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Signs of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 22.

Value of Bible Study

Signs of the Times

Jun 10, 1886

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1886

Value of Bible Study.

By Mrs. E. G. White

BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
SAID Christ: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me." No one can neglect the word of God, and yet attain to Christian perfection. But by carefully searching that word, we become acquainted with the divine Model; and in order to imitate the Pattern, it must be frequently and closely inspected.
As we study the life of Christ, we discover in ourselves defects of character; our unlikeness to him is so great that we cannot be his followers without a very great change in our life. Still we study, with a desire to be like our great Exemplar; we catch the looks, the spirit, of our beloved Master. By beholding, by "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," we become changed into the same image. We cannot imitate the life of Christ while we are looking away from him; we must do it by dwelling upon and talking of him, by seeking to refine the taste and elevate the character, by trying through earnest, persevering effort, through faith and love, to approach the perfect Pattern. The attention being fixed upon Christ, his image, pure and spotless, becomes enshrined in the heart as "the chiefest among ten thousand and the one altogether lovely." Even unconsciously we imitate that with which we are familiar; and by gaining a knowledge of Christ, of his words, his habits, his lessons of instruction, and by imitating the virtues of the character we have so closely studied, we become imbued with the spirit of the Master, which we have so much admired.
Those who know the blessedness of a union with God should not fail to exemplify the life of Christ in their daily conversation, in pure and virtuous characters. By doing good, by being courteous and beneficent, they adorn the Christian doctrine, and show that the truth of heavenly origin beautifies the character and ennobles the life. Christ's followers are "living epistles, known and read of all men." Their daily lives recommend the truth of God to those who have been prejudiced against it by nominal professors, who have a form of godliness, while their lives testify that they know nothing of its sanctifying power.
The word of God has been sadly neglected, instead of being appreciated as it should have been. This book, revealing the will of God to man, deserves to be held in the highest esteem; for it gives instruction of inestimable value to all classes. Its teachings are so plain that even the humblest and most ignorant can understand them, and learn to so order their conversation and be so circumspect in deportment as to bring no dishonor or reproach upon the cause of their Redeemer. If they have living faith in God, they will not by their inconsistencies furnish occasion to bring the truth into disrepute when it should be a savor of life unto life.
The truths of God's word, received into the heart, have an animating power; and those who will frame any excuse for neglecting to become acquainted with the Scriptures will neglect the claims of God in many respects. The character will be deformed, the words and acts a reproach to the truth.
The injunction of our Saviour to search the Scriptures should be religiously regarded by every man, woman, and child who professes his name. The student in the Sabbath-school should feel as thoroughly in earnest to become intelligent in the knowledge of the Scriptures as to excel in the study of the sciences. If either is neglected, it should be the lessons of the six days. Teachers in the Sabbath-school have a missionary work given them; it is to teach the Scriptures, not, parrot-like, to repeat over that which they have taken no pains to understand. "They are they which testify of me"—the Redeemer, him in whom our hopes of eternal life are centered. If teachers are not imbued with a spirit of truth, and care not for the knowledge of what is revealed in the word of God, how can they present the truth in an attractive light to those under their charge? The prayer of Christ for his disciples was, "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." If we are to be sanctified through a knowledge of the truth found in the word of God, we must have an intelligent knowledge of that word. We must search the Scriptures, not merely rush through a chapter and repeat it, taking no pains to understand it, but we must dig for the jewels of truth, which will enrich the mind, and fortify the soul against the wiles of the arch-deceiver.
Parents plead trifling excuses for not interesting themselves in the Bible lessons with their children, and they fail to become conversant with the Scriptures. Fathers excuse themselves from disciplining their own minds. They do not seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, but exalt the temporal above the spiritual and eternal. This forgetfulness of God and his word is the example they give their children, which moulds their minds after the worldly standard, and not after the exalted standard erected by Christ. Mothers, too, are unfaithful to their trust. The inward adorning of the mind and the culture of the soul are neglected as though inferior to the adornment of the apparel. Their own minds and the minds of their children are starved in order to follow custom and fashion.
Fathers and mothers, take up your long-neglected duties. Search the Scriptures yourselves; assist your children in the study of the sacred word. Make diligent work because of past neglect. Do not send the children away by themselves to study the Bible; but read it with them, teach them in a simple manner what you know, and keep in the school of Christ as diligent students yourselves.
Jesus, the greatest teacher the world has ever seen, recognized the value of the Holy Scriptures, and expounded them to his disciples. After his resurrection, he drew near to two of them as they were on the way to Emmaus, talking, as they went, of the disappointed hopes occasioned by the death of the beloved Master. They told him of the prophet mighty in word and deed who had been taken by wicked hands and crucified. And now it was the third day, and strange reports had been brought to their ears that Jesus had risen, and had been seen by Mary and certain of the disciples. Jesus said to them, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken; ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" And beginning at Moses and the prophets, "he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."
Jesus reproved the disciples for not being acquainted with the scriptures that testified of the Messiah. Had they been familiar with the Scriptures, their faith would have been sustained in the hour of trial, and their hope would have remained unshaken; for the treatment Christ would receive at the hands of those he came to save was plainly stated in the prophecies. The disciples were astonished that they had not recognized Jesus at once, as soon as he spoke with them by the way, and that they had failed to remember the scriptures which he had brought to their mind. They had lost sight of the divine word; but when the things spoken by the prophets were brought to their remembrance, faith revived, and hope again sprang up in their hearts. And when he was parted from them, they said one to another, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?"
The apostle tells us: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." If Christians would earnestly search the Scriptures, more hearts would burn with the vivid truths therein revealed. Their hopes would brighten as they dwell upon the precious promises strewn like pearls all through the sacred writings. In contemplating the history of the patriarchs, the prophets, the men who loved and feared God and who walked with him,—in dwelling upon the virtue and piety of these holy men of old,—the spirit which inspired them would kindle a flame of love and holy fervor in the hearts of those who would be like them in character.

HE COMETH AGAIN!

By Prophetic Times

HE cometh again! Shout the glad refrain Till it echoes o'er mountain and valley and plain; Till earth's weary hearted, on sea and on land, Shall hear the glad tidings—the Lord is at hand!
He cometh again! Not to suffer, but reign, And all the bright, holy ones shine in his train; O ye broken-hearted on sea and on land, The "day-star" is dawning—the Lord is at hand!
He cometh again! And sorrow and pain Shall vanish before him and come not again; While the shadows of darkness on sea and on land Shall light up with glory—the Lord is at hand!
—Prophetic Times.

Rising Above Moods and Feelings

A MAN must always seek to rise above his moods and feelings—to let them move within him, but not allow them to storm around him.
—A Sea-Board Parish.

Confession Makes Half Amends

CONFESSION of a fault makes half amends.

God in the Old Testament.

By Samuel Allen Harlow

THE study of the Old Testament ought to have for us the very deepest interest. It brings before us in vivid, brilliant colors, scenes which have peculiar and impressive characteristics. In very many of the scenes that glow upon the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, we see the immediate and personal connection of God with the strange and solemn events that make up the life of a great nation. In the Old Testament, God draws aside the curtains of Heaven, and stands boldly, vividly, majestically, and impressively revealed to the eyes of men. We see, as it were, the hand uplifted with the sword of punishment, or the arm of mercy stretched forth in deliverance.
Many to-day are losing, in a large measure, the idea of a personal God. He is receding into a vague, shadowy, almost unthinkable, being clothed round about in robes of inscrutable mystery, a shadow against the background of human life, an apparition without substance, rising before the thought of men as some colossal enigma which human thought cannot solve or explain. This is not the God of the Old Testament.
On the great background of the Old Testament, God stands clothed in majesty, his voice rolling in tones of love and warning over the hearts of men. The Old Testament reveals God to us as a tremendous and vivid personality; as a God hating wickedness and loving righteousness.
The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a being who loves, with an infinite and divine love, truth and righteousness, and who hates with the intensity of a being who is holy, all iniquity. And it is this personality of God, which is so vividly revealed to us in the Old Testament, that imparts to that book its peculiar charm and interest. We feel silenced and awed in the presence of the existence and personality of such a God. The history of Israel becomes in our sight profoundly interesting. It becomes a wonderfully real history. The scenes which the Old Testament present to us for our study and profit are all aglow with the vividness, picturesqueness, and brilliancy of great events wherein we see, as though portrayed in massive outlines, and in splendor and richness and strength of coloring, the tumultuous warring, disloyal, and sinning life of nations and individuals. We see, in these narratives in the Old Testament, the flashing armor of hosts tramping to battle, the gleam of swords and spears on crimson fields and mountains, the stately and splendid procession of kings and armies, scenes of war and peace, sorrow and joy, glorious reward and terrible punishment. And from amid these scenes, so intensely graphic in their nature, there rises in majesty, limitless power, mercy, and holiness, Jehovah of hosts, the God of Heaven and earth, the rewarder of those who love and diligently seek him, and the punisher of those who disobey him. If there is one single truth which these striking scenes impress upon our minds, it is the great and solemn truth that there is a personal God in the Heavens, and that his eyelids try the children of men.
Behind the operation of the laws of this physical universe, behind all the sad, terrible, and glorious deeds of men, there is One who holds the lightnings in his hand, and who leadeth the children of men as a shepherd leadeth his flock. The Old Testament gives us, in its weird, solemn, and beautiful scenes, no such being as The Great Unknown, or The Great First Cause; but it gives us for our reverence, our worship, our obedience, our love, and our fear too, a heavenly Father, who bows his head over his children in infinite love, mercy, and pity. Is there not enough taught us in the Old Testament to dissuade us from doing wrong? Is there not sufficient warning in the examples of evil and godless men and women to show us the doom, the penalty, the punishment, of turning away from God? Is there not sufficient illustration in the examples of noble and godly characters to foretell to us the bright and rich reward of those who love and serve God? Cannot the Old Testament, then, become radiant and instructive with lessons that shall teach us the way of righteousness and peace and eternal life?
May the Holy Spirit enlighten our minds so that we shall study this grand old book in the right spirit!—Rev. Samuel Allen Harlow, in S. S. Times.

The Sabbath Not a Feast Day.

By M. E. Kellogg

It is claimed by some that the weekly Sabbath is classed with the feast days of the Jews in Lev. 23, and that as all feast days were abolished at the cross (Col. 2:16), the weekly Sabbath was abolished with the rest. Those who hold this view must read Lev. 23 with very little thought, or else they are so wedded to a theory that they can only see one thing at a time. As God has given man but one weekly Sabbath, it follows that if that Sabbath were done away at the cross there has been no Sabbath since; yet the disciples of Jesus kept the Sabbath after the crucifixion, according to the commandment (Luke 23:56), which plainly implies a Sabbath to keep, and a commandment to enforce it; and again in the book of Acts, Luke refers often and familiarly to the Sabbath as an existing institution, and speaks of Jews and Gentiles alike, worshiping on that day. Acts 13:42-44.
The revelator, writing about the year A. D. 96, says that he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” Rev. 1:10. Then there was a day as late as A. D. 96 that the Lord claimed as his. From this point, Sunday advocates are always very anxious to make a great spring forward, landing somewhere in the third century, and in that country where the mystery of iniquity was specially working for the establishment of the Romish Church. Here they claim to find evidence that the Lord’s day of Rev. 1:10, and the first day of the week are the same. But it is as difficult to find any connection between the Lord’s day of Rev. 1:10 and the “venerable day of the sun,” of the heathen Emperor Constantine, as it is to find the missing link between the human form divine and the monkey of the African table-lands! But we would suggest that it is because they are looking in the wrong direction.
If a link is wanted for the Lord’s day of which John speaks, should it not be sought for in the word of God, rather than in the dark and misty ages of early apostasy? God himself declared from Sinai, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” While within sixty-five years of the time when the Revelation was written, Christ, speaking of the seventh day of the commandment, said, “The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” The Saviour also gave (Mark 2:28; Matt. 24:26) directions for the observance of the Sabbath at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, only twenty-six years before John had his vision upon the “Lord’s day.” These facts show that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment and the Lord’s day of Rev. 1:10 are the same; and that the Sabbath of the Lord and the Sabbath of Christ and his apostles has not been abolished, but is still binding upon all mankind.
The Sabbath then must be distinct from the feast days which were abolished at the cross, and instead of being classed with those days in Lev. 23, it is plainly separated from them, as we shall readily see upon a careful examination of that chapter.
Some try to make much of the opening verses of this chapter: “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.” Lev. 23:2, 3.
Here, say they, the weekly Sabbath stands at the head of the list of the Jewish feast days. Now if, in speaking of the weekly Sabbath, the Lord had not used different terms from those he used in reference to the feast days, and were it not for verses 4, 38, and 44, there might be some reason for their claim; but allowing these texts to have their proper bearing, that claim is entirely inadmissible. The great theme of the chapter is the “feasts of the Lord,” and it seems very proper that the weekly Sabbath should be mentioned first and pointed out as a day distinct and separate from the feast days.
Mark, the Lord does not say of the weekly Sabbath, it is a feast of the Lord, as he does of the others, but, “it is the Sabbath of the Lord.” Having now introduced the Sabbath and given it its proper place as the “Sabbath of the Lord,” he now takes up his main subject again. “These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations.” Verse 4. Here, then, in verse 4, we have the real beginning of the “feasts of the Lord,” and the weekly Sabbath expressly excluded. If the weekly Sabbath is included in the “feasts of the Lord,” why was verse 4 of Lev. 23 ever written? What can be plainer than that that verse was written to distinguish between the “Sabbath of the Lord” and the “feasts of the Lord”?
Following verse 4, we have a description of these feasts, the passover, the pentecost, the day of atonement, and the feast of the ingathering. But the Lord again makes a distinction between the “feasts of the Lord” and the successive weekly rest days. “These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, everything upon his day, beside the Sabbaths of the Lord.” Lev. 23:37, 38. It is very plain that these excepted “Sabbaths of the Lord,” of verse 38, are the same as the “Sabbath of the Lord,” of verse 3.
Now I will notice verse 44. “And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord.” It is a fact that cannot be disputed that God spoke the ten commandments with his own voice from the burning mount. “These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” Deut. 5:22. Occupying a prominent place in this God-given law, is the weekly Sabbath of rest, pointing back to the creation of the heavens and the earth. God proclaimed this law through no medium, but directly to the people. His voice was heard saying, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” But how about the “feasts of the Lord,” were they thus honored? “And Moses,” not God, “declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord.”
These feasts were typical, all pointing to some event in the future, the passover, to “Christ our passover,” the day of atonement, to the final Judgment; the feast of tabernacles, to the gathering of God’s children into the new earth. These days are called sabbaths as well as feast days (Lev. 23:39), and so the apostle speaks of them as “the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come.” Col. 2:16, 17. But the “Sabbath of the Lord” points the other way, back to the time when God “laid the foundations of the earth,” and, as we have already shown, was recognized and honored by the disciples of the Lord, years after the “feasts of the Lord” were numbered among the things of the past.
M. E. KELLOGG.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

"BLESSED are the poor in spirit." Matt. 5:3.

The Thought-Mill.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

EVERY one of us carries in his or her person a more marvelous apparatus than human skill ever conceived. It may be likened to a mill, which is running without any pause, unless it be during the unconscious hours of sleep. The Creator who fashioned this wonderful mill has provided the wheat and the corn, which, if well ground, furnish food to nourish and strengthen and make us happy. But the evil one is ever on the watch to throw in worthless chaff or poisonous tares, which, if ground out and consumed, are fatal to health, and may breed disease and death. This marvelous mill is the mind—fearfully and wonderfully made. Fill it with the golden wheat of pure thoughts, noble thoughts, and the outcome of it will be a life worth carrying up to the Judgment seat. If selfishness and Satan supply the grist, then the outcome will be mischief, misery, and perdition. Keep thy heart-mill with all diligence and watchfulness; for out of it are the issues of thy life. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
A person is known by the company he keeps. So the thoughts which we harbor within us, and which go out through the door of our senses, decide our characters. Let me but know what thoughts occupy most your mind when you are alone, and I will determine what manner of person you are. A true child of God gives house-room to pure, quickening, and holy thoughts; and he is constantly striving to bar up door and windows against wicked intruders. He watches his heart-mill lest the tempter fill it with nettles, or clog it with gravel.
Habitual thinking determines whether we are Christ's servants or Satan's bond-slaves. A sensualist is only a filthy thinker. The walls of his mind are hung around with lascivious pictures; his very soul becomes a brothel, and it is no easy task after conversion to clean this house of unclean imagery. Do a man's thoughts run every day upon the bottle? Then he is a tippler or a sot. A miser's mind is simply a money bag. Does another man's mind-mill welcome every golden thought from God's word, from nature, and from the workings of the Holy Spirit? Then as the sweet, nutritious flour pours from between the rollers of a Minnesota grain-mill, so do inspiring words and useful plans and godly deeds stream out from that Christian's consecrated heart.
One of the highest of spiritual luxuries is the companionship of pure, exhilarating, and holy thoughts. "I thought of Jesus," said devout Samuel Rutherford, "until every stone in the walls of my prison cell shone like a ruby." We can imagine how the white doves fluttered in, and lighted on John Bunyan's rude table in his little Bedford gaol. No king entertained such royal guests as the poor tinker, when he set open his soul's windows towards Heaven.
On the other hand, there is no greater torment than to be an unclean or intensely selfish or profane thinker. Such a man is "grievously vexed with a devil." Out of such hearts proceed evil thoughts, revenges, cruelties, fornications, pride, and blasphemies. What a hell it is to have such a heart!
Do you say that you are troubled with impure and defiling thoughts? Then don't think them. Are you haunted with doubting and distrusting and skeptical thoughts against God and his promises? Don't think them. Watch the mill, and fling them out. All thoughts have their germs. The surest way to kill a sin is to kill it in the egg. At the very moment when a wicked thought is conceived, or is thrust into your mind, crush it! The little serpent will soon become the anaconda which will enfold you, and strangle you like the fabled Laocoon in the embrace of the sea-monsters.
How important, too, is it to nurse into vigorous life every germ of pure and Heaven-inspired thought! Your whole spiritual life will depend upon the reception and the treatment you give to every good idea born in your soul, or awakened there by the divine Spirit. To smother a good thought is often a quenching of the Holy Spirit; it has cost the eternal ruin of millions; it may rob you of a heavenly hope.
A wonderful apparatus indeed is this thought-mill within our breasts. We cannot guard it too carefully. Christ offers to us his precious truth to supply it—his help to keep it clear from the wretched garbage which the evil one would fling into it—and his propelling power to drive it with all useful and holy activities. Keep this ever-busy, ever-tempted, ever-active heart of thine with ceaseless care and with prayer; and in Heaven you will find that the pure in heart shall see God.—Theodore L. Cuyler, in Christian at Work.

A Reckless Zeal.

ZEAL, divinely regulated, is a very important element in religious affairs, and cannot be safely dispensed with; but some zeal that was shown in the days of King David, though strong enough, was not the right kind—it was a blind zeal. Ahimaaz said to Joab, the general of the army, "Let me now run, and bear the king tidings." But Joab objected, saying, "Thou hast no tidings ready," and Joab sent Cushi with the true tidings. But Ahimaaz kept teasing Joab to let him run too; and so he did, and he was so full of zeal that he "overran Cushi," and got there first; and when asked for his message, he had none to deliver, but had to content himself with saying, "I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was." Then the king made him abide as a bogus message bearer. Soon Cushi, with less zeal but more knowledge, comes up, crying aloud, "Tidings, my lord the king," and forthwith delivers his message like a man knowing what he was about.
This is a fair sample of much of the zeal of the present day. Men have a zeal that prompts them to run like Ahimaaz, but they have no message ready, but run they must without authentic tidings, and when they come before the people they can only talk about having seen a "great tumult," or a great excitement; they have been running on the strength of that, but they can talk of nothing else, for they lack the tidings. They have the zeal without the knowledge.
They have a soap-suds religion—all froth—and think that a "great tumult" is the grandest thing out. But when the tidings of truth are called for, they have to stand aside—the message is not with them. They can run, but are empty when they get where the message is needed. We do not advocate less zeal, but more truth. It is important to carry something when we do run—something better than a rehearsal of a "great tumult."—Sel.

Family Prayer.

By Canon Liddon

THERE is one mark of a household, in which God is known and loved, which is too often wanting in our day—I mean the practice of family prayer. Depend upon it, the worth of a practice of that kind can only be measured by its effects during a long period of time, and family prayers, though occupying only a few minutes, do make a great difference to any household at the end of a year. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when each morning, and, perhaps, each evening too, all the members of the family, the old and the young, the parents and the children, the master and the servants, meet on a footing of perfect equality before the Eternal, in whose presence each is as nothing, or less than nothing; yet to whom each is so infinitely dear that he has redeemed with his blood each and all of them?
How must not the bad spirits that are the enemies of pure and bright family life flee away—the spirits of envy and pride and untruthfulness and sloth, and the whole tribe of evil thoughts—and make way for his gracious presence in the hearts of old and young alike, who, as he brings us one by one nearer to the true end of our existence, so does he, and he alone, make us to be "of one mind in a house" here within the narrow presence of each home circle, and hereafter in that countless family of all nations and kindred, and tongues, and peoples, which dwell with him, the universal Parent of all eternity.—Canon Liddon.

The Curse of the Law.

By R. F. Cottrell

IN 1 Cor. 2:2, the apostle said he determined to know, or to make known, nothing among the Corinthians "save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." He not only preached Jesus Christ, but he emphasized his preaching of Christ by the fact that he was crucified, as if there was an importance in that peculiar form of death. There are various ways of inflicting the death penalty, by stoning, by beheading, by poisoning, etc.; but a peculiar manner of death was the lot of Him who would die a sacrifice for man's transgressions, and thus redeem him from the curse of the law.
As recorded in John 12:32, 33, Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die." See also chapter 18:31, 32. If the Jews were to put Jesus to death according to their law, they would stone him; but if Pilate, a Roman governor, were to order his execution, crucifixion would be the mode of death. Why must Christ die in this peculiar manner? Because he must bear the curse that is due to the sinner for his transgressions of the law of God.
"It is written," said the apostle, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Gal. 3:10. And in verse 13 he says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."
Behold the Son of God condescending to leave Heaven and voluntarily receiving in his own person the curse that was due alone to transgressors of God's law. He acknowledged that law to be holy, just, and good. But when the full weight of the curse was felt, in the withdrawal of his Father's face, he cried in agony, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Now the sinner may return to God and be saved. By repentance toward God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, he may be delivered from the curse which is justly his due; and by patient continuance in well-doing, seeking for glory, and honor, and immortality, he may gain eternal life, instead of receiving the wages of sin, which is death. He is redeemed, or bought back, from the curse of the law, if he will accept of the redemption, which has cost so much, on the conditions of the gospel.
But if he refuses or neglects this great salvation, not complying with the given terms, the curse still rests upon him; and if he would know the meaning and terribleness of that curse, let him contemplate the scene of Calvary, the cruel cross, and the untold agony which wrung from the heart and lips of the Son of God the heartrending cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If such was the woe that fell upon the innocent Jesus when he had taken the place of sinful man, what wailing, and sorrow, and unavailing woe will be the portion of those who have trodden under foot the Son of God, slighted his offered pardon, and received at last in their own person the full weight of the curse of God and his violated law, which is justly their due? To their other sins they have added that of slighting the salvation so freely offered through the blood and agony of the pure and holy Son of God. Think on these things, and accept this Saviour while yet you may.
R. F. COTTRELL.
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