Earlier text: General ArticlesStudy of Prophecy.
By Dr. Cumming
"We have also a more sure word 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."—2 Pet. 1:19. PETER records in his epistles the scene he witnessed on Tabor. Deep and lasting must have been the impression it made upon his mind. He makes a deduction from the scene witnessed on the mount. On it I intend to ground illustrations of the future, so far as delineated in the sacred volume. But I feel it necessary to explain the words of Peter. The common reading of the passage is, "until the day-star arise in your hearts." Such, however, is not the meaning of the apostle—"a day-star" arising in a believer's heart, is not a Scriptural idea. The true construction of the passage, and in perfect accordance with the Greek, is this: "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];" there we close the brackets, and then the words, "in your hearts," refer back to the words, "take heed." Therefore the true reading of the words is, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed in your hearts, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise." Peter speaks in language which many in this generation certainly do not accept. "We have also a more sure word of prophecy;" and he adds, "Ye do"—ill? No. "Ye do"—wrong? No; but "Ye do well to take heed." Too many excellent Christians repudiate every discussion which touches the skirts, or trenches on the merest outlines, of prophetic investigation. Let us show that such an attitude is not Scriptural, it is not even rational, and certainly it is not profitable to our souls or conducive to our happiness. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all have written prophecies, some portions of which have been translated into facts, while some of their writings remain still for the future to illustrate, and the historian to record. The last discourse of Jesus to his disciples was a portrait of the things that were to come on the earth. The disciple who loved most, called the disciple of love, was chosen while an exile on Patmos, to pre-write the events of the future. Before him swept past the apocalyptic visions that are every day being translated into facts. The objection we hear constantly urged, sometimes by Christians, always by the profane, is this: Have there not been so many misinterpretations, mistakes, and miscalculations, that we are compelled to shrink from all effort to explain those predictions that relate to the future, until the future is lost in the present, and the predictions are known to be true by our seeing their fulfillment? What, I ask, would be the use of such a theory? When the whole earth shall be covered with the glory of Tabor, we shall not need evidence that God is God, or that the New Testament is true. We shall then read its magnificent pages in the original splendor in which they were once written, and we shall have the evidence of our senses that all God ever revealed is true. But the misinterpretations of the past ought not to be dissuasives from our attempting what we can prove to be a clear and an obvious duty. In the laying of the Atlantic telegraph, the failures of the past serve to stimulate better efforts for the future, as well as contain the elements of future success. Failures are not losses. Every buoy we see floating in the channel over sandbank or shipwreck makes past disaster the ground of future safety. The wrecks of the past make the voyages of the present only more certain, and less liable to peril. But if the misinterpretation of predictions be a valid reason for not attempting to understand them, will not such objection strike much further? The Bible has been misinterpreted; are we therefore to put a padlock upon it? The words of God have been perverted; are we therefore never to read them? Christianity has been turned into dark and overshadowing superstition; is Christianity therefore to be abjured, and its sublime hopes and prospects to be put in abeyance? The abuse of a thing is no valid argument against its use. The mistakes of the past ought to be reasons for greater care, more ardent prayer, but not for neglect of the subject altogether. It has been urged that the difficulties are so many that they are insuperable. We deny it. Of course the Bible does not make us prophets. The interpreters of prophecy do not assume to be so. We are interpreters of what God has written, not prophets of what he has not written. The books of Isaiah, Daniel, Revelation—the predictions scattered through the epistles—are part and parcel of the inspired word. What is a book written for? To be read. And what is the object of reading? To understand. Is it likely that God Almighty would give us a book that we are not to read, or if we read it that it will be impossible for us to understand? Let us refer to the most difficult and mysterious book in the New Testament—the Apocalypse—how does it open? Does it say, Don't cross the threshold; don't venture to read this book, for you will never be able to understand it; cease reading the New Testament at the end of the Epistle of Jude, and leave the book of the Revelation for perusal after its visions have hardened into history? No such preliminary warning is given. On the contrary it opens saying, "Blessed is he that readeth," not unfortunate, or mistaken, or fanatical is he that readeth; but "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein." That there may be no mistake about the possibility of understanding this book, it is further called "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John." Peter says, "We have a sure word of prophecy;" as sure a prediction as facts in history are real. And he says, "Ye do," not ill, but "ye do well to take heed unto it, as unto"—what? A meteor in the swamp, that misleads? a will-o'-the-wisp, that will drive or draw you you know not whither? No; but as unto "a LIGHT that shineth in a dark place;" and you are to take heed to it until the bright and morning star appear upon the brow of night, and the Sun of Righteousness, that set amidst the clouds of Calvary, rise amidst the splendors of everlasting day, with healing under his wings. The Saviour's longest discourse was the sermon on the mount of beatitudes, and his next longest sermon was that which he pronounced upon the mount overlooking Jerusalem, when he predicted distress of nations, perplexity, the fall of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jews, and all the lights and shadows of that futurity into which we have long ago entered. It is in the course of this prophecy that the disciples said to him, What shall be the sign of thy personal advent; the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? What did the Saviour answer? Did he rebuke them? Did he say, You have no business with such subjects? Did he say, Go, and practice righteousness, and charity, and love, and truth, but crush all desire to know aught of futurity? Certainly not; he at once proceeded, in a chapter as sublime as it is rich in comfort and thought, to tell them what signs should precede his advent, what circumstances should usher it in, what shadows and clouds should lie broad, cold, and dark, upon the bosom of the earth, until the brightness of his advent came to strike them through with glory. "There shall," he said, "be signs in the sun, and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear of the things that are coming on the earth. And then"—when? just when you see these things—"then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Let us not try to be wiser than the Master; read these words, and see if they only are the fanatics who try to understand them; or whether there be not some ground for suspicion that they are the fools that cast ridicule and discredit on them. The Saviour has assured his people that he will come again. He has not left us finally; we are in an interim condition, between the Christ that was crucified 1850 years ago, and the Christ that will come in the glory of his Father and with his holy angels. All Christians that repeat the apostles' creed believe that Jesus will come personally to our world—that he who breathed our atmosphere before shall breathe it again—that he who raised the dead in Palestine shall raise the dead throughout the whole globe—that he who calmed the tempestuous ocean will stretch his kingly hand over all creation, and there shall be an everlasting and unbroken calm. He will come, in the language of the angel sent to tell the sorrowing disciples upon Olivet, when they mourned his departure from them: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come—so come—in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." Can words be plainer? He rose in the air, the cloud his chariot, the shechinah his glory, and he disappeared; the cloud will be his chariot again, and he will come, in his own language, "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory;" or as the apostle says, "behold he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him." "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven"—the Lord himself shall descend from heaven. These are weighty words; we don't appreciate them as we ought. We think too much of death, too little of Him who is the Lord of life and the destroyer of death. We have nothing to do with death, but to ignore it; we have everything to do with the Lord of the living, the destroyer of death, and to look for him, worship and adore him. And certainly in recent time this subject has been investigated by pious, learned, and studious minds, to an extent and with a success with which it never was investigated before. The Evangelical party in the Church of England generally concur in the duty of studying the sure word of prophecy. Growing numbers in other churches agree with them. But if none accepted the study it would be no matter except a source of sorrow. We are to call no man "Master;" for our rule of belief is not what the most men say, or the best men think, or the fathers have written, or popes have fulminated, but to the law and the testimony; what say the Scriptures? if they speak not according to them, it is because there is no truth in them. Let this great truth sink deep into our hearts, that He who came personally to die, will come personally to reign. It is no dispute as to the meaning of the second advent; if language has any sense, if grammar is capable of construction, it must be accepted as a literal and a personal advent. How will that sublime scene, it may be very near, startle a world that has no thought of it, and no care about it. A glory in comparison with which Tabor's light was dimness, will flash to every eye, for "every eye shall see him," and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see—some departing like a vision forever; others embracing it with joy unutterable and full of glory, the salvation of our God. But whatever be the contrasting effects, his coming draweth near.—Dr. Cumming. GRIEF A FRIEND
By Henrietta R. Elliott
WHEN Grief shall come to thee,
Think not to flee;
For Grief, with steady pace,
Will win the race. Nor crowd her forth with Mirth;
For at thy hearth,
When Mirth is tired and gone,
Will Grief sit on. But make of her thy friend,
And in the end
Her counsels will grow sweet;
And with swift feet Three lovelier than she
Will come to thee—
Calm Patience, Courage strong,
And Hope—erelong.
-Henrietta R. Elliott. WHAT a blessing to a household is a merry, cheerful woman—one whose spirits are not affected by wet days, or little disappointments, or whose milk of human kindness does not sour in the sunshine of prosperity! Such a woman, in the darkest hour, brightens the house like a piece of sunny weather. The magnetism of her smiles, the electrical brightness of her looks and movements affects every one. The children go to school with a sense of something great to be achieved, her husband goes into the world in a conqueror's spirit. No matter how people worry and annoy him all day, far off her presence shines, and he whispers to himself, "At home I shall find rest." So, day by day she literally renews his strength and energy; and if you know a man with a beaming face, a kind heart, and a prosperous business, in nine cases out of ten you will find he has a wife of this kind.—Selected. The following, from Farrar's "Life and Work of Paul," is an excellent statement, in brief, of the object and scope of Stephen's address to the Sanhedrim:— "Since the charge brought against St. Stephen was partly false and partly true, it was his object to rebut what was false, and justify himself against all blame for what was true. Hence apology and demonstration are subtly blended throughout his appeal, but the apology is only secondary, and the demonstration is mainly meant to rouse the dormant consciences of his hearers. Charged with blasphemous words, he contents himself with the incidental refutation of this charge by the entire tenor of the language which he employs. After his courteous request for attention, his very first words are to speak of God under one of his most awful titles of majesty, as the God of the Shechinah. On the history of Moses he dwells with all the enthusiasm of patriotic admiration. To the temple he alludes with entire reverence. Of Sinai and the living oracles he uses language as full of solemnity as the most devoted rabbi could desire. But while he thus shows how impossible it must have been for him to have uttered the language of a blasphemer, he is all the while aiming at the establishment of facts far deeper than the proof of his own innocence. The consummate art of his speech consists in the circumstance that while he seems to be engaged in a calm, historical review, to which any Jewish patriot might listen with delight and pride, he is step by step leading up to conclusions which told with irresistible force against the opinions of his judges. While he only seems to be reviewing the various migrations of Abraham, and the chequered fortunes of the patriarchs, he is really showing that the covenants of God, with his chosen people, having been made in Ur and Haran and Egypt, were all parts of one progressive purpose, which was so little dependent on ceremonials or places as to have been anterior not only to the existence of the tabernacle and temple, not only to the possession of the Holy Land, but even to the rite of circumcision itself. While sketching the career of Joseph, he is pointing allusively to the similar rejection of a deliverer greater than Joseph. While passing in review the triple periods of forty years which made up the life of Moses, he is again sketching the ministry of Christ, and silently pointing to the fact that the Hebrew race had at every stage been false alike to Moses and to God. This is why he narrates the way in which, on the first appearance of Moses to help his suffering countrymen, they rudely spurned his interference; and how in spite of their rejection he was chosen to lead them out of the house of bondage. In defiance of this special commission—and it is well worth notice, in order to conciliate their deeper attention, this palmary point in his favor is not triumphantly paraded, but quietly introduced as an incident in his historic summary—Moses had himself taught them to regard his own legislation as provisional, by bidding them listen to a Prophet like unto himself who should come hereafter. But the history of Moses, whom they trusted, was fatal to their pretense of allegiance. Even when he was on Sinai they had been disloyal to him, and spoken of him as "this Moses," and as one who had gone they knew not where. And, false to Moses, they had been yet more false to God. The Levitical sacrifices had been abandoned, from the very time of their institution, for sacrifices to the host of Heaven; and the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of Remphan, had been dearer to them than the tabernacle of Witness and the Shechinah of God. At last a Jesus—for, in order that he might be heard to due purpose, Stephen suppresses the name of that Jesus of whom his thoughts were full—led them and their tabernacle into the land of which he dispossessed the Gentiles. That tabernacle, after an obscure and dishonored history, had passed away, and it may perhaps be intimated that this was due to their indifference and neglect. David—their own David—had indeed desired to replace it by another, but the actual building of the house was carried out by the less faithful Solomon. But even at the very time the house was built it had been implied in the prayer of David, and in the dedication prayer of Solomon, that "the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands." And to guard against the dangerous superstition into which the reverence paid to material places, is apt to degenerate—to obviate the trust in lying words which thought it sufficient to exclaim, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these"—the great Prophet had cried, in God's name, "Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool; what house will ye build for me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of my abiding? Did not my hand make all these things?" The inference from this—that the day must come, of which Jesus had prophesied to the woman of Samaria, in which neither in Gerizim nor yet in Jerusalem should men worship the Father, constituted a perfect defense against the charge that anything which he had said could be regarded as a blasphemy against the temple. The time spent by many persons in profitless desultory reading, if concentrated upon a single line of study, would make them masters of an entire literature or science.—Matthews. Never exhibit anger, impatience, or excitement when an accident happens. Personal Work With Scholars.
WE hope that every Sabbath-school teacher will read the following item from the Christian at Work. The object of the Sabbath-school is not to amuse the children for an hour a week, but to teach them the Bible, and lead them to Christ. The teacher may not be able in every case to accomplish all that is desired, but if no effort is made in that direction, of what value is the teaching? And the teacher must remember that he is not merely to teach about the Bible, but to teach the Bible itself; not to teach about Christ, but to teach Christ. A Sunday-school scholar was recently heard to make this confession: She had attended Sunday-school for six years, and in all that time no personal appeal of any kind had been addressed to her by her teacher to become a Christian. Finally one summer her teacher was away, and for six weeks another teacher occupied the teacher's chair. This teacher's method was as different as it well could be; there was a practical application of the lesson, followed by what some would call "leading questions." But the result was that before the old teacher had returned two scholars in the class had determined to confess their Saviour, which they did, and shortly afterwards united with the church. This incident fairly illustrates the worthlessness of much of the Sunday-school instruction of the day, which consists wholly in teaching the naked facts of the lesson, utterly ignoring their practical bearing upon the daily life. Now it goes without saying that Sunday-school teaching of this kind is not worth all the trouble it costs. The paraphernalia and appointments of the Sunday-schools, the responsive readings and waltzing tunes, the blackboard and the mottoes, picture cards, papers and books, plus the services of the teachers—all these and more, instituted that the scholar may receive a half-hour's instruction once a week on the bare facts of the lesson—well positively it does not pay. The Sunday-school is called the nursery of the church; there is sarcasm in the phrase, for it is to be feared that many Sunday-school chapels are little else than religious play-rooms for the children. A teacher who teaches the Sunday-school lesson, and yet who fails to say one word to the scholar as to the duty of right living, and the solemn obligation of discharging his duty to God—utterly fails in his first and most imperative duty. The highest power is not in the realm of the purely natural, but inheres in the domain of the spiritual, and the trend of the teaching must be in that direction to rightly be "teaching" at all. You might as well expect to make flesh for your children by feeding them with naked bone, as to build up the spiritual nature or bring a boy or girl to better living by drawing a picture of a fortress of Machærus or speculating as to whether the soul of Lazarus was in the same place during his first funeral as at his second. The Sunday-School Teacher’s Life-Work
TALKING lately with a young man, who is a splendid specimen of Christian manhood—“ Do you remember” he asked, “a Miss K., who, many years ago, was a Sunday-school teacher in your church in Philadelphia?” “Right well do we remember her, with her sheer Scotch grit, and her abundant Christian grace.” “Well,” he continued, “she was just the best woman that I ever saw. She was my teacher, and not only my teacher, but my friend and confidant. And not only mine, but such she was to all her boys. And she would have us often at her house, and interested herself in everything that interested us. I shall never forget how, when you were raising money to build your new church, she gave the money she had saved for a bonnet, and wore the old one another season. I tell you, she was a Christian, through and through.” He believed in that teacher before he believed in Christ. It would not be too much to say that, just because he believed in that teacher, he came to believe in Christ. He is now a successful pastor in the far West; and she, in her humble little sphere, is plodding along in the far East, little dreaming how long are the lines in which she is projecting her power. Possibly she may read these little lines; if so, she will not be unduly lifted up, but only in gratitude and praise. And let other teachers who may read this record, learn a lesson as to which way lies the secret of success in the Sunday-school teacher’s life-work. The Consequences of Idleness
By doing nothing we learn to do ill. Directions for Reading the Scriptures.
The Voice of Truth gives the following Directions for Reading the Scriptures, of which M. M. O. of that paper says that it was appended by Tyndale to his version of the New Testament, first printed in English in 1525. He was martyred at Valvoord, near Brussels, in 1536:— TO THE READER.—Give diligence, reader [I exhort thee], that thou come with a pure mind, and as the Scripture saith, with a single eye unto the words of health, and of eternal life; by the which [if we repent and believe them] we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy the fruits of the blood of Christ; which blood crieth not for vengeance as the blood of Abel, but hath purchased life, favor, grace, blessing, and whatsoever is promised in the Scriptures to those that believe and obey God; and standeth between us and wrath, vengeance, curse, and whatsoever the Scripture threateneth against the unbelievers and disobedient, which resist, and consent not in their hearts to the law of God, that it is holy, just, and ought so to be. Mark the plain and manifest places of the Scriptures, and in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them; but [as Paul saith] let all be conformable and agreeing to the faith. Note the difference of the law and the gospel. The one asketh and requireth, the other pardoneth and forgiveth. The one threateneth, the other promiseth all good things to them that set their trust in Christ only. The gospel signifieth glad tidings, and is nothing but the promise of good things. All is not gospel that is written in the gospel book. For if the law were away, thou couldst not know what the gospel meant; even as thou couldst not see pardon, favor, and grace, except the law rebuked thee, and declared unto thee thy sin, misdeed, and trespass. Repent and believe the gospel, as saith Christ in the first of Mark. Apply always the law to thy deeds, whether thou find lust in the bottom of thine heart to the lawward; and so shalt thou no doubt repent, and feel in thyself a certain sorrow, pain, and grief to thine heart, because thou canst not with full lust [i. e., desire] do the deeds of the law. Apply the gospel, that is to say, the promises, unto the deserving of Christ, and to the mercy of God and his truth, and so shalt thou not despair, but shall feel God as a kind and merciful Father. And his Spirit shall dwell in thee; and shall be strong in thee; and the promises shall be given thee at the last [though not by and by, lest thou shouldst forget thyself and be negligent], and all threatenings shall be forgiven thee for Christ's blood's sake, to whom commit thyself altogether, without respect either of thy good deeds or thy bad. WILLIAM TYNDALE.