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The Fundamentals ten Son; and His love is correspondingly shown in the proffer of all the benefits of that vicarious suffering to every one on the sole condition of faith. It pleased God to vindicate His supreme majesty before His ancient people in the controversy on Carmel. All day the pagan priests assembled at their altar cried, “O Baal, hear us” : but there was no voice nor any that regarded. At evening the lone prophet of Jehovah stood beside his altar and calmly made his prayer, “O God of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God!” Was there any that regarded? Lo, yonder in the twilight sky a falling fleece of fire! In awe-struck silence the people saw it descending, lower and lower, until it touched the sacrifice and consumed it. The logic of the argu ment was irresistible: they cried with one accord, “Jehovah is the God!” The antitype and parallel of that great controversy is at Calvary, where Christ, at once the ministering priest and the sacrifice upon the altar, made His last prayer with hands out stretched upon the cross; and the descending fire consumed Him as a whole burnt offering for the world’s sin. The logic, here also, is unanswerable. In all the world there is no other gospel which adequately sets forth the Divine love. By the power of truth, by the triumph of righteousness, by the logic of events, by the philosophy of history, by the blood of the atonement, let the world answer, “Our God is the God of salvation; and there is none other beside H im!” The failure of other religions and philosophies has been grotesquely pathetic. The irony of Elijah on Carmel is merely an echo of the Divine burst of laughter out of heaven in response to those who cry: “Let us break His band asunder and cast away His cords from us m He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. The pantheons crumble and the priests die; one altar remains, to wit, the cross on Calvary. I t is the sole altar and supreme argument of the true God.
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