Old Testament Types and Teachings

Being Bible Readings showing the progressive development of Truth and Experience in the books of the Old Testament

BY

HANNAH  WHITALL  SMITH

Author of “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life,” “Everyday Relition,” “Open Secret,” etc.

NEW YORK     CHICAGO     TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

Publishers of Evangelical Literature

PREFACE.

THIS book is not meant in any sense to be a Commentary on the Old Testament. I freely confess that there are many difficult parts about which I know nothing, but before which I have learned to sit down in the silence and contentment of faith, and await patiently the day of God’s explanations.

My object has been, not to explain the Bible, but simply to give, as far as I Have seen it, the deep inner sense of the Books of the Old Testament, in their progressive development of truth and experience. These views have been opened to me principally through the writings and teachings of a few of the Lord’s see-ers, or “seers,” chief among whom I would mention the Rev. Andrew Jukes, of England; and they have been made so great a blessing to my own spiritual life, that I long to have others share them with me.

There may be very honest doubts as to the correctness of interpreting the Old Testament in this typical way, and I would not contend with these. But I have found in my own heart, and in the hearts of many others, a certain spiritual sense which has led us instinctively to accept and enjoy this application of the Old Testament Scriptures, and it is to such I speak in this book.

Nor are we without large warrant in the New Testament for this typical or symbolical interpretation, as in many instances the inspired writers there, make just such an application of the Old Testament narratives. See Gal. iv. 22-13;  Heb. v.; vii.; ix.; x., &c. And notice especially the positive declaration made in 1 Cor. x. 1-11 concerning the story of the children of Israel:  “Now all these things were our types;” and again, “Now all these things happened unto them for types.” Our text reads “examples” or “ensamples,” but the true rendering is “figures” or “types,” as can be seen by a reference to the original, or to the margins of our reference Bibles.

I feel, therefore, that we are justified in seeking for this mystic sense in that, which might otherwise be of but little value to us spiritually. And I send forth these Readings to those who can receive them, with a heart-felt prayer that the Lord may use them to His glory.

H.W.S

BIBLE READINGS.

INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER I.

In the very beginning of my Christian life, I remember being much struck with the remark that the Bible revealed itself only to the need and the faith of those who came to it. Wondering just what this could mean, I began to read my Bible, and soon found that it was really true; that just as a science never reveals its secrets except to its students, so neither does the Bible. And I discovered that the only really necessary things for the understanding of it, were the felt need of its teachings and a childlike faith to receive them. I feel sure that any Christian who will come to its study with a believing heart, will grow in its knowledge far faster than with any amount of mere critical study. And no matter how little talent we may have, nor how small may be our capacity of critical research, we can all possess these two absolutely necessary requisites of need and faith, and may all expect, therefore, to have in time its deepest secrets revealed to our prayerful search.

The following series of Bible lessons is the result of this sort of experimental study. They do not undertake to be critical nor exhaustive in any sense whatever. What I wanted in my own studies was to get at the inner life of the Bible, and to see what secrets it would reveal to my soul. And these lessons are simply the supplies which I have gathered out of this inexhaustible storehouse, for my own pressing and especial personal needs. Doubtless many others have gathered far richer supplies; but perhaps those which have been so unspeakably precious to my own soul, and so wonderfully suited to my needs, may be found also to meet the needs of some others. I have no desire to insist upon my own views to the exclusion of any others, I may have made many mistakes, and may have left out very important links. I am sure many others know far more about this precious Bible than I do. But I will give to my readers the best I have, and trust to their charity to cover the multitude of faults which, no doubt, will be very patent to any who look for them.

In coming to the study of the Bible, the first and most important point of all to be settled is as to the position we are to assume toward it. Do we come as students, or as critics? If the former, then we may confidently expect, as I have said, that all its wonderful treasures of wisdom and knowledge will be one after another unfolded to our gaze. If the latter, then we shall most certainly find it a sealed book, hiding its secrets in unfathomable mysteries. When God speaks, man has nothing to do but to believe and to submit. The grand question then is, Has God spoken, and is this book really His revelation to us?

For the readers of these pages it is not necessary to go into an argument to answer this question. It has to them, doubtless, been answered long ago. And if not, the answer must be found elsewhere, as I am writing from the stand-point of an absolute conviction that this Book is God's own Book, containing an authoritative and inspired record of His mind and His ways. We must come to it, then, with this one only thought, that He has spoken and that we must believe. Whether we understand it or not, is no matter; whether its revelations look reasonable or consistent, or even possible, is of no account. He has spoken, and we must believe what He says. We must receive it just as it is, and where we cannot understand, must set it down to our limited power of comprehension, and be content to wait until the eyes of our understanding are enlightened by the Divine Spirit, and we are made able to comprehend the “wondrous things out of His law.”

I do not mean, however, to ignore or look down upon the honest doubts of earnest seekers. I know too well experimentally what these are, not to know that they must be met with loving sympathy, rather than with scoldings or contemptuous condemnation. And if it will help any soul in this direction, I am quite willing to confess that the difficulties and questionings of the generation to which I belong have not left me unmolested, and that I know what it is to have been compelled to lift up the shield of faith against many an assault of doubt, that has seemed to come like an army to overwhelm me.

But I have never found argument to help me here. The devil can out-argue any human reasoner or human reasoning, and there is nothing I am sure that pleases him more than to engage an earnest soul in a debate of this kind, in which he is so likely to come off conqueror. Doubts, are to be overcome not by reasoning, but by faith. “I will believe; I choose to believe,” have been the weapons with which I have conquered in many a fierce battle. For the will has far more to do with our believing than most people think. The will is king in our nature, and what the will decides, all else must submit to and follow. And if we will put our will in this matter over on the believing side, and choose to believe, turning resolutely away from every suggestion of doubt, I know from experience that we cannot fail to get the victory in the end. This will sound unreasonable to human philosophy, but nevertheless it is a fact, and to me it is a fact that attests the divinity of the Bible more than anything else. For unless the Bible were a divine book, no effort of will in believing it, after once doubts had entered, would amount to anything at all. When once we have seen cause to doubt a friend, no effort of will to trust again will help us. In all human relations we must have proofs of trustworthiness before we can trust. And if the Bible were a human book, it would require human proofs of its authenticity and authority before it could be believed or rested on. But to believe God, requires no proofs and no reasonings, only a choice of the will. For when the will is thus put on His side, He takes possession of it by His Holy Spirit, and in a divine way which is an omnipotent way, independent of any proofs, He convinces the soul of the truth of that which it has thus chosen to believe.

It may seem like stepping off of a precipice into an apparently bottomless abyss. But it is safe to step, because God is there, and will receive us.

Such steps would be fatal indeed, if taken where no rocks were. But because God IS, and is in His truth, there is no risk. He that will do His will, by thus obeying His command to believe His word, SHALL sooner or later know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or not. I am as sure of this as of my own existence.

But perhaps some one may refer to I Cor. xii. 3, “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” as a proof against this. In answer, I would refer to the case of the man with the withered hand. The Lord Jesus told him to stretch it out. But without divine power, he could not. He did not, however, make this a reason for not doing it, but obeyed the Lord, and, as he obeyed, the power was given. He did not have to wait for the power, the power was waiting for him. And so the blessed Holy Ghost is always waiting for us. He is given as a help, not as a hindrance. He is always ready, and the moment we put forth our will to obey God's command, He is at once there to make it possible for us to obey.

In Romans i. 17, there occurs a sentence concerning God, which may perhaps explain my thought. It is said that “He calleth those things which be not as though they were.” And it means that by this very calling, the things which were not, came into being. As we read elsewhere, “He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast.” Being God, He could thus by His creative word say, “Let there be,” and straightway there was. And since He is God, we can also -- in obedience to His command, call those things which be not as though they were, because His creative power is pledged to bring them into being, and is able to do it. If we therefore will but put ourselves in the line of His command and say, “I will believe, I choose to believe,” He will create the faith of which He has thus said, “Let it be,” and we shall find ourselves actually believing. To me this is practical, because I have tried it and proved it to be so in my own case, in many a stress of doubt. But believing does not always mean understanding, nor does it mean seeing the whole of the thing believed. There are many true believers of the Bible, whose faith is each one equal in strength to the others, and yet whose seeing capacity is so different, that it hardly seems like the same book to one as it does to the other. And from this cause arises, I think, most of the difficulties caused by the great differences of opinion as to Bible truth among honest believers.

A moment's reflection will convince us that in our different understandings of God's Book, we are all like people climbing up a high mountain to see the view, and whose views would of course differ according to the different degrees of height to which we might each have reached. The man at the foot of the mountain, who had just begun to climb, would have a very limited view; true as far as it went, but hedged in on all sides by the surrounding obstructions in the shape of forests, bits of rising ground, clumps of bushes, a high piece of rock, or even a turn in the river or the road. And unless his knowledge were greater than his view, he would call the river a lake without any outlet, and declare that the road ended at that turn, and say there were no fields or hills beyond those boundary lines. But as he climbed higher his view would become more and more extended. Soon he would see the country beyond, and the distant windings of the river or road, and the dividing lines, so strongly marked at the foot of the mountain, would gradually flatten into the surrounding landscape, until they would be almost lost to sight in the wideness and the grandeur of the extended plain spread out before the climber's vision. And so on and on, as the mountain was climbed, stretch after stretch of the landscape would unfold to his wondering gaze, until finally, when he reached the top, he would see as far as human eyesight could reach, over hill, and valley, and forest, and river, one grand sweep of land, and water, and sky, a view limited only by his own powers of vision.

One can see at a glance how different is the view seen from the top of a mountain, to that seen from the mountain's foot, and can easily understand that should two gazers, looking from these two widely separated stand-points, undertake to compare “views,” they would find that although they had been looking in precisely the same direction, and over the very same landscape, their descriptions of what they saw would widely differ.

And it is in this progressive way I believe, that we learn to understand God's truth. So that we can easily see how, even between honest and earnest students, there may be a great difference of “view,” simply arising from the difference of stand-point from which we look. And this may well make us diffident about asserting that our view is the only true or complete one, or from feeling that those who do not see just what we see, are not looking at the landscape at all. Let us rejoice in what we see, but rejoice also in what our brother sees, and be ready to listen to him, lest perchance he may be higher up than we, and may have things to tell us which we greatly need to know.

Let us come then to our study of the Bible in a spirit of childlike and receptive faith, asking to have the eyes of our understanding opened that we may behold wondrous things out of God's law. And then it may be given us to be indeed among the see-ers of truth, who see for other men, and whom men therefore call their “seers.”

I desire to have it thoroughly understood that in all I may say in this book I am only giving my “views;” that which I can see from the stand-point I occupy. If others see differently, I am quite prepared to admit that their stand-point may be higher and their view more extended, and will not contend with them on account of it. I can only give to my readers that which I have, and I trust that the view which has helped me, may help also some others whose needs may be like mine.

There are many different ways of studying the Bible which are very interesting and valuable, but perhaps the one which has interested me the most has been to take it up book by book, as though each book were only a chapter of the one Book. We have been too much accustomed I think to look upon the Bible as merely a collection of books by different authors, thrown together promiscuously under one cover. Whereas it really is one continuous Book, written by one Author, with a regular beginning and middle and ending, and a progressive development of truth all through from beginning to end. That the several chapters of this book were written by different penmen offers no difficulty to this view, for while the men were many, the God who inspired them was One, and He merely used them as His instruments to record, not their mind, but His own. Our Bible is to us as really God's book as though He had written it with His own hand in heaven, and handed it down to us. And as Gaussen so truly says in his book on Inspiration, “Whether the writers recite the mysteries of a past more ancient than the creation, or those of a future more remote than the coming again of the Son of man, or the eternal counsels of the Most High, or the secrets of men's hearts, or the deep things of God; whether they describe their own emotions, or relate what they remember, or repeat contemporary narratives, or copy over genealogies, or make extracts from uninspired documents, -- their writing is inspired, their narratives are directed from above. It is always God who speaks, who relates, who ordains or reveals by their mouth, and who, in order to this, employs their personality in different measures, for the ‘Spirit of God has been upon them,’ it is written, and His word has been upon their tongue.”

We may therefore reasonably conclude that there is no chance in the arrangement of the contents of this Divine book, but that the Divine Author had a regular plan in its arrangement, and has developed the truth to us in its pages in a regularly progressive order, beginning with the birth of all things in Genesis, and ending with the final consummation of all things in Revelation. And although we may not see this plan because of our ignorance and blindness, we must none the less believe that it is there, and that as we grow in knowledge, we shall more and more be able to discover and comprehend it.

The objection may be made to this, that the order and arrangement of the books of the Bible was settled by a council of men. But this does not reach the case at all, for the Divine Author of the book was living when this council met; and we cannot for a moment suppose that He, any more than any other author, would have left His Book to chance, or failed Himself to see that it was all arranged according to His own mind and will.

We may confidently expect, therefore, to see unrolling out before our careful study a wonderful plan of progressive development of truth in our wonderful Book, and to find each succeeding step linked on to the ones behind it and before it, in a way that will give us a far wider grasp of Divine truth, than any piecemeal study of the Bible could ever do, valuable and delightful as that is.

And, first, there seem to be three great epochs developed in the Bible: that of childhood, that of youth, and that of manhood. The childhood of our race is represented by the patriarchal period, when, as it were, the race was in leading-strings. They did not know much about law, but were like children in the nursery, guided by their parents. Then comes the period of youth, represented by the Jewish nation -- aware of law, struggling against it, trying to keep it, and continually failing. And last of all comes the period of manhood, represented by the history of the Church, when the soul rejoices in the law, and finds a power to keep it; when law is obeyed, not because of its penalties, but because it is recognized as being the best and highest good.

This much as to the grand outlines of the Bible. We will next consider it more in detail; and I think we shall find that each separate book takes us forward a definite step from the one before it, and links itself to the one beyond, and that each book has, as it were, one central thought or idea running through the whole of it, which is developed in this one book in a way it is in no other. I mean that just as the chapters in any book on science take up, one after another, separate and progressive steps or aspects of that science, while all are linked closely together, so it is here; and also that each book might have a heading, as we have to chapters in any other book, giving us in a few words its central idea.

The book of Genesis and the book of Revelation, the beginning and the end of God's record, present us with many strange likenesses and yet contrasts. They both treat of the same subjects; but, while one gives us these things in their beginnings and their failure, the other gives them to us in their wonderful consummation and eternal triumph. As, in a logical discourse or a carefully-prepared book, the author will, at the beginning, state his subjects, and then at the end will come back to the same statements with all the added light that has been thrown upon them by the progressive developments between; so, in this book, we come back in Revelation to the things spoken of in Genesis, only with all the added light and development that the intervening chapters of the book have progressively revealed.

We open the book on a garden in Genesis (ii. 8), and close it on a city in Revelation (xxi. 9, 10). We see the garden a home for one man, we find the city has become a home for nations. Rev. xxi. 24.

In Genesis we read of the creation of the sun and moon to give light to the world (i. 16, 17); in Revelation we read, “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (xxi. 23).

In Genesis we read, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth'“ (i. 1); in Revelation, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (xxi. 1).

In Genesis we are told that “the gathering together of the waters called He seas” (i. 10); in Revelation we read, “And there was no more sea” (xxi. 1).

In Genesis the curse was pronounced (iii. 17); in Revelation we are told, “And there shall be no more curse”' (xxii. 3).

In Genesis sorrow, and suffering, and death are introduced (iii. 16-19); in Revelation we read, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away” (xxi. 4).

In Genesis man was driven away from the tree of life: “So He drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life” (iii. 24); in Revelation nations are welcomed back to this tree: “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (xxii. 2).

In Genesis we have the marriage of the first Adam and his bride (ii. 18, 21, 22, 23); in Revelation we have the marriage of the second Adam and His bride: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready” (xix. 7).

In Genesis Satan, “that old serpent,” makes his first appearance (iii. 1); in Revelation he meets with his final doom (xx. 1, 2, 7, 10).

We see, therefore, how closely linked together, even in their contrasts, are the beginning and the end of the Bible. And we cannot but conclude from this, that between these two there must lie a regular and progressive plan which shall lead us surely, and by very definite steps, from one to the other.

CHAPTER II.

THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THE Old Testament seems to me something like a great picture-gallery hung with numberless pictures of divine truth. In some countries it used to be the custom for the women of the king's household to work in tapestry all the events of that king's reign, and hang them on the walls of his palace, so that every visitor, in walking through the galleries and rooms of the palace, could read from these tapestry-pictures one story after another celebrating the praises of the king. And just so, in the Old Testament, we have hung up for us a wonderful series of pictures, progressively developing divine truth. The doctrines of our faith are taught us later on in our Book; but the typical pictures of these doctrines are given to us in the early part of it, and we can only, I think get a clear insight into the doctrines, in proportion as we study them in the light of these pictures. I believe there is not a truth revealed in the New Testament that has not its corresponding picture in the Old.

CHAPTER III.

GENESIS.

MAN, AND WHAT HE IS BY NATURE

Keynote: Rom. iii. 9-19

IN the book of Genesis we have given to us, as I have suggested, the outcome of Adam, or man as he is by nature. We see here the development of human nature in many different forms of life, and its continual failure. This book gives us in type the first great lesson that every soul has to learn, and that is the lesson of its own helplessness. It shows us man tried under many different circumstances, and failing in every one, until finally the sad but sure transition is made from the garden of Eden into the bondage in Egypt.

Not that there are no individual examples of faithfulness and its reward, given us in this book, but the story of man as man, developed here, is one of repeated and most grievous failure. It has always seemed to me to be a very vivid picture of the experience of the awakened soul, seeking to make itself what it ought to be, by continually repeated efforts of its own and ending at last by finding itself in apparently hopeless Egyptian bondage. We all of us doubtless know something of this experimentally. We know what it is to have set ourselves to the work of our own reformation, to have been continually turning over a “new leaf” on our birth-days, or at New Year's time, thinking always that each renewed effort would surely be successful, and laying the blame of every failure on some fault in our circumstances or surroundings, believing that, if these were but more favorable, all would be easy and sure. And we remember well, some of us at least, the final and hopeless disappointment when we discovered, beyond a shadow of doubt, that we were utterly helpless, and then the joy that came, when in our helplessness we threw ourselves upon the mercy of God, and found in Christ the redemption our souls had so long sought for in vain.

Of all this the books of Genesis and Exodus form a wonderful picture.

The story of man's first trial and its failure, is given us in Gen. i. ii. and iii. He was created by God in innocence and purity, and was placed in the garden of Eden under the most favorable possible circumstances; possessing a nature inclined towards righteousness, and with every surrounding that could help to establish him therein. And yet in spite of it all, he failed most grievously, breaking the one only law that God had given to control him, and making it necessary for his own good, that he should be driven out from his home in the beautiful garden, lest he should eat of the tree of life and live on forever in the fallen and sinful condition to which he bad brought himself. (iii. 22-24).

CHAPTER IV.

EXODUS.

REDEMPTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Keynote: Rom. iii. 21, 22.

REDEMPTION and its consequences, might be given as the typical title of this book. It tells us the story of God's way of redeeming His people, and the results that follow this redemption. Its New Testament doctrinal counterpart is to be found, I think, especially in Rom. iii. 21-31. Immediately following the declarations concerning our utterly lost and undone condition in the first part of Romans, to which I have referred as presenting a parallel to the book of Genesis, we are here made glad by the wondrous story of deliverance for these very lost ones, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare I say, at this time, His righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

In the book of Genesis we have seen man passing, by a series of failures, out of the garden of Eden into the land of Egypt, and we open upon him now in a condition of apparently hopeless bondage there. “And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigour. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.” Exodus i. 13, 14. The rigor of this bondage at last forced frown the Israelites a cry for help, “And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried; and their cry came up unto God, by reason of their bondage.” Exodus ii. 23. And the Lord heard their cry and said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land, unto a good land, and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” Exodus iii. 7, 8.

All this is a wonderful picture of the stages in our experience, by which we are brought to know the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We seek first of all to redeem ourselves by our own efforts, and resolutions, and continual fresh starts, but our failures only grow worse and worse, until at last we find ourselves “sold under sin,” in apparently hopeless bondage; and then, when all hope in ourselves is gone, and our bondage has become very bitter to us, we cry unto the Lord, and He hears and delivers us, and our Exodus is accomplished.

The way of our deliverance is wonderfully pictured in this story of the deliverance of the children of Israel. From beginning to end it was God's work, and not theirs, His right hand and His mighty power alone got the victory, and He brought them forth “with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and wonders.” Deut. xxvi. 8. They were helpless before the power of Pharaoh, their cruel master, just as we are helpless before the power of our master, Satan, who has bound us in a far worse slavery than theirs; and is even more determined than Pharaoh was, not to let us go. Their helplessness was their greatest claim. Like us, they did not merit redemption, but they needed it; and the Lord delivered them, not because they were worthy, but because He loved them. As we read in Deut. vii. 7, 8. “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.”

The especial points in their deliverance which contain the most teaching for us, seem to me to be found in Exodus xii. and xiv. The Lord had been dealing with their enslavers by showing “signs and wonders, great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household,” but as yet they had not been willing to let the children of Israel go. In chapter xi. 1, , however, we read, “And the Lord said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.” This “one plague more,” which was to prove so effectual, was the judgment of death upon all the first-born of Egypt. And from this judgment, the children of Israel were to be delivered by a ceremony, which has been accepted by the Church of all ages, as one of the clearest types of the work of Christ, given to us in the whole Bible. This type is described in chap. xii. 3, 5, 6, 7, 13: “Speak ye unto the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.” * * “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts, and on the upper door-post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.” * * “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”

CHAPTER V.

LEVITICUS.

THE WORSHIP AND COMMUNION OF A REDEEMED PEOPLE.

Keynote: Eph. ii. 18-22.

THE book of Leviticus is a book of worship and communion. It gives us the results of God's presence in the midst of His people, and shows us the things that help and the things that hinder communion with Him.

It is a wonderful typical representation of the truths taught us in Eph. ii. 13, 18: “But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” And again, in Heb. x. 19-22: “Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a high-priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”

In Leviticus we see God dwelling in the midst of His people and making known His mind to them. The promise to them in Ex. xxv. 22 had been, “And there will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.” And here this promise is fulfilled. Between thirty and forty times in this book is the expression used, “And the Lord spake, saying;” and the whole book is simply a revelation of the Lord's mind and thoughts to a people who had been brought into the secret of His presence, It is an illustration of our Lord's words in John xv. 15, “Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of the Father, I have made known unto you.” Only to the heart where Christ dwells, can His secrets be revealed, and to them alone can He show His covenant.

It is very important to notice that this book does not tell how they were to be delivered from bondage, but only how they were to live and worship after they were delivered. Its very position, following Exodus instead of preceding it) shows us plainly God's order in these things. First redemption, then worship and communion. Not worship and communion in order to be saved, but because we have been saved. Many souls seek to reverse this order, and think if they could only know real communion with God, then they could have some hope that He would redeem them. They think this acceptable worship would make them more fit to be redeemed, or would make Him more willing. Whereas the truth is that the knowledge of redemption must come first, before there can be any satisfying communion. The very object of our redemption is that we may worship and serve God. If we could have done it before we were redeemed, then there would have been no need of redemption. The word of Moses to Pharaoh was, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may serve me.” Pharaoh had no objection to their serving God, if only they would not go out of his land to do it; and he said, Exod. viii. 25, “Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.”

If Satan can only keep us in his own land, slaves to himself, he cares very little what we do there, and is even well pleased that we should attend church, and say our prayers, and seek to serve God, as long as we will do it “in the land,” thinking so to blind our eyes to our slavery, and make us more willing slaves.

But Moses answered, “It is not meet so to do.” “We will go three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God as He shall command us.” He knew that the true worship of the God of Israel was simply impossible in the land of Egypt. And the soul now, that understands God's truth, knows also that “except a man be born again, he cannot see” nor “enter into the kingdom of God.” We must be translated out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son, before we can serve the King of that kingdom, and above all before we can expect to be told His secrets.

CHAPTER VI.

NUMBERS.

THE WILDERNESS WANDERING OF THOSE WHO ARE REDEEMED.

Keynote: Rom. vii. 9-24.

THE book of Numbers gives us the wilderness wandering of a redeemed people, and answers to the experience of the Christian who knows that he is redeemed out of the world and brought nigh to God, but who fails to enter into possession of the fulness of his salvation. In this book we see the children of Israel brought to the borders of the promised land, and failing to go in “because of unbelief”; and we see them, on account of this failure, condemned to wander for forty years in the wilderness. The seventh chapter of Romans is the New Testament counterpart of this book. Paul gives us in that chapter the experience of a redeemed soul, who knows what it is to delight in the law of God after the inward man, but who finds another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into continual captivity. It is too common an experience to need any description; for we all, I doubt not, know it for ourselves only too well, either in the past or the present. It is, in short, that experience in the church which has produced, and is best expressed by such hymns as the following:

That Christians could ever be willing to sing such experiences as these, seems a strange phenomenon. One would think, if it were unfortunately true, that it would be buried with shame in the deepest recesses of the heart, or spoken of only with the greatest sorrow. It is as though wives should put into verse, and sing to one another, their want of love and devotedness to their husbands. Or as though the children of Israel should have sung instead of weeping, when they found themselves turned back to wander in the wilderness.

The wilderness wandering, however, does not fill up the whole book of Numbers. The first twelve chapters give us the details of God's provision for His people's need, as to service and warfare. And it is a provision so ample and complete, as to seem to leave no possible room for failure to come. As we read also concerning the Christian in Phil. iv. 19, “My God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Neither they nor we can find any excuse for our failure in the insufficiency of His supplies.

In chapters i. and ii. God numbers His people, and arranges them around His dwelling-place, assigning to each one his rightful position, and calling them by their names; a blessed illustration of the Good Shepherd's individual care of His flock, who “calleth His own sheep by name and leadeth them out.” The numbering here was especially for warfare, “from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war;” and typifies the especial aspect of Christians, as engaged in spiritual conflicts with their enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Only those who were able, were called into this warfare. The young, and weak and aged were to be spared; showing that only a vigorous Christian life can really fight the fight of faith. And all were to “declare their pedigrees,” i. 18, that it might be known beyond a shadow of doubt whether they really belonged to Israel. Souls who doubt whether they belong to God or not, can scarcely fight His battles, for their very doubts are a siding with the enemy against Him.

In chapters iii. and iv. we have the Levites set apart for service: “Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister unto him. And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole congregation before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the service of the tabernacle” (iii. 6, 7). We may consider the Levites as a type of the church in service, doing the Lord's work, and having in charge His truth. The priest was a type of a soul in communion, and the Levite of the same soul in service. The Levites waited on the priests, and performed their service only “at the appointment” (iv. 19) of the priests. It is the soul in communion that finds out what the soul in service ought to do: and service is valuable only as it waits on, or “ministers unto” communion. The Levites carried the tabernacle, and its furniture, and its vessels in all the journeyings of the children of Israel, and set it up in every new encampment: a striking type of the fulfillment of Christ's command to His disciples, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” The service of each Levite was marked out for him by the “commandment of the Lord,” as we read concerning the service of the church in I Cor. xii. 11, “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.”

In chapter v. we have provision made for the purity of the camp: “Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell,” v. 2, 3. God's presence requires perfect purity on the part of those among whom He dwells. He takes knowledge of every wrong, even of that which may be hidden from those nearest us, and brings it to judgment. This is very blessed to the soul that really loves holiness and hates sin. Knowing the deceitfulness of our own hearts, and how easily grave and serious defects may be hidden from us, and knowing, as we do, the grievous and sometimes fatal results that flow from our secret and often scarcely recognized faults, we may well rejoice that we have to do with a God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity without recognizing it, and who is a “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

In chapter vi. we have given us God's mind respecting those whose hearts stir them up to a life of peculiar devotedness to the Lord, either for a particular work, or for an especial season: “ “When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord,” vi. 2. Such a one may be called for a time to deny himself from things not evil in themselves, and to which it may be he can one day return, (compare ver. 3 with ver. 20). But if the Lord has thus called us into separation for an especial purpose, either of service or of training, let us beware lest “our separation be defiled” by any lack of obedience to the divine command, or any want of watchfulness against the divine forbiddings. This separateness and this self-denial will bring us to a place of joyful communion “when the days of our separation are fulfilled,” and Christ in all His manifold fulness will be revealed to our souls, (see vi. 13-20). And the Lord can then pronounce over us without any hindrance His richest blessings, as He did upon Israel at the close of this chapter.

In chapter vii. we have the offerings of the princes of Israel. Willing offering is always the result of blessing. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” is always the Lord's way with us. These offerings are a type of the willing offerings of God's children now, who may be princes in giving, even though poor in this world's riches. And He notes it all; every bowl and every spoon, and even every cup of cold water given in the name of the Lord is written in His book of remembrance, and not one shall lose its reward.

Chapter viii. gives us further details as to the Levitical service and the cleansing necessary for it, teaching us in type the absolute necessity for purity of heart, as the basis for any effectual and acceptable service to God.

Chapter ix. gives us the provision for keeping the Passover in the wilderness, and for the guidance of the children of Israel in their journeys. The passover was the memorial of their redemption out of Egypt, and was to be kept by the people, even in the wilderness. A type, I think, of the continual remembrance on our part of the fact that we have been redeemed, even though we may know ourselves to be wandering in wilderness places. Neither defilement nor distance was to hinder from the keeping of the passover: “Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If any man of you or your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the passover unto the Lord,” ix. 10. But it was to be kept in the second month, instead of the first, see ix. II, teaching that defilement hinders or delays assurance, although it does not deprive the soul of its right to it. A child may be naughty, but it will be still a child, and no parent would be pleased to have it begin to consider itself no longer a child.

The presence of the pillar of cloud and fire guiding and protecting the children of Israel in all their journeys, (ix. 15-23), seems to me a very beautiful type of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of God's people, guiding them day by day in all the journey of life. “And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents. At the commandment of the Lord the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the Lord they pitched,” ix. 17, 18. There were no roads nor guide-posts in that “great and terrible wilderness,” and none of whom they could inquire their way. Yet they journeyed “without carefulness,” because the Lord led them at every step. They had none of the care nor responsibility of the journey. They had no need to meet and consult as to the best paths to take, nor to send out scouts to choose their route. They had only to watch the pillar of fire and of cloud and follow its movements, and all was well. A beautiful picture of the believer's absolute dependence upon the blessed guidance of the Holy Spirit, and of what ought to be his complete subjection to it.

And now that all had been arranged in God's order, the journey began. “And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony. And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran. And they departed from the mount of the Lord three days' journey: and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days' journey, to search out a resting place for them” (x. 11, 12 and 33). It is thus that the Lord, when He putteth forth His own sheep goeth before them. And how little cause for fear or anxiety can there be in a journey so guided, by such a Leader.

Yet almost at once the evil heart of unbelief showed itself, and the people “complained” (xi. I); and, seduced by the mixed multitude who accompanied them, they began to look back longingly to Egypt “We remember,” they said, “the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all besides this manna, before our eyes “ (xi. 5, 6) . The soul that begins by complaining, soon ends by something worse. It loses its relish for heavenly food, and looks back with longing to that which the world gives. And the end is sadly typified in the closing verses of our chapter, xi. 33, 34. “He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” Ps. cvi. 15.

The spirit of criticism follows swift upon spiritual leanness, as we see in chapter xii.: “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married.” The soul filled with the love of Christ has lost the spirit of judging. The divine charity spread abroad in the heart “thinketh no evil.” But an inward want of union with Christ always leads the soul to climb up on the judgment seat, and to take upon itself the task of removing the mote out of its brother's eye, regardless of the beam in its own. God deals with all such, however, sooner or later, and sounds in the inmost ear the solemn question, “Wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” And in mercy He reproves and chastens until the sin is acknowledged and the soul restored, 10-15.

In chapter xiii. we enter upon one of the saddest epochs of the history of the children of Israel. They are here brought to the very borders of the land which the Lord had given them for an inheritance, and for the very purpose of possessing which He had brought them out of Egypt. In Ex. iii. 8 He had said, “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land unto “--what?--the wilderness? No; “unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” And now that they had reached the borders of this land, the word to them was, “Behold the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged.” Deut. i. 21.

But the previous rebellion had weakened the heart of the people, and when they heard from their spies of “giants,” and “cities walled and very great,” they were afraid and refused to go up. “Whither should we go up?” they said, “our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven: and more- over, we have seen the sons of the Anakims there,” Deut. i. 28. In vain Caleb and Joshua “stilled the people saying, Let us go up at once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.” The remaining ten spies persisted in declaring, “We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.” And the children of Israel were finally so incensed at the faithful report of Caleb and Joshua that they “bade stone them with stones,” xiv. 10.

This whole scene is a picture, I think, of a stage of Christian experience, which is, alas! only too common. The soul, which has been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, is brought face to face with the wonderful promises and blessings of the gospel, and longs to go up and possess them. The glorious liberty and triumphs, for instance of the eighth chapter of Romans confront us, and we ask, “Is it not cur privilege to enter into these things now?” But we are met on every hand by “spies,” who tell us of the giants in our way, and of the difficulties that we shall not be able to overcome; and thus our brethren so “discourage our hearts” that we finally give up in despair, as Israel did, and turn back to wander in the wilderness of the seventh of Romans, afraid to take possession of the very land of promise which the Lord our God declares He has given us, and into which it was the very purpose of our redemption that we should be brought.

I know what it is to have been discouraged in the early part of my Christian course by the story of these “spies,” and to have become in turn a spy myself, bringing up a bad report of the land. When I was first converted I never dreamed of anything but of taking possession, of course, of all the rich and glorious things which I saw promised in the Bible to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. I had never been used to hearing Christians talk much about their spiritual experience, and I supposed in my simplicity that to be in the kingdom of Heaven meant really to be in a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And when in the course of a few weeks the “giants” began to appear in my land, and I found myself surrounded and overcome by a “people greater and taller” than I was, I at once concluded this must be because I had not learned the whole gospel, and that it only needed for me to be taught something more in order to get the victory.

I had found in the Lord Jesus a deliverer from the guilt of sin, but now I wanted to find in Him a deliverer from the power of sin, and I did not know how to set about it. I went therefore to a “spy” to find out. He was a beloved Christian teacher who had been many years in the way, and must know, I supposed, all about it. But never shall I forget my disappointment! After I had stated my case and told my need, saying that I knew it was because of my ignorance, and because I had not taken in the fulness of the gospel that I was in so sad a case, my friend said, “Oh, no! You are all right. You cannot expect such a deliverance as you are seeking. We all of us are more or less under the power of sin all our lives, and we must not expect the early joy of our conversion to last for ever. The seventh of Romans is the experience of the Christian throughout his whole life.” I thought my friend knew, and I received his report as final, and at once settled down to my condition as being inevitable, and therefore to be endured with the best grace I could; but my heart sank as I left the house, and, like the children of Israel, I could have “lifted up my voice and cried,” so great was my disappointment. And many a time in the years that followed would I recall with saddest longing the blessedness I had felt when first I knew the Lord.

CHAPTER VII.

DEUTERONOMY.

CONSECRATION.

Keynote: Rom. xii. 1, 2.

THE book of Deuteronomy is a book of consecration. It shows us God's redeemed people standing a second time on the borders of the land of promise, and consecrating themselves afresh to Him, as a preparation for going in and possessing it. “Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you,” iv.1.

It is the consecration of a redeemed people that is prefigured here. It is not the surrender which the sinner is required to make before he can know the forgiveness of his sins; but it is the surrender required from the Christian, who already knows this, and who is seeking to enter into the full possession of the gifts and privileges of the Christian life. It answers to Rom. xii. 1 : “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.”

No such scene as this took place when the Israelites stood on the border of the Red Sea. The only point then was deliverance out of Egypt in the quickest way possible. And the surrender called for was only that they should consent to turn their backs on Egypt with its “fish, and cucumbers, and melons, and leeks, and onions, and garlic,” and should follow the Lord their God as He led them out into a land they knew not. “Repent and believe the Gospel,” turn your backs on the old life of sin and begin the new life of faith, is the New Testament expression of this stage in their experience.

As long as the Israelites were in Egypt they could not keep God's law, because they were Pharaoh's slaves; and they had to be delivered in order that they might be able to keep it. But being delivered, and having been made God's people, they were then ready to hear the law and to consecrate themselves to obey it. And with us likewise, the first step in our experience must be, deliverance out of Satan's kingdom, and the new birth into the kingdom of God's dear Son; for the carnal mind, we are told, “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The consecration, therefore, which is set before us in this book, can never precede the new birth, but must always follow it.

And, in fact, as a general thing, many points exercise our hearts before we come to this consecration, -- how to be safe from the destroying angel; how to be delivered out of Egypt; how to have access to God; how to be led through the wilderness; how to overcome the enemies there. Until at last we come in our experience, as Israel did, a second time to the borders of the land of promise, and our souls begin to long to know something of the power of Christ's resurrection, and to live, even now and here, in “heavenly places.” And at this point the need for consecration presents itself before us. We realize that unless we are in very truth wholly the Lord's, He cannot lead us into the land of our inheritance. Not that there has been no consecration of ourselves previously. There may have been one or many; there must be, in fact, a measure of consecration in the heart of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. The law had been given to Israel just after their deliverance out of Egypt, and they had promised to obey it (see Ex. xix. 5-8). But now that they were about to enter Canaan, it was necessary that a deeper consecration should be made, which should have especial reference to their conduct in the land, and the conditions of their relationship with the Lord there. “These are the statutes and judgments which ye shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth,” xii. 1. And however it may have been as regards former consecrations in our own experience, I am sure we shall find that, when we seek to enter into the “land of promise,” a renewed surrender will be necessary, and that it must be of a far deeper and more heart-searching character than any former one has ever been.

It is necessary to keep all this clearly in mind in order to understand the conditional character of the book of Deuteronomy. We meet here continually with the word “if,” “All these blessings shall come upon thee and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God,” xxviii. 2. “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee,” xxviii. 15. The blessings of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ are so unconditional, and His gifts are so free, that we are apt to think there are no “ifs” to be found in it any where, and that the introduction of any conditions are always a mistake of legality. But while it is true that forgiveness is a free gift, bestowed without money and without price upon all who need it and will take it, it is also equally true that holiness of heart is a gift with conditions. No sick man can be healed by a physician, be he ever so skilful, unless he will submit himself to that physician's prescriptions and obey his orders. And no soul can be cured of the dreadful malady of sin, until it is willing to surrender every sin, and submit itself to the Lord's commands against it. Conditions do necessarily come in here. Obedience to law has its inevitable blessings, and disobedience its inevitable curses. And the consecration set forth in Deuteronomy is no legal demand of so much surrender for so much blessing, but is simply the necessary state in which blessing can be bestowed. And it remains to be as true now as it was then, that, “if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways,” the Lord “shall establish thee an holy people unto Himself as He hath sworn unto thee,” xxviii. 9. “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe to do all His commandments,” that “the Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation and rebuke in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do,” and “thou shalt grope at noonday as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee,” xxviii. 29.

Consecration is therefore, if we only understood it, not a sacrifice demanded, but a privilege bestowed. It is the only pathway there is to the unspeakable and inestimable blessings promised to the believer; and the Lord who calls us into this pathway knows that He is calling us to something that will make for us almost a Heaven upon earth. I speak strongly, but none too much so I am sure. To be wholly the Lord's, does bring to the soul spiritual blessings that answer, step by step, to the temporal blessings which followed obedience with the children of Israel. Read the book of Deuteronomy with this thought in mind, and see how wonderful are we similitudes. First of all the land into which obedience was to bring them: “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass,” viii. 7-9. And again, the Lord thy God will give thee “great and goodly which thou buildest not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not,” vi. 10, 11.

How exactly these descriptions answer to those rich spiritual possessions, and that blessed land of spiritual rest and joy, into which the obedient soul enters now.

Take also the blessings that “follow and overtake” the obedient in vii. 12-16 and xxviii. 1-13: “The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thy hand unto.” “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.” Thy enemies shall be conquered, vii. 16; thy diseases shall be healed, vii. 15; thou shalt have riches in abundance to bestow on all who need, xxviii. 11, 12; the Lord shall love thee with a peculiar love, vii. 13; and shall fulfil His promises to thee, vii. 12; and finally, and best of all, He shall “establish thee an holy people unto Himself as He hath sworn unto thee,” if only thou wilt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways, xviii. 9.

Take on the other hand the curses which it is declared in xxviii. 15-68 will surely “come upon and overtake” those who “will not hearken” unto the voice of the Lord; and notice the marvellous similitude there is between them, and the spiritual loss and suffering which we all .know invariably comes upon and overtakes the disobedient soul now. When such spray, the heaven seems to have become as brass, xxviii. 23; their spiritual enemies smite them and cause them to flee, v. 25; spiritual diseases of all kinds prostrate and afflict them, and even the old “diseases of Egypt” from which they had hoped to have been delivered, return upon them, and the old temptations of their unconverted days again overcome them, verses 27, 60; spiritual blindness overtakes them, and they “grope at noonday” and cannot find their way, verses 28, 29; their strength fails, v. 32; their work is fruitless, and they have no stores to give to others who are in need, verses 38-44; and, in short, the Lord's word to such a one is the same as to disobedient Israel of old, that thou salt “find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life.”

But that this consecration was not to be looked upon as a painful demand; can be seen from the continual exhortations to rejoice throughout this book, see xii. 7, xiv. 26, xvi. 14, 15, xxii. 11, and from the word of warning in xxviii. 47, 48, “Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee.”

Faber says,--

And the soul that has learned to know God can say, Amen, to this with eager gladness. For the will of God is the will of love, and the will of love can never be anything but richest blessing to the loved one. We all know this, even in our poor meagre human experience of love. We know that where we love, our will towards the object of our affections embraces and demands only their blessing and their happiness. Our own happiness is as nothing in comparison, and our only trouble is that we cannot find ways enough in which to express and pour out our love. We know that the one question of our hearts is not, “What can they do for me?” but, “What can I do for them?” Their good is our good, their sufferings are ours, and every joy that lights up their faces lights ours as well. Would they submit themselves utterly to our will, and let us have our way with them in all things, how infinitely happy we would make them if we could, along what smooth pathways we would lead them, and how tenderly we would guard them from danger or pain. And if this is true of our paltry human love, what must it be with the infinite, unspeakable and unknowable love of God? If therefore, we have ever been able to trust ourselves gladly to an earthly lover, or to surrender our wills to the call of human affection, surely we might with a fearless devotion abandon ourselves to the dear disposal of our Lord and Saviour and might say to Him with the gladdest joy, “Thy will be done, Thy will be done, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven.”

I confess that to me these words are among the sweetest ever put into mortal lips-- “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven.” It is the perfect doing of God's will that makes Heaven what it is, and to have His will done perfectly here would turn this earth into a Heaven also. And in so far as it is done in any individual life or by any individual heart it does bring Heaven down into that heart and life, and makes that man dwell in a perpetual kingdom. For he does indeed “always reign who sides with God,” since God's way is his way, and God's will is his.

Alas! how grievous it is that any one should ever have a different thought from this. And yet we all know how common it is, even for Christians, to look upon consecration as a stern demand, and to shrink from the will of God as from the worst evil that could befall them. I knew of a Christian teacher once who was asked by one of his friends to speak on the subject of consecration. “Oh do not ask me to do that,” was his shuddering reply! “Do you know what consecration means?” he continued. “It means that all that is bright and pleasant in your life will be taken out of it, and that every hard and sad thing you can conceive of will come into it. It means that you will have to do impossible things, and that your ease and comfort will be gone forever.” How little could such a soul have known about the Lord whom he was trying to serve! Sometimes children misjudge their parents in this way, and expect from them only harshness and stern demands. But where such is the case, it argues, either a very cruel parent, or a very naughty child, and the universal instincts of the human heart condemn it. How is it then that we can so calmly misunderstand and misjudge our Lord, whose will can be nothing but goodness and love, since He Himself is these and these only?

Oh, dear friends, if this has been the thought of any one of you, if your heart has been afraid of your Father's will, and has hesitated to consent to it, confess your sin now with shame and sorrow, and begin from this time forward to say to Him a continual, “Yes,” throughout all the range of your being.

CHAPTER VIII.

JOSHUA.

THE REDEEMED IN HEAVENLY PLACES.

Keynote: Rom. viii. 1-4.

THE book of Joshua gives us the redeemed in heavenly places. It is the story of the entrance of God's chosen people into the land of their possession, and their victories and rest there. It answers to the book of Ephesians, where we are shown the believer as "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places," made to "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," and wrestling there against spiritual wickedness, or as the margin has it "against wicked spirits in heavenly places." Eph. i. 3; ii. 6; vi. 12.

God's redeemed people in this book come out of the wilderness, and enter at last into possession of the land which He had promised them, the land from which they had been turned back forty years before by their unbelief. They conquer the very cities, great and walled up to heaven, which had frightened them so then, and overcome the giants of whom they had said, "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." In this book the Christian, in type, comes out of the wilderness of the seventh chapter of Romans, where his language is, "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death," into the promised land of the eighth chapter, where he can triumphantly exclaim, "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

The land of Canaan is often taken as being intended for a type of heaven, and crossing the Jordan as a type of death. But this can hardly be, since in heaven we shall have no foes to conquer, and there will be no danger of failure there, while in Canaan there were enemies on every hand, and many instances of grievous defeat. In Hebrews iii. and iv. the Holy Ghost takes up the story of Israel's failure to enter into the land of Canaan, and applies it to the consciences of Christians, as a warning to them not to make a similar failure. "Let us therefore fear," he says, "lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest." This rest is plainly a present possession of the trusting soul; something that can be enjoyed in this life; for we are told that those who believe do now and here "enter into rest." And I think therefore that we must look upon the land of promise then, as a type of the land of promise now, and the victories and rest there, as pictures of the victories and rest the soul finds in the present day, when it has fully taken possession of God's promises, and is dwelling in the enjoyment of them.

I was once taught a very striking lesson on this point by a dear old colored saint, who was attending a Bible class of which I was the teacher. The portion of Scripture we were considering was the book of Romans, and I was expounding especially the seventh and eighth chapters. I thought the dear old sister seemed rather puzzled by my explanations, but put this down to her want of intelligence, when suddenly she burst out with, "Why, honey, it 'pears like you don't understand dem chapters. You talk just as if you thought we was to live all de time in de seventh of Romans, and only pay little visits now and then to de eighth." "Certainly," I replied, "that is just what I do think, do not you?" "Oh honey," she said with infinite pity and surprise in her tone, "I'se afeard you don't know much. Why I lives in de eighth!" And the old face shone through all its blackness with what Joseph Cook calls the "solar light," as she said the words, and I felt they were true; but I was actually so ignorant as to think that it must be because she was colored and poor, that God had given her such peculiar blessings, in order to make up to her for these misfortunes! And I almost wished I too was colored and poor, that I might have a chance for similar blessing! But I could never forget the impression made upon me, and from that time onward sought continually for the secret of her joy. Until at last the path across from the seventh to the eighth of Romans was revealed to me, and I saw that people who were not old, nor poor, nor colored, might yet also take up their abode in the blessed land of promise there revealed.

The book of Joshua opens on the children of Israel encamped in the plains of Moab "on this side Jordan, in the wilderness." Their long weary wanderings, since they had refused to enter the land forty years before, had not brought them any nearer Canaan than they were when they set out. They were on the borders then, and they were only on the borders now. They had been moving, certainly, during all these forty years, but like a great deal of what is called "religious growth," their course had not been "upward and onward." They had gone round and round in that dreary wilderness, doubling on their track continually, and journeying onward, only to journey back again. And now a river lay between them and the land of their possession. Had they gone in at first, at Kadesh-barnea, they would have had only an unseen boundary to cross, and the transition would not have been so strongly marked. And so I believe that in the experience of the Christian, there need not be that definite step, to which so many object, in entering into the more full enjoyment of the promises of the gospel, if only at our conversion we were taught that we were well able to overcome the land, and were urged to go in at once and possess it. Doubtless some do thus enter in at Kadesh-barnea. But the majority of Christians, like the Israelites, fail to enter in at first, because of unbelief, and are turned back like them to wander in the wilderness of the seventh of Romans.

But there comes a time to all such, sooner or later, I believe, when they are brought a second time to the borders of the land; and to them this book is full of most blessed teaching.

It opens with the Lord's command to His people. "Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them." (i. 2.) It was not only a privilege He offered them, but a command He made. His object in redeeming them out of Egypt had been to bring them into this land. "I am come down," He said in Exodus, "to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto," --what? the wilderness, to wander there forty years? --no, -- "unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites." And unless they should actually be brought into this land, the nations round about, who knew of their going out of Egypt, and who had heard that the Lord was among them and "was seen face to face," and that He went "before them, by day time in a pillar of cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night," might well say, as Moses feared they would, that it was "because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which He sware unto them. "Numbers xiv. 14-16. Therefore, for His own glory's sake, it was necessary that His people should go in and be planted in the land of their inheritance. And with us also it is not a privilege only, but the commandment of our Lord, that we shall enter into possession of the promises, into that land of blessing and of rest which corresponds spiritually to the Canaan of the Israelites. "Abide in me." "Be filled with the Spirit." "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin." "Be careful for nothing." "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." All these are glorious privileges, but they are positive commands also. And unless Christians do as a fact enter into this blessed fullness of their salvation, they will surely give occasion to the world to say; that it is because God is not able to bring them into the land which He sware unto them. For as we read in Luke i. 69-75, the declaration concerning the Lord Jesus by the Holy Ghost was, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us, in the house of his servant David: As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant; the oath which He sware to our father Abraham, that He would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life." If we then as Christians, say this is impossible, we in effect declare that what God has promised He is not able to perform; and thus bring dishonor on His great name.

It is the Lord's command to us, therefore, that we go in and possess the land of our inheritance. And to me God's commands are even more comforting than His promises; for if He commands me to do a thing, I am sure He will give me the power of His Spirit to do it. His commands are not grievous, we are told, but surely they would be grievous, if we were utterly unable to obey them. It would have been a grievous thing indeed had He commanded the children of Israel to go in and possess the land of Canaan, and yet, knowing that they were utterly unable to do it, had not Himself intended to supply them with the power. And, in fact, He uses His very command as the reason why they should have no fear. "Have not I commanded thee?" He asks. "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest," i. 9. As much as to say, "Thou needst have no fear in undertaking to do what I have commanded thee to do, for I am in every command I give, and will always bestow the necessary power to obey it."

Another thing is to be noticed in this opening proclamation of the Lord to His people. "Every place that the soles of your feet shall tread upon that have I given unto you," i. 3. Not "that will I give," but of "that have I given." It was all theirs in the purpose and mind of God, but unless they actually went there and set their feet upon it, it did not become theirs practically and experimentally. This is necessarily true of any gift. The giver may give it with all the sincerity and good-will possible, but unless the one to whom he gives it, actually receives it, and appropriates it, and calls it his own, it never comes really into his possession at all. Even though a gift should be laid on the table, or put in the pocket of a friend, unless that friend closes the hand of acceptance over it, and says mentally, "It is mine," he will not after all possess it.

The children of Israel were going in to take possession of their own land. The Lord had given it to them centuries before, and it was theirs all the while, only waiting for their coming. And so of ourselves we read that God "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," although we very well know that until the hand of faith really closes over and appropriates these blessings, and we begin to say "they are mine," we do not actually and experimentally come into their enjoyment at all.

This land of promise seems to me to typify, as I have said, that experience in the Christian life which is called variously sanctification, perfect love, the rest of faith, the interior life, full salvation, the higher Christian life, and many other names, which all however I believe mean one and the same thing. And what they mean is according to my understanding of it, that at some certain time in its experience the soul finds in the Lord Jesus Christ not only a deliverer from the guilt of sin, but also a deliverer from its power; and comes into a life of victory, and rest, and liberty, and peace. and joy in the Holy Ghost. The Christian who has entered into this experience finds himself in possession of the promises at which he has hitherto looked with longing but hopeless eyes. His will is in harmony with God's will. Obedience becomes a delight, and service sweet. Cares, and fears, and anxieties are all lost in the infiniteness of God's love. And the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is found experimentally to set the soul free from the law of sin and death. Romans vi. and viii. are perhaps the best expressions of this life; though the whole New Testament is one long declaration and description of it.

The way into it is like the way out of the wilderness into the promised land. It is by the pathway of consecration and faith. Entire surrender to the will of God and perfect trust in His love, will take thee there dear seeker, whether thou clearly understandest the doctrines concerning it or not; and once in, thou wilt know more about it, than I could tell thee if I should write a book full concerning it. Let me earnestly beg of thee, therefore, to be strong and of a good courage, for has not the Lord commanded thee? Arise then, this very day, and, with Israel, go in to possess the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, to possess it. Step the foot of thy faith upon each one of His promises, and stand there steadfastly, sure that they shall be every one thine. Thy part is to step, His it is to give thee possession. And His blessed Spirit, who abides in every promise, will make thee mighty through God to the pulling down of every stronghold, and the overcoming of every enemy.

In chapter second we have given us the history of Rahab, a wonderful picture of how acceptable faith is to the Lord, even when exercised in the midst of great ignorance and distance from Himself. The comment of the Holy Ghost is given us in Heb. xi. 31: "By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not." And her faith so strengthened the faith of the spies that they returned to Joshua with the triumphant language, "Truly the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land: for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us," ii. 24. How different the report of these spies from that of the spies sent out forty years before. The giants were as mighty now as then, and the cities as great, and they themselves were as weak. But then they had left out the Lord, and had measured their enemies with themselves; and now Rahab had brought Him in for she had said, "I know that THE LORD hath given you the land," ii. 9. When God is brought into the scene and our enemies are measured with Him, there can no longer be any doubt or fear remaining. And I believe, dear reader, that if we could send out spies into the land of our possession, as Israel did, we would find also, that our enemy faints because of us, and that he knows, whether we do or not, that the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land. He is an already conquered foe, and the courage of faith will soon discover this, let him bluster as he may.

In chapter third we have the wonderful scene of the crossing of Jordan,-- a crossing which, while in many respects it is similar to, was yet very different from the crossing of the Red Sea. At the Red Sea no preparation was needed to make them ready, but they crossed in haste to escape from a pursuing enemy. Here the command was, "Prepare you victuals, for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it," i. 11. And again we read in iii. 5 that Joshua said unto the people, "Sanctify yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you." There was no pursuing enemy now behind them, but instead, a glorious land lay before them, and a preparation was necessary before they could enter it. This preparation was one of consecration. The word sanctify means set apart, separate yourselves from all evil. It means just what Paul says in 2 Cor. vii. 1. "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." all that consciously defiles must be laid aside, before the soul can expect to enter into the fulness of God's promises.

Again, at the Red Sea the path was made, before the Israelites were called upon to take a single step. But here the path was only made when they stepped. "And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap." Joshua iii. 13. The priests who are types of Christians in communion with God, were to step into the brimming river, for at this time Jordan was overflowing all its banks; and as they thus stepped in, the waters stood and rose up on an heap and the path was made. iii. 15-17. And so in realizing the forgiveness of our sins, we believe in an already accomplished fact, and enter into the enjoyment of a finished work. While in sanctification we believe in a fact that is accomplished when we believe, and enter into the enjoyment of a work that is going on as we trust.

It required a far stronger faith to cross the Jordan than to cross the Red Sea; and the faith which can trust for the forgiveness of sins, needs to be greatly strengthened, in order to believe in victory over sin. To my, this stepping into a brimming river, when as yet there was no sign of a path, is one of the grandest pictures of faith on record. I can fancy the heathen nations around, if they witnessed the scene, sneering at the folly and presumption of a people who could thus act. They must have known only too well that they could not trust their gods after such a fashion. But I think their cry afterwards must have been, "Surely no people have a god like unto these people!" And could the world but see more of this sublime sort of faith among Christians now, I feel sure they would be won to yield allegiance to a God who can thus be trusted, and who never fails His people's confidence.

But as this was an untrodden path to Israel, the Ark of the Covenant, which in one aspect typifies Christ, was in to precede them in this journey, "that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore," ii. 4. The path of faith is always a new and untrodden way to the soul, and it is only by "looking unto Jesus" that we can ever "know the way by which we must go."

The crossing of the Jordan, it seems to me, is a type of death and resurrection; not the death of the body, but the death to sin spoken of in Rom. vi. and elsewhere, and the resurrection to newness of life now; as declared in Rom. vi. 4. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." It is the believer by faith reckoning himself to be "dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord." At the Red Sea, death also was the type, but our share there was more that of entering into the accomplished results of the death and resurrection of Christ, by knowing our sins to be forgiven, and by realizing our translation out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son. While here the type is our being crucified with Christ, and realizing our resurrection life of holiness and separation in Him. As Paul says, "knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin," Rom. vi. 6. Here in type, it seems to me, we do what Paul exhorts us to do in Eph. iv. 22-24, "That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

To look at it practically and experimentally, I mean that this crossing of the Jordan typifies the crossing of the soul out of the experience of the seventh chapter of Romans into the experience of the eighth. It is the step by which the believer who has been justified, comes to know what it is to be sanctified also. It is in short the obeying of the command, "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is dying with Christ by faith, in order to be raised with Him into newness of life.

In experience this is an intensely practical thing. For nothing so gives victory over sin as to reckon one's self to be dead to it, and nothing so enables the soul to walk in righteousness as to realize its resurrection life in Christ. It may be difficult to explain this theologically or doctrinally; but to my mind the great point in studying the Bible is to get at its truths experimentally; and thousands of witnesses can testify to the blessed reality of being dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ. I have known life-long besetments conquered in this way, that had not yielded one iota to all the struggles and efforts of years. I knew a lady with such an irritable temper that it was almost intolerable to live with her. She was a Christian, and she grieved over it with bitter sorrow, but seemed to find it impossible to get the victory by years of struggling and agonizing. Finally when she was almost in despair, she was told by one who knew the way of faith, to reckon herself dead to it, and that if she did, God would make it real by the power of His Spirit. In her despair she grasped at the hope, and kneeling before her open Bible with her finger on Rom. vi. 11, she dared to obey the divine command and reckoned herself, on the authority of God's own word, to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. It seemed like a step off from a fearful precipice into a sheer abyss. But the step of faith, found, as it always does, the rock beneath, and according to her faith it was unto her. She met every temptation to irritability by saying, "I am dead to sin. I am crucified with Christ. I am alive in Him," and from that hour, now for many years, not even an inward ruffle has disturbed her peace.

Take the step of faith then, dear friends, into the brimming flood, and in obedience to God, apprehend your position as dead and risen with Christ and in Christ; and henceforth walk as those ought to walk who are indeed alive from the dead.

The twelve stones left in Jordan's bed, and the twelve brought out and set up as memorials, in chapter iv. both show the twelve tribes of Israel as being actual sharers in the death and resurrection, iv. 21, 22, and are a symbol of our union with Christ in these.

Chapter v. gives us the circumcision at Gilgal. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.* * Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." Col. iii. 3, 5.

If we are indeed dead to sin, it is necessary that we should practically realize it. Col. iii. 10-12 expresses this. Self must be mortified before victories can be won. The reproach of Egypt must be rolled away, ver. 9, before we can take possession of Jericho. We must always bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, if we would have the life of Jesus manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Cor. vi. 10, 11. And until this is done we cannot eat of the "old corn of the land," vers. 11, 12; which means, I think, a feeding on Christ in a far deeper sense, than was typified by the manna, even that which is set forth in John vi. 48-56, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him." Furthermore, when we have passed through the circumcision of Gilgal, we find ourselves in a place where we can have a revelation of our Captain, and can roll upon Him all the burden and the responsibility of our warfare. Vers. 13-15.

Chapter vi. gives us the taking of Jericho, one of those very cities "great, and walled up to Heaven," which had discouraged the heart of the people forty years before. The Lord Himself arranged the plan of the capture, and in it, I believe, gave us a sample of the "fight of faith." The people of Israel had no weapons of warfare with which to meet their enemies, nor any battering rams for those mighty walls. They had nothing but their God and their faith. Their part was simply to march and to shout. The Lord's part was to make the walls fall down, and to conquer their enemies. 2 Cor. x. 4. "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds." And therefore we read in Heb. xi. 30: "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." Prudence would have said, "Do not shout until the walls show some signs of tottering," but faith said, while yet the walls seemed as firm as ever, "Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city." vi. 16. "So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city." vi. 20.

And so likewise I believe the Christian is called to shout the shout of victory over his foes, even at the moment perhaps when they seem stronger than ever. I mean just this, that if we meet our enemy as an already conquered foe, and claim by faith our victory over him in Christ, we shall overcome far more quickly, than if we look upon him as an enemy who has yet to be conquered by our vigorous conflict against him. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." I John, v. 4. And I have found experimentally that the little words "Jesus saves me, Jesus saves me now," repeated over and over, in any great stress of temptation, will bring a far more speedy victory than I can gain in any other way. For our Lord Himself says, "That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things that he saith shall come to pass, be sell eve whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that you receive them, and ye shall have them." Mark xi. 23, 24.

This victory at Jericho was followed by a disastrous defeat at Ai, in chapter vii., caused by a hidden sin. In the life of faith, our only strength is in the Lord, and if any indulged evil shall cause Him to withdraw His strength, we find ourselves utterly unable to "stand before our enemies," vii. 11-13. Nothing but perfect integrity of heart before the Lord can ensure a continuous victory. This whole story of the taking of Ai contains most striking teaching, concerning the causes of failure and the way to deal with it, in this life of faith, but I cannot here enlarge on it.

From chapters ix.-xii. we have an account of the further conquest of the land, full of many deeply interesting lessons of the overcoming by faith. "So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord said unto Moses, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war." xi. 23.

In chapters xiii.-xxii. we have the story of the partition of the land among the tribes of Israel, with the appointing of the cities of refuge, and the assigning of their inheritance to the Levites. All being, I doubt not, typical of that which is set before us in I Cor. xii., and elsewhere, "Now there the diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." * * * "But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will."

Chapters xxiii. and xxiv. give us Joshua's closing words to the people he was about to leave; an address which in many things reminds us forcibly of Paul's farewell address to the elders of the Ephesian church, Acts xx. Both Joshua and Paul foresaw evil days for the flocks over whom they had so faithfully watched, both warned them against the corruption of evil association and companionship, and both also assured them of the power of the Lord to deliver, if they would but trust Him. And in the case of both, I doubt not that there was already cause for much sorrow of heart. The Israelites had lost the freshness of their early zeal, and had become "slack to go up" and possess the land of their inheritance. Large portions of it remained still in possession of their enemies, and the leaven of these associations was working among them. Therefore Joshua, gathering the elders and judges and officers of the people around him in Shechem, xxiv. 1, seeks to stir them up to a fresh consecration of themselves to God, before be should be called to leave them. He reminds them of all the way by which the Lord had led them, of the deliverances He had wrought, and the victories He had granted, and closes with an enumeration of the gifts He had bestowed as an incentive to a whole-hearted surrender of themselves to Him. "I have given you a land for which ye did not labor, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat. Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve." Won by Joshua's eloquence, and convinced in their hearts that no service could make them so happy as the service of the Lord their God, the people answered and said, "God forbid that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods." And when Joshua tried to show them the danger there was of failure, they but reiterated their promises over and over, "Nay; but we will serve the Lord." "The Lord our God will we serve, and His voice will we obey." * * * And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people, "Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us." xxiv. 14-25.

CHAPTER IX.

JUDGES.

THE FAILURE OF THE REDEEMED IN HEAVENLY PLACES.

Keynote: I Cor. iii. 1-4.

THE book of Judges is a book of failure. We see God's redeemed people here, living in the land of their inheritance, with all their enemies subdued before them, and yet continually overcome and enslaved by the inhabitants of the land. It seems to me to be in type the story of the dangers and temptations which beset the soul that is seated in heavenly places in Christ, and the enemies they are likely to meet there; and is a book of warning written for our admonition "to the intent that we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted."

The whole story of this book may be given in a few verses out of the second chapter. "And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim: and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them."

This state of things went on from bad to worse. Each restoration was followed by a long season of backsliding, until finally we find nothing but confusion and failure on every hand, with no hope of deliverance, and the book closes with this sad record of the utter absence of rule or control. "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." xxi. 25.

CHAPTER X.

RUTH.

UNION WITH CHRIST.

Keynote: Eph. vi. 22-32.

THE book of Ruth is considered by many students of the typical teaching of Scripture, to be a type of the union of Christ and the Church. It is the story of the marriage of a Gentile bride to an Israelitish bridegroom, a thing forbidden in the Jewish law, and yet here approved of God, and made an especial blessing to those concerned in it. As we have seen in Judges, the Israelites had grievously failed, and had forsaken the God of their fathers to worship Baalim and Ashtaroth. All was confusion and sin in Israel. In the midst of this confusion, where Israel had so failed, a Gentile is brought in and exalted to a place of especial honor. And in all this we seem to see a type of that which Paul declares in Acts xiii. 46. "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing you put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." It is a typical foreshadowing of the truth set forth in Rom. xi. Some of the branches are here "broken off," and the "wild olive" is "graffed in among them and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree." "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, . . that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in." I believe this picture was meant to be hung up in the great picture gallery of the Old Testament, as a type of the "mystery," which, Paul says, "in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel," Eph. iii. 3-6.

It was, as we have seen, a sin for the Israelites to make any inter-marriages with the Gentile nations round about. And yet here a Moabitish woman is married to one of the chief men among the Jews, and is raised to a place of especial honor; teaching, as I think, in type, the lesson, that "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have all been made to drink into one Spirit," I Cor. xii. 13.

No doubt this interpretation of the book of Ruth will seem fanciful to some. But to me it is full of very blessed teaching. It expresses to my mind in a beautiful story of domestic life, the oneness of Christ and the Church, the blessed union, of which we are told in Eph. v. 32: "This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." Our Lord has chosen us to be His in a very near and tender sense. He says to us: "As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you," John xv. 9. He loves us with so deep a love that He gave Himself for us; and He is continually seeking to win us to His side. He is the Bridegroom, and He tells us that "as the Bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."  . . . "For thy Maker is thine Husband: the Lord of Hosts is His name," Is. lxii. 5 and liv. 5.

And I believe all this is intended to set before us a blessed experience of the love of Christ, which is far beyond our ordinary apprehensions, and which would indeed satisfy the hungriest heart; a love which would lift the soul out of the servant's place into the place of the bride, would change drudgery into delight, and cause us to rise, as one has said, "from law to love, from penance to purity, from poverty to power, from fainting to fulness, from sadness to sunlight, from indwelling sin to an indwelling Saviour, from widowhood to wedlock, from sorrowful mourning to a heavenly marriage."

The story in this little book is concerning the time in the history of Israel to which we have been brought in Judges, when all was in confusion, and the Lord seemed to be left almost without a witness, even among His own chosen people.

It opens with a famine, i. 1; natural result of such a state of affairs. In consequence of this famine, an Israelite went to sojourn in the land of the Lord's enemies, doubtless in the hope of bettering his condition for a time, but probably with no thought of living and dying there. But we read in verse second that he "continued there." And it generally happens to any believer who goes among the Lord' s enemies to seek for the food which his own spiritual famine has made to seem a necessity, that, although it may have been his purpose merely to sojourn for a while, he also ends by "continuing there." The result of this long sojourn is that all Mahlon's household die but Naomi, who finds herself left a desolate widow with two widowed daughters. Then in her sorrow she hears "how that the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread." And she sets out to return unto her own land. But she had evidently so little faith in the God of Israel, whom yet she recognized as her God, that she urged her daughters not to go with her, afraid, doubtless, that it would involve them in new troubles and losses. Christians who have had only an experience of spiritual famine, can never be very earnest in urging others to come to dwell in their land, i. 8-15. Orpah yielded to her mother's entreaties, and returned "unto her people, and unto her gods." But Ruth clave unto her mother. I think that Ruth must have seen in this mother-in-law something of goodness or sweetness that had won her heart, and had made her believe that her mother's God must be better worth serving than her own gods. At all events she said to her those beautiful words of loving allegiance, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me," i. 16, 17.

And when her mother saw that she was "steadfastly minded to go with her, she left off speaking unto her," i. 18. "So they two went until they came to Bethlehem . . . and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest," i. 19-22. What grace was here! Naomi left in a famine, but she returned in the time of harvest. And every backsliding soul that returns to the Lord always finds, as the prodigal did, a feast prepared for him.

But better blessings even than the barley harvest were awaiting these returning wanderers, and blessings it had not entered into their hearts to conceive of. Ruth had not thought of finding a bridegroom and a home of her own in the land of Judah. She had gone there because her heart was desolate and lonely in her own land, and the religion of Naomi had attracted her. But almost at once upon her arrival, she went out to glean, and her "hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz," her "near kinsman," ii. 1-3.

And so the souls, who turn their backs on the world to seek the Lord, even although very ignorant of all the blessings in store for them, find themselves soon gleaning in the field of Christ, who is our near Kinsman, and who, as Boaz did, "takes knowledge" of them, although they are strangers; and causes His servants to "let fall some handfuls of purpose" for them, that they may not go "to glean in another field," but may "abide fast" by His people, ii. 8-13. Ruth had come to trust under the wings of the God of Israel; and no one ever yet trusted in Him and was confounded.

This it seems to me is the first experience of the returning sinner. He leaves, figuratively speaking, his father, and his mother, and the land of his nativity, as Ruth did, and comes unto a people which he has not heretofore known, ii. 11. Then he begins to glean, and gathers in from the Lord's harvest fields spiritual food to supply his daily needs. And for a while the soul is satisfied with this.

But a time comes when a deeper want is felt. "Then Naomi her mother-in-law said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?" iii. 1. This expression, "seeking rest," meant among the Hebrews all that is contained in the sweet tie of married life, a home, and a care-taker, and all the joys of wedded union. And the soul of the believer begins sooner or later to hunger and thirst after this rest in a realized union with Christ, of which the marriage union is so precious a type.

Very often some older Christian first urges the soul to press its claim for this, as Naomi did to Ruth. And where, as in Ruth's case, there is the true spirit of teachableness and submission on the part of the Christian, who has comparatively lately begun his course, towards those who are further advanced, he will learn his privileges far more quickly, than if left to his own crude conceptions and limited knowledge.

In submission to the advice of Naomi, Ruth made her claim, using as her plea, "for thou art a near kinsman," iii. 9. The kinsman's plea was an unanswerable one among the Jews; and our Lord, in assuming the place of a kinsman, meant that we should have all the benefit of this plea. And His answer to us is always, like that of Boaz to Ruth, "And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest," iii. 11.

Even the very boldness of her claim pleased Boaz. "And he said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter, for thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than in the beginning." At first she sought his gifts only, now she sought himself. The gleaner would be the wife. And just so it is with us. The work of Christ is our first knowledge; the person of Christ is our last. At first we are occupied with our needs, and come to the Lord simply to have them sup- plied. But at last we lose sight of the gifts in the Giver, and can be satisfied with nothing short of Himself. Our souls cry out for a personal Saviour. We want not only something to enjoy, and be thankful for, and use; but we want some One to love, and trust and serve. His manifested presence comes to be far more to us than His mercies. and nothing but a realized union with Himself can meet the craving of our heart's hunger. Having Him, we realize that we shall have all things, and without Him nothing is valuable to us. We say, in the language of the hymn--

Ruth's claim looked like presumption, but Boaz called it "showing kindness." And our Lord also delights in every claim we make upon Him for this realized oneness with Himself, however bold it may seem to us. It is indeed His own prayer for us, "That they all may be one; as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." I believe indeed, that, far dearer to Him than the greatest activities of service, is the longing of the heart to know this oneness, and the claim of faith that comes boldly to His feet to receive it. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith," Heb. x. 19-22.

Having made her claim, Ruth then was simply to wait until she should see what Boaz would do, for Naomi said to her, "Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall; for the man will not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day," iii. 18. And to those souls who have been stirred up by the blessed Holy Spirit to see their need of a realized oneness with their Lord, and to make their claim for it, the same command comes to-day, "Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall." For the Lord Himself has declared, "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth," Isa. lxii. 1. This "sitting still" means faith. When there is anything to be done, none who are interested can sit still, unless they are sure that some one else has undertaken the matter, who is both able and trustworthy, and in whose hands they can feel that it is as safe as in their own. The soul that "sits still," therefore, is the soul that trusts. It has made its request known to the Lord, and it knows that He has taken the matter in hand and will surely "finish it" in His own time and way. And therefore it waits in patient faith, sure that it already has the petition it desired of Him, even before the realization of the fulfilment has come.

I cannot but feel that we need more of this "sitting still" in Christian experience. There is too much restless anxiety about our prayers, too much of a feeling that unless we help in some way, or at least unless we wrestle and agonize over it, the matter cannot be finished satisfactorily at all. I saw an illustration of this not long ago which will explain what I mean. I was visiting a mother in her nursery, where her little boy was playing. We were talking on the subject of prayer, and asking each other the question as to what sort of praying was right -- the trusting kind, or the agonizing kind, when we were interrupted by the child's asking for some biscuit. His mother said "Yes" at once, and went to the closet for them, but found the biscuit can empty. She told the child the state of the case, but said she would send for some, and the child saw the nurse put on her bonnet, and take the money, and start out to make the purchase. A good child, upon this, would have gone to playing again, and would have waited quietly and trustingly until the biscuit came. But this child stood at his mother's elbow, saying over and over, first in a plaintive tone, which however rapidly rose to an agony of entreaty -- "Mother, give me biscuit. I want biscuit. Please let me have some biscuit. Do give me biscuit. I must have biscuit!" Until finally our conversation was drowned in the noise of his wailing, and we could do nothing but sit still in the best patience we could muster. My question about prayer was answered; and never from that time have I dared to agonize over any request I have made of the Lord. I do not mean, however, that we are to forget our prayers, or be indifferent to their results, but simply that, having made our request known, we must then wait in a quiet and patient faith, sure that our Lord will not rest until He has finished the matter we have put into His hands. We are not always prepared ourselves to receive an immediate answer to our prayers. We do not give the best things in our possession to our youngest children, even though they ask, lest they should hurt themselves, or spoil the things. We wait until they grow old enough to take the proper care of them, and to understand their use. A delicate watch would be only a burden to a five year old boy, and would be sure to come to grief. And our Father is too wise in His love, to give us what we are not yet prepared to receive. But when we ask Him, He will first make us ready for the gift, and will then bestow it, when we can receive and use it, without injury to the gift or loss to ourselves, for He "knows how to give good gifts" unto His children."

In the case of Ruth something had to be done, before the request which she had made to Boaz could be fulfilled. And this was typical, I think, of that which must take place in our own case, when our souls come to the Lord, and ask for a more fully realized union with Himself. The claims of a kinsman nearer than Boaz had to be disposed of. "And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman; howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I . . . If he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well: let him do the kinsman's part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee," iii. 12, 13.

This nearer kinsman may be taken as a type of the law, which is declared in Rom. vii. 1-4 to be, as it were, our first husband, having dominion over us until we are released from him by death. As we read there, "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." Legality is the one great hindrance to a realized and conscious soul union with Christ. Just as it is in the earthly marriage relation, any thought of law as controlling the conduct of one to the other, or any service that springs only from a fear of consequences, in so far as it is allowed, destroys the soul union between husband and wife, so it is here. Love must be the motive, or the service is valueless, and the oneness is marred. There must be, as Cook says, "similarity of feeling" between souls that would be one. Each must desire what the other desires, and each must hate what the other hates. And the mutual service must spring, not from "I ought to," but "I want to." The little word ought which is grand in other relationships, is fatal here. For this relationship is of so tender and subtle a nature, that it cannot admit of any bondage but the bondage of love. What wife could endure to have her husband say to her in the morning as he left home for business, "Well, I suppose it is my duty to work for you, and I mean to do it faithfully, but it is a very great cross I can assure you, and I only do it because I must." Would not a support so legally given be rejected with indignation, and would not all hope of any real union between that husband and wife be utterly gone?

But if legality would be fatal in an earthly union, how much more in the heavenly. And therefore, before the soul can be "married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead," it must be fully "delivered from the law," by being "dead to that wherein it was held," in order that it may "serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." And this is brought about, as was Ruth's deliverance from her nearer kinsman, by purchase. Boaz purchased Ruth from Mahlon to be his wife, iv. 9, 10; and Christ "hath redeemed us from the curse of the law," having "purchased us with His own precious blood" that we may be united to Him in a blessed oneness, far nearer and dearer than any earthly union could be, but which the earthly one most blessedly symbolizes.

At last of Ruth we read, iv. 13, "So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife." And of the Church we read, that, "Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish," Eph. v. 25-27.

In the divine order, the son born of this marriage was one in the line of the ancestors of our Lord. "And Salmon begat Boaz of Rachab; and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king," Matt. i. 5. And thus the poor Gentile widow, who had gone to put her trust under the wings of the God of Israel, ii. 12, found rest there, and a bridegroom, and a home, and was exalted to a place of especial honor. Surely before she went, it had not entered into her heart to conceive of the things God had in store for her, any more than it has entered into our hearts. And if we, who like Ruth, are a "wild olive tree," find ourselves grafted in among the branches and with them partaking of the "root and fatness of the olive tree," there is surely no room for boasting on our part, except as our souls shall "make their boast in the Lord," and shall say with Ruth, "Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldst take knowledge of me, seeing that I am a stranger?"

The practical lesson to be drawn from this little book would seem to be this, that, should there be in the experience of any the sad failure typified in Judges, the remedy for it is to be found, not in going back into the wilderness, nor, much less, in going back into Egypt, but in coming into a nearer and deeper union with Christ, such a union as is set before us in the words of our Lord in John xvii. 22, 23: "And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one even as we are one: I in them and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me."

The promise is ours. Let us boldly make our claim, and then "sit still" until we know "how the matter will fall;" for we may rest assured our Lord will not be in rest, until He has perfected that which concerns us. He has made our souls capable of a marvelous oneness with Himself, and has removed every barrier. But He will not force it upon us. A compelled marriage can never be other than a wretched one; and the glory of our destiny is, that, on our part, it is to be a voluntary and glad surrender to a love that woos and wins our hearts by its sweet constraint. We love Him because He first loved us, and we can come to Him with unshrinking faith to claim that which He Himself has already told us is His own purpose and prayer. "That they may be one" -- it is all shut up in this. One with the Father as the Son is one! Similarity of thought, of feeling, of desire, of loves, of hates. We may have it all, dear Christian, if we are but willing. We may walk through this world, so united to Christ, that our cares and our interests, our sorrows and our joys, our purposes and our wishes will be the same. One will alone to govern us, one mind to control us. He in us and we in Him; until so intermingled and conjoined will be our lives, that we can say at last in very truth, always and everywhere, "Not I, but Christ." For self will vanish in such a union as this, and this great "I" of ours, which so fills up the present horizon, will wilt down into nothing before the glory of His overcoming presence.

Seek after this oneness then, with all thy heart, dear reader. Thy Lord intends it for thee, and will grant it, as soon as He has prepared thy soul to enter into it. Let nothing discourage thee. Though He tarry, wait for Him, for He will surely come and will not tarry; and if thou wilt but persevere, the blessed day must and will come, sooner or later, when thy soul shall be satisfied with the fullness of His love, and thou shalt abide continually in His conscious presence. He will come and take up His abode with thee, and, like Ruth, thou shalt "find rest" at last in the hear of thy Heavenly Bridegroom.

Texts illustrating union with Christ: --  John xvii. 21- 23.  Rom. xii. 5.  1 Cor. xii. 12, 13.  Gal. ii. 20.  Eph. v. 23-33.  2 Cor. xi. 2.  Is. lxii. 5.  Hosea ii. 16-20.  ls. lxi. 10.  Rev. xxi. 2, 9.  Is. liv. 5.  1 Cor. vi: 17; x. 17.  Eph. i. 10.  Rev. xix. 7, 8.  John xv. 4, 5.  Matt. ix. 15.  John iii. 28, 29.  Matt. xxv. 1-13.

CHAPTER XI.

I SAMUEL.

THE REIGN OF SAUL.

THAT KINGDOM WHICH IS AFTER THE COMMANDMENTS AND TRADITIONS OF MEN.

Keynote: Mark vii. 9.

THE six books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles may all be considered as only different chapters of one book, for they all give us the story of Israel during the period of its being a kingdom. They are, I think, typical of that "kingdom of heaven" which exists now upon the earth, outwardly in the Church in all its branches, and inwardly in the heart of every child of God.

The keynote to these books is to be found in the New Testament passages concerning the "kingdom of God" or the "kingdom of Heaven;" which occur over one hundred times there. And the title I would suggest would be, "The kingdom of God both inward and outward." In these books we have given to us, as it seems to me, types or pictures of different forms under which His kingdom is set up in the Church outwardly, and inwardly in the hearts of believers. We are shown here the sorts of rule which are acceptable to Him, and those which displease Him. We are shown the privileges and glory of the kingdom, when rightly governed by the Prince of Peace, and the dangers and disgrace that result from a divided rule.

There are four of these pictures. The first gives us the kingdom under Saul, with the causes that led to it; the second the kingdom under David; the third the kingdom under Solomon; and the fourth the failure and division of the kingdom, and its gradual declension down to the Babylonish captivity.

The story of Saul is to be found in the first book of Samuel, and the character of rule which he seems to represent, is that rule which is according to the commandments and traditions of men. The Divine comment on his character was simply this, "He inquired not of the Lord: therefore He slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse," 1 Chron. x. 14. During all his reign the Ark of God, which was the only Divine dwelling-place in all the land of Israel, remained in obscurity at Kirjath-jearim, and David declares in 1 Chron. xiii. 3 that they "inquired not at it in the days of Saul." Saul preferred his own thoughts and his own ways, to the thoughts and ways of the Lord; and therefore we read in 1 Chron. x. 13: "So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it." In all this he was a striking type of that rule which obtains in so many Christian churches and Christian lives, where man, rather than God, is consulted and obeyed.

The causes which led Israel to desire a king are given to us in the first eight chapters of 1 Samuel. The first cause was the failure of the priests; see ii. 22-36. I have stated previously that the priests seem to me to be a type of a soul in communion; and the failure of the priesthood, therefore, would represent the failure of the soul's communion with the Lord. The result of this failure was the loss of the Ark of God, which was taken by the Philistines and carried away to their own country, and set up in the house of their god Dagon, iv. 17, v. 1, 2. The Ark was the Lord's dwelling-place in the midst of His people, where He continually manifested His presence and revealed His will. "For there," He had said in Ex. xxv. 22, "I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel." Nowhere else in Israel was this communion possible; and when the Ark was gone from their midst, Israel was shut out from their Lord. The loss of the Ark therefore was a striking type of the soul's loss of communion.

The conscious indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and His blessed teaching and guiding are no longer realized by the soul that, through unfaithfulness, has suffered this saddest of all losses; and Ichabod, or "there is no glory," is the grievous realization of such now, as truly as it was of Israel then, as we read in chap. iv. 22: "And she said, The glory is departed from Israel; for the Ark of God is taken."

The priesthood having failed, and the Ark being thus carried captive, the Lord raised up a prophet to supply their place. "And the word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision." "And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh: for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh, by the word of the Lord," 1 Sam. iii. 1, 20, 21.

For a while this was partially effectual. The Ark was restored, not indeed to its rightful place in Shiloh, but to Kirjath-jearim, a place within the borders of Israel, 1 Sam. vi.,vii.; and the Philistines, who had oppressed the Israelites, were subdued, and "came no more into the coast of Israel; and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. And the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron even unto Gath; and the coasts thereof did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites," 1 Sam. vii. 13, 14. But in Samuel's old age the prophets also failed, for we read that "His sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre and perverted judgment." And this was the second cause of Israel's desire for a king. Immediately they gathered themselves to Samuel and said, "Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations," viii. 5.

When communion fails, teaching comes in to supply its place. Doctrines are looked to as the remedy for spiritual coldness and wandering; and lost or forgotten truths are revived. The effect at first seems blessed, communion seems partially restored, and the soul's enemies are for a time subdued. But this communion is only after all on the surface or borders of our natures, for truth alone, without the Spirit, can not reach the central home of the soul; and sooner or later, therefore, teaching also fails.

I remember a time in my own experience when just this thing happened to me. It was before I knew the secret of the life hid with Christ in God, and when my soul was crying out continually, "Oh my leanness, my leanness!" I found, experimentally, that the learning of new truth helped me for a time into greater warmth and earnestness of Christian life, and I sought eagerly for every opportunity of being taught. But continually I was disappointed by finding that, in a little while, the freshness of the new discovery in truth would wear off, and with its freshness, its power would seem to go, and my soul would be left drier than ever; and yet the only remedy of which I then knew, was to go on learning more new truth, hoping that at last I should discover something whose effects would be permanent, and from which there would be no reaction. But this can never be. It takes an experience far deeper than the learning of new truth alone to keep the soul alive; and the result of repeated disappointments, unless a more vital experience is known, is to drive the soul into seeking by some outward rule to supply the empty place from which the Lord is lost. The "commandments and traditions of men" take the place of the "commandment of God;" and the soul endeavors by the "law of a carnal commandment" to remedy the state, into which it has been brought by the loss of inward communion, and by the consequent lack of spiritual power to restore, in even the clearest teaching of truth.

This desire of Israel for a king was displeasing to the Lord, because it was a token that they had rejected Him, that He "should not reign over them." And He warned them faithfully of the results that would certainly follow any rule but his own: "This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants," 1 Sam. viii . 11-17; see also xii. 17-19.

This whole passage seems to me a striking picture of that which happens to every soul that yields itself up to be governed by the "commandments and traditions of men." The best of its strength is taken in this service, and all its powers are in bondage to its control. Time, and talents, and money, and influence are all used to establish and support some system of doctrine, or some form of worship, and the "goodliest" of our powers are put to their work. And all the while the Lord is saying to such a soul, as He did to the Pharisees of old, "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," Matt. xv. 2-9.

The Israelites were not influenced by Samuel's warning, for we read: "Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles," 1 Sam. viii. 19, 20.

"Like all the nations;" these words contain the secret of the power of the "commandments and traditions of men." The soul shrinks from the thought of a walk alone with an unseen God, guided only by His Spirit, and prefers to follow in the footsteps of the forefathers, and to walk "according to the tradition of the elders." And I would that, just here, the solemn question should come home to each one of us, as to whether in our own experience there is anything similar to this failure of the children of Israel. Are there any of my readers who are seeking, by an outward rule of the commandments and traditions of men, to remedy a state into which they have been brought by the loss of their inward communion, and the failure of outward teaching to supply its place? Are there any whose first and ruling thought is not, What has the Lord commanded? but, What does my church say? or, What do my friends believe? or, What has been the custom of my forefathers? For if this is a faithful description of any, the Lord's rebuke to such is like His rebuke to Israel, "Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition," Mark. vii. 9.

The Lord's warning having failed, He consents that they shall have a king according to their request, but His comment upon it all is to be found in Hos. xiii. 10, 11, "Thou saidst, Give me a king and princes. I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath;" see xii. 16-22. As it was in the wilderness, so it was now, "He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls," Ps. cvi. 15.

The first king, Saul, was chosen because of his strength. To the eye of flesh he looked like a king upon whom they could lean with confidence; "from his shoulders and upwards he was higher than any of the people," x. 2. But he had one sad weakness, which yet however looked like strength. He depended upon his own resources and his own understanding, rather than upon a present though unseen God. "When Saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, lie took him unto him," xiv. 52. And he "gathered an host" whenever he went out to battle. Moreover, he "inquired not of the Lord" concerning his course of action, nor did he even obey the Lord's voice when it had been made known to him. When the coming of the prophet was delayed, for whom he had been commanded to wait, he "forced himself” and offered sacrifices, which he had no right to offer, from motives of expediency, lest, as he said, "the Philistines should come down upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord," xiii. 8-12. His own apprehensions of what was expedient were always his guide. The command of the Lord concerning the Amalekites was, "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," xv. 1-3. Nothing could have been plainer. But it seemed best to Saul that some of them should be spared, and we read in verse 9, "But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly." It also seemed best to him to destroy the Gibeonites, although Israel had given them a pledge for their preservation, for "the children of Israel had sworn unto them, and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal." Comp. Joshua ix. and 2 Sam. xxi. 1-14. His "zeal" seemed ever to lead him in opposition to the will of the Lord, as we too often see among Christians now, who, from motives of expediency, spare what the Lord has condemned to destruction, or destroy what He would keep alive. Or they outrun their Guide, as Saul did at Gilgal; and often from the same motive, because they "fear the people and obey their voice" rather than the voice of the Lord, xv. 3-22. And yet, though Saul could so disregard the commandments of the Lord, whenever it seemed best for him to do so, he was very rigorous in insisting upon obedience to his own commands. As we see in chap. xiv., when he "troubled the land" by an unreasonable requirement that they should not taste food on the day when they were pursuing their enemies; and thus caused them to sin in eating meat with the blood, at the day's end, when "very faint with hunger." Moreover, he was ready to kill Jonathan, his son, for having in utter ignorance disobeyed his unreasonable command, xiv. 24, 45.

Such was Saul, the king after man's own heart, whom Israel had put in God's place. And he stands, I believe, as a type of all rule which is purely vicarial; that is, a rule which does not act for the Lord, but instead of Him. Such a rule involves the idea of an absent and forgetful Lord.

CHAPTER XII.

II SAMUEL AND I CHRONICLES.

THE REIGN OF DAVID.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD BOTH INWARD AND OUTWARD.

Keynote: Luke xvii. 20, 21.

AND the Lord said unto Samuel, how long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing that I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons."

Immediately following the rejection of Saul in 1 Sam. xv., we come in chap. xvi, to the anointing of David. The desired king had failed to deliver, and the Lord, who is rich in grace, now meets Israel on their own ground, and out of evil brings forth good. They had asked for a king in their folly and wickedness, and the Lord, having administered the needed reproof and chastisement turns this very sinful desire into a means of richest blessing. He chooses a king for them who shall be after His own heart, and who shall lead them on to hitherto undreamed of triumphs. For we must not suppose that rule in itself is opposed to God. On the contrary, we are taught everywhere throughout the Scriptures the lesson of submission to the Lord, and to that which is according to His mind. Even if we submit to earthly authorities, it must always be "in the Lord." And while there must not be vicarial rules governing instead of the Lord, there must always be that rule which witnesses to His presence in the midst of His people, guiding and controlling them Himself personally, even though He may make known His will through the mouths of His servants.

David is an exemplification of this sort of rule. He governed Israel only as a witness of the Lord's abiding presence. He was not the Lord's vicar, but the Lord's instrument. And therefore his language always was: "For the kingdom is the Lord's; and He is the governor among the nations."

To my mind this bestowal upon Israel of a king after the lord's own heart, is a most blessed illustration of the truth of that word that "all things work together for good to them that love God." Al1 things -- even our very mistakes and failures. Earthly parents seek to do this in their limited measures, striving always to make every failure of their children a stepping-stone to the acquirement of some greater good or some deeper lesson, which could not have come perhaps in any other way; and surely far more will our Heavenly Father, whose wisdom and power are limitless, do the same. Therefore we may come to Him in happy confidence, with all our tangled skeins and ruined lives, and trust Him to pick them up just where we give them to Him, and to make all things work together for our final good.

The king after God's own heart did not, however, at once upon his anointing, gain the supremacy. For many years he was a fugitive in the very country of which he was the rightful king, hunted, as he himself says, like "a partridge in the mountains," xxii. 20. And in this he is a wonderful type of the true David, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived in the world which belonged to Him, as a fugitive and an outcast, with no place even "wherein to lay His head." In fact, all through the Bible, David is used continually as a type of our Lord, and even as His mouth-piece, as we see in the Psalms; and we are warranted therefore in expecting to learn from the story of his life many wonderful lessons concerning his great Antitype. I cannot go into all the details of these. But the one especial lesson I desire to bring out here, is, that in reference to Christ as Head over His kingdom, and His ways as our King, both in the inward and the outward kingdom. We see Him in type here as the "Captain of our salvation," leading us on to victory, and "delivering us out of the hand of our enemies," and causing us to be "more than conquerors" through His mighty power.

David reigned to conquer Israel's enemies. In 2 Sam. iii. 18 we read, "For the Lord hath spoken of David, saying, By the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies." And Jesus also became our King "that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us," Luke i. 71. At the close of his reign David could say, "Is not the Lord your God with you? and hath He not given you rest on every side? For He hath given the inhabitants of the land into mine hand; and the land is subdued before the Lord and His people," 1 Chron. xxii. 18. And Jesus also said, "Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

The very followers David had during this time of his rejection, are wonderfully typical of the followers of the Lord Jesus now. "Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him," xxii. 1, 2. And of our Lord we read, that "He came unto His own, but His own received Him not;" and that those who did receive Him were, like David's followers, the poor, and the unhappy, and the sinful. For we read that the "common people heard him gladly," and that "the publicans and the harlots went into the kingdom of God" before the religious men of that day. Moreover, the Pharisees and the Scribes murmured concerning Him, saying, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them," Luke xv. 2.

CHAPTER XIII.

I AND II KINGS AND II CHRONICLES.

THE KINGDOM OF PEACE.

Keynote: Col. iii. 15.

THE reign of Solomon was a reign of peace. The Lord had said to David, "Behold a son shall be born to thee who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Peaceable, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days." The result of having by faith apprehended Christ as our King and Captain, who has fought and conquered our enemies for us, will be rest and peace. "For we which have believed do enter into rest." Solomon's peaceable kingdom was the result of the victories which David had obtained. And our peace is the fruit of Christ's victories. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him." His legacy to us is peace, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." And the declaration of the Holy Ghost throughout the whole New Testament Scriptures is always this, that the kingdom of God is "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."

In Psalm lxxii., called “A Psalm for Solomon,” we have a blessed picture of this kingdom of peace, which so plainly reaches beyond Solomon to the "Greater than Solomon," and His final universal kingdom, that it is headed also in our English Bibles with the words, "Messiah's reign;" and it gives us a sufficient warrant for taking this story of the kingdom under Solomon, as a type of that glorious millennial kingdom, when in very truth there shall be a King who shall have "dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth."

At the close of this lxxii. Psalm we are told that "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended." All that he had hoped for and battled for, was fulfilled in the peaceable reign of his son, and in the spirit of prophecy he saw also, in the far future, the glorious kingdom, when Christ Himself would see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, and when the need for His intercessions would be ended also.

This millennial kingdom is antedated and begun now, in the hearts of all those, who by faith enter into the "rest that remaineth for the people of God;" and such may therefore take the lessons of this glorious reign, as being lessons and promises to themselves, of practical and personal importance now and here.

One of Solomon's first announcements was a declaration of the peace and rest of his kingdom. He said to Hiram, king of Tyre, "The Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent," 1 Kings v. 4. And upon the dedication of the temple, he again declared it, "Blessed be the Lord, that hath given rest unto His people Israel, according to all that He promised; there hath not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised by the hand of Moses His servant," 1 Kings viii. 56.

As a consequence of this rest, his kingdom was one of unexampled greatness. Power, wisdom, luxury and magnificence were its characteristics. 1 Kings iv. 21-34 describes it. "And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt: they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life. And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and three-score measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, besides harts, and roe-bucks, and fallow-deer, and fatted fowl. For he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river, from Tiphsah even to Azzah, over all the kings on this side the river: and he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. And those officers provided victual for king Solomon, and for all that came unto king Solomon's table, every man in his month: they lacked nothing. Barley also and straw for the horses and dromedaries brought they unto the places where the officers were, every man according to his charge. And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke of trees, from the cedar- tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom."

Even the Gentiles, chapter v., emblematic of the world and its desirable things, placed themselves and their wealth at the disposal of Solomon and helped him, instead of hindering, in all that he undertook. And similarly we read concerning Christians, "All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's," 1 Cor. iii. 21-23.

The world was attracted by the report of the riches and glory of this kingdom, and the Queen of Sheba came from her far country to Jerusalem to see if all that had been told her could indeed be true. And we read in 1 Kings x. 4-9, that when she had seen "all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cup-bearers, and his ascent by which be went up into the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her." And she said to the king, "It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words until I came, and mine eyes had seen it; and behold, the half was not told me; thy wisdom and prosperity exceeded the fame which I heard."

And in the same way, we may be sure the world will be attracted by the report of Christian lives that are filled with spiritual riches, and power, and wisdom, and will gather from far and near to see if the story they have heard can indeed be a true one; and when they have seen it, and have witnessed the peace in the midst of trial, and the inward joy overpowering the outward sorrow, and the victory over temptation, and the overflowing wealth of grace, they will be forced to acknowledge that it is indeed true, that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." And thus the saying of our Lord in the sermon on the mount will be fulfilled, that our light shall so "shine before men," that they, seeing our good works, may "glorify," not us, but "Our Father which is in Heaven."

Dear reader, are these things the characteristics of the kingdom in which thou art dwelling now? And is the out- side world so attracted by the report of thy riches and thy spiritual power, as to come to thee to learn if what they have heard be indeed true, and to discover if possible the secret of it? Do thy children see in thee such sweetness under provocation, and such patience under trial, as to be won, by the power of these, to love and to serve thy God, who does so much for thee? Do thy servants, or thy work-people, or thy friends, have cause to know from the outward peace of thy daily life, that the God of peace reigns within, and are their hearts attracted to His service?

Alas! I am afraid that the reverse is too often the case, and that one great cause of the small number of conversions in a church or a community is to be found in the poor and meagre sort of religion that exists there; and that far oftener than we think, husbands, or wives, or children, are kept outside the fold, by what they see in those nearest them, who profess to belong to this fold. I feel sure that if we who are Christians, all lived in this kingdom of spiritual peace and of abounding spiritual plenty, we should find hundreds flocking to the church, where now there is one. How can a husband think it is a desirable thing to be a Christian, when he sees his wife with a sort of Christianity that seems only to make her uncomfortable and gloomy; or how can children be attracted to a religion, which is professed by a cross or unreasonable father? A gentleman of learning who was an unbeliever, said something to me once, which I have never forgotten. We were talking together on the subject of Christianity, and I was urging its claims upon him, when he said, with marked emphasis and yet sadness, "If you Christians want the outside world to believe in your religion, you must have a better kind. Most of you seem to carry your religion as a man carries a headache. He does not want to get rid of his head, but he is forced to confess that it causes him a great deal of discomfort and suffering. You would not I suppose want to give up your religion, but you must acknowledge it often makes you mightily uncomfortable." It was, alas, too true a criticism to be treated lightly, and I inwardly prayed then and there that the Lord would enable Christians everywhere, and myself among them, to have a better sort of religion than this. A dear old preacher used to say that when buyers went to a shop, they wanted a good article, and that sinners equally wanted a good religion, if they undertook to get any at all. And I believe this is far truer than we know. Let us then seek to realize in our own individual experience, each one of us, all the fullness of our glorious salvation, that we may attract the world around us, by the beauty and blessedness of our lives, to come, taste and see that the Lord is good, and that He does indeed fulfill His promises.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DIVIDED KINGDOM.

Keynote: Matt. vi. 24.

THE latter part of Solomon's reign, and the divided rule which followed, seem to me to be typical of the especial dangers that are likely to beset the experience to which we have in that reign advanced, and the temptations peculiar to it. No height of spiritual blessing or spiritual power, can for a moment absolve us from the need of obedience and watchfulness. The temptation to Antinomianism has often overwhelmed the Church or the individual, after seasons of peculiar blessing, and it needs to be especially guarded against. We can never forsake the written law of the Lord with impunity, let our advancement in spiritual life be what it may. And we need to watch, lest, when seated in heavenly places in Christ, we should feel so far lifted above the usual temptations of life, as to be tempted to be less careful of taking heed to our steps, that we walk continually in the law of our God. Some have grievously failed here.

CHAPTER XV.

EZRA.

RESTORATION FROM BACKSLIDING, OR INDIVIDUAL FAITHFULNESS IN A TIME OF

GENERAL UNFAITHFULNESS.

Keynote: 2 Cor. vi. 16-18.

THE books of Ezra and Nehemiah contain the story of the faithful remnant, who went up out of Babylon, during the time of the captivity, to rebuild the temple and the walls of the city. They present us with a picture of restoration from backsliding, and of individual faithfulness in a time of general unfaithfulness; and seem to me to be a type of every true effort made now, by any Christian heart, after a closer walk with God.

We live in a dispensation that seems to have failed almost as grievously as did that of the Israelites. The Church of Christ is full of worldliness, formality, and even idolatry. Many of the Lord's own people are carried away captive into the spiritual Babylon; and there is needed now, as much as there was then, a faithful remnant, "whose spirit God has raised" to go up to build the house of the Lord, and to rebuild the walls of the spiritual Jerusalem.

These two books of Ezra and Nehemiah set before us in type, the blessed truth, that the general unfaithfulness or corruption of all around us, need be no hindrance to a faithful walk on our part, and that there is a path opened, by which we may individually separate from all that is opposed to the Lord, and may return to Him with a renewed consecration of ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, to be His temple, and to bear witness to His indwelling presence.

No especial tokens of God's power attended this work of the remnant. It was a humble, and, as it were, a hidden work; and yet the promise concerning it was, Haggai ii. 9: "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts." When all Israel was faithful, it was an easy thing for each individual Israelite to be so. But in the time of Israel's captivity, it required peculiar devotedness of heart to "go up out of captivity," and was therefore peculiarly pleasing to the Lord. And just so, I believe, there is for us now, an especial sweetness and joy in a path which is one of hidden faithfulness, with but little of outward glory or honor connected with it. As our Lord says, "Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company and shall reproach you, and shall cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets."

In Ezra we have the rebuilding of the temple, and in Nehemiah the walls of the city are rebuilt. The inward restoration must come first. As the building of the temple in the first place, seems to me to have been a type of the soul consciously surrendering itself to be the temple of the Holy Ghost; so now the rebuilding of this temple, typifies, I think, the restoration of the soul from backsliding or wandering, and a fresh surrender of the heart to the Lord, to be possessed and indwelt by Him. It is what is happening, I believe, in very many instances in the present day. Believers are, as we know, being brought to a sense of their distance from the Lord, and are groaning under their captivity to their enemies. The song has gone out of their hearts, and the language used by the exiled Israelites to describe their own sad condition, is the language found to be most appropriate to theirs: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down: yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land?" Ps. cxxxvii. 1-4. And these have heard, as plainly as Israel of old, the call to go up to Jerusalem to build the house of the Lord and many have obeyed this call. To such, this book of Ezra will be full of wonderful teaching.

A few points deserve especial notice. First of all, it was a voluntary thing on the part of those who went. It was only such as went willingly, who could go at all. But of all these a loving record was kept in God's own Book; see chap. ii. "Now these are the children of the province that went up out of the captivity, of those which had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away unto Babylon, and came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city; which came with Zerubbabel." The whole number being 42,360. ii. 24.

And to all the ages of believers since, has this sample- page out of the Lord's book of record come, to teach us that not even a cup of cold water, given in the name of a disciple, shall lose its reward. Sometimes we have been inclined to wonder why there should occur, now and then, in the Bible, these long lists of names. But if we think of them thus, as sample pages out of the Divine book of records, they assume a deep and precious interest. Just so, doubtless, is our Father keeping the record of those now, who, in these days of half-heartedness and degeneracy, are offering themselves to Him in a glad surrender, to be His temple, and to be filled with His abiding presence!

None were allowed to serve who were strangers to Israel, Ezra iv. 1-3, nor even those among the Israelites themselves, who "could not show their Father's house, and their seed, whether they were of Israel," see ii. 59-62. So only the true children of God, and those moreover also, who know of a certainty that they are His children, can ever enter upon this glorious work of consecration and restoration. It is essential to notice this. It is not conversion we are speaking of here, but restoration. The children of Israel were not now being brought out of Egypt, but restored from Babylon. And the first point to be settled always, in every such restoration, is that of assurance, the knowledge that our sins are forgiven, and that we are in very truth the children of God. We must be able to "shew our Father's house," and to "declare our genealogy," or we, too, shall be "put from the priesthood."

In chapter iii. the children of Israel, who were thus a numbered and recognized people, "gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem;" and under the direction of Joshua and Zerubbabel, they "builded the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings thereon." This must always be the first step in the restoration of any backslidden heart. The burnt offering altar represented Christ as the atoning sacrifice, making us at one with the Lord. The whole thought of this offering was at-one-ment. It was "an offering by fire of a sweet savour unto the Lord," Lev. i. 9; and proved to the offerer, in a way he could not mistake, his acceptance with God. To set up the burnt offering altar, for us, therefore, signifies a realization of our perfect acceptance, or at-one-ment with the Lord. And the returning heart needs this assurance, before any other step can be taken.

They next laid the foundations of the Lord's house, iii. 10-13; and so great was the joy of Israel at this, that we read "all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid." But they were not allowed to proceed with their work unmolested. In chapter iv. we read, that when their "adversaries" heard that "the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel," they came to them and said, "'Let us build with you.'" And when this was refused, they sought to "weaken their hands," and trouble them, and to "frustrate their purpose." Satan, who is our adversary, cannot endure to see any soul surrendering itself to the Lord to be His temple, and he always puts forth his utmost efforts to hinder all such. At first he seeks to mar the work by his cooperation, trying to bring wrong motives and unlawful means into play; and when this fails through the believer's faithfulness to his Lord, he then rouses opposition and persecution; see iv. 1-16. The result of this was that the "work ceased," and for many years, until the "second year of the reign of Darius," the burnt offering altar, and the foundations of the temple, were all that existed among the Israelites as a witness for the Lord their God. It is true, a prohibition came finally from the king; but many years had passed before this, and it is evident that it was want of faith in the Israelites, that was the real hindrance. Their enemies "weakened their hands," and "frustrated their purposes," and they were discouraged from their work.

I think this is a true picture of that which often happens in the history of a returning soul. The believer restored from backsliding, realizes his acceptance with the Lord, and the foundations of the inward temple are afresh laid with joy. But discouragements arise; the hands are weakened by fear, and the adversary stirs up opposition on every side. Friends grow anxious lest there should be danger of fanaticism; the Church turns a cold shoulder; older Christians remonstrate; until finally the believer "ceases his work," and the temple remains unfinished: the soul stops short of the fulness of the blessing.

The Lord, however, was not content with this state of things. He longed still, as always, to dwell among His people; and in the "second year of the reign of Darius," He sent Haggai to stir them up. "Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house to lie waste?" Hag. i. 3, 4. Moreover he showed them what were the sad results of this neglect. "Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages, to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much, and lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man to his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands." Hag. i. 7-11.

I believe these words will find an echo in many disappointed hearts, whose restoration from backsliding has not brought the spiritual prosperity they had hoped for, and who yet have failed to suspect the cause. Spiritual drought and poverty must always be more or less the portion of every believer, who does not know fully the inward building of the temple of the heart, for the Lord to dwell in.

We read, however, concerning Israel, that, at the prophesying of Haggai, "they obeyed the voice of the Lord their God," and "that the Lord stirred up the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts," Haggai i. 12-14. Their fear and discouragement had ended many years before in a decree being issue against them; but now their faith was so strong, that, without waiting for the reversal of this decree, they began to build at once. And the effect of this faith was such, that even their "adversaries," who had stopped them before, were the means of a decree in their favor now, and were even compelled to help them. See chaps. v. and vi., especially vi. 6-9, "And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo: and they builded and finished it." vi. 14.

They then "kept the dedication of this house of the Lord with joy;" and offered abundance of sacrifices, vi. 17, and set the priests and Levites in their rightful places "for the service of God," "as it is written in the book of Moses," vi. 18. When the heart is fully surrendered to the Lord to be His temple, there will always come abundance of sacrifice, and priestly service, according to His own commandments.

Moreover they kept the Passover, the memorial of their redemption out of Egypt, of which all might partake who were purified, and who had "separated themselves from the filthiness of the heathen of the land," vi, 19, 20, 21. And finally, they kept the "feast of unleavened bread with joy; for the Lord had made them joyful," vi. 22. The feast of unleavened bread was a type of holiness, and the joy of being made a partaker of Christ's holiness, will always come to the believer, who has reached this stage in his experience, and who knows that his heart is indeed the "temple of the Holy Ghost."

In chapters vii. and viii. we have the account of Ezra's return to Jerusalem with a further remnant, who were "minded of their own free-will to go up to Jerusalem;" and of this remnant also a faithful record is kept, all of them we read, being "expressed by name," viii. 20. This return of Ezra was for the purpose of instructing the people in the law; for Ezra "was a ready scribe in the law," and we are told that he "had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments," vii. 6-10. A heart-whole dedication will open the inward ear to listen to the law of the Lord, and He will always send teaching therein. Even as we read in John xiv. 26: "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

The coming of Ezra to teach the law of the Lord, at once made manifest the sins into which the remnant had fallen, ix. 1, for "the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," Heb. iv. 12. The necessity for a practical outward separation, to correspond to the inward separation, forced itself upon the consciences of the people; and the princes came to Ezra and said, "The people of Israel and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the land doing according to their abominations; . . . yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass." Ezra was confounded at this discovery, and "sat down astonished until the evening sacrifice," ix. 3, 4. At the time of the evening sacrifice he fell upon his knees and poured out his heart in confession and prayer, ix. 5-15. The hearts of the people also were touched, and they "wept very sore." And they said, "We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land; yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them." And at once they set themselves to the work of separation and obedience. All Israel was summoned to gather themselves "together unto Jerusalem" within three days, and "all the people," we read, "sat in the street of the house of God trembling, because of this matter, and for the great rain," x. 9. "Then Ezra arose and made a proclamation:" Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do His pleasure; and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives. And all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do." Under the direction of Ezra this work of separation from their "strange wives" was at last accomplished; and here the book of Ezra leaves them.

It remains true throughout all generations that "holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever." And invariably, from the place where the Lord dwelleth, all evil must be put away. When the soul, therefore, has afresh surrendered itself to the Lord to be His dwelling-place, the searching power of His Holy Spirit begins to reveal the evil, and calls for an entire separation from it.

This matter of the "strange wives" seems to me to be a type of that wandering of the heart from the Lord, which is called "setting our affections on earthly things." The New Testament speaks of it as the "friendship of the world," and in Jas. iv. 4, we are told that this friendship is "enmity with God;" for whosever will be a "friend of the world, is the enemy of God." Also, in I John ii. 15, we read, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." The life of separation to the Lord must be real. All that answers to this union with strange wives, must be put away, and also all that which is the fruit of it. The Lord must have our whole hearts, for our love is precious to Him, and anything which entices our hearts from our allegiance to Him must be given up. "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that liveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." "So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."

A poor woman, living alone in a country neighbor- hood, who supported herself by keeping a little country shop, was greatly stirred on the subject of her soul's salvation, but was continually hindered in all her prayers and efforts, by an indulged sin. She sold ale without a license, and it was by far the most profitable part of her business; but her conscience was uneasy with it, and whenever she prayed or thought of being a Christian, this illicit trade would start up between her soul and the Lord. The struggle went on for many months, and over and over she resolved to give up the ale, but could never quite bring herself to the actual point. Finally, she attended a meeting one night, where the subject of the preacher was the blessedness and the joy of Christ's indwelling presence in the heart and in the life. She listened with delight. Nothing was said about giving up anything; and she said to herself, "Ah, that is just what will suit me, to have Christ always with me in my lonely cottage!" And in the utmost simplicity of faith she began at once to ask Him to come, and believed that He did. The preacher had spoken about His knocking at our hearts for admittance, and about our opening to let Him in, and this poor woman caught the idea at once, and began to say over and over, "I open to Thee, Lord Jesus, and now I believe Thou dost come in, and I am going to take Thee home with me to-night, and keep Thee there. Mind Thee, Lord Jesus, I have let Thee in;" and all the way home, in her lonely walk across the fields, she kept repeating, "Now I am taking Thee home with me, Thou knowest. Remember, Lord Jesus, I am taking Thee home." Gradually, as she thus by faith claimed His presence, she began to feel a sweet consciousness of it; and by the time she had reached her own door, He had become so precious to her, that all else seemed worthless in comparison. All this time she had not once thought of the ale. But as she opened her cottage door, the first thing she set her eyes upon was a large pot of ale standing on the table. At once the thought came, "Oh, the Lord Jesus won't stay if I keep that ale!" And so sweet had His presence become to her by this time, that the ale was as nothing. She kneeled right down beside the table and said, "Now, Lord Jesus, I have brought Thee home with me, and here is this ale, and I know Thou won't stay if the ale does. So please give me strength to heave that ale right out into the road." She rose and lifted the heavy pot, and it was soon emptied of all its contents. Then she returned into her cottage and kneeled down again and said, "Thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for giving me strength to get rid of that ale. And now, if there is anything else in this house, that Thou cannot stay here with, please show me, and that shall go too."

It remains to be true throughout all ages, that as the presence of light must inevitably drive out darkness, so the realized presence of Christ in any heart or any life must inevitably drive out sin. "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not."

This entire separation from all evil, with a list of those who "gave their hands that they would put away their wives," closes the book of Ezra; leaving Israel thus prepared for the work, which Nehemiah chronicles in the next book.

Does it leave us also prepared for a similar work, dear readers? Has the presence of Christ in our hearts, driven out the sin there, and have we "given our hands" to put away all that is contrary to His will?

Texts on restoration from backsliding, and separation from all evil:--Jer. iii. 12, 14, 22.  Hosea xiv. 4.  Ps. li. 12.  Is. lvii. 18.  Jer. xxx. 17.  Joel ii. 25.  Gal. vi. 1.  Is. x. 21; xxv. 10.  Jer. xxiv. 7; xxx. 10; xxxv. 3, 7.  Hosea iii. 5; vi. 1; xiv. 1, 2.  1 Pet. ii. 25.  2 Tim. ii. 21.  2 Cor. vi. 17, 18.  John xvii. 6, 14-18.  Rom. xii. 2.  2 Cor. vii. 1.  Matt. x. 37-39.  1 John ii. 15-17.  Jas. iv. 4.  Is. lii. 11, 12.  Eph. v. 1-11.

CHAPTER XVI.

NEHEMIAH.

RESTORATION FROM BACKSLIDING, OR FAITHFUL SERVICE IN A TIME OF GENERAL

UNFAITHFULNESS.

Keynote: 1 Cor. iii. 8-15.

THE book off Nehemiah gives us the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Like Ezra, it shows us in type, a picture of restoration from backsliding, and of individual faithfulness in a time of general unfaithfulness. The city of Jerusalem had been ravaged and destroyed by the King of the Chaldees, and, as we read Neh. i. 3, "the wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and the gates thereof were burned with fire."

While dwelling in the palace of King Artaxerxes, the heart of Nehemiah was stirred up by the account he received of the desolate condition of his beloved city, and he cried to the Lord to grant him His favor, and to incline the heart of the king to permit him to return unto Judah, and unto the city of his fathers' sepulchres, that he might rebuild its walls, i. 1-11. The king granted the request, and Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem, and went out by night to view the wall. He found it was indeed as it had been reported to him, and he went to the elders of the city and said unto them, "Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire; come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach." Then he told them how the hand of the Lord was on him for this work; and, stirred by his words, they said, "Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work," ii. 12-18.

The temple having been built, in Ezra, and God's dwelling-place having been thus provided for, the people now can turn their thoughts to their city. Inward restoration always paves the way and prepares the heart for outward restoration; and this rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem seems to me to typify the outward work and service of the Christian, in whose heart the Lord dwells. Jerusalem may be taken as a figure of the Church, and the building of her walls and gates, as symbolizing that building up of the Church now, of which the Apostle speaks when he says, "Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying (building up) of the Church," 1 Cor. xiv. 12. "And He gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry; for the edifying (building up) of the body of Christ," Eph. iv. 11, 12.

In chapter iii. we have a detailed account of the work that was done, and the names of the men who did it. This is another sample page out of the Lord's book of records, similar to the one we noticed in Ezra. How precious to see Him thus taking note of each man, and of all the details of each man's work. Men may pass over lightly the work which their brethren do for the Lord, and may even think their own work not worth remembering; but the Lord never forgets the smallest thing. How little did Jehoiada the son of Paseah, and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah, as they "laid the beams of the old gate, and set up the doors thereof, and the locks thereof, and the bars thereof," amid the sneers and assaults of their enemies, think that the record of their work was to go down to untold millions; and that, wherever the Bible should go, there would it be told as a memorial of them, iii. 6. But "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which ye have showed to His name," and the weakest laborer may be sure that he is honorably mentioned in that blessed book of records, which is kept in the Lord's own house on high.

It is very striking also to notice how often it is said that they built "every one over against his own house," and even "over against his chamber. See iii, 10, 23, 28, 29, 30. This teaches us the comforting truth, that we never need seek far for an acceptable service, or for one that will be valuable to our Lord; for if each one of us will but build over against our own house, or, if we possess but a chamber, over against that, the work of one will join on to the work of another, and the result will be a completed wall around the whole city. As we read in vi. 15, "So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days."

But although thus successfully finished, the work had been carried on through great difficulties, for a disappointed enemy beset them on every side. At first they came with sneers, saying, "What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned? . . . . Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall" iv. 2, 3. And so likewise will our enemy seek to discourage us, when he sees us entering into the Lord's service with earnest hearts. He will come whispering in our hearts his sneers, and doubts, and mocking questions, "What do these feeble Christians? will such as they be able to accomplish anything? Even that which they build, shall it not after all come to naught?" But we must meet all such taunts as Nehemiah did, not with angry replies, nor even with arguments to prove our own strength and capability, but by simply committing our cause to the Lord, and leaving it with Him to deal with our enemy; "Hear, oh our God, for we are despised, and turn their reproach upon their own head," iv. 3-5. And we must only build on all the more resolutely, having as they had a "mind to the work."

Sneers and taunts having failed, their enemies assailed the faithful builders in another way. For it came to pass that when they "heard that the walls of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, and conspired, all of them together, to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it." If the enemy of our souls fails to discourage us by his sneers, then he assaults us with outward difficulties and oppositions, and with his fiery darts of temptation. But, as it was with Israel, the only effect must be to cause us to "make our prayer unto our God," and to set a watch against him day and night, iv. 7-9. Their adversaries thought to surprise them, saying, "They shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst among them and slay them, and cause the work to cease," iv. 11. But Nehemiah set a watch, and armed his people with armor, so that "every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held the weapon," iv. 16-18, and he said, "Be ye not afraid of them; remember the Lord which is great and terrible; and fight." "In what place therefore ye hear the sound of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us: our God shall fight for us."

Surely the New Testament counterpart of all this is to be found in such words as "Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation;" "Fight the good fight of faith:" "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints."

I am aware that those who teach a life of perfect rest and peace, are sometimes supposed to mean that there are no more assaults from our enemy in such a life. But this is so manifestly a misunderstanding, that it hardly seems necessary to say anything about it. And yet it is so difficult to explain just what we do mean, that I do not wonder we are misunderstood. For it is one of those marvellous paradoxes, in which two apparently irreconcilable things exist at the same moment, and perfectly harmonize. Peace and war, rest and labor, are one here. We fight, but it is the fight of faith, not of effort, for "our God fights for us," and therefore we are at perfect peace. We work, but it is not we who work, but God who worketh in us and through us, and therefore we rest. But to understand this, it must be experienced. We work as the instrument works in the hand of the skilful workman. We fight as the baby fights, who hides its head in its mother's bosom.

As the result of these faithful labors on the part of Nehemiah and the people, the wall was at last finished, and the Lord according to His promise that He "will bring forth our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday," if we but commit our way unto Him, and trust Him fully, made even the very enemies who had begun by mocking them, confess that the work they had so much despised, was after all of God. "And it came to pass that when all our enemies heard thereof, and all the heathen that were round about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was wrought of God," vi. 16.

In chapter viii. we find that the immediate and blessed result of the work of restoration, which had been accomplished, was to bring the people to a renewed acquaintance with the law of the Lord. It had been many years since Ezra had come up to Jerusalem, for the express purpose of instructing Israel in His statutes and judgments. But the condition of things in which he found them, had unfitted them for hearing or understanding it. They were such as Paul describes in Heb. v. 12, "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God: and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat." During times of captivity and of unfaithfulness, the law of the Lord is lost sight of, and indeed, cannot even be understood. But when the soul is again restored to communion, and the presence of the Lord is afresh realized in our midst, then the Divine law becomes most precious. In truth, I think its preciousness is felt then as never before. And to my mind this chapter in Nehemiah gives us in picture a truer apprehension of the sweetness of the will of God, and of what it means to have that will perfectly done in our lives, than almost any other chapter in the Bible.

The eagerness with which "all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water-gate," to hear the reading of the book of the law, is a picture of that "hungering and thirsting after righteousness," which comes to every soul that has been drawn near to the Lord. Since we have found Him so precious Himself, we begin to realize that His will must be precious also, and we begin to long to know it.

From morning until midday they stood and listened to the reading, "both men and women, and all that could hear with understanding," while Ezra "read the law distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." And we are told that "the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law." During the years of their captivity, this law had been but a vaguely remembered tradition among them, and it is no wonder that it should come to them now like a fresh and wondrous revelation.

Their first impulse as they listened was to grieve. "For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." Doubtless their grief had two causes, regret at their neglect of so wonderful a law, and fright at the discovery of their own great distance from its perfect righteousness. And so also, to souls in the present day, the fresh discovery of the will of God may perhaps at first cause tears and fright, as they see how great is their want of conformity to its blessed requirements. But in our case, as in theirs, if we only saw it aright, this very Will is our cause of deepest rejoicing. For Nehemiah said to the people, "This day is holy unto the Lord your God; mourn not nor weep. . . . Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our Lord; neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, Hold your peace for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their way, to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them," viii. 1-11.

A strange cause for mirth, some would say; even among those who profess to know and love the Lord, whose will they so dread. But to my mind the greatest cause of rejoicing that our poor world can have, lies just in this, that God has chosen to give to us His holy, and blessed, and lovely law, and has taught us to say, "Thy will be done." Without the will of God, this world would indeed be a place of concentrated misery. But the presence and accomplishment of His will, transforms it into an outer court of heaven.

And did we but know our God and His love, I am sure we, too, as they did, "would make great mirth," as soon as we understood the words that are declared unto us.

I confess I feel more deeply than I can express, the grievous wrong that is done to our Heavenly Father, by the evident dread His own children have of His blessed will. If they, who profess to know Him and trust Him, feel so about it, we cannot wonder that the world looks upon the will of God as something to be feared and resisted more than anything else, and we need not question why they are driven away from Him. If His own children regard Him as a tyrant, what can His enemies be expected to think? It is indeed most grievous, that Satan should have so veiled the loveliness of the will of God from the eyes of many Christians, that, instead of clinging to it as their chiefest good, they should so often shrink from it in fear and sorrow. Yet it is a fact which cannot be ignored, and which I would gladly meet and overcome, were it possible.

For the will of God is always and under all circumstances good and best. He is love, and His will can be nothing but love. He is full of wisdom, and His will must always be wise. He is omnipotent, and His will is baffled by nothing that can oppose. He is just, and His will must be truly and perfectly just. The truth is, when I think of who and what our God is, I am amazed that it ever entered into the head of any one of us to fear or combat His will. We do not know what we are doing, when we indulge in such feelings. The idea that our Father, who loves us, can want anything but our best and truest happiness is inconceivable. His will for us must be all that is best, and sweetest, and most satisfying, and surely we can trust ourselves to it without a single shrinking or fearing thought.

And when once we have opened our ears to listen to this will, we shall find, as the children of Israel did, that "His commands are not grievous," as perhaps we may have feared they would be; but that peace, and rest, and even "very great gladness" follow quickly in the keeping of His law. For the very second day of their reading, "they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month," viii. 14. This feast of tabernacles was a feast of joy. It was the celebration of their rest and possession of the land, after their journey through the wilderness. And thus they, who had expected perhaps commands which might cause them sorrow, found instead that their first duty was to joy and gladness. Not since the days of Joshua, had they known such joy!

It is indeed true, as some one says, that "God's will on earth is always joy, always tranquility;" and so every soul finds it, whose surrender is absolute and unconditional. "Great peace have they that love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them."

The result of this reading of the law, was great searching of heart among the Israelites, and in chapter ix. they tell their experience, and make their confession unto the Lord, and agree together solemnly to dedicate themselves unto Him, ix. 38. Chap. x. 1-27 gives us a roll of the names of "those that sealed" themselves unto this covenant, another blessed list, in which it is an everlasting glory to have been enrolled. And this list is, I believe, only a sample of the long and ever-increasing one, where are written the names of all who since then, have "sealed themselves" to be wholly the Lord's.

The terms of their consecration are given us in x. 28-39, ending with the significant words, "and we will not forsake the house of our God." All depends upon this. As long as the dwelling-place of the Lord is in the midst of any people, or in any heart, holiness of life will necessarily follow. And sin, if it comes, will nearly always result from the heart having first forsaken the Lord's dwelling-place.

In chaps. xi. and xii. there is given us another list of those who "willingly offered themselves to dwell at Jerusalem;" and also of those who "praised and gave thanks" at the "dedication of the wall of Jerusalem." See xii. 27-42. They could not sing while in captivity in Babylon, as we read in Ps. cxxxvii. 1-4. "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, there we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song: and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" But now that their captivity had been turned, their mouths were filled with singing, as it had not been since the days of David and Asaph of old. We even read that they "sang loud," and that they "rejoiced with great joy; so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off." The soul in captivity cannot sing, but when the "Lord turns again the captivity of Zion," then are our "mouths filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing." The praises of His people are acceptable to the Lord, and this record of those who here praised and gave thanks is therefore very significant.

The result of this joy, was a renewed and still deeper consecration. Again the book of the law was brought out, and read in the audience of the people, and it was found written therein, "that the Ammonite and the Mo abite should not come into the congregation of God for- ever," xiii. 1. At once Israel set themselves to obey this command, and separated from themselves "all the mixed multitude," 1-3. And it was discovered that this evil had crept even into the very inner courts of God's house; for the "stuff of Tobiah," the Ammonite, had filled the chambers of the temple, where aforetime they had kept the meat offerings and the frankincense. But this was now cast forth, and the clambers cleansed, and restored to their proper use, xiii. 4-9. So deep-seated was this evil of fellowship with those from whom the Lord had commanded entire separation, that even the priest, who had the oversight of the chamber in the house of the Lord, was "allied with Tobiah," and had been left undisturbed in his alliance, vs. 4, 7. But all hidden and even unsuspected sins are brought to light, when the law of the Lord is yielded to in simple obedience; and the soul is then enabled to cleanse its innermost chambers of all the "stuff" belonging to the enemy, and to present the heart to the Lord, for His use only.

Besides all this, it was found that the rest of the Sabbath was being habitually broken, by tradesmen of different kinds, who "brought all manner of burdens into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day." This, Nehemiah remedied, commanding the gates to be kept shut, and, setting some of his servants at the gates to watch "that there should no burden be brought in on the Sabbath day," xiii. 15-22. The Sabbath is a type of the rest of soul, Christ promises to all the wearied and heavy laden who come unto Him; and to break the Sabbath, therefore, symbolizes the breaking of this spiritual rest, by bearing burdens, which we are commanded to lay on the Lord. This is a very important point; for of all the declarations of God's will given us in the Gospel, none is more distinct and positive than this, that His people are to bear no burdens and carry no cares. "Be careful for nothing; "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on." "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." "Cast all your care upon Him, for He careth for you." And I doubt whether we even begin to know the grief that we give to our Lord, by our disobedience to these commands. When we, who are strong, tenderly love any one who is weak and helpless, how it delights our hearts to bear their burdens and do their work for them, and how it grieves us, if they will not permit us the privilege. And this should make us understand the longing of our Lord's heart towards us, His poor weak and helpless little ones, whom He knows to be so unable to care for anything aright for themselves.

A weary missionary lady in Persia went into a church there one Sabbath afternoon, and was obliged to sit down on a mat near the middle of the floor, as there were no other seats. She was very tired with her previous labors that day, and longed for rest; but with no support to her back, it seemed impossible to obtain it. In a moment a broad-backed native woman, noticing her look of extreme weariness, moved quietly up, and, planting her strong shoulders squarely behind her, whispered, "Lean on me." The lady leaned, but not with her whole weight. The fear of oppressing her kind friend, made her feel delicate about abandoning herself to the luxury of the support. But the native woman, with a look of longing love, leaned around and whispered to her in intensest tenderness, "Do you love me? If you love me, you will lean hard!" And then to that poor, weary body came rest, and to the weary spirit also came the sweet words from the Master, saying, "If you love Me, you will lean hard on Me also." Soul and body were rested, and from that time the dear missionary lady kept unbroken the blessed "Sabbath of rest," upon which she then entered.

Child of my love, "lean hard,"

And let Me feel the pressure of thy care;

I know thy burden, child; I shaped it,

Poised it in Mine own hand, made no proportion

In its weight to thine unaided strength:

For even as I laid it on, I said,

"I shall be near, and, while she leans on Me,

This burden shall be mine, not hers.

So shall I keep my child within the circling arms

Of Mine own love." Here lay it down, nor fear

To impose it on a shoulder which upholds

The government of worlds. Yet closer come--

Thou art not near enough, I would embrace thy care

So I might feel My child reposing on My heart.

Thou lovest Me? I know it. Doubt not then,

But, loving Me--lean hard.

CHAPTER XVII.

ESTHER.

GOD'S HIDDEN PROVIDENTIAL CARE OVER HIS PEOPLE IN THEIR CAPTIVITY.

Keynote: Heb. xiii. 5, 6.

THE book of Esther closes the series of the historical books of the Old Testament. It takes up the condition of the Jews, who "had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity," ii. 5, 6, and who had remained behind in the land of their enemy, when the faithful remnant under Ezra and Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the walls of the city. These captives are shown here, to be still the objects of God's care, although they would seem to have forfeited all right to it, by their failure to return to their own land when an opportunity was afforded them.

The details of this story are very simple. The Gentile wife of Ahasuerus, having been set aside because of her disobedience, the king chose for her successor a lowly Jewish maiden, belonging to the captive race; and her uncle and protector Mordecai "sat in the king's gate," ii. 19. One of the king's servants, Haman the Agagite, was advanced to a place of great honor, and all the king's servants bowed and reverenced him, but we read that "Mordecai bowed not nor did him reverence." In this no doubt Mordecai as a Jew, was governed by a command of the Lord, which was more binding to him than even the command of Ahasuerus. For Haman was an Agagite, and the family of Agag were of the nation of Amalek, whom Israel as far back as Exodus had been commanded utterly to destroy. See Ex. xvii. 14-16; Deut. xxv. 17-19. The wrath of Haman at this disrespect, led him to desire the destruction of the whole nation to which Mordecai belonged. For Haman "thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone;" wherefore he "thought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai." "And Haman said unto King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom: and their laws are diverse from all people: neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed." King Ahasuerus consented, and posts were immediately sent out into all his provinces with commandment to destroy "all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day." iii. 11-15.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JOB.

THE DEATH OF SELF.

Keynote: Heb. xii. 5-11.

THE book of Esther, as we have seen, closed the historical series of books in the Old Testament. In Job we now enter upon another series, containing, I think, the inward exercises of the hearts of God's people, as to sanctification. This series consists of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; and seems to give us a progressive development of heart experience, beginning with the deal of self in Job, and culminating in a realized union with the Lord in the Song of Songs.

In Job we have the death of self. Man is taught to see himself as he really is in the Lord's presence. His utter weakness and need are here revealed to him, and he is brought to an end of the self-life. In Psalms we have the resurrection life, the "life hid with Christ in God." Man is there taught to know the Lord, and is shown how to draw from Him the supplies for his weakness and need. In Proverbs we have this dead and risen man surrendering himself to the teachings of Divine wisdom, by which he is shown the path to walk in. In Ecclesiastes the world is sought in vain for an object to satisfy this deeply-taught soul. And in the Song of Songs this Object is found, and the heart rests eternally in a realized union with its Beloved. Job is the first step in the soul's experience, and Canticles is the last; and Canticles can never be reached, until Job has been first passed through. These steps are more or less marked in the experience of every sanctified soul, I think, and come mostly in the same order. We must first be brought to an end of self, as in Job, before we can learn what it is to live the life hid with Christ in God, as in Psalms. But in this resurrection life, we realize the need of guidance in order to walk safely through the crooked paths of the world, and must therefore yield ourselves up to the teachings of Divine wisdom, as in Proverbs. The world will then drop from our hands as an utterly unsatisfying thing, as in Ecclesiastes. And finally the soul will find itself prepared to be united to its Lord in a blessed oneness, which forever satisfies its needs and its longings, as in Canticles.

The first step in this developing series of heart exercises is, as I have said, that man should be brought to an end of self; and the Lord's first dealings with him, therefore, will be directed to this. In the book of Job we seem to have these dealings plainly set before us, and are there shown, as it were, the Lord's processes with His saints. We get behind the scenes here, into His secret counsels, and are made to understand the hidden mystery of trial, and see how it all has its spring in God, let the instrumentalities be what they may; and is all meant to make us "partakers of His holiness." It is the work of the Refiner that is here revealed to us. And I feel that it is unspeakably blessed for us, thus as it were, to get a glimpse into His work-shop, and see His processes of refining the gold committed to His care. The mystery of suffering is so unfathomable to most of us, and the questions it asks are so unanswerable, and often so agonizing, that we cannot be thankful enough for the glorious and satisfying answer given us in this book of Job; nor can we rest our hearts too utterly upon the revelation here made. "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless afterward it worketh the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby." This is the lesson of Job.

Job was a righteous man, coming under the refining and purifying hand of the Lord, in order that he might be brought to an end of self, and might have a revelation of God to his soul. And in this he was a sample and a foretelling of the thousands of saints since, who have had to go through similar processes, for the same glorious and blessed end." There was a certain man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil," i. 1.

It was necessary that a righteous man should have been chosen for that which was to follow, since it is the training of God's saints that is here set forth; and none but a good man could have understood the lessons or profited by them. Moreover it is plain to the simplest comprehension, that a wicked man needs to be brought to the end of himself. But that an upright man, who "fears God and eschews evil," should also need this, is not so clear. And some who can look, with a complacent comprehension of the divine purposes, on the trials that fall to the lot of the sinners around them, are yet unable to discover any reason for the mysterious dispensation of suffering to themselves. They are conscious, it may be, of the integrity of their hearts, and cannot see the justice or the need of their trials. "I was doing what I believed to be right," such a one will say, and "why should these things come upon me?" But the subtle forms of self-life that would ruin us, if left undiscovered and unchecked, are often most vigorous in those whose outward walk is all that could be desired; and it needs sometimes a very sharp discipline to uproot them. And in this fact lies hidden, doubtless, the secret of much that is mysterious in the dealings of the Lord with the souls of His servants. He loves us too much to permit any evil to linger undiscovered and uncured in our natures, and He will probe us to the very bottom by His dispensations, before He will suffer the hurt of His people to be slightly healed. This is not severity, but mercy. For the great object of all the discipline of life here, is character-building. We are to be the "friends of God" throughout all eternity, and to be His friends means something far grander than merely being saved by Him, and requires a far deeper harmony with His will. Therefore it is an unspeakable boon for us, that He loves us enough to take the necessary pains to make us meet for companionship with Himself. How well we know the strength of love it requires for us to discipline our children, in order to make them what they ought to be, and how often we fail just through a selfish weakness. Let us be thankful, then, that we have to do with a God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity with any toleration, and whose love is so strong that He will not withhold the hand of His discipline, until He has purely purged away all our dross, and taken away all our tin, and has presented us to Himself a "glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing."

Job, as I have said, shows us the divine process by which all this is accomplished. It is "baptism unto death." By all that happened to Job, he was brought to a know- ledge of his own heart, and was made to abhor himself in dust and ashes. The instrument used was Satan, but the Hand that used this instrument was the Lord's. In both cases, when Job's possessions were taken, and also when his own body was smitten with sores, Satan's power extended only so far as the Lord permitted, and not one hair's breadth further. At first the Lord said, "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power, only upon himself put not forth thy hand," i. 12. And afterward he said, "Behold he is in thine hand; but save his life," ii. 6. Therefore, while Satan seemed to do it all, there was One behind Satan, who overruled everything, and made it all work together to accomplish His purposes of grace toward Job.

First, the Sabeans fell upon Job's oxen and asses, and the servants who were ploughing with them, and destroyed them all. Then, "the fire of God" fell from Heaven and consumed his sheep and their shepherds. Next, the Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon his camels, and carried them away. Then, there came a great wind from the wilderness and caused the house to fall upon his children and kill them, i. 13-19. And finally Satan smote Job himself "with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown," ii. 7. To all these trials were added the reproaches and misunderstanding of his friends; until Job's life seemed to be utterly ruined, and as though it must end in nothing but humiliation and defeat on every hand. But it was only the "seen thing" which was thus ruined. The "unseen thing" in the mind of the Lord, was the "exceeding and eternal weight of glory "which was to be the outcome of this ruin. The outward man, it is true, seemed to perish, but the inward man was renewed day by day. And by all that Satan was thus permitted to do, Job was brought at last to the place of emptying, where the Lord could reveal Himself in glorious fulness.

CHAPTER XIX.

PSALMS.

THE LIFE HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD.

Keynote: Col. iii. 1-3.

THE book of Psalms gives us the resurrection-life of the believer. It is the illustration of the latter part of Rom. vi. 4. "Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." In Job we have seen the christian “buried into death,” and here we see him “raised up from the dead,” to walk, as Christ walked, in "newness of life." This book is therefore the natural sequence of the book of Job, or the next step in the soul's progress. In Job man had been taught to know himself, here he is taught to know the Lord. This book shows us human nature in all its weakness, as it is seen in God's presence, but reveals at the same moment the all-sufficient supply there is in the Lord for its every need. It is the necessary and immediate outcome of Job's death to self. It is life in God. Its language throughout is, "I am nothing; Christ is all."

And my feeling is that no heart is fitted to enter fully into an understanding of this wonderful book, until it has passed through the discipline, and reached the result which the book of Job reveals. None but a soul that has come to the end of self and of all self-dependence, can enter into the blessed sweetness of the twenty-third Psalm, or dwell in the fortress of the ninety-first; for the grace which these Psalms reveal, and the blessings they set forth, are all grace and blessings for the weak and the helpless, and none but these can possibly receive or enjoy them. The man who speaks here, is the man of faith, and the life revealed, is the life of trust. "Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. But Thou, Lord, art a shield for me; my glory and the lifter up of my head." ii. 2, 3. "But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the Lord; in Thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute." cxli. 8. "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man: it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes." cxviii. 8, 9. "O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him." xxxiv. Such are a few out of the numberless declarations of helplessness and of trust that are found in this book.

The Psalms are the expression of the inward feelings produced in the heart of each writer by the varied circumstances and events of his life. They were written mostly by David, though some of them are ascribed to other writers, and the prayer of Moses is included among them. But whoever may have been the authors, of each one it is true that he was evidently prepared by the Lord, through personal or public events, for expressing the mind of the Spirit of God, who "wrote by him, and whose words were upon his tongue." And moreover, whoever speaks, it is true, as Augustine says in his exposition of this book, that "the voice of Christ and His Church are well nigh the only voices to be heard." In some instances Christ Himself is the sole speaker, in others His people only speak; but generally it is the Head and the members together, who "use the harp and utter the song."

Many of the Psalms refer so manifestly to Christ that they are sometimes called Messianic Psalms. And these may be looked upon as a sort of diary, as it were, kept by our Lord for the purpose of letting His people know a little of the deep, inward emotions He experienced as a Man, bearing the awful burden of humanity, partaking of our nature, and tempted with our temptations. In other parts of the Bible we have the details of His outward life while on earth, and learn what He did, and what was done to Him. But here we have the record of what He thought and felt, while going through all these.

The writer of a little book called "Short Meditations on the Psalms" says concerning this, "The cries, and tears, and praises of Jesus, His solitary hours, His troubles from man, and His consolations in God, all these are felt here in their depth and power. What was passing in His soul when He was silent as to man, led as a lamb to the slaughter: what they who surrounded Him did not hear, we listen to in this wondrous Book. His thoughts of men, His worship of God, with all the incense of His various and perfect affections, are understood here. The New Testament tells us that He prayed and sung, but this Book gives us His prayers and songs themselves."

If this then be indeed true, what blessed intimacy does it declare, that our Lord should thus permit us to enter into the wonderful secrets of His deepest emotions while living on this earth, for us, and in our nature. And I think nothing so makes us realize His actual humanity, as to listen to these cries of human suffering and anguish, and to feel our hearts thrill over His yearning for human sympathy and appreciation.

One example will illustrate what I mean. In Psalm xxii. we have the emotions of our Lord's heart as He hung on the cross, bearing the sins of the whole world. The opening verse proves this, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? why art Thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?" The first sentence of this cry is all that we hear in the New Testament, Matt. xxvii. 46; but the Speaker who utters that, must also utter all the rest likewise. Some comparison of other verses in the Psalm will confirm this. Compare verse 6 with Is. liii. 3; verses 7, 8, with Matt. xxvii. 39-44; verse 16 with John xx. 25-27; verse 17 with Is. lii. 14; verse 18 with Luke xxiii. 34; verse 22 with Heb. ii. 11, 12. See also,

Ps. ii. 7, compared with Matt. iii. 17; xvii. 5; Acts xiii. 33.

Ps. ii. 2, and xxxi. 13, compared with Matt. xxvii. 1.

Ps. xvi. 8-11, compared with Acts ii. 25; iii. 15; Matt. vii. 14; xxv. 33.

Ps. xxxviii. 11, 12, compared with Matt. xxvi. 56 and verse 13 with Is. liii. 7.

Ps. xxxix. 9, compared with Matt. xxvi. 62, 63; Acts viii. 32-35.

Ps. xl. 6-8; li. 16, compared with Heb. x. 5-9; Luke xxiv. 44; John v. 39.

Ps. lxix. 5-9, compared with John ii. 17; xv. 25; vii. 5; Rom. xv. 3.

Ps. cx. 1, compared with Matt. xxii. 44; Acts ii. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 25; Heb. i. 13.

Ps. xli. 9, compared with John xiii. 18, 25, 26, 27.

Ps. xlv. 1-17, compared with Luke iv. 22; Heb. i. 8; Is. lxi. 1.

But besides those Psalms which thus expressly refer to the Lord Jesus, there are many others whose praises, desires, hopes and deliverances could have in Him alone their truest realization. Only by seeing this, I think, can we understand much here written. And only by understanding that the desires for vengeance upon His enemies and for the destruction of all His foes, is to be interpreted as referring to Christ's great enemy, Satan, and all his host of evil spirits, and to the dreadful effects of sin in the hearts and lives of men, can we be relieved from the painful sense of vindictive cruelty that otherwise would oppress many tender hearts in their perusal. The Lord, who has told us to love our enemies, and to do good to them that hate us, could surely not do otherwise Himself; and I cannot but feel that we must read of His wrath as being directed against the sin, and not against the sinner, and His vengeance as being poured out upon the cruel Enemy, who carries captive His helpless flock, and not upon the poor flock, thus attacked and enslaved.

And, taken in this sense, we, His people and the flock of His pasture, can unite with our whole hearts in His cries for vengeance, and can rejoice with Him in the promised downfall of every foe. I do not of course state this view of mine as an infallibly correct one; but simply as the best explanation I can find of all that is so difficult to understand in the Psalms, and as containing experimentally much blessed help to my own soul. If it is Christ and His Church who speak here, it must be that the expressions are such as the Church can unite in, without disobeying the commands of her Lord as to her treatment of her enemies; and only by taking the view I present can this be done. But I feel that the Holy Spirit alone can teach us concerning this.

The Psalms might be called the heart of the Bible. They lie in the midst of it, and express its secret and hidden life. The central verse of the whole divine volume is found here, the keystone of the arch, as it were; and this verse reveals the point upon which all else turns. It is the eighth verse of Ps. cxviii., and reads as follows: "It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man." And throughout the whole book the universal teaching consists only of different changes rung upon this same theme. For it contains, as I have said, the heart exercises of the dead and risen man. "Not I, but Christ" is its constant language. It is the second stage in the series, beginning with Job and ending with the Song of Songs, and is the second stage in the experience of every soul, which has been brought by the cross and the revelation of God, to the end of self.

No other dependence but the Lord God of Israel is thought of or permitted here. "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen and stand upright," Ps. xx. 7. "Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it, except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain," Ps. cxxvii. 1. And no possibility of disappointment to those who do thus trust, is for a moment admitted. "They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever," cxxv. l . "The Lord redeemeth the soul of His servants; and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate," xxxiv. 22. "In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me," lvi. 11. From beginning to end, the voice that speaks here tells of only one Refuge and one Defence. All dependence upon self seems to have been taken from him, and, with Paul, his realization is throughout, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak then am I strong." This experience is not generally the first, nor the second, nor even the third step in the christian life. Much has to be passed through before this is reached. The deliverance out of Egypt, the wilderness journey, the going into the land, the failures there, the bondages and the restorations, need often all to be experienced according to our measure, before we are ready to come to the death of self, as in Job, and to know this life of utter dependence upon the Lord. I do not say that all these experiences need to be gone through, but that which they teach must, and it seems as though souls but seldom have simplicity enough, and faith enough, to learn these lessons directly from the Lord, without this outward discipline of failure and trial. But whether by the inward crucifixion only, or by that also which is outward, in one way or the other, all must come here, before the Lord can work in them perfectly the good pleasure of His will; and happy shall we be if we can submit ourselves so unresistingly and so thoroughly to the forming hand of our Lord upon us, as to pass rapidly, and with the ease of a passive and yielding soul, through the necessary stages that precede this.

A poor woman was once scoffed at by an infidel for supposing that she, in her weakness and ignorance, could ever travel over the long and weary road from earth to heaven. "Ah, master," she replied, "it is a very short road, and easily travelled. There are only three steps in it." "Three steps," he repeated scornfully, "and what are they?" The answer was a memorable one, -- "Out of self, into Christ, and into glory." If then to some of my readers the road to present peace and victory may look long and hard, let me assure you that after all it needs but two of these steps to take you there. Out of self, and into Christ! That is all! And that is enough for the deepest experiences and the richest blessings. The process that brings this about may be hard to flesh and blood, as Job's experience surely was, but the end is worth it all. And, although hard, it need not be long, for entire consecration and perfect faith will hasten every stage. Job's lesson was learned in one year, but he suffered truly the loss of all things to reach it. We often are many years learning our lesson, because we are not able to bear such rapid and severe strokes of the Divine chastising Hand. "Out of self" is a step to be taken by faith, but it is also a step to be taken actually and experimentally as well, and the Lord's part is to turn our faith into a reality, by His dealings with us, both inward and outward. The life of trust looks beautiful to us, and we long to live it, but we forget that something must be done first. No soul can trust utterly in the Lord, it is manifest, who has anything of self left in which to trust, and we must therefore come out of the self-life entirely, before we can fully enter into this life hid with Christ in God. For it is utter weakness alone that can bring any soul to the point of utter trust. And many a "messenger of Satan" may have to be sent "to buffet" some of us, before we come here. But if our faith will but grasp it now, and if we will but let the Lord work as He pleases, without any shrinking or hindrance on our part, who can say by what rapid steps He may bring us out into this place of perfect peace, nor how soon He may make the language of absolute trust our language also.

In the Hebrew Bible this Book is divided into five books, the first ending with Ps. xli.; the second, with Ps. lxxii.; the third, with Ps. lxxxix.; the fourth, with Ps. cvi. and the fifth with Ps. cl. Probably each of these books would be found to contain some especial line of teaching, if our eyes were spiritually enlightened enough to see it. But I do not feel prepared to go into this.

The book of Psalms opens with blessing and ends with praise. The very first Psalm introduces us to the man who is the speaker throughout. It is the godly man; that is, the man who is like God, "conformed to the image of Christ." He not merely obeys the law of the Lord, but his delight is in it; it is "written on his heart." Therefore he has found the river of living water, and is planted beside it, and whatsoever he doeth cannot but prosper.

The introduction to the Psalms in the Commentary by Canon Cook of Exeter, England, says concerning the ideal man of the Book of Psalms that "he has these characteristics: unshaken trust in God; entire devotion to His service; submission to His will; reliance on His love, met by a corresponding affection, a more than filial tenderness; a longing for His presence in the sanctuary, and for fruition of that presence in Heaven; a thorough appreciation of the righteousness of all His dispensations; a confident, nay certain anticipation of a full manifestation of His righteousness. Faith, hope, and love assume thus their true relative position in the development of the spiritual man."

And to this godlike man are revealed secrets concerning the Lord and His ways, that have not heretofore in the progressive teaching of the Bible found any fitting hearer. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His covenant." Only the man who is like God, can understand God. And therefore in this book of Psalms, for the first time in the progress of the Bible development, does the sanctified soul find an adequate expression of its worship and its praise. All the previous revelations of the Lord had been but one-sided and limited, for there were no hearts prepared to understand any other. "As it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet He himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that He may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." To none but the spiritual man therefore do the secrets of this book lie open.

One of the most blessed of these secrets thus revealed to this "godly man," is that concerning the claim of the weak upon the strong. The language of his heart is always, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak." "Turn Thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted." "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for l am in trouble." "Attend unto my cry; for I am very low; deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than I." This speaker recognizes that the plea of weakness and of need is the most effectual plea that the soul can make. And do not our hearts also recognize it at once, as the one irresistible plea all the world over, as far as the knowledge of the true God has gone. Wherever there is weakness, there strength hastes to the rescue. In times of danger the weakest are the first cared for. If suffering must come, the strong endure it, that the weak may be spared. "Noblesse oblige" is the universal Christian law. And the Strong and Mighty One who inhabiteth eternity, who is at once the Fountain and the Power of this noble necessity, must therefore charge Himself with the care of all who are weak and needy, But none can know this, save those who have been made "partakers of His divine nature," for none else know God. Therefore it is, that, in the book of Psalms for the first time, He has fully revealed it; for until this stage is reached, there are no eyes that can see it, nor ears that can hear it. But the man who speaks here has learned it all. "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord," xii. 5. "The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble, ix. 9. "He will regard the prayer of the destitute; He will not despise their prayer," cii. 17. “The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.” ciii. 6. “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dung-hill; that He may set him with princes.” cxiii. 7. "The Lord preserveth the simple; I was brought low, and He helped me." cxvi. 6. "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down." cxlv. 14. "The Lord executeth judgment for the oppressed; He giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord loveth the righteous; the Lord preserveth the strangers; He relieveth the fatherless and the widow." cxlvi. 7-9. "He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." cxlvii. 2.

Throughout all the varied experiences of this book, it is still always this man who knows the Lord, that speaks to us, whether in the voice of Messiah, or of His people. And through it all he is led, doubtless by a series of deepening and widening revelations, to the paean of victorious praise that closes the Book. For only he who knows the Lord, and has seen the King in His beauty, could thus extol Him and praise His holy name.

The last six Psalms are a series of continually rising songs of thanksgiving, beginning with, "I will extol Thee, my God, O King; and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever;" and closing with that wonderful, and to me most precious and comforting command, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord." As Bonar has written concerning this, "Praise is now gathered in from every creature; every instrument of joy, and gladness, and triumph, and jubilee are summoned to sound loud praise; and every voice and heart are engaged to help the choir." And another also says concerning it, "Every voice now teems with praise; every thought is about praise; every object awakens it; every power uses itself to produce it. And no wonder, when we remember that we have been ushered into the Kingdom at last. . . . These are the days of heaven upon the earth! The kingdom has come; and the will of the Blessed One is done here as there. The mystic ladder connects the upper and the lower sanctuaries. Praise crowns the scene. The vision passes from before us with the chanting of all kinds of music. Man has taken the instrument of joy into his hand; but it is only to God's glory he strikes it. The creature is happy; God is glorified. Yes, praise, all praise! Untiring, satisfying fruit of the lips, uttering the joy of creation, and owning the glory of the Blessed One."

All sorts of instruments are needed in this universal chorus, the trumpet, the psaltery, the harp, the stringed instrument, the organ, the loud cymbal, and the high-sounding cymbal; the cymbal which can give but one note only, being as necessary as the stringed instrument which can give many. And all voices are needed here also, the voices of young men and maidens, of old men and children; the voices of those who are able only to sound one note of praise, as well as of those who can sound many. The heart-felt, "Praise the Lord," of the humble washer-woman, is as necessary to the grand harmony, as the reverberating eloquence of the great preacher, or the melody of the gifted singer. For the word is, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord." Yes, everything, -- "Ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children;" all must praise Him, for He is good to all.

And the day will come when this blessed command shall be literally obeyed. John saw it, and thus described it in Rev. v. 13, "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

Let us join in this anthem, beloved friends, now and here. Let us praise Him, whether we understand Him or not. Let us praise Him, even though His ways with us may seem to be too mysterious ever to be understood. Let us praise Him out of our weakness, and out of our ignorance, and out of our very vileness itself. Let us praise Him that we are weak, and ignorant, and covered with infirmity, because this is our most irresistible claim upon Him, and because so, and so only, can His power rest upon us. Let us praise Him that we are nothing and that He is all.

CHAPTER XX.

PROVERBS

THE REDEEMED AND SANCTIFIED SOUL GUIDED BY

DIVINE WISDOM IN THE DAILY WALKS OF LIFE

Keynote: James i. 5, 6.

THE book of Proverbs gives us the application of Divine wisdom to the practical details of our walk through the labyrinth of this evil world. It is the third step in the developing series concerning sanctification, which we are considering. The soul having experienced a measure of the death of self and having begun to live the "life hid with Christ in God," needs now, according to the prayer of the Apostle in Col. i. 9, 10, to be "filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding," that we may "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God." For this there must be Divine teaching. The life in selfhood depends upon the natural wisdom of the human heart for guidance; but the man who is emptied of his own wisdom, needs to have Divine wisdom to supply its place, or he will fall into all manner of evil. This book, therefore, reveals the Father teaching His children how to walk safely and wisely through this world of sin and danger. "My son, hear thou the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother," i. 8. "Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding," iv. 1. "My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding," v. 1. "Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth," v. 7. It is not teaching as to how we are to become children, but teaching given to us because we are children, that we may know how to live and walk as children should. It is essential to notice, therefore, that it is not the question of redemption that is touched upon in this book; but simply a walk according to the wisdom and will of the Lord. And I cannot but believe that Christians would make far fewer mistakes in their daily walk, if they were only in the habit of more frequently consulting this guide-book provided for them. It is surely a great privilege in the labyrinth of this evil world, to have a path set before us, marked out by divine wisdom, walking in which, we are assured, a practical happiness would be secured to us. How eager we are to run for advice to those whom we call wise in human affairs, yet how often we neglect to consult this compendium of divine wisdom, which would teach us far more unerringly. I feel assured that the careful study of this book would enable us to understand the Psalmist's rejoicing, when he said: "Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients: because I keep thy precepts," Ps. cxix. 98-100.

This book was written by Solomon, of whom we read in I Kings iv. 29-34, "And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men: than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. . . . And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth which had heard of his wisdom."

Its object is announced to us in the opening verses: "The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel; to know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment and equity; to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion," i, 1-4. And in the closing verse of this chapter we are told what will be the blessed results of hearkening to this teaching: "Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil." See also iv. 20-22; iii. 21-24; vi. 20-23; xxii. 17-21.

But it is not human wisdom and prudence that are to bring about these blessed results. These continually lead astray. It is submission to the mind and will of the Lord. We are expressly told to "lean not on our own understandings," "but in all our ways acknowledge the Lord and He will direct our paths," iii. 4, 5. "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. . . . . . Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 1 Cor. 1. 19-29. Therefore we must turn from the teachings of our own wisdom, and submit ourselves in all things to that wisdom which is from above.

And for this reason the "fear of the Lord" is put before us here as the one grand constraining motive, and power. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," ix. 10. "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days," x. 27. "He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the Lord: but he that is perverse in his ways despiseth Him," xiv. 2. "By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil," xvi. 6. "By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honor, and life," xxii. 4. "Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord shall be praised," xxxi. 30. In the very first chapter the contrast is drawn between the folly of self-will and this spirit of submission to the Lord. "For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof; therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices. . . . But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall be quiet from fear of evil," i. 29-33. The different forms of the expression "fear of the Lord" or "fear the Lord," are used over one hundred and twenty-five times in the Scriptures, and always, in connection with richest blessings. It is said of those who "fear the Lord" -- that the secret of the Lord is with them; the eye of the Lord is on them; the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them; His salvation is nigh to them; His mercy is great towards them; He will fulfil all their desires; He taketh pleasure in them; and finally that there is "no want to them that fear Him." Moreover we are told that it is the beginning of wisdom, and the beginning of knowledge; that it causes us to hate evil; that it gives us strong confidence; that it is a fountain of life; that it is the instruction of wisdom; that it brings riches and honor; and that he that feareth the Lord shall come forth of every trouble.

The fear meant in all these passages is not the fear of fright, but the fear of love. It is the fear we feel lest we should in any way grieve or wound the heart of a beloved one; and is not the fear of the consequences to ourselves, but of the sorrow to them. It is a fear which can exist only in connection with the highest and tenderest forms of love, for all lower forms of affection are indifferent to it, and cannot even comprehend it. And therefore I believe that it is only the Christian who has passed through the death to self in Job, and has learned the life of trust in Psalms, who can understand this sweet and constraining "fear of the Lord," which brings forth such results of blessedness. Others may perhaps be afraid of Him, but these only can fear Him. Others may dread His anger, these alone can fear His grief. Only these in fact know that He can be grieved, for they alone know how He loves. It is because His love for us is so deep and so tender that we are able to grieve Him, for no other affection or passion of the soul can be grieved but love. None can truly fear Him therefore who do not know something of His love, and none can, I believe, truly follow Him who do not know this sweet constraining fear. For His voice is so gentle and low, and His will comes to us so much oftener in the form of suggestion rather than in that of a command, that unless our love makes us fear the slightest neglect of His sweet requirements, or the least deviation from His will, we shall often overlook them and miss them altogether. No wonder that we are told here that the "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." For he alone is wise who follows the Lord whithersoever He leadeth, and such a following is the outcome only of this lovely fear.

The soul in Proverbs is brought here, and consequently we find a great deal said about "wisdom" in this Book. The word is used thirty-six times, and it is exalted to a place of such great prominence, as to lead us to inquire, if it has not a much deeper meaning than at first appears. In 1 Cor. i. 24 we are told that Christ is the "wisdom of God." Then we read here "The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth," and in John i. 3 we read concerning Christ, "All things were made by Him;" and in Heb. i. 2 "By whom also God made the worlds"; and in Heb. xi. 3 "the worlds were framed by the word of God." All these passages seem to me to point to the thought that Christ is hidden here under the figure of wisdom, and that it is a fulfilling of that declaration of the apostle, that "He is made unto us wisdom," as well as righteousness and sanctification, and redemption. Chapter viii. seems to make this even more clear and unmistakable, especially if the marginal references are carefully considered. It begins with, "Doth not wisdom cry?" and then gives us the words of this cry, "Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of men.  . . . The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.  . . . When He prepared the heavens, I was there; . . . when He appointed the foundations of the earth. Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of His earth; and my delights were with the sons of men." Surely to none but Christ can all this apply.

If by wisdom then in this book is meant Christ, and if the indwelling of wisdom means His indwelling, what a lesson we are here taught concerning the practical effect of the abiding presence and teaching of the Divine Comforter, of whom we are told in the New Testament that He is to "lead us into all truth."  "My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; so that thou incline thine car unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom; out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous; he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee; to deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; whose ways are crooked and they froward in their paths; to deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. That thou mayst walk in the way of good men and keep the paths of the righteous." ii. 1-20.

All this, and more, will most certainly be true of that life which is ordered by the Lord, and guided by His blessed Spirit; and the path of obedience to the divine requirements will always prove to be a path of richest blessing.

Our Lord has declared that His sheep shall "know His voice," but we shall need to live very near Him, and have much close communion with Him before this can be. For amid the multitude of voices abroad, it is not easy to distinguish the Shepherd's voice, unless we have become familiar with its sound. At first all voices are alike to the infant, and some time must pass before it can learn to distinguish even its mother's tones; and doubtless in the learning it makes many mistakes. But the time comes when the child knows that dear voice from every other, and cannot mistake it, and when the voice of a stranger makes it afraid. And for us also, if we but follow on to know unwaveringly, "applying our hearts" as our book says, and "inclining oar ears," "seeking for it also as for silver and for hid treasure," the time will surely come when we likewise shall be able to distinguish the Shepherd's voice, and shall "flee from the voice of a stranger."

Not long ago a friend related to me the following story. A farmer, wishing to purchase some sheep, made a selection from the flocks of a neighbor, and started to drive them home. But he found it impossible to induce a single sheep of them all to leave its owner's sheep-fold by any force or persuasion. In despair he called upon the shepherd, who told him the trouble was that the sheep did not know his voice, and going outside of the fold himself, the owner of the sheep stood and called them, when immediately every one bounded eagerly and joyfully out. He walked on, the sheep following him through strange and unknown roads, calling out continually to let them know that he was their leader, until he had secured them safely in the sheep-folds of their new owner. No doubt in time these sheep would learn to know the voice of the shepherd who from this time had the care of them, but until they had learned it, they could not follow him willingly, nor yield a ready obedience to his commands.

Subjection to a voice is one of the sweetest ways of learning to know it, and experimentally we shall find that each time we obey the voice of our Shepherd, when we do recognize it, it will become easier for us to distinguish it the next time. As our book tells us, "My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:" vi. 20-23.

We must therefore bow our necks to the yoke of this Divine guidance, if we would learn to walk in the true "way of life." But none can do this fully, I believe, who have not learned the previous lessons of our series. Self must be dead, and Christ must be known to be all in all, before the soul can everywhere and always take His yoke upon it, and learn of Him. Our own wisdom must have failed utterly, before we can submit in all things to Divine wisdom. And therefore but few comparatively reach this stage. Believers are crying out everywhere, "Oh! that I might know the Shepherd's voice!" But they shrink frown the steps that must be taken in order to learn it. Their bemoanings are like the bemoanings of Ephraim, "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke." For there is no other way. If we would walk where Christ walks, we must have on His yoke, and if we will not take it on lovingly and gladly, He will be compelled to put it upon us with chastisements and severity. A farmer's wife once said to me, that it had often been a great lesson to her, to watch the young oxen being trained to wear the yoke, and to see how much severe discipline was needed, which might all have been spared, had the animals but been docile enough to have bowed their necks to the yoke willingly and without resistance.

To take the yoke of Christ upon us, means, I think that we give up utterly our own freedom of will to Him, and consent to be in all things led and guided by His voice. This voice will be made known to us, I believe, in three ways; through the Scriptures, through providential circumstances, and through a divine conviction produced in the soul by the Holy Spirit; and we have a right to ask that we may clearly distinguish it, before being re­quired to act. But when once we know it, nothing but obedience will do, and to the truly obedient soul the yoke proves to be indeed an easy one, and the burden light.

The "voice of the stranger" is warned against in this book under the figure of the "strange woman," whose house we are told "inclineth unto death" and "whose guests are in the depths of hell," ii 16-19; v. 3-5; ix. 13-18. Some have thought this "strange woman" means the Babylon of Revelation, that "great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication," and which is plainly a corrupt form of religion; Rev. xix. 2. See also Rev. xvii. 1-6, and xviii. But whether this be so or not, the warnings against this "strange woman" apply to any form of evil that draws away the heart from the voice of heavenly wisdom, whether this divine voice is heard inwardly in the soul, or comes to us outwardly in the written word of our Lord, or in His providential dealings.

The practical teaching of divine wisdom given us in this book, reaches into many details of private and public life, and is worthy of far more careful study than it generally receives, teaching us also that nothing is too insignificant for His notice or advice. We are shown here what things are an abomination to the Lord. "These six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: a proud look, (or, as the margin has it, haughty eyes,) a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren," vi. 16-19. Also in other verses we are told that "they of a froward heart," a "false balance," "divers weights and divers measures," the "sacrifice of the wicked," the "way of the wicked," the "thoughts of the wicked," "every one that is proud in heart," he that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just," all these are declared to be an "abomination to the Lord."

We are also taught what are the things likely to bring us into outward trial and difficulty. and are warned against them; and are encouraged in paths that will lead to outward prosperity and peace. I cannot go into these details here. But I would repeat again, what I said at first, that this book is a blessed gift of wisdom to us, who feel ourselves so far from wise and that it is great grace in our Lord to have condescended to apply His wisdom, thus, to the details of our lives, in the midst of this world's confusion, because of sin.

Let us come to it, then, beloved readers, with receptive and submissive hearts, prepared to yield a glad obedience to what we find here; and prepared also to listen more attentively and obediently than ever to the inward voice as well, relying with perfect confidence upon our Lord's own promise, "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth;" and "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you." This blessed doctrine of the direct and personal teaching and guiding of the Holy Spirit has been too much neglected in the Church, and great loss has been the result. But that it is a glorious reality, and within the reach of even the most unlearned believer, thousands of witnesses can testify, who have given themselves up to a "walk in the Spirit," and who have found themselves led, perhaps by ways they knew not, into the green pastures and beside the still waters, where the little flock who follow the good Shepherd whithersoever He leadeth, always feed. "For wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." And the heart that "wholly follows" the Lord, as Caleb did, shall, like him, enter into the possession of an inheritance, which none others can conquer. Joseph Cook says, "Whenever your conscience is made fully supreme, its yoke by irresistible natural law will transform itself into a crown. This constant experience you will have at every fork of the way; and rising through such continual steppings, we may, even in our present low estate, approach the bliss of the upper ranges of being, even of those who have never sinned, and of that Nature which was revealed on earth once as the fullness of Him that filleth all in all."

If any doubt the truth of this, let them try the experiment of an utter yielding to God at every step of their way, and I feel sure they will be amazed at the rapidity with which their souls will climb toward these wondrous heights of divine fellowship and bliss. Let our obedience but keep pace with the outmost verge of our light, and our happiness will reach even here and now, to the joys of the "upper ranges of being," and a blessed foretaste of Heaven will be granted us. But without this utter surrender, we cannot expect to advance in the divine path; and the lesson of Proverbs therefore must necessarily be learned, before the soul can take the next step in its progress, and come to know the vanity of the world and all it has to give, as in Ecclesiastes.

"Happy, therefore, is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding: for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her."

Texts illustrating Divine guidance:  -- John xiv. 16, 17; xv. 26; xvi. 13-15;  Luke i. 79;  John x. 3, 4;  Ps. xxv. 9;  Ps. xxxii. 8;  Ps. xxxi. 3;  Ps. xlii. 3;  Ps. xlviii. 14;  Ps. lxxviii. 52, 72;  Ps. cxxxix. 10, 24;  Isaiah xlii. 16;  Isaiah xlviii. 17;  Is. xlix. 10;  Is. lvii. 18;  Is. lviii. 11;  1 John ii. 20, 27;  Matt. x. 19, 20;  Acts ii. 4; x. 10-16, 19, 20, with xi. 7-9, 12;  Gal. v. 16, 18;  Acts xiii. 2; xvi. 6, 7; viii 29; xxi. 4;  I Cor. xii. 4-11; ii. 10;  Rom. viii. 5;  Gal. v. 25;  2 Pet. i. 21;  1 Cor. ii. 13; Type, Num. xi. 15-22.

CHAPTER XXI.

ECCLESIASTES.

THE VANITY OF ALL EARTHLY THINGS; AND THEIR

POWERLESSNESS TO SATISFY THE REDEEMED SOUL.

Keynote: 1 John ii. 15-17.

THIS book shows us the utter vanity of the world and all it contains, apart from God. It is the illustration of those words of our Lord to the woman of Samaria, "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again." The world is here searched for an object to satisfy the heart, but in vain. All is proved to be only vanity and vexation of spirit. It is the fourth stage of the developing series concerning sanctification, and shows us the soul completely delivered from the love of the world and the things that are in the world. It is that inward escape from the world's allurements, which comes from the discovery of its utter hollowness and vanity. It is the heart made "dead" to its power. Many give up the world outwardly, who yet long after it inwardly. But this man hates it. It has no longer any charms for him. In the marvelous maturing of his inward life, he has outgrown it. Its greatest gifts are but childish toys to him, and to go back to them would be for a man to return to the rattles and rings of his babyhood. This is the only true deliverance, for it weans the heart. It is the divine way of cutting the cords and breaking the bonds that chain the soul to earth, and of setting it free to soar into infinity. When we love the world, it is hard to give it up, but when it has lost its charms, it drops from our hands unheeded. And if our affections are thus weaned from earthly things, it is easy then to set them on heavenly things. Nor can a heart that has once tasted of divine joys, be ever again satisfied with the joys of earth.

This book gives us the experience of the man who has found the wisdom spoken of in the preceding book of Proverbs, and who has tried the world by this wisdom, and has proved it all to be only vanity of vanities. "I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem: and I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." i. 12-14. It is the wise man trying the world by his wisdom, for others less wise, that he "might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under heaven all the days of their life." The effect of this trial was to prove that all was "vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." And yet this man had tried the world at its brightest and best under the most favorable possible circumstances for proving its worth. "I made me great works," he says; "I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor: and this was my portion of all my labor." But at the end of it all his sentence concerning it still was: "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." ii. 1-11.

This book gives us an insight into what the world is to a really sanctified heart; and it has been placed, I believe, by our loving Father in the Bible, as a beacon-light to warn us, before we enter upon them, from the seducing temptations of the world. But for this book of experience, we might have been tempted perhaps to think that there must be some satisfying portion somewhere in earthly things, although we ourselves have never found it. But here a man speaks who had tried everything, and who is so sure he had left no earthly joy untried, that he asks confidently, "What can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done." ii. 12. No one can ever again be in circumstances more favorable for earthly happiness than was this man, and yet he says, from the stand-point of experimental knowledge, that "all is vanity." He has tried it for everyone who was to come after him, and, if we would but believe his testimony, and would renounce the world without trying it for ourselves, we would none of us need to go through the same disappointing experiment.

It may seem to some a sad thing that the world should be so unsatisfactory. But when we understand the reason of it, and the blessed result, we will surely praise the Lord with all our hearts that He has so arranged it. For He has commanded us to hate the world and to forsake it, and how could we obey Him if it was attractive and satisfying? If there should be poison in our food, would we not be thankful if it had so bitter a taste as to make it impossible for us to eat it? And, since there is a fatal poison in the world to all who love it, shall we not be thankful that the Lord has given it such a bitter taste as to make it too nauseous to be enjoyed? If we understood this, dear friends, I think we should not grieve so bitterly over the spoiling of our pleasant pictures, nor think it so mysterious that disappointments should come. For it is a grand victory not to love the world; and the soul that has gained this victory finds itself set in a large place, and cannot but be thankful for whatever disappointment may have brought it there.

And not only is the soul here set free from the seductions of outward earthly things, but even also from the more subtle snares of earthly wisdom. There are many who scorn the physical enjoyments of earth in the shape of riches or tangible pleasures, who yet take refuge in the exercise of wisdom and knowledge. But these also are here shown to be vanity and vexation of spirit. "I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," i. 16-18. "Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also as vanity," ii. 15.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SONG OF SONGS.

DIVINE UNION, OR THE LOVE OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH.

Keynote: 2 Cor. xi. 2.

THE Song of Songs is in wonderful contrast to the book of Ecclesiastes. There the world is searched for an object to satisfy the affections of the sanctified heart, but it is not found. Here the Object is revealed, and the heart has entered into the richest enjoyment of it. This little book gives us the fifth and last stage in the developing series concerning sanctification, and is the consummation of all the soul's deepest longings. It can only be understood, I believe, by those who have passed through all the preceding stages. Self must die, as in Job, and the hidden resurrection life must be known, as in Psalms divine wisdom must be submitted to, as in Proverbs; and the world must be tried by this wisdom, and found to be utter vanity, as in Ecclesiastes; before the heart is prepared for the experience set forth in this mystic song. Through emptying to fulness is always the Divine way. And the heart must have learned for itself, the hollowness of all earthly things, before it is able to receive that fulness of the love of Christ, and to realize that conscious union with Him, which are typified in this wonderful little book. The world must go out, before Christ can come in. And in Ecclesiastes, the departure of the world has prepared the way for this allegorical picture of Christ's incoming. He that drinketh of the water the world giveth, shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of this water, shall never thirst.

This Song would seem to be the Old Testament typical expression of the truth set forth in Eph. v. 2333 of the wondrous union of Christ and His Church. "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it: that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

The same figure is also used in many other places in Scripture to express this glorious oneness. The Church is called "the Bride, the Lamb's wife;" the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as the "Bridegroom;" and the moment of the final union in Heaven is called the "marriage supper of the Lamb." In answer to the question as to why His disciples did not mourn or fast, Jesus said: "Can the children of the bride-chamber mourn as long as the Bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days." Matt. ix. 15, see also Mark ii. 19, 20, and Luke v. 34, 35. John the Baptist speaks of Christ as the Bridegroom, when asked who he himself was. "Ye yourselves bear me witness," was his answer, “that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. He that hath the bride is the Bridegroom; but the friend of the Bridegroom, which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice: this, my joy, therefore, is fulfilled. John iii. 28, 29. Our Lord Himself speaks of His own return as the return of the Bridegroom, "Then" (that is in the day of His return) "shall the kingdom of Heaven be likened to ten virgins which took their lamps and went forth to meet the Bridegroom. . . . While the Bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him. . . . And while the foolish went to buy, the Bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with Him to the marriage: and the door was shut. . . . Watch, therefore for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh." Matt. xxv. 1-13. And, finally, in the Revelation of John, the voice of the great multitude is heard to say: "Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad, and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And He saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God." Rev. xix. 7, 8. Also John describes what he saw, "And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. . . . And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." Rev. xxi. 2, 9.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PROPHETS.

THE LORD'S REVELATION OF HIS PLANS TO HIS CHILDREN.

Keynote: John xv. 15.

PROPHECY is God's revelation of His secret plans and purposes. It was given not for a merely temporary use, but for all ages and all people. Paul says concerning it, “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Rom. xv.4. Prophecy it is manifest can only come from the Lord, for He alone knows the end of things from the beginning, and He only holds the threads of destiny in His hands. Therefore we are told concerning the prophets, that, “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:  but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2 Peter i. 21. Throughout the books of the prophets, consequently, we read continually, “And the Lord spake,” or, “Thus saith the Lord," or, "The Lord spake, saying; "so that of each one it is manifestly true that "the Spirit of the Lord spake by him," and "His word was in his tongue."

In giving to His people these books of prophecy, the Lord is treating them as friends, for He Himself when on earth said to His disciples "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what His Lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Abraham was called the "friend of God," and when God was about to destroy Sodom, although it was not a matter that concerned Abraham personally, He said "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do ?" And He stopped on His way to Sodom to tell His purposes to His "friend," listening with all the condescension of a real friendship to Abraham's plea for the doomed city, and even yielding everything that he asked. No sweeter picture of the reality of our position as "friends of God" could be given than this story of Abraham. And I feel that when we come to the study of these prophetical books, we should realize ourselves as being in this blessed position of personal intimacy, and should understand that our Father and our Friend is here disclosing to us His secrets. "Surely the Lord will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." Amos iii. 7.

Written prophecy began about the year 800 B. C., during the reigns of the divided kingdom when all was outward confusion and the faith of the Lord's true people needed a divine revelation to pierce the gloom that surrounded them on every hand. With the plainest declarations of His judgments on the sin that so abounded in the midst of His people, the Lord, from the first, joined the most distinct assurances of the coming of a Saviour, who should usher in a kingdom of righteousness and peace, that would finally "cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."

The Lord Jesus Christ therefore, and His salvation form the centre of all prophecy, as we read in 1 Pet. i. 10-13, "Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into." Again we read in Acts iii. 24, "Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days." Also in Acts xxvi. 22, 23, Paul declared that his preaching was but a "witnessing to both small and great," of the very things which the prophets and Moses had said should come; "that Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles."

A recent writer has said concerning these books that, "Parallel with the record of prophecy, runs a historical record of its fulfilment, up to the point when light of the gospel of Christ is shed over the world. There was a time when all that was known of God's gracious purposes was matter of prediction only; but now an important part of it has become matter of history; and the transference of events from the one record to the other is continually advancing. It is easy to see the advantage of having these records side by side. The fulfilment of any part of prophecy, besides being important in itself, gives the most confident assurance of the completion of the fulfilment. Thus if we have at first a prediction of glory as the result of suffering, the accomplishment of the predicted suffering is the surest pledge of the coming glory. . . . The great burden of prophecy is the coming of a Divine Saviour to suffer and conquer for man, and then to share the fruits of His conquest with His people. Now the first part we know is accomplished, and this stands to us the pledge of all the rest."

We are encouraged therefore by the literal fulfilment of all the details of the prophecies concerning the first coming of our Lord in humiliation, to look towards an equally literal fulfilment of the prophecies concerning His second coming in glory, and we shall find a careful study of that which is here written in reference to it, of deep interest and great practical value.

The great Prophecies and Allusions to Christ in the Old Testament, which are expressly cited, either as predictions fulfilled in Him, or applied to Him in the New Testament. From Hale's Analysis of Sacred Chronology.

FIRST SERIES:

DESCRIBING CHRIST IN HIS HUMAN NATURE, AS THE PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN, IN THE GRAND CHARTER OF OUR REDEMPTION (GEN. iii. 15); AND HIS PEDIGREE, SUFFERINGS, AND GLORY, IN HIS SUCCESSIVE MANIFESTATIONS OF HIMSELF UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD.

I. THE SEED OF THE WOMAN.--Ge. 3.15. Gal. 4.4. 1 Tim. 2.15. Rev. 12.5.

II. BORN OF A VIRGIN.--Ps. 22.10; 69.8; 86.16; 116.16. Isa. 7.14; 49.1. Mi. 5.3. Je. 31.22. Matt. 1.23. Lu. 1.26-35.

III. OF THE FAMILY OF SHEM.--Ge. 9.26.

IV. OF THE RACE OF THE HEBREWS.--Ex. 3.18. Phi. 3.5. 2 Cor. 11.22.

V. OF THE SEED OF ABRAHAM.--Ge. 12.3; 18.18; 22.18. Mat. 1.1. Jno. 8.56. Ac. 3.25.

VI. OF THE LINE OF ISAAC.--Ge. 17.19; 21.12; 26.4. Ro. 9.7. Ga. 4.23-28. He. 11.18.

VII. OF JACOB OR ISRAEL.--Ge. 28.4-14. Ex. 4.22. Nu. 24.7-17. Ps. 135.4 &c. Is. 41.8; 49.6. Je. 14.8. Lu. 1.68; 2.30. Ac. 28.20.

VIII. OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH.--Ge. 49.10. 1 Ch. 5.2. Mi. 5.2. Mat. 2.6. He. 7.14. Re. 5.5.

IX. OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID.--2 Sam 7.12-15. 1 Ch. 17.11-14. Ps. 89.4-36; 132.10-17. 2 Ch. 6.42. Is. 9.7; 11.1; 55.3, 4. Je. 23.5, 6. Am. 9.11. Mat. 1.1. Lu. 1.69; 2.4. Jno. 7.42. Ac. 2.30; 13.23. Ro. 1.3. 2 Tim. 2.8. Re. 22.16.

X. BORN AT BETHLEHEM THE CITY OF DAVID.--Mi. 5.2. Mat. 2.6. Lu. 2.4. Jno. 7.42.

XI. HIS PASSION OR SUFFERINGS.--Ge. 3.15. Ps. 22.1-18; 31.13; 89.38-45. Is. 53.1-12. Da. 9. 26. Zec. 13.6, 7. Mat. 26.31. Lu. 24.26. Jno. 1.29. Ac. 8.32-35; 26.23.

XII. HIS DEATH ON THE CROSS.--Nu. 21.9. Ps. 16.10; 22.16; 31.22; 49.15. Is. 53.8, 9. Da. 9.26. Jno. 3.14; 8.28; 12.32, 33. Mat. 20.19; 26.2. 1 Cor. 15.3. Col. 2.15. Phi. 2.8.

XIII. HIS INTOMBMENT AND EMBAL-MENT.--Is. 53.9. Mat. 26.12. Mar. 14.8. Jno. 12.7; 19.40. 1 Cor. 15.4.