Protestantism and Christianity are two different things. The or e protests against what is wrong; the other confesses what is right. Many protest against evil without confessing what is good.

We think very little of what the early Christians thought very much of the kingdom of God and Christ as Lord. People now-a-days grasp Him as a Saviour, but they do not confess Him as Lord.

Phil. iv. 3.-Out of hundreds of workers we can seldom find one yoke-fellow. There may be plenty of fellow-workers, but we may not get yoked together with any, like a pair of oxen bearing the same yoke.

The only real high-church people are those who acknowledge Christ as their Head and themselves as His members.

Phil. iv. 3.—Did you ever think of having your name written in the "book of life "—in God's registry, not man's?

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The believer, Christ says, "hath everlasting life," "shall never perish," shall not come into condemnation," "is passed from death to life." What wonderful words!

What corsola-
Nothing shall

tion to the sorrowful, the bereaved, the sick! separate us from the love of Christ. Though we realize sometimes that "flesh and heart fail," and that through much tribulation we are entering the kingdom, we need not be troubled or afraid. Five minutes with Christ will make up for all we can endure below.

Phil. iv. 6, 7.—It is easy to rest one's soul upon God, and trust in the all-atoning blood of Christ, but how few Christians act up to this verse and make God their care-bearer—bringing every care to Him and leaving it with Him. Only such as do this know what it is to have the peace of God, which passeth understanding, keeping heart and mind. We are apt to be troubled with this or that care, but here is the remedy, "casting all your care upon Him."

Others can bear trials, sorrows, and sickness, but it is the privilege of God's people only to "glory in tribulation" and things that are contrary to the flesh. And the Lord generally meets us in those things that are most contrary; as an old

writer says:

“We are never met to any purpose till we are met

in our Isaacs."

Phil. iv. 8.- "Whatsoever things are lovely." A Christian should never be outdone in good manners. He should always

commend himself to the conscience of every man.

How the Gospel raises one above circumstances and surroundings! If trial or sickness comes in the most trying form, we have a God to whom to bring every complaint, and we know that He is making everything work together for good to them that love Him.

All

The Bible is a most wonderful book and will bear the most strict scrutiny. No word too much, no expression redundant, but all written with a view to our instruction, and exhibiting the only perfect workmanship of God that we can see. creation is marred, and the new creation is still encumbered with the old; that is, we Christians, who are the new creation, are burdened and crippled by the flesh. But the Word of God is perfect, and it is a great comfort to know that we have one book which we need not peruse with doubt and suspicion, but where truth and only truth is to be found.

If you are not gathering unto Him you are scattering : "He that is not with Me is against Me.”

NOTES AND REPLIES.

What instruction is conveyed to us in Ex. xxxiii. 7, by Moses' taking the tent" without the camp," and what tent was it?

There can be no doubt that this tent had some moral connection with the goats' hair tent, called in the A. V. the "tabernacle of the congregation," but more properly, "the tent of meeting," as the expression is first applied to this tent. The name was doubtless

suggested by God's word to Moses (Ex. xxix. 42, 43), “There will I meet with the children of Israel.” At this time defilement had come into the camp by reason of the golden calf, and as there was as yet no altar, Israel's sin obliged God to leave the camp, and, in sympathy with the mind of God, Moses pitches outside the camp the tent to which the people had been accustomed to come to enquire of God through him, and everyone who sought the Lord" went out to this tent. Never afterwards, so long as the altar occupied its place before the tabernacle,

did God go outside the camp, however heinously Israel sinned. The altar secured access, and therefore while the altar remained in Shiloh or in Jerusalem, there was always a ground of recovery, and it was not until the altar and temple were destroyed, first by the Babylonians and afterwards by the Romans, that God forsook the land of Israel and gave His people over into the hands of their enemies. The truth of atonement, represented by the altar, is all important in these days, as indicating the only ground on which God can bear with the sinner or meet him in his need. The altar must always be connected in our minds with the mercy-seat (or atonement-seat), as they are connected by the blood which was sprinkled on both.

Why is David called in 2 Chron. ii. 15, the seventh son of Jesse, while in 1 Sam. xvi. seven sons pass before Samuel, and David seems to have been the eighth ?

Jesse, it is said, "made his seven sons "(rather than " seven of his sons") pass before Samuel, but only six may have actually passed, and perhaps the absence of the youngest was considered a matter of no importance. The principle in the human heart of setting aside that which God sets His heart on, may thus be illustrated, for God was about to anoint David as His king. It is possible, however, that one of Jesse's sons had died, leaving no issue, and his name was therefore omitted in the genealogy of 2 Chronicles.

What is the faith that is made shipwreck of in 1 Tim. i. 19 ?

In this epistle as in some others, "faith" often means, not the subjective principle whereby we lay hold of God's truth, but the object on which faith rests, or the whole revelation of God. Those spoken of in this passage had ceased to hold the object of faith in a good conscience, and, as the result, had made shipwreck, and were in danger of being lost, like stony ground hearers, who believe for a while and then fall away. Of whom are the words in Rev. xxii. 18, 19 spoken?

Verses 6 to 21 of this chapter contain our Lord's final words to the Church of this dispensation, typified by the seven churches of the earlier chapters. If anyone shall add to the words of this book, God shall add to him, we are told, the plagues that are written in it, and if any man shall take away from its words, "God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.” (R.V. comp. v. 14.) In either case the person would be lost, and therefore wilful apostacy, on the part of one who has professed the truth, is contemplated; something similar to the sin against the Holy Ghost, This solemn warning needs to be remembered in this day, when there is so much wilful rejection of God's truth, and so much wilful adding thereto.

THINGS SECRET AND REVEALED.

THOUGH the twilight of former ages has so given place to the full blaze of noonday brightness that it can be said "the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth" (1 John ii. 8), yet the statement of Moses still abides: "Secret things belong to the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us" (Deut. xxix. 29); and if we are simply bent upon taking possession of the latter we shall have neither time nor wish to intrude (Col. ii. 18) into the former. The most instructed saint of God is yet but as a child waiting for the day of true manhood, even touching the understanding of things revealed, albeit a child walking in the pathway of true wisdom; but if we turn from things revealed to speculate upon what is not written we forsake the path of wisdom. for that of folly, to our own damage, and to the dishonour of that Spirit of truth who, by the written word of God alone, guides into all the truth those in whom He dwells.

A few centuries back there was much discussion on the question whether the incarnation of the Son of God might have taken place apart from the necessity of redemption; and in our day we have a revival of this in the suggestion that redemption was no part of God's original purpose, but that if sin had not entered into the world the Son of God might have become incarnate and have taken man (ie., Adam's race) into union with Himself. It is well therefore to be reminded that we have nothing to do with questions as to what God could or would have done if man had not sinned, and we need to be warned that Satan may rob us of the profit and blessing which arise from

contemplating what God has done and is doing in circumstances which exist, by leading us to spend our time in vainly trying to imagine what He would have done in certain other circumstances.

It is a simple, though a solemn fact, that sin did enter the world and mar the original work of the Creator, and unless we are disposed to question His absolute sovereignty, and to think that anything could take place without His permission, we surely must believe that He permitted sin to enter for high and holy reasons, and that He will be more glorified in dealing with a race destroyed by sin, than He would have been had man kept his pristine state of innocence. Perhaps no one will deny that the existence of sin, with all its awful consequences, is a mystery which we cannot at present comprehend, and it makes us feel that there are depths in God's ways that we cannot fathom, as well as heights that we cannot scale. But we have to do with what is, and not with what might have been, and no one is justified in saying that "God has assuredly not done more for man fallen than He would have done for man in a state of obedience." Who hath known the mind of the Lord," except so far as He has been pleased to reveal it? Who can say what God would have done if man had not sinned? Where can the faintest hint be found in Gen. i. and ii. of anything higher for sinless man than Eden with its beauties, and perfect dominion in this terrestrial sphere?

We may further ask, Could there be such a thing as union between the Creator and the creature simply as a creature and on the ground of creation? In 1 Cor. xv. 47, 48 we have an essential contrast drawn between the earthy" and "the heavenly," irrespective, apparently, of the question of sin, for the first man as formed "of the earth" was not a sinner, but still was "earthy" and 66 natural."