the Son of David " is the first thought in it suggested, though not the sufficient thought; and therefore the chapter goes on to connect with this two other titles :He is also the " Son of Abraham,"the promised Seed of blessing to the Gentiles ; and then much more than this, He is Immanuel, " God with us." These three threads woven together make our Joseph's many-colored coat as He is here put before us.

" Son of David," put first, declares His kingship to be the fundamental thought; "Son of Abraham" widens His dominion into universal reign over the earth ; " Immanuel " plants His throne in heaven, and subjects souls as well as bodies to His easy yoke. The last gives us the peculiar phrase of Matthew, nowhere else found, here abundant, "the kingdom," or rule, "of heaven." What fullness of blessing, for which the earth yet groans, is in this thought of a heavenly rule over the earth !

The break-down of thrones which the present day is witnessing, but which was long ago predicted in the Word, speaks not of royalty as a mistake or needless, as men deem ; but only that He has not taken power to whom it can be safely trusted. When He is come, despotic power will not only be His right, but a necessity, that the blessing of His rule may be realized in its fullness. It is for Him that, as "the desire of all nations," though with unintelligent groans, the whole earth waits ; when " all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him:for He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy . . . and men shall be blessed in Him ; all nations shall call Him blessed."

The genealogy comes first in Matthew because it is the legal proof of the Lord's being David's Son, for which reason also it is traced downward, because the title to the throne descends. In regard to supernatural birth, the law could take no notice of it,-it could not affect the title. Thus Joseph is reminded of his lineage where he is plainly told that " that which is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Ghost." That it is heirship that is in question is plain in the fact that Jeconiah is here said to have " begotten " Salathiel, whose real father, as we are told elsewhere, was Neri, Jeconiah himself being pronounced by the prophet childless (Jer. 22:30):his heir is reckoned as if begotten by him, just as seed raised up to him by his brother after his own death might be. (Deut. 25:6.)

Luke it is that gives us the true father of Salathiel ; and thus the genealogy in Luke is shown to be the natural one,-an important help to settling in the affirmative the question whether it is Mary's, as Mary alone is prominent throughout the early chapters. And this is completely in character with the way the Lord is seen in Luke, the gospel of His manhood, not His kingship. Heirship, therefore, in it is out of question :that He is son of man need not be proved. Thus the genealogy there does not commence the book:He gets no title from any special line of ancestors ; thus also the stream flows backward, as it were, in it also ; for it is grace that has connected Him with the family of man, and He is the spring of it. Thus the line of connection stretches back to Adam (reinstated in his old dignity as " son of God "), and the genealogy itself is appended to that part of the Lord's history in which He comes forward from His thirty years' private life to take up openly His public ministry among men. At His baptism by John He is seen and borne witness to as the anointed Son of God.

Returning now to Matthew and his genealogy, he himself points out to us its division into three parts, in each of which he gives and numbers fourteen generations- for a purpose clearly, as there are names left out to make this number right. Why should this be ? The number itself, which is twice seven, must be therefore significant, and the significance would be apparently, according to the meaning of these numbers (2 X 7), the " testimony of complete divine work." They would assure us that in this carefully measured succession God was bearing witness of His own hand at work in power and wisdom to control and bring order out of that which might seem to be fortuitous, or man's failure merely, – each name the record of a step toward the final result, which is the introduction of Christ as the Ruler in God's kingdom, to whom all from the beginning pointed. Read in this way, the three periods in their general character are plain :First, the period of promise from Abraham to David, the two heads of it ; secondly, a period of decay and ruin till the carrying captive into Babylon ; thirdly, a period of prostration, yet expectancy, ending suddenly in a resurrection of the long-lost royalty, in David's infinitely greater Son. The numbers here, to those who can read them, are again significant, and a divine purpose should be evident to all, which in its details may be difficult to trace indeed, for we have scarcely begun to realize the minute perfection of Scripture, and how as in nature mines of wealth often lie in what seem the most barren spots.

Promise, coming first, lays the foundation for faith, and shows the divine plan, which nothing on the part of man or Satan can alter or interfere with. Then comes the winter-killing of the weeds of self-reliance and confidence in man, who, "being in honor, abideth not;" and then, though still after a long trial of patience, the sudden advent of the promised King. In the first of these periods, just between Abraham and David, when the divine counsel is making itself known, and in a part of the genealogy which no Jew whatever could deny to be Messiah's, occur three of those four women's names, conspicuous as those of the only women there which show that not to Jews only is the Son to be born upon whose shoulder the government is laid. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, are all, as it would appear-certainly the first three-Gentiles, and thus show the blessing for the nations in the Seed of Abraham. Tamar's place is given her by her sin, God's grace being supreme above it; Rahab finds hers there through the faith of which she is in the history of the times a prominent example ; against Ruth the Moabitess lies the law which forbids the entrance of her posterity into the commonwealth of Israel, yet David is only in the third generation king over the whole. What lessons for the law-confiding Jew of our Lord's day ! and still for us what assurances of a grace that has been since fully revealed ! Uriah's wife comes into the second period, of break-down and ruin, and (how fittingly there!) completes the picture of grace that wearies not, nor comes short of the full salvation of those who are recipients of it. Fruit of this perseverance, not so much of the saint as of God toward the saint, is Solomon, the " peaceful," as his name means. Yet from its glory in him the kingdom wanes rapidly and goes on toward Babel when it passes to the Gentiles ; Israel is dispersed; God still over all, so as to make that dispersion the preparation for a gospel to be preached unto all nations, and a spiritual reign among the Gentiles of Christ the King.

Here we must leave the genealogy with its riches indicated only, scarcely at all possessed, yet the divine stamp plainly on it all and on the book to which it is the preface. What follows is the sanctuary into which the long line of this succession has conducted us :we learn after what manner and under what suspicion at the first the King of kings comes to His own world. Under a vail, in the distance of a dream, as if His coming were still to be (as it is) to the Jew but a parable, the angel of the Lord declares to Joseph the dignity of Him who comes. It is the Seed of the woman, the Conqueror, to whom is to be given the name of a conqueror of another time, Joshua, or Jesus, but whose first deliverance is of " His people from their sins." This is the meaning of His disguise; born in poverty,-a manger, not a throne, receiving Him; no room for Him in the "inn," the stopping-place for a night, to which sin has degraded the earth,-how could He assume honor in it? Rather would He take His place here with the very beasts of burden, the patient witnesses of ministering goodness, though in the scene of man's fall, and suffering with him its bitter consequences. " Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins" had been God's word of old to His people; and here was He how serving who could claim as Jehovah Israel for His own. Yet the place of service is that which glorifies, as the place of honor would have degraded Him. He alone had ability to serve those in such a condition,-to serve as savior, and thus to secure to them in due time His kingdom also, bringing their hearts into subjection to Him by that which makes His throne a "throne of grace."

He is Jesus, the Savior, that He may be, according to Isaiah's witness, Emmanuel. ' Those delights with the sons of men which had been of old are now in Him to find their expression and their justification. The sin which has come in is only itself to be made to witness, more emphatically than all else, of those delights. Emmanuel is the Savior, the kiss of God for prodigals, in His own person wedding man to God. May our hearts not think of it without making for Him fit music for the marriage-feast ! " God with us,"-not merely over us,- but so with us that He shall be indeed over us; His yoke the badge of freedom,-true liberty as delivered from the lusts that preyed on and enslaved us, the service of love, which is but obedience to the instincts of its own nature, love that serves in answer to a love that has served us.

" God with us,"-here in our world, on His way to a kingdom, marking out the road in which we are to walk with Him. With Him who would not walk ? Not a path but He knows, who has taken up that which we had thrown off, to show us how our meat may be even in such a scene to do His will who sent us into it. The thorns of our path are upon His brow ; plucked from it, they are indeed His crown.

Such is the manner, then, in which this new King is introduced to us. King of the Jews, His kingdom is world-wide, heaven-high ; the kingdom of One who serves that He may reign, and who if He reigns, serves all over whom He reigns ! A glorious King is He,-Jesus, the " King of glory,"-soon and as suddenly to come, as He came in the days to which we are looking back, and to which through all eternity with unabated intensity of interest we shall still look back.