THE KING’S BUSINESS
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broken. Abraham watched the meat and kept the birds away until sundown and then fell into a deep sleep and saw God walking through the sacrifice as a smoking furnace and a burning light. Jesus is the sacrifice and God bids us walk through with Him. This testifies that God is satisfied with the sacrifice and we are satisfied and thus made one in this covenant of blood. The covenant of blood given us in Ex. 12 is a splendid illustration of this lesson. The blood on the door posts assured those within the house a safe and blessed fellowL ship. Mr. Spurgeon, the great London preacher, used to tell an imaginary story of a little girl who went to bed on Passover night in Egypt, and said to her father, “Papa is the blood on the door post? You know I am the oldest child and the death angel is coming in judgment tonight.” “Yes, dear, go to sleep, the covenant of blood is there.” About 11:30 she awoke and asked her father again if the blood was on the door post, and insisted that her father go and see. To pacify the child he went and looked, but to his amazement, there was no blood. The servant had forgotten to carry out his command. Quickly he called the servant and the lamb was slain and the blood sprinkled on the door just five minutes 'before midnight. The little girl was safe under the covenant of „blood. is better to recognize the sleeping snakes, the possibility of evil in our nature and to take to Him our ignorance and self-trust, than to boast, “Though all should be offended, yet will not I.” “Hold thou me up and I shall be safe.”—Maclaren. They are to be commended that they were more jealous of themselves than of one another. —Henry. There is safety in asking Him, “Is it I ?” The lowly sense of our liability to fall, if it drives us closer to Him, will make it certain that we shall not fall.—Sel. v, 21. Woe to that man. God’s decrees respecting the Son of Man did not compel
brothers'in Christ, but could not speak to each other. They pointed to their Bibles, ishook hands, and smiled in each other’s faces, but that was all. At last a happy thought struck the Hindoo. With sudden joy, he exclaimed, “Hallelujah!” The New Zealander in delighf cried out “Amen!” Those two words not found in their own heathen tongues, were to them the begin ning of “One language and one speech.” A chaplain who was going over the bat tle front, in the civil war, saw a soldier sorely wounded and asked if he might read and pray with him. The soldier replied, “I am so thirsty.” Quickly the chaplain brought a drink, as he drank he said, “I am so cold.” The chaplain took off his outer coat and wrapped it round him. “Oh, if I had something under my head,” cried the wounded one. Off came the chaplain’s under coat and under the head it was gently put. Then the soldier looked up with tenderness and said, “If there is anything in that book that makes a man do what you’ve done for me, let me have it.” If there is anything in the New Covenant that makes us live for others, as Jesus lived and died for us, we want it. Abraham was told in Gen. 15, to kill a sacrifice and part it and lay it in rows and God would pass through it with him. This was the ancient way of making a cov enant, a covenant that never could be O NE who eateth with me (v. 18). To orientals, this was an additional hor ror, for hostile action against a man was absolutely precluded by eating bread with him, Psa. 41:10.—Plummer. Hypocrites, though they know it is at their peril, yet crowd into special ordinances to keep up their repute and palliate their secret wick edness.—Henry. Evidently Judas had escaped suspicion \ no one at once thinks of him.—Camb. Bible. v. 19. Is it I f They thought it impos sible, as they felt the throbbing of their own hearts—and yet—might it not be? It
COMMENTS FROM SUNDRY SOURCES By K. L. Brooks.
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