Earlier text: ARCH OF TITUSOUR earth was intended as a basis for the manifestation of life. Certainly no tangible result could be produced without a material agency to serve as a medium of operation. For this purpose the earth was formed, and common observation everywhere recognizes it as a mother of life. It is vitalized with potency to bring forth any form that Infinite Wisdom desires. The primal design made it a place of habitation. “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it. He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited.” Isa. 45:18. Man is earth’s chief occupant, but associated with him are all forms of life created for his good. David says, “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” Ps. 115:16. The Lord asks that “the whole earth be filled with His glory,” and also declares that the earth is filled with His riches. The whole scheme is to reveal the Lord’s righteousness. “Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase.” Ps. 85:11, 12. The Lord’s life, energizing the earth, causes it to send forth bountiful crops for man to reap. The plants that come of this life-deposit are truth; and showers from heaven that water it are righteousness. God is herein letting His goodness be seen upon every hill-top and mountain height, valley reach, and plain expanse. Hereby His boundless love is shared by all creatures. Speaking of God’s direct providences, the psalmist says, “Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it, Thou greatly enrichest it; the river of God is full of water; Thou providest them corn when Thou hast so prepared the earth.” Ps. 65:9, R.V. The advice as to man’s proper conduct is, “Let the people praise Thee, O God; let all the people praise Thee.” And the promise is, “Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.” Ps. 67:5, 6. Before sin was conceived, and brought forth to poison the ground, the fulness of life was everywhere manifest. The perfect beauty of life was an eloquent witness for righteousness. Then the earth in its fulness testified for God. The glory of all nature and the sweet innocence of Eden united in singing His praises. And these scriptures show that continued righteousness on the part of all the people would have been rewarded with unbroken manifestations of righteousness on the part of the earth. But man failed to co-operate with the earth in her manifestation of the Lord’s righteousness; and his disobedience imparted weakness and decay to the earth. The Effect of Sin on the Land.
When man sinned in Eden, he was immediately cast out of the place, and the earth also, where he was compelled to abide, fell under the curse of sin. Man’s transgression was imparted to the earth, and blight and mildew were manifested instead of righteousness. When Cain killed his brother Abel, the Lord said to the guilty man, “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength.” Gen. 4:12. As sin increased, its poisonous influences became more deadly, marring life and greatly curtailing its joys. Among the ancients, where sin was uncurbed for a few generations, the land became defiled, and its inhabitants were cast out. Lev. 18:25. When Israel became very sinful, the Lord said, “I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled My land.” Jer. 16:18. Since mankind have spread over all the world, and carried sin everywhere, the prophet calls attention to the situation, and says: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isa. 24:1-5. This blighted condition is now seen, but redemption’s work is to correct all this evil, and bring our earth into that condition which the Creator primarily intended it to maintain. Read a few of the Bible promises. To Abraham the Lord said, “All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.” Gen. 13:15. Again He spoke to him of “all the land of Canaan,” promising it to him and his seed for an everlasting possession. Gen. 17:7, 8. Later, the Lord confirmed these promises to Abraham by an oath, pledging His existence as security for their fulfilment. Gen. 22:16-18. These pledges and covenants were repeated to Isaac and Jacob, assuring them of their future and endless intent. Gen. 26:3-5; 28:13-15. Paul, commenting on the significance of these promises, showed that Abraham was in them promised the heirship of the world. Rom. 4:13. The martyr Stephen, in his sermon before the Jewish court, proved that Abraham had not received, as an inheritance, land enough “to set his foot on.” He showed, however, from the Scriptures, that the promise was yet to be fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Of Abraham’s sojourn in the land of promise he said that the Lord “gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet He promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him.” Acts 7:5. The promises to Abraham were made jointly to him and his seed forever. In commenting upon the promises which underlie the Christian faith, the apostle said, “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. . . . And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Gal. 3:26, 27, 29. The Spirit, through David, spoke of the future state of our world, saying, “Evil-doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” Ps. 37:9-11. Jesus quoted from the writings of David, and applied the promise to a future inheritance when He said, “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” Matt. 5:5. From the time Paradise was lost until now, this earth has, to a great extent, been in the possession of wicked men. Thus far in earth’s history the meek have been burdened, driven. Want and care have been their portion. The majority of them have belonged with the poor of this world. Yet they have been rich in faith and heirs of a kingdom which is to fill the whole earth. James 2:5; Dan. 7:27. IGNORANT OF THIS MYSTERY.
By G. W. Reaser
Recently, while reciting from the Scriptures, to a lineal descendant of Abraham, the evidences which furnish infallible proof of the true Messiah, the writer was forcibly impressed with the truth that there is but One Individual in the universe who can accomplish the redemption of lost man, and that all of the qualifications which are essential to a complete Saviour are found in the Man of Calvary. The Israelite according to the flesh, above referred to, had serious, if not blasphemous, objection to the miraculous in connection with the birth of Christ, and to the mystery of the union of the divine and human in Him. But, as a matter of fact, a perfect man could not have met the requirements of a complete Saviour, even tho he might have conquered the world and subdued it to the Jewish nation, thus meeting their minds concerning a deliverer. Had such a man lived a sinless life and died for the transgressions of the people, not a single soul could have had eternal life through his merits. Had Gabriel, doubtless the highest angel in heaven, and who ranks next to Christ the Archangel (or chief of the angelic hosts), come to this world where sin reigns, and lived a blameless life, and finally yielded up that life upon a Roman cross, such a plan of salvation would have been powerless to save a single member of the human family. The One who could be the central figure in a complete scheme of redemption, must be both divine and human. He must at the same time possess a divine nature and be a member of the human family, sharing all things except sin in common with them. And “He [God] hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” The human nature of Christ was not essential from the standpoint of God’s knowledge of the needs, frailties, and temptations of fallen man. To say this would be to limit the Holy One of Israel and to deny His infinity. The Father and the Son have, by the eternal Spirit, always been in infinite sympathy and touch with the children of men in temptation and in suffering. But to make it possible for us to grasp this blessed thought, the Christ was adapted to our humanity, and by this mysterious adaptation became a member of the human family, “one of us,” our Elder Brother. “For verily He6 took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.” All this was planned in infinite wisdom before the miraculous birth of the Just One; for it is written, “Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (God with us), and “unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.” After His birth Inspiration bears record that He was “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” How could He be a perfect Saviour to me, unless He had accommodated Himself, in the plan of redemption, to my humanity, so that my faith might grasp the fulness of the blessed truth that He once occupied the same flesh and dwelt in the same sinful world in which I dwelt; that while here He suffered pain, sorrow, trials, even as I suffer all these; that He was subjected to temptations brought to bear upon Him by “the prince of the powers of darkness” in person, stronger than any that will ever be brought to bear upon me? As the common legacy of humanity is a hereditary tendency drawing them with almost resistless power toward sin, so He was “made in the likeness of sinful flesh;” but having overcome all temptation and sin, He thereby condemns sin in my flesh. If there was no promise beyond this condemnation, then discouragement might follow; but, praise the One who devised a complete plan of redemption, His name was not only Immanuel (God with us) back there, over 1800 years ago, but the mystery of the Gospel to-day is,—Christ in me and in you, dear reader, I trust, “the hope of glory,” and possessing the same power—ours to appropriate by faith—that He possessed over sin and Satan when He was here in person. I have access by faith to the never-failing Fountain-head of grace and strength, of which through faith and prayer our Saviour availed Himself. It was by “the power of the Spirit” that He overcame, and “went about doing good.” Hence it is that that same Spirit is sent in the name of Christ, instead of the Father,—for it is one and the self-same Spirit,—to help my humanity to grasp the glorious truth that all that was accomplished in the life of Christ as an overcomer and as manifesting the beauties and graces of the pure and undefiled religion to the world, God desires to accomplish in me and in you by the indwelling Christ. Thus do we become partakers of the divine nature. How could all this have been brought within reach of the human family, except in the very mystery of the miraculous conception of the Son of God and the Son of man? The direct agencies in the working of this mystery were the Holy Spirit of God, and a member of the human family, one of our own flesh and blood. The result, the grandest ever developed in the history of the world,—if not in the history of eternity,—a complete divine-human Saviour. All praise to the Father for a Saviour perfectly adapted to my humanity, who is touched with the feelings of my infirmities; “who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” and who is able “to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him,” who can, with His divine arm, hold firmly to the throne of God, and with His human arm encircled about me, lift me above temptation, sin, and death, even to a place at His right hand in the highest heaven. Would that Jew and Gentile might accept this divine-human Saviour in all His fulness, whose Messiahship is attested by the minute fulfilment of more than 300 prophetic utterances, but whose present incarnation is best proved by the appearance of the “fruits of the Spirit” in our lives, as His witnesses; for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” G. W. REASER. THE GLORY OF THE REPROACH.
Are you reproached, reader? Are you sad because of it? Do you feel that it is unjust and cruel? It may be so. But for what are you reproached? Who brings the reproach? Sometimes it is more honorable to be reproached than to be commended. It depends upon who reproaches or commends us, and for what we are reproached or commended. When the girl possessed by a demon followed Paul and Silas saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation,” the words were true, but the commendation was no help to the messengers of God. The devil’s object was either to get prestige for his servant by associating her with the apostles, or to ruin the work of the apostles by identifying them with his servant. The commendation brought no joy to the apostle, and he rebuked the evil spirit. He who bears God’s message may bear it to the evil-minded, but he must not identify himself with their work. Sometimes the thing for which we are reproached is most worthy of commendation. So it was with a reproach laid upon Jesus. When Levi the publican made Jesus a feast and our Lord attended, the “higher class” Jews, the scribes and Pharisees, said, “Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?” At another time when He invited Himself to the house of a despised publican, the Pharisees said that “He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.” On another occasion they sought to heap reproach upon Him by saying, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” Yet what a glory was in the reproach. If they had known God, they would have seen that the very thing for which they sought to condemn Jesus was to His highest praise. He was indeed “the Friend of sinners.” He came “to seek and to save that which was lost,” to call “sinners to repentance.” He did not come to man because man was His equal, because man was rich or righteous, but because man needed Him, because man was without hope and without God in the world,—poor, lost, undone. Why should not Jesus meet with those He came to save? How could He be otherwise than the Friend of all the needy and oppressed? He loved the Pharisee. He came to him, but the Pharisee clothed his own needy, dying heart with the impervious garment of self-righteousness, and Jesus could not help him. He rejected Jesus, and hated the sinners not in his class; and therefore he hated the Man who acknowledged Himself the Sinner’s Friend. The Pharisee’s love of self in every age and land has been the cause of his hatred of worldly, unfortunate sinners, or those beneath him in the social scale; and he who has in Christ’s name sought to lift them up, has been forced to bear the reproach, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” What a glory there is in the reproach! “Sing it o’er and o’er again,
Christ receiveth sinful men.” Therefore He receives me, and you, and every soul who will come to Him. Then be of good courage, sinner; Jesus Christ is your Friend. The reproach is true, but no longer a reproach to the trembling, burdened sinner who has found Him. No higher praise could be said. Christian friend, bear Him company. Wherever a blind, weak, weary soul needs help, there help him. Go down by his side. Tell him of the Friend of sinners. And then, “if ye are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you.” CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS.
By F. B. Meyer
UNTIL you have learned to control your thoughts, you will never be able to live a godly and righteous life. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he;” and it is because the thoughts that we entertain in the hostelry of the soul are such worthless and vain ones that our words and acts often bring so heavy a disgrace on the name we love. Well might the wise man say, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” When the heart is right, the ear and the eye and the mouth and the foot will necessarily obey its promptings; but when the heart is wrong, filled with tides of ink, like the cuttlefish, it will develop itself in the impurity to which it gives vent. If you habitually permit evil things to have their right of way through you, or lodging with you, remember that in God’s sight you are here equally guilty with those that indulge in evil acts, because you are withheld, not by your fear of Him, but by your desire to maintain your position among men.—F. B. Meyer. OUR BEST NOT YET CLAIMED BY US.
We have never yet known how much we can do and endure in God’s service and at God’s call. There are, by God’s goodness and grace, powers and capabilities within us beyond all that we have, at any time, ventured on, or supposed were ours. And we have never yet realized how much God is willing to be to us personally, according to our opportunities and our requirements in His service for Him and for His. How far short we have fallen in our sphere of doing what we should and can do and be! And how far short we have come of receiving the measure of God’s blessing and power that He has been more than willing to give us if we would receive it. We do not yet, in our own experience, know God in His love and goodness as He is ready to make Himself known, or even ourselves as we may be in God’s service and by His grace in our present day. The best is yet open to us in both directions.—Sunday School Times. AS WE come into fellowship with Jesus, and are yoked with Him in burden-bearing and in labors of love, He opens to us the secrets of God’s tender care over those who love and serve Him. In this way we get rid of our doubts and fears concerning God’s providential care over us. No one who knows God as Christ does, who looks up into the Heavenly Father’s face with that perfect spirit of childhood, can doubt that God intends good for His children, and is able to bring it about.—J. R. Miller. Getting a Future from the Past
By Phillips Brooks
O, THERE are some who want to get away from all their past; who, if they could, would fain begin all over again. But you must learn; you must let God teach you that the only way to get rid of your past is to get a future out of it. God will waste nothing.—Phillips Brooks. The Momentary Christian Life
Christianity is not the work of a moment or an hour or a day, but of a life. And yet it may be that a decision of a moment, nay, more, it is nearly always the case that the decisions of moments, make the character. The only true Christian life to live, therefore, is the momentary life. SOME “UNANSWERABLE” PROPOSITIONS.
A DISCIPLE minister, J. N. Smith, writing in the Pacific Christian on the subject, “Ought Christians to Keep the Seventh-day Sabbath?” presents the following propositions, once offered, so he says, to his opponent in a debate, and unanswered, and made repeatedly since with the same result:— 1. If my brother will find one place where Jesus kept the Sabbath after His resurrection, I will keep it and preach it. 2. If he will find one place where Jesus commanded His disciples to keep the Sabbath, after His resurrection, I will keep it and preach it. 3. If he will find one place where the apostles, after the resurrection of Jesus, kept the Sabbath, I will keep it and preach it. 4. If he will find one place where the apostles instructed the disciples to keep the Sabbath, after the resurrection of Christ, then I will keep it and advocate it. Perhaps it would be impossible to answer these so as to satisfy Mr. Smith. The first is absurd on the face of it, yet it may be well to show how superficial they all are. 1. Jesus was on earth but forty days after His resurrection. During this time He met occasionally with His disciples, “speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” It is not said that during these forty days He kept the Sabbath. It is not said that He kept the first, the second, the third, the fifth, the sixth, or any other commandment. What would Mr. Smith think if a sinner—thief, adulterer,—whom he was pleading with to turn from his course of life, should say, “If you will find one place where Jesus did not steal or commit adultery, I will keep those commandments”? Could Mr. Smith find such a place? He would simply say that Jesus “did no sin.” 1 Peter 2:22. Therefore He did not break God’s law; for “sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. And therefore He kept the Sabbath, did this “same Jesus,” who is the same in character, “yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” Heb. 13:8. 2. The very proposition implies that He commanded the Sabbath before His resurrection; and He did. For by Him was the earth made, was the Sabbath given, was the law spoken from Sinai; for it is written, “Without Him was not anything made that was made;” and “to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.” See John 1:1-3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16. And by His Spirit through the prophets and when on earth, He taught the absolute immutability of His Father’s law. See Isa. 51:6, 7; Ps. 111:7, 8; Matt. 5:17, 20; Luke 16:17; Matt. 19:17. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And among His last words to His disciples are these: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe ALL THINGS whatsoever I COMMANDED you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Matt. 28:19, 20. Here is Christ’s command; will Mr. Smith receive it and teach it? 3. Where does it say of one single apostle that he did not steal or swear or kill or commit adultery? Does Mr. Smith believe that the apostles transgressed all these commandments because the Record does not say they kept them? We certainly know that they, one and all, invariably called the seventh day by its God-given title, the Sabbath. We know that when Paul went to Athens and into the business of tent-making, he associated himself with Sabbath-keepers. We certainly know that one of the strictest customs of the Jews was the Sabbath, kept with such added Pharisaic notions as to be a burden; and the apostle Paul could say, toward the close of his ministry, “I have committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers.” Acts 28:17. 4. Concerning this last proposition, let us cite our witnesses:— a. Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ.— He declares that “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20; 7:7), and that the Jews had “the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law,” of the Ten Commandments, as the next verse shows. Rom. 2:20, 21. Being “instructed out of the law,” they could approve “the things that are more excellent.” Verse 18. The seventh-day Sabbath was, therefore, a part of the form of knowledge and of the truth. The trouble with the Jews was not the form, but the spirit, the righteousness. They lacked faith, which the apostle declared established God’s law in the heart, and made it possible to fulfil in the life the unchangeable righteousness of God. Rom. 3:31; 8:4. The apostle therefore taught obedience to the whole law, and the whole included every part. b. “James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.”— He also speaks of the law. James 2:8-12. It is a “royal law,” the law of the great King. It is “according to the Scripture;” the only “Scripture” in the apostle’s day, known as such, was what we call the Old Testament. It is the law which declares, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Thou shalt not kill,”—the Decalogue. It is the law which points out sin to the transgressor. It is one law, for he that offends in one point is guilty of all; he has broken the one law. And this witness concludes: “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” c. “Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ.”— He simply tells us that Jesus “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth;” that in His righteous life of suffering, He was “leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps.” 1 Peter 2:21, 22. Jesus kept the Sabbath; Peter tells us that in this He left us “an example.” d. “The beloved Disciple.”— John tells us that “he that saith he abideth in Him [Christ Jesus] ought himself also so to walk, even as He [Christ] walked.” 1 John 2:6. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” Ch. 5:3. And of the saints in the last days he proclaims: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. God is not a man to change His holy, perfect law. The character He demands of His children is the character He Himself possesses, the one unchangeable righteousness of eternity. His law is and must be like His character. His Son, who represented Him, exemplified in the living power of His life the holy law of the Father, to teach every sin-sick soul that there was salvation from sin to righteousness. Will Mr. Smith, and all others, follow Him? A RELIGIOUS contemporary remarks:— We do not keep Sunday in obedience to any law of Christ, but as a freewill offering to the Lord and a beneficial Christian custom. But we could not preach and teach Sabbath observance without feeling that we were going back from Christ to Moses, and tacitly admitting that Christ’s commands, as conveyed to us through His apostles, were insufficient for our guidance through life. The fact that Christ kept the Sabbath while under the law, is no more a command or example to us than His observance of the Passover and other legal requirements. 1. But so every so-called “holy day” came in through the apostate church. So Good Friday, Easter, Whitsunday, Candlemas, Christmas, and every saint’s day came in; so came in all works of supererogation, “not . . . in obedience to any law of Christ, but as a freewill offering to the Lord and a beneficial Christian custom.” Mentioning the observance of the first day, offerings for the dead, the sign of the cross, etc., Tertullian (A. D. 200) says: “If for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, faith as their observer.” And that is the origin of every anti-scriptural and extra-scriptural doctrine which has cursed and divided the church of Christ. Well may the Lord ask, “Who hath required this at your hands?” What right have we to substitute? Jesus declared: “Every plant which My Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” If Sunday observance is a planting of the Father, where is the record? If it is not of God’s planting, whose planting is it? 2. But the Sabbath antedated Moses 2,500 years, existing before sin entered, antedating marriage. Does it make our contemporary feel that he is going back from Christ to Moses to teach or preach, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”? or, “Thou shalt not kill”? or, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”? The relation of Moses to these divine and eternal principles was precisely the same as his relation to the Sabbath. Of course, if our contemporary received or taught the Sabbath precept or any other command as pure, cold law given by man, he would go back to the same place the Jews were when they accepted the law through Moses. But he who receives God’s eternal law by faith in Jesus Christ finds every command a wellspring of joy, an enabling act, pregnant with the life of the infinite. The apostles taught this obedience to God’s law and Christ’s example (1 John 2:3-6; 5:3; Rom. 3:31, et al) as ever new and living principles. 3. All the types and shadows of the Jewish ceremonial service expired by limitation, as the shadow ends when it reaches the substance. When “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us,” the type ended. But the Sabbath is eternal. “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” He said, “I delight to do thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” 1237.—“Whatsoever Thou Shalt Bind.” A SUBSCRIBER sends us a daily paper containing the report of a sermon which uses Matt. 16:19, and asks: “What is meant by ‘whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,’ etc.?” J. B. F. The whole verse reads as follows:— “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 1. A key is that which opens. The Lord chose Peter to first preach the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. He opened it to the Jews on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), and to the Gentiles at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10). Peter refers to this when he says: “Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe.” Acts 15:7. And yet this did not give Peter a position over the other apostles, for the Lord afterward chose Paul as the especial apostle to the Gentiles, and that apostle declared: “For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles.” 2 Cor. 12:11. The same Gospel key used by Paul opened blind eyes, unlocked deaf ears, and swung wide many doors. Similar words are used of Eliakim, who was over Hezekiah’s household. All these servants of Christ but typified their Master, by whose Word and Spirit alone are doors opened. See Rev. 3:7. 2. Binding and loosing, forgiving and condemning, is not a new word to Peter. God had used similar words and stronger long before. He said to Jeremiah (1:10), “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” In chapter 18:7–10 He tells how Jeremiah did this; it was by the word of God that he preached, and which the nations accepted or rejected. Only so it was that the apostles could remit or retain sin. John 20:23. If the message of forgiveness were accepted, the apostles, and any other true minister of God, could declare the sins forgiven; if rejected, if slighted, they could declare the sin retained. For this is God’s word: “He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already.” John 3:18. So the apostle Paul declares of the ministers of Christ: “For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life.” 2 Cor. 2:15, 16. But it was all in the Gospel which the minister bore. That living Word made him all that he was; through that living Word all his work was wrought. The same loosing and binding power is in every Gospel message uttered in the Spirit. When are the children of God lawfully married? W. M. W. There should be conformity to the civil law as regards age, consanguinity, mental condition, racial descent, and marital relations. Civil law, however, permits in many cases divorce for trivial causes. The Word of God permits divorce for fornication. Matt. 5:32; 19:9. The question is too large to discuss in this column. There must be at the foundation of every Scriptural marriage, true principles of righteousness, purity, integrity. It should not be built on fancy, lust, or policy.