ON THE MODE OF PRESENTING THE GOSPEL.

NOTES OF A CONFERENCE BIBLE READING.

MAN'S obligation to obey the gospel does not hang upon his good pleasure to obey, but entirely on God's command. God's decree is not the question, for "God commandeth all men everywhere to repent." "There is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." He is not a Mediator between God and angels that sinned; He is their judge.

The Scriptures make no "offer" of the gospel to men. In an offer there is not authority, but a kind of licence to accept or refuse. The gospel is a command from the king, an invitation from the Lord of heaven and earth; and, lastly, an entreaty from God the Father. There is in it the joint supplication of the Father and the Son through the Spirit. "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God."

An "offer" is feeble and weak, and does not belong to the gospel. It does not represent God as the Lord of lords, nor as the great King who invites to a banquet, nor as the Father of mercies. The words of God as found in the Gospels represent the claims of God, and those words which give God His true character should be used by us in preaching the gospel.

The words " offered faith" as given in the margin of Acts xvii. 31 are not a true rendering of the original, and are rejected in the Revised Version. The meaning is, that God has presented to all men a ground of confidence.

In the three ways in which the gospel may be presented the man who obeys not, is constituted a rebel against right, a refuser of grace, and a rejecter of mercy. In the one case the throne of God is brought before us; in the second, the riches which surround the throne, as seen in the banquet; and in the third, God's bowels of mercies. For a sinner who rejects such a gospel what can there be but hell?

In speaking to ten thousand or to one let us remember that unbelief denies the sovereignty of God, despises the riches of His grace, and makes light of His tender mercy and pity. Let us instruct those to whom we preach, not only as to the blessedness of faith, but as to the guilt of unbelief; so shall we represent God fitly. Man's worst sin is his rejection of the gospel. It lies at the very root of much that is called Christianity. The very sin which is the highest disobedience is the life and soul of the world's Christianity, be it Roman or Protestant.

It is the Cain altar instead of the Abel altar. We cannot join with the world in seeking to reform men without damaging our own communion with God. Alas! many of God's Nazarites are shorn in the Delilah lap of the world's love and approbation.

When Abraham knew the doom that was to overtake Sodom, could he have encouraged its people to improve themselves, to adorn their houses, etc.? He would have said, “Depart, for the whole place is doomed.” To look at matters in this light would settle all efforts on the part of disciples of Christ to improve the world apart from the gospel, which saves out of it. The axe is laid to the root of the tree, and it is loss of time to seek to improve that which God has condemned as utterly bad.

The testimony of Scripture touching man's alienation from God is plainly recorded. In this respect there is no

difference between Jew and Gentile, between one nation and another, between one class of mankind and another— all are destitute of righteousness; "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Rom. iii. 23.) All the sons of Adam are in every age the same. When man stands before God he has not a shred of righteousness. As between man and man (according to Rom. v. 7), there is much which human history records of men as being both good and righteous, but not before God. And besides the state of alienation which is common to all ages and conditions of men, there is a relative progress in the hardening of man's heart and conscience against God which the devil brings about, leading men on to despise the very goodness of God.

In Jeremiah xvii. 9, we read, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked;" literally it is "incurably sick." Let us remember chapter xiii. 23.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil." Before the flood Scripture gives this testimony: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Gen. vi. 5.) Jeremiah gives his testimony by the Spirit after God had proved man's heart through giving the law. So also in Isa. v. 4 we read, 'What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done to it? wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes." This puts man's accountability in the strongest light. God had a right, and claimed His right, and the conscience of His people assented. They said at the first, "All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." (Ex. xxiv. 7.)

It may be

The faculty called conscience can never die. It

lulled to sleep, it can be corrupted, and the devil can pervert it, so that Saul of Tarsus can be persuaded that he is doing God service in persecuting saints. But with all this the conscience can never die, and when it is waked up by God's truth it does its proper office in taking part with God and justifying Him; this is what it will do in hell, it will justify God, while the will and the heart will be utterly alienated from God, and let loose on the creature himself.

Is conscience a faculty that was acquired by the fall ?

If I am in health, I do not notice that I have a hand; but let it be hurt, and at once I know it. So with Adam in uprightness; his conscience came into office when he sinned; it sounded the trumpet then, but the faculty of conscience he possessed before; and it approved him when upright, and condemned him when guilty.

Think of Julius Cæsar and Judas Iscariot in hell. They must both condemn themselves. Julius Cæsar must say, "I am punished here, and am banished from my throne, because I covered it with guilt." But Judas Iscariot would have to say, "I knew the King of kings, I kissed His face, I betrayed Him!" A worm that never dies must Judas have, such as Julius Cæsar can never know. The hell of the future begins even now on earth.

Rom. ii. 1-11 shows that God has this rule of executing judgment upon man. He executes it after long-suffering; and let us remember that He did not deal in long-suffering when He cast out from their habitation the angels that sinned, but he does deal in long-suffering with man, on the ground of the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. God does not execute judgment before warning has been given, and long-suffering has come to an end. God makes such a manifestation to man of his state as to leave no more room for long-suffering; and the wickedness of man

compels Him to arise and execute judgment. Then man's confession will be like that of Pharaoh, "The Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked." God will never fail in procuring from His enemies an acknowledgment of the righteousness of the sentence which His judgment pronounces on sin.

The evangelist must take heed to show not only the justice of God in condemning the sinner, but the equity of the punishment. Salvation is of God, but damnation is of the sinner. Oh, let us yearn over the souls of the unsaved, but let us get our yearnings in the Father's house. Then we shall go to preach the whole truth; but if we are merely driven by conscience, or if our motive is only care for souls, we shall preach a stunted gospel. If we are not in communion with the Father's love, it will not be natural for us to talk of the pleasures of the Father's house. It must be our chief business to dwell there, then we shall know the power and warmth of the Father's love, and we shall be constrained to speak of it, whether to saints or sinners, as those who "have known and believed the love of God."

"BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD."

IN SICKNESS.

"Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus ; when THEREFORE He had heard that he was sick, He ABODE TWO DAYS still in the same place where He was.” (Jno. xii. 5, 6.)

"Trophimus have I LEFT at Miletum sick." (2 Tim. iv. 20.)

IN THE STORM.

“He saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other and there arose a great storm of wind, and the

side