There was no necessity that it should be brought into light.

It has never been in darkness.

It is manifest everywhere. Light and life are synonymous.

There is not a condition in which in some form or other it does not exist. While one class of life may not live in a certain environment, there are other forms to which this environment would be as a hotbed for their production. Life is, indeed, universal, and may be said to be omnipresent. You will find it in the deepest depths of earth, and in the highest reaches of air. It expands on the mountain top, it dwells in the sea; it is organized in the infusoria, it exists in the infinitesimal, and reveals itself at last, in the beauty of woman and the strength of man.

As natural life has always thus been in evidence; as it has never been in the dark at all, then the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light is not natural life—it is new life—a life unknown to the world before.

It does not come from the natural man. It is not produced by natural generation. It comes from our Lord Jesus Christ and by supernatural generation. It did not come from him while he walked the earth. At no time during his earthly career did a human being receive it. The disciples who followed him—he who leaned upon his breast at supper and was the disciple whom Jesus loved—knew nothing of it. This new and unique life was brought into the light only when that light shone from his empty grave. He gave it forth and communicated it to men only when, as the risen man, he ascended up on high. It comes from him as the second man, as the last Adam, that Adam to whom the first was only as the clay model to the completed statue, as concept is to consummation. It comes from him who is both God and man, in one body and one person forever; and who, as such, is the head and beginning of the new creation of God.

By him it is communicated to those who own him as their atoning sacrifice.

The instrument is the word of the Gospel.

The agent is the Holy Spirit.

The Word is preached—it falls into the heart of the believer as seed into the ground.

The Spirit quickens it—the new life is germinated.

That new life is the life and nature of the risen one, our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, the man in the glory; it is the mind of him who is called Christ, and it is, therefore, in final term—"the mind of Christ."

It is wrought, not in the soul, but in the spirit of the believer.

By no slow process does it enter—this life of the risen Lord—but by absolute fiat—the fiat of him who said—"Lazarus, come forth."

It is fiat life.

Its entrance into a human being is as light flashes into darkness.

It is as instantaneous as when God of old said, "Let there be light," and light burst over a world cataclysmically fallen into chaos.

It is as transforming as when morning awakens the sleeping earth and hill and dale, river and sea, shine forth in their beauty.

It is as startling as when Lazarus himself, obeying the voice of his Lord, rose from the dead and came forth.

Behold the illustration of it.

Here is a man who grovelled in the lowest animalism.

He was a husband and father. What a husband! and what a father!

She who was his wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of his footsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who had solemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent on gratifying his own fierce lust, and ready with unchecked sensualism to trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose very name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not only wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every characteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A man, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to unspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer, through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and degraded humanity found its unhindered course. A human being, who had become a lazar spot, a walking pest, whose inmost thought rotted and putrified his own mind; and whose words without license were a poison and contagion to every one whose ears caught their unwelcome sound.

Mark the change in that man!

The wife now watches at the door with a gladsome smile to greet his return. The children, who once in their rags trembled with fear, now clean and wholesomely clad, and gay with laughter, gather at his knee, the moment he enters his home. He is himself well dressed. He holds his head erect, his eyes, no longer bloodshot, meet your gaze with frank and open glance. His tones are soft and modulated, his speech gentle. The Bible, the one book he always hated, is his constant study. His mouth once filled with cursings that might well have chilled the blood to hear, now give utterance to the voice of prayer and earnest thanksgiving. The church he never entered and always avoided has become the centre around which the best activities of his life are continuously moving. He who was once shunned, despised and feared, is now honored and respected of all.

The man has been transformed.

Those who saw him in former days and see him now might in all reason ask, "Is this he, or some other man?"

It is both he and yet another man. The same person, but possessing another character.

What is the secret of it all?

Let the answer be graven on every heart. He has received a new life, a new, a pure, a holy and spiritual life. He has received that life from above, from the second Adam, the Lord in heaven. He is now a twice-begotten man.

And herein is the glorious, distinctive feature of Christianity in so far as it touches a human soul.

To that soul it brings the good news that a new generation is possible; the good news that any human being may start over. The good news that, no matter how much you may be handicapped by your original genesis; no matter what the terrific law of heredity may have transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry your name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of which the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest and poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings the good news that you may receive from the throne of God life from God, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may be recreated morally and spiritually, and have in you all the assets which, when fully capitalized by the grace of God, shall insure your sonship with God here, making you master over every disturbing and disquieting passion, and guaranteeing to you an eternal entrance into the endless inheritance of God, wherein you shall be, indeed, the heir of God and joint heir with our Lord Jesus Christ. In short, you may have the bequeathed ability to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This is the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light.

The Gospel is the good news of this life of which the life giver himself has said, "I came that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." That is to say: "I came that ye might have this spiritual life and have it without limit here."

And this Gospel of the new life brought to light by and through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the elemental facts and forces which definitely answers the question— "What is Christianity?"

But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death as a penalty and the bringing in of a new and spiritual life. Christianity is through its Gospel—the good news that—

Third—Immortality has been brought to light.

The word here translated "immortality" is "incorruption"; but it signifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortality is identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality, which is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence of incorruption and is inseparable from it.

This word "immortality" is greatly misunderstood, and almost always misapplied.

It is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hear or read the expression, "immortal soul."

The truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The terms are misleading—their conjunction is false. Applied to the soul, the word "immortal" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the original word and idea relate to the body—never otherwise. The word "mortal" is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture the expression, "mortal soul." You will find the words "mortal body." A mortal body has for its opposite an "immortal body." A mortal body is subject to corruption and death. An immortal body is incorruptible and not subject to death—an immortal body can never die.

The mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label of sin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminals awaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. To be filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then die and the body turned back to its component parts—this is a scandal in construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properly built falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the most shameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth of the graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of the living God, that death is an "enemy," not a welcome thing like birth and life—but an enemy. Such a scandal is it, indeed, that when our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he was himself moved with indignation; for the words, "groaning within himself," miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that he was inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at the sight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus was already corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatever tears fell from his eyes as he wept—these were his protests against death and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only as due to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him "who had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Hebrews 2:14.)

Even though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered from death; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death is safely housed and at home with God in heaven—yet the fact that this body, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but the temple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet for worms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, is a scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame of death.

The Son of God came into the world to remove this scandal.

He died and rose again, not only that he might have power and authority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a character befitting them for the high things of God, he died and rose again that he might have power and authority to give an immortal body to all who would receive from him this new and spiritual life.

He brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead.

He brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in which he had died.

If our Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead in the body in which he died, then immortality in the New Testament sense of the word has never been brought to light.

But he did so rise.

He made that clear on the first Sunday night after his resurrection.

The disciples were gathered together in the room.

The supper table was spread.

No one cared to eat.

The story had been going all day that Jesus had risen.

The women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked with him.

Two men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and broken bread with him, that very afternoon.

The disciples did not believe it.

They were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue.

Then, suddenly, he stood in the midst.

They thought it was his ghost.

This was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is a disembodied thing.

He was a ghost—he was disembodied—therefore he had not risen.

So they felt—each one of them.

They did not say it—but they thought it.

He knew their thoughts.

He asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraids them for their unbelief.

He tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones.

He says, "I have flesh and bones."

They are still silent.

Then he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them his feet.

There are great marks in them—there is around these marks as the stain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed.

Still they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too good to be true.

He says to them, "Handle me and see—take hold of my feet—feel me— examine me for yourselves."

They are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone.

He turns upon them quickly and says, "Have you anything to eat?"

They point to the untasted supper.

Then comes the climax.

He goes to the table.

He sits down.

He eats before them.

It is of record that he did eat broiled fish and an honeycomb.

Either this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church of Christ—on the credulity of aching human hearts—or it is the truth of God.

Call it the truth of God—then the body in which our Lord Jesus Christ rose was the body in which he died.

That body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is the living, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration of immortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which was dead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which we now live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die.

In that body which he raised from the dead, and which never saw corruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand of God.

He is there as the vision and standard of immortality.

He is there as the forerunner, the prototype, the sample and prophecy of immortality for the Christian.

Until the Christian is made immortal his redemption is not complete.

The Christian who dies is transported to heaven.

His estate there as compared to this is "far better."

But "far better" is not the "best." It is only a comparative.

The superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body. Without a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor a perfect son of God.

The divine ordination is "spirit, soul, and body."

Unless the Christian receives an immortal body the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over death and over him who has the power of death (that is the Devil) is not complete.

Satan as the strong man armed holds the goods and keeps them secure within his house.

The instrument with which he is armed is the law. That law which requires that it shall be "appointed unto men once to die." The goods are the bodies of the saints, and the house is the dark and dismal grave.

O the pitifulness of it! that our Lord Jesus Christ should possess the Christian as a ghost in heaven, and the Devil hold his blood -bought and spirit-sealed body in the grave.

A risen Christ in an immortal body, surrounded by disembodied Christian ghosts in heaven forever—that is a concept too hideously grotesque to consider.

An immortal Christ who redeemed his own body from the power of the grave, but is unable to deliver the bodies of those for whom he died—to think it is blasphemy! to believe it—impossible!

If the Devil be the strong man armed, the risen Lord is the one "stronger than he," who has met and equalled all the demands of the law, and by his death nullified its ultimate power over the bodies of those for whom he died.

In the very nature of the case, then, full redemption requires that the body of every Christian shall be delivered from the grave, and that every Christian, whether living or dead, shall be clothed finally with an immortal body.

This is the great objective of salvation—not just to save men from vice and immorality here; not just to fit them with an antidote against the poison of sin; or give them an impetus to holiness and truth for a few brief years in this mortal body, then let them die under various circumstances of suffering and pain and be carried away to heaven to live there as attenuated, invisible ghosts forever!

O no! it is not that!

It is true men are to be saved here and now in such moral and spiritual fashion as that each saved person should make the world sweeter and better and nearer to God for living in it. All that is true, but it is only a part of the glorious truth. The supreme objective—the ultima thule of redemption—is—

Immortality—the Christian eternally and incorruptibly embodied.

And this immortality, this eternal embodiment, is to be accomplished for every Christian. The fact that death has been abolished officially as a penalty for the Christian is a demonstration that abolition of death means abolition for the whole Christian; as a whole or complete Christian must have a body, then the abolition of death for the Christian means abolition of death from the body. The abolition of death from the body is immortality; by virtue, then, of the abolition of death, immortality is assured to every Christian.

Not one will be forgotten even though centuries may have broken into dust above his grave.

This immortality will be brought to pass by him who is the Resurrection and the Life.

It will be brought to pass at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is coming to this world again. By every law of necessity he must come. He is coming to complete redemption, to bring on the capstone amid shoutings of "grace, grace unto it."

He will raise the dead who have fallen asleep in his name. He will change the living ones who are his at his coming. He will make the body of each incorruptible, deathless, immortal, like unto his own glorious body, as it is written:

"We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2.)

And again it is written:

"We are citizens of a country which is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." (Philippians 3:20, 21.)

At the last he will regenerate the earth. He will make it over. He will make all things new. He will set this race of redeemed immortals within it. Perfectly recovered from the spoliation of sin and death, they shall inhabit it forever. God shall get his own world again.

Paradise lost shall become paradise regained, and God's purpose to make man his constitutional, governmental, moral and spiritual image shall be fulfilled. Man shall be God incarnate, and incarnation shall be seen to be the beginning and the ending of the purpose of God.

This is the consummation to which Christianity leads us—a perfect race of immortal beings in a perfect world, a perfect world in which no man shall say, "I am sick"; where sin is unknown; where the funeral bell does not toll, and a grave is never dug. Where God is all in all.

This is the hope and the ultimate Christianity sets before us. Not once in all its record does it offer us heaven or bid us prepare for it as the ultimate, but always it exhorts us to look for and wait patiently for immortality and glory at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the Christianity of the primitive centuries.

This is the Christianity of the New Testament.

It is the Christianity that fully met the needs of men.

It met the needs of men who gave themselves up to unrestrained passion, to the gluttony of every appetite; who lounged away their day in cool marble halls, or leaned half drunken from the cushioned seats of the amphitheatre, while the sands of the arena were reddened with human blood to give them a holiday. Look at them there. They passed their unsatisfying hours in idle jest, wreathed themselves with freshly plucked, but swiftly fading flowers, drowned their senses from moment to moment, still deeper in the spiced and maddening wines, gave unbridled freedom to their lust; and then, at close of day, in the splendor of the sinking sun, went forth to cool their fevered brows in the Campagna's freshening but deadly air, and drove with furious pace and brutal laughter along the Appian way between rows of monumental tombs whose chiselled epitaphs told the hopeless end of human life; then back again they drove with still more reckless haste to spend the night in wild debauch and meet the gray dawning of another day with its mocking routine and disgust. Loathing their very joys, revolting at their own gratification, these men asked: "Is there nothing better than this, that we drain the cup of pleasure to the dregs, open our veins, watch the life blood ebb away, and laugh, and mingle our laughter with curses that so cheap and easy an ending should have cost so much to reach?"

O the woe, the horror, the emptiness, and the crying, agonizing need of lives like these.

And Christianity fully and richly met the need of lives like these.

It met the needs of men who in the midst of an environment of the flesh, with the wild beast of appetite struggling within, now and then had longings for a power that should enable them to put their feet upon the neck of passion.

It met the needs of men who, standing above their dead, asked again the old and oft-repeated question of Job, "If a man die, shall he live again?"

Christianity met all these needs.

Through crowded streets of populous towns and lonely lanes of silent villages, in lordly palace and before straw-thatched hovels, to listening throngs and wayside hearers, it rang forth its wondrous proclamation.

It told men that a man had been here who had proven himself stronger than death and mightier than the grave; a man who had burst the bars of death asunder, spurned the sepulchre wherein human hands had laid his body, had ascended up on high, and now, from heaven's throne, had power to impart to men a life that hated sin, rejoiced in virtue, could make each moment of earth's existence worth while, and carried within it the assurance and prophecy of eternal felicity.

Far and wide, over land and sea, it rang the tidings that this perfect life might be had by king or cotter, by freeman or slave, without money and without price, for so simple a thing as genuine faith in, and open confession of, him who had died and risen again.

With rich, exultant note it announced that he who as very God had clothed himself with a new and distinct humanity, who had loved men unto death and died for them, had not forgotten the earth wherein he had suffered, his own grave from whence he had so triumphantly risen, nor yet the graves of those who had confessed his name; but, on the contrary, was coming back in personal glory and with limitless power to raise the dead, transfigure the living, make them immortal, and so change this earth that it should no longer be a swinging cemetery of the hopeless dead, but the abiding home of the eternally living sons of God.

Men held like Laocoon in the winding coils of sinuous and persistent sin, and who vainly sought to escape from its slowly crushing embrace, heard the good news and turned their faces towards the rising hope of present deliverance.

Men standing in the shadow of the tombs and waiting their turn smiled until their smiles turned into joyous laughter as they said: "If we die, we shall live again—the grave shall not always win its victory over us."

Do you wonder the world stopped, listened, and that multitudes turned and followed after?

Do you wonder that this Christianity of the primitive centuries triumphed so phenomenally?

This is the Christianity we need to preach today.

It is full of a great body of doctrine.

It is full of the supernatural.

Miracle and miraculous are woven into its texture from beginning to end. You cannot touch it, or handle it, or look at it from any angle of vision that it does not suggest the miraculous. The moment the miracle is out of it it is no longer the Christianity of the first century, it is not the Christianity of the New Testament—the Christianity that has a miraculous Christ for its centre and the miracle of an infinite God for its environment.

A Christianity of doctrine!

A Christianity of miracle!

And why not?

It is as superior to the Christianity, so called, that sets aside miracle and doctrine, turns its back on the hereafter, makes its appeal in behalf of the present alone, and grounds its claim to authority, not on a "thus saith the Lord," but on a "thus saith science and reason"; a Christianity that owns the law of evolution as its present force and defining motive; it is as superior to that sort of Christianity and as high above it as the heavens are above the earth.

One night this summer I stood upon a mountain ridge and watched the revelation of the starry sky. The great constellations, like silver squadrons, were sailing slowly and majestically to their appointed havens; from north to south and from south to north again, the Milky Way swept upward from its double horizon to the zenith like a highway paved and set with diamonds—a highway over which the wheels of the king's chariot had sped, leaving behind that cloud of dust in which every gleaming particle was a burnished sun. I gazed spellbound until it was as the vision of an unfathomed sea, an ocean tide of light, where the shimmering foam was the rise and fall of single and multiple systems, the surf beat breaking on the shores of converging universes. I gazed on this wealth and congeries of far -flung worlds, in which some that appeared the most insignificant and twinkled and trembled as though each glimmer would be the last, were actually so great that beside them our own poor little world was but as a mole hill to earth's Himalayas; as I gazed I thought of the distance from world to world—measured as light travels—till the count of years fell away, and there were no more numbers with which to count, and I knew that at the end of this calculation I had but entered the suburbs of that realm for which we have but one word, whose inadequacy we all confess—the Infinite. I listened, the silence seemed to utter forth majesty and might and honor and omnipotence, the air had in it the breath of sacred and adoring things, and unwittingly I cried out, alone in the night there, "The heavens, O God, declare thy glory and the firmament showeth thy handiwork."

And when I look at this Christianity set forth in the New Testament, and anticipated in the Old, the constellations of doctrine, this Via Lactea of truth in which every statement is a sun of splendor; when I begin to get the sweep of the divine purpose coming up from the opening pages of Genesis and culminating in the book of the Revelation; when I see that Christianity is the presentation to us of the ways and means whereby the original thought of incarnation (and this was the very first thought stamped upon the first pages of the Genesis record of the creation of man; for incarnation is conceived in Eden before it is brought to the birth in Bethlehem)— when I see this original thought of incarnation, in spite of sin and failure, and the world's captivity to the Devil and his angels; when I see this high purpose of God at last realized, and realized so completely that each redeemed soul is in final terms the glorious enthronement of God in humanity, and that God in Christ and in the Christian, gets his own world again, I cry out with full tribute of heart and intellect: "O Lord, this is the Christianity which thou hast wrought, thy name is written in every doctrine, every line justifies, as it proclaims thee, the infinite and gracious author."

This is the Christianity to preach.

Let the preacher preach a Christianity of doctrine.

There are three important things every preacher should preach. The first thing is doctrine. The second thing is doctrine. The third and pre-eminent thing is doctrine. The church is starving to death for the want of it, the preachers are becoming emasculated apologists for lack of it, and the world, looking on, is laughing at a limp, genuflecting thing calling itself modern Christianity and for want of vertebrate strength, unable to stand alone.

It was doctrine believed in and preached which sustained the martyrs and gave courage to missionaries. He who believed in the sovereignty of a redeeming God, the certainty that God would get his elect, the Coming of Christ, the millennial triumph, and a rebel world surrendered at the feet of God, could endure the agony of the stake, the privation of the wilderness, and all the discomforts and all the discouragements of fields of endeavor well sowed but scantily reaped.

Let the preacher preach the supernatural—the things that are miraculous, and be unafraid.

He need not be afraid. The world wants that sort of preaching. It is growing tired at heart of mere machinery and this eternally running up against a formula of the laboratory or a mathematical calculation and analyzed force, as explanatory of everything in heaven and in earth. It would like, if it were possible, to believe in something a little beyond the length of its eyelashes and the touch of its finger tips; something that cannot be summed up always in avoirdupois; something, indeed, beyond the ability of man.

Let the church get back to the old-fashioned doctrinal, supernatural, miraculous Christianity that underwrites itself with the name of God. Let it be boldly proclaimed that Christianity is miraculous, because it is, first and last, the Christianity of that God who is himself—the eternal miracle.

The very salvation of the church as a church depends upon this retrograde.

If the church hesitates, compromises, seeks to accommodate its formulas to modern nomenclature. If it is willing to carry its baggage at half weight; if it is willing to make its proclamation a continual denial of all that it has heretofore professed as fundamental; if it believes the twentieth century has the call on the first, and that modernism outranks primitivism; if, in short, it looks upon primitive and apostolic Christianity as the feeble hint which the modern thinker has known how to modify and improve, then, as already suggested, the days of its spiritual and moral bankruptcy are in sight, and the sooner good business arrangements are made to hire out its meeting houses for ethical and social culture the better.

Let the church persevere in turning its back upon the hereafter; let it continue the folly of ignoring the eschatological emphasis of Christianity; let it keep on giving to men the anodynes of mere moral maxims; let it direct all its energies to improving and perfecting a society which God has already judged and condemned at its best, and presently these drugged and befooled people will awake, the drugs will no longer be effective, and they will turn in indignation upon a Christianity which began by professing to be a revelation from God and ends by confessing to be nothing more than an evolution from man.

It is time for preachers to arouse if they would have the hearing, and not the indifferent ears.

Let them refuse to apologize or defend.

Let them have the courage of divine conviction.

Let them refuse to admit into their fellowship men who are willing that a bar-sinister shall be stained across the birth hour of the Christ; who are ready to smile away such a title as "the Blessed Virgin"; who can read no deeper meaning in the cross than a brutal murder, and who do not yet know that in the garden of Arimathea there is still an empty tomb. Let them refuse ministerial ordination and partnership with men who, bearing the university brand, claim the authority of a self-elected scholarship to make the Word of God secondary to the word of man. Let them go forth and proclaim to the world with the voice of assurance which permits of no debate and will accept no recall, the Christianity that is summed up, is perfectly defined and holds inclusively all its splendor of doctrine in the three immense facts which its Gospel proclaims:

The abolition of death, the gift of a new and spiritual life, and the guaranty to every believer of a resplendent immortality like unto his who sits on yonder throne—both eternal God and immortal man—Coming Bridegroom and Triumphant King.

Let them preach this. Let them tell the guilty sinner that the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ meets his case and can make the foulest clean; let them tell the slave-bound sinner that in a moment, in the flash of an eye glance, a risen Saviour can deliver him and set him free; let them tell the dying that death has lost its sting, and at death a convoy of heaven's host shall bear him away from his home in this mortal body to be at home in heaven with his ascended Lord; let them cry above every Christian grave, louder than the sound of any falling tear: "Jesus is coming to raise your dead and change the living and clothe each saint with immortal beauty"; let them look abroad upon a world full of the storm of sin, the tumult of high passion and long rebellion against our God, and shout aloud that victory cometh in the end; that Christ is God as well as man; that the days of his glory are at hand, when the "God of the whole earth" shall he be called; and when all beneath a perfect heaven in a perfect world shall know him as Lord and God from the least to the greatest. Let them preach this, and with unbroken confidence repeat the exultant words of Holy Writ, the words which shall warrant all their speech, that "our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel"; and it will be this Gospel echoing forth with all the music of its joyful tidings that shall answer infallibly and beyond all dispute the question of the hour—"What is Christianity?"



The Bible

THE WORD OF GOD

"When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God." (1 Thessalonians 2:13.)

THE Apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearer of a revelation direct from God; that the words he speaks and the words he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of God, warm with his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with his will.

In this same epistle he writes:

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord." (1 Thessalonians 4:15.)

The preposition "by" is the dative of investiture as well as means, and is Paul's declaration that what he is writing to the Thessalonians are not his ideas, clothed in his own language, but ideas and thoughts whose investiture, whose very clothing, is no less than the word of the ascended Lord—he who is none other than the "Word of God."

Writing to the Corinthians he says:

"Which things we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but (and grammar requires us to understand) in the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth." (1 Corinthians 2:13.)

According to Paul's testimony, therefore, the fourteen epistles which he wrote to the churches are not letters written by a mortal man, giving expression to the ideas and thoughts of man, but are the very words of the infinite God, giving utterance by the Holy Ghost to the thoughts of God.

An examination of the other epistles of the New Testament will show the same high and unqualified pretension. The apostles write (all of them) not as men who are giving an opinion of their own, but as men who know themselves under the domination of the Spirit, and as giving authoritative expression to the mind and will of God.

Nor is this peculiar to the writers of the New Testament.

Constantly, the writers of the Old Testament introduce their message with the tremendous sentence: "Thus saith the Lord." Again and again they declare the Lord has spoken "by" them. David says: "The words of the Lord were in my tongue." Jeremiah says the Word of the Lord came to him and the Lord said: "Take a roll of a book and write therein all the words that I have spoken to thee." Then we are told that "Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book."

After these words had been read to the princes of Israel, they asked Baruch, saying, "Tell us now, how didst thou write all these words at his mouth?" Then Baruch answered them, "He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book."

The process is clear enough. The Lord spake his words in Jeremiah. Jeremiah received the words direct from the Lord, dictated them word for word to Baruch, Baruch wrote them as they were pronounced in a book; and when written, the words were the written words of God.

Ezekiel declares when the Lord commanded him to speak to the children of Israel, he said to him: "Speak with my words unto them." Ezekiel not only speaks them, he writes them in the book of his prophecy. Ezekiel gives an account of how the Lord spake to him and inspired the book which bears his name. He says: "The Spirit entered into me when he spoke to me; . . . the spirit entered into me and spake with me." The Spirit said unto him: "When I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, thus saith the Lord."

The Apostle Paul, speaking in commendation of Timothy because from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures (and by Holy Scriptures the Apostle meant the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi—these were the Scriptures Timothy as well as every Jew knew as such), tells him that all Scripture (and of course any decent exegesis of the passage with its weight of context would recognize that the Apostle was referring to the Scriptures Timothy had known from childhood, the Scriptures as we have them to-day from Genesis to Malachi)—Paul tells Timothy in the most precise terms that all these writings are inspired of God.

The Apostle Peter, corroboratively speaking of these very Scriptures of the Old Testament, says they came not "by the will of man, but holy men of old spake as they were moved (literally, carried along) by the Holy Ghost."

Thus, this book we call the Bible comes to us with the enormous and uncompromising claim that it is not a man-made book, but a book whose real and sole author is the living and eternal God.

This claim stands face to face with human need.

Here we are from birth to death, pilgrims on the highway of time, not knowing whence we come, nor whither we go. We need a guide to lead us, a light to shine when we stand at that parting of the ways —where eternity becomes the end of time.

This book meets us and claims to be all that—a guide through time, a light to shine upon the road that leads to God and to be, in every line and accent, the inspired, incorruptible, infallible Word of God.

How may we know it is all it claims to be?

Never more than now did we need to know it.

Voices in the air are crying that we have been deceived; that this book upon which our fathers pillowed their heads when at the end of life's journey, they laid them down to die; this book we have held as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path is, after all, at its best, only the word of man and not the Word of God at all.

Every now and then resounding blows are heard as they strike against the old foundation. Those who pretend to be working in the interest of the truth bid us stand aside, lest we and our hopes be buried in the impending ruin.

We need to know at any cost whether this splendid and sustaining faith has deceived us; whether this book we have looked upon as holy and divine is nothing more than the word of man, spoken with his stammering tongue and written with his stumbling pen.

We must know, and know for a certainty that will leave no peradventure to arise as a troubling after-ghost, whether this Bible is, as Paul says it is, in truth, the Word of God; and the question will insistently repeat itself:

"How may we know the Bible is the Word of God?"

The question need not make us tremble.

The answers are at hand.

The evidence is so great, its very wealth is an embarrassment.

That evidence stated, detailed, analyzed and elaborated, would require—not a few pages—but whole libraries.

One broad and general proposition may be laid down.

It is this:

The Bible is proved to BE the Word of God when it is shown to be NOT the word of man; and it is proved to be not the word of man when it is shown to be—not such a book as a man WOULD write if he COULD; nor such a book as a man COULD write if he WOULD.

That it is not the word of man—not such a book as a man would write if he could, is made clear enough by the picture it paints of the natural man.

This picture is so sharply drawn, the figures stand out in such living and apt delineation, that no one can mistake the import.

According to the Bible, man came direct from the hand of God. God created him body, soul and spirit—a tripartite being. The soul was the person, the seat of appetite and passions. The spirit was the seat of the mind, the centre of reflection. Spirit and body were the distinct agents of the soul. The spirit, the agent to connect the soul with God—the body, the medium of the soul's manifestation or materialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and enjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the influence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the soul—enabling the soul rightly to use its appetite and legitimately to satisfy its passions.

Thus organized, God set man up in the world to be his constitutional, moral, spiritual and governmental image—his likeness morally—his image (his representative) administratively.

Man turned his back on God, listened to the appetite of his soul, and surrendered to the demands of sensual hunger.

The soul, at once, sank down into the environment of the body. The mind sank down into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual," "devilish," a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of God; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand God; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing it, followed it in its downward course into the environment of the soul.

Out of this dislocation the soul came forth dominant over mind and spirit. Soul appetite and soul desires became supreme; the body, the willing and active agent thereof. From this period on, man was no longer a possible spiritual being, but a "natural" man. The word "natural" is "soulical." In Scripture it is twice translated "sensual." The much-used word "psychological" is a derivation of it. In the Bible sense of the word, a psychological person is just the opposite of a pneumatical or spiritual person.

Man was now psychological, soulical, sensual. He had been transformed into a being no better than an intellectual animal, and the slave of his physical functions. Instead of being the master of his appetites, he was mastered by them. His passions intended, under right use, to be blessings, became curses; instead of angels, they became as demons. Instead of dwelling in the midst of his endowment in harmony with it and able to direct it, he found himself at its mercy, incessantly smitten by it and suffering his own equipment. Repudiating faith, walking by sight, talking of reason and governed by his senses, he threw himself open to invasion by the world, the flesh and the Devil.

As a result of his fall, man has become a degenerate, full of the germs of evil, "every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually"—an incurable self-corrupter.

In him there is not one thing that commends him to a holy God; and even should he succeed in living a life of perfect morality, his best righteousness in the sight of God would be no better than a bundle of filthy and contagious rags.

There is no power within him by which he can change the essential character and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the most devoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerow of thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spent life and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would not gather a single fig. No sooner (says the Bible) can the natural man bring forth the fruit of righteousness unto God. The Ethiopian may change his skin, the leopard his spots, before a natural man can change himself into a spiritual man. "The carnal mind is enmity with God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." "The natural man (the word 'natural' is psuchikos, soulical) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually (pneumatikos, pneumatically) discerned." "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" meaning thereby that God alone can sound the depths of its measureless capacity for sin and iniquity; therefore, he says: "I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins."

The end of man is to die.

Such an end is not natural.

It is unnatural.

It is violent.

It is penal.

It is an appointed punishment: as it is written: "It is appointed unto men once to die." "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed (literally, passed through, pierced man;" the seeds of death entered him for himself and all his posterity). When he dies, therefore, be he never so moral and upright, his death is judicial, his taking off is the execution of a criminal.

He is to be raised from the dead as to his body (in the meantime, his soul is "dragged" downward to the prison of the underworld, where in conscious suffering he awaits the second resurrection and the judgment hour), he will be raised, judged, found guilty and cast forth into the lake of fire (which is the second death), from whence there will be no resurrection of the body (the body will perish in the fire—for an immortal body belongs only to the sons of God—the participants in the First Resurrection); then, as a disembodied spirit—a ghost—he will go forth with an inward, deathless worm, and an inward, quenchless fire, to be like "a wandering star unto whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever," an exile from God, outside the orbit of divine grace, love and life—a hopeless, an eternally hopeless—human derelict, upon the measureless sea of night and space.

That is the Bible picture of the natural man.

Is that the picture the natural man paints of himself?

I trow not!

Man looks upon himself as a son of God by nature, having in himself all the elements of divinity, and all the forces necessary to shape his life aright. He is proud of himself, and talks of the dignity of human nature. He describes himself in panegyric, magnifies his virtue and minimizes his vice.

He flatters himself in his own eyes.

The two concepts—that of the Bible and that of the natural man—are as far apart from each other as the heavens are from the earth.

To man, the Bible concept is false, belittling, wholly disastrous and degrading, the death knell to any possible inspiration for human effort and attainment. It is a concept against which he revolts with all the nature in him, and hates with an exceeding great hatred.

In the very nature of the case, then, the Bible concept of man is not due to man; it is not such a concept that he would write if he could.

The picture which the Bible paints of sin is not such a picture as the natural man has ever painted.

The Bible declares that sin is something more than fever or disease or weakness, it is high treason against Jehovah, it is a blow at his integrity, a rebellion against his government, a discord to his being and a movement whose final tendency would be to dislodge him from his throne.

The Bible hates sin and has no mercy for it.

The very leaves of the book seem to curl and grow crisp under the fire of its hatred. So fearful is its denunciation that the sinner shivers and hastens to turn away from a book whose lightest denunciation of sin has in it the menace of eternal judgment. Like a great fiery eye it looks into the very recesses of the heart and reveals its intents and purposes. It sees lust hiding there in all its lecherous deformity and says, he who exercises it solely in his mind is as guilty in God's sight as though he had committed the act. It looks into the heart and sees hate crouching there with its tiger-like fangs and readiness to spring, and says that he who hates his brother is already a murderer.

The Bible has no forgiveness for sin until it has been fully and fearfully punished. In this it simply echoes the law stamped and steeped in nature. Nature never forgives its violated law until it has punished it. The Bible demands satisfaction, complete and absolute, before it offers even the hint of forgiveness. It takes the guilty sinner to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and shows him God's hatred of sin to be so great, that the moment his holy and spotless Son representatively takes the sinner's place, he smites him and pours out upon him a tidal sweep of wrath in a terror of relentless judgment and indignation so immense, that the earth quivers like an aspen, rocks to and fro, reels in its orbit till the sun of day refuses to shine, and the moon of night hangs in the startled heavens like a great clot of human blood.

The Bible declares that forgiveness of sin can come to the sinner only by way of the anguish and punishment of the cross; and that no sinner can be forgiven till he has accepted the downpour of the wrath of God on the cross and the substitutional agony of the Son of God as the punishment he himself so justly deserves.

The Bible teaches that in the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" the sinner should hear the echo of his own agony, as of one forsaken of God and swept out of his presence forever; and that the only ground of approach to this righteous God is the atoning blood of his crucified Son; that he who would approach God, find forgiveness and justification, must claim that crucified Son of God as his sin-offering, his vicarious sacrifice, his personal substitute. By the hell of the cross alone can he find the heaven of forgiveness and peace.

Is this man's attitude to, and definition of, forgiveness and peace?

It is not.

Man does not hate sin. He loves it. He rolls it as a sweet morsel under his tongue. He condones it in its worst form. To him it is genital weakness or an overplus of animal life—an exuberance of the spirit. It is a racial inheritance and not an individual fault. It is temperamental and not criminal.

The Bible concept and the natural concept of sin contradict each other; both, therefore, cannot have the same author.

The Bible concept of holiness is not the concept of the natural man.

In the Bible, holiness is not goodness and kindness, nor even morality. Holiness as the Bible sets it before us is the correspondence of the soul with God, the soul reflecting the intent, desire and innermost character of God; so that, were God to enter into the soul, he should find himself as much at home as upon his own exalted throne.

Such a definition as that makes human perfection and all its claims to holiness seem no better than a painted wanton dressed in the garb of purity and mouthing the words of virtue and chastity.

Whence comes this wisdom of holiness which makes the loftiest ideal of man no higher than the dust of the roadway, his best righteousness criticizable goodness and altogether a negligible quantity?

If it is from man, it must arise from two sources—human experience or human imagination.

It cannot come from human experience! no natural man in the past has experienced it—none today experience it.

It cannot come from imagination; for a man cannot imagine what he has not seen, known or experienced. As he has not experienced holiness he cannot imagine it.

In the nature of the case—the Bible concept of holiness did not originate with man, and that much of the Bible, evidently, is not of man.

That the Bible is not the word of man is shown by its statements of accurate science, written before men became scientific, and while as yet natural science did not exist.

The record of creation is given in the opening verses of Genesis.

Whence came the wisdom which enabled the writer in a pre-scientific age to set forth a cosmogony in such a fashion that it does not contradict the latest findings of the geologist?

The Bible says the earth was without form and void.

Science says the same thing. Over a hot granite crust, an ocean of fire, and beyond that an impenetrable atmosphere loaded with carbonic acid gas.

Cuvier, the founder of paleontology, says in his discourse on the revolutions of the globe, "Moses has left us a cosmogony, the exactitude of which is most wonderfully confirmed every day."

Quensted says, "Moses was a great geologist, wherever he may have obtained his knowledge." Again he says, "The venerable Moses, who makes the plants appear first, has not yet been proven at fault; for there are marine plants in the very lowest deposit."

Dana, of Yale College, has said that the record of creation given by Moses and that written in the rocks are the same in all general features.

Whence came the wisdom which kept Moses from hopelessly blundering?

Moses places the account of the original creation in the first verse. In the second, he states the earth fell into chaos. "It became (not was) without form, and void."

Isaiah, the prophet, declares definitely that God did not create the earth without form and void—God never was the author of chaos—he made the earth habitable from the beginning.

The first verse of Genesis records the creation of this original and habitable earth. The second verse shows, as the result of some mighty cataclysm, that the original earth fell into a state of chaos. The second verse, and the verses following, are the record of the making over of the earth after it had fallen into a state of chaos.

Whence the wisdom which taught Moses what science in our day is only beginning to spell out, that the present earth is not an original creation, but a remaking; that the original creation goes back beyond the time of shifted crust, of tilted rock, of ice and fire and mist and formless chaos?

Whence came the wisdom and knowledge which led Job to say that it is impossible to count the stars for number, when it was possible in his day, and is equally possible in our day, to count them with the naked eye?

How did he know, what the telescope alone reveals, that the number of the stars as flashed forth in the field of these telescopes is utterly beyond our computation; and that in the attempt to number them, figures break, fall into dust, and are swept away as the chaff of the summer's threshing floor.

How did he, looking up with that naked eye of his, how did he know that in the Milky Way there are countless thousands of suns—and these the centres of other systems? How did he know that world -on-world ranges in the upper spaces of the silent sky, so multitudinously that each increase of the power of the telescope only adds unaccountable myriads until, looking from the rim of those nightly searchers, the eye beholds reach on reach of luminous clouds, and learns with awe profound, that these clouds are stars, are suns and systems—but so far away from us and from one another that they cannot be separated and distinguished by the most powerful glasses; and that these clouds, if we really could separate them and bring them within the field of our particular vision, would reveal themselves as suns and systems so numerous, that only, the Creator himself could number them?

How did Job know all this in that far day when he sat at his tent door in the beauty of the cloudless sky and without a telescope? How did he know all this so that he could tell us with absolute certainty what we now know only by the aid of modern science—that the stars cannot be counted for number?

How did he know what only the modern telescope reveals, that the North is stretched out over the empty place? How did he know that there in the Northern sky there is a space where no star does shine —a dark abyss of fathomless night—as if, suddenly, the universe of worlds had come to an end?

How did he know, at the moment when the wise men of his day were saying that the earth was supported on the shoulders of a giant, that the giant stood on a platform made of the backs of elephants; that the elephants stood on the back of a mighty tortoise, but where the tortoise stood none of them said; how did he dare at that time to write that God hangeth the earth on nothing?

How did Isaiah know that the world is round? How did he learn to speak of "the circle of the earth," at the time when the scientific men of his day said that it was four square and flat?

How did he know of that imponderable ether in which the stellar universe is said to float? Who taught him to say that God spread out the heavens as "thinness," when the wise men of that hour were teaching they were a solid vault? How is it that he made use of the most scientific term when he speaks of the heavens as "thinness"? It is true in our English version he is made to say that God spread out the heavens as a "tent"; but the word "tent" in the Hebrew is (doq) and its root meaning signifies a thing that has been beaten out or stretched into thinness—an elastic thinness; it is a word accurately describing the ether which scientific men tell us is so thin that a teacup full of it may be blown out into a transparent bubble as large as the earth, and, even then, its attenuation would seem no greater than at the beginning.

How did Isaiah know all this?

Evidently his knowledge and wisdom did not come from the knowledge and wisdom of his day.

That the Bible did not come from man is seen in the fact of fulfilled prohpecy.

Page after page of this book is filled with prophetic announcements.

History and human experience record their amazing fulfilment.

The prophet Daniel gives the history of four great world empires, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.

The rise and fall of these empires are foretold centuries ahead.

The total ruin and perpetual desolation of Babylon were announced when the city shone forth in the zenith of its splendor.

Daniel writes an account of Alexander the Great two hundred and fifty years before he is born, calls him the first king of Greece, describes his march for the conquest of the East, the battle of the Grannicus, his sudden death at Babylon, and the division of the empire among his four generals.

At the hour when Rome was practically passing through her travail pains of national birth, Daniel foretold its ascension to power, and described it as a wild beast, trampling down the nations, absorbing into itself the three kingdoms which preceded it, occupying the territory once possessed by them, and becoming the supreme governmental power of the earth. Centuries before it took place he foretold the division of the Roman Empire into two equal parts. He announced, also, that it should be the last universal political power till Christ the Lord should come to set up his worldwide kingdom. Centuries have passed since Rome ruled the world. From that day to this it has remained the last supreme world-power. The territory once ruled by it is filled with mighty nations—not one of them, great as it may be, is a universal world-power.

Where did Daniel get the foresight which enabled him to look on down through two thousand years of human history and, in the face of battle, intrigue and change, declare, what so far has come to pass, that Rome should be the last universal empire till Christ came?

Ezekiel, the prophet, said that the great and populous city of Tyre should be taken, cast down, and never rebuilt; and that the Lord would make it to be like the top of a scraped rock to spread nets upon.

The city was taken and destroyed. The people moved to an island just off the mainland and there built a new city. Two hundred and fifty years after Ezekiel made his prophecy, Alexander came, besieged the new city; and, in order to take it, built a causeway from the mainland. In doing this he tore down and utterly demolished the ruins of the old city; took its stones and timber and cast them into the sea; and then, actually, set his soldiers to work to scrape the very dust that he might empty it into the waters. From the hour when it was overthrown to this, the city has never been rebuilt; and for centuries it has been, and is to-day, like the top of a scraped rock—a place where fishermen spread their nets.

Where did Ezekiel get this knowledge?

Certainly not from man.

It will not do to say he guessed it!

Egypt was a land of cities and temples. The cities were populous, the temples and monuments colossal. Avenues of gigantic sphynx led to gateways whose immense thresholds opened into pillared halls, where the carved columns seemed like a forest of stone. Pyramids rose as mountains, and their alabaster-covered sides flashed back the splendor of the cloudless skies. The land bloomed as a garden. The papyrus grew by the banks of the Nile. The fisheries of the mighty river filled the treasury of kings with a ceaseless income. Art, literature, knowledge and culture were enthroned supreme—yet was it a land of false gods and a people given over to their worship.

Speaking in the name of God the prophet announced the coming desolation of Egypt. It should be cast down. Its fisheries should be destroyed, its papyrus withered, its cities and temples overthrown and the ruins scattered over the plain, no native prince should ever again sit upon its throne, it should become the basest of kingdoms.

It has become such.

Its cities are destroyed. Its temples are roofless, its columns fallen, the statues of its kings lie face downward in the dust, the pyramids, stripped and bare, stand scarred and silent in the sun. The singing Memnon are as songless from their chiselled lips as the tongueless Sphynx half buried in the yellow sand. The fisheries are gone, the papyrus has withered; for centuries no native prince has been seated on the throne. It is a land of the dead. The dead are everywhere. At every step you stumble over a mummy, the mummy of a dead cat, a dead dog, or a dead and shrivelled Pharaoh. Its greatest asset is its departed glory, and every grain of sand blown from the mighty desert, and every wave of reflected light flung back from the Lybian hills, proclaims the terrific fulfilment of the prophet's words.

The prophets foretold the final siege and destruction of Jerusalem. It should be trodden down of the Gentiles. The people should be carried away captive and sold into all lands. They should be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. All nations should despise them. They should become a by-word, a hissing and a scorn. They should be hunted, hounded and persecuted. Their sufferings should be unparalleled, horrible, unspeakable. The sound of a shaken leaf should startle them. They were to become the people of the trembling heart and the wandering foot.

The prophecies have been singularly fulfilled.

Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans. The city was taken. The city and temple were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands perished by famine, by fever, by fire and by sword. Titus, the Roman conqueror, drove a ploughshare over its smoking ruins. The people who remained alive after the general slaughter were carried away captive. They were scattered from one end of the earth to the other. They have found their dwelling place among all nations. They dwell everywhere and are at home nowhere. They have been a by-word, a hissing and a scorn. Every hand has been turned against them. They have been hunted on the mountains. They have been chased through the valleys. They have been walled up in the narrow and filthy ghettos of cities. Their goods have been stolen. Their wives and daughters have been ravished. They have been whipped and racked and tortured. They have been broken on the wheel, burned at the stake, buried alive, and sent to sea, thousands of them, in sinking ships. Every cruelty that the ingenuity of man and the inspiration of fiends could suggest has been practised upon them, until the heart revolts and the soul sickens at the mere recital of their blood and woe; and to this hour, through twenty long centuries, Jerusalem, as announced, has been trodden down of the Gentiles; all nations have tramped through her streets, overridden her people and torn down her walls.

The prophets said God would make a full end of the nation which persecuted them; but he would not make a full end of them, he would preserve and multiply them.

The promises have been kept.

Rome has become a past tense. With thoughtful steps we pause amid her ruins, painfully locate the palace of her kings, the arenas of her pleasure, the abodes of her vice; on fallen column or broken tablet, we read the story of her past victories, her mighty conquests, and standing beneath a crumbling triumphal arch, gaze on the sculptured figures of Jewish captives who once followed in an emperor's triumphal train, more enduring to-day with their stony faces than the ruined city which lies prostrate at their feet; for while Rome has passed away, the Jew still lives, he has been preserved and has multiplied. The Jews to-day number twelve millions of people; and these represent but two tribes out of the twelve; so that the two are four times as numerous as the whole nation when it came out of Egypt under Moses. Their vitality is phenomenal—it is miraculous—their multiplication is against all the laws and precedents of history. Persecution and trial have but increased their fecundity. Like the burning bush ever burning but never consumed, they continue to exist; and when you draw nigh and consider their strange story, out of the midst, as of old out of the bush, the voice of him who is the "I am, that I am" is heard saying —"These are my disobedient but covenant people, whom I have sworn shall be to me as the 'apple of mine eye'"; saying, "Whosoever toucheth them toucheth me."

It was foretold that in the closing hours of this age and as a prelude to their final restoration, they should bud and blossom and fill the face of the whole world with fruit.

If to-day you seek a representative person in every department of human genius and achievement, you will find that representative in a Jew.

The Bible testifies, and testified it centuries ago, that in the closing hours of this age, the Jews should turn their faces towards Palestine and ask (or plead) their way to Zion.

The prophecy has been, and is being, fulfilled to the letter. The faces of thousands of Jews are being turned towards Palestine; thousands of Jews are asking how is it possible to return to Zion. Zionism has passed from the realm of dreams to the solid ground of fact. Everywhere over the earth societies are formed among the Jews to emphasize the return to Zion and the setting up of the Jewish State.

It was further foretold that many should return thither in radical unbelief and open materialism; that at the entering in of the gates of Jerusalem land should be bought and sold and speculation become rife.

To-day there are more Jews in Palestine than at any time since the return from Babylon. Land is bought and sold at the gates of the city, and speculation in real estate values is running high. There is the hum of expectation in the sacred city. Palestine is being colonized by Jews. The Turkish government has taken off the ban, the Jew is owned as a citizen and may become a representative in its administration. The deserted cities are being occupied. Millions of Mulberry trees are being planted, the desert and the waste places cultivated. The lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep are heard once more. In Jerusalem, the wailing place of the Jews is more crowded than ever. The penitential psalms are recited, tears are shed and the cry goes up with keener lamentation that the city, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, has become the prey of the Gentiles; that the walls are broken down, the holy places laid waste, "our holy and beautiful house," they cry, "where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?" And the prayer ascends with ever-increasing supplication that Jehovah will again make bare his arm in the sight of the Gentiles, build up the place of the holy assemblies, beautify Jerusalem and establish his people. Synagogues are built within the shadow of the sacred rock, the one-time threshing floor of Ornan, which David bought and whereon the holy temple stood. The latter as well as the former rains are falling. Everywhere it is evident that the land is reviving, and the thought of Judah as a kingdom and power among nations, finding utterance on the lips—both of Gentile and Jew.

And all this activity and Zionward movement taking place with the Jew in a condition of spiritual blindness, unbelief and godless materialism—as foretold. The very leaders of Zionism (some of them) the most outspoken in their repudiation of our Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah of Israel.

The Bible foretold that the Jews as a people would never receive the Gospel: "As concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sakes" (the Gentiles). On the other hand, it was announced that the Gentiles, who despise the Jews, should receive the Gospel, accept a rejected and crucified Jew as Israel's king, and own and acknowledge him as the redeemer and saviour provided for themselves.

This prophecy has been fulfilled.

For nineteen hundred years the Jew—as a Jew—has steadily rejected a crucified Christ. Here and there an individual, paying the penalty of scorn and contumely from his own people, has believed the Gospel and owned the crucified and despised man of Nazareth as his very Lord and God. He has done so according to that election of grace which the Bible foretells (an elect remnant is seen through all the ages, under one dispensation or another, responding to the call of God—like the seven thousand who would not bow the knee to Baal; and belonging to that election of grace the believing Jew stands out marked and sealed of God) but the Jew as a nation with unbroken solidarity refuses to-day the only Jew who can establish him in the land of his fathers and fulfil the covenant promises.

Equally fulfilled is the other side of the prophecy.

The Gentiles, who, racially considered, despise the Jew and everything of the Jew, to-day own and accept this rejected and crucified Jew of Calvary, not only as Israel's Messiah and king, but as the redeemer and saviour provided of God for Gentiles; so that the Gentile world now worships and adores him as very God, holding up the cross of his shame and death as the symbol of highest honor and most radiant glory.

The Bible has predicted the final characteristics of the present age in terms precise and clear.

By type, figure and direct prophecy it announces that the last form of government among the nations just previous to the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will be democracy—the rule of the people: "The government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

That prophecy practically has been fulfilled.

Democracy is, nearly, the universal mode of government. England in some respects is more democratic than the United States. France, Portugal and Switzerland are republics. Spain, Italy and Greece are constitutional monarchies; that is to say, the people are recognized as the ultimate authority. The Northern nations, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium, are liberal kingdoms. The monarchy is simply a fashion—the people are the rulers. Germany is a military nation. The Kaiser, speaking at times as the war lord, gives the impression that he is absolute emperor. He is far from it. The socialists count their votes by millions, and while the German people accept the empire, they do so because it is the most satisfactory agent for their business and prosperity. The German people behind the throne are the absolute power; and the voice of democracy makes no more radical utterance and demand than in the German kaiserreich. Recently, in a public interview, the Kaiser is reported to have said, he expected his son to be the last emperor of Germany, as within fifty years the whole world would become democratic. Austria is still more or less under the influence of Caesarism, but beneath the surface, the various peoples and nationalities constituting that empire are restless, feverish, and full of democratic ideas. Turkey has been shaken by a revolt of "The Young Turks," and the demand for more popular government. Japan has broken loose from the customs and traditions of centuries—her flag is the symbol of the rising sun, and indicates that she is seeking to take her place in the new dawn of popular sovereignty. China, the oldest civilization and the mightiest population, has become a republic, her young men returning from the universities of Europe and America having sown broadcast the seed of democracy and the claim of the people. Russia, alone, remains absolute in name, but the absolute has been shattered even there—it is supported only by bayonets and drawn swords. Every now and then a sullen sound is heard, dying away to be renewed in deeper tones; it is the voice of the people, in spite of the knout, the prison and Siberian exile, calling for what they claim to be their "rights."

Everywhere the evidence is manifest that the prophecy of Daniel announcing the rise of the "clay" (Daniel's symbol of the people) and the warning of Isaiah that "the nations should rush like the rushing of many waters," and "make a noise like the noise of the seas," are being fulfilled.

After "Clay," or Democracy, there remains only anarchy, or power in the hands of an absolute ruler. That absolute, world-wide ruler is declared by all the prophets to be the Son of God, and his kingdom is symbolized by a stone—a stone is the very opposite of clay.

THE CLAY IS HERE!

Centuries ago the Bible declared that in the closing hours of this age the whole world would be under arms, preparing for a gigantic and final war; that each nation would turn itself into a vast army, and that the whole earth would become a military camp and field of manoeuvre.

This prophecy is being fulfilled.

A universal preparation for war is going on with maddening haste. Nations are seeking to outdo each other in their colossal preparation for the approaching strife. Armies are no longer mere levies or hired cohorts, every man in the nation capable of bearing arms or in any wise doing military duty is enrolled, and must take his place as a soldier. During the summer immense armies move out of their barracks and play seriously the game of war. Each nation has its field manoeuvres and theme of attack and defence. On every side is heard the tramp of marching feet, the sound of bugle call, the rumble of artillery, the sharp word of command.

Nations are vying with each other in the endeavor to cover the sea with the swiftest and most powerful battleships. Millions are being put into guns and ammunition. The money of the people is being poured out like water to obtain war material. Forges and foundries are working to turn out the most destructive implements. The arsenals are being gorged with cannon, with shot and shell. Enormous sums of money in gold are stored away in impregnable fortresses that, as the sinew of war, it may be ready to respond at a moment's notice. Never before in the history of the world has there been such a spectacle.

On land and sea men are silently, ceaselessly preparing for the irrepressible and impending conflict. Each nation feels its existence is at stake; not a thinking statesman who does not feel assured that, sooner or later, the clash will come. All feel it will be fierce, titanic, fateful and final.

The Bible foretold the great apostasy as manifested in the Roman Catholic Church, the rise of Protestantism, its ultimate breakdown in rationalism and open infidelity (that condition of which it should be said, "they will not endure sound doctrine"). It foretold the rising again of Romanism into the place of power and authority (as we see it to-day in the United States, where it holds the balance of political power and is fast becoming a social triumph).

Who would have had the hardihood to prophesy in the hour when Protestantism was delivering its terrible blows against Romanism, overturning the tables of the priests, who sold their infamous wares of papal indulgences, breaking idols and images in the churches, and driving the church of the priesthood, the mass and auricular confession swiftly downwards to the waters of the Mediterranean and, while it was repudiating this apostate church (which set up saints and images in the place of the Son of God, exalted works of merit instead of the cleansing power of the blood) continually cried aloud the glorious doctrine of justification by faith, and whose supreme watchword was—"The Bible and nothing but the Bible"; who, under such conditions as these, would have had the courage to proclaim that in the closing hours of this age, this aggressive and biblical Protestantism should break up by self-division, become fragmentary, its leading thinkers and teachers repudiating the Bible as the infallible Word of God? Who would have dared to say that Rome would come back, ascend into the place of authority, sit upon the throne of the world's respect and receive its honors? Who would have said that this church which has set itself up above the Bible, claimed the right to change times and seasons in defiance of a "thus saith the Lord," and has burned men at the stake for their love and devotion to this very Bible, should, at the last, by reason of the infidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and its indifference to a "thus saith the Lord," come forth as the defender of the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of the sacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against the shame and indecency of divorce?

Yet these prophecies are written on page after page of this book, and their complete and amazing fulfilment looks us in the face.

What a picture is painted for us in the words that follow:

"This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."

"The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine: but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables."

It is a picture which finds its counterpart in the Protestantism of to-day—a Protestantism full of worldliness, having a form of godliness, a great religious profession, but denying its only power (the Holy Ghost), repudiating doctrine and listening to every fable of rationalistic philosophy sooner than to the truth of God.

In the letter to the church at Thyatira it is written:

"That woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess (a teacher) to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication (fornication in the book of Revelation signifies idolatry—image worship and, also, union with the principles and ways of the world) and to eat things sacrificed unto idols."

Jezebel was the Pagan wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel stands for the union of Paganism and Judaism. But Jezebel here represents a professed church of Christ. In Jezebel, therefore, you have a professed church of Christ in which there is a combination of Paganism and Judaism. This symbolic Jezebel teaches the servants of Christ to commit fornication—that is, not only identification with the world, but idolatry (image worship).

In its full detail, then, we have a professed church of Christ in which may be found a mixture of Paganism and Judaism. A church where the professed followers of Christ are taught to worship by means of images.

Could you find a better, more accurate delineation of the apostate Church of Rome—a Church which borrows the priesthood of Judaism and the idolatry and image worship of Paganism?

In this book of the Revelation there is still another picture.

In the seventeenth chapter a woman is seen seated upon a scarlet colored beast. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet. She is decked with precious stones and pearls, and in her hand holds a golden cup full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication (idolatry). She is seen to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. The woman is, also, said to be seated on seven mountains and is, finally, spoken of as that great city which rules over the kings (nations) of the earth.

The woman is called "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."

In the twenty-fifth chapter of the book, the BRIDE OF THE LAMB, the true church of Christ, is symbolized by a city—THE NEW JERUSALEM. Babylon and Jerusalem stand always opposed to each other. Babylon is the centre of Satanic power and testimony—its name signifies mixture, confusion. Jerusalem is the centre of God's dealings and testimony—it signifies peace and righteousness. If, therefore, the city of New Jerusalem is a symbol of the true church of Christ and the church of Christ is called a "mystery," then this woman called Babylon, said to be a City and also called a "mystery," is a symbol of the false church of Christ; and, being a harlot, and the mother of harlots, or churches like herself (and thus the Mother Church), and harlot signifying fornication, and fornication, idolatry—image worship—then a professed Church of Christ, which teaches and practises image worship.

The great city ruling over the kings of the earth in John's day and situated on seven mountains, or "mounts," is ROME; as the city represents the woman Babylon who is the symbol of the false Church of Christ, then you have a false church of Christ seated (and remember, the word is "seated") in Rome. A Church seated in Rome is a Roman Church; and as the city rules over the earth, over the world; and a world-wide rule is a universal rule; and the word for universal, worldwide, is, also, "catholic," you have a catholic church; and, seated in Rome (Rome its capital centre), THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

This Church is said to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and the pages of history glued together with the blood of these same martyrs, and the burning, blistering record of the "Holy Inquisition," affirm that the astounding picture is true in all its crimson and scarlet details.

But the striking feature in the picture, and the one that is first presented to us, is that the woman (the Church) is carried by a beast. This beast is a symbol of government and teaches that the Church "rules" over the governments of the world, is sustained by the State, has attained to "temporal power." As the picture occurs in the third division of the book, and that division relates to things still future, we have here a distinct prophecy that this Apostate Roman Church shall again attain to temporal power, become a State Church, supported and carried officially by the nations of the earth.

The exactitude with which the picture has been painted, and that, too, at a time when Rome had not yet come into the place of full -blown apostasy and power; the startling way in which, step by step, the prophetic outlines have been fulfilled even in our day, are tremendously suggestive concerning the possibility of its complete and final fulfilment; and bid us ask most earnestly—whence came the mental eyesight which enabled the writer of the book to sketch out for us centuries ahead of time, that which the page of after history reveals to us as facts?

The social, financial, governmental, religious and moral condition of the present time have been portrayed in the book we call the Bible. The coming of a special class called "rich" men as a particular characteristic of this age, the revolt of labor, and its cry against the wrongs of capital, were all set forth in the epistle of James, nigh two thousand years ago, with an accuracy that is not to be explained on natural grounds. So absolutely unnatural is it, that it is perfectly safe to say—these things are not such as a man could write if he would.

That the book is not to be explained on natural grounds is evident from the fact that it is not a CONSTRUCTION, but a GROWTH; not an ORGANIZATION, but an ORGANISM, growing up from Genesis to Revelation like a tree from root through trunk and branch to leaf and fruit.

Each book of the Bible will be found on examination to stand related organically to one another; and that each occupies its necessary and sequential order.

In Genesis, you have the beginning of things, the germ and outline of everything afterwards revealed.

Exodus gives the redemption by blood of a people foreseen and covenanted in Genesis, their deliverance by the hand of God from the power of the king and the dangers of the land.

In Leviticus, the redeemed people draw nigh to God by virtue of the blood of sacrifice and find access to the presence of God through the intercession of a priest.

In Numbers, this blood-redeemed people are seen on their journey to the better land; we read of their trials, their temptations, their unbelief, their backslidings and continual moral failure by the way, and the never-failing grace and love of a covenant-keeping God who leads them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.

In Deuteronomy, the people have the way over which they have come, and the dealings of God, rehearsed to them, and are instructed and prepared for the land whither they go.

In Joshua, the second generation (which stands always for regeneration) gets into the promised land.

Judges tells how, after being blessed with all covenant blessings in the covenant land, the people fell into a state where every man did that which was right "in his own eyes."

Ruth, the Gentile woman, becomes the bride of a Hebrew Lord; and the covenant promise of God concerning Israel goes straightway down from a Gentile mother and a Hebrew father towards the throne which is set up in David and owned of God as the throne of Christ.

The books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, take up the story of the kingdom, and the Old Testament leads us on through symbol, figure and open prophecy, to a Coming Messiah and a glorious kingdom till, when we reach the last verse in Malachi, we lean across four centuries of prophetic silence, waiting to greet that promised Christ who shall be born in Bethlehem; and who is to be called the Son of the Highest; who is to sit on the throne of his father David, "to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever."

We listen for the angelic song and the salutation to men of good will; and we are expecting, later on, to see Zion's king riding up the slopes to the Holy City and all the people coming forth to cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

When you open the New Testament you find four books—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The order of these books is fixed—it cannot be changed.

If Mark be substituted for Matthew, then the New Testament begins without an account of the birth or genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ; no intimation is given that he is born king of the Jews, and is the expected Messiah.

If Luke be given the place of Matthew, little mention will be found of the Jewish kingdom of heaven; and our Lord will be seen with a leaning towards the Gentiles.

If the Gospel of John begin the New Testament instead of Matthew, then we shall read of him who is Son of God rather than King of the Jews, and the expectation raised by Malachi will seem unfulfilled.

But the moment the order named is followed all is perfect, all is harmony.

Matthew presents our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of Abraham and Son of David; heir of the covenant land, and the covenant throne, and at once links the New Testament with the Old.

Mark announces that this King of the Jews came into the world to be the Servant of God and a blessing in his service to men.

Luke, although he announces our Lord Jesus Christ as King, sets him forth pre-eminently as The Man, going among men, eating and drinking with them, and speaking in such plain and simple terms that the "common people heard him gladly."

In John, this Jewish King, this Servant of God and men, this Man among men, who received sinners and ate with them, is revealed as the Mighty God, the eternal Word, the Holy One of Israel, who came down to visit his people, was made flesh and "tabernacled" among them, as of old he dwelt in the tabernacle of the wilderness in the Shekinal glory above the Mercy Seat and between the outstretched wings of the golden Cherubim.

Take away the book of Acts, and nothing can be known of the origin of the church and its apostolic history. Without the book of Acts the epistles are wholly unintelligible when they refer to the Church.

Do without the Second epistle to the Corinthians, and you have no revelation of the state of the Christian dead either as to their location or condition.

Without the Second epistle to the Thessalonians you cannot fix the identity of the Antichrist.

Leave out the epistle to the Hebrews and there is no key to Leviticus.

Without the book of Daniel it is impossible fully to understand the book of Revelation.

No matter at what period the book of Revelation may have been written, it can have but one place in the Bible, and that the last. It must have this place because it shows us the foreview of Genesis fulfilled: the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head, Satan has been bound and Paradise is regained.

The Old and New Testaments stand related to each other as the two halves of a perfect whole. In the Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New Testament the Old is revealed.

Genesis finds its key in the first chapter of John's Gospel, and identifies the creator of heaven and earth with him who was made flesh and dwelt among us as the Son of God.

Exodus is explained by the First epistle to the Corinthians, in which we learn that "Christ" is the "Passover sacrificed for us."

Leviticus is expounded by the epistle to the Hebrews.

Numbers has its correspondence in the book of Acts.

In Numbers you have the experience of the Children of Israel in their journey through the wilderness. In Acts we get the story of the Church in its pilgrimage through the world.

Deuteronomy is to be read with Colossians.

In Deuteronomy the people of Israel are being prepared for an earthly inheritance. In Colossians the Church is being prepared for a heavenly inheritance.

Joshua stands over against Ephesians.

In Joshua the redeemed people have to fight with flesh and blood in order to possess the covenant land. In Ephesians "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits in the heavenly places."

Judges may be understood by reading the first chapter of the first epistle, and the twelfth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians.

The book of Ruth is illuminated by the third and fifth chapters of the Ephesians.

In Ruth you have the Gentile bride of a Hebrew Lord, the kinsman, redeemer and advocate; who presents his bride to himself in the gate before all the assembled judges.

In Ephesians, the Gentile Bride is seen to be the Church, the kinsman, redeemer and advocate, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having loved the Church and given himself for it, will "present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing."

The books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, may be read with the four Gospels and the book of Revelation.

In Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, you have the story of David, the anointed king, man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, triumphant warrior, exalted king—Solomon, prince of peace, ruling over the established kingdom and the queen of Sheba coming from the uttermost parts of the earth to own and celebrate his glory.

In the Gospels we get the story of our Lord Jesus Christ as anointed king and man of sorrows. In Revelation he is seen coming forth at the head of the armies of heaven, a mighty warrior, a triumphant king and, at the last, as Prince of Peace ruling in splendor over his established kingdom; while the Gentiles, coming from the uttermost parts of the earth to Jerusalem, bow the knee before him and acknowledge his glory.

Ezra may be read with the latter half of the second chapter of the Ephesians.

In Ezra you have the building of the material temple. In Ephesus the building of the spiritual temple.

Nehemiah can be read with the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation.

Nehemiah gives us Jerusalem below. Revelation, Jerusalem above.

In the book of Esther the name of God is not once mentioned; but it shows us the unseen God acting in his secret providence to deliver his covenant people, the Jews, from the hand of the Gentile oppressor, and setting them in the place of authority and power over the Gentiles.

The eleventh chapter of the Romans explains the book of Esther.

In the eleventh chapter Paul shows that God has not forgotten the people whom he foreknew. The nation as such has been set aside. It is now, as Hosea says, Lo Ammi, "not my people," not the people of God.

An election according to grace is going on among the Jews. These are being called into the Church and will form a part of the Body and Bride. The Gentiles have come dispensationally into the place of Israel, and God is sending his Gospel among them—calling out those whom he has foreseen and known among the Gentiles. The nation as such would seem to be cast aside. The people are walking in darkness and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their true God and only Saviour, is not owned among them; but while the Lord is thus denied by them, he has not forgotten them. His providences are round about them in their preservation and multiplication, and in his judgment of the nations which persecute them. Their present condition nationally is temporary. Paul warns the Gentiles that the Jews have been cut off and set aside because of unbelief. The Gentiles have been brought in, and stand alone by faith. It is well for them not to be "high-minded," but "to fear"; for so surely as God spared not the nation and set it aside because of unbelief, just so surely will he deal with the Gentiles if the Gentiles fall into unbelief.