What is the meaning of 2 Tim. i. 10, "Who hath abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel?"

THE force of the word "abolished" needs to be understood. In connection with "death" it implies a setting aside, and a making null and void of death's judicial claim. Till Christ died, Satan could claim the power of death, as it were, by judicial authority, according to the sentence pronounced by God in the garden. Hence we read in Heb. ii. 14, that Christ through death destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. The word "destroy" in this verse, is the same as that under consideration, and implies in no sense the destruction of Satan, but the absolute and judicial making null and void of his claim, as the one who had exercised the power of death. Now, the Lord is presented to us as the One who holds in His hands, by virtue of His cross and passion, the “keys of Hades and of death" (Rev. i. 18); as if part of the victory of the cross had been to wrest the keys from the grasp of Satan. Till Christ died and rose, life and incorruptibility were necessarily hidden, and hence the gospel of the grace of God is that through which they are now brought to light, and through which the glories of the world to come will yet be brought to light. One of the great efforts of Satan now is, to prevent the enlightening power of the gospel of the glory of Christ from shining into the hearts of men. (2 Cor. iv. 4.)

What are we to understand by "the rudiments of the world" in Col. ii. 8-20 ?

If we

THE rudiments or elements of the world seem, in this epistle, to refer to the things of men, in contrast with the things of Christ. The danger of the Colossians was similar to that to which we are exposed. are led away by worldly philosophy and vain deceit, we get occupied with theories of evolution, of human development, or of moral improvement, from which, as believers, we have been delivered by the cross of Christ. In Him we profess to have died to everything that could be evolved or educed from human nature, and all our resources are in Him "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." We are not to subject ourselves to the world's dogmatic teachings, or to its speculations, for we are complete, filled up, in Christ, and have no need of aught beside. To any who are troubled with doubts or difficulties arising out of the evolution theories of the day, whether infidel or semiChristian, we would especially commend this second chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, which, if intelligently read and pondered, meets the whole question, and leaves to such theories neither root nor branch.

CHRIST'S TWOFOLD REPROACH.

Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach."-HEB. xi. 26; xiii. 13.

OUR perishing fellow-sinners around us boast themselves chiefly in three things-their wisdom, their gold, and their religion. The love of gold and pride of religious ritual are now more than ever prominent in these lands and wherever the English tongue is spoken. We know, alas! how easily formal worship on Sunday can combine with making haste to be rich the rest of the week. Man's gold and man's religion are readily welded together. Awful illustrations of this are seen in the priests' gifts of "thirty pieces of silver" to Judas Iscariot, and "large money" to Roman soldiers (Matt. xxviii. 12), in order that they might uphold their corrupt temple-religion against "Jesus and the resurrection." This evil combination was and is the only way to be popular. Man's busy world hates poverty, and equally hates simple worship “in spirit and and in truth," such as the Father seeks from the "true worshippers."

Hence Christ's reproach was twofold. The first was the reproach of poverty, for He had not "where to lay His head." The second was the reproach of separation from Jewish outward religion and its temple hypocrisy and guilt, for He suffered "without the camp.'

The Epistle to the Hebrews sets in contrast Christ's holy brethren of the heavenly calling and man's professing world, and it is in this epistle that the reproach of Christ is twice mentioned.

In Heb. xi. 24-26 the subject is the "faith" of Moses, as seen in his refusing Pharaoh's palace and throne, for which apparently he had been trained, and choosing rather to suffer affliction with the Hebrew brickmakers. He thus shewed that he esteemed the "reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." He knew that any reproach of poverty for the coming Messiah and His people was of infinitely more worth than gold that perisheth, and he endured the scoff and sneer heaped upon him by Egyptians of rank and wealth in Pharaoh's court, his former associates. It was a genuine reproach of Christ on account of his poverty.

We trace the same reproach all through the Master's footsteps as given in the Gospels. "There was no room for Him in the inn." (Luke ii. 7.) Is not this the carpenter?" (Mark vi. 3.) "Have any of the rulers, or of the Pharisees, believed on Him?" (John vii. 48.) Yes, one reproach of Christ was His poverty. As has been often said, He had a manger for a cradle, a borrowed ass to ride upon, had nothing to bequeath to His own blessed mother, and was laid at last in another's grave! Though He was rich, yet in grace and for our sakes He "became poor," that we through His poverty might be rich. But how could money-loving, covetous Israel receive such an one for their Messiah?

In Heb. xiii. 13 the "reproach" is of a different kind, and one that our Lord must have incurred all His days, owing to His separation from the nation's corrupt religion. Obeying God's law perfectly from the first down to His being baptized by John in Jordan, that He might "fulfil all righteousness," He nevertheless stood aloof from all the commandments of men. He refused to wash hands at their bidding, and when they made much of clean and unclean meats, going beyond the Scripture, He openly

opposed them, teaching that nothing that entered into a man defiled him, but that which came out of his heart. Our Lord clung to the divine and spiritual, and threw far from Him traditions of elders and Jewish inventions. The temple itself had become to Him a "house of merchandise" and a "den of thieves." Thus He lived apart from the human religion of His day, and outside it all He died!

No wonder, then, that there was the mocking and the jeer of priest and hireling at the cross. And mark the form it took. "Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it again in three days, save thyself." Such was "His reproach," endured outside the gate of Jerusalem, " without the camp," that camp of Israel in which, at the first and so soon, the golden calf was set up for worship.

Now is it not just in these two characteristics of Christ's reproach that we find it so difficult to follow Him? Naturally we shun poverty, and love carnal, popular religion. The order of the two things is also important. It is only as saints love their Master's holy poverty, and avoid using the extras of their purse for themselves, that they really in spirit go forth "unto HIM without the camp." In other words, we cannot be truly "outside' on Sundays except as we have been correspondingly "outside" in self-denying poverty through the week. We may have worked "with the hands, the thing that is good," in our earthly callings, but if part of the week's wages or business gains, not needed by us, has not been used to “give to him that needeth," no wonder we have not the Master's reproach of poverty. Our fellowship may consist much in outward church details, but if there is not the grace of fellowship in temporals, we shall know little of spiritual enrichment. Loving, lowly obedience to every "jot and tittle" of God's truth cannot be dispensed with by us. But there are the weighty things of the law,

"judgment and the love of God," as well as the less weighty matters, the tithing of "mint, rue, and all manner of herbs." The latter we have to do, and not to leave the other undone.

When we have been humbly following our Lord through the week, how increasingly sweet will be our Lord's day, as we go forth" unto Him without the camp" of guilty Christendom's outward religion.

May God give us grace to understand Christ's twofold reproach, and to bear it to the end.

H. D.

A SCENE IN THE TEMPLE.

NOTES FROM AN ADDRESS ON JOHN VIII. 1-11, BY MR. T. NEWBERRY. "EVERY man went to his own house: Jesus went to the Mount of Olives." Such is the contrast given in the last verse of John vii. and the first verse of John viii.

A wondrous attraction that Mount of Olives must have had to our Lord. At its base was the garden of Gethsemane, with its shadow of Calvary. From its summit He was soon to ascend to His Father and our Father, and when He again descends from heaven His feet will stand on that mount, and it shall cleave in the midst. (Zech. xiv. 4.) Both His sufferings and His glories are thus connected with Olivet.

The feast of tabernacles had just been celebrated, and the Lord well knew the ignorance of the people. There was the temple in its grandeur and beauty, the priests in their sacred robes, the altar, with its sacrifice; but all was as a sealed book to them. Now He comes with His heavenly teaching, fresh, as it were, from God, having spent the night in communion with Him on the mount, and He takes His seat in the treasury; for He never entered the inner temple. The feast being over, the