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THE KING’S BUSINESS
was involved the life of the only sinless man who ever lived. • What a revelation of the depths of devilish human nature under the guise of serving God! The highest offi cial of the chosen people of God descended to the coarse level of hypocrisy, cruelty and injustice against the One man of whom the world has testified. “This man hath done nothing amiss.” Look at the contrast. The spotless Son of God, accused of sin, God the Son, charged with blasphemy. He who was the life of men sentenced to death. Man’s great High Priest, committed to death by a Jewish high priest. The Creator of the world spit upon by His creatures. Lesson VI.—November 8,1914. G olden T ext : Whatsoever a man someth, that shall he also reap. —Gal. 6 :7. There are three ways in which men are constantly sowing. They- sow by their thoughts, by their words and by their deeds. The harvest corresponds to the sowing. Evil thoughts, bitter words, selfish deeds will bring a harvest of sorrow and remorse. Kindly thoughts, loving words and unselfish deeds will produce a harvest of happiness. Fleshly sowing breeds corruption. The Spirit sowing brings a rich reward. “Men may wrong each other but they cannot cheat God. To expect God to sow His bounties upon them, and not to let Him reap their gratitude and service is mockery. But it is not God they deceive. They de ceive themselves. For at last everyone shall reap as he sows. The use made of our seed-time determines exactly and with a moral certainty even greater than that which rules in the natural field what kind of fruit age our immortality will render. Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummate outcome of the good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe, rotten ripe. Heaven is the fruitage, of righteousness. ‘He that soweth to his own flesh reaps corrup tion’—the moral decay and dissolution of the man’s being. This is the natural retrib utive effect of his carnality. The selfish Concluded on page 537.
sacred office, sitting at the Lord’s tab le - may be found betraying their Lord? To what depths can the-heart of man de scend? Surely, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked; who can know it? In Judas we have suggested the awful possi bilities of apostitcy. Lesson V.—November 1, 1914. G olden T ext : A s a lamb is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Isaiah 53:7. The golden text gives us a full sized por trait of the Son of God. The disciples had all forsaken Him and fled. They laid hands upon Him, bound Him and led Him away., What a fulfillment of the prophecy! “My kinsfolk have failed me and my familiar friends have forgotten me.”—Job 19:14. Where now is the multitude whom He had fed? Where are the sick whom He had healed? Where the distressed He had delivered? Where are the disciples whom He had loved and to whom He had minis tered? Where the eleven apostles whom He had chosen? Where is Peter, who had sworn he would stand by Him, and where is John, the beloved, who had reclined upon His 'bosom? Where is the throng which had hailed Him with hozannas and crowned Him as their Messiah? See the Divine Man with hands bound behind Him, head bowed, surrounded by a mob, as He passes through the sheep gate where the animals designed for slaughter were led and the words of Isaiah are fulfilled. “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” To the crafty High Priest, as to Pilate, “He answered him never a word,” fulfilling the prophecy, “He was oppressed, He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth.” He was reviled, yet He reviled not again. He suffered, yet He threatened not. He committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. He was in the hands of His Father and He held His peace. What a travesty upon religion! What a burlesque on a court of inquiry in which
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