■^ ^Vv^,, V, >,-X "■~ - ""j.^^ ';;^ ^XV*^- '"''^^'''v^/-^r-'i^.<..^/ ." r \ "f V^C V V A A <' .- ^ •' ' l^0^?^^42^$l^l;l;i[ PRINCETON, N. J. '^'' t- SAei/. Division . . . rfrrf.yrf. . . i Section Number GOD'S TIMEPIECE FOR MAN'S ETERNITY. ITS PURPOSE OF LOVE AND MERCY ; ITS PLENARY INFALLIBLE INSPIRATION ; AND ITS PERSONAL EXPERIMENT OF FORGIVENESS AND ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST. BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D., AUTHOR OF" LECTURES ON THE PILGRliM'S PROGRESS"; "THE RIVER OF THB WATER OF life"; "a PILGRLM IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC "; " VOICES OF NATURETO THESOUL"; " VOYAGE TOTHE CELESTIAL country"; ''lectures on cowper"; "powers of the WORLD TO come"; ''faith, doubt and evidence," etc. NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway. 1883. Copyright, 1883, By a. C. ARMSTRONG & SON. PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE t CO., NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW VOHIC, V PREFACE. From Alpha to Omega, The Volume of the Book WRITTEN OF Me, IS One and Eternal; perfect, infalli- ble, indivisible, even as Christ is one and the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever. In its purpose of Love and Mercy, its absolute plenary inspiration, its all-sufficiency in Time, its ceaseless accum- ulation and progress of spiritual Light and Life through Eternity, it is " tlie Laiu of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesits." As God's infallible Word in Christ, it is man's only possible law of lib- erty; THE Spirit and the Word; whatsoever the Spirit saith unto the churches. Being God's Law in Christ, it is our Life and blessedness; the Book of God's absolute Prepossession in us from the CRADLE TO THE GRAVE. In itsclf are our appointed tests of its infallible unalterable inspiration and certainty, incapable of diminution or addition ; the iv Preface. inspiration and its tests wholly at our own pleas- ure and power, by our daily experimental use of it, watching not only at the posts of its doors, but with- in its Holy of Holies; and 'praying in the Holy Ghost for its demonstration in our own soul's experience, and for its fruit in our daily life, by the faith it in- spires and produces, working by love, purifying the heart, overcoming the world. All this, God's Timepiece, our Bible; with its place and guidance in the soul of Man; God's indwelling telephone of word, thought and impulse; every ray of light, God's voice, God's electric touch, quickening every instant for Eternity ; as a perfect watch in the bosom directs a man by its ticking, through the minutes and hours of each single day. He minds his watch every day, and winds it iip, and cannot carry on his business without it. Let him keep God's Timepiece in his heart, as he does his watch in his pocket, and it will carry him and his business for eternity, without need of any other guidance. God in Christ lives and breathes in it, and in the soul that hides it. It is perpetual mo- tion and Eternal Life. "Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee." It is, within and without, a union of Chronometer and Compass; and the Micrometer-Screw besides, Preface. v measuring the vastest and compressing into action the minutest spaces and motions of time, thought, and character. Take care of the minutes, and the hows will take care of themselves. Words are to Scripture and its texts, what moments are to Time and its seasons. If a single second were wanting, or too much, in the mechanism and motions of the Universe, it would, ere long, become a chaos. And so with the language of a Divine Inspiration. The seconds govern the minutes, the minutes the hours, the hours the days; and so on, through the whole round of weeks, months, seasons, years; and so, with the same accuracy, must the words and sen- tences of God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity be constructed for the expression and interpretation of God's will, God's thoughts. It cannot be supposed that God would leave His attributes at the mercy of human beings, to be de- scribed m language or style of their own choice or invention. What are His thoughts, and what reve- lations of them men need, God must teach His ser- vants a language to express, without mistake, with the right words in their right places. Therefore Tcada ypacpr] BsoTtvsvdro^, All Scripture is inspired of God. is God-breathed, for Man's Eternal Salvation, vi Preface. and is infallible through Jesus Christ. This is the argument and intent of the present volume, for which we earnestly desire a patient consideration, and upon which we humbly implore the divine blessing. CONTENTS. Inteoduction. The Divine Eevelation is of Certainties, not Obscurities— The Unknown must be studied by the Known —The Uncertainties of any Law-book, its condemnation— An uncertain Law, a Trap' for Ruin— All the Laws of God the Result of Lifiuite Love— Only one Code of Laws ever revealed by the Almighty xvii I— II. Christ's divine personality the light and life op THE whole bible. Christ the central Light, Life, and Proof of the whole Bible, de- pendent throughout on His divine Personality— The whole written of Him, and for Him, that in Him we may have Eternal Life— The Scriptures therefore of God manifest in the Flesh, the great Mystery of Godliness . 1 The Things revealed are ours fobever— Everything dependent on the disclosure of God's Attributes, and of our own Char- acter and Responsibility before Him— All Things concerning God, Christ, and the Soul's Eternal Life or Death foreshown in the Writings of Moses, and graduallydemonstrated through the whole Scriptures of God by the Witness of the Spirit— The Bible our infallible Chronometer and Compass, for Time and Eternity, that we may keep all the Words of this Law —The Key-words for the Boxing of this Compass 7 III— IV. infallible authority of the Pentateuch: its language AND books a five-fold KEY TO THE SUCCESSIVE SCRIPTURES. The Pentateuch our only Divine infallible Authority, for all our Knowledge of Creation and Redemption —The seeming Con- tradictions, and the Means of understanding them, from Eternity to Eternity, in God's Light 15 via Contents. The gradual self-interpreting and accumulating Power of Reve- lation, from the Old Testament to the New — The Eternal Spiritual Meanings and Teachings of the Words for Life, Death, Hell, and the Grave, Expiation, Atonement, Sin, Sacrifice, Holiness, Bedemption, and the eternal Judgment of Men according to their Ghai'acter in this World 20 Y,— VI. THE WHOLE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS TEACHINGS DBAMA- TIZED BY CHRIST, AND INTERPRETED. Stalactites of Homer's Genius in the Caves of Pluto — The Power of a classical Paganism — The Light of David's Psalms — Power of internal Evidence— The great shining Passages of the Old Testament dramatized by Christ 36 Truths for Eternity as well known by Inference as by Miracles — Christ's own Method of Reasoning good enough for us — The necessary absolute Certainty of God's Words for an abiding Faith in Him 41 VII,— YIII. THE SILENCE OF GOD, ITSELF A DIVINE REVELATION. Teachings by the Silence of God — A dividing firmament in the Scriptures between half-truths and whole, and between False- hood and divine Truth — Immortalilj' of the Soul, and a Be- lief in the future Life and Betribution, known in ancient Egypt amidst Darkness, but revealed to the Hebrews, in a pure and holy Light — Reasons for the Beserve of divine Bevelation — God would not sanction the Traditions of Men, nor of a darkened or defiled Conscience 44 The assured gracious Presence of the Holy Spirit with the Word — Demonstrations in the Fifth Chapter of John's Gospel — Object and Evidence of Miracles — Personal Experiments re- quisite for all spiritual Proof .• 51 IX,— X. DEMONSTRATIONS IN THE MACHINERY AND REASON OP A WATCH. Consequent Infallibility and Independence of the Word above all human Testimony— Illustrations from the Machinery of the Watch — The Ai'gnment from Chance and Atheism; the Argument from God to Man ; the Answer from Man to God . 60 Contents. ix Christ's testimony covers all the Scriptures— Man's infallible personal Experiment is in Prayer — Consequences of Pro- testing God's Drafts from Time to Eternity 77 XI— XII. NAPOLEON S THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRIST AND HIS ElIPIRE OF INFINITE LOVE. Thoughts of Napoleon and Kousseau concerning Christ — Christ the God-Man, and His spiritual Kingdom au Empire of Lovo in the Soul and for Eternity — Forgiveness of Sins and the Power of Miracles in Christ, the Demonstration of God man- ifest in the Flesh 84 This Manifestation progressive, both in the Human and Divine; in the Claim and Demonstration of Divine Attributes; in the equal Demonstration of human Guilt, sinful Habit, and De- spair, unless, forgiven and regenerated — Blasphemy of the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, assuming the holy Infal- libility, Omniscience, and forgiving Power of the Son of God 89 XIII— XIY. CHRIST OUR LIFE. DEATH SW.ALLOWED UP EST VICTORY BY HIS DEATH FOR US. Christ alone our Eternal Life, dwelling in our Hearts by Faith — Our Lawgiver and King, Creator, Judge, Advocate, and for- giving Saviour, all in One — The successive Terraces of these demonstrated Glories in the Prophecies of Isaiah 97 Intuitions of the People and Teachings of the Law of God com- bining with the Light of divine Projihecy— Death swallowed up in Victory by our forgiving Lord and God — Forgiveness the most absolute Proof of Deity, and the greatest Obligation of Gratitude from Man to his Redeemer— If Mankind were not lost, no need of ever being found — But no Fear of God, if no Hope of Salvation 102 XY— XYI. Christ's army of the witnesses and teachers from PROPHECY to its FULFILMENT. Foreshadowing of the Appearance of Christ in the World — These Realities of Experience and Warning, the Grounds of His X Contends. Appeal to Marikind— The great disciplinary Instruction and Experience, arising from the Knowledge of an Existence and Eesponsibility beyond the Grave — Presumption and Despair the two Extremes of Temptation and Guilt, to be provided against — Who shall lead Christ's Army of Witnesses? David and Paul 113 Treatment of the Claims of Christ by the Jews — Their Posses- sion already of the Power and the Rules of correct Reason- ing fi'om their own JScriptures, acknowledged as God's Word — Forgiveness of Sin impossible but by God only — The As- sumption of its Power by Man a Blasphemy against God and tbr- divine Spirit — Any Experiment beyond this Life impos- sible, and this Men know beforehand 122 XYII— XVIII. FORGIVENESS BY CHRIST THE ALL-CONTROLLING EVIDENCE. Character of Christ, and Experience of spiritual Healing and Forgiveness by Him, the central, all-controlling Evidence of Christianity — The Combinations of Promises and Warnings; co-extensive with Eternity — God's alarm-bells of Death, and Jubilee Chimes of Salvation 130 A spiritual and Eternal Kingdom of Grace and Glory demon- strated — AH Nations are to call Him blessed, and the whole Earth to be filled with His Glory — The demonstration of Infinite Love is that also of Infinite Blessedness and Power in Heaven and on Earth, from Everlasting to Everlasting 136 XIX,— XX. Christ's use of the scriptures the rule of all true criticism, and theology. The Temptation of the Son of God in the Wilderness, the first explanatory Narrative in the Gospels — Its Connection with the Transfiguration and the Walk to Emmaus — The divine Necessity for Christ, It is Written 142 Position of Satan, as the Tempter, Accuser, and Enemy of Man- kind — Position of the Son of God, and the Difierence between the Methods of Satan and those of Modern Infidelity — The Power of a " Thus saith the Lord." 152 Contents. xi XXI— XXII. CHAKACTEEISTICS OF DIVINE INSPIRATION SETTLED BY CHRIST. Characteristics and Limitations of Divine Inspiration, settled by Christ — Its Definitions and Possessions from Genesis to the Apocalypse — Amount of Christ's Testimony on the lowest Computation — Steps in the Histoiy of the Tempta- tion — Final Demonstration wrought out by that 161 Demonstration from the Temptation completed by Gethsemane and the Death of the Cross — The Limitations of Christ's Omnipotence by the Absoluteness of His whole divine and human Nature — His own Work, as appointed by God's "Word — The Blessedness of the Apostolic Participation in His Sufferings — Suffering with Him, to be also glorified to- gether ■. 169 XXIII— XXIV. THE RESURRECTION AND WALK TO EMMATJS. Argument of the Narrative of the Resurrection: 1. Of Certainty; 2. Variety; 3. Cougruity; 4. Forgiveness and Assured Sal- vation, as in Paul's Testimony in 1 Cor. xv. — It is weitten can-ies this Triumph through Eternity 178 The Walk to Emmaus, and its Key to the whole Body of the Scriptures 184 XXV,— XXVI. THE DESPAIR AND RESTORATION OF THE DISCIPLES. Temporary Despair of the Disciples an inevitable first Eesult of our Lord's Death upon the Cross — The divine Presence and Prayer alone prevented its Continuance — The Intercessions and the Spirit of Christ enlightened and preserved their Souls 197 The whole divine Preparation completed for the Apostles' Preaching and Teaching concerning Christ out of the Scrip- tures — Then the Propylteum built by Christ for the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles Accompanying and Follow- ing — The absorbing and triumphant Power of Faith and Love and Apostolic Zeal and Faithfulness 204 xii Contents. XXVII, -XXYIII. Christ's ministry of suffering love. Power of the great Personal Revelation after this Survey — The divine Preparations for it — The infinite Privilege and Happi- ness of the Ministry of suffering Love 219 God's Method of Demonstration, personal, experimental, soul- renewing, beatifying, transfiguring, and consonant with our Nature; destined in Christ to be the Witness of His Infinite Love, Power, and Glory^Vastuess of our Lord's Exposition of the Scriptures 225 XXIX— XXX. VASTNESS OF CHRISt's EXPOSITION OF THE SCRIPTURES. NO ANCHORAGE IN UNCERTAINTIES. "In all the Scriptures the Things concerning Himself" — The Sweep and Thoroughness of this Proposition — Christ demon- strated it while Himself on Earth — No Attempts at the Break- ing of His Will, no Case left for Chancei-y, or conflicting Can- ons of Councils — The whole known Volume of the Bible, and its Documents, God's Vouchers, and His alone 231. Sufficiency of our Evidence— No Anchorage in Uncertainties, for Eternity — God's Mercy not hidden in Obscurities, but He sets His Bow in the Clouds — The very Proverbs of this World are Prophecies of the next 237 XXXI— XXXII. LANGUAGE AND LAWS OF FAITH AND EXPERIENCE. Questions and Conclusions of Experimentalists — "But they don't come back to teU." — John Foster and S. T. Coleridge — No Uncertainties in the Gospel, but only immutable Things, in which it was impossible for God to lie — Testi- mony of John and Paul 241 Promulgation of Law in Nature— Language and Laws of Faith — The Experiment of Time one and final; the Invitation and Acceptance of Divine Grace; the Death of Death and Hell's Destruction through Christ; and the Beginning of the Life Eternal in Him 246 Contents. xiii XXXIII— XXXIV. A PLENARY INSPIRATION NECESSARY FOR THE REVELATION OF SIN AND ITS ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES. The Kevelation of Sin and its conseqiiences, considered as a cen- tral Proof of the plenary verbal Inspii-ation of the Scrip- tures 253 The infallible Inspiration demonstrated by the Nature of the Truths revealed; and by the Saviour's Words; and by the Consequences of idle Words 258 XXXY— XXXYI. CHRIST THE "LORD OF THE SABBATH. THE NAZARENE CRITICS OF HIS FIRST SERMON. The Law of the Sabbath, with our Lord's Dominion over it, Himself its Soul, and the Gospel to the Poor forever in it, demonstrate a verbal Inspiration — Christ's first Sermon in Nazareth 266 Qualifications of the Nazarenes as the highest literary Crit- ics 277 XXXVII— XXXVIII. HUMILITY BEFORE GOD, THE PERFECTION OF REASON. A plenary verbal Inspiration necessary to sustain the Appeals of Christ to the Old Testament and Moses 2S7 Eeferences to Reason and Conscience in the Sight of God — Hu- mility before God the only Security of Reason in the Ex- amination of God's Word— God the Teacher, Reason the Learner— The Prayers of Bacon, the Experience of Cole- ridge— Lightfoot on the Source of Luke's Gospel by direct Inspiration — Men casting Anchor out of the Stern, and wish- ing for the Day, meanwhile Dragging and Drifting 295 XXXIX— XL. NOT YE THAT SPEAK, BUT THE SPIRIT OF YOUR FATHER IN YOU. Arguments of Ullmann, Tholuck, Luther, and Bengel, on the Use and Province of Reason, and the Necessity of a verbal xiv Contents. Inspiration — In what Sense is the Bible breathed forth from God ? — Argument of Alexander on Isaiah 307 Demonstration from the closing Chaptei's of Luke's Gospel — Cei'- tainty of the Old Testament Canon— The Septuagint Trans- lation — Philo and Josephus — Eichhorn's Historic Investi- gation — Christ's Verification and Use of the Old Testament Scriptures — "Not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost" — Nei- ther extemjjore SiDcakiug nor Writing, in Christ's inspired Messengers 314 XLI,— XLII. PROF. HTJXLEy's argument, HOW MUCH MAY HANG UPON A WORD. Argument from the Importance of Particles — Justification of God and Man bj' Words — Paul's Argument of the Kes- urrection 324 Prof. Huxley on the Epiglottis, and what constitutes Man — The Argument of Evolution applied to the Inspiration of Words — No such Thing as accidental or extempore Speaking . . 330 XLIII— XLIV. THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH WILL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH. NOT DOUBTS, NOR OBSCURITIES, BUT CERTAINTIES. Exactness of divine Information concerning Spiritual law — "If it were not so, I would have told you " — Regeneration, the greatest of Miracles, dependent on Words — Lord Bohng- broke on "Calvin's Institutes." 337 Verbal Inspiration and particular Providence — The Habit of Conjectures a Habit of Scepticism — Evil of turning Ob- scurities into Enemies, for Satan's Work — Anecdote from Dr. Witherspoon— An infallible divine Inspiration neces- sary for any right Beasoning ... 343 XLV— XLVI. PROGRESSIVE ILLUMINATIONS BY WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH UNTO THE CHURCHES. PRECIOUSNESS OF A CHILDLIKE FAITH. Half Truths whole Errors— Absolute Safety only in the divine Record — Plato's Cave, and the poet Goethe in the Dungeon — Divine Certainty in all that the Spirit saith unto the Contents. xv Churclies— Necessity of a Fog-horn for mere human Lan- guage — Paul Speaking with Tongues, and Praying for the Power of Interpretation— What Men owe to God, a be- lieving Heart — What God owes to Men, infallible divine Truth 356 Progressive Illuminations in God's Kingdoms of Nature and Grace — The Combinations of incalculable Minuteness and Grandeur in Word and Works —Illustrations from polanzed Light and the Connections of the Physical Sciences — Nec- essary to Truth, a single Eye, a Child-like faith, a trans- parent spiritual Atmosjihere, and God in Christ shining through it — The Climate of the Soul — Science itself dem- onstrates a verbal divine Inspiration 367 XLVII— XLYIII. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT, THE HIGHEST HEAVEN OF SCIENCE. Various Ways of spoiling and despoiling Preachers by Philoso- phy and vain deceit— The Bondage of Tradition and Doubt- Suspicion and Tickets of Leave — Archbishop Usher on the Witness of the Spirit 380 The Forgery of a spiritual Work impossible, the very ideas of Spirit and Foresight being unknown — Its Fulfilment and Proof as impossible as a Demonstration of Non-existence from Eternity — All scientific Truth the Servant of Christ, and Christianity the highest Heaven of Science 392 XLIX— L. ALL god's WORDS CREATIVE FOR CHRISt's REDEEMING WORK. The Vesture dipped in Blood — The final Argument and its Per- fection—Vision and Inspiration of the Word of the Lord to Ezekiel — The Divine-human and Human-divine, indis- putable 399 The New-creating Life of divine Inspiration as Inhering in the incarnate Personality of Christ the Saviour— God's Words, Old and New Testament, creative Pencils of Light, em- ployed by the Holy Spirit for Christ's redeeming Work. 404 xvi Co7ttents. LI— LIL DISCOVERIES OF THE SOUL IN PRAYEK. THE BIBLE A child's book FOREVER. The Soul led and instructed by Supiolicatious— Universal Truth discovered and recorded by Prayer — Testimony of ancient liturgies — Dilierence between living Branches and dead Clubs — The seven Sons of Sceva, their athletic Christianity, and its Results 410 The Bible the most natural and supernatural of all Books — Divine Love its Substance, divine Light its Garment — In- finite in Mystery and Simplicity, microscopic in InteUigenco and Care — A reason for the tiniest Flowers and Thorns in the Wilderness — A child's Book for all Ages 415 LIII,— LIY. AN INFALLIBLE INSPIRATION THE ONLY TRUE HISTORIC FAITH. CONJECTURAL CRITICISMS GOOD FOR NOTHING. Complexity, Minuteness, Infinitude and indestructible Unity of the Argument — Its Power of Anchorage the Same in all ages, but accumulating through all — Cloiids and Tempests of Sin, Misery and Mystery, evolving in Eainbows of pardoning Mercy and sanctifying Grace and Love — Faith in the Word of God as infallible, the only true historic Faith — Internal Harmonies and Laws of Adjustment 424 The Price of the Fabrication of Legends, Forgeries and Myths instead of the Divine Word— The Proverb of "the Devil to pay" illustrated — Bishop Hoadly on the Kingdom of Christ and of Conscience— Conjectural Criticisms and Clinkers of Thoiight — The Way to Doubting Castle — Consequences of the Fog within and Breakers without — Dr. Franklin's Vow to build a Lighthouse — Walk in the Light as Christ gives it, and go not out of the King's Highway — The Power that worketh in you, able to carry you through 433 INTRODUCTION. The-Broad Church Translators, Bevisers, Interpre- ters, and Progressive Theologians of our age seem dis- jDOsed to retreat from the known severities of Divine Revelation, into what they please to call its " merciful OBSCURITIES." But is that a merciful process of revela- tion, which conceals from the vision of faith an actual danger ? Would it be merciful in constructing a chart for an unknown sea, into which a navigator was ap- j)ointed to enter, if the hydrographer concealed the known sunken reefs, the hidden sand-banks, the dan- gerous rocky coasts ? Would it be merciful in a Law- giver to render the penalties against crime so uncer- tain, and obscure, that the criminal might hope they would be infinitely smaller than the letter of the code ever intimates, or its strict equity permits ? Is not the certainty announced, the greatest mercy, and the clearness and explicitness the greatest safeguard for the sinner? What is to keep a man from falling into crime, if the law itself is uncertain in regard to its guilt, or how can the Judge be justified in executing a l^enalty, both in degree and duration, unknown? He can go no further than the law allows; if he does it is iniquity. The perfection of law is its equity and clearness, and of government, its justice, benevolence. xviii Introduction. and stability. In the case of the Divine Government its foundations and its laws are just and right; but they can be neither, if concealed from the knowledge of the subjects of their operation, who are to be pro- tected and guided by them. Accordingly in God's Law-book the heaviest of penalties are denounced againd those who conceal the truth. If they had stood in the gap, and been faithful to God's truth, souls would have been saved. They have concealed and falsified it, and theirs is the re- sponsibility. " For THE WOBD THAT I HAVE SPOKEN, THE SAME SHALL JUDGE YOU in the last day." It reveals God now to the knowledge of His creatures; it will justify God then, in the righteousness of His sentences. " Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance ? God forbid ! for then how shall God judge the world? " If He may not righteously avenge the law, he cannot righteously reveal it. The question is tremendous and transcend- ent against aU the false philosopliies of sin and its penalty; in demonstration also of the infinite benevo- lence of the whole Divine Law, the justice, power and beatifying influence and intent of which are to make aU creatures fit and worthy to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever. Laws cannot be cruel, the object and perfection of which are the foundation of a holy character, a divine nature, and eternal blessedness in God. Any thing less than that object, any thing dif- ferent, would be impossible, if God is Love; and if He is not Love, He is not God. These are postulates of all right reasoning, from man to God. " When will men learn, The outward by the inward to discern, The inward by the Spirit ? " Introduction. xix THE SPIRIT OF JESUS THE WHOLE SOUL OF THE BIBLE. The wliole argument and demonstration of Chris- tianity are in this, A roRGrvTisra God and Saviour; and for soul-satisfying assurance in this divine axiom of Eternal Life, and of conquering power by it, every man must make his own experiment, or he cannot believe, but abideth in darkness. Therefore "God HATH SHINED IN OUR HEARTS to givC the LiGHT of the Knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " : every word in that sentence being a law and progression of Light and Love, as the Eternity of God and Immortality of man are a key to the mean- ing of every thought in the Bible. "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: also He hath set Eternity in their heart, and hath made ev- ery thing beautiful in His time. And God requir- eth that which is past." Every instruction and com- mand, every warning and joromise, all deterring and alluring truths, bear the burden of God's mercy for man's good. The whole climate of the Bible is Eter- nity, and its atmosphere the Firmament of Love, The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its Tem- ple; and the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. All that is revealed is given that we might be saved. " The Lawgiver, able to save, and to destroy." — James iv. 12. "I that speak in righteousness, inoHTY to, SAVE." — Is. Ixiii. 1. "And these things I say, that ye MIGHT BE SAVED." — Johu V. 34. "He that converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul FROM DEATH."— James V. 20. "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." — Matt. XX Introduction. xviii. 11, and Luke xix. 10. This very word saved demonstrates the peril of an everlasting destruction. Let the childlike inquirer take simply his concord- ance, and study in their connection, the words for heaven and hell, darkness and light, salvation and perdition, saved, lost; life, death; reward and pun- ishment; time and eternity; and everywhere he will find God in Christ, as at the beginning, so in the new creation, dividing the light from the darkness, com- manding us to walk in the light, as He is in the light, declaring that we can see light only in His light, and pronouncing a woe upon them that put darkness for light and light for darkness. The pestilence and the fool "walketh in darkness," and the power of Satan's strategy and kingdom is the power of dark- ness, and its consummation the blackness of dark- ness forever. The Higher Literary Criticism, in its handling and circulation and endorsement of sus- picions and doubts, is but a Doubting Castle kept by Giant Desj)air, even with Christian and Hope- ful sometimes in its dungeons. To remove the doubts of men by the certainties of Scripture, and not to measure or obscure the certainties of Scripture by the doubts and conjectures of men, is the ivork of a true, believing student of God's Woi'd. From Genesis to the Apocalypse there is ceaseless progress in Theology, an infinite, ever-growing dem- onstration of the sinfulness and misery of man, and the loving attributes and saving mercies of the Al- mighty, till, as promised in Is. xxx. 6, and Zech. xii. 8, concerning the Holy One of Israel, and those that wait on His Word, " the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of Introduction. xxi the sun sevenfold as the light of seven days, and he that is feeble shall be as David, and the house of David as God." And so, "The isles shall wait for His Law, and His coming, who is the Life and Light of all nations; to open the blind eyes, and to bring out of the prison-house those that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. I will make DARKNESS LIGHT BEFORE THEM." "Then shaU the deaf hear the words of the Book, and the eyes of the bUnd shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness, and the meek and the poor shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel, for the scorner is consumed." Most mercifuUy consumed; for "when the scorner is pun- ished the simple is made wise." " Smite a scorner, and the simple wiU beware." "But a scorner seeketh wisdom and fiadeth it not." A vast portion of human literature concerning the Bible is the literature of scorners, cavillers, evil surmisers, lawyers; taking away the key of knowledge, shutting up the king- dom of heaven against men, entex'ing not in them- selves and forbidding them that are entering. — Matt, xsiii. 13. the certainties of one divine code, aijd only one, proclaimed by OUP LORD. The criticism of conjecture and suspicion disorgan- izes the very faculty of s^Du-itual discernment. It makes every miracle of truth rvin the gauntlet be- tween Hues of magicians with tractors of diabolic power to draw away the sacred magnetism, stealing from the soul the fire and faith of a divine insi^ira- tion. The progress of these critics across the sacred pages, denying the supernatural, is like that of snails XXZl Introduction. over the leaves of flowers; tlieir path is traced, and their work characterized, by the fihn of the sHme left behind them. "And as for my flock," says the AVord of God in Ezekitl xxxiv 19, "they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they di'ihk that which ye have fouled with your feet." But the work of benevolence and truth is to make plain paths for the soul, " lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, and lest any man fail of the grace of God."— Heb. xii. 13, 15. "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him. What is written in the Law ? How readest thou ? " — Luke X. 25, 26. The Law meant the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, the constant, unmistakable designation of THE Law. "Did not Moses give you the Law, and none of you keepeth it." The lawyer knew this, and made answer accordingly, out of Deuteronomy and Leviticus; and our Lord said unto him, "Thou hast answered right." And so in Isaiah ix. 19, 20, " To the Law and to the Testimony ! Should not a people seek unto their God? For the living to the dead ? If they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them." Here the reference cannot possibly be to any other authority than the Law of God by Moses. And so, eight hundred years later, "Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sab- bath day." — Acts xv. 21. " Seek ye out the Book of the Law, and read." "What Book, and what Law? Which of the codes, Elohistic or Jehovistic, and which of the Redactors Introduction. xxiii of Documents? "With wliom took he counsel, or who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord ? " " Re- member YE THE Law of Moses My servant, which I COMMANDED UNTO HIM IN HoREB FOR ALL ISRAEL, WITH THE STATUTES AND JUDGMENTS." Mai. iv. 4. Only one Law and Testimony was ever referred to by our Lord; one code, one covenant, one passover one atonement, one approach to God, one laio of Love. The whole Law was fulfilled in that one word, given by Moses in Leviticus xix. 18, and Deuteronomy vi. 5, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; and thy neighbor as thyseK; " and Christ's words illuminated the unity and Mosaic authorship of the whole, when He said, " On these two commandinents hang all the law and the prophets." — Matt. xxii. 40. The demon- stration of the Mosaic era, and none later, was perfect. CHRIST NEVER SANCTIONED ANY CODE BUT GOd's ONE CODE OF LOVE, BY MOSES. Christ never quoted any other code, nor referred to any other lawgiver than Moses. Neither did any of His disciples, or the Apostles. " This is that Hoses in the wilderness, who received the lfv^ng oracles, Xoyia Z(^vTa, to give unto us." — Acts vii. 37, 38. "Master, Moses said ; Master, Moses ivrote imto us; "—Matt. xxii. 24, and Luke xx. 28; and the writing was in Deuter- onomy XXV. 5. If it had not been Moses, but a later authority, in a fifth code, somewhere down in the centuries of anonymous piety and fraud, the cavilling enemies of our Lord would have known it. If there had been even imagined a "Deuteronomist," other than Moses, according to the nomenclature of the Higher Criticism, the Sadducees would have shuffled that xxiv Fntroductioji. card. If the texts quoted by our Lord had been in a document not of Moses' writing, or if there had been any suspicion or conjecture, not to say theory, of its not having been Moses, the Pharisees also would have fenced with that weapon. But neither in the histories or proj)liecies of the Old Testament, or interpretations of God's Law in the New, is there aught of fact or reference from which the publication or existence of any code of divine laws, other than the Pentateuch, or after the time of Moses, or by any other lawgiver than Moses, can be proved, or even conjectured. The su^Dposition of some half-dozen successive and separate codes, one for priests, another for princes, another for the peo- ple, another for or from the prophets, evolved in separate and distant ages, by anonymous voices of unnamed and unknown authors; codes supi^lementary, Elohistic, Jehovistic, with documents amendatory, as the contrivances or outgrowths of new patches on old garments, is no better than an atavistic ut- terance of Isaiah's " luizards that peep and mutter." It is the ventriloquism of jugglers; an insj)iration from the entrails; throwing the voice sometimes afar off, sometimes in the air, sometimes in a bog with marsh lights; it is Jannes and Jambres withstanding Moses, " doing so with their enchantments," to obscure and adul- terate, with second-hand imitative blood and frogs, the real miracles, and thus distress and daze the Pharaonic spectators. Cleavers of dead wood, themselves as dead to true spiritual life and meaning, as the punk-wood itself, out of which they spHt their torches. The processes of this school of criticism, under the guise of free, fearless, scholarly expurgation and Introductio7i. xxv reconstruction, do but "murder to dissect" the Scrip- tures; disfiguring them almost as thoroughly beyond idejitity, as the slayer did the body of Dr. Parkman, so that the only proof of the corjnis delicti was the jaw of his false teeth left in the furnace.* NO PEH^ATE OK ARBITRARY INTERPRETATION. Sinful men are always suspicious of God, as if He had some private, selfish ends, Hke then- own. This is a remarkable acknowledgment of the consciousness that a jDrivate, personal, self-seeking habit of character is wrong, is unjust to others; that such a character cannot co-exist with disinterested benevolence, which is and ought to be the ruling characteristic of hohness and truth. Now, ajDplying this conviction, which is just, to the revelation of God's will given us in the Scriptures, let the Sceptic ask himself, what j)ossible private object can God have ? The Creator of all beings and things, the Possessor and Governor of the Universe ! " If I were hungry, I would not tell thee !." Can He do any thing but out of infinite love? out of a necessary re- gard to His own loving nature, not sacrificing one at- tribute to another, nor permitting one to contradict another; not justice to contradict love, nor love to be opposed to justice. Can He possibly conceal or mis- * "The latest spiritualistic critical fraud, which has spread from Tabingen, through a part of the Evangelical Church;" "the patched-up legendary view of mingled traditions, with later compilations." — See Lange on Genesis, Scribner's edition, pp. 31, 99, 107, etc. "It reduces the Scriptures not only to fragments, but to fragments of fragments, jumbled in confusion." See Prof. Tayler Lewis, on the assumed Jehovistic and Elohis- tic distinctions, pp. 99 to 108. xxvi Introduction. represent any of .His attributes or permit them to bo misrepresented, or falsified, or dishonored ? And when a supreme regard to His own glory is described as the rvile of Jehovah in all His dealings, can there possibly be any other just, benevolent, and righteous rule than this? For in the knowledge of that glorj^ and an active subordination to it, and re- joicing in it, lies the whole and sole possibility of order and happiness under the Divine Government. For nothing can be harmonious or blessed, that is not accordant with God's own infinite goodness and holi- ness, God's own self-respecting holy will, and the man- ifestation of it. Nothing can be blessed, or a means of blessing others, that opposes, or defies, or falsifies God's will; or that obscures His glory, or is not con- formed thereto, or prevents it from being seen and understood, or causes it to be mistaken. All the manifestations of God to His intelligent crea- tures are for their good, that they may be partakers of His own holiness and happiness. How can it possibly ever be otherwise ? And the giving of His own Son to suffer and die the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, that we might be heirs of God and joint heirs Avith Christ, by the adoj)tion of sons, is such a proof of love, such an infinite conquest of our suspicions, and such a winning of oiu' confidence, that the very imagination of it covild have come only fi'om its reality as a divine revelation; and the I'evelation of it is a miracle of demonstration greater than the exist- ence of the visible universe. Certainly, whoever con- fesses Christ before men will be filled with all the fullness of God's love and blessedness forever and ever; for in that confession from the heart consists the most Introduction. xxvii perfect and glorifying service of gratitude and love we can ever render. " There shall this he told for a memorial of her." This, and the record of the offering of a poor widow among many rich men, and the mention of a cup of cold water by the Lord Jesus, are proofs of the infinite value of a very little faith and love, and how all the greatest things and creatures in the universe are put to theu- best ser- vice in the production of such love. Two mites that make a farthing ! Scientific research discloses the fact that mountain ridges vast enough for the foundations of continents are the work of countless millions of in- visible insects, ages on ages building up and fossilizing their substance and their habitaticTas. Now suppose that every one of these animalculse were intelligent, capable of thought, and animated in every part of its work by the single desire to bring an offering to God, to do something that might glorify God, and remain a manifestation of His goodness. The architecture would be an intelligent musical temple, vibrating within and without the melodies of love and praise. Eveiy two mites of coral, and all the rising seawalls, atolls, and mountain ridges, would be as sacred as the thoughts of angels, would be more precious and glorious than continents of diamond and gold. Such will the whole universe of God be found forever, as the new-created work of His Divine Love, and of the faith of each re- generated creature, confessing and adoring that Love in Christ, when the whole people of God shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in THE BOOK. "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to right- eousness, as the stars forever and ever." xxviii Introduction. CERTAINTIES, NOT CONJECTURES, THE BUSINESS OF A TRUE CRITIC. This therefore is the j)rimal canon of a just criti- cism, imperative, obligatory, namely, to accept and press THE ScKiPTURES, just as Christ and His apostles pressed them; not donbtingly, but by manifestation of the truth ; not apologetically, but aggressively ; " to speak boldly, as we ought to speak ; " not for a condescending patronage of divine truth, but for universal conquest. " Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedi- ence of Christ; casting dovs^n every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." "All ScRiPTUEE IS INSPIRED OF GoD, and able to make all men wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus." All Scripture; for the righteous prepossession of the Son of God is in it, for all mankind, from the cra- dle to the grave. " For all the promises of God in Him are yea and amen, unto the glory of God by us." Paul the Positivist wrote all these commanding, constituting, aU embracing postulates, who wrote the fifteenth of First Corinthians, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth of the Second Corinthians. And he wrote these divine ut- terances, not as if there were any grounds of doubt in regard to them, or internal suspicions, whereby to ticket them, as perhaps bad bills, needing to be tracked back to the forgers; but for conquest, for payment in gold at the Savings Bank of Christ for sinners. It was the central power of legislating Love, by the Spirit of Christ, that coined these testimonies, with infinite con- fidence, not by permission or vote of " many author- ities," but the One Supreme God, and by His oath, swearing by Himself, because He could swear by no Litrochtction. xxix greater, and would have all men justified by faith in His Son, and in none other way; that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. The Word of God in Christ, is one and the same, equally, in the Old and the New Testament, having in it all the light, meaning, and purpose of human salvation, and aU the instrumentalities for that work of regeneration in the soid, that the Divine Word, the Son of God, became flesh to finish: — all that was possible for the life of the soul, and therefore for its conviction of sin and its awakening unto prayer, and its spiritual resurrection from the death of sin, and its new creation in the image and nature of God in Christ; all that might contribute to the beginning or comple- tion of that work; all the possible influences, sugges- tions, electricities, magnetisms, illustrations of God's attributes, and of man's dependence on God; God's holiness and man's sinfulness, God's mercy and man's despair and hope, God's thoughts towards man, and man's right way of thinking and beheving and earnest striving after God. COAL MEASURES IN THE OLD; INSPIRED MINERS IN THE NEW. The boundless coal measures of Light, Love and Fire, in the Old Testament, were prepared for the working of companies of inspired miners in the New. "The Lord gave the Word; great was the company of those that published it. Thou, O God, hast pre- pared of Thy goodness for the poor. The God of Israel is He that giveth strength and power unto His people." This 68tli Psalm is of infinite Messianic grandeur. " Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God XXX Introduction. might dwell among them." Compare Eph. 4: 8-16. " Unto every one of us is given grace, according to the measirre of the gift of Christ, according to the riches of His glory, strengthened with might by His Spii'it in the inner man, speaking the truth in love, to grow up in all things into Him who is the Head, even Christ." Known unto God are all the workings of His Word from the beginning of the world. All the remotest flashes of light, and jjossible revelations of it, for the production of belief in God, and love to Him and ad- oration of Him in spirit and in truth; — all jDOSsible miraculous new creations by the Word, by what we call accidental fallings of it on the soul, meetings of the soul with any part of it, anywhere among savages or cultured infidels; in words and suggestions and un- accountable impressions, though seemingly driven like dead autumn leaves by the wind, and lost, yet carry- ing into the soil, possibly, some hidden seeds some- where; and if any, then enough, in infalUble after- growth and reproduction, for the life of some whole continent. Given, the Word of God from Genesis to the Aj)ocalypse, for man's eternal life in God, and it is impossible to restrict any part of it, by men's canons of criticism, denying its infallible inspiration, or the possible intentions and apj^lications of it, by the om- niscient God that gave it, and His Holy Spirit that inspu-ed and accompanies its thoughts and words, it may be for a hundred thousand generations, to the end of the world. God must foresee the action of its words, as well as its orbs of thought, as surely as He must have ordered and foreseen the atoms and action of the elements, the way in which Hght is parted. Introduction. xxxi the velocity with which it travels, the power of every- one of its rays, the chemical activities that it creates and governs, the laws of life it combines and executes; the organization of an eye to receive it, the creation of a mind and reason to adore its proofs and illustra- tions of the essence and attributes of Grod. We say, from Genesis to the Apocalypse. The glory of the English literature of the 17th century is in the floods of light jDOured through its volumes of poetry and prose upon the spiritual meaning and Divine in- spiration of the Scriptures, through the medium of the Authorized Translation in our language, and Luther's in the German. Bengel and Luther, Tyndale and their successors, made a Bible for the ploughboys, and therefore equally for the most cultured and self-ap- plauding intellects, set together to the study of its pages, as Httle children to the syllables of earliest believing and imaginative thought for the saving of the soul. "A deliberate sad eye, with leisure," said the most illustrious of those Biblical scholars, John Lightfoot,* in his rules for a student of the Holy Scrij)tures, " might bring all the New Testament, both for words and sense, from the Old. And this I ever HELD THE SUREST WAY TO EXPOUND BOTH. God HimSclf hath taught us what is the best way to read, for He hath folded the two Testaments together; so that, as the Law begins, so the Gospel ends, and as the proph- ets end, so the Law begins; as if calling you to look still for the one in the other, Moses and EHas were Evangelists. And what did Christ ever do or suffer, which you may not see in the Law and Prophets, tra- cing Christ throughout the Old Testament." * Lightfoot's Works, vol. ii. pp. 43-47. xxxii Introd2Lctio7i. THE PERFECTION OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND DISCIPLINE GRADUAL IN CHRIST TO THE END. In the gospels we are with Jesus; we follow Him in the way; we talk with Him, ask Him questions, hear His words, wonder at His parables of wisdom, His miracles of power. We behold the proofs of His divine nature. His deity as the Son of God, and one with the Father, His omnipotence, omniscience, the universe under Him, the kingdom of heaven His, the eternal world of being, and all its awards to the righteous and the wicked His. AH these realities, these discoveries come out, as we travel with Him; we learn them gradually, just as His disciples did. The proofs of His divinity are as jjositive and plain as of His humanity; we behold one day, one hour, the Son of Man, the next the Son of God. The facts and seals of both natures drop out as artlessly, as spontaneously, as naturally, as the motions and prat- tle of a child. The most sublime and astounding announcements of His supremacy as Lord of all, Governor and Judge of mankind, possessor of domin- ion over all worlds, visible and invisible, drop from Him as by accident, unconsciously, in the midst of discourses not at all intended for a j^roof of His great- ness, nor the argument instituted for that, but as it were unawares, under the form of man, a servant; the infinite God giving utterances, that no human being would put in language, but the moment they are spoken, and the mind at leisure to ponder them, God, not man, is seen in them. One of the earliest of such instances comes out at the close of the Sermon on the Mount. '■^ Many will say to Me in that day," etc., " and Introduction. xxxiii then will I prof e?,^ unto them, I never knew you; depakt fkom: Me, ye that work iniquity. Whosoever heareth THESE SAYINGS OF MiNE, and cloeth them, I will liken HIM," etc. Then His deahng with the Decalogue: "Ye have heard that it was said, But I say unto you," etc. These avowals of His divine power and majesty were so fre- quent, and so natural, that the impression, of them grew as a flower opens, as the sun rises; never start- ling or tremendous, as with the rending of the rocks, or the rolling fires around Elijah, or the bush of flame to Moses, but calmly as the faUing of the dew; so does the vision, the sense, the conviction of a su- pernatural, superhuman Being, though in the form of man, the servant, in uttermost lowhness of life, even unto the crucifixion, go down into the soul. And so it carried the illuminated reason of the centurion, "Truly this was the Son of God." And so the sight of Jesus on the cross, blameless, dying, praying for His murderers, FcUher, forgive them, for they know not lohat they do ! removed the veU of darkness from the dying thief, and the Holy Spu-it breathed in his sotd that wondrous prayer of faith and love, " Lord, remem- ber me, when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom ! " So from the beginning, the vision carries us, and so we follow on, through the gospels, walking with Christ, beholding His glory, till we are not only prepared, but constrained to cry out with Thomas, " My Lord and my Grod ! " And with Stephen, " Behold, I see the Son of Man standing on the I'ight hand of God! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." All this rev- elation, from the fii'st verse of Genesis to the last word of the Apocalypse, is of the Powers of the xxxiv Introd2iction. World to come, for life or death eternal, to the never dying soul; and of the Love of Christ, jaleading with us, that we may not be self-banished, in a sinful immortality, from the presence of the Son of God roRE-v^R. "Amen, even so, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and dwell within our hearts by faith, that death, and sin the sting of death, may be swal- lowed up in victory ! " GOD'S TIMEPIECE FOR MAN'S ETERNITY. o>*ic I. CHRIST THE CENTRAL LIGHT, LIFE, AND PROOF OF THE WHOLE BIBLE— ALL OUR KNOWLEDGE OF IT DEPENDENT ALONE ON HIS DIVINE PERSONALITY —OUR BIBLE FOR ETERNAL LIFE. The Bible its o^tst witness, is a received proverbial expression, yet so little realized, analyzed, believed, acted on, that it might have been catalogued as among Coleridge's "bedridden truths in the dormi- tory of the soul." God can have no witnesses, but only confessors. " Where vyast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together, and aU the sons of God shouted for joy? Where is the way where light dweUeth ? Wast thou then born ? " Christ alone is the Author and Finisher OF Faith, and His Word the substance and the evi- dence of things not seen. He receives not testimony or endorsement from man. We learn from Him alone, and by His enlightening of our understandings, as to all things written in all 2 God' s Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the Scriptureii, in Moses and the Prophets, and the Psahns, that the Word of God is a growth, Toy the Holy Spirit, and not a mere creation by Almighty Power; — that its living, growing evolution and prog- ress, according to the necessities of man and the mercies of God, because of man's fall into sia, and his consequent hereditary progression in wickedness, are demonstrated in itseK, even as the growth of an oak is registered and proved by the successive rings of its annual life, grown and recorded in the sections of the trunk. "Thou hast magnified Thy Word, above all Thy name." — Ps. cxxxviii. 2. "My name is in Him." Ex. xxiii 21. An incarnate personal prophesying Life and Light.— Deut. xviii. 18, and John i. 4. The Word, thus begun, perfected, and finished in Christ, is in Him forever living and abiding, as manifest and complete as the I am before Abra- ham, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; Em- manuel, God with us, Christ the Woi'd, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Revealer of God, the Creator and Eedeemer of man; Chi-ist inhabiting Eternity, investing Himself with humanity, in form and nature; born and manifested in the flesh, suffering, dying, rising, ascending into Heaven, and upholding all things by the Word of His power: — All this is The Word, all this union of impossibilities in Time, and yet indisputable Eternal certainties; a temporal Eter- Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, j nity, and an Eternal To-day; Christ the Letter and the Spirit, Christ the written Gospel and the unwrit- ten glory; — All this in a visible, legible volume, a per- fect oneness, " a whii'lwind, a cloud, and a fire infold- ing itseK " ; loosed and ojoened by God at the beginning, sealed by Christ at the close; a volume, as known and perfectly finished, as the Virgin Mother with her Babe, by the Holy Ghost ujDon her, and the power of the Highest overshadowing her; — and afterwards the at- tendant ministries of worshijoping and singing angels, prophets, priests, and devout inspired men, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and beholding the Lord's Christ, by the Sj)irit, in the Temple. This is the Word, the Bible, the Volume written of Me, an Eternal Now, past, present, and to come, an Orb of Love, Light, Life, Power, and Law, self-existent, om- nipresent, forever settled in heaven, forever on earth, OUR Bible; God manifesting Himself to us, and us to OURSELVES IN HiS SIGHT. All this supernatural overwhelming array of Eter- nities in Time, the Attributes of God, the "Word, made flesh, yet in a record so natural and simple, so artless and sublime, so convincing and irresistible, that in the reading of it, in gazing at the glory, we can only exclaim with Thomas, " My Lord and my God ! " and with Isaiah, " Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts ! " and with John, " That which was from the 4 God's Timepiece for Mans Eterjiity. beginning, wliicli we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life ! " and with Christ Himself upon the cross, " It is finished ! " Noth- ing can be put to it, nothing taken from it. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall not pass away. This is that witness of God, which He hath testified of His Son, and that witness of the Son, which He hath testified of God the Father. God speaking to us by His Son demonstrates the Old Testament Scriptures as His Word; and the appearance and testimony of His Son throw the same God-given demonstration over the whole New Testament as over the Old. And so the whole volume is in all ages a finished spiritual orb and unity of divine in- spiration, as indisputably the work of God as the sun in the heavens. What infinite subhmity, and assertion of supreme, self-existent truth, authority and power, in all these introductions of the Saviour to the souls of aU man- kind! The openings up of divine revelation in the Old Testament, in the Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Apocalypse, are as the successive breakings of heaven's seals of Hght and fire by the hand of God Himself. Read and compare the first five verses of Genesis, God's Ti7nepiece for Mans Eternity. 5 the 1st, 2d, and 110th Psahns, the first five verses of the Gospel of John, the first seven of the Epistle to the Romans, the first five of that to the Galatians, the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and the opening chapter of "the "Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus " in Patmos. And then, as a cen- tral instance, take the august and magnificent open- ing of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the j)i'ophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son; whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the Word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the SpiRrr is Truth. He that believeth what the Spirit saith hath the witness in himseK; for this is the wit- ness of God which He hath testified of His Son. He that beheveth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son." " He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath NOT THE Son of God hath not life." — 1 John v. 11, 12. FoRGrvENESs AND Eternal Life IN Christ are the purpose and fulfilment of God's record, in the Law 6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eteriiity. and Gosjjel; the whole, and only Scriptures Pro- phetic and Historic, of "Grod manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." The Scrij^tures demonstrated in Jesus Christ alone, as Gon over all, blessed forever. And recorded in the Volume written concerning Him, Old and New, " that believing we might have life through His Name." — -John xx. 31. "For whatsoever things were ivritten aforetime, were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Script- tfRES might have hope. All Scripture is given by insj)iration of God, and is able to make thee wise unto Salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." For the law by Moses is not one thing, and grace and truth by Christ another; but both are equally the love and inspiration of the Father and the Son, by the Holy Spirit taking of the things that are Christ's, and showing them to the soul, for the assurance of Eternal Life in Him. " Being the Author OF Eternal Salvation, He by one offering hath per- fected forever them that ai'e sanctified; having by His own blood obtained Eternal Redemption for us, that we might have Eternal Life in Him." The Tes- tament of Life ends with the last words of God to man in the Apocalyj)se, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 11. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THINGS SECRET AND THOSE REVEALED— THE FIRST DISCLOSED ATTRI- BUTES OF GOD, AND THE FIRST WORDS FOR GOD AND ETERNITY— EVERYTHING IN A DIVINE REVE- LATION DEPENDENT ON THEM — ALL THE FIRST THINGS CONCERNING GOD AND CHRIST AND THE SOUL'S ETERNAL LIFE AND DEATH FORESHOWN IN THE WRITINGS OF MOSES— GOD'S CHRONOMETER AND COMPASS FOR TIME AND ETERNITY. "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those which are revealed belong unto ms and to our children forevek, that xve may do all the xoords of this law." — Deut. xxix. 29. It is from the outset a revelation from God, weYL known and ad- mitted, of such a nature as to last forever, that by means of it we may keep God's law. " For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spuit." — Rom. viii. 3, 4. The verse quoted from Deuteronomy is as a north star in our spiritual firma- ment; and the eighth chapter of Romans, and all the S God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. planets in the New Testament, are but as pointers to it, that we may do all the words of this law. The Eternity of God and the Immortality of man in His image, the Holiness of God and the sinfulness of man after the fall, ar^ as plainly revealed, with all the consequences, as a child's catechism. All the true principles of criticism follow inevitably; — the nature of a divine inspiration, the necessary infallibility of it for man's guidance, God's administration of His own government dependent on it, holiness and truth the foundations of it, and no true reasoning possible ex- cept from these j)ostulates. They are summed up, after more than three thousand years, in the words of God to the prophet Ezekiel: "Behold, ai.l souls ARE Mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine: the soul that sinneth it shall DIE." That the solemn everlasting meaning and con- sequences of these words were accepted and known from the beginning by the Jews is manifest from Ez. xxxiii. 10 : " If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how i^lioidd ive then live?" Yea, and except God in Christ shall give you life, ye cannot live. There was never a question asked by an inquiring or an unconverted soul, that carried its answer more directly with it, for ourselves and for oiu' children. It is very remarkable that the first instance occur- God's Thnepiece for Mans Eternity. g ring of the word forever in the Bible (Hebrew, olam), is found thus expressly referring to the Eternity of God, and to the sin of man through the falsehood of the "liar and father of it from the BEomNiNa": "Ye shall not die, but be as gods." The dreadful com- ment of Jehovah instantly follows the crime ; and then the first step is taken to save man from its eternal consequences. Thence comes the known infinite mean- ing of the word olam; it is the introduction of God's Eternity to the consciousness of sinful man. After this, the first examj)le of its use from God to Moses is in Ex. iii. 14, 15 : " This is My name for- ever {olam) ; say to the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me to you." Thus was established, in the open- ing of Divine Revelation, the origin and spiritual mean- ing of the word, in God's own attribute of self-exist- ence, Eternity. Then in Ex. xv. 18, in the song of Mii'iam: "Jehovah shall reign /o?-eDer" (ohm). Then in Deut. xxxii. 40: "I lift uj) my hand to heaven and say, I LIVE forever " (olam). These instances are postulates of the absolute infin- itude of the word. AU lower applications of it are figurative, in things and seasons of time-ivorlds, gener- ations and Hmited periods. But the absolute Eternity of God is the governing and defining power for all the relations and responsibihties of the soul to Him, under all circumstances. And the Eternity of God is 10 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eterjiity. the background of all His communications, all Hia laws, judgments, institutions, provisions for mankind, ^'■tliat ive may do all the words of this laiv." This wonderful text foreshadows and ordains every- thing to come ; the conclusion of the Book of Ecclesi- astes, five hundred years later, is in it: "Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, whether good or evil." Here are Im- mortality, Eternity, and Eternal Life in God, for man, by the relations of the Divine Law, for the ETERNAL KEEPING OF IT. The whole of Divine Rev- elation is here, as when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light ; " the same light at the beginning, and in the whole universe, as when reservoired in orbs, or prismatized in rainbows, for times and seasons, for covenants, emergencies, and successive enlarging dispensations, down to the com- ing of God incarnate in Christ. A more perfect de- scription of a spiritual Timepiece fok Eternity could not be imagined than this verse of Moses. Chronom- eter and comj)ass answering each to other in the con- science and heart of man, "that we may do all the words of this law." For, "He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also He hath set Eternity (olam) in their heart." Eccles. iii. 11, 17. Chronometer within, and compass Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 1 1 without, for man's Immortality and Eternity; intended for and answering to the intuitions and ideas in man's original creation in the image of God. "So teach us," was the prayer of Moses, "to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." "Lord, make me to know mine end," was David's prayer, " and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am," and may take action accordingly. The measure is for Life Everlasting, and so is the number. A believing mariner under the teachings of Moses would know how to box this comiMSS for Eternity. And so Christ told the Jews, after four thousand years' possession of it, and of the prophetic instruc- tions as to its meaning and use, " Had ye believed Moses, ye would have beheved Me, for he wrote of Me. But if ye beheve not his writings, how shaU ye believe My words ? " — John v. 46, 47. Within and without, God's Word and Spirit; Eter- nity in their hearts; chronometer, and compass ! And such power and minuteness of inference, such infinite sweej^ round the whole horizon of our being, with indexes for Immortahty and Eternity, all the words of this law, that we may know the Way of Life in God forever! This spiritual compass has more flaming lifeUnes and points, if the heart consulting it is steady toward God, as the needle to the pole, than the most experienced sea captain could ever trace, or commit 12 God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. to memory from the magnetic-figiu*ed circle, for the guidance of his ship. "Every one of Thy righteous judgments endvireth forever. They stand fast forever and ever; His covenant forever. Concerning Thy tes- timonies, I have known of old that Thou hast founded THEM FOREVEK." "Jehovah, God, forever." — Gen. xxi. 33. "God of Israel from eternity to eternity." — Ps. xli. 14. " The glory of Jehovah shall endure forever." — Ps. civ. 31. "Thy righteousness is forever." — Ps. cxix. 142. "And forever all the judgments of Thy righteous- ness." — cxix. 160. "Blessed be the Lord God of Is- rael from everlasting to everlasting, from olam to olam." — I Chron. xvi. 36. And so repeated in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the word and its eternal significations are indisputable; always in reference to the attributes of God, and therefore unmistakable. "God, the God of the spirits of all flesh." — Num. 'xvi. 22, and xxvii. 16. In the historical and proj)hetic books these august declarations are equally and infinitely distinct and sublime. The attributes of the word alwaj's corre- spond with the attributes of God, and all things are ordered and established in unwavering deference to the "Word, which is the one abiding certainty for the universe, and is so clothed with the divine authority and majesty, that the quality of piety acceptable to Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ij God is just this: "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at My Word. Hear the Word of the Lord, ye that tremble at His Word." For all things in Time and through Eternity are ordered by it. Even if only the Pentateuch were before us, in cen- nection with the gospels, we may see how the back- ground of all God's deahngs with man, and man's with God, is Eternity; how self and sin make man suspicious of God, and unfit to judge Him in any- thing; how self in view makes man intellectually blind as to God's purposes and ways; how suffering is the crucible of faith and the refiner of evidence; how God is supreme in all human history, and how an infalli- ble divine inspiration is necessary to disclose God's thoughts, God's presence and jDlan, God's will and law, to judge rightly of which Faith must be the guide of Reason; for doubt and suspicion morally, darken a man's mind intellectually, and self-interest makes him almost unconsciously a perjured jxu^or, a false critic. We see how the history of the Hebrews is a tapestry of God's weaving, and must be either the record of infallible divine inspiration or a whole lie; for it could come only from God's j)lans in execution, and God only could reveal those plans, with their eternal mean- ing and issues; and could demonstrate, as in Isaiah, j^ Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Jeremiali, and Ezekiel, where and how the temporal events take up men's souls and run into eternity; and are proved by God's light, making every knot and line and crosshne of the tapestiy a prophet for the soul, and luminous as a transparency, revealing God and man together. Moreover, in the study of these Icey-wordH of Eter- nity we learn to walk and work, with fear and trem- bUng, because it is God that worketh in us; by mani- festation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God, even as His attri- butes in Christ are plainly made known to us. And we see how a baptism with the infinite compassion of Jesus is necessary for the watchman of souls, and how Christ's own loving Spu'it alone can deal with the doubt and despair of agonized consciences; how loy- alty to God's Word, like that of Chi'ist, can alone make a man true and faithful to man, and kind and tender and charitable and generous, just in proportion as he is true. , God's jjatience reasons tenderly with the sinner, and wins him. Man's imj^atience strikes him and stuns him. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God, but the righteousness of God restrains the wrath of man, and causes it to praise Him in many adorable ways of His Eternal wisdom and grace in Christ Jesus. Gods Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. i^ III. THE RECORD OF CREATION IN THE PENTATEUCH OUR ONLY DIVINE AND DECISIVE AUTHORITY — THE SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS, AND THE MEANS OF UNDERSTANDING THEM, IN GOD'S WORD, FOR ETERNITY. The Eevelation thus belonging to us and to our children eoeever, begins with the record of Creation as God's work in successive periods. It is therefore the first and highest decisive authority as to the questions which science is now agitating and investigating. The only element of uncertainty is in regard to the just interpretation of the language; but so far as we can ascertain that, it is the highest scientific as well as moral and theological authority that we pos- sess, or can possess. Wherever there is any doubt, it is the revelation that has the rightful precedence, and must decide. The question, what is the first book of this revel- ation ? does not rest upon man's testimony, nor does the question, who was the wi'iter of it? It begins as a hght from God and eternity, with no announce- ment of any human scribe or reporter. Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven. It was i6 God's Timepiece for Man's Etei'iiity. reserved for Him who is the Author and Finisher OF FAITH to estabhsh infallibly for the knowledge of all mankind what is the first book of revelation, by referring explicitly to Genesis, and quoting from it" as the Word of God. Our Lord's references to it, and His quotations of its words as divine authorit}-, demonstrate the manner of the Creation of Adam and Eve, as there reported, to be absolute and un- questionable truth. Those therefore who joroclaim that account to have been a fable do most undoubt- edly hold up to scorn the Lord Jesus Christ as an impostor and a passer of counterfeit money in the name of God. They do this in the face of an ac- cumulation of demonstrative proof, both physical and moral, of the supernatural truth and divine personality of Christ, immeasurably greater than anything ever ofi'ered by scientific men as to their theories. In the Word of God there are the same contrasts, diversities, seeming contradictions, and, ap)plymg the terms of natural science, "faults " (that is, " cjisloca- tions or disturbances of strata, interrupting the miner's operations "), as in His works. There are also anal- ogous methods of the differential calculus, for finding and measiuiug the actual differences and theii* mean- ing; comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and the parts with the whole. In the large dictionaries we God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. ly have illustrations given of "faults" in a mine, and there are engravings presented of the dislocated strata, before which the experimentalist or miner is at fault. So, both in the Divine Providence and Word, we are sometimes interrupted by seams and scars un- accountable, and depths unfathomable. Thy jiidg- ments are a great deep. In nature we have the mountain of granite, and quartz, and the gold, for which we must dig, and separate it from the quartz. But the granite and the quartz are as much God's work, and God's designs are in it, as the gold itself. We ourselves can mix mud and sand, and make our own quarries; but we cannot make the gold, nor the organizing principles and laws. We can convey, express, and modify thought in language, but we cannot make, nor successfully imitate or dissemble, a divine inspiration with its seals. None but God can create and demonstrate the inspiration. No human being could imagine the proofs, the methods of proof, and the irresistible power of conviction, with which God could and does estabhsh that, in the intuitions of heart and conscience, the moment an immortal being looks down into the mirror of His Word, and sees both his own and God's image. He sees himself in God's sight, and the conclu- sion is. Thou God seest me ! Then at length, when he sees himself in Christ's likeness, or longing i8 God s Ti7nepiece for Maris Eternity. after that likeness, the demonstration is, Thou my Divine Redeemer hast sought me, and found me, and brought me back to God. I did not find Thee, nor accept Thee, nor acknowl- edge Thee, nor would I, nor could I, of mine own per- verted will and reason; but Thou, against both, didst seek me, and uew-create and save me, by Thy Spirit and Thy Word, laying hold uj)on me, within me, lead- ing captivity captive, subduing my self-mil, my carnal mind, the enmity of my heart, and drawing me by in- finite long-suffering love, redeeming grace and dy- ing love. And Thou makest me to comprehend this, only by Christ dwelling in my heart by faith, strength- ening me for this, with might by Thy Spirit in the inner man. Here it is that Jude, closing up the epistles in the New Testament, presents the differential key to the whole inspired Word: "Ye, beloved, praying in the Holy Ghost, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto Eternal Life." Only thus, by discovering and using this Di- vine Calculus, can we bridge the gulfs, or accept with intelligent, grateful, adoring beHef, the infinite mys- teries of " God manifest in the flesh." Praying in the Holy Ghost is the one element of scientific investiga- tion in the Scriptures, without which all the textual God' s Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ig criticism of scholars is presumptuous and vain. " Pray- ing ALWAYS WITH ALL PRAYEB AND SUPPLICATION IN THE SPIR- IT," is Paul's watchword as well as Jude's. God's quarries are infinite. The chronology, the history, the records, the workmen, the instruments, the stuff to be wrought, the purposes, the methods, the boundless suffering: — the very difficulties to us are God's methods/or us. "Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain; God is His own Intei-preter, And He will make it plain." " He that formeth the mountains, and createth the spirit; and declareth unto man what is His thought, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night. The thunder of His power, who can understand ? O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! " Science and religion are the same infinitude and mystery of Godliness. All is of God from Eternity to Eternity. The truth and its surroundings, its set- tings, its background and foreground, perspectives and retrospectives, its origins, occasions, sources, ele- ments, intermixtures, accidents and ends; aU of God. 20 God's Ti77iepiece for Mans Eternity. Nor will any one in his senses say, The gold indeed is of God, the mountain and its quartz, not. He that made the gold made the mountain to contain it, to en- shrine it, and He that made the mountain made the gold. Both, and equally both, are of God, and could not have been without Him. All science is God's truth. And so, in all our scientific investigations we are but tracing the work and the footsteps of God's Presence and Power; so that an impelling faith in God is the very substratum of the possibility of sci- ence. And without this faith, the best university in the world, managed by the highest minds, is only a scientific treadmill, or a dissecting hall, with the posi- tivism of the surgeon's knife the only thing credited in it. IV. THE GRADUAL PERFECTION AND INTERPRETATION OF WORDS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT TO THE NEW— THE WORDS FOR "DEATH," "HELL," AND THE "GRAVE," AND THEIR ETERNAL SPIRITUAL MEANING AND TEACHINGS. For the conveyance and understanding of God's plan of salvation, human language itself had to be rescued from the grasp of demonism, materialism and idolatry, and new created by the Holy Spirit. The God s Timepiece for Mans Eterjiity. 21 words sin and redemption as well as holiness, could be understood only by God's disclosing of Himself, in His infinitely lioly and adorable attributes, and re- vealing in contrast, man's sinful heart, character, and ruin. These and other terms were more and more exactly and fully defined through the gradualism of inspiration, in institutions, laws, precepts, examples, appointed and expressed by divine wisdom and mercy, dealing with the necessities of sinful men, providing for and proj)hesying the coming Redeemer, that the world might know when, where, and in what charac- ter, and with what signs, to welcome Him for the sal- vation of their souls. The words Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna, regarding the unseen world, and the dwell- ings of men in that world, according to theu' character in this, have had a similar gradual perfection and in- terpretation, from the Old Testament to the New. The expressions heaven and hell, the kingdom of heaven, and of God, expiation and atonement, sacrifice and offering, as well as the righteousness of God, were seeds of eternal and infinite significance, gradually unfolded and illustrated, through eras of inspiration by the Holy Spirit, and in the life and experience of men distinguished for their piety. Coming up out of the darkness of Egypt, the relations and real- ities of the future life, as well as the duties of the present, and the i-ight methods of God's worship, 22 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, liad to be redeemed from the doctrines of devils and clothed with divine light. The Author and Finisher of Faith must Himself in- spire the spirit of a loving trust, and teach its adoring language for believers. The Redeemer of the soul, coming to save mankind, must do everything for them, making all things new. His work was as that of a Missionary Angel among Dacotah savages, com- pelled to construct their written language for them out of the elements of their rude spoken dialects, never before reduced to writing. Their instructor must make their very dictionary out of theu- own rugged, imj^erfect conversational vocabulary.* He be- * See the interesting history of the progress of the mission among the Dacotah Indians, and the making of a Dacotah dic- tionary and Bible, by the fii-st missionary, Stephen E. Kiggs, D.D., LL.D., and his wife. The volume is entitled, "Mary and I. " Having translated the gospels into the Dacotah tongue, Dr. Biggs says: "We now addressed ourselves afresh to the work of teaching and preaching. In preaching I began to feel more freedom and joy. There had been times when the Dacotah lan- guage seemed to be barren and meaningless. The words for Salvation and Life, and even Death and Sin, did not mean what they did in English. It was not to me a heart-language. But this passed away. A Dacotah word began to thrill as an English word. Christ came into the language. The Holy Spirit began to pour sweetness and power into it. It became a joy to preach, — not exhausting as it sometimes had been." Thus it was that Christ came into the language of our com- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2^ comes the Inventor of an Electric Telegraph, who must arrange the posts and the wires, and contrive the aljDhabet of cij)hers, and teach the operators and the postmasters how to manage the machinery, how to catch and interpret the signals, the dots, dashes, pauses. If God taught Adam the language of Creation be- fore the fall (see Gen. ii. 19, 20), how much more the language of Redemption for himself and his pos- terity after the faU. A Messianic language, and illus- trations of the covenant by blood, such as in the Pass- over, and the sin-offerings, and jDurifications, must be provided, as well as the promised Messiah. A lan- guage not only of words, but of symbols and signs prophetic of His coming, and making known the needs of fallen men, and the spii*itual heart-and-hfe-renewing nature of salvation by divine grace. God early put mankind into the school of object- teachings, as children are taught by pictures, puzzles, ships, buildings, trees, animals, to draw lessons and make definitions fi-om them. So with the lessons of mon version of the New Testament from the first moment when Tyndale, guided by the Holy Sj)irit, and filled with love to souls, began his work upon it. The revisers of such a translation need something more than additional Greek MSS., and critical skill, to fit them fer their work, and preserve its theopneusted beauty and sacredness. 24 God's Timepiece for Maris Eternity. religion, from the garden and its dressing and keep- ing, from the Trees of Knowledge and of Life, from Cherubim and the flaming sword, from worship by altars and incense, from ladders of angels between earth and heaven, j)illars of cloud and fire, the burn- ing bush, smitten rocks and fountains in the desert, figui'es, types, brazen serpents, tabernacles of witness, cherubim of gloajy overshadowing the Mercy-seat. All these things had an infinitely merciful divine meaning in their origin and use. And by as much as for the accuracy of a comjDass or a telegraph the utmost ex- actness in the signals is indispensable for any safety or reliance in the emergencies of our temiMral life (and so in the science of our medicinal notations), infinitely more must the language of inspiration regarding Eter- nity be alsolutely true and infallible, for our Eternal Life. It has been well said that an incarnate language is as necessary as an incarnate God; an infallible thought and speech, as an omniscient heart-searching Redeemer. The first instance of the word Sheol, and the first mention of the grave in the Old Testament Scrip- tures, we shall find in the record of Jacob's grief for Rachel, in Gen. xxxv. 20, and for Joseph, in Gen. xxxvii. 35. " I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning" (I wiU go down inta Sheol). A hun- dred years before this, Abraham had purchased the God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2^ cave of the field of Maclipelat for the burial of his wife. "In the choice of our sepulchres," said the children of Heth, "bury thy dead." Their Sheol was a cave, and the Sheol of the Egyptians still earher, a succession of caves, a tier of caves, with places for the sarcophagi, one above another, a kingxlom of catacombs, the origin of the imagery in Isaiah xiv. 9, 11, 15, where the Hebrew is Sheol throughout, though translated Hell in verses 9 and 15, and Grave in 11. It was not yet rendered Hades (for the era of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures had not arrived), but Sheol from beneath, the kingdom of the dead, " is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, Sheol. The worm is spread over thee, and the worms cover thee." Two hundred years later we find the same imagery in Ezekiel xxxii. 21, 27, " The strong out of the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of Sheol, whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, the nether parts of the earth." Gesenius thinks Sheol means by its derivation a hol- low subterranean enclosure, but also suggests, what seems more likely, a derivation from the root shaal, to demand; being the orcus I'apax of CatuUus, the rapa- cious, all-remorseless Hell or Hades, never satiated with its victims. But as yet, in Abraham's day, Homer was not, nor Pluto, nor Achilles, nor the adventures of 26 God's Timepiece for Alan's Eternity. Ulysses, nor any dreams or records of exjDlorers or discoverers of the regions of the dead. This Hebrew Avord then had a meaning of its own, several hundred years jDrior to the Greek mytholo- gies. And its meaning, as to the extent and nature of the kingdom of the dead, grew, with every experience of death and its terrors as revealed of God. Thus Sheol gradually swept up all the death-judgments and pestilences of eveiy age, from Sodom and Gomorrah, and Korah and his company, and the Kibroth hcdtaavah of the desert, to Hinnom and Gehenna, with then- burn- ings and corruj)tions, growing into a more intense pre- sentation and spiritual meaning, through successive floods of light in the Projihets and the Psalms; till in the gospels, in Mark, for example, ix. 43-48, it is Ge- henna, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched"; and in Luke xvi. 22-31, it is Hades, where the Sadducean, unbelieving rich man is in tor- ment, beholding Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Death was always a judgment against the wicked, and the grave a kingdom of terror, never re- Heved of its terrors to the ungodly. The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man died and was buried, and found himself in Hades, tormented in the flame. Definiteness, under the growth of inspiration and experience, took the place of uncertainty. Opinion of what was to be after God's Timepiece for Mans Eteritity. 2^ death became more and more fixed, as the world drew towards the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. See the whole Book of Job, and its \ivid references to the traditions and histories of the judgments of God, antediluvian and otherwise, against the wicked; "The heritage aj)pointed unto them by God." "Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? And the terror when God taketh away the soul; the portion of a wicked man with God, when the heavens shall reveal his iniquity ? " It is the assertion of experience and truth by the Spirit and the Word of God; the common proj)hetic belief in a coming state of guilt and retribution in the unseen world, where the vncked will receive the due reward of their wicked- ness, and God will be justified in the sight of the whole universe. Not only in Genesis and Job is there the concentra- tion of these lightnings, but in Ecclesiastes and the Book of Proverbs. There is never the possibility sug- gested of an}^ such thing as an Eternal Hope for the wicked, but the very contrary is affirmed; despair in- stead of hoj)e. They that say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways, — they have then- desu-e, their reward. This conviction of a righteous and eternal judgment is an atmosphere of subhme and awful consciousness over and within the whole human mind. 28 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. It was an early Hebrew proverb that "the wicked shall be driven away in his wickedness, but the right- eous hath hoj)e in his death." The consequence or effect of d}TJig in one's sins was an increasing terror and burden on the soul, that nothmg but the sense of forgiveness could remove. See Ezekiel xxxiii. 10, 11, and compare Ps. ix. 17, " The wicked shall be tui'ned into Sheol (that is, a region and state of penal retri- bution) and all the nations that forget God." This recej)tacle and habitation of the wicked was not the grave merely, and could never have been so misinter- preted, but a condition of misery for evil men accord- ing to their character in this world, carried into the next. All men, all nations, go down to the grave, the house ajDpointed for all living, good or bad, beheving or unbelieving. But only the wicked are " turned into Sheol," as in Ps. xlix. 14, 15, 19, "never to see light." This word, in all such passages translated by the Greek Hades, is demonstrated by the context as meaning nothing less than what we call Hell; that is simply, the abode of the wicked who die in then- * Consult for ample proof the E^egetical Essays of Prof. Stuart on the Hebrew and Greek words relating to future pun- isliment. Of this volume, reprinted in Great Britain, it was said that no investigation of the same terms, of like extent or equal ability, existed in our own or any other language. Gods Timepiece for Mail s Eternity. 2g But the .ancient believer in God had a refuge and rest in Him, and in dying was said to have been gathered to his fathers. And the hope of eternal life continued to increase in intensity and brightness, till in Christ it assumed shaj^e and lustre, as when carbon is crystaUized into the diamond, l^his was the progressive inspiration and Christian experience in the Old Testament. Forgiveness of sin removed aU the terrors of death, and quieted and comforted the soul in passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Across all the darkness, clouds, impenetrable sorrow and gloom of the grave, the Pilgrims under Moses, the Pro^Dhets, and the Psalms went direct to God in the belief of that life and immortality, which were not only brought to light, but reduced to sense, in Christ's resurrection and ascension. They had received that j)i'omise, and lived uj^on it by the power of faith, though they saw not its fulfilment; God, says Paul, having reserved that divine triumph, that better thing, that finishing thing, for us, that neither they without us, nor we without them, should be made perfect. But if there is truth in the eleventh of Hebrews, or religion in the life of the Old Testa- ment saints, or the foundations of true piety in the Old Testament revelation, the old witnesses for God carried on all the processes of their spiritual life with the same respect precisely to the great recom- JO God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. pense of reward in a better country, even a heavenly, as we. From what Hving well indeed did Christ's own piety flow forth, but those very Hebrew Scrip- tures? And by what was He nourished and sus- tained, but by every word of promise from the mouth of God, for the fulfilment of which He Himself was to be the Bread of Grod which cometh down fi'om heaven for the life of the world 9"^ Had there not been, deej^-grounded, those original fixtures of opinion and belief in the realities of heaven and hell, as states of happiness and misery contrasted * Some learned expositors have maintained that the faith of the old Hebrews in God was higher and more remarkable and effective than ours ever could be, because they had set before them nothing but temporal expectations and rfewards; and yet, knowing nothing about immortality, nevertheless rose to a more exalted piety and disinterested obedience, obeying God exactly as they were commanded, notwithstanding that they knew nothing about Him except as a tem^Doral governor, for temporal ends, and never expected to know anything more of Him, or to have anything more to do with Him, after death. This is the absurdity with which Warburton, and a multitude of German Commentators since his day, have blasted the verdure of the Old Testament like a simoon, and rendered it a land of darkness and confusion, instead of an Eden of the Tree of Life, whose leaves were for the healing of the nations. The palsy and the poison of their speculations are on many books of so-called Christian exposition still. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ji and eternal, in holiness and sin; and axioms of reason- ing from the character of incorrigible criminals with passions set on fire of hell, and habits fitted for no other abode, there could have sj)rung u^d neither such proverbs, nor such prophetic reproofs and threaten- ings, nor the endurance of them when proclaimed. They were beheved and understood as God's incon- trovertible representations of a fviture world, where the consequences of sin persisted in would inevitably be endured by men who had chosen to live and die in their own wickedness. We find a demonstration of aU this in comparing our Lord's warnings to the Jews against the consequences of dying in theu* sins with the third, eighteenth, and thirty-third chapters of Ezekiel. These moulds of thought, then, even if an omnis- cient Saviour had been restricted to the use of them, or could have contrived none others, were, with all their weakness and inexactness, abundantly sufficient for the conveyance of "the mind of the Spirit" in the gospels, and in the New Testament. And as to the eternal meaning, the eternal reaUty, vast, infinite, overwhelming, there is no room for doubt. It is not a dispute of words, nor any contradiction or uncer- tainty of thoughts, or durations, but existence itself, according to character; and character set a-going by- choice, in Time, for Eternity. J2 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. So in the passage in Matt. xi. 23, " Thou Capernaum which art exalted unto Heaven, shalt be brought down to Hell" {Hades); the word cannot possibly mean the grave merely, for the issue immediately is defined to be that of the last judgment; and Capernaum with all the cities of the world will go down to death and the grave at any rate, iiTesioective of character. But Capernaum, and the other unbeHeving cities wherein most of Chi'ist's mighty works were done, and by •which their inhabitants through jDOSsession of such light and mercy had been raised to Heaven, should in the day of judgment bo " thrust down to Hell." Compare Luke x. 14, 15. Now if we take only a few of the great shining passages of Old Testament Kevelation on which the New was built, — the 16th Psalm, eighth to eleventh verses, and the seventeenth, " I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness"; along with the 73d Psalm, "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory "; and Job's shaft of supernatural inspir- ation, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and the corresponding translation of these articles of Job's and David's faith into their daily life and exi^erience ; just there especially where a man's effective rehgious hope and belief are brought out most decisively, and demonstrated in the presence and suffering of disease God's Tmiepiece for Man s Eternity. jj and death; the conclusion is inevitable of a satisfactory- knowledge of a blessed immortahty. Take for exam- ple at the funeral of David's child, the words of the king, "i shall go to him, but he will not retiu-n to me "; this knowledge and prophecy of the future heavenly state, and the simple acquiescence of all the attendant and questioning j^eople in David's be- havior, as being perfectly accounted for and satisfac- tory, with that key of eternity opening the door ! The logical faculty must be indeed blind, and unfit to disclose the treasures of a revelation from heaven to mankind, if it can make out anything other, or any- thing less from all this, than the knowledge of the certainty of life and immortality. The same may be said of the record of the translation of Enoch and Elijah, and the words, "He was not, for God took him," and the world-wide knowledge of such events by tradition as well as history, in the ages of divine communication. Now then, plainly, when our Lord put into uni- versal currency with His own image and superscrip- tion, as the real bullion of divine truth, in words of the Holy Spirit's coining, that infinitely solemn and con- centrating parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and Abraham conversing in the Eternal World, as to the endless retributions for character and action in this world, He taught no new doctrines. But He did ^4- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. take up and oj)en and illustrate the Volume of His Father's will concerning Himself, and the value and destiny of human souls, and concerning life, death, and Eternity, in the j^resence of Sadducean, Epicu- rean, unbelieving men. He depicted and dramatized for men what He knew to be divine reahties, and what he came in infinite mercy and love to reveal fully for salvation of the lost; though taught ah-eady by Moses and the prophets so clearly, that if men would not hear and be convinced by such witnesses, neither would they, though one rose from the dead. " Son, remember ! " An affectionate, compassionate address ! "What could be more so ? The very s^Du-it of the Divine Saviour weeping over Jerusalem. Yet all the compassion in the universe could not bridge the gulf, or bring that man into Abraham's bosom, who in his lifetime had received his good things, and beheved in and regarded nothing better, while Laza- rus had received evil things with patient submission and faith in God. It was infinite Incarnate Love, nothing less, in the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, on whom God hath laid the iniquities of us all, that then and thus on earth was revealing, opening, expounding, for the instruction and salvation of the soul, these dreadful mysteries of self-"\vill, and sin, and its eternal consequences. And the one truth of overwhelming God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j^ power in all these warnings is that of the interminable and ever-accumulating weight of character, for good or evil, as long as the soul exists, with the attribute of a conscious, voluntary responsibility belonging to it. It was the vivid di-amatization of these realities of guUt, with the assurance of their eternal results, that made Christ, at one and the same time, the Incarna- tion of God's mercy, and the most terrific Preacher of His righteousness and justice that ever spoke. Never man spake like this Man, when, from the depths of Love Divine, He uttered the thunder of that awful text, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the condemnation of heU ? " Yet the whole of its awfulness was already in the proverb : " The wicked shall be driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death." And in the prayer of Moses: "Who knoweth the power of Thine anger ? Even according to Thy fear, so is Thy wrath. So teach us to number oiu' days, that we may apply oiu* hearts unto wisdom." Who now dare pal- ter with the watchwords of Eternal Life and Death, adopted in mercy by the Judge of all the earth, that the inhabitants of the world may, in the time of their merciful visitation, learn righteousness ? j6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, Y. THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY AND GREEK POETRY UPON CHRISTIAN LANGUAGE AND BELIEF— STALACTITES OF HOMER'S GENIUS IN THE CAVES OF PLUTO— THE LIGHT OF DAVID'S PSALMS— THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE CARRIES EVERYTHING— THE GREAT SHINING PASSAGES DRAMATIZED BY CHRIST. We certainly attribute too much authority and power to Homer and the Greeks, making' him almost a teacher of inspired theology or eschatology, when we go to him for the meaning of Sheol; or especially if we go with the crowd of Indian path-finders to Babylon and the Oriental philosophers, to find either the details of the futiu'e, or the intermediate state, or any of the foundation stones or j)i'iiiciples on which the Hebrew imaginations or beUefs of such a state rested. The Hebrew words of spiritual instruction and warn- ing, promise and legislation, were shafts of divine rev- elation at successive periods, Adamic, Noahic, Abra- hamic, more and more resi^lendently lighted fi'om God. It must be remembered that Herodotus and Homer did not begin to write till centuries after the Exodus of the Israehtes when they came forth fi-om Gods Timepiece for Man s Eternity. jy bondage, full mailed in all the knowledge of immor- tality received from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all that was possessed also by the Egyptians them- selves. And when the Hebrew words or phrases con- cerning death, the grave, and the world to come were translated into Greek, those translations conveyed the full Hebraic meaning; thus transferring the breath and life of divine insjoiration and knowledge even into the dialect of the heathen mythology. It was a bap- tism from the Nile of one language into the Jordan of the other. It is more likely that the Septuagint translation carried the elements of heavenly light and teaching into the Greek mind, than that the Greeks carried and threw the vail of their philosophy and supersti- tions over the Hebrew mind. Yet the droppings of Homer's genius have become stalactites to hold up the mythological caves of Pluto; and so we go in with our smoking historical torches, and admire the flashing lights, almost as if they were sunbeams. The true light to take into this awful and gloomy imagery of Styx and Acheron is that of David's Psalms, rather than of Ulysses' imagined experience and communications with the wandering desolate ghosts of Hades. For the Hebrew genius took the Greek captive for God's purposes of a wider and more perfect inspiration, not the Greek the ^8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Hebrew. And so we have in Hades, as tlie adopted synonym of Sheol and the kingdom of the grave, not Tartarus and Elysium, still taught as if under divine sanction, but a kingdom of immediate spiritual forces and awards; not a running to and fro of shuddering ghosts, lamenting, as the great evil of death, that their bodies were never buried, but a foreshadowing of the departure of those eternal processions mar- tiaUed at the word of the last Judge, "And these shaU go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The internal evidence carries everything, and we ask, "What, on the whole, is the thought conveyed for our acceptance, belief, and practical usage and guidance ? Over and above the particular words, there is a basis of known ideas which, if it cannot be exactly bodied forth in terms, still remains very clear in substance. Take for example the striking text in Proverbs, "The way of Life is above to the wise, that he may depart £i*om Hell beneath." This does not mean whai we call Hell, say some of the critics, but only the grave. Hades, the house ap- pointed for all living. Well then, what does that mean? It cannot surely mean the grave merely, the seiDulchre or place of interment for the body; for no ivise man or fool ever has avoided, or ever can avoid that, or depart from it, though in him were concen- God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. jg trated the science, philosoj)liy, and life of all ages. And it cannot mean dealh merely, for it is appointed unto aU men once to die, and after that, tlie judgment. And it cannot mean a mere under-ioorld of departed spirits all alike in the same quality and condition; for it is contrasted with an above-world of the ■?oi>c, by taking the way to which in this earthly existence, while the way of life is open, he departs from Hell beneath. The thought of the contrast is evidently eternal, and founded on character. No matter then for the imperfection of human lan- guage, nor the ignorance or superstition of those who first used it, and made moulds of thought out of it. There remains, unescapable, inevitable, the great over- whelming thought or conviction of a world of character beyond the grave; and that character as eternal as the choices that began it, and the God that governs and hath appointed its retributions. It is above, — the way of Hfe; beneath, the way of death; but each and both the way of our existence, conceived of as fixed and certain, beyond the grave, beyond the death of the body. So much, certainly, is included in the use of the word Hell, in this and a number of similar passages, so translated from the Old Testament into English. It is plain that in these passages there was conveyed the assurance of a future state and place of retribu- tion to the vncked, and reward and happiness to the ^(9 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity . righteous. Every man to whom these passages were addressed, eveiy man who heard or read these words, knew that they described an indisj)ittable reaUty and behef ; they were elements of a commanding common consciousness, to which our Saviour Himself appealed, when He warned men against the destruction of soul and body in hell, and drew His teachings in regard to that hell — its nature, extent, and eternity— fi'om the Old Testament Scriptures. The English reader has only to take Young's Analytical Concordance of the Hebrew, Greek, and English terms for Hell, and com- pare the passages, and the argument is irresistible. Take them into the New Testament, and we find them dramatized by Christ with such vivid intensity in His own parables and interpretations, that the dead coming back into life could not have spoken more convincingly. It is imjDossible that our Lord's reas- oning from such passages can rest on any other grounds than those of a Verbal Inspiration; the truths conveyed being of infinite importance, and therefore necessarily infaUible, both in phraseology and meaning. Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^i VI. ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY OF GODS WORD, IN OR- DER TO THE LIFE OF MAN'S SOUL, THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST — TRUTHS FOR ETERNITY MAY BE AS WELL KNOWN BY INFERENCE, AS BY MIRACLE — CHRIST'S OWN METHOD OF REASONING AND BUILDING. It is ahaohdely certain, if anythiag in this world can be, that God has given us the means of ascer- taining all the truths necessary for our immortal well being, and of detecting and exposing the false- hoods that put us in danger of eternal evil. And yet, absolute certainty can, no more than goodness, exist anywhere out of God, or without Him in it, as its essence. It is with a verily, verily, that Jesus said to the Jews, " The Son can do nothing of HimseK, but what He seeth the Father do, for what things soever He doeth, those also doeth the Son likewise; for the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him aU things that He Himself doeth." And to this end, "that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father " ; recei-^ing His words and the words of His Apostles, as the Father's words. "The words that I speak unto j'ou, they are Spirit and they are ^2 God's Timepiece f 07'' Alans Eternity. Life. The word that ye hear is not Mine but the Fa- ther's which sent Me." " I have given unto them the words ivhich Thou gavest 3Ie. I have given them Thy Word. Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth. Them also who shall believe on Me through their tuord, that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." If there be not here the truth and necessity de- clared of an infallible verbal inspiration in all things necessary to the knowledge of God in Christ, where can the assertion or the idea of it ever be found? But still it all hangs by the great prophetic covenant in Moses and Isaiah: "A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise you up; and I will put My words in His mouth, and whosoever will not hearken unto My WORDS which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him." "My Spirit and My Word," are j)ro- nounced inseparable. They certainly are as much so as the spirit and the words of Socrates and Plato, or the soul and body of the Lord Jesus Himself. There are things as well known, as absolutely cer- tain by inference, as they ever could be by a present miracle. So Christ reasoned. There are truths as absolutely known to be true, by correspondence be- tween . the external voucher and the inward exj^eri- ence, as if they were a minie-ball, shot through Gods Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. ^j your heart, and taking you in a moment into tlie world of spirits. It is a thing to be wondered at; the majesty, profoundness, and far-reaching and mi- nute application of the certainties, by divine inference from God's Being, driven down into the human mind, through these sentences of the words of Christ; re- corded on purpose that the believers in God may build an Eternal City of Truth upon them. After they are thus given, each individual soul must be the builder of his own house of worship out of them; for they are given and settled for the whole world; for the foundations of faith in God, that men may receive salvation from Him through Christ as the gift of eternal life, the salvation fi'om eternal death. The eternal consequences, and a be- lief in them, become collateral assurances, inferences, and seals, for every mind that possesses the govern- ing idea and conviction of an eternal existence and re- sponsibihty to God. On this possession, as the inde- structible foundation of His own ajipeal to the human mind and on this desire of everlasting happiness Je- sus Christ built, with infinite persuasion, for a divine eternal reality. These were the spiritual ringbolts in the substance of the soul, as made originally in the image of God, by which to fasten the very constitution of the mind of every believer to the anchor of Hope, " entering into that within the veil, whither the Fore- 44 God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. runner is for us entered. Jesus, our High Priest, con- secrated for evermore, and ever living to make inter- cession for us." And so did Moses, by divine appointment and inspiration before Christ, buUd and intercede ; — Moses, who vras also, lilie Christ, "faithful to Him that apj)ointed him, in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after. "^ — Heb. iii. 5. VII. THE TEACHING OF THE HEBREWS BY THE SI- LENCE OF GOD — A DIVIDING FIRMAMENT BE- TWEEN FALSEHOOD AND DIVINE TRUTH — THE REALITIES OF SPIRITUAL WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES. It has been undeniably proved by modern research and discovery that the Egyptians possessed the knowl- ed'ge of immortality and a future state of retribution, and had their own Book of the Dead, with trials and verdicts and judgments in the world to come. Every Hebrew in the time of Moses must have been familiar with the particulars of their l(M things, their ideas of what was to be beyond the grave, as well as the rites of their bestial worship in this life. But all their sys- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^5 tern was so inextricably corrupted and depraved by the most degraded of all idolatries, mythologies, and su- perstitions, demoralizing the very moralities of life, and consecrating its immoralities, that the God of the Hebrews did not permit Moses even to refer to the actual truths connected with the vast system of the Egyptian priesthood; for this would have been to bind falsehood and truth together as a compound power upon the reason and conscience, even toward God. God constrained Moses to set His clock of human conduct and behef by the attributes of God as re- vealed to Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with never a reference to any divine truths learned from the Egyptians. This accounts for the reticence as weU as the minuteness and exacting pre- cision of the insj3U'ed records. The reticence, to indi- cate the unsearchable wisdom and holiness of the invisible Jehovah, not to be set forth by graven im- ages or personifications; the minuteness, to expel and forbid the horrid cruelties, abominable practices, and imbruting will- worship of idolatry; and to enthrone instead thereof, for the conscience and heart of the worshipper, God's own apj)ointed system of sacred rites, full of the symbohsm of divine meaning, and prophetic of the Saviour to come. Men have therefore needlessly perplexed themselves /f.6 God's Timepiece for Alans Eternity. with discussing the possible reasons why, if the truths of immortality and a judgment to come were known to the Egyptians, Grod did not more definitely appeal to that very knowledge, when He proclaimed the Dec- alogue by Moses, and prepared His people in the wil- derness for the Pi'omised Land. It was because the Egyptian heaven was like Mohammed's, nothing but earth, no heavenly horizon. ' The Hebrew heaven was " THE ErERNAii GoD, THY KEFUGE, and Underneath thee the Everlasting arms." And God, in His new crea- tion of a people by divine truth and the divine Spirit, would make an infinite transparent void and variance between all that the Hebrews knew in and from Egypt and its priests, and all that God had revealed of the history of creation, and the fall of man, and the antediluvians, and Noah and the Patriarchs, for the worship of the true God iu sj^irit and in truth. He made a sejoarating firmament in the midst of the waters, and said, " Let there be lights in the firma- ment of heaven, to divide the day from the night." The clouds of falsehood and corrupt example to which they had been accustomed in Egyj^t were so heavy with sense and sensual imagery and passion, that if shut up to that medium of instruction they could neither have seen God through it, nor have formed to themselves any righteous concej)tions of the spiritual and never-ending existence of the soul. And God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^7 therefore God, for their own good, restricted them ia His own Word to the revelation of Himself as the Eternal and infinitely holy Jehovah, the only wise God; and made the disclosiu-e of themselves to them- selves, as capable of knowing God only by loving Him, and of hviiig forever only in His blessed likeness. Immortality was so well known to the Hebrews, coming up from Egypt, that it was an atmosphere of light and consciousness, surrounding ahke the evil and the good. But the Egyptian beliefs and habits of a brutal transmigration (souls possessed and car- nalized and thus demonized by sense), and their rit- uals accordingly, — and the corrupting jpower of sen- suality carried into aU their speculations concerning Eternity, must be carefully and utterly exterminated from the Hebrew rules of a divine service. The Eter- nal God was to be revealed in His infinite oneness and hoHness; and the natiu'e of sin against God was to be made manifest, and Jehovah was to be brought near to them in His Eternal Love, and in His present holy providences. And therefore all the regulations of life, social, poHtical, economical, in work and worship, in earthly business and duty, were to be totally dis- entangled from idolatry, in abhorrence of its customs and its teachings; and in obedience to God's statutes, were to be interwoven in God's service, " unto the ex- ample and shadow of heavenly things and good things ^8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. to come," in assiu-ed trust for God's eternal Mercy and Grace. God Himself, and the forgiveness of the soul, and the blessedness of His never-ceasing presence and love (" if Thy presence go not Avith us, carry us not up hence "), were what He did and would bestow forever; but the things that He gave now, even the promised land, and prosj)erity in this life, were only earnests of the future, things by the way, provisions of a pilgrim- age. This was Abraham's grand and glorious theol- ogy, " I am they shield (m Time), and thine exceeding great reward (in Time and Eternity) ; " and Moses and the Hebrews knew this, as well as the great Patri- arch, their ancestor by covenant with God. For god- hness had then, as now, the promise of the life that now is, as of Ihat which is to come; and both together. From the eternities of mud and materialism God raised behevers in Hun up to a life of practical obedi- ence, under the clear, austere firmament of a law and precepts requiring fi-om them a character of hoUness as God is holy, and because He is holy, that they might be fitted to live foeevek with Him. The promised land was but the frame of an invisible future, the telescope of faith for bringing near that " better coun- try," alone suited to their immortal nature, brought into communion with God ; and by reason of their be- lief in that, and their living for it at God's Word, as Gods Timepiece for Man s Eternity. ^g strangers and inlgrims on the earth, " God was not ashamed to be called tlieii* God, for He had prej)ared for them a city." — Heb. xi. 13, 16. And so Jehovah disciphned them with precepts and observances, con- nected with the Decalogue of Love to God and man. and jDrotected them as with a coat of mailed fire from the monstrous lies of the Egyj)tian mythologies. He had set them apart, as in a standing-stool of parental care, with the symbolism of Jacob's dream- ladder before them, let down fi"om heaven, trodden by ascending and descending angels. He dehvered them from the tyranny of Pharaoh, and carried them across the Red Sea, and thi'ough the deadly desert, by miracles of His own divine power, hoHness, and love, and taught them that man doth not hve by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.— See Neh. ix. 13, 14, 20. He instructed them, and the whole world through and after them, that man hath a higher life and holier needs of immortality, than those of the body, for which life God's grace, forgiving sin, must fit him. The very reserve of a divine revelation, leaving them alone with God, with the heart and conscience du'ected towards Him only, because He alone was Jehovah, theii' God, and no God or Saviour besides Him, and because their true Ufe consisted in loving Him and keeping His commandments out of gratitude ^o God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and love, was a spiritual discipline of infinite solemnity and power. The silence of God, and the thought, Thou God seest me, taught them more concerning thc^ reahties of Eternity and Immortality, and did more to wean them from Egyptian superstitions and fables, and to educate their souls for heaven, than if there had been given a schedule of contrasted eternal felici- ties and tortures more definite than those of Pagan, Mohammedan, or even baj)tized Papal falsehoods. In the books of Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Proi^hets, there is demonstrated a closeness and fury of the life-and-death grapple between the principal- ities and j)owers of heaven and heU, a startling near- ness and reality in the shock and flame of battle-life, unknown in our day, in the proximity and mixture, the confusion and meUe of Pagans and Christians, idol- aters and worshippers of God. Take Elijah's life of deadly conflict with Ahab, Jezebel, and Baal for illus- tration. But the literature of Devil-desjDotisms before the flood (raS jusQoSeiai rod SiaPoXov, as Paul calls them, Eph. vi. 11), has not come down to us, whatever of that nature there may have been then. Nor is there any indication in the Hebrew beliefs or literatui'e sanctioning any compromise or indifference between truth and error, or any nullifying of the for- ever widening gulfs and consequences between holi- ness and sin. It is manifest that there had ever been God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. 5/ a party of materialists, whose pleasures, aspii'ations, and beliefs were restricted to this world; but that, in the hterature of better instructed spirits there was al- ways the known reality of entu*ely another life, and that life a revelation from Jehovah, the ■VNaitten Word of God, directing aU souls to Himself in faith and prayer, and to a reliance on His merciful and forgiv- inof love forever. YIII. DEMONSTRATIONS FROM THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF JOHN'S GOSPEI.-PRESENCE OF THE SPIRIT WITH THE WORD— OBJECT AND EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES —PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS AND PROOFS REQUISITE FOR ETERNAL LIFE. The fifth chapter of John's Gospel is a demonstra- tion (1) of the unity and divine inspiration of the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testaments, and (2) of the unity of God in Christ and Christ in God, as the same in person, attributes, authority and power. And yet how remarkable that the whole train of argument and instruction grows out of the healing of the impotent man at Bethesda, followed hy the persecuting fury of the Jews against Christ, because He had wrought that miracle of divine mercy on the Sabbath day; and had justified His work by ^2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. such an assertion of His oneness in power and being with the Father, as "made Himself equal with God." Then followed Christ's affirmation of its being really God's will " that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Fathei'," and His offer of the gift of eternal life to every believer in His own "Word. Here are some of the great connecting links of this vast and mighty argument. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlast- ing hfe. But I receive not testimony from man. The Father Himself which hath sent Me hath borne witness of me. But these things I say, that ye might be saved. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life. And they are they that testify of Me. And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life." The axioms of thought and belief so announced are themselves a demonstration from Christ, comj^rehend- ing these conclusions, namely, 1. No testimony ad- mitted or possible fi'om man. 2. Then God Himself must give it. 3. God hath given it. 4. The Scrip- tures are God testifying. 5. Theu- testimony is con- cerning Christ. 6. It is for eternal life. 7. Life only in Christ. 8. For this, men are to search the Scrip- tures, for they alone testify of Him. And, 9, All men who hear Christ know what the ScriptAPes are. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^j These Scriptures, being the testimony of God, were not a vague or doubtful quantity, when Christ was speaking on earth, but absolute, and absolutely known, and referred to as containing the indisputable postulates of all right reasoning in regard to God, Christ, eternity, and the destiny and duty of the soul. These Scriptures, known then as the Word of God, are Christ's credentials now of divine testimony and authority solely from God. In them God's Word, in- faUible, neither asks nor receives man's sanction or support, any more than God the Creator can ask or receive authentication as God from man the creature. In that Word itself which is demonstrated by Chi'ist, we are informed that the Holy Spii'it of God who gave it is attendant on the Word, and is a divine witness and interpreter in the heart of the believer. Comparing Isaiah Iv. 8-11, and lix. 21, we have the infallibility of the Word of God, along with the ever accompanying presence and witness of the Spu-it of God; a presence and witness which could never be given to an erroneous or fallible utter- ance or record. "As for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord. My SiDuit that is upon thee, and My Word which I have put in thy mouth, shaU not depart out of thy mouth, nor out the mouth of thy seed, nor of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever." 5^ Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. This presence of the Spii-it with the word, is in like manner assured by the Lord Jesus to every believer in Him, as constituting a sure, sufficient and pei*petual guide, no matter whether there be any other external testimony or not. The evidence of the Word is in itself, by the Holy Spirit that in- sj)ired it; known as God's hght, not by man's tes- timony, but by its own, which is God's. God speaks and it is done. The volume of the Book, from Gen- esis to the ApocalyjDse, is for all time, to all souls, an omnipresent, omniscient voice and spirit, for ever. Miracles are as the ringing of God's bell, to call men to hear God's voice; as the burning bush made Moses turn aside to see that great sight; and when men begin to attend and hear, then the inward wit- ness of the SjDirit goes with the outward utterance, which itseK becomes an inward breathing of the way, the truth, the life, carrying the same conviction of spiritual verity, as the consciousness of voluntary motion does of physical existence and reality. God's Word being thus inbreathed, and demonstrated by a new spu-itual creation and life of the soul, the possession and consciousness of its j)0wer are depend- ent on individual faith and experience, by the Holy Spu'it; and its knowledge j)Ossesses this superiority, above all pretences and antitheses of science, falsely God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 55 so called, that it is placed so entirely at tlie com- mand and disposal of every believer, that the way- faring man though a fool need not err in regard to it, nor ever be without its saving light. All the miracles are wrought for us as truly as for those who first beheld them; and the Word of God is spoken to us; just as Christ said to the Jews, Moses wrote unto you; and the Sadducees said, Moses wrote unto us; and Christ said. Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, etc. (Matt. xxii. 31). Thus the Word is a j^resent utterance of God to all mankind in all generations, as personal and dii'ect as if now first spoken; and so the miracles are present miracles. And we ourselves are co-workers with God of them, as well as believ- ers in them, the greatest of them being that of a personal regeneration. When we have read enough in the Scriptures to begin to understand their object and plan, then we perceive that the mii-acles recorded necessarily grow out of the revelation itself, in its life and nature, and are natural to it. Supernatural in themselves, they are natiu'al to God's Word, which could never, with its provision and gift of life eternal, and its assurance of forgiveness, be established, be made credible, without them. The spii'itual pur- pose of the book requu*es and justifies them, and its success demonstrates them. Forgiveness of sin is its ^6 God's Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. object, and to get men to believe and accept forgive- ness, its mightiest work, the greatest of all miracles; and common miracles, vrorks of supernatural power, vouchers of omnipotence, are essential to prove that God offers forgiveness, and is capable of it, to the greatest of sinners. But here we have to remember that the only pos- sible self-satisfying test and proof of the Word of God in each man's case is personal. When we have ful- filled the commands given as to its use, then we shall KNOW. For God's own directions, with which His Word is committed to oiu- trust, for ourselves and others, are not to be mistaken — being in every man's power. They are Christ's instructions, as the all- wise and merciful Physician of the soul, and are plainer and more precious than ever were given to accompany any medicine of sovereign and life-restor- ing energy. God provides, commands, and works the miracle; we demonstrate it. Herein is the combina- tion human and divine, as in the text, " Work out your own salvation, for it is God that worketh in you." The demonstration of its efficacy consists inevitably, fii-st, in its being used; second, according to the direc- tions. For it is confessedly a spiritual medicine, for the healing and forgiveness of the soul; good for nothing else, proved by nothing less, but ordered and administered by the Divine Physician, who would GocCs Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 5/ neither prepare nor send it without His own teach- ings how to take it, nor could it be efficacious with- out being taken according to those instructions. Suppose your physician prescribes a medicine to be taken by the tablespoonful every three hoiu's. The demonstration of its efficacy is in taking it in that way. If it were applied to the temples, instead of being swallowed, it woiild fail. Suppose the accom- panying direction to be that the patient, every time he took it, should name over it the name of the phy- sician, and ask him to accompany it with a blessing by the spell of his power. That, you will say, would be superstition. But supj)ose the use of the Bible to be, as dii'ected by its Author, with inward prayer to God for the presence and blessing o* His Spirit, He having given His Word with that essential qualifica- tion. That would not be superstition, but a perfectly reasonable and infinitely valuable and blessed condi- tion and proof, because it brings the inquiring soul, that is seeking for heahng and forgiveness, directly to God, in communion with God's own love, God's own Spu'it. But, superstition or not, reasonable or not, in a man's judgment, if that were the dkection, no man could be supposed to know the truth without minding that rule ; or to prove the value of the medi- cine without seeking God in it. But, minding that rule, taking the medicine with prayer, he needs no ^'opy- Iceum, an avenue of sphinxes, in order that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God, in demonstration of the Spirit and of power within the temple of the Word. Human learning, external research, is good to clear away rubbish, to i^revent prejudice, to gather out the stones, to prepare the way of the Lord, to disen- tangle difficulties. Good sometimes, as Mr. Berridge used to say, to silence scorners, or as a stone to throw at a dog to stop his barking, but the power is within. For it is written, "I will destroy the wis- dom of the wise, and bring to nothing the under- standing of the prudent." Where is the wise? Where /^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. is the scribe? "WTiere tlie disputer of this world? Hath not God made fooUsh the wisdom of this world? Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men, and in no conceivable way could man testify that the Word of God is God's Word, unless you find God's own authority evident in itself, apart from man's testimony. And if you find and feel tliat (which is indeed the witness of the Sjiirit), you can neither mistake nor doubt it; nor do you ask for any endorsement of it, nor indeed will you submit to any such suppo- sition as that it is not in itself all-sufficient and divinely authoritative. No creature shall patronize it, or put his seal upon it. It needs no candle, neither light of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God doth hghten it, and the Lamb is the hght thereof. When you are sensible of that presence, all the questions as to canonical or uncanonical, as to whether particular books have been received by the Church, or not received, go for nothing. When the Spirit that inspu'ed the Word insj)u-es your heart to behold and adore its glory, the disputes of outside traditionists as to an- tiquities, seals, councils, are of httle moment. Just so, in a watch, to determine its merit and its maker you would pay no attention whatever to God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. y^ any questions or conflicts as to the time when ru- bies or diamonds were first discovered, or cogged wheels first invented, or the elastic power of a steel spring first put to use. No matter for all that. There is the watch, a perfect watch, declaring its maker. A party of metaphysical or mechanical wran- glers might contend that the watch had no authority or design, because there was no proof of its ever having been made at all, or of certain parts of it ever having been in existence as mechanical appli- cations. But that is notliing to you; there is the watch, and it could not have grown there, as an apple- or an orange grows. And just so, a party of theological or anti-theological controversiahsts may tell you that the Bible has no authority, unless you can find a church that can give you some account of its origin, or a set of literary or scientific wit- nesses that can give you some history of such or such a book, or of aU the books. But there is the volume, God's own Word, and you see how its parts are inwrought together, how the whole coheres, how it keeps time, how it is entirely superior to human evidence, how it would not work one whit better, if it had the literary and historical evidence of all ages. And further, you see how, if its wheels did not play with infinite ac- curacy, if any wheel or tooth ran against the cogs yd God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. of any otlier, it would stop, and prove itself useless and powerless, even thougli all the writers, witnesses, and corporations of all time conspired with unbroken testimony to establish its divinity. We see at once how impossible to demonstrate its divineness, if God Himself did not establish it, if the volume itself did not rightly reveal God, and establish its own authenticity as from Him. And if God HimseK has really stamped it as His Word, all the vouchers of all humanity are needless. As the Timepiece of humankind for eternity, it can go alone ; it does go alone ; it does not go any better for the testimony of all Christendom. All Christen- dom must go by it, or Christendom is not Chris- tianity. It keeps no better time for the certificates of all generations, whether of Chi'istendom or hea- thendom. It judges mankind, not mankind it. It is the ultimate everlasting authority, the court of last appeals. Gods Timepiece for Maris Eternity. /^ X. CHRIST'S TESTIMONY COVERS ALL THE SCRIPTURES- MAN'S PERSONAL EXPERIMENT IN PRAYER— CONSE- QUENCES OF PROTESTING GOD'S DRAFTS. The testimony concerning Christ in the Scrip- tures extended over the whole range of those Scrip- tures, from Genesis to Malachi. Its infaUibiHty was grounded in the fact that all those Scriptures were the Word of God. They could not be the Word of God merely in. those passages which Clu'ist se- lected for exposition, and the testimony of man, and fallible, in the whole course of providential and historical narrative, any more than the sun, moon, and stars could be the work of God in their primal elements, their light and life-giving energy, but the work of man in their orbits and periodic motions. If you beHeve that God made the light. He made aU things. He made the correspondences of all things with the light. If you believe that the utterances of the Old Testament concerning Christ were the truth of God, all the correspondences and roots of that truth were of God likewise. Carry this Divine Word to the Sandwich or South Sea Islands and pour its Hght upon the savages there. /variably produces the assurance of eternal life. " And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Nothing less than this can be the perfection of heavenly and earthly science united. It is infinite, celestial. Christian evidence, leaving no loophole or excuse for unbehef ; the very method of jjroof, which God's reason, in God's Word and in man's mind de- mands, as the ground of absolute knowledge. It is the Lord of all, the Author of Eternal Salvation, the Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, i^i Author and Finislier of Faith, who "begins and com- pletes in Himself, as God and man, this science for the universe, this demonstration of all power in heaven and on earth. This, and nothing less, is the infinitely glorious con- clusion of the 72d Psalm; even the fullilment of that promised celestial and eternal glory, wherein "the jDrayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended." "He shall dehver the needy when he crieth. He shall redeem their souls. Praj'er also shall be made for Him continually, and daily shall He be praised. There shall be a handful of com in the earth on the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Leb- anon. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth; His name shall endure forever; His name shall be con- tinued as long as the sun : and men shall be blessed in Him. All nations shall call Him blessed. And blessed be His glorious name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen." 1^2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. XIX. THE TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS THE FIRST EXPLANATORY NARRATIVE IN THE GOSPELS— ITS CONNECTION WITH THE ACCOUNT OF THE TRANS- FIGURATION, AND THE WALK TO EMMAUS— THEN THE CULMINATING NARRATIVE OF THE CRUCIFIX- ION, OUT OF THE SAME DIVINE NECESSITY— " IT IS WRITTEN." The Temptation is tine first grand self-demonstrating narrative in the Goapels, presenting Christ, acting for us, in our nature, and giving the normal example, the principles, the grammar of Hfe and the germs of motive and of feeUng, to guide and inspire us in all our conflicts with evil, and the Evil One. It is the method for our inteUigence and heart. As Christ did in the wilderness, when tempted of the devil, so must we do, whose whole pilgrimage, in con- sequence of sin within us, is that of a temptation through Hfe, by the world, the flesh, and the devil. But having a present God to appeal to as our refuge and strength, and the example of a friend and Sa- viour who was in all points temjoted like as we are, yet without sin, the outstanding lessons and example in this narrative are found in Christ's in- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 14J cessant use of the "Word of God, as His only au- thority and weapon; in the exercise of faith in God as His overmastering, sustaining, inspiring principle and vital power. The next grand narrative is that of the walk to Emmaus, with the same Scriptures that Christ used for Himself against Satan in the temptation, now disclosed in the full glory and majesty of their sig- nificance and purpose in regard to Himself as the Saviour of mankind, and for the complete instruc- tion and arming of believers in Him, to be His witnesses and God's, in and for the work of re- demption, in the preaching of the Word, in the pub- lication of the GosjDel, in the hfting up of Him upon the cross, whom the Word presents for our salva- tion, and who has given us to know that if He be so Hfted up. He will draw all men unto Himself. Now if our strength for ourselves, in aU our personal con- flicts, is in the knowledge and use of God's Word by a personal faith, equally or much more are such knowledge and use necessary, and certainly with need of a much wider and more fuUy instructed comprehension of the same, in our work in and upon the world, as Christ's agents in behalf of oth- ers, for the planting, encouragement, and instruc- tion of their faith; and all because. It is written. Between these two narratives, there came the vis- 144 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ion, and there stands the account of the Transfig- uration, which is a double example of Christ's com- muning with and recalling the Old Testament anu His Father's prophets in it, both for His own com- fort and strength advancing to His sufferings and death, and for the instruction and confirmation of our faith, when He should have fulfilled in Himself all things testified beforehand in Moses and the projDhets. In the temptation in the wUderness, Satan appeared to Him, and projDosed that He should save His own life from suffering and death by miracles. In the Transfiguration, Moses and Elias appeared, and spake with Him of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. It was Christ communing with the dead but living proj^hets of the Old Tes- tament, in regard to His own dying and rising and kingdom of glory, even his inheritance of the saints in light, the jDurchase of His sufferings and death.- Peter, James, and John, the representatives and lead- ing spirits of those who were to be the living prophets of the New Testament, were alone admitted to behold His glory and hsten to that conversation, in order that they might be the better prepared to bear wit- ness and to preach. Admitted to hear the thunder of the voice of God from heaven, the same that fell at His baptism ; but warned that they should submit even this majestic utterance to the Old Testament God's Timepiece for Maris Eternity. 7^5 inspiration ; that sui-er word of proj)liecy, according to wliicli all i^rocedures were evolved, As it is written. The reference to this testimony in the second of Peter's Epistles is in this view very wonderful, as to a thing well known, an event recorded, full of divine glory, and indisputable, and yet of secondary importance to the utterances of God in the Old Testament as it was written. "For we have not fol- lowed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majest}'. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the ex- cellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice, which came fi-om heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure ivord of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no j)rophecy of the Scripture is of any private Luterpretation. For the j)i"0i3hecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Two of the foremost of these holy men of God were now present on the Mount of Transfiguration, per- I/J.6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. mitted to break tbrougli the impassable barrier be- tween the Eternal World and this, in order that they might renew their testimony, direct from heaven, to the glory of that Being, tkrough the foreseen efficacy of whose blood, shed for the remission of sins, they had ah'eady enjoyed a thousand years' experience of heaven. They appeared with Him now in glory, and spake of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. It was a re-personation of the Word, It is written, in august Hving personages, adoring and talking with the Word Incarnate; a crystallization to the spiritual and physical sense of the beholders, of a portion of the heavenly unseen world, with its hving glorious inhabitants, and the themes of then: absorbing in- terest. If there had been any doubt or questioning of the resurrection, or future life, of dejDarted hu- man beings, as Hving on in another world, this would take all that doubt away; but the death and rising again of the Lord Jesus could not be understood by that, save only in mysterious predic- tion. And therefore Christ sealed in them the vis- ion for perfect silence, not to be broken even to the dearest and nearest of the disciples, till His own resurrection had been seen and known. "You have seen these transfigured beings in glory, along with Me, as really living beings as I am. They, you well God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, i^y know, died, and have not been seen on earth for a thousand years. You have heard the voice of My Father in heaven. I, whom you have seen and known as yet only hving, but to-day transfigured, am My- self to be j)ut to death, but to rise from the dead, the third day, from the grave in which I shall be laid among you. TeU the vision to no man, till I am rif^en from the dead, when you will know its whole meaning and power, and can relate it, along with the event of My resurrection, in your presentation to men of My glory." So He charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. And they kejDt that saying with themselves, questioning one with another xohat the ris- ing from the dead should mean. Peter, James and John had that secret subject among themselves, all the remaining time of theu^ education with Christ, and ever and anon were studying it. But Christ, to theii' minds, Christ, the Messiah, Christ, the person of Peter's confession, Christ, the Son of the Living God, was always living. How should He die ? How should He rise again? He who said to Martha, I am the Resurrection and the Life, He who Himself called Lazarus from his grave, hoAV should He die ? How should death ever have any power over Him? Because He had power to lay down His life, and 148 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. power to take it again. Because this commandment He had received from the Father, and thus in His Fa- ther's Book it was written of Him, I dehght to do Thy will, O God. It must be fulfilled, as God had written, not because the fulfilment was necessary, and must be brought about, in order to save the credit of the prediction, but because it was God's prediction, and could not be broken; because heaven and earth might sooner pass away than one jot or tittle of God's Word be unaccomplished. And because, by His voluntary dying, in obedience to God's will, and bearing our sins out of infinite divine compassion, having Him- self become a jDartaker of our flesh and blood, in order that He might do this in body, soul, and sj)irit in our nature, He, through death, destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and delivered the life-time subjects of the devil's bond- age. Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory ? The first thing requisite for them to know was, that Christ ought, in obedience to His Fa- ther's Will, and because It was written. The other eternal reasons they should see and know, even in their knowledge of Christ's own glory, by experience and particij)ation of the same. For the present this must suflfice — It is written. In the walk to Emmaus the receivers and repre- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i/j.g sentatives of the information and the glory were not apostles, not of the twelve; and therefore the record possesses an importance, as disclosing an affluent of the great river of inspu'ation from the Lord Jesus before it was put in writing, and showing whence they derived the materials and the illuminating power of their testimony who spake the Gospel as from the lips of the Lord Jesus, as He Himself gave to them the Word of God ivith His knowledge of it, and His authoritaiive in- terpretation. This witness is for us, and for all men directly, not through what is called the Apostolate, or any apostohc succession, but as an ojDen reservoir, that ive knoio to have been set open bvfore our Lord's As- cension. And we are at liberty to put all the elements in it, which we can discover through the Gospels or in the Epistles to have been drawn at any time by our Lord from the Old Testament Scriptures, or commun- icated concerning Himself by after inspiration. In the walk to Emmaus we are ourselves with Christ as our teacher, and are taken by Him into the Word of God entering with Him into the depths, unfathomable, to see the sunken pillars of God's redemptive architectxire, and how the new world wherein dwelleth righteousness must rise uj^on them and out of them, and how every builder and every behever that would possess the infinite honor and happiness of being a co-worker with God in 1^0 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Chi-ist, and would be jDrepared for such a glorious ministry, and be successful in it, must work and build ujDon that Word as it is written, and according to it, and to the directions of Christ, everywhere pointing to the plan divine, and giving the specifications. Here was Christ, taking some of the master-builders of His kingdom into His secret studio, and unroUing before them His plan and Grod's plan, ground plan and up- per story, in the Old Testament Scrijotures, as God took Moses up into the Mount, and revealed to him and made him understand the j^lan and si^ecifications of the Tabernacle, and said to him, " See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee in the Mount," so also in the same manner He instructed David, and David Solomon, for the build- ing of the Temple. See Ex. xxv. 40, xxvi. 30, and Num. viii. 4, compared with I Chron. xxviii. 11, 12, 19, and Heb. viii. 5. In the narrative of the Crucifixion, to which every preceding path travels, and without which the Gospels would be vain, and our faith vain, we have everything advancing by divine foreknowledge and plan, tran- spiring in the same method, by reason of the j^revious revelation, now coming to its conclusion, with the same divine necessity. As it is written. That is the one thing regarded. There is the same invariable exaltatior of the Word in its written exactitude, as God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, i^r the Judge and Determiner of all things. But we have this narrative also recorded by the witnesses, just exactly as its scenery passed before the minds of the disciples, still veiled and darkened, looking on in as- tonishment and despair, only one person admitted to the fuU understanding of it, and that, the thief upon THE CROSS, whose faith was the first triumph and re- ward of the Redeemer's sufferings. As yet, that Christ should suffer death they no more knew the meaning of, than that He should rise again from the dead; for with that rising they could as yet connect httle more than the idea or belief of continued existence in another world; and it would necessarily take Chi'ist away from this world as the King of glory, and from all their hopes and expecta- tions as Hebrews, of a glorious empu-e on earth under His Kingship. They knew not the meaning as yet of any part of the great tragedy; and so it went on, and so the whole is related as to them its events were developed, under that veil. Every step in the history, every be- trayal of the victim, every insult, every agony, the scenes of Gethsemane, the words of prayer, the bloody sweat, the desertion of the disciples, related with such inimitable simpHcity and severity; not one word or mark of exaggeration or of effort at display; not a shade of coloring put in for .effect, but just the hue 1^2 God's Thnepiece for Mans Eternity. of living truth, circumstance after circumstance; and the admission, so freely made, that all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might he fulfilled, but that the disciples did not understand it, and that there was an inexorable necessity of such fulfilment, by which the Son of God Himself was bound. "Think- est thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shaU presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be ful- filled that thus it must be?" It is written; and that is My divine necessity, even the written Word of My Father, and that Word as He meant it, without one attempt to vary or escape its meaning or its conse- quences. XX. THINGS TO BE NOTED AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE TEMP- TATION—FIRST THE OPENING POSITION OF SATAN, AS THE ACCUSER AND ENEMY OF MANKIND— SEC- OND, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SATAN'S METH- OD, AND THAT OF MODERN INFIDELITY— THIRD, OUR LESSONS FROM HIS EXAMPLE AND THAT OF THE SAVIOUR, "THUS SAITH THE LORD." We now carry this general survey back to our Lord's history of the Temj)tation in the wilderness, on our behalf, and continuing our argument, we note Gods Timepiece for Man's Eternity, i^j fii'st, that the very first temptation of Adam and Eve by the devil was of doubt as to God's Word; had He given any word at all, any divine revelation? If He had, was it true ? Literally true, or to be taken cum grano salts, with conjectures and asides, accord- ing to the needs of our self-seeking intei'jDretation ? He may have issued the command; but as to the penalty — is that to be taken hterally? By no means, is the answer of the Tempter. There is concealment of the truth under it. For God doth know that ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, but not as demons suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. The form of temptation for the fall of the second Adam was neither of concealment, nor denial, nor mis- interpretation of the Word, but the very contrary; ambi- tious and self-exalting presumjition in the application of it; self-seeking as the right rule of blessedness. Had the Son of God really come ? Was this He ? Let me tr^- His own behef in the Old Testament Scriptures as the Word of God. Is He sincere ? Or can He be tempted to put those Scriptures to use, not in His own sufferings, but for His own ease and grandeur. The Satan of the temptation is himself a beHever in God, but at war against Him, and an unbeliever in the reality of any such thing as true piety, disinter- ested love, in man. He is the accuser of mankind; he would fain be the accuser with proof against 1^4- Gods Timepiece for Majis Eternity. Christ. If he can succeed in moving Him one hair'a breadth from His integrity as the servant of God, to pat self in any way, with whatever fair pretence, above God's will, or stni more, by pretended con- formity with that will, he wUl gain the whole victory; and even after all the manifestation of heaven at John's baptism of Christ, he will be able, as hell's prince of detectives, to convict Christ as a forger and false prophet; a sinner against God, and therefore by no possibility a Saviour of mankind. It is remarkable, and full of instruction, that the temptation by which he intended to expose Christ as a forger and false prophet, consisted in this cru- cial trial of His character, as to His disinterested loyaUij to God and love to man. Had He really come on earth, as the Son of God, to bruise the ser- pent's head by dying for sinners? He hoped, as in his torturing work upon Job, more than a thou- sand years before, to prove that there is no such thing as a self-denying piety on earth, but that ah seek their own reward in pleasure and glory, in this world. He hoped, and attemj)ted, to turn Him aside from a supreme regard to the will and Word of God as His law, and from an unchangeable sympa- tliy with God's purposes, and submission of Hia own to God's wiU; preferring self-indulgence and power to the cup of death, which the Father Gods Timepiece f 01'' Maiis Eternity. 755 had given Him to driiik. Aiid the temptation being- addressed to Him as a man, and not as God, the superiority, safety, victory of Christ consisted not in His being one with God, but entirely, intensely, in- finitely, unchangeably, in body, soul, and spirit, con- secrated to God's will, as made known to men in God's Word; having no other will but God's, and no pos- sibility of ever preferring His own will in anything whatever, even for an instant. It was not incarnate God-ship merely, but human nature and divine in one perfect, consistent, immaculate manifestation of character; the God-man indeed, but the man God- like, God-perfect, absolutely, unchangeably, infinitely holy, as man; and though in all points tempted like as we are, as man, yet vsdthout sin; as man, without one breath or shade of human self-seeking. As man, our infinitely perfect example; as God-man, our Sa- viour, God in Christ reconcihng the world unto Him- self, having borne our sins in His own death, at God's will; the iniquity of us aU being laid upon Him, as our propitiation, our redemption, through His blood. Consider, in his use of Scripture, the unexpected testimony of the devil as to what is written in the Old Testament being the true and undisputed Word of God. Any evidence extorted from a criminal, which criminates himself, is of all things most un- deniable. It is not, however, extorted, for Satan 1^6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. gives it willingly, and in the most natural way, ad- mitting particular texts of the Old Te^^tament, drawn especially from Deuteronomy, as the Word of God. He dares not now, as in the method of the devil with Eve, even ask the question. Yea, hath God midf The whole Volume of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Oracles of God, from Genesis to Malachi, had be- come, by the Will and Providence of God, a pos- session and prepossession of the whole Hebrew people ; and the known designation of that Sacred Volume, as God's own. The Scriptures, was as limited and definite and certain in its meaning, as any algebraic sign is to-day to the mathematician. The devil no more thought of disputing the Hebrew Canon, as if it were unknown or mistaken, than the formula that two and two make four. It is written is ac- cepted by the devil himself, as an unquestionable axiom and standpoint of perfect reasoning from God to man. He admits the authority of all that our Lord had quoted from Moses, as divine, and as meant for all mankind. And most remarkable it is, that our Lord's three quotations fi'om God's Word, in this jjrimal and all determining conflict and conquest, were only from Deuteronomy; the devil accepting the same, and not the shadow of a sus- picion or contradiction permitted to fall upon the book, or the texts, or Moses as the writer. God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. 75/ There is a vast difference between Satan's method in this conflict against the Lord Jesus, and that of modern infidehty against both inspiration and Chris- tianity. Satan not only did not attempt a denial of the supernatural, as impossible, or of verbal inspira- tion as incredible, but availed himself of the truth and certainty of both; himself, following Christ's method and example, quoted the 91st Psalm, and proposed that Jesus, if He were the Son of God, should make experi- ment of its inspiration accordingly, and justify, in the sight of the whole world, His own confidence in God's protection by it. He attempted neither evasion nor denial, either of Moses' inspii'ation or authority; but, first opening his batteries of temptation on the ground that a voice from heaven had declared Jesus to be the Son of God, he continues the conflict on the admitted grounds of divine inspiration, and receives our Lord's appeal to the Old Testament Scriptures, without the least question that they are the Word of God. He does not even interpose that most common form and apology of unbelief, that even if insjjiration be admitted, it is in so general a sense, that you cannot assert of any particular phrase or sentence that that is the Word of God; for the words themselves are not insjDu-ed, and at best it is only a human liistoric record of things supposed to have happened. This is an easy refuge for any man against the ij8 God's Timepiece for Alans Eternity. divine authority of any and every i)art of the Scrip- tures, which he does not rehsh, and wishes to reject. tt is a shield against all the arrows of divine truth, wven as, on the other hand, a true faith in God's Word, and in the Lord Jesus Christ, as presented there, is a shield from the armory of heaven against all the fiery darts of the Wicked One. They who deny a plenary inspiration of the Scrip- tures, and they whose theology accepts such denial, and proceeds upon it, cut themselves off from all power in the Word of God, from all ability to stand forth in His name, under His authority, proclaiming, Thuii mith the Lord. But the Saviour of the world, in His ministry, un- questionably affirms a verbal inspiration, stands iipon every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Every word, for, indeed, if not, then a new revelation would be needed, to teach us which were, and which were not the very words of God in this volume; for those that are not would surely be merely human, fallible, of no authority. But the Lord Jesus founded His kingdom on no such quick- sands, nor ever sent His disciples to any such school of uncertain theology, but gave them the very words of God wherewith to grapple, and whereby to hold, a world lying in wickedness. Nor did Satan himself take any other ground. He God's Timepiece-for Man's Eternity, i^g accepted our Lord's appeal, and stood upon the same theory of such an inspiration of the Scriptures, as makes all thai is written in them the very Word of God. That is true faith in God, and loyalty to Him, which is faith in God's Word, and abides by it, and acts accordingly. And it was by such use of God's Word, that our Lord put Satan to flight, and not by any array of angels or any exercise of supernatural power, but by doing what He knew to be the will of God, as it was xvrilten; by drinking the cup which the Father had given Him. Thus was cast out the great dragon, "that old serpent called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world." Our blessed Lord might have launched at him a single thunderbolt, and trans- fixed him in that bottomless pit. from whence, by mys- terious permission he had broken loose, and was now ranging up and down Judea, seeking whom he might devour. He might have set Michael the Archangel again upon him, to rebuke him, or to remand him, under chains of darkness to the judgment of the Great Day. But He simply smote him with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and that was enough. He used no other argument, no other com- pulsion than that of divine truth, in the simplest, plain- est announcement of the will of God. He gave no other reason but this, that God says it, and that settled the matter. Even so His disciples were to overcome i6o God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the Accuser, the Diabolos of mankind, " by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony"; loving not their lives unto the death. It was an example for us all, for the ministry, for the churches, in the conflict against sin and Satan. "We must throw ourselves on God's Word, and use it, and a2D23ly it, not as the ivord of man, but as it is in truth, the very Word of God only. We are not to be afraid of it, nor to play at blind-man's buff with it; (see II Cor. iv. 4), we are not to doubt it, we are not to withhold it, nor conceal it, we are neither to suffer its perversion, nor to thrust it as a sword into the scabbard, instead of into men's hearts and iniquities, but we are to draw it forth and smite with it on every side. Neither man's expediency nor permission is to be the rule, but only God's Word. Thy Word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against Thee. But again, " I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart, I have preached righteousness in. the great con- gregation. I have not refrained my hps, O Lord, •Thou knowest. I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation. I have not concealed Thy loving kind- ness and Thy truth." — Ps. xl. 10. No emergency could have happened, no mischiev- ous contingency been brought about by Satan, to which our blessed Lord would not have instantly applied some pertinent and commanding passage or God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i6i example. " For the Word of Grod is quick and pow- erful, and sharjDer tlian any two-edged sword," and illimitable and eternal in its search and application, "piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a dis- cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Our Lord needed no other library, no other weapon, no other education; neither needs any Christian, for that is all in all. XXI. THE CHARACTERISTICS AND LIMITATIONS OF INSPI- RATION, AS THUS SETTLED BY OUR LORD — ITS DEFINITIONS FROM GENESIS TO THE APOCALYPSE, THE SAME— THE AMOUNT OF CHRIST'S TESTIMONY ON THE LOWEST COMPUTATION— 'CHRIST'S OWN VERACITY INVOLVED AS THE WITNESS FOR GOD- STEPS IN THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION —THE FINAL DEMONSTRATION WROUGHT OUT BY IT. If there be inspiration at all, it is in this volume called by Christ, The Scriptures; and the volume being of many ages, the inspiration is one and the same in all, and is proved by its own signs and seals. If a river runs under ground, but reappears after a great distance, you may demonstrate its identity, by its quahties, its fishes, the very mud that it carries and i62 God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. deposits; and if it disappears again for a season you may know it when it again rises to the hght. It cannot be salt water in one place and fresh in another. The volume must be one, known in all its parts by the presence of the same inspiration. " Tlixj Word is true from the beginning, and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever." If the Redeemer of men says, " In the volume of The Book it is written of Me," and we know the parts of that volume that were in it when the Redeemer referred to it, we know that all those parts were there by the same infaUible inspiration. By what language, in what terms, is this inspiration intimated, in the volume itself from which the Re- deemer quoted? The following instances are drawn from the Old Testament, to which Christ always re- ferred as the only divine authority given among men. No reliance can be placed upon language, if the words in which God conveys His own thoughts, and sets forth the law of ati eternal salvation, are not inspired. These testimonies are from Genesis and Deuter- onomy down to Isaiah, Daniel, Malachi, — the whole collection of the Scriptures known in Christ's time as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; no other inspired Scriptures existing in the world. Christ's integrity in quoting one authenticates all. " He that made them at the beginning said." " God commanded, saying." "By every word that proceed- Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i6j etli out of the mouth of G-od shall man live." " Ke- member ye the law, which I commanded in Horeb." "Every Word of God is jDure; He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him." " Add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." "The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the command- ment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." "The "Words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." "As for God, His way is perfect; the Word of the Lord is tried; He is a buckler to aU those who trust in Him." "Ye shall not add unto the Word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God." "Whatsoever thing I com- mand you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto, nor dimiaish from it." "To the Law and to the testimony! If men speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them." " My Spu-it which is uj)on thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever." i6^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Now the assurance of this testimony is in the words of the Lord Jesus, affirming nothing less than the authority of a verbal insj^iration in the Old Testa- iflent Scriptures, as binding upon the Son of God Himself. Is the testimony honest? Is it true? Whatever latitude, under the pressure of things not yet by us understood, difficulties not explained, perhaj)s as yet inexphcable, we may be comj)eUed to admit in our definitions, or in our speculations concerning the requisite characteristics of an infal- lible divine insiDu-ation, Qiene affirynations. in regard to the Hebrew Scriptui^es as the Word of God, are Christ's Words, and His character is staked upon them. Are they honest, unexaggerated, to be received in the length and breadth of their fair meaning? Let us see. On the lowest computation of infi- dehty, the testimony is that of a good man. The very scoffers at a divine revelation admit the good- ness, the honesty, the unquestionable integrity, in the perfect character of Christ. He is an unim- peachable witness. They who reject every other part of divine revelation sometimes assure us that they receive without hesitation the words of Jesus as true. They admit that Christ was goodness in- carnate, truth and love without mixtvire and with- out deception. But here is the testimony of such a Being, the personification and examj)le of right- God's Timepiece for Mans Etc7^nity. i6^ eousness and goodness to the race; His testimony as to His own rule of life and conduct, as to the in- fallible perfection of that rule, and as to its supreme and unquestioned authority over all mankind. An un- hesitating regard to it, and obedience of it, are pre- sented as the principle of His own character, the inflexible determination of His conduct in all things; and He declares that what it is for Him it must be for aU men, their sole and authoritative rule. Now if this testimony is not true, those Scriptures are not true, and the Lord Jesus knew it; and we have this acknowledged trustworthy and good Being, the admitted personification and example of aU good- ness, basing His whole life upon a known lie; setting out in His pubhc ministry of self-denying and suf- fering benevolence vsdth the proclamation of an enor- mous falsehood as the foundation of it, and a com- pidsion in it, and endeavoring to impose the same falsehood upon the whole human race. But this huge, vast swindle is inconsistent with the lowest supposition of any goodness or honesty whatever in the Being who, under such solemn cir cumstances, on such a stupendous theatre, pubHshes this testimony. The Old Testament Scriptures must therefore be received as the perfect Word of God, or this witness, whose words are claimed above all other testimony i66 God's Timepiece for Maits Eternity. on earth as beiug sincere and true, and whom all men acknowledge to be the most perfect example of purity and truth, is infinitely deceitful and wicked, the very Alpha and Omega of falsehood; imposing, under the guise and influence of assumed goodness the greatest of all possible forgeries, an unins23ired, imperfect, human production, as the authoritative revelation of Jehovah for all creatures. We are shut up to this dilemma. Either this book, these written revelations, to which God in Christ re- fers mankind, are the Words of God, and we are bound to receive and obey them as such, or Christ Jesus, the admitted personification and reahty of truth and love, on whose testimony this fact of di- vine inspiration stands, is a false witness, a person of incontestable and immeasurable wickedness. This wondrovis Being, the light of life, the Hght of the world, the incarnation of love and mercy, who went about doing good, who could stand amidst ma- Hgnant enemies, and say, with His life and character as transparent in their view as the air of their own landscape, " Which of you convinceth Me of sin ? " — this Being, in the admiration and eulogy of ^ whose moral loveliness and gloiy, with the transcendent beauty and grandeur of His life and death, the genius of unbehevers themselves has been exalted and em- ployed, is the greatest of deceivers, and the light God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i6j that was in Him was darkness, if the Old Testament ScrijDtm'es, to which He apphed the comprehensive designation of "all that is written in Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms," were not the di- vinely inspu-ed revelations of His Father. Christ was predicted in the Scriptures in various ways as the Sun of Eighteousness, the Light to hghten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel. He was to be the teacher and interpreter of God's Word, and the exemplar, the diviae model of obedience to it, and of all the divitie perfections described m it. And when He came. He was such a Being, fulfilling aU these promised characteristics in Himself, and manifesting the divine glory. A Being, whose words are as suns, mountains of Hght, words that are spiritual creators, chronometers, ar- tesian wells, living principles for iafaUible guidance, charts in unknown stormy seas, safety lamps for la- borers in mines and labyrinths of sin and of death. He could stand on the throne of God and say in His name, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not jDass away." They shall shine, when the Pleiades and the North Star are extin- guished. They shall light your way thi-ough death and eternity. "I am the Light of the world. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." i68 GocTs Timepiece for Man's Eternity. And all His arrangements and institutions on earth, all the forms ia which He wielded infinite power, and crystallized infinite wisdom in organizations for man's good, were ia the same spirit of the Father's aU-lov- ing will and Word, as Hia will. The Sabbath was made for man in love, and therefore He, the Son of man the Savioui", was Lord of it, in redeeminsr love; and hath all God's authority over it, to make it perpetually His own day of love and worship, to put into the heart of it His dying love. His sufferings, death, resm-rection, to give to all mankind the Hght of life in it, as an inahenable heritage and inseparable fixture of life-giving truth; a Sabbath which should be the gift of God to the whole world, and the glory of the Word in preaching Christ crucified, for the chief of sinners; so to make it man's refuge and rest fi'om toil and temptation, letting down by it the air of heaven over every man's homestead, in which the household plants may grow, and no man or state, or human authority shall take away its holy freedom, or drive their trains of traffic and amusement over it. The Sabbath and the Saviour are alike from God for man, to make men partakers of God's holiness and happiness and glory; to save them from them- selves, and from the desjDotism of Satan, and from the legions of sins, and temptations to unbounded irrehgion and sensual indulgence, which, under the God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i6g pretence of a progressive scientific socialism, are whirling society to perdition. The Sabbath is Chi-ist's own Day for heaven's gifts unto men, to fit men for heaven, by mak- ing them partakers and possessors of heaven's blessedness on earth. It is not an exaction, or a tax from God upon humanity, or a robbery, or im- position of spiritual bondage, but a jubilee of free- dom for Satan's- bond-slaves; a redemption of our time, our days, oui* weeks, for ourselves and our own mercies, because we are so depraved, so turned away from God, and in subjection to appetite and passion, that we are neither willing nor able to take care for ourselves of our divine interest and welfare. XXII. THE FINAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE CROSS, AND ITS PRACTICAL POWER— THE LIMITATIONS OF CHRIST'S OMNIPOTENCE BY HIS DIVINE NATURE— HIS WORK AS APPOINTED BY GOD'S WORD— THE BLESSEDNESS OF A PARTICIPATION IN HIS SUFFERINGS. "I AM the Good Shej)herd: the Good Shepherd giv- eth His life for the sheep. Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My Ufe that I might take lyo God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. it again. This commandment have I received of My Father."— John x. 18. And now for the last divine, unassailable proof of the eternal truth and life-giving power of these Scrip- tures, through the life and death of Jesus, for the new creation of our being in God's hohness! Even so, we hasten to the Cross; — through the storm of hell in the malice of men and devils, hurrying Jesus through mockeries, cruelties, jeers, blasphemies, tor- tures, to the last tragedy. And in all that high- way of sacrifice and suffering, agony and endur- ance, the tempting work of Satan is terrific though unseen; and Christ Himself at every step is in the dreadful conflict treading the wine-press alone, and of the people none with Him. But He shields His own, though they reject and desert Him. How wonderfully, at the gleam of the sword of the Spirit in the blows of the conflict, the central, aU-govern- ing and absorbing truths of eternity and salvation flash forth as streams of fire within and aroimd the soul. And the intensest and most blessed significance of aU, for us, the infinitely blessed opportunity of being made like Christ, possessors of His Spirit, sons and heii's of God with Him, and even partak- ers of His sufferings, and of His absolute inability to do anything or desu'e anything contrary to God's God's Twiepiece for Mans Eternity. lyi Word and will! That is infinite perfection, that is eternal Ufe, that the being filled with all the fulness of God. Glorify God is the rule of heaven, and of love, and of all good beings. Glorify, and enjoy self, save thyself, is the rule of death and heU, and of the carnal mind, at enmity against God. "If thou be the Christ, the Anointed of God, the King of Israel, come down from the Cross, and save Thyself." The blasphemers by classes are set down in the gospels, scofiing and cursing. The people, and the rulers with them, derided Him, saying, He saved oth- ers, let Him save Himself, if He be Christ the chosen of God. The soldiers also mocked Him, If Thou be the King of the Jews, Save Thyself. And one of the malefactors railed on Him, saying. If thou be the Christ, Save Thyself and us. The chief priests with the Scribes and elders said. He saved others; Him- self He cannot save. " If He be the King of Israel let Him now come down from the Cross, and we wiU believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him; for He said, I am the Son of God." Thus were these accusations and taunts repeated at successive intervals, and shot forth by all classes, as fiery darts, railing iij)on railing, blas- phemy uj)on blasphemy, against God and His anoint- ed, even as predicted in the prophetic 2d Psalm. It was like the roU of musketry from regiment after 1^2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. regiment, battalion succeeding battalion, with the boom of fresh parks of artillery, stationed at aU points in command of the field of battle! And the central object of attack and conquest, a Cross, with a dying Man nailed upon it, between two thieves; but over the cross, over His own head, the reality, engraved of God, the truth, for the assertion and fidelity of which He was dying; the inscription, meant by the Jews as an accusation, but written by Pilate under divine constraint, the Messiah's Kingly Diadem of suffering and glory, — This is Jesus of Naz- areth, the King of the Jews ! "Would the blasphemies and taunts move Him, who had foreseen them all? How terrific had been the spectacle, how fuU of horror and darkness for the uni- verse, had the Son of God stepped down from the Cross, and assumed the Crown, saving HimseK from that death, which He came into the world to endure that He might save others ! Could the instigator of these blasphemies have im- agined that they would succeed? There must have been some such supposition of a possibility, even as in the wilderness. If Thou be the Son of God, it is God's wiU that Thou shouldst mxie Thyself^ and all men will adore Thee. Save Thyself! That is supreme, self-ehosen law, for fallen humanity ! That was the intended sting of Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. lyj all these darts; the venom of the poison of the Tempt- er was in them all in that suggestion, as at the first. When Satan put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ, perhaps his success with the traitor was owing to that suggested hope of the devil, that Christ might yet be persuaded to draw back from death, might not suffer Himself to be given up to the will of His cru- cifiers, and thus, as Satan intended. He would demon- strate Himself a selfish impostor, by setting His own salvation before the promise and the will of God. Save Thyself! That was the suggestion and the hope conveyed by Peter's word at the beginning, and attempted violence at the close, which was but an im- itation of the work of the Tempter in the wilderness, Save ThyseK. Then said Jesus -unto him, " Put up again thy sword into his place : for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptiu'es be fulfilled, that thus it must be ? " And now comes the chmax of all the proofs thus far of the sinlessness of Jesus, and His infinite spot- less sujDeriority to all mankind, in the actual annihila- tion of self at the will of God, even when He might, had He chosen, by prayer to God, have done other- wise. For when, by this answer to Peter, and this re- 7;Y God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. fusal of all help from heaven and earth, it was manifest that the Lord Jesus was really resolved to carjy the Scriptures of the Prophets into ^ literal fulfilment of the Father's word and sword against Himself, then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled. But Peter followed Him afar off, unto the high priest's palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end. It was as if he had said within him- self, I will not, even yet, give up all hope; but if He does permit Himself to be condemned, I will deny Him, and will perform the first of all claims upon hu- mankind, to save myself. And not till Jesus, from the midst of the mockings, and scourgings, and blind- foldings and blasphemies of His crvicifiers, turned and looked upon Peter, — not till then, and under that look of compassionate anguish and reproach and forgive- ness, did Peter reahze what he had done, and how Christ's own prayer was saving him. And yet the Lord Jesus could not save Himself. It was the law of redemption given by the Father, con- sented to by the Son, and made known by divine rev- elation, that without the shedding of blood, His own blood, and the tasting of death for every man through that propitiatory sacrifice, there could be no remission of sins. If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us ! Thyself first, and every self-seeker shall forever be justified. Thyself first, and that will be the lesson for God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. I'/S us, which our self first will gladly accept and keep: but not self last, not self-denial. Thyself first, and us by Thy divine power, not Thy divine seK-renunciation ! Come down from the cross, and we will believe Thee, and Thou mayst s.axie us! Come down from the cross ! It is the cross that we deny; not Thee. Come down from the cross, and take the crown; we wiU put it upon Thee. The devil that put it into the heart of Judas to be- tray Christ, and of Peter to deny Him, put it also into the heart of His crucifiers to make this proposi- tion to Him. And at any time Christ could have put an end to aU this agony, and changed the scene into triumph. While life lasted. He had the power to have avoided death, and to have put away from Him- self, from His own sovil, the cup which the Father had given Him, and which He drank openly, as on "the central gaUows of the universe." HimseK He cannot save ! It is the last seal of in- spiration, of infinite truth, of divine love, a testimony of siipernatural mystery and meaning and power, ministered even by Satan, and the soldiers, and the men that drove the nails, and the priests that had secured His dying, and the disciples who forsook Him and fled. In the very nat\u-e and essence of His all- conquering and suffering benevolence, HimseK He cannot save! He was crucified through this weak- i'/6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ness, V)ut it was the strength of God, the cannot of omnipotence and infinite love. He cannot deny Him- self. He cannot come down fi'om the cross, for He made it for Himself, and bore our sins upon it. " Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say ? Father, save Me from this hour ? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name! Then came the voice fi'om heaven, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." Trouble, even unto death may be the very place, the very time, the very expe- rience unto which we have been appointed by the Father to do His work, to accomplish the glory of His divine love among men. Himself He cannot save ! It is only through His own death, that He is life and salvation to others; through suffering and death borne meekly, volunta- rily, for a sinning, dying, lost world; only thus that He is the Hght and life of the world; because He will and must save others, by the sacrifice of Himself. "What wonderful utterances of the very principle of the Atonement, as by the souls of murderous Caiaphases, inspired against their own purposes and selfish will, and made vocal by the infinite, constraining, prophe- sying Spirit, uttering Christ's meaning in their own counsels and words, their own selfishness and pride Christ's divine watchword, when they meant their Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. /// If Thou be the Christ, the King of the Jews, said His revilers, save Thyself. A most wonderful crys- tallization into two words of the ftrinciple of sin and human selfishness, brought face to face with the divine principle of suffering love. The watch-word of the King of Israel, the Saviour of the Jews and of mankind, was this: "Sacrifice Thyself for others"; seek not Thine own, but others' good. The maxim that always crucifies Christ is this: Save thyself. The maxim that enthrones and honors Christ is this: Lose thyself for Christ's sake, and He will find thee, and thou shalt find thyself in Him. And therefore the inscription over the cross was left by Pilate, just as he had ivritten it, in spite of every remonstrance. This is Jesus of Nazaeeth, the King OF the Jews. This crucified One, Who could not save Himself, and so, in and by this very self-sac- rifice, is their Eternal King ! This is He : And what I have written, I have written. And so, the maxim of faith and self-desi^air — faith out of the bosom of self-des^jau*, beholding Christ, is just this. Lord save me ! I perish ! Christ on the cross dying, is the power, both of demonstration and salvation; not Christ coming down from the cross where men's mahgnity and cruelty had nailed Him. But Christ on the cross, bearing our sins, and re- fusing to put aside this burden, refusing to save 7/(5* God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Himself in order that He naight save us! That is God's demonstration; that indeed is divine. The discovery of every man's scientific experiments through hfe and the trial of life, and so far as he can do it, of death, in his own laboratory, is, I per- ish! The result of every man's own inquiries into the conservation, correlation, and conversion of forces, is just this: It is sin, that is alone conserved, cor- related into misery, and converted into death. For sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death, and nothing but faith in Chi-ist dying for us that we may not die eternally, can stop it. XXIII. BEARING OF THE NARRATIVE OF THE RESURRECTION UPON THIS WHOLE ARGUMENT: FIRST, OF CER- TAINTY; SECOND, VARIETY; THIRD, CONGRUITY; rOURTH, OF FORGIVENESS AND ASSURED SALVA- TION, AS IN PAUL'S TESTIMONY IN FIRST CORINTH- lANS, FIFTEENTH CHAPTER. In the narrative of the Resurrection there is the same great and noticeable law, it is written, bearing all things onward to the mighty invisible predicted tri- umph; and we have the effect of this amazing event \ipon the mind, as the successive opening of its won- Gods Timepiece for Man's Eternity. lyg drous gates discloses the reality, before yet there is calmness and leisure to gather into one conceiDtion and belief the whole overwhelming glory; the mean- ing of the plan of prophecy fulfilled in such an ending. We have the hurry, the amazement, the dismay, the sudden joy, the sudden bursts of doubt and faith, de- spair and hope; returning disbeUef as clouds after the rain, and tempests after the rainbow; the alternations of doubtfixlness and certainty, sorrow and joy, tears and smiles, an April day of storm and sunshine; or a storm at sea with hghtning at midnight like that upon the lake of Galilee, with Christ walking on the sea, and the terrified beholders of His Majesty themselves crying out for fear in the behef that they have seen a spirit. It is a succession of events, the meaning of which evidently as yet no one knows. It is not yet disclosed, it is not yet comprehended. And the brokenness of the narratives, the inextrica- ble combinations, complications and confusions, as of images flitting with the suddenness of spirits among each other, and across each other's path, and apparently within each other's personal iden- tity, and sometimes not even the presence recog- nized or remembered, of the very fellow-witness, or dear friend, or brother, who went with you and stood by you and shared your amazement at the overwhelming discovery; so that, if you were put i8o God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. upon the stand and cross-examined, you could not possibly account for it or make it comprehensible, how you should have seen what your companion did not, or how he should have seen and remem- bered what you did not, though both were equally sincere and earnest, with equal command of all the means of knowing the truth. It is a most wonderful picture, so that it may almost be affirmed that nothing in the Resurrec- tion is more supernatural, suj^posing that it did take place, than the contrivance or creation of this for- gery of it, and of the conduct of those who saw it, supposing that it did not. It is a narrative that no impostor, nor forger, nor a hundred thousand experts at forgery, though each possessed as great a genius as Shakespeare's could ever have produced. For that lightning-hke photograph of the Resurrec- tion transactions is as the revelation of the mid- night storm over a vast mysterious country of moun- tains and hamlets, suddenly disclosed in a flash of lightning shining from the east to the west; every- thing seen for one moment in startUng distinctness, and then gone, and then again jiartially and mo- mentarily visible, and then again gone in darkness! Now it is a very remarkable feature of aU this testimony, and this demonstration of overwhelming amazement, and yet increduhty, maintaining its hold God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i8i over them so long, that not one of these witnesses pretends to have seen the Lord Jesus arise. They profess nothing more than just this, that they he- held Him, conversed with Him, ate and drank with Him, and received their commission from Him, in such continuance of demonstration, that when it was concluded by His ascension into heaven, out of their sight, left them no more room for doubt. They had certainly seen Him taken down from the cross, and laid in the grave. If now they should see Him Hv- ing again, they were competent witnesses; for there is no conceivable jugglery of imposture, by which they could have been deluded. They could not be mistaken about Christ dying. That took place in view of aU the world as spectators. But the Eesiir- rection took place irrespective of men's speculations, observations, arguments, efforts; and what is the central evidence, as of the divine self-existence, it took place without witnesses. No created being saw the Resurrection, or God's or Christ's exercise of power in it; there is no description of it, though there is of the earthquake that preceded it, and of the angel from heaven roUing the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and sitting ujDon it, and say- ing. He is not here, He is risen! It was the hiding of God's power; there was no more witness of it, or description, than of the In- i82 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. carnation. Wlien the Son of God became man, and when He rose from the dead, the mystery of power and glory is ahke invisible, secret, divine. No man saw, or knew, or revealed it, as a witness. Only angels told, or were admitted to the honor of tell- ing that Christ had risen, and they did not say that they saw Him rise. Angels were the first preach- ers of the Resurrection, as they had been of the In- carnation. He is risen. He is not here, as He said. And go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead. Ye shall see Him in Galilee. Mary Magdalene saw Him first, but her testimony was not believed. And Christ Himself upbraided the eleven for their unbelief and hardness of heart, be- cause they believed not those who had seen Him, after He had risen. The belief of mankind in aU ages must necessarily rest upon the testimony of those who have seen; for all mankind could not possibly see for themselves. If, therefore, men required to see and know by demonstration of their own senses, or else wovdd not believe, they must live and die unbelievers, and so d^dng were lost, even by inex- orable necessity of theii* senses. For to this very end Christ came, suffered, died, and rose again, that through faith in Him men might be saved fi'om their sins; and if not thus God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i8j saved, not believing, that they might be saved, then lost. If their, testimony of Christ having risen was true, it would be proved true by the results, in a demonstration increasing from age to age, by the glory of the rising kingdom of the riseai Lord; if not true, there could be no such results, nor even the possible embryo or beginning of them. But if true, and this transaction, completed and ac- complished by God for the salvation of the soid, for the soul's deliverance from sin, and its redemj^tion in the likeness of the risen Saviour, by the power of His own Spirit dweUing in the soul through faith; — then certainly a denial of all this, cutting off the possibility of faith, cuts off also the possibility of salvation. And therefore, when God Himself presents truth for faith to accept and act upon, it is necessarily infallible; and yet, even while infallible, it necessa- rily leaves power in the sovil to reject it, if it will; the power of free-agency, even of oj)inion; ability to stand up, even against God's own testimony, and deny it, if it will. Hence the fearful responsibihty of men undertaking to deal with God's money, God's truth, to sweat it for the profit of their own business, by seUing their own fictions in its place. Now if this had not been absolute trnth, if it had been a studied forgery, it never would have been 184 God's Timepiece foT" Mans Eternity. submitted to mankind with such appearances of care- lessness and falsehood. Every vacuum would have been supj)lied, every incongruity cemented or ac- counted for; and if it had been a story, the work of premeditated coUusion, the four witnesses would have compared notes beforehand, and erased, as far as possible, every trace whether of ignorance or com- plicity. Therefore we would not change this account, with its apparent discrepancies, even were they ten- fold what they are, for the most accurate, perfect, lawyer-like, or mathematically fitted history, that the art of man could execute, or the imagination con- ceive. The testimony to the truth of Christianity in the very incoherence of these recitals of the fun- damental miracle of Christianity, is invaluable. THE WALK TO EMMAUS, AND ITS KEY TO THE WHOLE SCRIPTURES. The walk to Emmaus is as the fi-esh, reviving dawn, and cloudless sunrise after such a storm. It consti- tutes one of the most interesting and important por- tions of the whole New Testament, besides holding as in a separate safe the duphcate key to the interpreta- tion of the whole of the Old. It presents Christ to, Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. iS^ us and to all the world as the sole divine authorita- tive Commentator on the Word of God, as given for men's salvation. It brings our blessed Lord delight- fully near to us, under the most famihar and en- dearing characters, as our Teacher, Friend, Saviour. We love again and again to walk with these two disciples, to place ourselves in their circumstances, to go back to Judea on that evening of the Kesur- rection day, and to listen ourselves to the divine Being, exj)ounding unto us in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. We begin with the transactions of the morning. The Saviour had been laid in the grave by Joseph of Arimathea, laid there in his own new sepulchre, wherein never man had been laid; and the darkness of despair seemed to have closed over the prosjject. The deed had been accomplished that darkened the earth and the heavens, and yet was the ministra- tion of the light of an eternal salvation over both. The sacred body, during the silence of a whole Jew- ish Sabbath, reposed within the tomb. The morn- ing of the first day of the week drew towards its dawn. The priests had triumphed, the few disciples trembled and wept. None knew the brightness of the glory that was forever to invest that day. They stole early to the sepulchre, under cover of the dark- ness, for fear of the Jews, some to perform the last i86 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. sad ofl&ces of love, which the interposition of the Sabbath had prevented their accomphshing, some to see the place, and weep at it, where Nicodemus and Joseph had, on Friday night, laid all that was mortal of Him whom they loved; and some with a half acknowledged hope, they knew not what, con- nected with the third day after the crucifixion. So they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ? " The stone was already rolled away, and they could enter in; but, wonder of wonders, their Lord was gone. The hnen clothes were there, and heavenly watchers by an empty sepulchre. A vision of angels surj^rised them, declaring, "He is risen, He is not here, as He said." The occurrences were as yet too overwhelming for joy; fuU of trembhng and amazement, they hurried to and fro, not know- ing what to think. They made a careful examination, and repeated it; but only one of them, the beloved disciple, seems to have seen and believed, on the sjDot, before meeting Jesus; for as yet they knew not the Scriptures that He must rise from the dead. The words that were told them seemed as idle tales, which they believed not; and the empty sepulchre could not by itself convince them; for plainly, the body might have been removed from it without a Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. iSy resurrection; and such was the assertion of Mary- Magdalene to Peter and John: "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him." And so the disci- ples when they had ascertained the truth, that He was not there, went away again to their own home, leaving Mary at the door of the sepulchre weeping; all of them full of perplexity, wondering in themselves at that which had come to pass, and not knowing what to make of it. As the disciples sought each their own habitation, the two from Emmaus sought theirs. Would they ever be gathered again in the glad hving presence of Him whom they loved? One of them was Cleo- phas, the brother-in-law of the mother of our Lord. Probably his habitation was at that village, and his companion was some dear disciple, who was going with him to spend the night at his house, where they had often enjoyed, amidst their family cu'cle, the company of our Lord Himself. They left the sepulchre and the city, anxious, sad, doubtful, and astonished. It was seven miles and a haK from the city to the village, but they had enough to talk upon, if the walk had been a jDilgrimage of seven days. They talked together of all those things which had happened. How did they perplex themselves with i88 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. oft-repeated examinations of the strange events wliicli they had heard reported, and partly seen ! They never could have believed, before the crucifixion, that the chief priests and their own countrymen would have carried their wickedness so far They did in- deed trust that it was Christ, who should have re- deemed Israel, but not by suffering and death. And now they had lost Him forever and as to any possi- bility of His being stiU alive, even the vision of angels rej)orted by Joanna and the wife of Cleophas might have been only some new wickedness of the priests themselves, some stratagem of their malice, some de- ception for a more annihilating disappointment. So they communed and reasoned, in much dark- ness, and in great grief, agitation, and excitement of mind. Amidst it aU, one thing is manifest, namely, their deep love to Christ; and this it was, in fact, that laid the foundation for the after correction of their mistakes in regard to Him. " Their views indeed were indistinct and dim, But yet successful, being aimed at Him." The poet Cowj)er, who has given in these two lines so j)rofound and blessed an utterance of the security of the soul that even in weakness and darkness, and from the midst of smoke and anguish — a bruised reed, a heap of smoking flax, — is seeking after Christ, God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. i8g has most beautifully drawn the picture of their feel- ings, and of their walk and conversation together. "It happened on a solemn eventide, Soon after He that was our Surety died, Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined. The scene of all their sorrows left behind. Sought their own village, busied as they went, In musings worthy of the great event. They spake of Him they loved, of Him whose life, Though blameless, had incurred perpetual strife; Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, A deep memorial graven on their hearts; They thought Him, and they justly thought Him, One Sent to do more than He appeared to have done ; To exalt a people, and to place them high Above all else, and wondered He should die." That was it : they wondered He should die ! They wondered, when they remembered that He had said, If any man keep My saying he shall never see death. They had wondered when they heard Moses and Ehas speak of His decease at Jerusalem. They wondered when He had said, My Father loveth Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. They wondered when they heard Him say, I am the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep. And when He said, signifying what death He should die, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me, they, with all igo God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the people, wondered, and answered Him, We have heard out of the law tliat Christ abjdeth forever. And how sayest Thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man? How can He die Himself, who giveth life to others ? They wondered because they had heard Him say, I am the Eesurrec- tion and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and beheveth in Me, shall never die. They won- dered, when Mary anointed His feet with spikenard, so that the house was filled with the odor of the oint- ment, and Jesus said, Against the day of My burjdng haih she kept this, for the poor always j^e have with you, but Me ye have not always. They wondered the more, the longer He staid with them, and the more they beheld His glory, that ever He could be taken from them. So indeed, it was not so much the want of faith, as it was the superabundance and misdirection of their faith, that affirmed for Him the impossibility of the cross, and the necessity of a self-existence in glory and haj^piness on earth, of which He would make them also, and aU that followed Him and loved Him the beatified partakers. Every day that they staid with Him, and He with them, they were living more and more habitually in the blessedness of His existence, and desired no greater thing than to have God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, igi Him with them forever. A little longer, and they wovild have wished for no other heaven, there was biich infinite attraction in His love, such communica- tion of the bliss of heaven in His loving words, so that, ever since they knew Him they had prayed like the restored demoniac sitting peacefully at His feet clothed and in his right mind, that they might abide with Him forever, and He with them. It was their very love, and the fervor of behef in His power and glory, as the coming King of Israel, that made them wonder that He should ever die. They had seen Him dealing with the powers of na- ture as a Being of supreme authority over them, com- manding even the devils and they obeyed Him, dis- pensing the forces of life and disi^ersing the terrors of disease and death, as one might drop syllables from his tongue, or breathe away the frost-work of a winter's night from the windows. This was certainly the King of Israel. Lift up your heads O ye gates, and let the King of glory enter ! Ye gates of nature and of life, unfold before Him, that He and aR His train may occupy the kingdom of the Lord. Hosan- na to the Son of David ! For behold He cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest! It was the inevitable outbreak of the concentration and observance of three years' miracles in power, and vet gfreater miracles in holiness and love. The won- ig2 God's Timepiece for Maris Eternity. der was that the. hosanuas had not broken out long before they did, making the mountains and the vales of all Judea one resounding hymn of praise, and adora- tion, and that the people could have been kept back from an uproar of the proclamation of their King. But after all these mii'acles of grace and glory, who was He ? Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph the carpenter, whose first lesson was that of accepted poverty, humiliation, self-denial, suffering, and sim- phcity and humility as a little child's. Oh how im- possible, when we know what human nature is, under the curse of the habit of self-worship, and self-indul- gence, from which Christ came to save us, that they should have understood this, until Jesus Himself had baptized them also with suffering. "With their minds and hearts full of the Old Tes- tament glory, and of wonder, awe and ecstasy at Christ's manifestation of it in miraculous authority and power, and with the confidence that they were all beginning to exercise in Him, as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, it was next to impossible that they should take the suffering and death, which had not yet been demonstrated, and inter- pret and believe in their light, the august manifes- tations of glory and grandevu", thi'ough which even then they were passing. They could not see nor understand the Cross, Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, ig^ through the bright cloud that overshadowed them; and though in their hearing Moses and EHas spake of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jeru- salem, yet they heard it as dreamers do, when heavy with sleep; and they could only be filled with amaze- ment, as they journeyed with Him towards the holy city, and observed with awe His supernatural bright- ness. In the record of the Transfiguration, what won- derful reticence ! What infinite dignity in the ap- pearance and disappearance of Moses and EHas ! What reverence and sacred awe in the whole trans- action, so brief, so unsatisfactory to those who were craving for signs and wonders! "Who apj)eared in glory and spake of his decease, which He should ac- compUsh at Jerusalem"; but not one word is given of their conversation. Had this been apocryphal, or a forgery to be imposed uj)on men's credulity, Moses and Elias would have been led into Rabbinical prat- tle, wovild have referred to their past existence, would have betrayed the vanity and talkativeness that clumsy forgers have always fallen into in their lies. But not a word of their communion with Christ is detailed save only that they spake of His decease to be accompUshed at Jerusalem. Thither the dis- ciples knew that He was going, and as He Himself had taught them, to be crucified. And yet, not one ig4 God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. word did they understand; and so entirely was the meaning hidden from them, that even on the moun- tain the desu'e of them all was expressed by Peter, in the prayer that they might be permitted then and there to build three tabernacles, one for the Lord, one for Moses, one for Elias. Not a word in behalf of Peter, James, and John ! Self, itseK, was swallowed up and transfigured in that petition. They wondered that He should die, and the wonder would have been if they had not wondered. For what had the mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of hfe, to do with death? They had heard out of the law that Christ, their Messiah, the Desire of nations, abideth forever; He that should come and set up Daniel's predicted everlasting kingdom with such dominion and glory that all peojDle, nations and languages should serve Him; so that the saints of the Most High should take the kingdom and " possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever." They had heard that this wonderful Being should Himself eternally reign over them; and certainly He must so do, or these august predictions were lighter than vanity. For what could a dying man do with them, or by them, a man whose breath is in his nos- trils? The first enemy that the jDredicted King of glory should overcome was death; otherwise, like common men, whom God turneth to destruction, and God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, ig^' who none of them can keep ahve their own soul, " His breath goeth forth, He returneth to His earth, in that very day His thoughts perish; " and what then becomes of His kingdom and His seed forever, and His throne which was to be as the days of heaven, and as the sun and the moon before God, established forever? So, just in jDrojDortion to the greatness of their faith in Grod and in Christ, and in the word of God, as (with understandings yet darkened), they received it, in regard to Him, was then- confidence that He should never die, but that He should hve, as the Author and Giver of life, the Ancient of days, and should make aU His chosen people Israel, good, wise, holy, happy, like Himself. They had expected a temporal dehverer, and though that expectation had been much piirified from its grossness by their long abode with Christ, yet all the instructions of our blessed Lord could not disabuse their minds of this expectation. They clung to it with such pertinacity and fondness, that it was as a blind to keep them from seeing anything in its true light. The very miracles that proved Chi'ist's divine power, every one of them confirmed their faith in the con- tinuance of that powei', through His divine person- ality and presence. And they themselves wore to ig6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. sit upon twelve thrones around the throne of His glory. And every one of them that had left houses or lands, parents, brethren, waives, children, for the kingdom of God's sake, were to receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come, life everlasting. "Well, in order to all this, the Lord and Giver of all this must certainly remain with them, and Himself bestow it upon them. If not His gift, they did not desire it. The record in Luke's Gospel, xviii. 31-34, is a pas- sage presenting their state of mind a very short time previous to the crucifixion, on occasion of the an- nouncement by Christ of the nearness of that coming traged3^ So completely were their views of the Mes- siah's kingdom limited to this side the grave, and to the continuance of His existence in this world, that even the scenes of the last three days of our Lord's life at Jerusalem, the exhibitions of infinite condescen- sion and love which He made for their instruction in washing His disciples' feet, and the repeated assur- ances of what was certainly to happen had Httle or no efiect in convincing them. One would have thought that His sufferings in Gethsemane, His betrayal, His arraignment, would have been enough to dissipate their delusions; but no, not even the crucifixion itself could cure them. They returned again with His resurrection from the dead; God's Timepiece for Mans Eterjtity. igy and even after the forty daj^s still spent by Him on earth, and at the very last moment, just as He was to be received up into heaven, they proposed to Him the question. Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? It was a national preposses- sion of patriotic and rehgious pride, and hope, and glory, more powerful, more intense, and unmanageable, because in its origin unquestionably divine, than any similar impulse that ever swayed, or could sway, either rulers or people. XXV. THE INEVITABLE RESULT OF THE CATASTROPHE-A DIVINE PRESENCE ALONE COULD HAVE PREVENTED UTTER DESPAIR— IT WAS LOVE TO CHRIST THAT ENLIGHTENED AND PRESERVED THEIR SOULS. And now the contrast and the clashing, the ship- wreck of their brightest hopes, was a ruin that seemed impossible for them to endure. Hopes that had been fostered as the personal inheritance of every mother and daughter and first-born son in Israel, for three thousand years? The mind is at a loss to conceive the extremity of despair and unbehef resulting from such an appalling conclusion as that of this vast ig8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. tragedy. No Avonder that they feared, as they entered into this cloud. The deepest ignorance and darkness were the ne- cessary result, at first, of all these cherished miscon- ceiDtions. It was the profoundest mistake that ever any kingdom or nation on earth had been educated upon, and the character of a whole people trained in it from their infancy. It is difficult for us to im- agine the amount of exalted faith which must have possessed the hearts and minds of such men as Sim- eon and Zechariah, and such women as Anna the prophetess, looking for redemption in Israel, and exclaiming, Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast j)repared before the face of all nations, A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy peoj)le Israel. How could this ever be accomplished through the death of Him in whose eternal life and kingdom they were to reign over the whole earth? The whole fabric of their hopes had been annihil- ated, for Christ had died. And there was no possibil-^ it}^ for the forgery of a new Christ to have been palmed upon them. The archangel Gabriel, had he come to them from the tomb could not have deceived them. After more than three years of loving com- munion with Him, and friendship and intimacy such as Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, igg tliey had enjoyed, all the universe could not have sup- plied a counterpart for His place in their affections. For it was not as a mere temporal deliverer that they had loved Him. Our Lord had drawn them by the infinite lovelhiess of His character, with such a power of attachment, that no exhibition of grandeur in Him- self, nor promises of greatness to them, could ever have excited or sustained. But instead of glory, he had promised them humili- ation; instead of riches, poverty; instead of ease, per- secution; instead of self-enjoyment, tribulation; instead of honor in this world, disgrace and contempt; instead of a throne, the prison; instead of a crown, the cross. And yet they loved Him ! Most remarkable phenome- non ! They had been with Him by night and by day, and they could not help loving Him. They loved Him in spite of themselves, in spite of their own ambition, in spite of all His assurances of persecution and dis- tress, in spite of all His rebukes of theu' spiiit of worldUness, in spite of all His repeated denial and de- struction of their temporal hopes and expectations; stiU tUey loved Him. They loved Him indeed, with a dee^Der love, the more He broke their hold on the plans and things of this world, the more He severed them from all that as men and as Jews they held dear. The more He chastened their spirits, and- taught them His grand lesson of lowliness and self-denial, the more 200 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eteriiity. they loved Him. The nearer He brought them to Hun- self in spirit, the more entirely they loved Him and rested in Him, and found in His love the beginning of eternal life. There is something infinitely beautiful and convinc- ing in this exhibition of the power of our Lord's char- acter. They had discovei'ed in Him a Being, to know and to love whose personality, was the very peace of God, that passeth all understanding, was pei'fect rest and blessedness to the soul. No other such Lord of life, and Giver of conscious blessedness could ever be known or imagined in the world. For this reason they could not be imj)osed ujjou. The forger wovdd have been detected the instant he ajopeared. And so, these loving, trusting, simple-minded, but keenly and mor- ally discerning men, in whose hearts no place could be found but for Christ crucified, were chosen as the fit- test first witnesses of His resurrection when they should have received its proof. They knew xolvom. they had believed, and covild no more be deceived by an- other, than Jesus Himself could have deceived them. The disciples had this sustaining and inwardly coa- vincing and discerning love, but they had not yet a corresponding faith, or but very Httle of it. And when Jesus died, their love itself seemed to have been changed into hopeless, unbeheving sorrow; grief with- out faith. They could not penetrate the future, could God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, 201 not understand oiu' Lord's plan. Everything seemed broken up, interrupted, destroyed forever. Even our Lord's last discourses, as detailed with such simpHcity, preciousness, and graciousness by John, seem to have failed of being appreciated, exce]3t that their une- qualled" tenderness could not but draw the disciples more closely stiU to Him ; but yet they knew not what He meant. When He died, they were overwhelmed. An impassable gulf seemed to have ojjened at their feet, and they could not cross it, even in imagination; and when the bridge had been thrown over it, connect- ing the past, the present and the future in our Lord's resurrection, and taking up and renewing again the dis- severed tissue of their fondest expectations, they could not at first believe their own eyes, much leBs under- stand the wonderful transaction. The bridge itself was too serial, and shot up too suddenly into heaven, and was so terrifying in its loftiness, that they dared not ti-ust themselves upon it. So they now pursued their lonely desolate pilgrimage, to Eternity, caring little, now that Jesus had gone from them, how soon their own life might be ended. In the midst of their grief, as they thus communed and reasoned, in anguish uncontrollable, yet not un- reasonable, a stranger overtook them. With tones of sympathy and love. He enqiiired the cause of their sorrowful and earnest conversation. "What manner 202 God's Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?" And then, in the simpHcity of their astonishment that any person should think that any other subject than Jesus of Nazareth could occupy their attention, they took it for granted that He must be a stranger in Jerusalem, or He would not have dreamed of their talking about anything else; and so, with their hearts won by His benevolence, they poured out aU their sorrows and doubts before Him.* * In the "Kevised Version," the simplicity and tenderness of this recital are greatly marred by the omission of the words "and are sad," from verse seventeen. The inimitable beauty of the record is in the expression of Christ's own sympathizing no- tice of the dejection and distress of the pilgrims. While they communed and reasoned Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them. He did not stop them, but joined them walking, and as they walked, put the question, "What are these, your conversa- tions, as ye walk and are sad ? The sadness of their communion was what He had observed and inquired about, as if He had said, Tell Me, for I would share in your sorrows. The revisers have put it in such a shape, that the sadness seems to have been a sudden result of the stranger's question, What are you talking about as you walk? The revision reads: "And they stood still, looking sad." As if the interrogation of the newcomer had itself stopped and saddened them. This intru- sion is not in the Greek text of any authoritative MS. The re- visors give no reason for the alteration except a marginal refer- ence to S. V. A. MSS, "and they stood sad," but the revision gives it, " And they stood still, looking sad." Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 20 j How were they astonished, when He broke forth, as master of the whole subject, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets hare spoken ! Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His gioiy? Should you not have known, with the sHght- est spiritual acquaintance with the tenor of the proph- ets, that the path of your Messiah's glory led through suffering and death? And then at once He opened to their minds such new views of truth, and poured such a flood of hght over the prophetic Scriptures, as made the Bible seem to them a new revelation. With what sweet and gracious power and clearness did He lead them through its various eras and vast fields of thought, presenting explanation after explanation of its mysteries. Then first did they begin to comprehend the reign of their Messiah, and the scheme of redemp- tion. Well might theu' hearts burn within them, when an unknown Saviour was expounding unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern- ing Himself! That this exposition was the con- quest of death and sin by the undeserved suffer- ings and death of the sinless and blameless Deliverer, through His own blood shed for the remission of sins, and that this exposition has ever since been proved the only source of the happiness of heaven among men, is itself the crowning demonstration be- 20^ Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. fore the opening of Eternity, that Christianity is divine. Oh what a furrow of light did His path trace, over the sacred pages! What notes of sovd-eutrancing melody, what celestial regions of thought, what pro- found depths of meaning, as the Hand that made the Harj) of sacred Prophecy swept across its strings ! Every passage, every line, every word in the Scrip- tures, as He brought them to their remembrance, was spirit and Hfe to their souls. As passage after passage rose up before them, the film passed from their moral vision, and everywhere they beheld the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world ! XXYI. POINTS OF VISION AND INTERPRETATION UNQUES- TIONABLE—NECESSARY MINUTENESS OF THE SUR- VEY—THE WHOLE A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR PREACHING AND TEACHING CONCERNING CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE— THE PROPY- L^UM OF CHRIST TO THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES AND THE EPISTLES. There were particular passes across which the un- known Stranger carried them in His coiu^se, where it seemed as if they could scarcely sustain the power of Hght He was flinging upon their souls. There were Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 20§ mounts of spiritual \ision they had never climbed before, where it seemed as if they were caught up into the third heaven of glory. As He led them down from the very first prediction in the garden of Eden, through the history of Abraham, who had seen Christ's day so long before He came, the trial and issue of the Patriarch's faith, in the sacrifice of Isaac, was one of those summits of Hght. When he came to the death bed of Jacob, there was an- other. The blood of the slain lamb, sprinkled on the door posts in the Institution of the Passover, was another. The lifting up of the Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness was another. He revealed the meaning of the whole system of sacrifices and cere- monies; that ceaseless shedding of blood, without which there is no remission of sins. He revealed Himself as the Prophet promised by Moses in Dent, xviii. 15-20, the Prophet like unto Moses, with God's whole name and pardoning prerogative in Him. As the lightning at midnight, as the corona after a total echpse, shining from the east even unto the west, so were the gates of this Apocalypse of the coming of the Son of Man, to the vision of these disciples. It was as if a photograph of every moun- tain and valley, every river and forest, city, village and hamlet, all the heights and depths in the land- scape of the world of divine revelation, had been 2o6 God's Timepiece for Alaiis Eternity. suddenly engraved within their consciousness, never more to be obscured or forgotten. The divine revelation of an atonement for sin and an all-compassionate mediatorship betvsreen God and man, came before the giving of the Law, and was in- deed a necessity of forgiving mercy, contemporaneous with the very first act of disobedience. It was the corner-stone and the Sabbath-perfection, of all soul- saving theology, in adoring gratitude and praise. It created the walk of Enoch with God, and sustained the triumphant faith and patience of Job, and insjiired through his afflictions those watchwords and fore- running beacons of an Eternal victory of faith out of the exjjerience of Despair; — those songs of the dying Swan of Antediluvian theology and prophecy, "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; and blessed be the name of the Lord." — "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." — "For I know that my Redeemer hveth, and that He shall stand in the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God." The Redeemer of Enoch, Job, Moses, the Resur rection and the Life, stood now. upon. the earth, Him- self God manifest in the flesh, God raising the dead, God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. These footprints of the primeval searchings after Gods Ti7nepiece for Majis Iiteniity. 20^ God and discoveries of Him. by penitential faith could not have been omitted from our Blessed Lord's survey of the Avitnesses of divine inspiration in all past ages. For the whole Book of Job is an antici- j^atiou of the coming of the Redeemer, and the Res- urrection unto Life in Hhn. The preaching of Elihu, Job's youthful Consoler and friend, is the very mercy and compassionate disciphne of the Gospel of Christ, revealing unto men His righteousness, in their for- giveness and salvation. And when our Lord entered on the Book of Psalms, what surj^rising revelations! The 2nd Psalm was the foreshadowed universal throne of the Mes- siah, and the proclamation of it by. the Father: the 16th, Christ's dominion over the grave, entering the prison of its gloom for us, and for us rising again: the 110th, His supreme Lordship and Priesthood, after the order of Melchizedek. The 22nd opened with our Lord's own dying exclamation. My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me! The 69th described as in jDrophetic history, the very circum- stances of His sufferings. And all this minuteness of prediction, so often ob- jected against by critics after the fashion of Por- phjTy, as being incredible, — this divine characteristic of inspiration, was maintained as such by oiu' Lord from the beginning, both in history and prophecy. 2o8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. So that, on the one hand, as His own Interpreter, He showed to the disciples the glory of Christ in Isaiah as the giory of Jehovah, when the great Projihet saw His glory and spake of Him; and on the other, His humiliation and His d^dng blood, as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world: and both were demonstrated with a microscopic and telescopic power and clearness, equally impossible ever to have been forged or imagined. Indeed, the whole earth had been seeded with prophecies and ^^reparations of His coming, as demon- strated in the epistle to the Hebrews. They were held as divine germs for development in the bosom- of empires, as well as in the Jewish institutes, even till the subsoil plough of God's mighty j)rovidences should bring them forth to light and demonstration. All the grand disciplinary methods of God's govern- ment among the nations, the stupendous eras of his- tory, the ideal and eternal truths that alone could lay the foundations of a holy society, the tides of thought and feeling, convincing, instructing, new- creating : « ' The vast successive thoughts, That all the nations sway, As billows o'er the deep, In thunder rolled away." And then, the night-visions of Daniel, the setting of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2og the judgment, and the opening of the Books before the Ancient of days, and the coming of One like the Son of Man with the clouds of Heaven, and the do- minion given Him, the glory and kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him: His dominion an everlasting kingdom which shall not pass away, and His kingdom even that of the Saints of the Most High, who shall take and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. But in comparison with this sublime description of the High and Holy One inhabiting Eternity, how in- evitable for our Blessed Lord to dwell upon the depths of His own humiliation and sufferings for the sins of the whole world. So then especially in cor- recting the prejudices and guiding the minds of His future preachers, our Lord would fasten their atten- tion upon the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: "Who hath believed our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ? " Oh wonderful portrait- ure by the SpirilJ*of Christ so many ages beforehand, when it testified the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. "Despised and rejected of men, the Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Siirely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised 210 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. for our iniquities; the cliastisement of our jDeace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every- one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. -He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my peoj^le was He stricken. And He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death. When thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin. He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the jjleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied ; by His knowl- edge shall my righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear then* iniquities. Therefore He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He hath poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Wonderful, minute, demonstrative, unanswerable history beforehand, of the infinite whole mystery of the Incarnation ! And now the whole divine process so impossible in the view of an unbelieving rationalism, is completed by the sight and sensible appearance and indwelling of the despised, crucified, buried, risen. Almighty Redeemer, forever interceding at the right hand of the Majesty on high. God's Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. 211 As He prayed for Peter before His death, and for His betrayers and murderers in d^dng, even so, of old, the prayers of Intercession for tlie pardon of tbe guilty, the fore-gleams of a divine Mediatorship, as in the j)rototypical examples of Moses and David and Samuel, and of Solomon in the dedication of the Temple with its Mercy-seat, and of Noah, Daniel and Job, had been a divinely characteristic and most mer- ciful feature of salvation, even before the publication of the Decalogue, with the Sabbath of a believing worship centralized in it. With this were bound up, and wreathed around it, in cu-cles of forgiving mercy, all the allusions to G-od's never-faihng riches of long- suffering love in the gift of His only Son to die for sinners. All these j)erpetual magnetisms of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God, drawing us to Himself, and in the methods of His disciphne, were noted in their connections. The prayer of the soul forsaken of God in the 22nd Psalm, was followed by " The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," in the pastoral 23rd; and the 102nd w^as codiciled by the 103rd; and the 69th sui^plement- ed by the 71st and 72nd. And all these particulars in the Covenant of forgiveness, the word of God's mercy which He commanded to a thousand generations, and confirmed the same for an everlasting covenant, or- dered in all things and sure, were postulated for be- 212 God's Tunepiece for Mans Eternity. lief, till God manifested in the flesh should appear, the gracious Testator and Executor of the Whole in One. " Comfort ye, comfort ye My people saith youk God. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God ! And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. Thy God sh^vll do THIS. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." There was nothing in all these amazing delineations of the mercy of an Almighty Saviour that Christ did not make to pass before vision of those favored dis- ciples, admitted to look through the telescope of an instructed faith at these Messianic Nebulse of His for- giving love. The baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire was in all these revelations. It was the fire of divine love, and all the dear affectionate attractive pictures of the Shepherd of Israel and His tender watchfulness over the lambs of His flock, leading them in green pastures and by still waters, till the travail of His soul should be satisfied, when all the families of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 21 j mankind slioukl be gathered in one fold, under One Shepherd, were illuminated forever. In the 23rd chajDter of Jeremiah, as they followed the trans^Darent explanations of their Divine Instructor, they beheld, growing, "the Eighteous Branch of David, the King that should reign and jDrosper, and execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and this is the name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness." And in Jer. xxxi., God's covenant with the whole house of Israel, writing His laAV in their hearts, forgiving their iniquity and remembering their sin no more; also the same in chapter xxxiii. 8-26. Nothing could be more com- prehensive and explicit, nothing more divinely glo- rious. Then again, Ezekiel xxxiv. 23, "And I wiU set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, and I the Lord will be their God. And I wiU raise up for them a plant of renown. Thus shall they know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and they, the house of Israel, are My people, saith the Lord. And ye. My flock, the flock of My pasture, men, and I your God, saith the Lord." Then Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26: " Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean ; from all your filthiness and from all your idols wiU I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you 21^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and ye shall be My peoj)le, and I will be yoiu* God." Then the great resurrection chapter, xxxvii. 13, 14: "Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have ojDened your graves, O My people, and brought you up out of your graves, and put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live; one fold, one ShejDherd. My cov- enant of peace shall be with them : it shall be an everlasting covenant with them. My tabernacle also shall be with them; yea, I will be theu' God, and they shall be My people. And the nations shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My sanc- tuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore." The angel of the covenant was there; and in all the afflictions of His people, He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them and carried them aU the days of old; Thou O Lord, our Father, our Redeemer, Thy name from everlasting. There is no more doubt as to the trains of exposition by our Lord, and the method of His tracing the course of His own life and divine nature as the Redeemer of mankind, than there can be as to the texts which He chose from the prophets Isaiah and Micah for His first and His latest sermons. No doubt He took those amazed disciples to the moun- tains of Midian to behold in the vision of Balaam God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 21^ tlie Star out of Jacob and the Scejitre out of Israel, and to hear and understand, as never before, the question, "Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like His." And Isaiah's vision, in the year that King Uzziah died ! Who but Christ, in the vp^ay to Emmaus, could have revealed to those sorrowing discijoles, that it was the Lord Jesus Himself, whose goings forth were from everlasting, that sent the prophet on His mission of mercy, having first taken away his iniquity and purged his sin. He that took for His first sermon on earth that .divinely compassionate passage, " The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, to bind up the bro- ken-hearted, to proclaim libei-ty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; that they might be called Trees of Righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified." "These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory and spake of Him." Christ Himself and no other Being was the expositor to these disciples of His own Autobiography from eternity. But this exposition itself was only as an index or table of contents, according to which the discijDles now, looking back and remembering all the words of our Lord, could gather up and connect the whole 2i6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, train of events and teachings with the conclusion. Let any man read the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th chapters of John's Gospel, and consider the terrible- ness of our Lord's denunciations against the unbehev- ing Jews, whom He styled murderers and liars, like their father the devil, and compare and contrast those dreadful accusations with the assurance they all. thought they had, by the very covenant of circum- cision, of their being the children of Abraham; and he wiU cease to be astonished either at the wrath of our Lord's enemies, or the uninterrupted blindness of his friends. It is not much to be wondered at, that after all these discourses, and the declaration of our Lord, before Abraham ivas, I am, the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. The wonder rather is that for three years or more, our Lord coidd have continued such sermons, with incessant and accumulating proofs of His divine Messiahship; and that the rulers of the Jewish Hierarchy, seeing and knowing that their jDower, and the very continued existence of the temple and the nation, were imperilled by such truth and such miracles, should not sooner have put Him to death. But how then coiJd the Scriptures have been ful- filled? How could the education and discipline of His disciples have been completed, and the founda- tions of His Church settled, in divine suffering and Gods Timepiece for Alans Eternity. 21 j .. » love, in the apostleshijo of witnesses and expounders of His doctrines and His death ? A premature explosion by the passions of His enemies was restrained, as by divine safety-valves, until the whole people of Judea should become so imbued with the knowledge of His character, His words and His miracles, that immediately after His resurrection, they should beheve by thousands, and would bear out and justify the bold and fiery sermons of Peter and John, and the arraignment of the High Priest and the rulers, as having been themselves the murderers of the Messiah, and thus the uninten- tional instruments of God's own fulfilment of all those things which He had before showed by the mouth of all His holy jDrophets, that Christ should suffer. Then again in Hosea and Micah, Joel and Jonah, Zechariah and Malachi, and the historic as well as the prophetic Hebrew Books, He traced the outlines of His own predestined humihations and sufferings, death and glory, the cross and the crown, the inheri- tance of Him, and for Him, whose coming was to be "the Desire of Nations." "Eejoice greatly, O daugh- ter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is just and having salvation: lowly and riding uj)on an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass." He showed them the thirty pieces of silver, the price at which He was valued, when 2i8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. • betrayed. He showed tliem how they should look on Him whom they had pierced, and how the Sjiirit of grace and supj)lications should be poured upon them; and every family and tribe be blest with that penitential and believing baptism, till the prayers of David the son of Jesse, should be ended. And thus he passed down throu^gh the minor pro]3hets, to the last great predictions of His com- ing, and the Messenger to prepare His way, and the purification of the sons of Levi, and the coming of Elijah the prophet, that the heart of the fathers might be turned again to the children, and of the children to the fathers. How divinely clear, how ravishingly bright, did ever^'thing appear beneath His teachings ! In truth, the abundance of the revelations was such, that our Lord must have communicated, along with them, an apportioned power of comprehension, a supernatural illumination of their intellects. It was Just such as on the evening of the same day He bestowed upon all the discij)les, when He oj)ened their understandings to understand the Scriptures. The veil was removed, the darkness swept away, and everywhere they beheld the Saviour's glory, and the Word speaking of Him. Everywhere, in aU their preaching ever afterwards they knew that they had the mind of Christ. God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. 2ig XXVII. rOWER OF THE GREAT PERSONAL REVELATION AFTER THIS SURVEY— THE DIVINE PREPARATION FOR IT, THE ETERNAL ASSURANCE AND BLESSEDNESS OF IT— THE INFINITE PRIVILEGE AND HAPPINESS OF THE MINISTRY OF SUFFERING LOVE. In the midst of such conversation, they drew near to their abode. It does not appear that they had any susj^icion who this wonderful Stranger really was, though He was making their hearts burn within them every step of the way by His exposition of the Word of God. His theme was the dearest of aU themes, and they loved Him for the interest He took in it, as well as the wonderful knowledge He possessed of it, and the divine instruction and consolation He com- municated to their minds. He made as though He would have gone further, but how could they let Him go ? They held him as Jacob did of old, when He said, Let me go, for the day breaketh; and he said, I will not let Thee go, ex- cept Thou bless me. Now He said, Let Me go, for the day declineth; but they said. Abide with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent. Towards evening ! Ah ! it was the morn of an eter- nal sunrise, the beginning of a day of glory never to 220 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. end. With affectionate urgency they constrained Him, till He entered their peaceful abode, to which indeed He Avas no stranger. "With joyful hospitality they made ready their evening meal, and sat down to par- take of it, still talking of Him, of whom now they began to have such new, such glorious and soul-ravishing views. Singular enough it was, that while their inward sight had been irradiated to behold their Lord in the Scriptures, so that now they knew Him better than ever before, their outward vision had been so holden, as not to recognize Him, though He had walked several miles with them, and was even now sitting with them in personal bodily presence at meat, Perhai^s our Lord chose this deeply interesting mode of communicating with them, because, in such a con- versation He could gain their more undivided and meditative attention to the truth. It was the truth, and not the person of the Stranger, that was overcoming them, commanding them, pos- sessing them; striking in their hearts, and chiming, like the bells of the Holy City, hke voices out of the throne, as the sound of many waters; words that were as flames, as burning coals, as electric rainbows, as the living creatures in Ezekiel's vision, running and returning as the appearance of a flash of lightning. Through and throu^^h their hearts, down into Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 221 the thouglits of tlieir souls, deeper tlian conscious- ness had ever sounded, and awakening thoughts of which they could not have deemed themselves capa- ble, and feelings that they never knew before, went these words of this calm but sympathizing Stranger, taking their whole attention; words quick and pow- erful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and yet sweeter than honey, and the droppings of the honey-comb, and more refreshing and softly pene- trating than the dews of summer nights on the bor- ders of the Lake of Galilee. The words that they heard sank all the deeper for their previous deep sadness; and indeed, in order that the truth might thus quietly and stealthily gain attention and possession, it was as necessary that the melancholy meditative mood, in which they set out from Jerusalem, and were sadly communing when Jesus met them, should be preserved, as for a plen- tiful dew fall it is necessary that the wind go down, and the night be calm and cloudless. Any whirl- wind of emotion or amazement, as at the supposed appearance of a ghost, or a supernatural being, would 1)6 a fatal disturbance. If at first setting out, Christ had revealed Himself to them, and afterwards at- tempted to instruct them, they would have been in such a fever of surprise, agitation, and joy, that a calm listening would have been impossible. But our 222 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Lord graciously and sweetly j)repared tbeix' minds for the disclosure. And now they were counting upon a continued evening of just such holy conversation, and would have closed it with the reading of the Scriptures and family worship by their sacred guest, when sud- denly, as He takes the bread, and looks up to heaven, they behold Him, just as He sat with the twelve dis- ciples four days ago at the institution of the Last Supper, when He spake those solemn words, "This is My body, broken for you." Yes ! it is He ! the same form, the same holy countenance, the same heavenly gesture ! He took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. It is He ! And they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight. No more doubt, no more darkness now ! They have seen the risen Saviour, and away they fly, the same hour, to Jei'usalem, to tell the glad tidings to their fellow dis- ciples. Did not Our hearts burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scrij^tures ? How is it that we did not know Him before, that we did not remember that never man spake like this Man? Hapj)y beings, hajDpy discij^les! Thenceforward, the joy of the Lord was their strength, and they were transfigured by it from gloom to glory, even as they had been prepared for it, by the grace of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 22^ God, tlirougli their first discipline and development of love to Christ, and afterwards their hearts being wrung with grief and anguish for His sake. "For unto you it is given, in the behaK of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake." This jDrivilege of suffering for Christ was manifestly regarded as the highest of all the blessings of the Christian hfe; and this was the greatest demonstra- tion that human beings could be capable of making for their divine Redeemer; this confession of Him be- fore men and angels, the world, the universe, friends and enemies, at the cost of the sacrifice of everything in this life that men could hold dear. The revelation was that of infinite divine truth, demonstrated through divine love, as the ground-work, purpose and method of all truth. Dear and blessed, loving and suffering disciples ! As their commission was in many cases, that of a living martyi-dom for Christ, so the crown of their glory in His blessed service was to be the brightest that ever could be worn by mortals. They were to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. To them was to be given the glory of tui-n- ing many to righteousness by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony; and they were to shine above the brightness of the firmament forever and ever. 224 God's Timepiece for Mans Etertiity. How wonderful to see that the whole evidence of our faith is passed, for its perfection, through the medium both of human and divine suffering. "For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Caj)tain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." And so with His own ministers, and sj)ir- itual soldiers, so that the whole evidence of divine inspiration from Genesis to Revelation jjasses through the anguish of prophets and ai:)0stles; passes through agonized and bleeding hearts, and throvigh the wrath of men and nations made to praise God, and through demoniac natures subdued by redeeming grace, and brought to sit at the feet of Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. Nothing is left to mere theory or conjecture, but all is divinely experimental. And so we learn b}' heart the truths for our life, without which we know nothing but death; — we learn and know them in and for ourselves, just only in proportion as we learn them from God in Chiist, and employ and teach them in His love for God and our fellow creatures. Thus God benevolently makes all regenerated men fellow workers with the Redeemer in working out their own salvation, through the power that worketh in them to wUl and to do; learning and understanding, by believing, loving, acting. Doubtless all the apostles learned for themselves as much as God's Ti7nepiece fo7^ Alaiis Eternity. 22^ they tauglit others, by wi-iting their own ejiistles; for they wrote, possessed by the Spirit, and raised above self, out of the fulness and self-forgetfulness of divine love ; as for example the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and John, an outpouring of truths profound beyond all possibility of the human mind to have discovered; but written out, in order that men dead in trespasses and sins may come to life; written out of their o-wn hearts' blood, with compassion and weeping and joy, that all the disciples might, young and old, be pre- sented before God faultless in Christ; and might even in this world rejoice and be made steadfast in Him, and know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. XXYIII. GOD'S METHOD OF DEMONSTRATION, PERSONAL, EX- PERIMENTAL, AND CONSONANT WITH OUR NATURE —GOD'S ETERNAL NATURE BEING LOVE, THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE WAY OF KNOWING HIM, THAN THAT OF LOVING HIM— THAT LOVE KNOWN ONLY IN CHRIST, AND IN THE SCRIPTURES CONCERNING HIM. " For God hath shined in our hearts, to give the Hght of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Hath shined in our hearts, and so, 226 God's Tiinepiece for Mmis Eternity. I)}' the very laws of human nature, hath made the hearts thus illumined and filled with gloiy and power, the attractive magnets to aU other hearts, by the in- dwelling and example of such j)ower. "I beseech thee," said IMoses, " show me Thy glory," when this revelation was beginning among men. If Thou hast ai:»pointed me to speak of Thee and for Thee, show me Thy glory, that I may speak u'resistibly, convincingly, attractively, all that which I have seen, and may testify that which I have known. And such was the watch-Avord of Paul's power, "I know whom I have believed, and that He loved me, and gave Himself tor ME." God's method of demonstration is thus always that of love. How coincident with our nature, how ap- propriate to the foundations of beHef, and to the ring-bolts wrought in our intellectual and moral constitution, on which the truth might lay hold, to draw us up to God ! This may be seen, it had been already seen, even when Christ came, in the influence exerted by Plato's writings concerning Socrates. "We believe that there was such a personage as Socrates once teaching in the world, attracting disciples, and mold- ing their characters on his own, more by the dis- courses give in Plato's dialogues, and by the sym- pathy and love there manifested, than by any other Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 22J demonstration. No man could ever be persuaded that this account was a mere fiction. Let such a fabuhst as Strauss try his wit upon it. It is quite impossible that such a myth could have been in- vented, or could have grown by natural selection or evolution. And so the gospels hold mankind by an irresistible demonstration, the power of which will be felt and acknowledged as long as the world stands, renewed as long as the gospels are pubUshed. And they are the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever. So Ave are held to .God, brought back to God from our ignorance and disobedience, relegated by this true divine religion of the personality of God in Christ Jesus; to be made like Him, by seeing and knowing Him as He is, and not by silent wor- ship of the Unknown and Unknowable. "But as He who hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father (and such return unto Him and true wor- ship of Him, and renewal of the soul in His likeness, is not possible but by prayer and faith, which is the soul's true calling on God), pass the time of your so- journing here in fear; forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by 228 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. tradition from your fathers, but with the 'precious Uood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot. "Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, lolio by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Sj)irit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently; being born again, not of corrup- tible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever. And this is the "Word which by the Gospel is preached unto you." And the beginning and the end are Love. And so, " God was manifest in the flesh," and in all the most intimate conjunctures between our souls and bodies, being so manifested, is known as the object of a reasonable faith, disclosed to us by and through the structure and workings of our own personal existence; sympathizing with us, and in this compassionate and loving humiliation of the divine nature on earth, under the vestvu'e of our humanity, ju.stified in the SiDirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the World, received up into glory. Faith, sight, sense, reasoning, experience, all appealed to, all satisfied Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 22g and fulfilled in the knowledge of Christ, that we might be filled with aU the fulness of God. Now then, full in the face of the arrogant pro- nouncement of philosophers that Grod cannot be manifested, but is forever unknown and unknow- able, there shoots forth as the hghtning the sen- tence that God was manifest in the flesh, and DWELT AMONG US, AND WE BEHELD HiS GLORY. " For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;" manifested in the flesh, in order to be justified in the Spirit, in order to be seen of angels, ("and when He bringeth in the first-born into the world He saith. Let aU the angels of God worship Him "), in order to be preached unto the Gentiles, in order to be believed on in the world, and then, when re- ceived up into glory, to be the "Head over aU things to the chru'ch, which is His body, the ful- ness of Him that filleth all in all." Him that filleth all in all! And so He who was the Word made flesh, the Word in this incarnate divine personality, must expound the prophecies in those inspii'ed documents that had foreshadowed His coming, in order that men, when He came for their salvation, might believe; — He must expound to His witnesses, as the appointed teachers of mankind, 2 JO God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. "In all the Scriptukes, the things conceening Him- self." In this designation oi' proposition we have there- fore arrived at the great centre of thought, signifi- cance, and argument; the great hinge and stand- point of aU divine revelation; its whole object and importance. The things conceening Himself. This is our central sun; here the light shines and hither the whole universe of truth and being gravitates. How mighty is this sentence, as comprehending all the apj)ointed j^athway of the Scriptures of God, the purpose of God in them, their infinite worth and infallible certainty; all that needed to be known for the accomplishment of God's designs for human salvation. The things conceening Himself. It is like the great sentence. It is written, with which, in the opening of His ministry, Christ con- fronted and confounded Satan in the wilderness. And here, at the close of His ministry, in commit- ting its continuance and comj^letion to the hands of His disciples, The things conceening Himself. For this was their stewardsliijj with divine truth, their wholesale commission business on earth, Christ and Him crucified. This was what made the Scriptures interesting. This was what gave them their power. The importance of the Old Testament as well as of the New consists in its revelation of Jesus Christ. Noth- God's Timepiece foi'' Mans Eternity. 2ji ing else in it was made the subject of exposition by our Blessed Lord to the two favored disciples. Ex- ternal things were all passed by, the traditions of the elders, and the learned rubbish of the synagogues, cabbala, and mysteries, philosophy and speculation. Beginning at Moses and all the prophets He ex- pounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things con- cerning Himself. XXIX. NATURE OF THE SWEEP OF THIS PROPOSITION — CHRIST ESTABLISHED IT WHILE HIMSELF ON EARTH, SO THAT THERE SHOULD BE NO DIS- PUTING OF IT, NO ATTEMPTS AT THE BREAKING OF THE WILL, NO CASE IN CHANCERY, NO COUN- CILS—THE WHOLE VOLUME, AND ITS DOCUMENTS, GOD'S VOUCHERS, AND HIS ALONE. Now there are these two considerations, — first, the clean sweep of this proposition, its thoroughness, de- cisiveness, — all the Scriptures; second, Christ did this Himself, while He was yet on earth, and would not leave it to an after inspiration, not even to the mission of the Comforter, who was to convince the world in His stead, when He should have gone to the Father, and no more be seen or heard speaking among men. There was a divine order and sequence; a logic of eter- 2^2 God's Timepiece for Alans Eternity. nal truth pursued by Him, who was the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; Moses and the prophets first, and all the Scriptures, in theii- Hght, as God's hght. But what are all the Scriptures ? Is there certainty or uncertainty here ? Is this the infallibility of God informing His creatures, or the fallibility of men com- pounded into the pretence of infallible history, by the medium of successive infallible councils? Nay, we have here the God incarnate, testifying to the Word of God, the Creator, Kevealer, and Covenant Keeper, and Redeemer of mankind. It is not man but God, who assures us what be the very words of God, on which we are permitted and commanded to build our faith in the promised Saviour of guilty lost men. The Lord Jesus Christ had made His will before His death, in regard to His own kingdom, as the king- dom of His Father; and now He was Himself its sole Interpreter and Executor, after rising fi'om the dead, and before ascending to His Father. What that will, as the will of His Father, was. He had made absolutely sure for aU generations; and now the probating of it, and the administration. He made equally clear and ex- plicit. The Scriptures of that will were known as the Oracles of God committed to the Jews alone as the keepers of them for mankind. There were no other oracles ever delivered from God to man; "And what- soever things were written before the coming of Christ God's Timepiece for Maiis Eteriiity. 2jj were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scrij)tures might have hope." Could there have been any doubt as to that " xoliat- soever," the very first thing the Divine Messenger from God, the Messenger of the covenant of life and peace from Him, must do, would be to clear it up. The so- lution of it would be the very first exercise of God's truth and goodness. If ever the promised Messiah came to do the will of God, it was not only to be ex- pected, but infinitely certain, that this exposition and proof of that will would be made as sure as the cove- nant itself forever settled in heaven. This must have been one of the things that the Saviour would do in the world and for the world, before He left the world to return to His Father. When He prayed God for His disciples, " Sanctify them by Thy truth," and di- rected them to study thai truth, for their sanctification, He would not leave them ignorant or uncertain what really luas that truth to which He referred them as the very Word of God. This is our security; and this would be enough, if we had no other, or none marginal or ad- ditional; but we have. There is at the same time a wondrous combuaation and harmony of witnesses hu- man and divine, inspired, and also uninspired, but or- dinarily or humanly historical; along with a chain of events and providences, bearing upon themselves God's seals, for our deliverance from doubts, that oth- 2J4 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. erwise here at the very foundation of our faith might trouble us. We have the Word of God, the only divine revela- tion then upon earth, as by testimony of Christ, then already written, in a volume; then so absolutely known, so received and relied uj)on, that he could reason from it as an undisputed, sure, acknowledged quan- tity. We have this volume, as translated from the He- brew into the Greek, some centuries before Christ came Himself to appeal to it as "the volume of the Book written of Him" We have the evidence and the date of such translation in the works of journal- ists, philosophers and historians, such as PhUo and Josephus; historians as credible as any on whose books or records the world of believers in human history ever built their faith in the existence of Alexander the Great, or the Commentaries of Julius Csesar. It was this known volume of writings, to which Christ referred and appealed, and which He charged the Jews with disobeying, and in some cases nulU- fying by theu' own added traditions, setting the pre- cej)ts of men in place of the commandments of God; and He attributed all their calamities to that, and all their pei-il; but never charged them with not possessing or not confessing, or not carefully pre- serving from mutilation those records, or not know- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2j^ ing, and being conscious of, their importance and authority as divine. But the Jews did never receive these Scriptures as divine, merely or mainly because certain historians acknowledged them as such, or testified of them that they were such; but those historians testified that these very writings were the books that at the time of the coming of Christ had been translated into the Greek tongue, at Alexandria, and were in habitual use for reference as of divine authority, in all the synagogues; " where," said Luke, " Moses hath in every city those who I'ead them every Sabbath day." When the Hebrew tongue was passing out of exist- ence as a vernacular language, which however was not till the volume of the Old Testament inspiration was closed, God put the insj^ii-ed records in the ark of the Greek tongue for transmission; that tongue made immortal by the genius of Homer and Plato, and carried through the world by the conquests of Alexander; that tongue, in which Christ Himself was to make His own communications to mankind. The genius of the Hebrew passed into the Greek, carr}'^- ing into its more modern and universal dialect the baptism of the old divine insph'ation; the Greek being as it were thus clothed upon, that its mortaUty might be swallowed up of life. Now we are entitled to ask. Can there be anything 2j6 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. more suflS.ciently and satisfactorily deraonstrated than this ? And what unbehever can ever find fault with God, if judged according to this evidence ? We have the very same Scrij)tures that Christ declared to be the Word of God. They were a perfectly well known and indisi^utable quantity and quality; the very books, and none others, of that divine revelation, out of which Christ's mind, from childhood to manhood, grew and was nourished, in the completest fulfilment of the con- dition of a perfect life, that by every word that pro- ceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man hve. The Very Scriptures, and the books of Scriptru*e, in regard to which, at the age of twelve years. He conferred with the doctors of the law in the temple at Jerusalem, both hearing them, and asking them questions; and out of which, through all His ministry, He had been teaching the people. He knew what these books were; and His hearers knew the same; but now they knew by a distinct personal afiirmation and enumeration from Christ Himself. There was no uncertainty, there could be none. There was not one book, vouched for by Christ, about which there was the least doubt, that it was the Word of God. All the things in that Volume of the Book, covered and governed by the words of Christ to the tempter in the wilderness, It is written, were as known cer- tainties of [divine revelation, as the axioms of geome- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2^'/ try, or the quantities and laws of astronomical science. And the Scriptures as they had them, and as Christ re- ferred to them, and expounded them, we have them also, and know them; the very same Scriptures, as truly, as indisputably, as the planets that shone upon the Judean landscaj^e were the planets that now shine upon our eflobe. The books that Christ referred to, and expounded and taught, were the infallible Word of God. XXX. SUFFICIENCY OF OUR EVIDENCE— NO ANCHORAGE FOR ETERNITY IN UNCERTAINTIES— GOD'S MERCY NOT HIDDEN IN OBSCURITIES, BUT HE SETS HIS BOW IN THE CLOUDS— THE PROVERBS OF THIS WORLD, PROPHECIES OF THE NEXT— QUESTIONS AND CON- CLUSIONS OF EXPERIMENTALISTS. Here then we have a positive double anchorage for our faith, from which we cannot be dislodged. Moses and the Prophets, where Christ began, are a part of the Scriptures of God. There is no room for doubt as to that position. That one thing is settled, Moses and all the Prcyphets. But in the forty-fourth verse, it is, Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. These all are Scriptures of God, infallible, and which must all be fulfilled, because they are God's Word. Here 2j8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. is a second position where our anchorage holds, Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. Now we just as certainly know what writings, what books, were comj^rehended and referred to by our Lord Jesus Christ under this designation, as when the poems of Homer are named, we know that the books referred to are those of the Hiad and Odyssey. "VVe know what those books were to which Jesus Christ referred, as being the books of the "Word of God, about as certainly as we know that Jesus Christ existed. And those Jews, to whom Christ was ex- pounding those Scriptures, knew as well as He did what they were, what precisely was the Hebrew Canon of books, which they preserved with such inviolable carefulness and security, and to wliich Jesus Christ referred as being beyond doubt the Word of God, and to which He anchored the minds of His disciples, as the immutable foundations of truth, provided by the God that cannot lie, for the gift of life eternal to men dead in trespasses and sins. Moreover, He stood now as a Being bearing witness from the other world. He had gone into His eternal glory and returned. He had entered the grave, and risen from it. He had entered heaven, and carried with Him the soul of the penitent thief, from the Cross into Paradise. He had returned among the disciples with the declaration, All power is given unto God' s Timepiece for Alaits Eternity. 2jg Me in heaven and on earth. And He it was who on earth expounded these Scrij^tures, leaving no possibil- ity of any uncertainty as to their identity or divineness. Now this is a perfectly conclusive and triumjphant argument. It has aU the guards and logical requi- sites of the comj^letest reasoning, from the a priori demonstration to that of experience. Nevertheless, scientists that do not of themselves know aU things, must begin their knowledges by taking some things for assured as taught them by authority, and so, they too must be justified by faith. Can we possibly make an argument, can God Himself address one to the hu- man reason, that shall stand in the place of faith, that shall compel, as sight compels, by demonstration to the senses, so that there shall be no room for doubt? He that cometh to God must believe that He is, must come without seeing Him, and cannot possibly know Him, but by so coming, and must believe in His attributes just as He Himself has re- vealed them, and in the consequences of disobedience as He has made them^known. But sufficient evidence is given to all for the be- ginning of action, for coming to God in prayer; and then comes the witness of experience by the Sj)irit of God, promised in answer to prayer. But that witness is impossible, without action by faith upon the preliminary evidence. The Word of God is in- 240 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. fallible. It is contained in the Scrij)tures. But tlie tilings of God there revealed by the Holy Spiiit knoweth no man but by the Spirit of God. And we cannot construct an argument to the reason, that shall stand in the place of the Spirit, and of an eternal experience, and do the work which the Spii'it alone can do. Just as we cannot construct an argu- ment from nature, or a demonstration from the works of God, and the methods of discovered law in those works, that shall reveal God to the senses, and so supersede the necessity of faith, compelling men to see and acknowledge God; not the forces of nature merely, but the God who produces them. Always, even to the end, men may be unbelievers if they will. And there is what is called a sea-push of skepticism in our day, a whirl, a black knot, in the surf, the tide, extremely jDOwerful and dangerous. There is an undertow that sets out from the beach, after a high tide of faith; a reaction as of cold ague after fever, a return of the pendulum to the opposite extreme. It is an undertow l^hat bathers have to watch against, for it is so strong, that even those who have gone in to help others out have been car- ried beyond their depth, and lost their footing and their life. Any one of the gospels is a life-preserver in the wUdest sea that ever raged, the worst storm that ever came down on Galilee. If Christ be there, God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 241 you are safe. But if you will not admit Him into your ship, but treat Him as an impostor, and His life as a romantic fiction, there is no help for you. There is no help for poor human nature, if Christ be not the Way, the Truth, the Life. XXXI. "THEY DON'T COME BACK TO TELL "—COLERIDGE AND JOHN FOSTER— PAUL AND JOHN. A great thinker upon the mysteries of our being, and an experimentalist, almost to the last degree, of the consequences of character in our sins, (Cole- ridge, the philosopher and poet), was wont to say, Quantum sumus, scimus; we know just as much as we are. Our consciousness, our experience, under the inward teachings and witness of the Spirit, are the exponent of all our real self-knowledge. And our self-knowledge of all that we have become and are, if we find ourselves Hving without God and without Christ in this world, and so laying the foun- dations of an eternal character for the next world, is a convincing demonstration of all that we shall be, if we carry these habits of Hving beyond the article of dying. "I am the Kesurrection and the Life," belongs only to those who now, in the time of God's 242 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. offered mercy, confess Christ before men. Otherwise, tlie rejection of Him, and its consequences, abide upon tlie soul forever. But, exclaimed John Foster, profoundly musing on the mysteries of death, the state of the lost, and the veil impenetrable, behind which all results are hidden, except in the Gospel of Christ, " They don't come hack to tell ! They don't come back to tell ! " "Why should they? If they did, it could only be to point to the Cross, and say, "There is aU that we know about it. And you on earth know that, by the word of God. AVe know that we suffer, and that jxistly, receiving the due reward of our deeds. But as to the Eternity of it, we know that only by the Cross. The suffei'ings and dying of the Son of God are the Logarithms of the Eternal "World. There is no hope for us out of Him, none for you if you reject Him, and die in your sins. There remaineth no more sacrifice, forever." Hence the importance of an exceeding faithfulness even unto death, in Christ's witnesses, both in word and doctrine. For who, otherwise, is sufficient for these things? "Hold fast," said Paul to Timothy, " the form of sound itwds, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. Con- tinue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 24.^ hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." And John's testimony! "Who is he that overcom- eth the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God," and taketh into his heart all that is comprehended in that article of faith, and in Paul's again, II Cor. v. 14, 15, "Because, we thus judge, that if one died for aU, then were all dead; and that he died, in order that they who live should no more live unto themselves, but unto Him, who died for them and rose again." Knpwing therefore the ter- ror of the Lord, before whom all are to stand in judg- ment for all things done in the body, xve persuade men. There is no other persuasion for Eternity, neither any hope held out for those who choose to die, not in Christ, but in theh- own sins, having neither sought nor found his forgiving grace and mercy. Death in sin, and the wages of sin, are the end; and who can arraign God's benevolence in it, seeing that He hath made it as clearly known as His own nature in Christ ? Now assuredly the infinite importance of all these communications from God in Christ, as to our Eter- nal Destiny, lies in their everlasting and infallible certainty. It is absolutely certain that God would not leave us in doubt. All our own happiness, and 2^4 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the jDOSsibility of communicating it to others, reside in the use of our ojDportunities with God's certainties, not obscurities, to-day. For the whole Eternity of men, as to character and its results, depends on the confession or rejection of the name and claims of Christ, before men, while it is called to-day. The tides in every man's affairs of hfe, the seizures of favorable instants at the forward top, the crest of the wave just where it is bending, the faiths, pur- poses, resolutions, not sicklied o'er with doubt, nor palsied by delays — these are the things that make us, or their wanton wastes that mar us forever. Go into a foundry, whether of iron, or brass, or gold, for the building of monuments of moral char- acter and glory; or watch the determination of suc- cess or failure, in the process of converting iron into steel; the necessity of the measurement and seizing of a single second for the decision, or the whole experiment is ruined. These are analogies, apocalyptic as the hghtning upon our work and des- tiny for Eternity. Mark the proverbs of society, and observe how they are the jDrinciples of endless success or irretriev- able disaster and ruin. To-day, if ye wiU hear His voice, harden not your hearts. Agree with thine adversary, quickly. Walk in the hght, while the light is with you, and in you, and upon you. Walk in God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2^5 love, while the offered Spirit of Love, and of Power, and of a sound mind, disposes and enables you. Keep thy heart all the way, with all dihgence, aU watchfulness; take the water-power at the wheel, and the will at the stroke of the walking-beam, for the dynamite of the heart is in it to the last point; the irresistible, all-conquering force of the whole machinery thrown through its blow, in body, soul, and spirit, a unit in the explosion, hurling the man, through all the energy of a life-time, into Eternity. Now it is not wonderfvd that a thoughtful mind and awakened conscience, such as John Foster, should have demanded that the truth of an Eternal Ketribu- tion, if true, should be thundered as with the sound of many waters, and reiterated, as with the blast of the Archangel's Trumpet, from generation to generation, and from Genesis to the Apocalypse. For this de- mand God Himself has fuUy met in the Incarnation and Death of His own Son. This is the explosion of the artillery of all God's Providences and Scriptures. It is the very concentration, and evei'-acting pressure of infinite certainty from Eternity upon the finite mind. What less is that transaction, as to the un- derstanding of the whole government of God, and of all the divine attributes, and all the destinies of man, than the forerunning lightnings and thunders revealinor an Eternal Judgment? What less than 2^6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the tliuuder of Eternity is the j)eal of the tragedy of the death of Christ, reverberated from the chUdhood to the death of all generations, in its testimony against sin, out of love to the soul of the sinner? It is the lesson of all our hearing, the Hght of all our seeing. And there can be neither charity, nor liberality, nor benevolence, nor largeness of mind, in concealing or adulterating any of these truths, or throwing the shadow of a doubt upon them, or teach- ing mankind to rely upon the obscurities of divine revelation as more merciful than its certainties. XXXII. THE COURSE OF NATURE— THE LANGUAGE AND THE LAWS OF FAITH— THE EXPERLMENT OF TIME, THE INVITATION AND THE ACCEPTANCE OF DIVINE GRACE, THE DEATH OF DEATH AND HELL'S DE- STRUCTION THROUGH CHRIST, AND THE BEGIN- NING OF THE LIFE ETERNAL. The course of nature is a jDromulgation of law : the consequences, if nature be violated, are a ^promulgation of penalty. The power of foresight and opportunity of provision against evils otherwise certain and inevit- able is an element and arrangement of probation, in which there is offered a salvation fi-om future evils, a God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. 2^^ safeguard against* the "wratli to come. The necessity of obeying natiu'e is really a demonstration of the necessity of obe;ying Grod and our spiritual destiny. And in natures merely animal and mechanical, God, to prevent eyil, has set this law of instinct as a main- spring, answering the place and piirpose of reason in intelligent creatures. Instinct winds up their watch- es as a mechanical intelhgence, and works for them inevitably a future salvation. It is involuntary. But reason acts upon information, and is voluntary. Rea- son receives and obeys warnings, and is responsible accordingly. Instinct obeys a mechanical necessity. Instinct is the working out of a character preordained and conformed to nature. Reason is for the forma- tion and exercise of a voluntary character according to God's own teachings. The devil in the beginning did not say, There is no God, but, "He is 7iot a true God, you cannot trust Him. He conceals from you what you ought to know, and tells you what is not true, what cannot be proved, and requii'es you to act ac- cordingly. Yea hath He said, In the day that thou eatest thou shalt sui-ely die ? But I teU you that God doth know that ye shall become as gods knowing good and evU. That demonstration is what He with- holds from you. But you must have that, or else do not beHeve what He tells you. You can trust Him no further than von can see Him." 2^.8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Now that is the language of men towards a known villain; and that is the way in which unbelief treats God. And that is John's logical definition of unbe- lief, Hath made God a liar. In requiring the demonstration of sense, and pre- tending to base your denial of the Word of God on that necessity, you treat God as a liar, and cut your- self off from all possibility of communion with Him. He cannot give you demonstration and save you; for in the first place to put you into the eternal fires, and so convince you, would be your ruin. But even ihat would not be demonstration; for as to the eterniiy of any thing, whether haj)i3iness or misery, a demonstra- tion would requu'e that you live through that eternity, that you experience that eternity, and measure it yourself, which no created being can do. And therefore the very angels have to take God's Word for it. Chi-ist's dying is the demonstration for them, as for us, of the worth of the soul and the reality of eternal death for those who are not made partakers of His hfe; the only demonstration that even angels can have, or beings of any kind in any world. Even the rich man tormented in hell might have answered Abraham, when he told him there was a great gulf eternally fixed between him and Heaven, How do you know ? You have never gone half way through eternity. You know not what may be in the Gods Timepiece for Mail s Eternity. 2^g future; you must have demonstration. I know as much as you do. You have to take all things on the Word of God. You have a creed as God teaches it. But I beUeve nothing but what I see and know by demonstration. I beheve only my own senses, mj'seK. And Abraham might have answered, "Well, you have 3^our reward. BeHeve on. Your senses are true, and what they tell you, and what you are in them, is your exj)erience; and because you would not be affected by higher spiritual testimony, even God's testimony, the^e Jlames are your experience. But what God is, you could not know, nor what God would do, except by what God told you would come upon you. And the im230ssibility of dweUing with God, or being happy in Him, unless you be- lieve and love and obey Him, you now find out, alas, too late, forever." Now if a man say. There is no need of all this terrible haste and clamor, this ringing of alarm bells and thundering of fire-engines, this repetition of the terrific theological watchwords of Retribution. It cannot be that this is our only chance; there must be an ophthalmic hosj)ital in the world to which we are going, and a quarantine there, where men may be healed. The answer to this is fovmd in Christ's own declaration, that if we, the guilty 2^0 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and the lost, whom He came to seek and to save, by saving us from our sins, refuse to accept of His mercy, to avail ourselves of His healing ministra- tions, now, while they are offered, to-day while it is the accepted time and the day of salvation, it win be too late when Time is ended and Eternity begun. " If ye believe not in Me, (Christ's mercy forewarns us), ye shall die in your sins. While ye have light believe in the light that ye may be children of the light. He that believeth not in Me, and abideth not in Me, he is as a withered branch that is to be cut off from the tree, and carried away to be burned." Besides, if a man say I will not believe until I see, untn I know by my own sense and knowledge, that it is the last chance, and that if I do not believe I am certainly and irremediably doomed and lost for- ever; it is perfectly plain that such a man never can be saved by beUeving in Chiist, never can know the power of faith, nor its vitahty; for aU the faith that such a person ever will exercise, or ever can, is not in God nor in Christ, but in his own senses, and in the testimony of heU-fire; a kind of faith that even if it cotdd be suj)posed to save the soul, would evidently do it by dishonoring and disobeying Gi-od as long as possible. The question for the soul through eternity is just Gods Timepiece for Man's Eternity. 2^1 tliis, Can you trust God? Do you take Him at His Word, or do you susj)ect Him of some deceit or ex- aggeration, and are you resolved to wait upon your own experience as yoiu" only infallible teacher ? If the latter, then you are the worshij)per of your own senses, and you are forming and fostering that carnal mind, which is enmity against God. You can truly worship God only by faith, seeing He has thought fit to address you in His Word, and to warn you what is best for you. A man should therefore say, If I am ever to ex- ercise any virtue by faith, now is the time. Now will I trust in God and obey Him. I will not go into the eternal world a mean, suspicious, self-wor- shipping and self-indulging brute of the senses. But I will come to God in Christ, and so, thi'ough His in- finitely merciful grace, I shall be made worthy of Him, worthy to be accepted by Him. I will awake, at His voice, from the dead, and go into Eternity A Living Soul in Him, through His most precious blood. Not a despau-ing leper into a hospital, nor a bhnd man to be operated upon, nor an abortion of sin to be treated with the surgery of heU; but I will go, complete in Christ, an heir of God by faith in Christ, and a joint heir with Him, made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of saints in Hght, in His image; dear unto God, to be pre- 2^2 God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. sented in Clirist before His throne in His likeness, without sj)ot, or wrinkle, or any sucli thing. O wonderful prophecy of the Eternal fulness of Christ's dying love! And the riches of the glory of His Inheritance in the Saints ! And the infinite reward of the confession of His Name by sinful men on earth ! " We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. "Whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet, believing, ye rejoice, with joy unspeakable and full of glory. When Christ, who is our Kfe, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." The spirit and the Bride say. Come ! And let him that heareth say, Come ! And let him that is athirst. Come ! And whosoever will, let him take the water of life, freely. The offer and the possibilities now, in Christ Jesus the love, the mercy, the forgiving and sanctifying grace; its available methods, du'ections, and certain- ties, now, for all souls; are God's infinitely compassion ate and perfect Time-Piece for Man's Eternity. God's Timepiece for Mans Eteriiity. 2^j XXXIII. THE REVELATION OF SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES CON- SIDERED AS A CENTRAL PROOF OF THE PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. Both tlie consequences of unbelief, and the re- wards of faith, demonstrate the necessity of a plen- ary verbal inspiration in any revelation of the attri- butes of God and the sinfulness of man, for the soul's instruction ia the way of life. Sometimes these prin- ciples are concentrated as in a mountain of fire for aU ages, as in the great central seventeenth chapter of Jeremiah, verses 5, 7, 9, 10. "Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth ia man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man ac- cording to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." Here we have the divine eternal laws of justice and judgment, beginning with the heart. And in these words God hath set for us these tremendous postu- 2^^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. lates of faith, in regard to sin and eternity, for uni- versal liuman knowledge and experience, heathen as weU as Christian, through all ages. As to the heart, which is what concerns us for eter- nity, its condition by sin is a cardinal doctrine of truth in moral science, in government, in religion, in theol- ogy; an incontrovertible postulate in all our dealings one with another and with God. God's description of it, and statement of the consequences, are at the same time the demonstration of sin, hell, redemp- tion, grace, and heaven. There can be no exagger- ation, for it is God's own "Word; and throughout the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, deep answers unto deep at the noise of these terrific waterspouts. Yet above all such terrors the rain- bow of God's mercy is brighter than the lightnings of justice. And through the whole, and in all men's experience, as in water face answereth to face, so, in this mirror of man's sinful nature, given by God's compassion for man's guidance, the heart of man answers to man, as when God saw that the wicked- ness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. " Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but the Lord pondereth the hearts." And if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; — was it not thine own self- God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. 2^^ blindness that Teiled thy consciousness, and hid from thee the eye of Grod ? " Doth not He that ponder- eth the heart consider it? And He that keepeth thy sonl, doth not He know it? And shall He not render to every man according to his work? And shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Or is God unrighteous that taketh vengeance? God forbid! For then how shall God judge the world? For God requireth that which is past, and will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil." — Prov. v. 21, and xxi. 2, and xxiv. 12, and Eccl. iii. 14, 15, with Kom. iii. 5. These concentrated questions and answers are as the charge of an army of God's hosts, with bayo- nets of electric fire. Antediluvians that rebelled, and patriarchal theologians that walked with God; repre- sentatives of human nature, and witnesses for the divine attributes; Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Job, Jos- eph, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul, John, lift up one and the same voice of warning in these vast and mighty titterances; the testimonies of man's experience, and God's merciful interpositions accordingly; for the good of the universe, out of mercy to the universe forever. Such is the testimony, rejjeated in the Book of Ee- elesiastes (ix. 3), that God hath not only set Eternity (both the idea and its warning) in the heart of the 2^6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. sons of men, but that, notwitlistanding this, the heart of all generations is fully set in them to do evil; so that madness is in their heart, while they live; and in this quality and character they go to the judgment. All this evidence, from Genesis to Malachi, is the infallible instruction and warning of infinite, incar- nate Tbuth and Love. The love itself demands and creates the infallible verbal certainty. For God's administration is in all mercy and wisdom, especially in its heart-j)robing severity. He begins with the heart, at the fountain; and thence onward the whole history of mankind is one of vast, instructive, heart- searching and demonstrative experiments: laying open the carnal heart and mind at enmity against God. Experiments, of like vastness of ages, races, and na- tions; and all the illustrations are of man's deprav- ity, even under all the divine incarnate lights of forbearance, mercy, warning, instruction, and holi- ness; in the midst of Abrahamic, Mosaic, prophetic. Messianic promises, inviting, forgiving, through a Sa- viour to come. The consequences of sin, in retributive justice and self-misery, from Sodom and Gomorrah, down to the whole seven hells of Canaan are revealed; with mir- acles all the while flaming through the world, the reports of which, and the awful reverberated glory of their judgments, went through all kingdoms; yet God's Timepiece foi'' Mans Eternity. 2^j all the while the human heart unreclaimed, mad upon its idols, desperately wicked. And because of all this, precedents of law and grace in a divine revelation always accumulating, and instructions how to deal with the heart, and confessions and prayers wi'itten out for our use, full of contrition and faith in God's mercy, and disclosing the experiences of penitent and trustful sorJs in the way of redemi^tion; a di- vinely prepared liturgy, inspired by the Holy Spii'it for the whole world of sinners, acknowledging the plague of their own hearts, and imploring God's mercy. And then comes the Redeemer, God Incarnate, God MANDTEST nsr THE FLESH, and the history of the Crucifix- ion, and the way in which men have treated God's own ascended Son, and God's whole inspired Word; and the bold denial of both, after ages of the knowl- edge of Him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, yesterday, to-day, and forever ! God, in all His Word from the beginning, reveals sin as against HimseK and against man, in itseK and in its consequences, for time and eternity. All His statutes and judgments are infinite in mercy on ac- count of 8171, and for the discovery of sin, and sense of guilt, and disclosure of new-creating grace; aU His deahngs and revelations benevolent, wise, heart-search- ing, for the eternal saving of men from sin and self 2^8 God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. and Satan. History, description, the human race in individuals, societies, ages, empires, and God's own legislation for man; in all things searching and illu- minating the heart in its wickedness, and demonstrat- ing the impossibihty of peace or happiness or good government, except the heart be renewed by divine grace. And so the rejection of God's Word, and of its infallible word-inspiratioyi, and the denial of the cardinal truth of man's entire dej)ravity, and of the need of God's methods of grace in Christ, are the destruction of all good, and of all hope of bringing men to repentance. XXXIY. INFALLIBLE INSPIRATION OF ALL THE WORDS OF GOD'S LAW-BOOK DEMONSTRATED BY THE NA- TURE OF ITS TRUTHS; AND BY THE SAVIOUR'S WORDS; AND BY THE CONSEQUENCES OF IDLE WORDS. And now we come to the hnks of a demonslration of the necessary Plenary Verbal Inspiration of every part of the Law-Book of God's government, with all His own illustrative precedents set down for man's guidance to Eternal Life; by faith in Him, and in His Word, who is the Author and Finisher of Faith. All possible conceivable securities are in this Chro- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2^g nometer and Chart for a safe voyage to Eternity; iiotliing is wanting for its absolute perfection. If we may trust in God as our Creator, we may also, to the uttermost, in His lorovisions for us as our Eedeemer. Consider now the immensity and multitude of the truths made known to us in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypse. The creation and fall of man and its consequences; the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God; His unsearchable equality and per- sonal identity with the Father, in all the attributes of God made known to us, or conceivable by us; the succession and multitude of predictions fulfilled in His life and death; the dependence of the destinies of all mankind on His words; His revelations of fu- turity, immortality, and the judgment to come; — and aU these truths, and the knowledge of them, the very truths by which the righteous Judge of all mankind will order the retributions of Eternity. In His infinite righteousness and mercy He can do nothing less. Does the human reason admit the i^ossibility of a revelation of such truths, without a Plenary Verbal Inspiration of them, so that by the words in which they are conveyed, the Judge of aU the earth may be justi fied ? Could such truths have been left, as uncertain glimmerings or marsh-lights, or spangles of gold, to 26o God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. be discovered and assayed by human ingenuity from mountains of mere quartz and pyrites ? Judgments, statutes, principles, i^recedents and precepts of right- eousness, by which a universe of intelligent immortal beings are to be judged, left to be doubtfully dis- cerned, amidst volumes of forgeries and lies, demon- strated to have been such from the beginning ! And so left at the mercy of unscrupulous judges of fact and law, that unprincipled lawyers may keep infinite estates in chancery by technicalities for their own profit from generation to generation! If there be a God revealing Himself to mankind for theu^ good, this is impossible. And now we carry these surveys back to the quali- ties, jDurposes, extent, application and eternity of God's Revelation, as defined in Deut. xxix. 29 (see page 7, ch. 2), and lay them alongside the methods of God's providence, and the histories of His succes- sive revelations to mankind, and the disclosures of human depravity and guilt, and consequent self-caused, ignorance, bhndness, and darkness; and we ask, Gould anything less than a 2)lenary verbal accuracy be required of a benevolent and just Creator and Governor, in the volume of attributes and laws by which the sub- jects of His government are to be rewarded accoiding to their works ? There can be but one answer, and that is given by God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 261 Chi'ist. " The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life. There is One that judgeth you; and My words ai'e not Mine, but the Father's that sent Me. All things that the Father hath are Mine. And if any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not M}^ words, hath One that judgeth him. The Word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting; whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak." These are the last words of Christ to the whole world before His death. "I am come a Light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness." It is impossible that any- thing less than a divine verbal infallibility can be jDroposed or understood in these communications of Christ for the salvation of mankind. Our Lord Jesus assumes as His own the Divine Attributes of Omniscience and Sujoreme Deity, by which He will Himself judge the world, when He says, (Rev. ii. 23,) "I am He that searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you accord- 262 God's Timepiece for Ma7ts Eternity. ing to your works." And in Matt. xii. 34-37, as well as Luke vi. 45-47, "I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they sliaU give accovint thereof in the Day of Judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Every word is a work; and word and work, thought and habit, out of the same heart. Every idle word therefore an infallible revelation of character. Is this a righteous judgment? Heedless words, recklessly scattered by men or angels, may be as fire-brands, an'ows, and death, in their lighting on unguarded souls, and rankling as fiery darts of Satan. "With what measure ye meet, the consequences as well as the contents, shall be measured to you again. Every idle word! Beyond question, in the face of Eternity, this judgment is righteous. And the same righteous law applies to God Himself, and to God's heart, and to Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, as to all mankind. If God, or the Son of. God, coald be imagined ever to have spoken or inspired any careless, exaggerated, uncertain or idle words, or ever circulated a faUible word or law, instruction or precept, as infallible truth, and binding upon men as God's Word, that cannot lie. He would Himself be judged by the same rule, and the same law of coHsequences. Gods Ti7nepiece for Mans Eternity. 26 j Only this is to be considered, that the consequences of careless words, or false uncertain words or propo- sitions, would be as much vaster and more terrible in God and in Christ, the God incarnate, than in man, as the character of God is infinitely more im- portant than man's character, and the universe of God greater than a man's birth-place, and the govern- ment of God than a man's government, and the thoughts and words of God as high above those of man, as heaven is above earth, and unsearchable and germinating and creative as the infinitude of Eternity. Now out of this unquestionable demonstration by the Lord Jesus, there arises a proof incontrovertible of the infallible divine inspiration of the whole Script- ui-es; their plenary verbal inspiration; so that every word is divine truth, and no careless words possi- ble, from Moses in the Pentateuch down to John in the Apocalypse. For we must inevitably apply the rtde of conse- quences, by ivhich ive are to be judged, to God's own rule, by which He is to be justified; to God's Law of Love proclaimed by Moses and again by Christ, by which Law, as given by Moses, the whole tmivorse is quickened, balanced, governed, and beatified for- ever. Where is that Law first enunciated? In the Old Testament, in the books of Moses! Where and whence did Jesus quote it, and apply it, to all man- 264 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. liind, and for all Eternity? From Moses, and m Deuteronomy, and to the whole universe of God. Now take Mark xii. 28-34, with the preceding para- graj^h beginning, "Moses wrote unto us," and con- cluding, "Have ye not read in the Book of Moses," and compare Luke x. 25-28, What is wkitten in the Law, as to the way of Eternal Life? How readest thou? And he, the lawyer, answering, said, "Thou SHALT LOVE the Lord thy Grod, with all thy heart, soul, strength, and mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." The words quoted as written in the Law were from Deut. and Leviticus, and comprehended in the phrase "written in the Law," the whole Sceiptuees, from which the Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, and all Judea, as well as Christ and His Apostles, reasoned aUke, as from the whole and sole body of divine truth, all from God, and aU unquestionable and infallible. The whole of Christ's integrity, for us and for all mankind, rests upon the words and authority of that quotation, and upon the truth of Christ's testimony, that it ivas given from God to Hoses and lorilten hy him. The two quotations recorded in Mark and Luke are a combination of Deut. vi. 5, and Lev. xix. 18; and both these books are presented and appealed to under the same title and description of the Law Gods Timepiece for Maris Eternity. 265 and the Scriptures. The lawyer who put the question, "What shall I do to inherit eternal hfe?" was an- swered by Christ, What is written in the Law? How readiest thou? And the lawyer immediately put Le- viticus and Deuteronomy together in his answer. And Jesus said, Thou hast ansivered right. Part of the first commandment was in Deuteronomy; the other part in Leviticus; — and no question, either with the Jews, the lawyer, or the Saviour, that both books were the same inspu-ation from God, and both written by Moses. And then again in Mark, the same reasoning of Christ followed a quotation by Him from the Book of Exodus, on immortaUty; so that we have Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, all here affirmed by the Lord Jesus and the Jews, and then- scribes and lawyers, as being the Scriptures of Gtod, and the Law of God, and the writing of Moses, separately and together. And the great subjects that prove them are the highest attributes of God, as revealed and worded by Himself, for all mankind. But the criticism of the destructives, or what is absm'dly called "The Higher Literary Criticism," tears these books and texts asunder, and affirms that only half of what our Lord quotes as the first commandment was ever given by Moses at all; and the rest never revealed 266 God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity, by God, or even proposed as God's law to the Jews, till near a thousand years later, and then wrought out as a forgery, to brmg about a political revolution ! ! XXXV. THE LAW OF THE SABBATH, WITH OUR LORD'S DO- MINION OVER IT, AND THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR, DEMONSTRATE A VERBAL INSPIRATION— THE FIRST SERMON IN NAZARETH. The Sabbath is a concentration of the two first commandments, in the Decalogue, as set forth by our Lord, (Mark xii. 29-31), "The Lord our Go.d is ONE Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; — and thy neighbor as thyself." And from the history and laws of the Sabbath, and their intricate and minute connections with the whole work of human salvation, we derive a comprehensive proof of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. This is illustrated in the universality of the Sabbath Cov- enants of promise, as referred to in Isaiah, chapters 55, 56, 58, compared with Eph. ii. 12, 13, and iv. 4—16, and Phil. ii. 9-11, and Rom. xiv. 9; — covenants embracing all mankind. Gentiles as well as Jews, once afar off, but now made nigh by the blood of God's Thnepiece for Mans Eternity. 26'j Christ, and brouglit into blissful unity with God, in Him of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. God's law of love lays hold upon men's hearts, and is the only legislation that does this. All other is a mere external vice; holding its subjects as for the biting of a file. God's law never deals with symptoms merely, but is the work of Him who judges the hearts of all mankind. AU its knots are knee- timbers, growths of its loving hfe; thou shalt not covet, lie, steal, murder, or commit adultery, growing out of this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The not doing this becomes enmity against both God and man. All the laws of God, whether as to omission or commission, are gifts of His mercy, that we may, by obedience and use, be made like unto Himself, par- takers of the divine nature. So, the formula of everything that comes from God is just this, of generosity, and loving care for our good, for Time and Eternity, physical and spiritual. The Decalogue with all its ramifications, passes through the Sabbath, fastening the whole of man's spix'itual existence to it, in the provision that six days of labor shall suj)ply man's daily bread for seven days; consecrating the seventh, as a heaven on earth, in its blessed uses and enjoyments, in 268 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the worsliij) and love of God. All the successive laws run through this, as through a pulley, and are grappled in the divine organization of human so- ciety. For by this foreordained gift and grace of the Sabbath as Christ's day, co-eval with the Eter- nity of His own holiness and glory, and purpose of human salvation, "the creature itself shovdd be delivered from the bondage of corruj)tion into the glorious liberty of the children of God." And so the Law of the Sabbath, with all its pur- poses and appropriations by our blessed Lord, in His incarnation, sufferings, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost attend- ant on His Word, becomes the law of gravitation in the spiritual universe; upholding aU things by the Word of His power, the government being upon His shoulder, even forever. The Sabbath of God, at the first Creation, is that of Christ for the New Creation. And for this pur- pose, and in all the divine laws, precepts and prom- ises connected as a spiral of causes within it, the Sabbath is like a ganglion * of nerves and will-power, running from the brain and spinal cord in our bodies; conveying the impulses and noting the paths of obedi- * "A mass of nervous matter, forming a centre, from which nervous fibres radiate." Duuglison. In the Hebrew, "a holi- ness-day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord." — Ex. xxxv. 2. God's Timepiece f 01^ Alan's Eternity. 26g ence in all directions. Is. Iviii. 13, and lix. 21. These arrangements in the human frame, so fearfully and wonderfully made, are forth-shadowings of the sacred verbal minuteness and accuracy of the Divine Words (Spirit and "Words, Is. lix. 21), in the creation of the Scriptures and their institutions, by the infallible inspiration of Divine Love. The Sabbath in Christ, and Christ in. it, its Lord and Life, are our cen- tral illustration and proof of the methods of God's mercy, from the Creation of mankind to the Day of Judgment. How comprehensive and instructive are the graphic accounts concerning it, in God's early, intense, and jealous discipline of the Hebrews in the wilderness, and His carefulness and grace in giving them the reason and the rule of its particulars. Compare Ex. xvi. 29, and the parallel passages. " See ! for that He giveth thee the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you, on the sixth day, the bread of two days! Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day." And Ex. XXXV. 3, "Ye shall kindle no fire through- out your habitations." The supposed severity was the fulness of divine compassion and mercy, with a double miracle, perpetual to secure it. Because, from the Creation of the world He hath given thee the Sabbath; the mu-acle of thine own rest, as founded in His, prophesied, quahfied, and 2^0 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, patterned after His; therefore He giveth thee leisui*e and rehef from temj)oral and bodily wants and anx- ieties, "by the supply of these last beforehand! Thy daily bread and thy sj)iritual are thus mutually sanc- tified, in that one good and perfect gift from the Father of lights, who hath engrafted in it and in us, the word of truth, which is able to save our souls, the perfect law of life and liberty in Christ. Thy daily bread and thy sjjiritual, acting and inter- acting in all things for man's good, for body and soul, this world and the next, time and Eternity! A double portion of thy daily bread, over and above all that thou wouldst need in thy six days, is fore- ordained and provided, for the blessed uses of the seventh, as thy day of rest, in accordance with and enjoyment of God's own rest; in jDrayer and jDraise, and the study of His word, without distraction. Thou shalt have no need of kindling a fire of thuie own, in any of thy habitations; for the Lord God is thy sun and shield, and thy God thy glory. Ex. XXXV. 2, 3. Is. Ix. 2. Miracle to secure miracle; time, to secure Eternity; the second miracle for daily wants, to increase your faith and gratitude for the first and greatest; in order that ye may at all events not fail to secure that, for your spiritual, everlasting life and blessedness. Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2yr Ex. xxiii. 25. God does this to all generations, in an organic law of liuman society, for aU the races and families of mankind; enabling them, on their six working days, to jjrovide for the seventh, " that thou may est rest on that day, and thy poor and thy stranger' with thee." Ex. xxiii. 12; Deut. v. 14, 15, 1 Kings, viii. 41-43. In all this we behold God visible, God manifest in the flesh even before the incarnation of Him who said, "The poor ye have always with you; Me ye have not always; " love them for my sake, and that ye may love me forever. It is my Sabbath service and missionary law. " Thy poor and thy stranger WITH THEE. It is MORE BLESSED TO GIVE THAN TO RE- CEIVE." See Ps. Ixxii. 4, 5, 8, 13, 17; Is. xlii. 5-7, and xhx. 8-11, and li. 16, and ch. Iv. and Ivi. 6, 7; with Acts xxi. 35, Mark xiv. 7, 8, Deut. xv. 11. And so Christ is magnified, and ever shall be, in the whole body of Divine Revelation and in all its in- stitutes, and in all the members of His body, whether by life or by death. For He is "Head over aU things to the Church, which is His body, the ful- ness of Him that filleth all in all," The deniers of the Divine integrity and authority of the Mosaic Statutes, — more superhuman, more supernatural, than the architecture of the heavens, — are shipwrecked on the records of these unacknowl- 2^/2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. edged Sabbath truths, as foolhardy navigators against sunken rocks. For the infinite benevolence of this Sabbath Law, promulgated at the creation, estabUshed among the Hebrews, connected and co-everlasting with the duty and blessedness of the stated worship of God by the whole world through all ages, is demonstrated, even by scientific sagacity, and search, in the cor- relations of the human body with its earthly dwelling- place; and more yet, the older the world grows, by sanitary, social, industrial, economical, commercial, historical and spiritual experience. It is the only stay and interruption of human selfishness and world- liness, avarice, ungodliness, and oppressive cruelty, divinely set in the very Almanac of weeks and days, months and years, and seven-fold jubilees; the tides of an angel-watched Bethesda of mercy, as regular as day and night, sunrise and sunset, amidst the incessant toil and misery of sinful men. If ever there was or could be a supernatural divine demonstration of infallible insjjiration, it is this. It is God always, but never man, that promulgates and supports this law; and by a perpetual providence, sends the Sabbath, wherever the Gospel of Christ is proclaimed, with its law of truth, liberty and mercy, indiscriminate, universal, for the security and universality of divine grace, for aU nations, God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2'/j througli all time, in Christ, the Resukrection ajsid THE Lite ! '■'■Thy poor and thy stranger ivith thee." "The stran- ger that Cometh out of a far country; — do thou, O Lord, according to all that the stranger calleth upou Thee for, that all the people oe the earth may knoio Thy name to fear Thee, as do Thy people." All shall possess and enjoy the freedom of thy Sabbath, and its purposes and jDOwers of worship and of prayer. 1 Kings, viii. 43; 2 Kings, xis. 19; Ps. cii. 18. And then if thou say, "What can we do with such immigrations from all nations, and how protect our- selves, supplying them ? God Himself shall give them the same Sabbath-miracle of all-sufficing manna, as for thee; and their keeping of the Sabbath through thy faithfulness shall be the security both of their prosperity and thine. In the Lordship of the Sabbath the government of God should be ui^on the shoulders of God's Mes- siah, and of His kingdom there should be no end; nor of the supremacy of the Jews over all nations, if they themselves would but keej) the Sabbath as God had given it. The keeping of the Sabbath, with its law of freedom and of love, was to be the chariot and covenant of dominion for the Jews, over all na- tions, and by it they should ride upon the high places of the earth ; for the mouth of the Lord had spoken 2'j^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. it; thy Eedeemer, the Holy One of Israel; the God OF THE WHOLE EARTH SHALL He BE CALLED. See the clauses of this covenant drawn out from the fifty-second to the sixty-second chapters of Isaiah, inclusive; and compare these with the ninth and the forty-second. The glory of the Sabbath, and the proofs of a Divine Redeemer in its universal sacred- ness and dominion, were to be the seciu'ity of truth and love and liberty to all mankind forever, through His incarnation, sirfferings, crucifixion, resurrection, and the interceding, atoning efficacy of His own blood, as our High Priest eternal in the heavens. The Sabbath, and the Temj)le services, and the Prayer of Solomon, and the "House of Prayer for all nations," were all typical, prophetic, Messianic; all preparations, by grace and providence, by institu- tions and securities in them, for the way and coming of the Lord, and for the emergencies of His redeeming ministry and mercy. So, when the Lord of the Sab- bath came to His temple and His people, it being for Him, and His gospel uses of salvation, that that "hallowed''' day was given, and secured from G-od for aU nations, He took possession of it, authorita- tively, openly, publicly, as the Divine Lord of it, for the poor and needy. " To the poor the gospel IS preached;" and the Sabbath by the Lord is guar- anteed to them in such preaching, as His divine in- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^75 stitution for their good. And this compound and indivisible universal miracle was to John and to the Jevi^s, and to all mankind, the undeniable demonstra- tion of the presence of the Saviour of all. " In every nation, ivithout respect of persons, (see Peter's parenthesis in Acts x. 36), He is Lord of all." This is the divine seal. And now we come to the opening of that seal, at the very begin- ning of our Lord's ministry, in Nazareth, where he had been brought up. Then and there, known of all. He took for the text of His very first sermon, in the Jewish synagogue, Isaiah's sweet and beauti- ful silver-trumpeted notes, and said, reading from the book of the prophet Esaias, delivered unto Him, publicly, in the synagogue of Nazareth, on the Sab- bath day, opening that book, and finding the place where it was written, — " The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap- tives, and recovering of sight to the bhnd; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the accepta- ble year of the Lord." "And He closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, T/iis day is this scripture fidJiUed in your ears." 2^6 God's Timepiece f 07'' Mans Eter^zity. It was the laying of the Corner-stone as predicted in the 118th Psahn, refused by the builders. All the combining proi:)hecies and providences of God, for the Jews and for mankind, were brought to a culmination in this whole illuminating passage of Scripture. The moral and material, the heavenly and earthly, the natural and supernatural, the his- torical-human, and the fore-ordained, and now ful- filled, superhuman and divine; the testimony of God and man together, known, admitted, indisputable. This day, this Sckipture ! The Lord's Day, the Lord's death, the Lord's resurrection, the Lord's Gospel, the Lord's Scripture of salvation for all man- kind! The Sabbath for man; for his physical and mental constitution for Eternity, for man as he is, to make him better; for man self-deranged, depraved, and dead in trespasses and sins, to raise him up to holiness and life eternal, quickened and new created in Christ Jesus, the resruTection and the life. The Lord's Day, for jDroclaiming to aU nations through all time, the Lord's death, its infinite signifi- cance, its necessity for the soul's deliverance from the bondage and the guilt of sin, the terror of death eternal; its saving power, its constraining omnipo- tence of grateful love and holy motive, and divine confession, and communion of saints. Ye do show FORTH THE LoRd's DEATH, TILL He COME; aU the SOul- Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, zj"/ convincing and converting and sanctifying truths connected with that death, and the Scriptures that rendered it necessaiy for eternal life to man the sin- ner, through the grace of the Son of God, the Sa- viour. The day of infinite glory, on earth and in heaven; in which were set all the laws and means of death to sin and life to God; the whole reckoning and reasoning of souls, dead indeed unto sin, but alive imto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, for- ever and ever? XXXYI. THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE NAZARENES AS THE HIGHEST LITERARY CRITICS. If ever a set of critics or textual experts were pre- pared and eager to detect a word of falsehood, a statement not unquestionably accurate, an alleged authority having the least doubt, or capable of sus- picion, it was these guardians in Judea of the He- brew oracles. And they were the same books, the same chapters and verses, the same minutely scru- tinized, established and appointed portions in all the synagogues in the land. There was not a rabbi or scribe or lawyer with the key of knowledge any- where from Memphis to Babylon, from Alexandria to 2^8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Jerusalem, but knew where the roll of Isaiah's in- disputable prophecies began and ended; not one elder of a synagogue but could and would have de- tected it instantly if Christ had mistaken or misplaced book or text, or misquoted one of the sacred books, or misnamed its author; much more had He inter- polated a single sentence, and still more, had He forged a whole chapter, and apphed it to Himself as the writing of God, that had been in existence as a j)i'ophecy more than eight hundred years, and was now in His person appropriated and fulfilled. But of all tribunals to which Christ might proclaim the divine Word, the synagogue of these Nazarenes would be the keenest to detect and the sharpest and most eager to expose and punish a misstatement. They had a sectarian and bhnd-hearted prepossession and jealousy, so despotic, fanatical, and irresistible in behalf of the Jewish national traditions, and interpre- tations of a proud worldly dominion, by which the letter and Spirit of the Word of God had been cov- ered up, as by palimpsests of human authority, that nothing could have lulled their suspicions, or quieted their rage, at the discovery of an infidel disobedience. It was as when the lava of Vesuvius had over- whelmed and buried the cities and fields of Pompeii and Herculaneum, incinerating the literature, and erasing all the title-deeds and bounds of possession. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2'jg and by process of ages creating a new soil and vege- tation. So that, if the old inhabitants and owners had risen from their ashes, and laid claim to the land, they would have been put to death as invaders and robbers. Even so, and with a ferocity of patriotic rage, would these people of Nazareth defend their faith against the pretensions of Christ, as the forgery of a traitor and blasphemer, worthy of death. These traditionary smugglers and Thugs of Palestine kept possession of their den and its fortunes, in the name of the Most High. They had a Tarpeian HiU for Lj^nch law, by the mob of enraged Traditionists. There are learned men and modern critics to-day maintaining that such extreme prepossession and con- fidence on the human side of evidence by tradition, are the best possible quahfications for judging the as- sertions and proofs of the supernatural and divine. These Nazarenes were so fierfect and just in this method of criticism, that they swept everything be- fore it; put it in the place of trial, judge and jury. " We have a law, — our Scriptures, and for their in- terpretation, our traditions; — and by that law He ought to die, because He makes Himself the Son of God and our lawgiver, and the Sabbath, and the Temple and its worshiiD, His. And this He says to us, who know His father and mother and brethren fi-om their infancy." 28o God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. It was so plain a case, that they could not wait for the slow procedures of justice by witnesses, but their righteous indignation could be satisfied only with the swiftness and certainty of a violent mob-murder. This pretender had set Himself on the highest pin- nacle of the Temple of Jehovah, and they would cast Him down instantly in the act of such blasphemy. What need had they of any witnesses? The prophets, and especially the prophecies of Isaiah, which He had perverted, were enough. The whole World knew what those were, and every Hebrew of the nation was ready to die for them, if need be ; how much more to punish with the highest penalty of the law so daring a blas- phemy of their sacredness ! And now we note, as powerfully illuminating and confirming the testimomj of all the references to Isaiah in the four Gospels, and in the Acts, and in Peter's and Paul's Epistles, the singular minuteness of the record of the conflict of these Nazarenes against Christ, — the par- ticulars, microscopically photographed as to the proof, the items and the reception of our Lord's first sermon; the calm and serene truthfulness and dehberation with which He is said to have taken every step, spoken every word, and with the most intense watchfulness of all the assembly. Let us recapitulate the points; for there is no other recital more remarkable for verification. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2S1 First, He came to Nazareth; (2), He had been brought up there; (3), He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as His custom was; (4), He stood up to read; (5), the book of Isaiah the Prophet was dehvered to Him; (6), He opened that book; (7), He found the place where what He would read was writ- ten; (8), He closed the book; (9), He gave it again to the minister; (10), He sat down; (11), the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him; (12), He be- gan by saying, This day is ihis Scripture fulfilled in your ears; (13), all bare Him witness and wondered. There was a divine purpose in this minute, life- enacting, vivid, reproducing tracery of words, char- acters, witnesses, actors, scenery, the synagogue, the Sabbath, the book, the passage, the result. Nothing in the Gospel of Mark, or any other Gos- pel, presents so minute and microscopic a tracery; so fuU of life and reality, and sketched as if a reporter for the Sanhedrim had set it down, as material for the trial and conviction of the criminal. For such was Christ instantly adjudged and condemned to be, by the tenor of His own discourse ; as was afterwards His first martyr, Stephen, when Saul also, with the same fanaticism, was consenting unto his death. That last point, all bake Him witness. There was no surprise as if an unknown or interpolated chapter or passage had assailed their ears, no suspicion, no un- 282 Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. easiness, but unmingled gratification and assent at the gracious words of tlie well-known proj)het, and of Je- sus in reading them, with such divine and loving em- phasis and intonations. The fulfillment of them was what they rejoiced in, until He came to the announce- ment that they belonged not to the Jews only, but to all mankind ; and not for their temporal or national ag- grandizement, but for the salvation of the soul; for the poor, the broken-hearted, the bruised of sin and Satan. Had He proposed to them to take up arms for Him, as the King of Grlory, and to foUow Him to victory for the dominion of the Jews over the whole earth, they would have done it; would have acknowl- edged Him as the Messiah. But otherwise, when they came to understand what He meant, the asserted ful- fillment of that great j)rediction of Isaiah in Himself, and for Himself, the son of the carpenter, as the Son of God, was a blasphemy that changed then* satisfac- tion instantly into the hatred and the fire of hell. Seeing all this, we no longer wonder at Nathanael's question. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? But it was God's infinite, providential wisdom, that by these very Nazarenes, who had known Christ from His chUdhood, the testimony of the jorophet Isaiah, on which Christ rested all His claims, should be con- firmed beyond question, as that of the very Scriptures God's Tivtepiece for Maris Eternity. 28 j of God, the undisputed oracles of God, committed to the Jews for safe-keeping, from the beginning. The same argument applies with equally crushing force to the accusations brought against the books of Moses quoted by our Lord, and against the whole Pentateuch, as a mass of documents, interpolated from beginning to end, and not only never written by Moses, but never known by the Hebrews them- selves till near a thousand years after the age of his existence. And yet there are Christian teachers at this day so liberal, and proud of such charity for scejitical writers, that they aver that the rejection of Moses as inspired may be consistent with a truly sincere and religious belief and character. But they fail to ask or to an- swer as to the kind of character that such belief makes Christ Himself to have possessed, and as to the crime of imposing such a forgery upon the world, as the very foundation of the Word of God. For the Pentateuch, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, is just that foundation, and verbally inspired of God by Moses, as assured to us by Christ; without whom, and whose Dei'y as the Son of God, there is no proof of truth or inspu-ation in any part of the Scriptures, from Genesis to the Apocalypse. Now mark the strength of this demonstration, as aofainst the criticism of modern Destructives affirming 284 God's Tiviepiece for Mans Eternity. that the prophesies of Isaiah quoted by Christ, and evidenced by the Synagogue of the Nazarenes, and the behef of the whole nation, were an imposture; the forgery of some anonymous villain assiuning Isaiah's name and authority. If these critics had been there in Nazareth, thus blaspheming the He- brew Scriptures, they would themselves have been hurried to the brow of the mountain and flung down headlong. The Isaiah that Christ quoted was the Isaiah of the only Hebrew Bible, that ever Greeks or Jews or Samaritans knew or believed; the only Script- ures that ever God gave to the people in Hebrew; the very books of Scripture translated for the whole world in Greek, some two hundred years before the Son of God came. This being the case, if Christ had forged a single passage, that would have been the crime, for which they would have put Him to death. If he did not forge the j^assage, but the whole people accepted it as Isaiah's by inspiration of God, then these critics stand pilloried as in the stocks; and instead of being treated as Christian scholars and believers, are worthy only of the scorn of all Christendom. For under pre- tence of accurate and unprejudiced investigation and " scholarship," such as never before was known in the world, and a jealousy for truth, superior to that of the "World's Saviour, and a subhme intuitive dis- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 28^ cernment of falsehood such as He never possessed, they put forth in behalf of all mankind, on their own assertion, without one particle of fact, or truth, or history, or even tradition, an accusation against the very Isaiah as a liar, whom Christ appealed to and quoted as the Projjhet appointed and inspired of God to prepare for His coming; and consequently a charge against Christ Himself, of being base enough and blasphemous enough to allege that particular passage of those lies, lohich He must have kyxown to have been forged, in proof of His own mission and authority from heaven, as the Son of God and Redeemer of mankind ! There they stand, — these " Higher Literary Critics," these rational detectives of the modern age, — con- fronting Christ, with "Books of Origins,"' traditions, conjectures, and chronological eras of their own de- vising, and lives of the Saviour of the world and His apostles, written to order, accordingly; denying, at the outset, the supernatural, infaUible inspiration of the Scriptures, as impossible. What is to be said of the multitude of modern commentaries, exegetical essays, and volumes of "the progressive theology of the future," written on these principles, and not unfrequently commended by pro- fessors of Biblical Exposition for the education of students for the Christian ministry? For such wri- ters (even the most learned and genial of them) are 286 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. worse than tlie peddlers of plague-stricken garments from the purlieus of rag-markets in Oriental Bazaars. If their postulates are believed by themselves, they are dehberately, " as learned experts," exj)ending the whole energy and subtlety of their faculties and life on the exjDOsition and circulation of the productions of liars and forgers, as being the foremost treasures of the human intellect, and worthy to command the services of the greatest scholars in the world, in bring- ing out the exact meaning of their Ues, for the sat- isfaction of aU generations.* * Dr. John Pye Smith, eminent alike for his piety, learn- ing, and candor, quotes, in the second volume of his "Scrip- ture Testimony to the Messiah," p. 289, John Fred. Eohr's Let- ters on Rationalism, published in 1813, as an example of the way in which not only the Old but the New Testament might with little trouble, and very plausibly, be stripped of every- thing supernatural; and even the doctrine of a future state, under any conception of it, be got rid of. And he adds, "These are the principles which have been for several years promulgated in the theses, lectures, annotations, and still more elaborate works, of some of the men who hold forth themselves, and compliment each other, as the enlightened and liberal scEiPTxmE ceitics of Germany." "Yet unwittingly," (says Dr. F. W. Upham, in his recently published volume of "Thoughts on the Holt Gospels," by the author of "The Wise Men, and who they were,") "and against their wiU, they are of some little use. For where the God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 28y XXXYII. A PLENARY VERBAL INSPIRATION, NECESSARY TO SUSTAIN AND JUSTIFY THE APPEAL OF CHRIST TO THE OLD TESTAMENT AND MOSES. Whatever of divine revelation there is any proof of in this world is compi-ehended in the Old and New Testaments, and embraces the Old as the whole possibility of the New, and the New as the whole and sole demonstration of the Old, in and through THE Divine personality of Jesus Christ. The ap- sceptic's finger points in scorn, there the treasure is concealed. As these sorcerers go up and down, peering about, muttering their curses, and weaving their spells in the holy land, the divining rods in their unhallowed hands bend downwards, where, beneath the surface, are hidden veins of water and seeds of gold." The names and writings of Semler, Paulus, De Wette, Strauss, Baur, Ewald, Kvienen, Keim, Benan, Colenso, Smith of Scot- land, Davidson, and others, have become familiar in England and America. "In the meantime," says Dr. Pye Smith, "the caution administered by the early Olu'istian writers may prove to be the wisest and best, namelj ; let those who regard the Lord Jesus Christ as a figurative Saviour, a figurative Law- giver, King, and Judge, beware, lest, in the day of their ex- tremity, they find only a figurative salvation!" 288 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. pearance and utterances of such a Being in the world demonstrate all things in the Scriptures to which He ajDpeals. The divine characteristics seen and known in Him explain and fulfil all things. There is no mar- vel or miracle to be compared in self-demonstration of reahty and glory with Him, the divine centre, to which aU orbs of intelligence gravitate. All the mir- acles of the Bible are but as commas or semi-colons, in the Volume of which He is the sum and sun, the jDcrsonal indwelling fulness of the Godhead bodily. There is no more possibility of a preconception or forgery of His appearance or knowledge of its mean- ing, than there could have been that an ape should have created the sun in our solar system, or begotten a Newton to understand it. God alone could fore- ordain, God only could predict, and only God, in the fulness of time, could make manifest the glory, re- cording it in words. The assurance of a verbal inspiration was given to Moses at the outset of his mission. " I will be with thy mouth." — Ex. iii. 13-18, and iv. 12. And when it seemed to him impossible to speak for God, being not eloquent, but slow of si:)eech, a laggard with his tongue, God comforts his infirmity and consequent seK-distrust, by giving him Aaron to share the re- sponsibility, " Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother ? I know that he can speak well." And it is added. God's Timepiece for Mans Eter^iity. 28 g •with wliat an exquisite touch of nature in the recital, " Behold he cometh forth to meet thee, and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart." — Ex. iv. 14. And then it is added, "Thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God." Ex. iv. 10-16. What a graj)hic description, thus early in the ages, of the nature of divine inspiration, for the communi- cation of the purposes of divine love and mercy to mankind ! " ^^^lo hath made man's mouth ? or who maketh the dumb, or the deaf, or the seeing, or the bhnd? have not I, the Lord? Now therefore, go, and I wiU be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt do."— Ex. iv. 10-16. God Himself would in- spire the words of Moses, and direct his actions; moutb» and hands were God's, if Moses would wholly trust in Him. Coidd there possibly be a more satisfactory and instructive delineation, a light to guide our steps, from Moses to Christ, and from Genesis to the Apoc- alypse, But if such a plenary and minute inspira- tion was deemed necessary in God's dealings with 2go God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the Egyptians, and witli His own peoiDle, to bring them forth, from their bondage to a rejoicing free- dom and confidence in G-od, how much more in all Grod's messages for the redemption of all mankind from sin and everlasting misery! How much more where the change of a single word might make all the difference between spiritual life and death ! In Habakkuk ii. 2-4, " The Lord said, write the Vision, and make it plain, that he may run that read- eth it. The jnd shall live by His faith; " and as in 1 Kings, viii. 24, and 2 Sam. xxiii. 2, 3, concerning David; and Deut. xviii. 18, concerning Christ; " / ivill put my xoords in His mouth;" so in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Leviticus, (both chapters be- ginning with the words "And the Lord spake unto Mo- ses "), the statutes named are sealed with these words, " / am the Lord your God," twenty-two times in twenty- three verses; the whole closing with this divine rule: "Therefore shall ye observe aU my statutes and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord, your God." The instances of minute particulars with this formula of asseveration, / the Lord, are so reiterated, that the seals of insiDiration glitter and blaze with every movement of the texts, as the stones in the Urim and Thummim supernaturally burning on the breastplate of judgment worn by the Jewish high priest. God's Timepiece for Alaii s Etei^nity. 2gi From the Pentateuch down to Malachi these char- acteristics of unity and inspiration are indisputable, inseparable, positively declared, and illustrated and proved by the history, as clearly and irresistibly as the history by the contents of the j)rophecies, and the conflicts between God's holiness and mercy and man's depravity and despair. The argument is so powerful, so conclusive, that it can be met only by conjecture and assertion, as a road cut through mountains by dynamite; or the method of the Brahmin trampling under foot the instrument that convinced his reason against his will. The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel are as im- pregnable in these evidences as the books of Moses and of the Mmor prophets, and are sealed with the same seals. " "Whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. I have put My words in thy mouth. Speak unto all the cities of Judah, kings, princes, priests and peojDle, aU that I command thee. Behold, I will make My words in thy mouth fire. Write ALL THE WORDS that I have i^poken unto thee in a book, and read the words of the Lord in the ears of the people." — And to Ezekiel, "All My words that, I shall speak unto thee receive in thine heart and hear with thine ears, and tell the people, thus saith the Lord, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear." 2g2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Tlie twenty -third chapter of Jeremiah is such an intensely vivid and wi'athful comparison and contrast between true and false prophets and teachers, "be- tween the prophets whom God hath inspired, and to whom God hath spoken, and those that speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord;" it is a description so terrible and convincing as to the crime of denying or forging or falsely inter- preting the words of a divine revelation, that it might stand as an indictment of God against the volumes of the rationalism and higher criticism of our day; "the prophets of the deceit of their own hearts, by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighl:)ors; the prophets that steal my words, saith the Lord, and put their own in the place of them, and prophesy false dreams and tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies and their lightness." " I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my pecfple to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faith- fully. What is the chaff to the wheat ? saith the Lord."— Jer. xxiii. 21, 22, 28. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2gj In the records of the historians, and in the books of the prophets, we have the same co-ordinate and suc- cessive historic demonstrations, growing out of and returning upon the root-ramifications of the divine insjpiration, with a system of nerves, arteries, veins, muscles, intercalated, articulated, synchronized, mu- tually dependent and sustaining, in a manner so intri- cate, and yet so plain, so indisputable, that the most exquisite and skilfvd anatomists of the human frame can not find in man more irresistible proofs of unity, interdependence, assimilation, and growth, from in- fancy to manhood. So that in fact you could no more take away the proof of divine inspiration, and leave any living truth, than you could cut out from a living man, his spine and the fibres running from it, and leave life or activity in the corjDse, that falls prone instantly and returns to dust. The death and worthlessness that ensue upon the completed work of these destructives and dislocators are demonstrations at once of the preceding life and preciousness, and of the actual crime of murder; just as the corjyus delicti and the arsenic found in the body, are proofs of the means and maUce of the murderer. Their arguments drawn from the strata of human lying and depravity in aU literature, against the di- vine origin and inspiration of Genesis, Deuteronomy, and John's Gospel, their pretences of the discovery 2g^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and detection of forgeries, falsehoods, interjDolations, are as if a hewer of stones or a bliud-drain-builder should grope in the sewers of St. Peter's Cathedral, to prove that Michael Angelo never was the architect. The argument is, in effect, merely that of Hume; all men are jjroved by all human experience to be Uars ; therefore, God's words, since they must be conveyed through human beings, and in human lan- guage to mankind, are only man's lies. AH histor- ical investigation and analogy especially as to re- ported divine " Origins," necessitates this conclusion. But the blasphemy of this logic is presented by John in the terrific declaration, " He that believeth not God HATH MADE HIM A liak; because he beheveth not the record that God gave of His Son." — I John v. 10. Where was that record ? For answer, take only Clu-ist's own words, undisputed, to the Jews. " Search the Scrip- tures; for they are they that testifj^ of Me." — John v. 39. Did this apjDeal comj^rehend the writings of Moses? "There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, IN WHOM YE TRUST. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: eok he weote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings how shall ye believe My words?" — John v. 45-47. Moses and Christ, and THEIR WORDS, staud together as God's witnesses and God's words, for the judgment of the Great Day. John xii. 48. God!s Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. 2gs Everywhere the testimony of Christ to the author- ity, authenticity, and perfect truth and credibiHty of Moses, with all his recitals, is the same. And if there had been a possibility in Christ's day, of undermining the authority of Moses, of charging hun with impost- ure, or any other prophet or writer with the false personation of Moses, speaking lies under Moses' mask, it would have been done. And this would have destroyed the influence and authority of Christ at the outset, and forever. XXXVIII. THE LAMB THE LIGHT THEREOF AND GOD THE GLORY —REFERENCES TO REASON AND CONSCIENCE IN THE SIGHT OF GOD— HUMILITY BEFORE GOD THE ONLY SECURITY OF REASON IN THE EXAMINATION OF GOD'S WORD — GOD'S WORD THE TEACHER; REASON THE LEARNER— THE PRAYER OF BACON —THE EXPERIENCE OF COLERIDGE. The life and death of the Lord Jesus, as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, are the Alpha and Omega of all that has any evi- dence whatever of being God's truth; for there is no moral truth on earth, no explanation of earth's dark- 2g6 Gods Timepiece for Mans E^rniiy. ness but commences there. It is the soui-ce and hopeful spring of all truth, purity, disinterestedness, love, submission to God's ^vill, self-knowledge, dis- covery of the evd. of sin, regeneration out of it into the lost likeness of God, the attainment of hoUness and heaven. So that there is no possibility of any faith in God, any beUef in God's goodness, any dehverance from sin, any relief from the pressure of eternal demoniac mystery and evil, bearing the world down to despair, if we do not accej)t of Christ as God's Interpreter of God's Word and of Christ's endorsement and explana- tion of the book of Genesis, as the beginning of God's revelation of divine truth and mercy to mankind. Here then we see plainly the law of a vahd, just, and truthful examination and cross-examination of the Scriptures, and of the witnesses in regard to them, and of the mysteries contained in them. Chi'ist is our Divine Interpreter, who only can make them plain. And as He gives them to us, so He stands with us be- fore their transparencies, their scrolls of light, their fathomless perspectives, and directs our sight, our points of vision, that the Holy Spirit may take from them the things of Christ and show them to our souls. He repeats His rule of interpretation, for our teaching of them to others, by having them jDassed through our own experience. "Not handling the Word of God God's Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. 2gy deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth com- mending ourselves to every marl's conscience in the sight of God." For it is impossible to appeal to conscience as a safe judge in any thing moral, except under submission to God's Word. Conscience is worthless, just so far as the Reason is warped or darkened by sin, as it inevi- tably is, in a selfish creature. But all sinful creatures are selfish, and all the faculties of the soul partake of that demoralization and darkness. Reason itself being under the same bias, and therefore incaj)able of a perfectly disinterested and infallible judgment in regard to the divine revelation of law and its sequences for man through eternity. It is neither a judge of God's law written on the heart, nor of God's law revealed in the Scriptiires; much less can it de- cide concerning the last by its ignorance and mis conceptions concerning the first. Man having fallen, God alone can teach him what he has fallen from, and what is right and true divinely and forever. Hence the dangerous tendency of such an af- firmation as has been made in a Symposium in the North American Review concerning the authority of inspiration, "that no law even from God can have any moral force unless it requires such perfec- tion as man exacts from himsef. Were we to sup- pose that God should command any thing of man 2g8 God's Timepiece for Maiis Eter7iity. which eillier in kind or degree man does not impose vpon himself, His command would have no binding force. A conflict would at once arise between the personal influence or behest of the Creator, and the moral law which the creature finds wi'itten on his own heart. In such a conflict the creature, lite An- tigone is bound to obey the law of goodness, which he dares not ofl'end, however much he may tremble before the wrath of the Sovereign who has power to kill and make alive." Who but the Creator can tell a fallen creature what that law was and is, or can interpret infallibly its requisitions, and show the creature how he has departed from it and pervei'ted it, putting evil for good and good for evU? His own reason, perverted, exacts from himself as perfection that which in the sight of Grod and by the judgment of His "Word is not only imperfection, but crime. "Immortal man," said Dr. McLeod in India, "is seldom so degraded as not to seek some apparently good reason, and in the holy name of rehgion too, for doing the worst things. Thus the Thug strangles his victim, as he prays to the goddess of murder; and the member of hereditary bands of robbers consecrates his services to the goddess of rapine." * The same writer once said, " There are men who no more grasp the truth which they seem to hold, than a sparrow grasps the God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. 2gg message passing through the electric wire on which it perches." They do not grasp it as the truth of God, or an inspiration in it, but an intviition of man's own discoveiy. These speculative critics re- semble the sparrows on the telegraph wire. They are saying one to another, AVe are the judges; there is no inspiration unless it finds us coinciding with it, and the ultimate judge is our reason. "Was Adam's reason, after he had fallen, the same infallible iiltimate judge of a divine revelation, or of the truth, and meaning and intent of God's Word, as before? Coiild he any longer recognize or judge God's Word, but by submission with a penitent believing heart and mind accepting what it might please God to reveal, and obeying God on trust? Man had ceased to be the judge, and coming down from the judgment seat must take his place at the bar as criminal, and must receive his sentence, and the mercy of a reprieve on God's groimds, not his own reasoning. Conceive his saying, I am the ultimate judge — my own reason and conscience. There is no authority higher. Conceive of his asking God, What are you going to do with the heathen? Until you let me understand that, I can not receive what is written as being divine. And if I am to leave the * "Memoirs of Norman McLeod," p. 420. joo God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. heathen in Ood's hands without a revelation, and they are safe then and so, why am I not as safe, seeing that my reason can not accept a revelation that teaches an endless retribution nor one that avers that man as an immortal being can ever be lost by sin. A Bible for learners, reconstructed on such prin- cij)les even out of the Scriptures, with the rea- son of fallen men as the Supkeme Judge, could possess nothing in it of authority, or sovereignty, or certainty, fi'om God the Saviour, for man the sinner. The right philosophy of reason itself is that which investigates its condition since the fall; and that can be known only by God's own history of the fall and its consequences, in the perversion of man's whole nature. Hence the French philosopher Condillac ("Origin of Human Knowledge," Part I, Sec. 1), made the declaration as a principle of right metaphysical logic, that "the state of the soid in the ignorance and concupiscence produced by the fall is the only one that can properly he the object of philosophy, be- cause it is the only one made known to us by experi- ence." The Word of God appeals to that experiencb, shows its universality, and discloses the only redemp- tion from it, by the new creation of the soul in Christ. Eousseau himself said, "The right of the gospel is always unquestionable and reliable, and God^s Timepiece for Mans Eternity, joi consistent with itself. Eeason teaches us that we ought to obey its precepts, but it also teaches us that it is above reason." Has the Keason of man been affected by the fall of man, and does it partake intellectually of his de- graded condition morally ? If this be admitted, then what can be plainer than the conclusion that the Scrij)tures are God's infallible Rule for our Reason, but our Reason can not be the infallible judge of God's Scrij)tures, God's thoughts. Hence the truth of the critical maxim of Lord Bacon, appHed to the interpretation of Scripture, accompanied with the cor- responding views of the profoundest scholars and holiest men of the seventeenth century, such as Lightfoot, Usher, and Howe. "We are delivered up to the Scriptures whereto ye were delivered," says Lightfoot commenting on Romans vi. 17, "as they are to be our masters, and not loe theirs. As another apostle's expression is (James i. 23, 24, and iv. 11), 'We are to be doers of the Law and not judges; to be the students of the Scriptures, doers of the Scriptures, not their judges.' " * * See Lightfoot's sermons on the "Eeasons for keeping God's Law," and on the "First Eesurrection," and on the "Difficul- ties of Scripture," and on "The Sabbath hallowed." Works, voL vii. London, 1822. See also Lightfoot's argument on the J02 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. The prayer of Lord Bacon, for guidance tlirougli all his inquisitions in natural science, his adventures, suppositions and experiments, for improvement in eoTirce of Luke's Gospel, hy direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, shown in Ms use of tlie Greek word, avaodsv, from above. " Harmony of the New Testament," vol. iii. compared with the notes upon Luke, i. 2, 3, vol. xii. : having had perfect understand- ing of all things, not from men, or their narratives, or tradition, hut from heaven itself, not from enquiry of others, but by divine inspiration fr-om the beginning. So a.vooBEv,from above, signifies ovpavoOsv, from heaven, in John iii. 3, 31, and xix. 11, and James i. 17; iii. 17, etc. Compare also Lightfoot's defence of the Doxology, in Matt. vi. 13, and Lightfoot on Acts i. 2, "whether Luke does not, by the word" avooBEv, declare that he understood all these things from heaven, and '^from above." "We have taken it as meaning beyond all controversy, that he was divinely inspired, and the Spirit from above governed his pen, while he was writing those things." Vol. viii. p. 354. Compare the declaration of Lord Bacon that the divine Script- ures are not to be interpreted as other volumes, but by guidance of the Spirit that made them divine and infallible, for a continu- ous, ever-adapted, and increasing fulfilment. "For they be- speak the nature of their Author, one day as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day: and though the plenitude and summit of their accomplishment may be for the most part des- tined to some particular age, or even given moment of time, yet have they in the meantime, certain grades and stages of fulfilment, through dififerent ages of the world." Advancement of Science. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, joj natural knowledge, was the highest exercise of a truly scientific reason. It was, strictly speaking, a more scientific jorocess of inquiry, than the silent worship of the unknown and unknowable,' suggested by Prof. Huxley as the highest exercise of a religious spirit. Lord Bacon prayed "that human things might not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindhng of a greater natural hght, any thing may arise of in- credulity or intellectual^ night towards divine mys- teries; but rather that, by our minds thoroughly purged and cleansed from fancy and vanity, and yet subject and jxrfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may he given unto faith the things that arefaitKs." Coleridge, in the account of his own education and early inwrought principles of thought ("Biographia Literaria ") speaks of the " stirring and working pre- sentiment that aU the products of the mere reflec- tive FACULTY partook of DEATH, and were but as the ratthng twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which he had not penetrated, if they were to afford his soul either food or shelter." This was a vivid and startling discovery. How true to Paul's and Luther's experi- ence ! That root was Christ. And the Spirit in the heart is Christ's interpreter, both of the Wor^ of God, and of the life in it, and of the Heaven in the jo^ God's Timepiece for Jlfaiis Etcriiity. likeness of Christ, promised by it. This is the exper imental demonstration so j)owerfiil and comforting to faith beforehand. Dr. South jDreached a sermon in Oxford in 1699, under this title, drawn from Matt. "Vi. 21, No MAN EVER WENT TO HEAVEN, WHOSE HEAET WAS NOT THERE BEFORE. Add to this, 710 mau's heart ever thei'e, but only by the new birth in Christ, and we have the central demonstration of Christianity. Experience trusted in, without faith in God, with- out reliance on His grace, and on the guidance of His Word, makes us never any higher or better than men always have been by nature. Science by itself alone, with all its culture, at its utmost capacity and reach, can give us only a crystallization of selfishness. Gen- ius may shine like a diamond, but it is only carbon, and when all things subject to fire are burned up, it must go the way of common earth. Now if any man trust in scientific experience to make the world or himself better, or if he boast the riches of such ex- perience as a wealth of transfiguration for mankind, he will find himself and his generation in the predica- ment of the miner in Cahfornia, reported to have broken open one of the geodes m the mountain, and drank from it the water of crystallization to quench his thirst, who immediately himself became a solid fossil. So mankind, though scientifically and to the last de- gree of perfection, crystallized, will be nothing better God's Timepiece fo}' Maiis Eternity. J05 without faith, than walking fossils. Men cast anchor out of the stern, without Paul's spiritual science, and wish in vain for the day, not knowing what to do with it even when it conies, but drifting stern foremost. Unmoored from Christ, and His infaUible interpre- tation, we find the distinguishing truths of the re- demptive and regenerating theology, which, sitting at his feet, we have gathered from the Old and New Testaments, gliding insensibly out of recognition, be- coming more and more indefinite and distant, re- duced, both in themselves and the original books, sources, and j)ersons, from which and from whom, according to the discovered divine plan, we have re- ceived them, — reduced from certainties to uncertain- ties, from divine doctrines to human opinions, from granite to gravel, from truth with distinct angles, to smooth round pebbles, from divine inspiration to hu- man intuition, and from one only true rehgion to many, equally acceptable to God, if the worshipper of them is only sincere. From a recognized, revealed, divine Sovereignty of moral government growing out of the eternal elements of God's nature, we are brought down to the sovereignty of hiiman judgment, the verdict of a jury of human consciences and opin- ions as to what is right and wrong, not as that ver- dict might have been rendered by perfect beings, by angels or other creatures, in the image and love ^o6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. of God, but, as rendered by the moral sentiments of creatures confessedly in rebellion against Grod, and with darkened consciences. These " cataracts of truth " in Christ for our eternal life "blow their trumpets" fi-om the very throne of God.* They are not fog-bells, nor lighthouses whose flame may be hidden or extinguished by the ocean in a tempest. But we have an unction from the Holy One, and know aU things; because, he that will do His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. There is our absolute test of certainty, per- sonal, universal, such as no science can present. And of aU sciences rehgion is the most absolutely and pro- foundly experimental, the most disciplinary; being a comprehensive working and disciphne of the whole of man's nature, with examination and self -verifica- tion of all the facts. It is the true Health-Lift exer- cise, by which a man raises himself from death, and knows that he is raised only in, and by, and for Christ; but having that unction from the Holy One, knows by experience, all that he does know, and not by reliance on other men's experiments. * Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in early Childhood." The Ode itself brings to mind the poet's ex- quisite sonnet on King's College Chapel: — "That branching roof, Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose, where music dwells. Lingering and wandering on as loth to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were bom for immortaxits. " Gocfs Timepiece for Mans Eternity, joy XXXIX. ARGUMENTS OF ULLMAN, THOLUCK, LUTHER, AND BENGEL, ON THE USE AND PROVINCE OF REASON, AND THE NECESSITY OF A VERBAL INSPIRATION— IN WHAT SENSE IS THE BIBLE BREATHED FORTH FROM GOD? "Faith in Jesus, and in His instructions," says Ull- man, in concluding his profound treatise on the Sin- less Chakacter of Jesus, " is a kind of faith which is not blind and does not sacrifice the reason of man. In no way can that which we believe on the authority of Jesus contravene the laws of our own intellect. On the contrary, we feel ourselves bound to receive his doctrines, under the assurance that they are the outflowings of the Divine Reason, from which have proceeded not only these truths, but also the nature, the laws, and the necessities of our o-^ti narrow, but yet divinely-related intellect. We feel assured that there is a pre-established harmony between revelation and the human soul; and we are convinced that there will be discovered, at the last, a most exact agreement between the truths revealed by the Di- vine Reason, and the laws that regulate the human." " Human reason," says Prof. Tholuck, quoting from Luther, "flits and flutters about the letter of the jo8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Divine Word until it has got it to rights for ihelf; that is, in other words, until it has regulated the sundial hy the clock in its own chamber. But if it is the Spirit of God, who alone teaches to under- stand the Word of God, then mere working on the letter cannot do this; on the contrary, one must protect himself from the haughty illusions of hu- man reason, by learning rightly to distinguish be- tween the human and divine." Now how to do this, Tholuck shows in his remarks on the importance of regarding the Analogy of Faith, the whole Plan of the Author and Finisher of Faith. " As what a human author means in a single passage of his book is perceptible only from his meaning in the whole book, and as the importance of a single member of the human body can be known only so far as we endeavor earnestly to understand it fi'om the structure of the whole frame; so also what the Holy Scrij^ture means in any one passage only then is seen, when the reader compares the individual part with the whole, and so interprets. Luther used to say of his own translation, the good understanding was more to him than the disjDutatious letter." These remarks of Tholuck are to be found in his "Hours of Christian Devotion," on II Tim. iii. 16. From a child, says Paul to Timothy, thou hast known the holy Scriptures; all Scripture given by Gods Timepiece for Man's Eternity, jog inspii'ation of God, and profitable, that the man of God may be perfect He could not be perfect for the ministry of God's "Word by any Scripture not divinely inspired and infallible. And of such Scrip- ture he could learn the meaning and application only by the mind of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, showing it to the soul, that the things thus learned, freely given of God, might be proclaimed not in the words that man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, "Not walking in crafti- ness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending our- selves to every man's coNscrENCE in the sight of God." It is said that the ordinary barometers in the market are not to be rehed upon by farmers, for several reasons, but esjDeciaUy because they so easily get out of order to a certain degree imperceptible; that is by admission of the air to such an extent, that the sensitiveness and dehcacy of the instrument for detecting changes of temperature are lost. Now this is just the condition of the common marketable con- science, unless it be kept sealed up for God, hermet- ically sealed, as it were, under his Word and Spii'it. If there is any leakage, any compromise, if the air of the world is admitted, the atmosphere of expedi- ency, self-interest, reputation, convenience, wealth- worshij), public sentiment, popular opinion, custom, jio God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. human law, fo axA upon the spiritual barometer, instead of being tested by it, then it plays false, it is no more to be relied upon. Conscience sealed up for God, under His "Word and Spirit, and only thus, can be a true judge. The world and its maxims must not be admitted to work upon the conscience, or to get within it, for it is only a con- science TOWAKDS God that can be trustworthy, by his own Spirit, not the spirit of the world, nor of the natural man, but by the mind of Christ judging all things for us, and we receiving aU judgment, all opin- ion, from the word, by the Sj^irit. In the preface to his exposition of the Apocalypse in 1740, the illustrious Bengel says, " If somewhat of the truth has fallen to my lot, I found it in the com- mon way or highroad to heaven, by searching the Word of God with simplicity." And he adds, " God hath taught m.e,from my youth upward, to have a view to him only; and in the meantime, I have undergone so many and so various judgments of men, that as to matters of conscience 'tis all one to me, whether God and man, or God alone, approve of my doings." Bengel describes the grounds of his conviction of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures in a sugges- tive note on I Peter i. 10-12, " Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently," etc. Bengel says, "We know that the Old Testament God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jii Fathers could not and did not exercise their faith and expectation of the Messiah in such a manner as to exckide all conjectures about the time when He should come. We know this from the text in I Peter i. 11." And here he points out the inference deducible from Peter's words, relating to a question of great importance. " To the Prophets, who prophe- sied of the grace of God towards the Christians, it was revealed that these blessings did not belong to their own times, but to a then future time. But what the time was, which was signified by the Spirit of Christ in them testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should foUow, was not revealed to them, else they needed not to have searched for it." Now, adds Bengel, "where could they search but in the very ivords of the prophecies dehvered by them- selves from the Spirit of Christ in them testifying con- cerning the sufferings of Chi-ist and the after glory ? But if these words were of their own choosing, to express the ideas or notions they were msj)ired with, — it was in vain to search for any notions imphed in or deduci- ble from them, other than ivhat they themselves intended to convey by them, and which consequently xoere revealed, because well known to them. They knew therefore that the words they spoke or wrote, had a more extensive. Tneaning than they themselves yet apprehended, and im- JI2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. plied things yet unknown to them, and Hkely to be found out by searching. Therefore, the words were not theirs, but those of the Spirit of Christ in them tes- tifying, concerning the sufferings of Christ and what was to come afterwards. That is to say. The very WOEDS, IN WHICH THE INSPIRED WRITERS SPOKE OR WROTE THEIR REVELATIONS, WERE DIVINELY INSPIRED." "Receive then," says Bengel, "the truth as the Truth, and conjectures as conjectures." The Spirit of Christ in the Prophets testified before- hand, before Christ's coming. But where are those scrip- tures to be found, thus minutely testifying ? It con- stitutes a demonstration of the antique integrity and truth of the whole book of Isaiah and of the Hebrew Canon, such as cannot be confuted. The whole book, known and quoted so abundantly by our Lord and His apostles was identical with that which we know under the same name. See the argument of Alexander on Isaiah against the vaunted treatment and arrangment of its con- tents by the German critics, Ewald and others, as "the latest achievement of the higher criticism." "We need look for no invention beyond this," says Dr. Alexander, " unless it be that of reading the book back- wards, or shuffling the chapters like a pack of cards." Corresponding with these views are those so power- fully set forth by Prof. Eleazar T. Fitch, D.D., of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, j/j New Haven, in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," 1855, on " The True Doctrine of Divine Inspiration." The historical as vs^ell as critical argument is presented with cogent clearness and eloquence. "If therefore," says he, "you inquire in what sense the Bible is breathed forth from God, the tx"ue an- swer is, the whole Book was prepared, by His direc- tion, for the redemption through Christ, planned in His eternal wisdom; by men to whom He gave direct revelations and the wisdom and knowledge necessary to guide them in their writings; consequently the whole Book has endorsed upon it His name and au- thority. While all other books are hooks of men, this is the Book of God. "While others are liaUe to err re- sjDecting truth or duty, this is infallible. "While others are subject to our conscientious judgments, even in the decisions they pronounce, this book, as the eternal rule of judgment, binds the conscience; and our only inquiry is, "What are its decisions ? " " The book contains, in every title, p)'ecisely that, which, in God's eternal plan He foreordained should compose the book; from tvhich none can take anything, or to which add anything, without in- vading Sis right and prerogative to be heard just as he speaks in His Word." J// Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. XL. DEMONSTRATION FROM THE CLOSE OF LUKE'S GOS- PEL THE HIGHEST CONSISTENT WITH FAITH — THE CERTAINTY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON— PHILO AND JOSEPHUS AS WITNESSES — CHRIST'S VERIFICATION BOTH OF THE BOOKS, AND THEIR INFALLIBLE INSPIRATION — IN THE TEMPTATION, FIVE POINTS SETTLED IN REGARD TO DIVINE REV- ELATION. The three last chapters of the Gospel according to Liike (the twenty-fourth being the consummation of aU that precedes) apjoear as a rainbow bridge be- tween two Eternities of Divine Truth, with Christ en- throned in the centre as the Keystone and Supporter, the Author, Builder, Interpreter of all. All mantind who would go safely into the invisible world must pass by faith in Him. Nor is there any chapter of divine revelation from Genesis to the Apocalypse more exquisitely pathetic, comforting and demonstra- tive than this, given by His Spirit, containing the record of the walk to Emmaus. It is a combination of aU the sublimest truths both of the Old and New Testaments, from the first chapter of Genesis to the second and seventy-second Psalms, and from the fifty- third of Isaiah to the first of John, and the last of God's Timepiece for Alans Eternity, j/j the Apocalypse. It is quite inexplicable how any reader of the whole book can doubt its divineness. It may be challenged as an example of the wisdom and benevolence of Grod providing for His intelligent creatures absolute demonstration, as far as the con- stitution of the human mind would permit, and still leave room for a child's faith in the Heavenly Father's love, without which faith there could be no possibihty of any reasoning creature being a child of G-od, or fit for the worship of God in the kingdom of heaven. It may be said of the demonstration of Christianity contained in these gospels, that the divine nature of the Saviour would not permit it to be less, while the constitution of the human mind for behef in the in- visible God and Father would not permit it to be more.* * Compare Sir Kobert Boyle's "Considerations on the Style of the Holy Scriptures"; also on the " Keconcilableness of Rea- son and Eeligion"; also John Foster's Essays, Letter VI., on "A Man's writing Memoirs of himself," and Letter IIL, on "De- cision of Character." Also his work on the "Evils of Popular Ignorance." "The withdrawment of the grand truth in ques- tion from a man's faith, that is, eternity, an invisible world, and a judgment to come, the whole of revealed truth, would nec- essarily break up the moral government over his conscience." Foster's argument demolishes the fabric of Secularism. It is a demonstration of the necessity of an education in the religion of faith in Christ, as the only protection of the State fi-om moral disintegration. ji6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Now if any 'one yet ask, "How can I be sure? There are those that say, This is no history, but only one-sided opinion; a mere sect of dreamers, imposing false statements on the world. There is no verification of all this, outside the little pale of the gospels. What proof is there that the holy canon of the Jews from Moses down to Christ was the very canon that Christ gave to His discij)le3 and that we receive iroui Him ? " The answer presents a fair and satisfactory demonstration by correlations and correspondence of admitted histor}'', and witnesses confessed by the whole historic world, and water- marks extending over ages, and vouchers inextrica- bly interwoven and attached. We have the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Sep- tuagint, just after the conquests of Alexander the Great, demonstrating what were and had been the holy books of the whole Jewish people, in succes- sive ages from Moses to Malachi. At the time when Christ came we have two great admitted historic phi- losophers and interiDreters of Hebrew sacred litera- ture, Philo and Josephus; and a vast population, of whose knowledges and behefs they are the admitted unquestionable, credible exponents. The references to these witnesses, if not their orig- inal works, are at command of every reader of the English tongue; so that no student need complain Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jij of any want of the means of verification. A brief but thorough and satisfactory confirmation of the canon of the Old Testament Scriptures .as Christ quoted them is found in Eichhorn's " Historic Inves- tigation of the Canon of the Old Testament," trans- lated and published in New York as early as 1829, by Rev. Dr. Schroeder. The jresult is this, in Eich- horn's language, that " History attests that after the Babylonian Captivity, and indeed soon after the new establishment of the Hebrew State in Palestine, the CANON WAS FULLY SETTLED, AND AT THAT TIME COMPRISED ALL THOSE BOOKS WHICH WE NOW FIND IN IT." Whether the opinions of such men as Philo and Josephus or their interpretations of what is contained in the books be true or false; pure, or mingled with conceits, traditions, fables, philosophies outside, is of no moment whatever as to the question what were the veritable historical and prophetic books which they and the Jewish State, Nation, people, long be- fore Christ came, received and transmitted as the Word of God, an inspired, sacred, infaUible litera- ture. They and their followers and readers consti- tute a body of witnesses, a collection of proofs, as credible in every respect as Julius Csesar, Cicero, Tacitus, and their believers and the readers of their books; a testimony that never has been rejected by the toughest of sceptics, but received from age to ■^i8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. age as liistorical, for two thousand years. That is one side of the equation of evidence, unquestioned. Now on the other, we have the hfe and words of Christ recorded in the gospels, and the subsequent teaching of His apostles, and the growth and his- tory of Christianity, and its work upon the world for two thousand years, referred to and springing from the Old Testament Scriptures, the old Hebrew Bible. And all the words of Christ refer back to those Scrip- tures as his divine authority, and for Life Eternal, preaching the love of God, and man's redemption, ever from those Scriphires as God's wfaJlible Word. Can we conceive of Christ Himself as ever entertain- ing a doubt as to their authenticity, genuineness, infall- ibility ? Can we imagine the possibility of Christ's ap- peahng to God's Word, and yet admitting that in its reasoning, or its words, it might be broken, might not be God's Word? Could it be inspu-ed by the Spu-it of God, and yet the words not so inspired, as to convey infallibly the thoughts of God, the intended meaning of that inspiration? There is no such intimation; but, applying them to Himself, as to aU mankind, He always appealed to them as binding on every conscience, settled forever in heaven, and beyond question. There is no in stance of His ever arguing that point of infallibility, God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jig or meeting any man on the ground that it could be debatable. An infallible inspiration, and God's Vol- ume in whicli it was contained in words, were ' the ruling divine prepossession of His soul. There is thus settled, in the very first sentence in the ministry of Christ on earth, first, the fact that there is such a revelation; second, that Satan knew it, and acknowledged it, as well as the Son of God; third, that it was not of limited or local application or authority, as for the Jews only, but equally and completely for all mankind; fourth, that it was as binding on the Son of God, at whatever cost to Him- self in the way of obedience, as on any other man, and that the very possibility of blessedness, and in- deed of any thing except enmity against God, lay in such trust, obedience, and love; and fifth, that this revelation was and is so known, so determinate, so separate from and superior to all human writings, that the words It is written, when issued as the final obUgation for man's conduct and opinions, are instantly understood as referring to that revealed volume and settling the matter. These five things do certainly comprehend, in the volume of which they can be affirmed, a plenary in- spiration, sufficient in fulness and infallibihty for all the conceivable purposes for which a revelation from God is necessary for mankind. Absolute truth in J20 God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. such a revelation follows as its inevitable character- istic; and consequently a verbal inspiration just so far as that is essential to the plenary conveyance of ab- solute truth. Here then we have the meaning and fulfilment of that declaration in the Psalms (Ps. cxxxviii. 2), " Thou hast magnified Thy Word above aU Thy name." It stands in the place of God, and Christ invokes its verdict and authority as if it were God. There is not the shadow of a doubt about it. There is no more uncertainty in regard to it than there is in re- gard to God's own existence and attributes. The first manifestation of the grace of God in Christ, after His own baptism with the Spirit of God, is this unconditional exaltation of the written Word of God as the supreme arbiter of human duty, and this in- stant and perfect submission of aU the interests and emergencies of life and death to its authority. This is the foundation and material of the ministry of Jesus Christ Himself, It is written. There is no abstraction, no uncertainty as to the enshrinement of this light, any more than there wag to the old pilgrims and astronomers under God's heavens, when He took them forth at midnight, and appealed to the stars as His witnesses, His vouchers. Was there any uncertainty about Orion or Pleiades, or any of those glorious constellations beheld by God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. J2T Abraham or Job, or any question as to God being the Creator of them ? Or do we have way doubt that we see the same stars that they saw, and know them to be the same ? And now we know through Christ just as unerringly the books of God's Word, as we do the planets of which His Word speaks, and which we behold now in the heavens. We know that they are the very same books that Jesus read, and obeyed, and appealed to, and walked and taught in their light. We know moreover as infaUibly that none but God could make them, as we do that none but He could make the starry heavens. What we caU the internal evidence of these Scrijotures which Christ knew, and to which Christ refers us, is as great, com- manding, and perfect, as the evidence of design, and of the being and j)rovidence of the Creator in these heavens, under which Christ was born and Hved, and which He studied and loved as the works of His Father. None but God could have vnritten one of the least of those letters of light, those all rtding planetary sentences ; and equally, none but God could have written the book of Genesis, or Exodus, or Leviticus, or Numbers, or Deuteronomy, or bound them together in their divine unity; — or Miriam's song, or the prayer of Moses in the 90th Psalm, or Christ's reign and worship in the 2d Psalm, or the 19th, or the 40th, or the 72d, or the 103d, or the ■^22 God's Tmiepiece for Maiis Eternity. fifty-thii'd chapter of Isaiah, or the Gospel of John, or the Epistle to the Hebrews. Such is the immeasurable reach and power of this argument. The Lord Jesus Chi-ist is confessedly the central personage and reahty of divine revelation, the Author and Finisher of faith. To Him all truth con- verges, and around Him, as the central Sun, all hght, all orbs of light, gravitate, and on Him they depend. To Him all the testimonies of God travel, and fi'om Him aU their rays are reflected back, as the renewed and repromulgated testimony of God; God being His own interpreter in Christ, and not permitting divine revelation to depend on any other than a divine wit- ness. From the cross, upHfted as the Lamb of God, the Redeemer, in death bestowing pardon, and salva- tion. He flings the Eternal Light backward and for- ward. And then, in the morning and evening of the ResiuTection He appears and travels with His disci- ples through the whole Old Testament; bidding them search it as for their life, because it testifies of Him in His suiferings, death and glory; assuring them that in it, it is not man, but God that testifies, and ex- pounding unto them in aU the Scriptures the things concerning HimseK, And thus, fi'om the same central position, as the Way, the Truth, the Life, He creates and estabhshes the Tnethod, the certainty, the matter and argwnient of the Gods Tiptepiecc for Mans Eternity. J2j New Testament Scriptures, Himself their life, theii* con vincing, sanctifying, new-creating radiance and power, in the record of His own life, sufferings, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension; in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles; HimseK, His blood, His Spirit, His love, the fountain of all their inspiration, the vital element of their hfe-giving Hght. From Genesis to the Apoca- lypse He shines, the Alpha and Omega, the begin- ning and the end, the first and the last, the end of the law for righteousness, the manifestation of the divine attributes and glory, the object, consumma- tion and proof of aU divine revelation. From Eter- nity to Eternity it is the new song, ever old and ever new, of Moses and the Lamb. Great and marvellous are Thy works. Lord God Almighty ! just and true Thy ways, Thou King of saints ! Blessing and honor and glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, fobeveb and evek. ^2^ Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. XLI. ARGUMENT FROM THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTICLES- JUSTIFICATION BY GOD'S WORDS— PAUL'S ARGU- MENT OF THE RESURRECTION. The discussions between profoundly learned men concerning the place and meaning of particles and articles in a dead language are full of instruction. If the view of a strictly verbal inspiration has been carried to an extreme, introducing difficulties that reaUy do not^ exist, the denial of it, and the supposi- tion that an infallible revelation could be conveyed without words, by the inbreathed thought merely, without the forms of speech necessary for its com- plete and accurate presentation, leaves the accuracy of the message open to a denial that may be fatal to its power, at the mercy of the merely human and un- inspired utterance. There must have been, we are ready to say, a choice of words by the Divine Spirit, for the divinely inspired writer, a guardianship secur- ing the utterance of the truth that God chooses to convey; an inspiration sufficiently plenary and verbal to make the message a thing to be received as the Thessalonian beHevers were praised for receiving it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the Word of God, which effectually worketh, not in word only, God's Tii7zepiece for Mans Eternity. J2^ but in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. — I Thess. i. 5, and ii. 13. The original utterance may be misinterpreted, may have suffered alteration in being transmitted, or translated, but as it came from God, it must have been infallible. And God in Christ, to reconcile the world unto Himself, and draw men by divine truth, must have been infal- lible in His own quotations from His own Scriptiires. And so with Christ's inspired disciples. It was at His own pleasure to vary the language in quoting from Himself, but always without error, without con- tradiction; always in accordance with the fulness and accuracy of His own known meaning. We have said, as it came from Ood. In this con- viction, which was a just postulate, by God's own announcements, the Jews of old, neglecting the Spirit, which giveth hfe, and cleaving to the letter, which conveyeth it, went to such an extreme of superstition as worshippers of the letter, without the Spirit, that it was no longer the Divine Word, hving in them, but, as in the worship of the brazen serpent, instead of the Saviour typified, they became idolaters. But they might well be worshippers even unto martyr- dom, not without reason, not without a divine provi- dence and intuition directing them, in belief and de- fence of the Word, as letter and Spirit in one, as in Is. hx. 21. So alone were they justified in their jeal- ^26 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternily. ousy and scrutiny and j)ainful accuracy as keepers of the oracles of God, because the words of their Scriptures in those oracles, were God's words. So only are we justified in the stress we are accustomed to lay upon the words of every passage which we contend for as inspired. The exact meaning of it could only be conveyed to us in exact words, per- fectly truthful, without error; that is, such words in our own human language, as were sufficient for God's purposes of infalHble saving truth, in the conveyance of His own thoughts. Do we think in language, or does the language also, by divine commission, think m and for us ? There is certainly a process in the mind, for and by which the language is minted, as there is melted gold before its pieces are coined and weighed and stamped. For ex- act thought, exact words; for loose thought, careless words may answer; but for divine thought, and eter- nal destinies and responsibilities, and with such a canon of eternal judgment as this, "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words condemned," God's words also musi be His, justification, as hav- ing been inspii'ed by His Spirit, for our infallible guidance. Now the argument fi'om all these trains for the necessity of a divine infallible inspiration is as com- plete and perfect as that for the existence of God God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^2'j from tlie proofs of benevolent design in nature. la God our Father ? Would He then leave us without instruction? Would He leave us in the power of falsehood ? The answer is to be found in the examination of what He )xa8 left us, which, if it be not from God, there is no proof of a good God at aU upon the earth. AU such proof concentrates in Christ, the Author and Finisher of Faith; Christ, without whose coming and manifestation as the Light and Life of men there could be no such thing as trust in God, the affectionate obedient trust of the child in the Father, but only the relationship of distrust, re- morse for the past and dread of that which is to come. But Christ living, dying, rising, hath brought life and immortality to light; life in the eternal pres- ence and likeness of God; life in participation of the divine nature, through God's own promise of a new creating spirit in the soul of each beUeving man, according to God's Word. This is Paul's own argument in regard to the res- urrection. He proves that Christ rose the third day, according to the Scriptures; but if Christ be not risen, the Scriptures are false, and so our faith in God is vain, impossible. But, the Scriptiu^es being inspired of God, Christ is risen, that inspiration being infal- lible. God's infallibility, absolute in His Word, is ^28 God's Timepiece fo)'' Mans Eternity. the foundation of all divine truth. Higher than this inspiration need not, can not, go; lower than this, it can not be fi"oni God, can not be God's testimony, but is worthless. This may be called reasoning in a circle; but it is God's circle, reasoning from Him- self to Himself; beyond which there is no stand- point for intelligence, either of angels or of men. It must come to this, an infallible inspiration, or none at all. Revelation is worthless, if not written; if written, dependent on the words; impossible to be written, except by inspiration from the Revealer, guiding the writer. In this case, the words must obey and follow the thoughts, not the thoughts the words. The thoughts inspired of God are creators of the words, in order that the words may be cre- ators of the thoughts that God intended to convey, in other minds, the truths necessary for the object of revelation. Inspired truths, involving eternal con- sequences, can not be communicated infallibly, with- out inspired words. But if no eternal consequences, then not necessary to be revealed, and no divine inspiration requisite. But Christ's appeal to all mantind, and in behalf of all mankind, because of immortality, and its eter- nal consequences corresj)ondent with character be- fore God, was, beyond all denial, to a known un- questionable record in sentences and words from God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. J2g God, and for man's eternal good. A definite, divine revelation in writing, for the just guidance of the human conscience; a spiritual revelation connecting every soul with God the Creator and Judge; a Light of Life, over against tradition, naturalism, evolution, the imagination, thoughts, philosophy, and written iuteUigence and science of man. It is God's written word, authoritative, decisive, supreme, the last ab- solute tribunal. It may be traced back by human investigation, till it is lost from sight in the unsearch- able source of all things, the Creative Fountain of all knowledge and force in the Old Testament; and then in the New, the boundless mystery of godliness in the Word made flesh; the fi.rst verse of John's Gospel answering to the first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning was the Word, and the AVord was with God, and the Word was God." On earth incar- nate, and in heaven enthroned, God over all, blessed forever, the Almighty Saviour of the never dying soul! ^jo God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. XLII. THE NECESSITY OF A VERBAL INSPIRATION PROVED BY THE ADVOCATES OF EVOLUTION— IF IN THE MATERIAL, MUCH MORE IN THE SPIRITUAL UNI- VERSE.— AN IMMUTABLE CERTAINTY THE ONE ES- SENTIAL ELEMENT. The possibility of infinite consequences resting on a single word, in the expression of thought, as on a siagle muscle or nerve and its position in the human frame, is presented in the reasoning even of Prof. Huxley so distinctly, that his scientific illustration may be taken as a very impressive argument of the necessity of a strict particular verbal inspiration for the guidance and welfare of men's souls, if any in- spiration is admitted at all. Prof. Huxley's Philosophy of Evolution fi-om a practical eternity without a per- sonal God and Saviour does not admit it, nor any personal providential intervention in our affairs. But his argument from natural necessity in the physical universe which he maintains, appHes with incompar- ably greater force to the spiritual which he rejects. Even if mind and matter were both merely forms of a natural evolution from eternity, without the di- recting will of a Creator, still the necessity of a verbal God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jji infallible accuracy and imchangeable fitness remains; for without it every thing might go to ruin at any moment. If sj^uitual truths were merely evolutions of material forces, still they are confessed to be the highest and most potent of all, and consequently, the formulas or words in which they are conveyed must be infallibly secure. "The change of men into brutes or brutes into men," says Prof. Huxley, "may hang upon a breath of dalnp or dry air blowing in the epiglottis. If I alter in the minutest degree, the proportion of the ner- vous force now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my glottis, I am dumb. The voice is produced only so long as the vocal chords are paral- lel, and then only so long as certain muscles contract with exact equahty, and that again depends on the equahty of action in the two nerves. The minutest change ivoidd render us all dumb. Bat dumb men would he little removed from the brides." "What constitutes and makes man what he is? What but his power of language ? that language giv- ing him the means of recording his experience, mak- ing every generation somewhat wiser than its prede- cessor, more in accordance with the established order of the universe ? This power of speech, which en- ables men to be men, looking before and after, m some dim sense understood, is the working of this 5>j^ God's Timepiece for Alajis Eternity. wondrous frame, and wliich distinguishes man from the whole of this brute world." "Let me," says Prof. Huxley, "slightly crush to- gether the bearings of the balance-wheel of the watch, or force to a slightly different angle the teeth of the escapement of one of those bearings, and the watch will cease to go. Let me puncture the jugular vein, and the result will be that life ceases. The brute and the man are no more different, than the watch with and without a miain-s^oring." * * Now then we rightfully ajDply this proposed ma- terial demonstration to the spiritual world, and the necessity of a plenary verbal inspiration there. For the words are as the molecules, magnetic and attrac- tive, the combinations of which produce organized thought, and the certainty and command of which are essential to exact and accurate thought, reason- ing, and expression. The inevitable certainty foUows (a Creator being admitted) of as minute and plenary a guardianship, protection and infalhble determina- tion by the Father of our spirits, of all the springs and links, the coin-words and key-words of truth, that connect our souls with Him, and govern our eternity. There must be a moral exactness and in- fallibility as sure at least, as that physical and mathe- * See Huxley's "Man's Place in Nature," and "Origin of Species," pp. 148, 149, God's Timepiece for Mail s Eternity, jjj matical arrangement by which the moon was appoint- ed for seasons, and the sun knoweth his going down, and man his frame and labor until the evening. For a breath of expression, the alteration of a word, may produce aU the difference between men and angels, heaven and hell. Here again opens the whole universe of penal warn- ings, as absolute and certain as the ^womises. And here again is our argument, ii'resistible, absolute, as to the necessity of all this portion of God's disclos- irres to sinful creatures being set forth in language as deterring, in words as chosen and exact, as suit- able to the infinite reahties conveyed, as the other corresponding heaven of inducements, the terms of which are laid by God's angels as coals of living fire from His altar with His Spirit upon the soul. And this is the perfection of an infaUible revelation spoken "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," comparing spiritual things with spiritual, nothing kej)t back that was profitable, no declaration of the whole counsel of God shunned, or made doubtful. "The power of speech in some dim sense under- stood," Prof. Huxley argues, " enables men to be men," although in reality mere machines of intricately or- ganized and magnetized matter. But if they are to be angels of the resurrection, sons of God, in the j'j^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. likeness of His incarnate glory, then how much greater the necessity of an infallible divine care and workman- ship in the word-thought machinery, by the working of which this infinite and eternal spiritual transfigur- ation is to be accomjDlished. For it is only by " obeying the truth through the Spirit, by the Word of God which hveth and abideth forever," that sinful men, believing, are thus " born again," and enabled to praise their Ee- deemer and New Creator forever. Only so, that by learning as httle children their alphabet in words of two syllables in the nursery of Christ on earth, " They, in a nobler sweeter song, May sing His power to save, When this poor, lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave. " The necessity of a verbal inspiration may therefore be seen not only in the nature of the painutest escaj^e- ments and nerve-connections of language, but much more in the concentration and comprehensiveness of thought contained in those phrases, in which are con- veyed the grandest mysteries of God, Christ, the Moral Universe ; God's plan, from the beginning through the never-ending ages. These phrases are the prisms through which alone the Divine Light falls upon our understandings, and so in God's light we see light. Only the Spirit that revealed i he t 'loughts, could com Gods Timepiece for Man s Eternity. j>j>5 mand the forms of words suitable for them, the gar- ments in which thej can be made visible, intelligible. Paul's words may be taken as illustrations; describing his own experience, his incommunicable revelations from God, and his consequent agonizing conflicts in prayer for others, and the method and glory of God's love for lost dying sinners, raising them, by the dis- closure of that love in Christ's death, from their death in trespasses and sins to the throne and likeness of their divine and infinitely glorious Saviour, new created in his image. So the two vast and magnificent prayers of Paul contained in Eph. i. and iii., and Philippians iii. 8-12: —the combinations of an infinite survey of the nature and riches of redemption in Christ, by laws extending to all worlds, with the means of the personal realization of such redemption, and its infinite prize of glory everlasting in Paul's own case ; " that I may know him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death." Every phrase has to be studied and translated by other correspondent shafts of light; every one being a painting in itself, a Parthenon of divine revelation. Let any man enter amidst these expressions, and pon- der them, and ask if it be possible that Paul, or any other man, without a verbal inspiration, could have Jj6 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. written them. An infallible writer of sucli comnmni- cations from God must have had God to choose His own words for him. The imagination is taken by these divine talismanic word-gems, of burning light, and carried from point to point in an infinite range of conceptions through the universe. The soul of the behever may be thus on fire and active at the sight of a dome of the Celes- tial City, photograj)hed by John; or a text of the gates of pearl; or a mention of the sardonyx, the ruby, the chalcedony; the strong and ardent regenerated a£fec- tions leaping up as a festal pyrotechnic at the touch of a match in the hand of the master. But in Paul's words the thoughts are always conducting us from all our wanderings to that life-giving sacrifice of Christ, whose offering on the Cross made thought and lan- guage for us a blessing, not a curse; we ourselves, through the grace of His dying love, becoming " dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Every part of God's "Word, in- tended for this divine result, or beaiing upon it, in Law, History, Prophecy, Miracles, Types, Ceremonies, Sacred Songs, and records of Faith and religious experience, must have been, as ordered of God, infal- libly and verbally true and important. Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jjy XLIII. THE EXACTNESS AND FULNESS OF DIVINE INFORMA- TION AND SPIRITUAL LAW— "IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU " — THE GREATEST OF MIRACLES, DEPENDENT ON WORDS. Spiritual things with spiritual. Take, for example, the contrast between death and life, in Eom. v. 21, and the characteristic, inevitable, respective results as stated in ch. vi. 23. "For the wages of sin is DEATH : but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." What kind of death, to an- swer for a spiritual comparison, since the death of the body is as inevitable as its hfe, for all creatures ? God's Word is kept, to use the sailor's phrase, close hauled to the wind from eternity. There are calms, lulls, catspaws, gales; but the steady set of the aerial current of thought and language is towards immor- tality and eternal consequences; and there are days when a very httle disarrangement between the saila and the wind would provoke shipwreck. There is no carelessness with God; no possibHity of random words, or want of forethought. It is instructive to consider the effect upon the whole Word of God, if instead of admitting the sig- nificance of eternity upon its warnings as well as its jj8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. promises, we deny the reality of a retributive harvest in the future world from men's sowings in this hfe. Carry such denial through the Scriptures, and apply it as the measure, the test, of an opinion or belief of the final salvation of all men, and it would be like running a subsoil ploughshare through an acre of medicinal plants and flowers, every furrow strown with herbs torn up by the roots. Take the words of Christ, " If it loere not so, I xoould have told you." — John xiv. 2. Applied as He applied them, to what ive are to meet in the future world, they are of intense and infinite grasp and importance. They show incontrovertibly that no truth of eternal hearing on our faiths and habits of character and action would he left out, or doubtful in a revelation designed to pre- pare us for a future existence. " In my Father's house are many mansions," enough for all who come to the Father through Me. They shall never perish, neither shall any power pluck them out of My Father's hands. Where I am there shall My servants be, and because I LIVE, THEY SHALL LIVE ALSO. Oh blessed assuraucc ! What was the converse of these proj^ositions, or the wanting of a mansion in the house of His Father, or the perishing of those who did not come to Christ, or the abode of those who would not live with Clrrist, and yet would be found existing somewhere without Him ? If there was not such a pei'ishing, such a God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity, jjg DEATH IN LITE, out of Christ, if there was no danger of such eternal death, and no possibility of it, I vx>uld have told you, and you need never have been terrified with falsehoods concerning an imaginary heU. Now run through the tenor of the Scriptures, and it will be seen at once that there is neither mystery, nor uncertainty, nor doubt, as to men's reaping in eternity what they have sowed in time; but the con- sequences of sin are as eternal as sin itself is, in every sinful being, who has not fled for refuge to Chi'ist, the soul's only Redeemer. Sin and its ever- lasting consequences are the reahties out of which, and because of which, there comes the revelation, the offer, of Christ and His grace. " If it were not so, I would have told you." If none were to be lost, if none could be lost eternally, I would have told you. But in that case the whole Bible would have to be written over again, and aU that I have taught you of the terrors of the judgment, and the fate of the wicked would have to be expunged. God has said, in the Scriptures which you confess are His Word, that " the soul that sinneth, it shall die ; " and you know that the thing here meant is not the death of the body, or the mere separation of the soul from the body, but a spiritual death, the consequence and experience of the sins done and habits wrought '^^o Gods Thnepiece for Mans Eternity. by the soul in the body in this life. And I Lave said, and tell you now again, that if ye believe not in Me, as your Saviour from your sins, and come not to the Father through Me for His grace, ye shall die in your sins, and where I am, thither ye can not come. "If it were not so, I would have told you." If there were not these eternal consequences hanging upon your reception and belief of My words, or your rejection of them, I need not have spoken. I need neither have warned you, nor died for you. There would have been no adequate reason for My sacrificial ex- piation, nor any truth in the threatening oi dangers to which you could not be exposed. If there were any other possibility of eternal salvation for you than that which is offered to you through a present faith in Me, I would have told you. " I am the door. By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. Strive to enter in, for many will seek to enter in and shaU not be able, when once the Master of the house hath risen up and hath shut to the door." "If it were not so, I would have told you." For I came to deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject unto bondage. But now I teU you. Fear nothing but that death of the soul, and him who alone is able to inflict it. " Yea, I say unto you, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."— Matt. x. 28. Gods Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. J41 Oh wliat an infinite reach of weKare and of mean- ing, of importance to man, and compassion in God, do these words cover ! And if thev can and must be apphed to the possibihty of there not being mansions enough to offer and secure in heaven, for those who are on the way thither through faith in Christ, how much more to the dread vast question, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? Or what shaU a man give in exchange for his soul ? '" Can there be any other penalty than that of eternal consequences to be appre- nended for those who deUberately, m. this world of of- fered mercy, shut themselves out from such man- sions; rejecting fi-om their own souls the grace of a new-created character in Christ, mercifully placed at their disposal by Him, that they may be pre- pared for heaven, and saved from eternal death ? The believing spu'it always sees further than the unbelie-v-ing, and nothing can commend itself to the reason as more just than the principle in divine things that to him that hath shall be given, accord- ing as he values and keeps what God hath already bestowed. The grace revealed in God's Word as a di\ine gift to faith, is the only key to the science of that Word; the only method by which its treasures can become possessions of the mind. Some men who have denied whoUy a divine inspiration of the Scrip- j/2 God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. tures have nevertheless perceived clearly that the supernatural teaching and experience set forth in them are the only perfect method of defending their truth; and they only are consistent reasoners, "who submit their reason entirely, trudingly, to God's. Deists within the Church of England at one time rejected the supernatural, and regarded all belief in it vi^ith as great a degree of scorn as has ever been expressed in our day by what is called "modern scientific thought." Lord Bolingbroke was one day employed in the morning in his study reading Calvin's In&titutes, when Dr. Church, a divine of the English estabhsh- ment called on him. The deist asked the divine if he could guess what book it was that he had been studying ? " Really, my lord, I can not," answered the doctor. "Well," said Lord Bolingbroke, "it is Calvin's Institutes. What do you think of such mat- ters?" "Oh my lord, we don't think about such an- tiquated stufi'; we teach the plain doctrines of virtue and morality, and have long laid aside those abstruse points about grace."* "Look you, doctor," said Lord * Toplady, in his essay on "Life a Journey," relates the fact that a great churchman, then living (August 1775), said to a lady of quality, "Do not tell me of St. Paul, madam: it would nave been happy for the Christian Chui-ch, if St. Paul had never written a line of his epistles." God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. J4J Bolingbroke, " you know I don't believe the Bible to be a divine revelation; hut they who do can never de- fend it on any x>i'inciples hut the doctrine of grace. To say the truth, I have at times been almost persuaded to believe it upon this view of things; and there is one argument which has gone very far with me in behalf of its authenticity, which is that the behef in it exists upon earth, even when committed to the care of such as you, loho pretend to helieve it, and yet deny the only principles on which it is defensible." XLIV. A VERBAL INSPIRATION AS ESSENTIAL AS A PAR- TICULAR PROVIDENCE — THE SCRIPTURES GOD'S TELEGRAPHIC STATION P^OR THE UNIVERSE— THE GREATEST OF ALL MIRACLES— THE HABIT OF CON- JECTURES A HABIT OF SKEPTICISM— THE INIQUITY OF MAKING OBSCURITIES THE WEAPONS OF SATAN TO DO HIS WORK. The demonstrations of a necessary verbal inspi- ration, in the terms of a published universal law, having Eternity for its range, and aU created intel- ligences for its subjects, are as positive, complete, unquestionable, as those of a particular divine Prov- idence, necessarily extending to all events, influences, and persons. The co-ordination of man's free agency J44 God's "Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and God's foreknowledge cannot be denied. But the admitted coincidence of the human and divine in the authorshij) of the Bible, involves the presence and providence of God, supreme in every part, in word as well as thought, as also in the freedom and spon- taneity of man, in order that the whole Book may be the whole and infallible truth. For such it must be, if supreme for Time and Eternity. The places of men's birth, the disciplinary arrange- ments and tenor of their education, and the con- sequences of their purposes, thoughts, opinions, and actions, together with the social, poHtical and moral facts and biases, by which their opinions are estab- lished, and their characters and powers developed and exerted, are so linked in with the elements and organizations of our globe, with the earth's configui'ation, atmosphere, cHmates, clouds and rain, seasons and their changes, vegetable productions and animal races, that the minuteness, omnipresence, and activity of the providence of God, throughout and over all these things, are inevitable. Such provi- dence, connecting and interweaving the spiritual and material, in what is called the "'conservation and cor- relation of forces," morally and physically, must have been universal, infinite, particular; uniting God's spir- itual and material kingdoms, and the perfection, gov- ernment, and protection thereof, in mutual harmony God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. J4^ and melody. Every sliaft of liglit, aud all the laws of liglit, every mote in the sunbeams, every rain- drop, every vai'iety and degree of strength in all the elements, must have been determined; and their atomic combinations, invisible to us, and incomput- able, (save only that we perceive the absolute ne- cessity of their being exactly weighed and meas- ured,) must be providentially ordered by the Infinite Intelligence, that has the care and compounding of them. There is a sympathy between the physical laws of God's universe and the spiritual, and it may be that God will commission Science to make discov- eries at present inconceivable, as to the connections and lessons. All men's sincere researches build bet- ter than they know; and even Caiaphases and Pi- lates, as well as Balaams, may be found again to have prophesied, while attempting to subvert Chi'ist's king- dom. Kings will be nursing fathers, and queens nurs- ing mothers to the Church. Eoyal Hu'ams will quarry stones, and fell and float timbers for God's Temple, as in Solomon's time. The scientific observers of the transits of heavenly bodies will be themselves spirit- ually illumiuated, and armed with new instruments, as were of old the Bezaleels and Ahohabs of Judah and Dan. As God filled the master workmen under Moses " with j>^^ GocTs Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workman- ship " for the comj)letion of His earthly Tabernacle, so and much more for that not made with hands. The infinite sublimities of the 72d Psalm, and the forty-ninth, sixtieth, and sixty-first chapters of Isaiah, are to be transacted. " The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. For as the earth bring eth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." How infinite the privilege, how blissful the service, of a loving, consecrated workman, in preparing the very least of the instrumentalities of this glory ! For it is aU ordered of God, to every man his sphere, his errand, and his gift, " and the ministration of the Spirit to every man to profit withal." Every man's heartfelt Avork upon and for the Scriptures, in every book, in behalf of every verse, every word, is God's providential care and love. " For that ye ought to say. If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that. For every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." "Of his own will be- gat He us with the Word of truth, that we should God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, j^y be a kind of first fruits of His creatures; " ex- amples, iDatterns, first-fruits of the spiritual fruit- tree, "yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." And as the Volume is to be used in so manj millions of varying cases, and under such infinite variety of circumstances, for the -work of regeneration by the Spirit with the truth, every word is important, and miist have been, in its con- nection and meaning, appointed with special design and certainty. The Scriptures are as a telegraphic station of thought and word for all parts of the world, and all inteUigent creatures in it; consequently, every ap- pointed cypher, syllable, signal, arranged and definite; and the Supreme, Only Wise, Master-Mind using them accordingly, knowing their absolute exactness and importance. A miUtary commander must not only have his own position, known, but ah the distant as well as near correspondences of men and things with it. Every soldier must be in his duty, at his own post, as well as every regiment and officer. Every Word is a soldier of God, not to take the place of another, but having his own sphere, fitness, activity. The genius of a great general is tried by his arrange- ment and possession of details, in the organizing and handling of an army, compacted, as a building, "ac- cording to that which every joint supplieth." The j^c? God's Timepiece for Mans Eternitv. work of coral insects for the building up of an island or a continent; the weaving of an atmosphere for the life of man and the growth of all nature, by exact, in- variable, infallible measurements of oxygen and nitro- gen; the waves of motion in light and sound, and of the elements that make substance and color, and the correspondences of sense and sight accordingly; all intricate and wise particulars in nature, with their known and immeasurable importance, are symbols or illustrations, assuring a still greater definiteness and certainty in the language of the truths of God's spii-- itual kingdom for eternity. If the insjDiration of the words, events, personages and laws, set down in the record of a divine revelation, were merely human, falUble, uncertain, then none of the securities could be trusted, none could be proved to have been given by God, or their requisitions binding on the conscience. The greatest of aU miracles, the sj)iritual, are de- pendent on the meaning and use of human speech, di\inely adapted and conveyed, attended by the Holy Spirit in the soul. The heart-felt, contrite conviction of s,in against God is a mu'acle; being nothing less than the beginning of Eternal Life, an infinite supernat- ural work, in a soul dead in tresj^asses and sins. And then forgiveness is a greater miracle still, through the blood of Jesus Christ. The miracles of grace Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. J4g are greater than those of providence, for the last are kingly servitors to the first; but all in a connection inseparable, and dependent on divine truth; God's truth, expressed in God's word, by God's methods, through human language. The whole kingdom of God is within you, all its miracles, the gift of spirit- ual sight out of blindness, out of obscurity, (Is. xxix. 18), the fii-st awakening and quickening of souls dead in trespasses and sins; a miracle greater than that of the resurrection of the body. But all miracles, recorded, taught, known, are wrought through words; "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast;" "by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live." And what vast consequences may wait upon the use and right interpretation of one word may be seen in the instance of avooBev (as in the note on page 301), the question whether you will render it from the beginning of the history on earth, by enquiries running back through human traditions, and there- fore chargeable with uncertainty, or from above, from heaven, by direct inspiration and guidance of the Spirit of Christ, in whose name, concerning whose life, and in whose service and love, and by whose infaUible guidance, Luke was certainly writing. "I was well acquainted," said Dr. Witherspoon, J5<5 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. in one of the papers of his Druid, "with a divine, who began a prayer in his congregation with these words: ' Lord, Thou art the simplest of all beings!' — which incensed his hearers against him to such a degree, that they accused him of blasphemy: — where- as, the poor man only meant to say that God was philosophically simple and uncompounded, altogether different from the grossness, divisibihty, or in learned phrase, discerptibility of matter." His hearers thought he was making God a simpleton. What if the choice of the words for a divine revelation concerning God and man, for time and Eternity, had been left to the culture, taste, knowledge, mental habits, and style of the respective human authors or writers employed in it ! The various idiosyncracies of language and style, characteristic of the writers of the Word of God, demonstrate the perfect freedom of their faculties both in thought and speech; and at the same time the necessity of an infallible divine guidance, and perfect honesty and common sense, in interpreting God's will, and following his instructions. Dr. With- erspoon gives a curious illustration of combined ig- norance and obstinacy, in an English naval com- mander, entrusted with desj)atches from England for the governors of the provinces of North America. The captain of the frigate had orders to proceed to Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^5/ Georgia, but first to New York, then to the CaroHnas, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Jersey a. Arriving at New York, and mentioning his orders to the Governor, he was told, " If you will give me the letters for the governors of New Jersey and Pennsyl- vania, they shall be dehvered in forty-eight hours; but by yoiu- j)rescribed route it will take three months." The commander rephed, I aUall dick to my instructions. And so probably he attempted that impracticable entanglement of sea and land navigation, as impos- sible as the pretended combination of forgeries and truths in the law-book of the Almighty. The British Admii-alty were in those days, before our Revolu- tion, somewhat pardonable for instructions proceed- ing from ignorance of the colonies, and producing such confusion of provinces, distances, and relations of space. But what can be said of those critics on the Scriptures, and inventors of canons for the over- running and interpretation of them, who deny the authorship of Moses and the Pentateuch, and send forth orders to set both down in unknown Apocry- phal regions, and to visit and overhaul the whole Bible accordingly, by the guidance of a new chart, laying down the whole compass of documents, au- thorships and chronologies in prophecy and history, between Moses and Malachi, as a region of sunken j^2 Goc^''; Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. rocks, to be searched out, protested, and guarded against ! And then the existence, eras, and authority of im- agined fragments of history and law are offered as realities, together with conjectured and asserted Books of Origins, and famihes of manusciipts, and revisions of texts, by " transcrijDtional probabilities," commended to us as the oracles of God; and the right use of them taught accordingly, by the latest discoverers of the doctrine of wholesale forgeries of the Books of Moses, foisted on the whole Jewish nation more than eight hundred years after his death; and such anonymous forgeries sanctioned as a religious and patriotic habit of the Hebrew litera- ture, acceptable to God, and endorsed, or " accommo- dated," by the Lord Jesus, as wrought by inspiration of the Holy Spirit ! The conjectures of minds that take the standj)oint of their reasoning not within the hght of an admitted inspired record, but outside, in the atmosphere of unin- spired human nature, denying the existence of any infal- lible revelation, produce at length a habit of inveterate skep- ticism, "the holding down of the truth in unrighteousness." They are like those suspicions among thoughts, which Lord Bacon says are like bats among birds, flying only in the twilight: whereas, the lark soars singing up to heaven in the morning sunlight. No small portion of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, j^j the modern apologists for the Scriptures, and interpre- ters of the Bible by analogy of uninspired literature, are hunters after suspicions as if they were discoverers of new truths; or innocent detectives on the wing, robin- redbreasts or heaven-appointed doves, let loose from Noah's Ai'k to return and report. By them shall there be a new catechism for the children after the flood. Critical proofs are good for nothing, except as co- inciding with Christ's words. Internal evidence is all powerful, because of such established coincidence with the letter and Spirit of the divine oracles, and the pur- pose of Christ's coming for the redemption of the soul from sin and death eternal. " Concerning the works of men," said David in the 17th Psalm, "by the word of thy hps I have kept me from the Paths of the De- stroyer." What a precious divine testimony is this ! "And herein do I exercise myself," says Paul, (Acts xxiv. 16,) "to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men." And again, "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, in full as- surance OF FAITH." It was a demand ex necessitate rei; the absolute ne- cessity for any right reasoning in regard to God, hea- ven and hell, that the information concerning that which no ivitnens could behold in Qmst's bosom, or in the Eternal World, and return on earth to testify, should be assured by infallible divine inspiration. The mes- 55-/ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. sengers and ministers of Christ must therefore, be wit- nesses by the Holy Ghost, of things which the Holy Ghost only could reveal, and set forth in accurate lan- guage. Apart from such inspiration, mere external erudition, however perfect and exact, would be value- less, much more when theories by conjectures and doubts are admitted as jDostulates of reasoning. Prof. Stuart, in a note on Hug's Introduction to the New Testament (page 721) remarks that nearly all the writers who, up to that time, had made out theo- ries as to the origin of the three first gosjjels had left out of sight and consideration the foot of the inspiration of the authors. It was not even an element of belief, but denial, with many. Yet this fact in the very na- ture of the case, was the truth of truths, the very first fact of importance to be considered; the very founda- tion of all right reasoning; the claim without which the Bible is of no more worth to us, as a witness of things past or to come, on earth or in heaven, than Homer's Hiad. For by that, once determined, we must ever be held, as the final arbiter and interpreter of all truth and certainty. Our critics are so oppressed by this habit of referring every thing to the imj)ulse and idiosyn- crasy of the writer, irrespective of any supreme guidance or suggestion of the words, that the result of their investigations becomes altogether human, God's Timepiece for Alajis Eternity, jjj nothing divine; a thing of mere natural genius and culture. The inspii'ation of particulars in language being denied, as also any guidance by the Holy Spirit, of natural peculiarities, tendencies, preferences, every- thing is left to each individual's education, circum- stances, dialect, and native likelihood of error, with ever so great supposed sincerity, in whatever he could not for himself ascertain. Then, of the ascer- tained things, why he left this, why he inserted that, why he rej)eated what was already recorded by another, how or why he could have used a new word, or such a pronoun as exsivod sometimes absolutely, sometimes abstractly; what imagined rea- son can possibly be asked or given, excejit on the supposition that the whole is overruled or aj)pDintcd by God's inspiration? Yet such inspiration is from the outset denied as an imj)ossibility. And this postulate is the banner of the benevolence of Phi- losophy and Rationahsm now unfurled and floating from the teachings of some professors in theological seminaries, and preachers to whom Moses and the Prophets, who spake of Christ, are myths as outworn as the cradle of bulrushes in which Moses once floated, as a new born lily, on the bosom of His mother Nile. The modern idea of a new progressive theology "by the consultation of doubts and obscurities as to J>5<^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. the meaning of Eternity and eternal realities, may perhaps lead to the endowment of new sacred scientific professorships, for solution of the Nebulae of God's Word, never yet decyphered, but supposed to contain the key to all former mysteries and difl&culties. But this would be like inverting a telescope to look at the stars. Time-calculations in cloudy days might answer for travellers inland: but on the ocean of Eternity, what then ? A false compass or chronometer on board ship may be prevented from action and discovery, by the ship itself being employed exclusively on coast or river navigation, and never out at sea. It wiU be too late to correct mistakes, once the boundary Hne has been past between this world and the next, Time and Eternity. XLV. HALF-TRUTHS WHOLE ERRORS— ABSOLUTE SAFETY ONLY IN THE DIVINE RECORD— THE INADEQUACY OF MERE HUMAN LANGUAGE— PAUL'S EXPERIENCE OF POWER AND WEAKNESS. From any revelation which was half divine inspi- ration, and half natural light, or mere human investigation by common reason, common sense, and what is called profane history, nothing but half- God's Tiinepiece for Mans Eternity, j^y truths could have come; aud the mere human would have been preferred to the divine, and enthroned as the last appeal, because the first discovered certainty. If thine eye be single, then indeed thy whole body shall be full of light; but if evil, darkness; and how great that darkness ! So great, so complete, that a man, and even a corporation, shall contend with the utmost fierceness, that it alone is light, and the only perfect light. See a wonderfid illustration in Plato's description of the Cave, and the fire-light, and the men reasoning according to it. And yet the same men may have all their faculties of mind and body in what they regard as perfect simplicity and soundness, so that they will biu'n at the stake those that differ from them. It is a truth of physiology that a wound in the eye may so draw away the aqueous humor, ivithout any injary to the general health, as to produce utter blind- ness, as effective as if the whole external world were covered with a veil. Such was the veil upon the heart of the old unbelieving Jews, in full health in regard to this world and all its interests, but utterly blind as to Christ and the Life Eternal. In this mischief aU men are " Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles." The minutiae and particularities, so extreme, so rigid, in the Hebrew laws, were aU necessary, and aU had ^^8 God's Timepiece for Ma?is Eternity. theii" iudividual meaning and aj^plication, for the training of the conscience toward the invisible God, even by visible realities of form and figure. They were as the spongioles of roots, entering into the hidden fountains and elements of eternal principles, to carry ujd those principles into a trunk, and branches, and fruits, individual and national. When the rules are grounded in principles, and grow out of them, they produce buds and blossom.s, leaves and fruits, for the concentrated nourishment and life of the soul, and theu- seed is in themselves, in their kind. But if the ritual of God's service, or selected parts of it, are set up to be the lords many and gods many over the conscience, instead of a guide to God and the teacher of His love, then they become as the Brazen Serpent, which the heroic Hezekiah destroyed as Nehushtan, the piece of brass. The conscience towards law must be first of all towards God, enlightened by His word, and Spirit, and thus authoritative and supreme. For unquestionably there may be a con- science towards evil, an evil conscience, seared as with a hot iron; a conscience towards idols, a warjoed yet sincere conscientiousness, which is the very j^erfection of the despotism of Satan, first blinding the mind against the truth, then hardening it, fossilizing it in error as the truth; with strong delusion to believe a Gods Timepiece for Majis Eternity, j^g lie, having pleasui'e in unrighteousness, and being self- wrought into the nature of that which they voluntarily believe and choose. It is not intellectual discernment, nor any mere intu- itions of genius, that can create in the soul the knowl- edge and love of Christ, as the soul's light, life, and Redeemer. Take for illustration the German poet Goethe's account of his first acquaintance with Shak- speare. "The first page of his that I read made me his for hfe; and when I had finished a single play, I stood like one born blind, on whom a miraculous hand bestows sight in a moment. I saw, I felt, in the most vivid manner, that my existence was infinitely ex- panded, everything was now unknown to me, and the unwonted light pained my eyes. By little and little I learned to see, and thanks to my receptive genius, I continue vividly to feel what I have won. I sprang into the open air, and felt for the first time that I had hands and feet. And now that I see how much injury the men of rule did vie in their dungeon, and how many free souls stQl crouch there, my heart would burst, if I did not declare war against them, and did not daily seek to batter down their towers. "^ — - Compare this enthusiasm and worship of a human production with the great German poet's treatment of the gospels. It was not any want of susceptibility to be moved, nor of power of pei'ception, where honor j6o God's Timepiece for Maris Eternity. one of another was concerned, that prevented the same ardent admiration of the words of Christ, but Christ's own sad question, " How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, but seek not the honor which cometh from God only ? " The demonstration itself, to us, of His being for us that Way, that Truth, that Life, rests therefore in this, His perfect conformity with the original draft, in the body of that writing, which, by such conform- ity, He proves irresistibly to be from God; and which we can prove to our own satisfaction and full assur- ance of understanding, only by coming personally our- selves to Christ, and trying His life. His love, upon and within our own souls. I know whom I have BELIEVED. How cau any man otherwise ever come to the knowledge, by experience, of life eternal, in God, in Christ, in time or eternity? It is only by faith that this knowledge is ever possible. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself, in Christ, within him, the hope of glory, the Author and Finisher of faith. He that believeth not God's word, hath made Him a har, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son, Him- self THE LIFE. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of Ood hath not life. These things God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j6i have I written, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may behave on the name of the Son of God.— 1 John v. 13. This is the style of ineffable divine certainty — icliat the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that hath an ear let him hear this, even according as Christ Him- self heard and obeyed unto death, this formula of God's covenant and will, It is written. How many men, striving to enunciate what they did not clearly comprehend, have lost themselves in verbiage, so that the reader or hearer has to cry out for an interpreter, or even a pUot with a fog- horn, to guide him out of the confusion. Except a man can interj)ret, of what avail are his volu- bnities of tongues ? Paul himself, and his four- teenth chapter of First Corinthians, are joroofs of the necessity of a verbal inspiration in the ministry of divine, soul-saving truths for all souls through all ages. "I thank my God that I speak with tongues more than ye aU. Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." Therefore, "Let him that speaketh pray that he may interpret." Paul himself could speak with tongues and interpret, only by the Holy Spirit in his own heart and mind, guiding him for that very purpose, in words that the j62 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. Holy Ghost teacheth. For that let every minister of Christ pray. But he cannot even pray aright, except by the Holy Ghost teaching him how to pray. And the Holy Spirit vpill thus go with His words from his heart, and will be the living and illuminating fire, the heavenly magnetism. What are even the best words without that? Do we not know that when this physical frame of our earthly nature is charged with electricity, we can light the gas by the touch of our knuckles? And even so, when a man's own sovd is charged with the fire of God by the Divine Spirit, he can set souls on fire; but not otherwise. How much more at the foundation of the Christian faith for aU ages and aU souls, must there be the words of eternal truth, bu^rning with and by the Spu'it that indited them, and as absolutely true as God is true; words coined by God, because omniscience alone and infinite Love could inspire them, and the j^ulses of the same love in human ministries are to beat with them. How often do writers of the greatest power find extreme difficulty in putting into language satisfac- tory to themselves the conceiDtions, the thoughts, which they desu-ed to express, but have found them- selves almost in despau' at the confessed inadequacy of their own expressions. Plato, John Foster, De Quincey, Coleridge, Pascal, Locke, Stuart Mill, Kant, God^s Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j6j Jolin Howe — men of all languages, researches, be- liefs, pursuits; naturalists, philologists, psychologists, anatomists of body and soul, metaphysicians, biolo- gists, theologians, poets, mathematicians, confessing that language itself is one of the greatest of mysteries, and perfect simplicity, profoundness and exactness in the use of it an impossible attainment. But in " the Volume of the Book wkitten of Me" there is this tri-unity of qualities; simphcity in word, infinitude in meaning, and exactness in expression; so that he may run that readeth, or read running. They are words that shall never pass away, though heaven and earth shaU pass; a judgment, and truths, and modes of reasoning, that are made to red for a light of the jxople; words of God in the mouth, and His Spirit in the heart, even of babes and suck- lings. The simpler the words, the more perfect and absolute the proof that God Himself chose them and inspired them; as in the Gospel of John, perhaps the most radiant with divine demonstration of all the volume, and yet the most childlike and artless; simple and transparent as the air, profound and measureless as space. Who can account for the miracle, or who can deny it? If this be true in regard to men's efforts to catch and flash upon the screen the variations and almost infinite excursions of their own minds, uninspired, ^6^ God's Timepiece for Mans Eter^iity. so that they cry out of the depths, O for a super- natural dialect, as swiftly at command as the light- ning-like revelations that encomjDass and outrun all our powers of expression ! — how much greater the necessity of a verbal realization, an inspired con- veyance, for those divine thoughts, that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are higher than man's thoughts, and are not man's thoughts at all, but only God's revealed to man for his study and obedience ! And so is the word that goeth forth out of God's mouth, not in cataractical con- fused masses, but gentle and gradual, as the drojDS of the rain, to accomplish that which He pleases; jewels of expression, framed for His own thoughts, and accomj)anied by His own Spirit. One wotdd give a miUion pounds sterhng, if he had it, for the invention of a psyckograph, or jjhoto- graph of thought, in accurate and adequate language, as the flash of light first rises in the soul. What an infinitude of labor it would save, and wresthngs of second thoughts, against the first, or of doubts against reahties; what instant visions it would give of the nature of plans or piu'poses of good or evD, half-formed; but if evil, then, the moment they are thrown upon paper, arrested, and remaining only as evidence of what would have been reality, if not seen and known as soon as existing, and perhaps God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. j6^ annihilated as soon as seen. "Thou understand- est my thought afar off. Thou compassest my i^atU and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways." God must do this, and judge mankind accordingly, or he would not be God. And there must be some kind of telephone playing into *the eternal world, with intelligible cyphers dotted in the book of judgment, disclosing what is going on here. The conscience toward God is such a faithful and infaUible witness, and even in its earhest glim- merings what a power of language and coloring it possesses ! What worlds of refuse, and of lumber, fit only for the chaos of Gehenna, might be pre- vented, if each man's sotd were such a stenographic recorder, or reporter aloud, in plain language ! A cardiphone, an utterance of the heart, a detecti- phone, reporting at once to the self-consciousness and to God ! What a shield it might be against the malignities and fiery darts of the Wicked One! And what a gift of divine jDower would a good man have, if his incommunicable, inexpressible revela- tions, aspirations, presciences of the unseen and eternal, could be written down at the very instant of their momentary consciousness ! For we often have a conscious insight of such profound immeas- urable power and glory, of such irresistible, all- compelling demonstration of truth, as, if completely ^66 God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity. uttered, and conveyed as soon and as distinctly as a flash of liglitning at midnight, would overcome aU oi^positions, of all minds, all worlds. But we lose it in the very attemjDt to describe it, or translate it into language. And all efforts are vain to sat- isfy even our own ideal of it. But an infallible revelation from God must possess these command- ing quahties of thought and uttei-ance, to justify God in hanging upon its words an eternal judgment of His own character, and that of His intelligent accountable creatures, in His own sight and in theirs. "That thou might be clear when Thou judgest, and be justified when Thou speaketh." " Men owe it to God," said Pascal, " to receive the religion which He sends; God owes it to men, not to lead them into error." (Pascal's "Thoughts," ch. 20.) " To lead into error," Pascal adds, " is to place man under the necessity of assuming and apjoroving falsehood. This God cannot do; and yet He would do this, if in an obscure question. He permitted mir- acles to be wrought on the side of falsehood." This is absolutely impossible. God Himself therefore is ever with us, the Interpreter and Guardian of His Own Truth. Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j6j XLYI. PRAYERS AND PREACHING OF THE APOSTLES— DEVEL- OPMENT AND INCREASE OF ILLUMIMATIONS IN GOD'S KINGDOMS OF NATURE AND GRACE— INCALCULABLE MINUTENESS AND GRANDEUR IN WORD AND WORKS —OUR LORD'S EXAMPLE OF A PRIORI REASONING- ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON'S EXPERIENCE. There is no report on record, no inspired account of the words of the early preachers, nor examj^le of their power in preaching or praying, save only in two or three chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, and in the prayers of the Apostle Paul. And though these are great masses of truth, shafts of light con- centrated, yet all the rest has to be imagined, all the work of the divine Spirit in the men going forth from Pentecost, under the power of the first bap- tism, and all the fervor and power of their successors. The superhuman electricity, awakening vividness and persuasion of their eloquence, the divine lightning, the j)hrases condensed with thought in the words taught by the Holy Spirit, and piercing through the soul; the starthng earnestness, the flame of knowl- edge from infinite depths of anguish and of joy in their own experience, the pleading, the tears, the weeping fervor and fire, the infinite -comi^assion ^68 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and love, the celestial radiance of the soul in its peace and blessedness of Christ; the reahties of sin, death, the judgment, heaven, hell; — all these creations to the sight, of spiritual worlds, spu-itual thought, scenery, experience, things seen and known of Christ, and spoken forth fi'om His indwelling and inspiration in the soul, and in words taught by the Holy Spirit; — constituted a whirlwind flame of .elo- quence, a winged burning chariot, full of eyes and voices, as in Ezekiel's vision, di'awing hearers and seers within the sweej) of its attraction, rolling through the cities and neighborhoods of the Jewish and heathen world, as apocalyptic orbs of celestial fire and glory. There is no description of it, but it was the out- pouring of a divine life, in suffering and redeeming intensity, and the rapid diffusion of Christianity fol- lowed in its train. They that wielded this power, out of Christ's love constraining them, were filled with divine consolation in the use of it; it was the life and blessedness as of angels to them on earth, to speak thus of Chi-ist and His love; and for all that they had reHnquished or suffered in this world they received a hundred-fold, in the bhss of this very service. Think of the multitude of illuminations and illus- trations of the Scriptures, flashing as a sea of diamonds God's Timepiece for Alan s Eteriiity. j6c^ mingled with fire, now coming into knowledge almost universal, through periodicals and papers in every tongue, and demonstrated by increasing millions of Christian minds and hearts out of their own blissful experience. This is God's progressive work, how gradual, yet how irresistible ! And the law and condi- tion of all this growth, with all and in all that receive it from the Scriptures, is that of God's providence and light, interpreted and applied by the Holy Spirit iu the soul. The infinite wonders brought to view through the telescope and microscope, in material worlds, are but an approximative illustration of what God is doing in the spiritual universe. Consider the working of light within the atoms of different substances, according to positions and angles of incidence, refraction, reflection, medium, polaiization, repetition. There is as great a variety in unit}^, by the working of spiritual light in more minds, than atoms. The discovery of the polarization of light was a.s a new creation. And such is the revealing effect of th3 rays of spiritual truth upon the inward texture and organization of souls; Ughtning like, so sudden, but Godlike, so immutable and eternal. We have experience of polarized light, even in our hours and moments of prayer, and in the revelations to faith produced by it. For prayer by faith (" praying in the Holy Ghost "), is to the soial as Lord Rosse's great J/0 God's Timepiece for Mans Ete7niity\ Telescope; and as the vision sweeps round the infini- tudes, it opens new unfathomable abysses, that in their very darkness show the unsearchableness of the hght itself that discovers them, and new immeasurable con- tinents of worlds, as islands, in eternal boundless space; and still, light reflected from all; apocalyptic light, constructing, organizing, living, growing, weav- ing, renewing, changing. It is God's light and God's providence that opens all this glory in and ujDon His creatures. " In Thy light shall we see light." Mate- rial astronomy is counterparted and illumined by the other infinite spiritual universe, under God's law of Love. And now, if it has taken so many thousand years to discover and apply by genuine mathematical calcula- tions and evidence, some of the laws of matter in God's visible tangible universe, how much more must it re- quire of dihgence and time, with spiritual humilit}'^ and waiting upon God, to discern the times and seasons which the Father hath i3ut in His own power; and the visitations, workings, limitations, and possible spheres and conquests of thought, through the patient study and application of His Word, by faith and prayer; — and all this in a state of being and action, where the voluntary exercise of these quaUties, and improvement of these gifts, are offered as the securities of an eternal progress in the beatifying knowledge of God. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jyi Our Lord Jesus was certaml}^ the Master of a priori reasoning in regard to the Word and attributes of God, " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory ? " What a mountain-mine of intelligence in that question! The ought not, was grounded on what had been written of God before- hand in the Scriptures, and was not here expounded merely of any moral necessity or propriety in the na- ture of things, or in God's attributes, but because it had been so set down in God's Word. The Lord Jesus showed His disciples, by the revel- ation of His own nature, how to see His foreshin- ing radiant image in the Scriptures. It was as if He had taken a steel mirror, which had been overclouded and stained by using it for pressing herbs, or for haii*- dressing, (for even thus had the Jews abused and perverted their own Scriptures for the uses of this world;) as if He had taken such a mirror, and wiping it clean, and making the reflection pure and jjerfect. had bent His own face over it, and then called His dis- ciples to look at the image of His whole being in its depths. For so it was, that in all the Scriptures, after His death and resurrection. He showed them Himself, in His sufferings and glory; Himself, in the human and divine; Himself, as the teaching, miracle-working, cru- cified, dying, Self-existent Lord; Himself, the buried 37^ Gods Timepiece f 07' Mans Eternity. and risen, ascended and enthroned Almighty Sa- yiour ; — all now as clear as the sun ; His whole fore- shown and afterwards reflected attributes, through eternity, the same, yesterday, to-day and forever. And the same divine Spirit of Christ which was in them foretelling and instructing, must be with and in us, showing what they saw, showing the fulfilment, clearing and quickening our vision, removing our er- rors, correcting our mistakes, preaching unto us the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven. The angels desire to look into these things, fellow- students with us; and the Holy Ghost from Heaven is as necessary for our enlightenment as for theirs. God grant we may neither despise nor reject nor deny it. But we are dependent on the Holy Spirit, and on the presence of Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, for the climate of our soiils, through the breathing of a Saviour's love. The climate of our souls ! A world of illustrations from the physical to the spiritual creation is opened before us by this expression. Take some of the in- stances of truth reverberating from the material to the immortal. " In that aerial ocean," says Hum- boldt, ' ' on the shoals of which we live, the climate of our own region depends on the variations of the atmosphere as to temperature and moisture, den- sity, pressure, oxygen, and electricity, polarization, God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jyj magnetic resonance and purity; "but greatly also on the degree of ordinary transjyarency and clearness of the sky, which is not only important in respect to the increased radiation from the earth, the organic development of plants, and the ripening of fruits, but also with reference to its effect on the feelings and con- dition of inen."^ Out of the laws of the visible and tangible creation of Grod, the invisible and eternal may be known and illustrated, or impressively tyjoi- ped. The spiritual atmosphere of our own heart and life depends on Christ in us the hope of glory, and on the inspiration of His love, producing all that we ever possess of sincerity, freedom from selfishness, a single eye, a contrite mind, a regard to the divine approbation, through the love of Christ constrain- ing us. Thus the invariable transparency and clearness of the firmament of God's Word (forever, O Lord, Thy "Word is settled in heaven), and the exceeding and eternal brightness of divine truth and glory, shining in the face of Jesus Christ, down into the heart, * See the illustrations in Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 292-369. "A physical delineation of Nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is opened to our view." "Language, more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race," and carries our thought into eternity. j/^ God's Tii7tepiece for Mans Eternity. tlirough the atmospliere of the love of Christ, will pro- duce a gracious and fruitful experience, filling the soul, and at length the whole earth, with all the ful- ness of God. Thus God and the universe, heaven and the world, are mutually illuminated; and so is the only way of knowing God's spiritual kingdom in all worlds, and becoming heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, by His own new-creating Spirit of love and of power and of a sound mind. Again, take the illustrative fact that " every part of the earth's surface absorbs and radiates heat at the same time, and that the power of radiation is always equal to the j)ower of absorption." Even so the power of magnetic radiation in the soul, the power of com- municating divine truth, is always equal to the power of faith in receiving and absorbing the light and love of Christ in His Word. And both are dependent on the habit of obedient and constant working by love with the truth as it is in Jesus, committed to the heart for this purpose. As it is used, so it increases, both in depth and intensity, in volume and in power. We are better prepared for a childlike faith in every jot and tittle, of God's Word, than those children in the market place could have been, to whom Christ preached concerning the lilies of the field; since, through the microscope, " organized beings, possess- ing life, and exercising all its functions, have been dis- God s Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jj^ covered so minute, that a million of them would oc- cupy less space than a grain of sand; so that what before were imaginary things are now real beings, with definite weights, and uniting by fixed laws." * With what intense interest and reverence, must every intelligent being ponder the progress of Science, in the light reflected fi'om and upon the sublime ques- tions of natural and spiritual Theology in Job. "Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, or the way in which light is parted, and the firmament spread abroad, and the dust of the orbs of heaven weighed and meas- ured by Jehovah's counsels, judging and governing the earth and the people, the ivicked and the good, by them?" The possible dependencies of nations on a word and its wrong or right pronouncement, are illustrated in the Book of Judges, xii. 6 (whether Shibboleth or Sibboleth), the tribe of Ephraim being almost anni- hilated by a slip of the tongue. Was it accidental? Can anything' be accidental under God's government ? Was there not a wise, holy, and retributive provi- dence there, connecting heart and tongue, syllables * See Mrs. Somerville's "Physical Geography," chapters xxi. and xxu., and pp. 268, 299. Compare also Arnold Guyot on the "Earth and Man," together with Mary Somerville's instructive volume on the "Connection of the Physical Sciences," Harper's Edition, from the seventh London. .jj6 God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. and moral habits and consequences ? Such an event is but one of God's j^risms for analyzing hght, and throwing its responsibilities of knowledge into eter- nity. The minuteness of causes is an infinite and sol- emn wonder. What a world of spiritual lessons in the study of atoms and their combinations, in physical and mental organizations, and in the elementary chem- istry of the earth and man! What warnings in the investigations of miasma on the earth or in the air, and in accepted hereditary beliefs, in currents of opinion and prejudice, in pregnant false axioms and seeds of error and misery! The very hairs of our heads are all numbered. And so one half of God's universe looks down into the other as a mii-ror of its meaning and its laws. How then can a verbal inspiration in God's Book OF THE SOUL be denied, when it is not only admitted, but woven into the very demonstrations of science, in the Book of Nature, and taught by scientific men as a postvdate of philosophy? There must be an omnipresent, all-determining and arranging Provi- dence, in Nature as well as Man, in the letters and syllables that spell and mean Eternity. For God hath " set one thing over against an- other"; and the world, which is man's birthplace and standing stool, is full of educational analogies, "and whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever"; it Gods Timepiece for Maits Eternity, jyj hath that meaning for man, " That men should fear before Him "; and for that, "every thing is beautiful in His time." The Book of Ecclesiastes is full of these disclosures of Time for Eternity, and of God's work for man's Immortality. But we are carried back into the first volume of science ever written or known on earth, for man's guidance, by the culmi- nation and comparison of the discoveries of five thousand years. The treasures of hiformation, and the vast and profound generalizations, brought to- gether in modern works on the Connexions of the Physical Sciences, the phraseology and the proofs of the laws weighing, measuring and balancing the globe and aU its elements, with the definite and rel- ative proportions of atoms, and the processes of light, heat, combustion, magnetism, electricity, temperature, in the earth and its atmosphere; — all these disclos- ures are just a providential commentary on the Scrip- tures, as unintentional, many times, from mount to mount, from altar to altar, as Balaam's majestic prophecies ; yet all concluding, "NVhat hath God wrought! and teaching, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like His! " Heaven is My throne, and the earth My footstool, saith the Almighty; but I create new heavens and a new earth, and to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trem- j/c? Gods Timepiece for Man s Eternity. bieth ai My icord." Compare with this, and under- stand by it, our Lord's first benediction, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The soul to be saved from eternal death, and Christ, the only Being that can save it, are the combination key for our commanding and opening of the Spiritual Safe given to us in the Scriptures. A man may err in many things, but if he keep those two, he is honest and safe, and gets into the heart of God's Safe in Christ, and there God will keep him. " For whatsoever things were written aforetime were wi'itten for our. learning, that we, through patience and com- fort OF THE Scriptures, might have hope." The soul to be saved by faith in Christ, is the all in all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse. Archbishop Leighton used to say, "I prefer- an er- roneous honest man before the most orthodox knave in the world; and I would rather convince a man that he has a soul to be saved, and induce him to live up to that belief, than bring him over to my opinion in whatever . else besides." He could say, Whatever else I leave undone, one thing I do; seek for soids, that they may be saved, not lost forever. And these he sought among men of all persuasions. A friend, calling upon him one day, and not finding him, learned that he had gone to visit a sick Presbyterian Gods Timepiece for Mmis Eternity, jyg minister on a horse which he had borrowed of the Roman CathoHc priest. The skepticism which he sought to cure in others he had known within him- self; " all sorts of skeptical and doubtful thoughts on the great points of religion he said, having not only passed through his head, but stuck fast and jjainfully in his mind, till the mercy of the Lord dispelled them." And so his direction to other souls was just this, "Wait patiently on the Lord, and hope in him, for you shall yet praise him for the helj) of his countenance. That alone can enlighten you, and calm the storms that are raised within it. In the midst of these assaults, throw yourself down at his footstool, and cry, " O God, Father of mercies, save me from this heU within me ! I acknowledge, I adore, I bless Thee, whose throne is in heaven, with Thy blessed Son and crucified Jesus, and Thy Holy Spirit, and though Thou slay me, yet wiU I trust in Thee." j8o God's Timepiece for Man's Eternity. XLYII. THE POSSIBLE SPOILING OF A PREACHER BY PHILOS- OPHY—SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT AND POWER VIN- DICATED AS GOD'S ONLY — INDEPENDENCE ONLY BY FAITH AND SUBMISSION. There is no possibility of independence, or any true method of science in man, or security against error, "without dependence on God, the Creator of man and of science, and of man's relations to Himself and to all knowledge. Measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves men must forever remain mere imitators of one another's mistakes; relying on human authority, yet denying universal experience of guUt and ruin as a hbel, and individual experience of regeneration and spiritual life as fanaticism. So have men used the "Word of God rather as an external lamp contrived, than an inward fountain of holy consciousness and joy; and so have come weakness, and suj)erstitions, and fears, and the mere belief of the devils, who tremble, in- stead of the freedom and fearlessness of the sons of God. For nothing tends so much to produce a man- God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j8i ly independence, confidence, and genuine liberty of thought and feehng, as a simple reliance on God's Word, and an unconditional submission to it. "Let them destroy my works," said Luther; "I desire noth- ing better; for aR I wanted was to lead Christians to the Bible, that they might afterwards throw away my writings. Great God! if we had but a right under- standing of the Holy Scrijjtures, what need would there be of my books ? " God has provided for us this divine independence of all human authority; "not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." But assurance is a thing which can not be got from other minds, any more than the power of sight can be got fi'om spectacles. There must be the seeing eye, before any spectacles can help it. There are schools and plu-ases of philosophy, as well as religion, to which a man may be in bondage, and the power of the pulpit may be greatly hindered or dimin- ished in that way. "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tra- ditions 'of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Schools may spoil you, if phi- losophy and the traditions of men are taught in them, rather than the Word of God by the Spirit of God. Philosophic views of the spiritual life itself, as organic j82 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. and successional in and through a visible organization, indestructible even by the most radical corruption and apostasy, so as to embrace even the Church of Rome as an appointed and legitimate development of that life; inspiring on the one side a false and most immoral liberahty, and on the other a presumptuous and im- moral exclusiveness; such views prevent the develop- ment of power. That which is successional is de- pravity, rooting us in the race, in the wHd olive tree, out of which grace cuts us, and grafts us into Christ; grace, which comes not by organic succession, but constant divine interposition and new creation. Sec- ond causes multij)lied in sj)iritual things cut us off from God, and fi'om the belief and experience of divine power; and the Church, in some systems of spiritual philosophy, is a vast second cause, endued with divine attributes, and preventing direct access to God, almost as fatally as the " practical eternity " of a succession of eras and causes without God's inter- vention, in the scientific philosophy of an atheistic evolution. Philosophic views of penalty, as bringing all creat- ures at length into the bosom of God; philosophic views of the divine attributes, tending to pantheism; philosophic views of faith, disconnecting it from God's truth, which is its only legitimate foundation; philo- Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j8^ sophic views of history, exalting it to such a position as to make the authority of God's Word dependent upon it; the very vagueness, doubtfulness and subtlety of philosophic views or speculations generally; — all this may just leaven a man's theology so far as to spoil it, render it unfit for use, dej)rive it of regenerating effi- cacy, and render power in the pulpit impossible. Some of the most approved German writers are illus- trations of theology so spoiled. In the system of Nitzsch, for example, much applauded for its ortho- doxy, and philosophic exactness, it is maintained that as to logical position, by the letter, the tenet of abso- lute, positive, eternal punishment is undeniable, but as to reality, irreconcilable ivith the philosophy of the di- vine nature, and therefore impossible. The logical let- ter is a falsehood; the spiritual truth is that of final universal salvation. There can be no such thing as power in the pulpit, in proportion as such views have place in the preacher. Again there is the paralytic weakness and bondage attached to low and uncertain views of divine in- spiration. Here is a great secret of rottenness and feebleness. Every reader of history remembers the anecdote of Mirabeau's impression on first hearing Robespierre, then an unknown young man, speak in convention. "That young man will yet be heard 384 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. from; he will make himself known and felt, for he believes every word he says." The very opposite im- pression will be made by the pulj)it- orator unless ho is profovmdly grounded in an impregnable experi- mental assurance of the Scrij)tures as the Word of God. But an assured and steadfast faith in the Word of God is the gift of God's own Spirit. Consequently, it depends on the degree of earnestness with which the preacher himseK seeks God. If, day and night he follows hard after God, if he makes it his delight to find Him and commune with Him, if he supphcates like Moses, "I beseech thee, O Lord, show me Thy glory," then will God shine into his heart to give him the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and will give him that glorious ministration of the Spirit which exceeds in glory, that revelation by the Sj^irit searching the deep things of God, that Spirit of wisdom and revela- tion in the knowledge of Christ, and that earnest of the Spirit in the heart, which makes the Word a vivid flame, a burning Hfe, an irresistible exj)erience, a fire infolding itself, an electric light penetrating the whole being. God causes those who sow in tears to reap in joy; He gives the latter rain to those who avail them- selves of the early; and so He blesses the springing of His own seed unto life everlasting. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j8^ The knowledge and assurance of a divine inspira- tion are not to be gained bj study in the schools, not even on the highest theoiy, but only from G-od Him- self, only from the same Spii'it, by whom the Word of God is itself truly inspired. This power belongeth unto God. Archbishop Usher, with his boundless learning, before the modern German exegeiea began their studies, wrote out, with a piety like Paul's, a profound logical and holy demonstration of our de- pendence on the witness of the Spu-it. That witness was the secret of his own power, as it was of Bengel's. If men throw themselves on the knowledge and as- surance of the schools, it fails them, as when in a crit- ical moment a revolver misses fire; it fails them as power, for God vindicates that for Himself alone; and " cursed be the man who trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord; " he shall be, and his proofs shall be, like the heath in the desert, like the parched places in the wil- derness, like salt and ashes instead of verdure. AU the arguments may seem to be the same, but the life, the power, the assurance of the Holy Ghost are want- ing, and under the firmest creed thei'e will be falter- ing and doubt. When the schools of the prophets, and all the apparatus of their colleges, were multi- plied in Israel, then false prophets were multiplied, men educated, but not baptized, heirs at law, but jS6 God's Timepiece for Mail s Eternity. not at equity, graduates at the schools, but not com- missioned of the Lord Almighty. But how much more, if the theory itself be based on doubt instead of certainty. There may be such theories of inspu^ation as inspii'e nothing but anxiety and unbelief; theories so discrediting and question- ing, so dishonoring to God, His Word, and His Spirit, that the experience of divine power is rendered im- possible. If a student has been so unfortunate as to come into the ministry under such a discipline, he comes as one with a palsy; he comes distrustful and afraid, inexperienced and ashamed; he can not devel- op power, for he does not feel it, does not believe it. If a man is doubtful about a bill, a draft, a signa- ture, he can not use it with confidence; other people will not take it, but with a private mark to return it; commercial operations can not go on. If a physician is doubtful about a medicine, whether, for example, it be quinine or oak-bark, and the patient too is doubt- ful, little good will the prescription accomphsh, for there will not be the jDower, even if the medicine be genuine; so much does even nature depend for the efficacy of her real causes upon faith. But how much more the divine nature, that operates only by faith, new-creates by faith, produces the experience of life by faith. The Word of God is self-dependent, containing all Gods Timepiece for Mans Eternity. j8y things necessary for its proof, confii-mation, and en- ergy, within itself, by virtue of the inseparable pres- ence and life of the Divine Spirit; and so completely independent of all history, aU human testimony, that if all such were annihilated, aU the books and records containing it burned, the Word of God by the Spirit of God would have the same power as ever. And yet, there is nothing that in and by history has more perfect infrangible proof, accumulated and germinating forever. But that proof alone a man can not stand upon, for with aU its perfection, human testimony alone by itself has the quality of a lie; let God be true, but every man a liar. Every preacher is bound to know and jDossess the i>ower of God by the Spirit of God, and to depend on His Sj>irit and not on man; then and thus only will he know how to apj)ly human testimony in its proper place, and how to appreciate the combination between human and divine. The human testimony to which Clu'ist refers as true ceases to be fallible, and by His endorsement becomes divine. Just as His own incarnation, consti- tuted a fleshly tabernacle as divine and incorruptible as His own divine Spirit from eternity, so the words sanctioned and employed by His Sphit become them- selves Spirit and life; infaUible, incorruptible, divine. The personality of Christ carries every behever, as it did the thief upon the cross, and Paul the persecutor. ^88 God's Timepiece for Ma7is Eternity. From Genesis to the ApocaljiDse we know whom, and therefore what we have beUeved. "Whom, not having seen, we love, and in whom though now we see Him not, yet believing we rejoice with joy un- speakable and full of glory, receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of the soul." — I Pet. i., 8, 9. Of which salvation the old prophets and reasoners in the face of death inquired and searched diUgently; kept, like oui'selves, by the power of God through faith unto salvation, 7'eady to be revealed, through a Saviour, 7'eady to appear, yet neither of them among the things then visible, but ministered through them to futui'e ages, as a grace to be hoped for at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and meantime the hope itseK to be acted ujoon and acted out in holy fear, prayer, and conversation, obeying the truth through the SiDii'it, for the regeneration of the whole world. Such is the sanctifying faith created and sustained by these gosjDels and epistles. They carry such a charm of deep sincerity, such profound sense of integrity and truth, such disinter- estedness, such uninterrui^ted and uncorrupt ap- peals to the highest motives of gratitude and love; there is such undisguised absence of all offers or promises of gain in this world; such assurance, on the contrary, of loss, affliction, tribulation; such de- lighted and grateful recognition of obedience and Gods Timepiece for Maris Eternity. j8g faith in others; such gratitude for kindnesses re- ceived; such fervor of the spirit of "beneficence, for- giveness, charity; such lowHness, poverty, self-re- straint and self-denial out of love; such freedom from asceticism, superstition, formalism, spiritual des- potism, severity and cruelty; such communion both of joys and sorrows; such consolations imparted and shared; such compassion for them that are wander- ing; such an earnest imitation of Christ in all points possible on earth; such a constant thoughtfulness and beholding of His love and care and glory in heaven; such entireness and supremacy of Hving for Him, yet not as penance or painful duty, but by sweet and cheerful constraint of grateful love; such artlessness in the narratives; such entire absence of the con- sciousness or vanity of authorship, or seeking of the praises of men. It is unaccountable by any thing but a divine insj^iration. It is the work of nothing less than an inspiration infallible, and a sanctification that could come only from the Spu-it of God. And still we might go on with a volume of the characteristics of saints, and challenge any one to add a vii'tue or proof of divine goodness which is not plainly manifest, or to mention any thing omitted; yet all manifested unconsciously, unintentionally, as the lilies of the field grow and blossom. Fulfilling constantly, as never before or since, the command jpo God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity of the Lord Jesus, Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, not j^ou, and may glorify, not yourselves, but your Father in heaven, being drawn to Him by love, and in- spired by Him, and endowed by Him, the Author and Giver of all this light and glory. The evolution of such a book of narratives and letters, such reasoninsfs of divine logic and truth, ffoTin the sole premises of love, is more than human, is beyond all the possibilities of the natural man. It is infallible omniscient wisdom and love, working, patient, long-suffering, immutable, through vast and varied dispensations, interruptions, rebellions, per- versions, idolatries, and fathomless gulfs of depravity; an unceasing system of instruction, education, and pardoning mercy, from Adam to Christ, the same, yesterday, to-day, and forevei*. Now at every stage of this wondrous body and growth of divine revelation it was absolutely impos- sible for any forger to have understood what went before, or imagined or contrived an after-piece cor- resj^onding. Stand at the closure of the book of Mal- achi, and gaze into the gvdf of the future four hun- dred years. It is impossible for human power, wisdom, wit, prescience, to invent or imagine the beginning of the gospels, or the incarnation and life of Christ. God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, ^gi Stand at the close of the gosj)els, those simple exclusive portraitures of the divine Saviour of our race, His mercy and love, His words and mii-acles, His sufferings and death. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine or invent from these bio- graphic data, the Acts of the Apostles, from the Pentecostal miracle of tongues to the conversion of Saul and the establishment and visitation of the churches, ending with Paul in his own hired house preaching freely in Rome. Stand at the last trace of intelligence in the book of the Acts, and again it is absolutely hnpossible for any man to contrive the Epistles; — the chain of doc- trine, fruits, practice, development, interpretation; the divine hghts thrown back from regenerated lives over all past revelation, and forward tiU this mortal shall have put on immortahty. And once more, stand at the close of the Epistles, at the ascription of Jude, "To the only wise God our Saviour," and look forth into the untried eternity, the field of all prophecy in fulfilment. It is impos- sible for any human being, any forger, any unin- spired soul, of that age or of any age, to imagine or contrive such an Apocalypse from the Lord Jesus Christ, on the throne of the Almighty. Su.ch an opening of the future, and of heaven and hell, with such startling supernatural disclosures, such an aurora ^g2 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, over the whole heavens of embattled squadrons of flame and lightning and thunder, and yet not a con- tradiction nor incongruity of thought or words, but a j)erfect symmetry and fulfilment of all previous seeds of thought and proj)hecy. More impossible than for a man contemjjlating a seed which had been discovered in an Egyptian mummy three thou- sand years ago, to desci'ibe what would grow out of it in the coming spring resurrection, to tell before- hand its form and development, whether a tree or a vegetable, a flower or a cedar of Lebanon, a lily of the valley, or a California Gigantea, five htmdred feet high. XL VIII. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A PRECONCERTED FORGERY —BUT IF INCREDIBLE BEFOREHAND, ITS SUCCESS YET MORE IMPOSSIBLE — A VERBAL INSPIRATION NO MORE IMPROBABLE THAN A SPECIAL PROVI- DENCE. The supposition of a Corhss steam-engine contrived with all its parts, provisions, steam-chests, cylinders, motors, condensers, shafts, safety-valves, ages before the force of steam was ever known, by pre-existent savages before they had learned to talk one with God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jgj another by imitation of the cries of brutes, would be a probability of common sense, worthy of be- ing beheved and acted on, in comparison with the supposition of an uninspired human being first im- agining the story of the creation, temptation, and fall of Adam and his posterity, and then, out of these im- agined elements, contriving the forgery of a Divine Revelation, with disclosure of the plan, possibility, mystery, and history of the redemption and regen- eration of mankind, by a Saviour to come. But if the forgery, with its predictions and its planted seeds of spiritual thought and promise for faith, were deemed an incredible performance, what shall be said of its success by the fulfilment of those predictions demonstrating its truth by successive de- velopments through the march of centuries, succes- sive minds and events through intervals of distant ages entering into, and setting at work, and enlarging the fictitious scheme of the world's regeneration from sin and misery? By the supposition of its being a forgery, not one of the successive unconscious agents of this vast engine of intricate spiritual machinery could ever have had a conception or belief of that supernatural and new-creatuig design in the execu- tion of which it is in reality employed, and by force of which it does in reahty change and govern human societv. jp^ Gocfs Timepiece for Mans Eternity. So that we have such a forgery performing for thousands of years the actual spiritual work, which the very accusation of forgery against the books of the Bible denies ever to have been designed or con- templated in them; and if the contrivers of those books were forgers, a^ accused, then they never coiJd themselves have intended, much less beheved, such a divine result. And now the ideas of a Personal Creator, Lawgiver, and Providential Governor, and of sin, and conse- quent eternal death, and of an Incarnate Divine Saviour, made known by inspired Scriptiu-e are presented by Herbert Spencer's "Fu'st Principles," as a vast compound lie, ordained to be excogitated by the human reason as a sheathe for necessary truths otherwise impossible to he fastened on the human intellect ! And aU this, the foundation of a system of " sociologi- cal secularism," to be taught in our common schools and colleges, for the perfect infallible guidance of a race of future angels ! These philosophers and higher critics, rejecting the argument from design, and a plenary authoritative inspiration as incredible, propose for our belief a deity of Natural Selection and scientific experiment- alism and evolution, clothed with the authority of "Nature's pluck," and designing, contriving, and ex- perimenting for millions of years the construction of God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. ^95 a human eye for the use of the human being, before the frame, organization, or actual existence of that being shall have been imagined, or the possibility of language or of sight provided for ! A pre-existing race of men before Adam is also postulated, for hundreds of thousands of years left without the knowledge of God, and therefore cer- tainly without any claim ever made by Him, of hav- ing been their Creator, and without any provision for those spiritual wants, which alone can pronounce the man a man, in any way different from the brutes, or his organization a fit temj)le for the incarnation of the Son of God ! An evolution from the monkey is proposed as an escape from the difficulties of the Creative Genesis, and an insurance against the consequences of our yet possibly finding a fossil man just in the attitude of emerging from the likeness of his Simian parentage ! If any future age should discover such a hirth-process engraven in the rocks, what in the name of truth could men do with the book of Genesis or the theory of an infaUible insj)iration ? Let us have mercy upon our posterity beforehand, and not expose them to the hazard of such a shipwreck of theh' faith as must ensue if they ever discover the missing link between the man and his monkey anteriors. A verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is no more ^g6 God's Timepiece for Maiis Eternity. improbable, nor beset with difficulties, if a divine rev- elation be admitted at all, than the particular provi- dence of a Creator and Father, overruling all things, according to His own foreknowledge from the begin- ning of the world. Far greater objections may be urged against the particular providence, than ever have been against the particular inspiration. The two things are probable by science itself, examin- ing the biu-ied strata by which the construction of a world is proved. It is not denied that the print marks of a rain-storm may be detected on the sands of an antediluvian ocean. To-day we may examine and test the proof-sheets of photographic impressions of the form and motions of animals engraven with the rapidity of lightning. We may do the same with reminiscences of scenes, transactions, and words for- ever gone, yet capable of being renewed with in- finite exactness, even as God Himself is said to re- quire that which is past. The shadow of a humming bird flying between oneself and the sun could not be lighter, swifter, more evanescent than idle thoughts and words; yet they are engraven on the mind; a passing cloud could not change more silently; yet there is the image, its word, its lesson. As the vision of Eliphaz the Temanite, a spirit j^assed before my face; it stood stiU, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image before mine eyes, silence, and a God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity, jgj voice, a still small voice. It is gone, but it is a pres- ence forevei'. Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Is any right conception of truth or duty possible, that is not first of all and above all, responsible to the Author of truth, and of our own being and immor- tality ? We are treated from time to time to critical speculations, assuming a disinterestedness in the pur- suit of truth, higher and more divine than that of Christ our Saviour — ^just as if, indeed, the search after truth made us superior to the fear of God Himself, because Science has not yet demonstrated through Sense to Eeason that there is a Supreme personal Creator and Governor of the universe. Our respon- sibility and duty, in the province of education (vye are told, in certain quarters), is therefore fird to Truth, not to Christianity. If Christianity be indeed the truth, it is the divine fountain of all truth, the highest heaven of science; and all scientific truth is only the servant of Christ its Author; and all discoveries of science are only Christ's Supreme Providence, as Head over all things unto the Church, which is His body. His spiritual kingdom, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. But if Christianity were not true, then there is no such thing as truth, no moral nor spiritual reality, nor kingdom, nor fact, nor any responsibihty either to ^g8 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. God or natural law, which is only evolution from a "practical eternity, without Creator, Lawgiver, Gov- ernor, or design." We are thus plunged in a bound- less chaos, such as neither Lucretius nor Democritus ever in the gloom of paganism imagined. Pilate himself, when scourging and crucifying Christ, asked Him to His face. What is truth ? As if he had affirmed, " That is my sole object. My obligations are to Truth, not to Christianity, nor to the Jew- ish Scriptures, nor to any God proclaimed by any thing written in them; but to whatever truth, at what- ever cost, a scientific investigation by the senses may discover. I crucify the pretence of an infallible in- sjDiration in the Scriptures, for the sake of Truth; making myself heroically naked of aU prepossession in its favor, that I may wrestle with it, regardless of consequences. I abjure aU justification by faith, even in God, and admit nothing on authority even of God's assertion, but go by fact made known by mine own Benses." Had Prof. Huxley been there, he might have said to Pilate, "If thou have the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the Eternal and Un- knowable, be thou content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by infaUibihty, but even to bear the bad things which it jjrophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and God's Timepiece for Man s Eternity, jgg Jionesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will be to them more endurable than a paradise full of angehc shams."* Is this a suitable language even for what is called natural piety? Is it not rather the most transparent pride, whUe a Divine Creator is denied and the word of His inspiration ridiculed? XLIX. THE FINAL ARGUMENT, AND ITS PERFECTION— ILLUS- TRATION FROM THE VISION AND INSPIRATION OF THE WORD OF THE LORD UNTO EZEKIEL. "He was clothed in a vedure dipped in blood, and His name is called The Wokd of God: a name weitten, that no man knew but He Himself: King of kings and LoKD of lords." — Rev. xix. 11, 12, 16. This answers to the announcement of Christ in John xiv. 6. "I am the way, the truth, the life: no man cometh to the Father but by Me." It is that testimony of Jesus which is the sph'it of prophecy: by which heaven is opened, and He that is called faithful and true judgeth in righteousness. — Rev. xix. 10, 11. Here we discover an analogy, vast and indisputa- ble, between the divine and human personality of Christ, made flesh and dwelling among us, and the * Huxley's "Critiques and Addresses," p. 240. 400 God's Timepiece for Mans Eternity. divine and hiiman personality of the Word, the Scriptures given by inspiration of God, 'ta6a ypa.