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THE K I N G ’ S BUSINESS reason why I should forsake him now,” “ It is well with the righteous.” Or hear Rutherford in Edinburgh, “ Daugh ters, I think I am going to leave you. I cannot see, and I feel so strangely. Get the Book. Put my fingers on the verse in Romans 8 that says, ‘I am persuaded that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God,’ put my fingers on that verse,” and they said, “ Father, you are touching it,” and he answered, “ Good-bye, daugh ters, I breakfasted with you this morn ing, I shall sup with my Lord Christ tonight,” “ It is well with the right eous.” Come to my study on the hillcrest beyond, and let me show you a cane and a Greek testament given me by one of the best men I ever knew in my life, who was dead half an hour after he gave me the stick and the book; but who looking at the sun set ting over the Pacific, said in his quaint old time way, “ Elder, when it comes up in the morning I shall be seeing the King." “ It is well with the right eous.” And I will stop and think of my father singing the last night I ever heard his voice, as the moonlight slanted over his mane of white hair, while he sang. “ Oh that home of the soul, in my • visions and dreams, Its bright jasper walls I can see, Till I fancy but thinly the veil inter venes Between the fair city and me,” “ It is well with the righteous.” Or I will pause again and you think of your mother. She had weathered many a storm with Jesus; she had been in many a bit of lonely road with Jesus; but man, woman, God grant you to get to the heaven that holds your mother; “ It is well with the righteous.” Or let me sharpen this by a contrast.
A minute ago you saw Saul of the Old Testament dying a suicide. Less than a minute ago I showed you Saul of the New Testament, exultingly, tri umphantly, rejoicingly facing death. “ It is well with the righteous.” Or again, Jezebel in the Old Testament is flung from a window and the dogs lick up her blood. And Mary of the New.Testament is honored the whole world over, and has the unique distinc tion of being the mother of Jesus, “ It is well with the righteous.” Or yet again, there lies Judas, and the loathe- some spot where he burst asunder shall be called Aceldema, place of blood. And there is John, who writes, “ I saw the new heaven and the new earth; I saw its citizens and they hunger no more, nor thirst; and there is no more sickness, nor pain, nor sorrow, nor cry ing, nor death; and God shall wipe away-all tears from their eyes;” “ It is well with the righteous.” Do you hear the ChoTus? God says, “ It is well with the righteous;” and beginning with Abel, and coming all down the weary centuries till it gets so near to us as my father is to me, and your mother to you, and all these voices say, “ God was right and not wrong; truthful and not lying, when He said, ‘It is well with the right eous.’ ” And where do I stand as this study nears it close? “ Ill with the wicked.” Who are the wicked? “Hear O heav ens, and give ear O earth, I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me.” Ah that sounds like Eve’s scream as she leaves Eden; or the shriek of those dying folk of the flood; or those doomed ones of Egypt. For we are wicked. But how did anybody ever get righteous? “ For there is none that doeth good, no not one, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and there is no difference. I am quoting the Bible. Then how :does there come to be any distinction be-
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