THE K I N G ’ S BU S I NE S S
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cries, “We jrill not have this Man to save us." I charge you, renounce it as the foe of God and man. This proud system is a sin of deepest dye against, the Well- Beloved. To say that Christ came to earth for nothing is bad enough; but that He became obedient to the death of the cross without result is profanity at its worst. What I say of myself I know that each one of you will say for himself. Your alms-givings, your prayers, your tears, your suffering persecution, your earnest work in the Sunday-school or elsewhere — do you ever think of putting these side by side with the blood of Christ as your hope? No, you never dream of it; I am sure you never do, and the men tion of it is utterly loathsome to you: is it not? Grace, grace, grace is your sole hope. The true believer trusts in the death of Christ; he puts his sole and entire reliance upon the great Substitute who loved and lived and died for him. He does not dare to associate with the bleeding sacrifice his poor bleeding heart, or his prayers, or his sanctifica tion, or anything else. “ None but Christ, none but Christ” is his soul’s cry. “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” “ By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift, of God, not of works lest any man should boast.”— Spurgeon. GENESIS AND SCIENCE The first chapter of the Bible gives •us the history of the vast creation process. It is revealed in a form at once simple and profound. Its simplic ity lies chiefly in its pictorialness. Its profundity emerges from the startling agreement between its statements and all that six thousand years of human toil has been able to discover from the
investigation of Nature. With this lat ter quality of the narrative I am not now concerned. The Bible cosmogony needs no apology. It is its own best defense. And we humble and non-spe cialist Christians need have no fear that our dear Bible is disqualified by reason of any strata of speculation lying deep down at its foundation. The foun dation is of God, as all the building is, and standeth sure. The first chap ter of Genesis is a rational cosmology, not a fanciful mythology. It is a strong framework into which busy wide-eyed science has with infinite pains and many mistakes fitted bit by bit the close-locked details of the puzzle; so often ignorant that the frame was meant for her jig-saw at all.— J. Russell How- den. Mk THE BIBLE KEY Christianity at once gives notice unto men that unless their eyes be anointed they cannot see its truth, unless their ears be circumcised they cannot hear its truth, unless their hearts be humbled they cannot appropriate its truth, un less the will be surrendered they can not continue in its truth. Christians therefore can indeed belong to the mul titude and be with the myriads that follow the Master because of His mighty works, or even the loaves and the fishes. But to be His disciples, His learners, re ceiving from Him not the things which He dispenseth to all freely as He goeth about, but to the fewer as He sitteth down-—they must follow Him up to the mount, even at the expense of some weariness of the flesh. ¿Me. UNBELIEVING PREACHERS For a long time I could not believe that preachers of the Gospel could themselves be unbelievers until I ob served thht the spoon can convey the soup it cannot taste.— Panin.
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