ing to my soul, especially in times of sore affliction and discouragement. It has uprooted selfish ambition and a de- sire for human applause, and caused me to aim at least in bearing true tes- timony for our now rejected Lord, with a longing to be well pleasing to Him at His coming. Especially does that "blessed hope" throw a gleam of glory upon the graves of our beloved dead. It frets me no longer because many of my dear brethren can not see this pre- cious truth, which shines like the sun at noonday from the Word of God, and which is a veritable key to unlock the meaning of the Scriptures. John the Baptist was a faithful witness when he said, " A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven," John 3:27. God forbid that a poor sinner should judge them, for to their own Master they stand or fall.—The late Rev. James H. Brooks, D. D. the Laymen s Message dawn of the Lutheran reformation, which helped to put the Biblein to the hands of the common people, to teach them the doctrine of justification by faith, and to lead the church back to the place where every disciple went forth to witness for Christ because he was a disciple. In the tenth of Romans we see what God's true apostolic suc- cession is. I feel, as Hudson Taylor used to say, that I would rather be in the succession of the Samaritan woman who, while the disciples went to the city to buy feed, in her zeal for souls forgot her waterpot. She came to the well a sinner and a stranger to Christ; she found Messiah at the well, and she forgot her errand to fetch water, and went back into the city, and said to the men, ' ' Come and see a man that told me all things ever I did,''' and she brought the men of that city to Christ. And I do not read that she was ever ordained by a Presbytery or associa- tion conference. She reminds me of Miss Field in Burmah, who went out and told the Gospel story to those who had never heard it. They asked her, ' ' Have you ever been ordained to preach the gospel?" " N o , " she an- swered, " b u t I was foreordained to preach the gospel." We shall never win this world for Christ until disci- ples, as a whole, again take up the
of Judea. Second, things shall not al- ways remain as they are now, but " n a- tion shall not lift up sword against na- tion, neither shall they learn war any more," Isaiah 2:4. " The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the k i d ," Isaiah 5:6. " The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick; the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity," Isaiah 33:24. " T he earth shall be filled with the knowledbe of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea," Hab. 2:14. Third, this glorious change shall not precede, but succeed, that personal coming. This was many years ago, and the conclusions then reached have been deepened by every day's study of the Word of God, and the actual condition then and now of the church and the world. It has made me a lonely man, but it has been an unspeakoble bless- Essential Elements in By the Rev. A. T. Pierson, D. D. " F i r st of all, the distinction between 'clergy and laity' is an invention of the devil. There is no foundation for it in the New Testament, and the erection of an artificial and arbitrary barrier between disciples in the matter of testimony to the gospel and personal work for souls, was one of the most magnificent triumphs of Satanic subt- lety and strategy known in history. In the Book of the Acts we find all be- lievers witnessing for Christ and work- ing for souls. We read that, after the persecution which arose concerning Stephen, the church was " a ll scat- tered abro'ad except the apostles," and " t h ey that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the wo r d "; the fact that the apostles remained at Jeru- salem is specially noted to show that those who were preaching the word were ordinary disciples. And there is not throughout this first volume of church history—the Acts of the Apos- tles—-the slightest sign of any artifi- cial discrimination between disciples; they were All Busy With the Work of God. But when, under Constantino, who professed to be converted, the church was turned into a hierarchy, with arti- ficial grades and ranks, the dark ages began and never ceased until the new
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