243 this age is waning fast, and that at any moment He may appear. This makes me an optimist. This thrills me with hope. This makes my ministry (in ideal) vivid, and intense, and glad. Were I asked if I believe in the two sacraments of the Church I should heartily reply “ Yes.” To me they are right valuable and precious ordinances, but they are in no sense essential to salvation. He who so teaches infringes upon the gospel of the Cross and de stroys the “ freedom” with which Christ sets believers free. I have loved and now love still more to preach the glorious doctrine of C h r i s t i a n Immortality. Preaching “ Heaven” is, 1 suppose, unfashionable, but it is invaluable. The “ eternal life” begun here, but consummated yonder, is indeed a message for our age. He deprives men of a mighty force for daily living who conceals the “ bliss unending” of glorified believers. In such doctrines as I have instanced my ministry has been laid. To utter such teaching has been my obligation and my joy. I have no “ new’’ Gospel, be cause I believe there is none. All so cial and political evolutions which are good are in these doctrines, and will certainly come out of them. The Church can best achieve social and. political amelioration by preaching the gospel of the Cross. This way seems slow and tedious to some, but it is the only sure method. If my experience is vocal to any one it speaks of evangelical doctrine as vital and satisfying to man’s deep and varied needs. I know that a loveless evangel icalism is repellent, and it ought to be. But true evangelical faith worketh by love. “ The morality of the Cross is as sublime as its theology.” When we be lieve in the Crucified, Risen, Enthroned. Interceding, Returning Saviour, it makes our lives sublime. Love is the fulfilling of all Bible Law. If our love fails, then our faith has failed. A re-
THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NE S S a full outline of my doctrinal belief and preaching and teaching. I am hut re calling what I deem to be the central and fundamental elements. I believe and teach much which .1 do not deem it necessary to delineate here. I. sim ply seek to indicate where my minis terial emphasis has been laid. In closing this chapter concerning a working creed, I desire to say that cer tain doctrinal aspects of Christianity, in addition to those I have cited, have grown weightier and weightier to me. The doom of the finally unbelieving has appeared to me, all too slightly, but with accumulating urgency in all its infinite pathos and tragedy. I do not place it among the essentials of the Faith but it looms upon me with dire ful magnitude. “The wrath to come” is a grim reality in Scripture. On any theory of it what an awful doom it is! I have sought and seek now more than ever to warn men of it and to urge them because of it to accept the message of the Cross. I find it gives an edge and an urgency and a tenderness to one’s ministry without which a ministry ia mockery indeed. Premillemual Hope The second Advent of our Lord and Saviour has been a dear and delightful doctrine to mo through the greater part of my ministry. I regard it as the very soul of New Testament teaching, and of the Old Testament, too. I also regard It as an essential part of the Christian Gospel. I hold strongly that our Lord’s return is to be personal, phy sical, visible. If I am-charged with a “ spectacular” idea of His Coming again, I shall not shrink from the charge. That His Coming will be pre-millennial 1 heartily believe, and that it will be pre ceded by the “ rapture” of Christian believers, I also heartily believe. My hope of the world’s salvation lies not in any gradual evangelization of the world, but in the personal Return of our dear Lord and Saviour. I believe
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