Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12:1-2

OUR AND OUR Hebrews 12:1-2. Twenty-second anniversary sermon preached by Dr. W. B. Riley, 11 a. m., March 2, 1919. WE enter this morning our twenty-third year as pastor and people. In other words, we approach at least the quarter century line of mutual service. It is needless to remark upon the sweetness of the pleasant serenity of this fellowship; the anniversary banquet of Friday night abundantly illustrated both. Our membership has almost quadrupled in these twenty-two years, and is this morning, in round numbers, 2,090 people. In this time we have raised and expended for all purposes something like $750,000.00 In this time we have seen founded and successfully conducted for seventeen years, the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School, which has enrolled in its present classes an even one hundred, and its graduates are efficiently at work on every continent. In these years every feature of the church life has gained enlargement and some phases of our work have attracted national, if not international, attention.

Evangelism has held first and central place; we have believed that all the successes enjoyed testify to the very certain triumph of orthodoxy.The growth of the church illustrates also the principle discovered as long ago as children learned to make large snow balls of little ones, the further they were rolled the more rapidly they accumulated. Our past accomplishments ought according to that principle, be but a hint of our prospects. In the next three years, or about the twenty-fifth anniversary, we should witness results that well-nigh equal the accomplishments of these twenty-two years; the momentum acquired in reaching our present history ought to result in well-nigh unimagined progress in the immediate future.To stimulate in all of this I bring your attention to this text, with its three natural suggestions: Our Careful Observers, Our Chief Obstacles, Our Capable Saviour.OUR CAREFUL “Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses”. Who are they? When Paul penned this Epistle he practically told us in the eleventh chapter who he had in mind—the departed saints now with God, and from their Heavenly heights watching the race of the Christian life. I want, however, on this occasion to lower the level of the vision and remind you that while the saints in Heaven observe upon the race of the Christian life, there are many on earth who make almost equally careful observation upon the same, and the members of this church in particular are the subject of their curious, or their critical, or their commendatory concern.We fare carefully watched by our opponents. The people who hate God, reject His Son, who refuse and even resent His Holy Spirit, are not totally indifferent to the life, character and progress of the church located in the midst of them. The First Baptist Church has compelled the attention of the saloonists of this city, has given concern to the sensualists of this city, has been eyed with suspicion by the whole company of men who live by some exploitation, and whose objective is always and wholly selfish. They watch our movements, mark our failures or successes, rejoicing over the first and grieving over the second.

It is less than twenty-five years ago that a minister in another city died, stricken suddenly and most unexpectedly and laid in his coffin. When he went, the saloonists of the city closed their doors for the day to pay tribute to this man, the gamblers gathered about his bier and mingled their tears with those of family and friends.

The lewd women of the city mourned the loss of what they regarded a compassionate and easily forgiving friend. Years went by and finally there came to that same pulpit another who changed the whole tenor of that church’s life. In doing it he so far excited the hatred of that entire company that they burned his church to ashes, set his own home on fire, threatened his life again and again and could they have burned him and extinguished his church at one and the same time, they would have celebrated the double event in the spirit of jubilee. Before God, I believe that such ministers and such a church meets the Divine approval, and if the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis is not regarded with disfavor by all moral renegades, then it is not doing its duty. In the cloud of witnesses with which we are compassed about stand opponents of God and of Christ, and if we be loyal to both, of this church.We are carefully observed by our critics. Twenty-two years ago when this pastorate was commencing, the present president of a great university, whose advocacy of liberal theology was a matter of international note, called attention to the type of theology destined to characterize this pulpit, and instituted a comparison with that of another church in a neighboring state to which there was going at that moment a man committed to modernism, and he said, “These men are similarly constituted, equally educated, they present opposite theological poles, and it will be interesting to note the progress.” For some years after that speech that university sought to ignore both the ministry of this pulpit and the progress of this church.

One of their representatives played conspicuous part in a deliberate attempt to end the relationship of pastor and people. The latest thing emanating from that same source manifests an anxiety of mind, and in seeking to discredit certain volumes that have recently emanated from the press, they make mention of two that have come from this pulpit; and their pitiful attempt to tie up those books with some sort of German assistance, is the surest indication of their displeasure in our progress now, and their annoyance of our prospects.

Beyond all debate this cynical attitude of our natural critics is fostered and even quickened into a flame by the rise and progress of the Bible School to which this church gave birth seventeen years since. With little money at our command, and despite ardent opposition of denominational politicians, that Bible School enrolled almost twice as many students as the divinity school afore mentioned, and we admit, in view of the millions with which this Seminary is backed, and the meager support this Bible School has had, their desire is perhaps natural. And yet the reason is to be found in the very language that Dr. A. H. Strong employs.

In his latest book he says, “The theological seminaries of almost all our denominations are becoming so infected with this grievous error (skepticism) that they are not so much organs of Christ, as they are organs of antichrist. This accounts for the rise all over the land, of Bible Schools to take the place of the seminaries.

The evil is coming in like a flood. But, oh, the pity that money given by Godly men to provide preachers of the Gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!” With a little change in the Scripture we might read: “Why do the critics rage and the denominational politicians imagine a vain thing? The kings of gasoline set themselves, and the ministers of modernism take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”We are carefully studied by our friends. The most amazing, as well as the most comforting fact of my experience in my travels is the multitude of people who have been interested in and praying for the progress of this church and the supremacy of this school. Not scores of them, not even hundreds of them, but literally thousands, have so voiced themselves.

They are in every state in the union, on the other side of the sea, and their name is legion. Beyond all question, our blessings are in many instances God’s answer to the prayers of unknown friends, and when the final day comes and all secrets are laid bare, the members of this church will be sweetly surprised to discover how many men and women throughout the length and breadth of the earth were our intercessors with God.

It is this sympathetic observation that is most inspiring; although I confess to you frankly that to me the close watch of the opponent, and the careful observation of the critic, contain also their goading features, and makes the goal of the Lord’s will all the more alluring. Our dear brethren in all ages, and in all the earth, have been united in their confidence in an authoritative Book, in their unshaken faith in the Deity of the Son of God, in their declarations concerning a regenerated church-membership, in their confidence in the final triumph and power of the Kingdom; and it is because of our emphasis upon these fundamentals that friends have been created for us whose name is legion and whose sympathetic and prayerful interest is our greatest pledge of future success.But the text progresses. When we come to its second pointOUR CHIEF “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses”, we are enjoined to“lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us”. What are some of our weights? What are some of our besetting sins? What are the chief obstacles in the way of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis? A multitude might come in for just discussion; let me elect from among them, and so discuss them in turn as to make the discussion itself curative.The obstacle of satanic schemes and suggestions. I spoke to you a while ago about watchful opponents, but we have one great chief opponent, whose pleasure it is to paralyze the Church of God; whose purpose it is to put her out of commission; whose plan it is to employ every agency at his command for her distraction and her defeat. In this endeavor he stops at nothing.

He might send his first lieutenant, the saloonist, to burn the church and blacken the reputation of the preacher, but as a rule, he takes a more effective method. He deceives some child of God, some member of the church into some wrong notion, and releases his tongue.

When Abraham went into Canaan, carrying with him Lot, his beloved kinsman, Satan got busy and stirred up contention between the servants of Abraham and the servants of Lot, and thereby separated men who should have forever walked and wrought together. When Moses led Israel, and was the most marvelous leader God ever gave to any people, Satan got the attention of Miriam and Aaron long enough to raise a rebellion in the camp, and with them influence the people to bring serious indictment against Moses, particularly at the point of talking too much and Israel thus became distracted.In the New Testament, no sooner had the new Church been born, and its) marvelous progress marked, than Satan put it into the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira to attempt deception concerning their tithe, and sorrow smote the whole Church in consequence; and no sooner was Paul converted and exalted Apostle, than the devil divided them over the subject of Gentile regeneration and church-membership. There are a thousand ways in which he seeks to obstacle the Church. Oh, if only as members of that blessed Body, we had deaf ears to his suggestions, refused to participate in anything which he puts forth, repudiated every plan that looked to division and disaster, he would know a daily defeat. One of our greatest writers, in a book of great spiritual import, told the story of a little girl whose mother had charged her not to take certain peaches from a table where they had been placed in readiness for the next meal. Not long after she had retired the mother thought she heard her slipping down the back stairs, so she took another route and got to the dining room first, and in the darkness concealed herself.

The little night gowned form stealthily slipped in and the eager hand felt through the darkness until the peach was found and taken. Then the mother prayed, “Oh, Lord, save my child from the deception and this theft.” Only a minute had passed when the door opened a second time and the little girl reached the table, and laying the peach down, said confidently, “There, old devil!

I have beaten you again,” and she walked back to her bed, refusing her own hunger rather than grieving God. There are ways of defeat. Let us study them.The second obstacle of church progress is spiritual indifference or deadness. Two thousand and ninety people, if all were alive and active for Christ, could turn this city and state upside down. You say, “But Pastor, remember there are over a hundred of these people who do not live in this city.” Yes, we admit it, but a correspondence conducted with these people a year ago impressed us with the fact that they are not our weak ones. One of those that we supposed had to be dropped, we found a missionary in China and doing a great work.

Another one conducted a Sunday School in her home, being away from any church; and being a minister’s daughter she was the leader of the same. Still a third, too far from church to attend, got them to open the school house that services might be conducted there, and so on until forty or more of these had revealed utter faithfulness.

When the Calvary Church of New York, under the leadership of a pastor who was new to his office, attempted to clean house and dropped fifteen hundred names at one time, they included among others a dear old woman who had gone to California in the interest of her health, and who, three days after she had been dropped, died, leaving in her will three thousand dollars to the church. The spiritual indifference that distresses is on the part of those who are in reach of the church; who could attend, but do not; who could contribute, but do not; who could read their Bibles, but do not; who could accept responsibilities, but do not. I think I could truthfully say this morning that for the twenty-two years of this pastorate I have prayed more often for that company than for any other single point of this membership. I call you today to companionship in this cause. Let’s storm Heaven in the interest of the spiritually indifferent and the spiritually dead.A further obstacle of our progress is self-content and self-complacency. I confess frankly that this is my strongest temptation.

It comes in consequence of an unjust comparison. There is a phrase, “comparisons are odious”.

Yes, to the people who suffer by them; and perhaps injurious to those that make them. Every time I go away from home and attempt to preach in an atmosphere cold, I think of the warm one in the far northern city and yearn for it. Every time I appear in a house, the majority of whose pews are as bare and empty as the palm of a pauper’s hand, I turn with gratitude to God at the thought of home coming and crowds.Every time I reach the after-meeting in a strange sanctuary and see the entire membership stand as stiff and motionless as though they were corpses instead of Christians, I think of the scores of personal workers that weave their way through this company at every call of Christ, and I thank God upon every remembrance of them.Every time I turn in thought to my former parish, Chicago, and contemplate the decline that has come to the Calvary Church, my own child in the Gospel, and to the First Church, the institution that mothered Calvary and many another into being, and the Fourth Church, long since extinct, and the Centennial, swallowed up by the Second, and of the Tabernacle, now pastorless and discouraged, and the Immanuel still retaining her place, but long since having lost her popular evangelism I am grateful that God, at the very heart of this city has given us victory after victory, and has added to our members more rapidly than to our years, and by our prestige demonstrated forever that a downtown location is not the signal of doom. I feel like falling afresh upon my face to unite with you, my brethren, in thanksgiving and in praise.And yet, that is our danger. We are in danger of being too well content. Complacency is our temptation; comparison is our injury.

Peter saw a Church of three thousand built up in a single day, and he was not satisfied; and Jonah had a revival in which 480,000 were converted in twenty-four hours, and he was not content; and Livingston let light into a whole continent, but he was not complacent. Our past, encouraging as it is, represents but a poor endeavor; our progress, marked by comparison, is poor when we recall the infinity of our resources and the multitude of our unused opportunities.

Had we rendered a more mighty service, had we indulged in dear sacrifice, had we listened intelligently to the voice of the Spirit, had we responded with God-given strength to our Lord’s commands, I confidently believe that our position today instead of being one of mediocre measure might be the most outstanding one of all the world, for God has set us in the midst of marvelous opportunities; God has called us to mighty undertakings; God has proffered us the resources of His own infinity, and God cannot be delighted, He must be disappointed with our attainments. Oh, let us give meaning to this message this morning! New meaning, deep meaning, Divine meaning. And let us lay aside “every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us”, and withstand the suggestions and schemes of the devil, the spiritual indifference and deadness of the membership, the self-content and self-complacency and run and run! Our steps have been too sluggish. God pardon the past and lay impetus to our progress!In order to all this we must look to the last suggestionOUR CAPABLE SAVIOUR “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Three suggestions, and I finish.He is the Saviour of infinite sufficiency. We never would have had faith, but for Him; we never could have retained our faith, but for Him; would not know the conquests of faith, but for Him. He commenced it, He was the Author of it, He will complete it. The man that is loyal to the Lord grows in faith daily; the church that is loyal to its God will do the same, and its faith will be finished in fruition. I have met some Christians who thought they were perfected already in this present life; I believe them to be stunted instead. The day a church imagines that it is “rich, and increased with goods, and has need of nothing”, it is spiritually stunted and practically destroyed.

How then may it continue to render annually a report exceeding any it has ever given? How may it meet and conquer against every conceivable obstacle of location, environment, losses by death, removals, disasters from false leaders, divisions from false teachers? There is but one way, “Looking unto Jesus”. He is an infinite sufficiency, and in Him we find the answer to every question, the solution of every difficulty, and the strength for our problems.He is the source of inspiration and example.“Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame”. Charles Spurgeon tells us how one man influences another by example. Speaking to his students, he said, “The slow coach minister will not have a lively, zealous church. A man who is indifferent, or who does his work as if he took it as easily as he could, will never have people around him who are in earnest.” I have been thinking this week that this church, in both its points of progress and its points of failure, was in no small way the reflection of this pastor. You have adopted my evangelistic note and made it your own. You have heartily consented to and advocated the fundamentals of the faith that have been precious to me, and upon which I have laid emphasis. You have been equally as missionary as your minister’s example inspired; and your lame points have, beyond all question, been the reflection of his faults and failures.

Such is the power of example. As I have pled with you at times and attempted to take you to higher ground than I myself had reached, I have been reminded of that marvelous illustration given by our Galusha Anderson of the uselessness of words without example.

He said, “Many years ago there lived a man of mark, William Bloss. He was an unusual man, and in his prime a man of might; but finally his mind became unbalanced. His face which was usually smooth shaven, was covered with a stiff bristling beard, his hair was unkempt, his clothing disordered, his eyes wild and piercing. He commonly carried his Bible under his arm, and spent much time in advocating moral and religious reforms.“One day,” said Dr. Anderson, “Bible in hand, he was standing in the Arcade, a great crowd around him, haranging them on the evil of drink. With scathing invective he was denouncing the City Council for licensing liquor, and the great crowd was deeply interested.

Though unbalanced, he seemed to be saner on the subject of the saloon than most of his fellow-citizens. Finally, as the crowd around him increased, a physician, tall as Saul, the son of Cis, went his way to the side of Mr.

Bloss, and addressing the great throng said, ‘Neighbors, you are doing Mr. Bloss our old friend, an injury. You know that he is insane and by gathering around him you increase his nervous excitement and prolong his insanity. I ask you, gentleman, to disperse and leave him alone.’ The crowd still stood about him when Mr. Bloss turned to the physician and cried in ringing tones, ‘You old blockhead, why don’t you set them the example? If you want them to go, go yourself.” The words were roughly spoken by a man regarded as insane, but they were so sensible and pat that the crowd cheered.” Thank God, that in our Heavenly Master we have One whose example is strength and not weakness, is progress and not retardation, is triumph and not defeat. He endured all, the Cross included; but He came to the crown.Finally, He is a Saviour of successful intercession.“Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. What is that? The place of His priesthood. The seat of His intercession. He has gone there for you; He has appeared there for me. He is pleading your cause; He is pleading mine; He is pleading the cause of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis. And when I remember that, it makes me courageous; it inspires me with confidence to undertake and expect conquest.

I picked up this week a scrap book that I put into shape twenty-five years ago, and I found in it the clipping that told how when Dr. Dodd was in England, there was a poor Irishman there condemned for fish stealing. In those days the state books of England were cruel in the last degree. Dodd doubted the man’s guilt and tried in every way to free him. But he was condemned. The day of the execution came and as they were passing Dr.

Dodd’s house, the man asked that they stop, and kneeling down he prayed, “Oh, God, bless Dr. Dodd. Every vein in my body loves him, every drop of blood in me loves him, for he tried to save me!” Think of the word “tried.” To try is the best that man can do, but it has no application to my Lord. He is not a man of trial; He is a man of success. He is not an intercessor of failure; He is an intercessor of victory! Would God that we could say this morning to a man, to the last member of this beloved church, what the convict said to Dodd, “We love Him!

We love Him with every drop of our heart’s blood! He having carried the last drop of blood from His own broken heart into the presence of the Father to offer it as an atonement for our sins, has succeeded, and in Him our salvation is secure.

Hebrews 12:18

THE OLD AND THE NEW Hebrews 12:18-25. THE Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the most unique Books in the New Testament. It might very properly be styled the key with which to unlock the mysteries of the Old Testament and set them in the glorious brightness of New Testament interpretation. If it be true, as is popularly supposed, that Paul penned this Epistle, then we can readily see how God selected the best man, from among all the inspired of New Testament times, to do such a work. A Hebrew himself, thoroughly trained in essential Judaism, the one thing needful to his correct interpretation of Old Testament teachings was given when his eyes were marvelously opened to see how they all pointed to Christ, and found their highest meaning in the person and character of the Man of Nazareth.From the beginning of this Epistle to its close, the author is seeking to set so plainly before Israelites the relation of the old revelation of God through signs, wonders and symbols, Prophets and Priests, to the new with its Gospel and Apostles, that even their darkest prejudices might not wholly exclude the great light that had risen in Christ. Read the Epistle to the Hebrews at a single sitting some night, and you will see the masterly work of a man who set himself to the task of showing the perfect harmony of the two great systems of truth that God has given to the world.The text that we have for this study has to do with this very question, and is a striking setting forth of this relation of the new to the old.In these days we hear a great deal about new things. We have new commercial interests, new mechanical methods, new social relations, new educational methods, new and improved theories of government, and we also hear of “The New Theology”.

But the theology that is really new is that of which our text speaks—the theology that makes God’s Word the one and only rule of faith and practice, and crowns Christ as the Sovereign of souls.There is no novelty in commercial, social or governmental progress that compares with that of the new religion called Christianity. You say, It is nineteen hundred years old, and so out of date.The sun hanging now in yonder heavens is eighteen million years old, for aught we know, and more, and yet it was the newest thing in the material universe six hours ago. So Christianity, like God’s mercy, is new every morning, every moment if you please, and our text seeks to set forth the blessed phases of this new faith in Christ.THE FIRST THING THAT ONE, UPON READING THIS TEXT IS THE IT The Apostle takes the hour out of which the Law was born and contrasts it with the hour when the Gospel was given. In the first we see a God of awful majesty and power and justice and judgment. The very mount of His presence smokes and shakes and starts from its base and is full of threatening and death to disobedient men.It was from a cloud that enveloped Him, shooting out flashes of fire, symbolic of His judgment, and shaking the hills and vales in illustration of His power, that His voice was heard in giving the Law.But when the Gospel came it was amid the silences of the night, under the shining of that brightest of stars, the Star of Bethlehem, and all the tramp of feet was that of angel visitors, and the sound of voices was either that of the most Heavenly host, or the most meek of the earth come to worship before Him who was born the “Prince of Peace”.The contrast of those hours is the perfect illustration of the difference in the Old Revelation and the New. The first taught men to fear God and obey His Law, while the last instructed them to love Him who so loved us as to give His Only Begotten to die that men might live.There is a mighty step between the Old Testament and the New. The five hundred years in time was not so long as the religious distance between Malachi and Matthew. But this step forward was a natural step.

The difference between the Law of the Old Testament and the Gospel of the New was not the difference between error and truth, so that when the last was given we threw the first away. The advanced reader is in no contradiction with the primer, and our new religion is but the full blown blossom of the bud that grew on the stem of Israel. Christ Himself said to those who feared or hoped that He would discard the Old Revelation:“Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17) Those people who talk of casting away the Old Testament Scriptures oppose the Christ of the New who said again:“For verily I say unto you, Till Heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled. “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:18-19). He would be a foolish husbandman who thought that when the branches, blossoms and fruit came to his trees, he had no longer need of the old homely roots and began to dig about them to cast them into some burning heap.He is a poor friend to the New Testament who thinks he honors it by dishonoring and attempting to destroy the root revelation out of which it came. It is the contrast of advance, not of antagonism. OF OVER JUDAISM The Apostle here makes it to show the exceeding superiority of Christianity over Judaism. The Law could do no more than impress men with God’s power and justice and demands; and all of Judaism, with its many ceremonies, and its wonderful and striking symbols, only taught men truth in the concrete, as children learn many things by picture representation. I saw a boy not long since who could turn through the pages of a picture-book and recite every story between its lids and yet he knew not even his letters and was unable to go further until taught principles instead of pictures.So, in the infancy of God’s Church the religious system of Judaism was suited to poorly developed souls, who were not advanced as yet to the better truths of a more perfect revelation. “What the Law could not do, in that it was weak” (Romans 8:3), we are told, “God” sent “His only begotten Son” to accomplish. To Henry Ward Beecher, the Old Testament stood for a religion of ceremony while the New is the best embodiment and boldest expression of eternal principles that shall live and meet the wants of every age. He says justly enough, “Every system that multiplies ordinances, every system that runs after rites and ceremonies, runs back to Judaism—that is, runs back to childhood.”When one goes into many a modernly built church, he sees services that lead him to think that the edifice should have been dedicated to the memory of Moses instead of “In the Name of Christ.”Ceremony and symbol are in everything. The singing is ceremonial; the prayer is ceremonial; the reading of Scripture is ceremonial; the sermon is ceremonial; the preacher’s dress is ceremonial, and even his intonation is ceremonial.

On the walls are pictures, and about the altar there hang or stand relics of an age that Paul considered past, eighteen hundred years ago.You can’t call it religious death; but if it is Christianity, then Christianity is subject to being Judaized. They have given up eternal verities for the ordinances that appeal to the physical senses of eye and ear.

At one time in New York City, at the St. Jean Church of Rome, there was on exhibition a musty bone that Catholicism claimed as from the arm of St. Ann, the mother of the Virgin. The Holy Church charged her children for seeing this relic of a religious past, and the gracious priest, who looked well to the dimes, explained to each religious dupe, “This is from the arm of the grandmother of God and may have been often around the infant Jesus.” Oh, Twentieth Century! how thy great heart of progress and hope must have sorrowed to see men returning to a false relic of a faded past, leaving the newer and better revelation of Christianity, which teaches not that musty bones are valuable because they supported the Son of God, but rather that the arm of the Living Christ is always wound tenderly about His own. “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), is being fulfilled afresh every hour.It is a strange thing that many “new theology” people are the very ones who make most of forms and ceremonies. Those who think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is too old for twentieth century advancement, propose to whitewash it and fix it up to suit by special music, responsive readings, chants, gowns, pictures and ritual; as if these were not the garments of Judaism which Christ left off because His revelation was too full-grown to fit such abbreviated habiliments.Those things are as old as the Temple and its service, and when God destroyed the Temple by Roman armies, he left no remnant of them all, and purposed to give men to the better service of communion face to face with Himself. How ridiculous to dig up the ashes of ritualism and parade them as an improvement on Christianity.

It reminds one of Dr. Lorimer’s story, which he related at the first meeting of the Baptist Young People’s Union, in Chicago.It seems that a widower, having discovered in a maiden lady the ideal of his heart, wooed and won her as the queen of his home.

Upon their arrival at the old place, after the wedding, the father called the children and began to present his bride to them one by one. Coming to his half-grown son he said, “Johnnie, this is your new mother.” Johnnie eyed her closely, looked at the wrinkles of the face and the gray in the hair, and motioning his father aside he said, “Hold down and let me tell you something!” The happy father bowled and gave ear, and Johnnie added, “You are sold! You are sold! She is not new; she is old!”Ritualism is not new. It is old, and for a twentieth century church to return to it and live in it, is going back from Mount Sion to Sinai; from the Gospel to the Law; from the City of the Living God to the courts of a primitive temple; from the company of angels and just men made perfect to the companionship of scribes and Pharisees; from the Mount of Transfiguration where Christ’s glory is supreme, to the Mount of Sinai where Moses was mediator; from the priesthood of God’s Son to the priesthood of sinful man. Who would roll the wheels of religious thought back two thousand years, let him indulge the conceit that ritualism is new and improves the services of a sanctuary dedicated to the cause of Christ.It was a blessing to the Church of England that Philipps Brooks remained in it, to plead by precept and by example that ritualism be not allowed to come in the room of Christianity.

We need such men in all our denominations. There are Baptists, not a few—and many of them good people—who are infected with the leaven of Phariseeism, and love form, regardless of its deadening effect.

They plead for it as essential to the aesthetic tastes of the time. But who can prove that such things are more popular with men than the Gospel of Christ unadorned?Look across the ocean and see the greatest gathering of worshipers the nineteenth century knew. Six thousand strong they gathered in the old London Tabernacle, through many summers, and yet Dr. Pierson, when he came to succeed Spurgeon, said something like this: “The continued gathering of those great assemblies in the tabernacle, where for nearly forty years six thousand people assembled, morning and evening to worship, and where there was no choir, no organ, and the Gospel was simply preached, without an attempt at any high art, presents a standing contradiction of the slander that the old Gospel has lost one jot or one tittle of its ancient power, or that there is any necessity for any modern resort to these aesthetic standards in order to bring the common people to hear the same Gospel that they heard from the lips of Christ.”I am not opposing good music, vocal or instrumental; nor such responsive readings as may enlist and educate the pew; but the dead line of church life lies just where we attempt to attract men or please God by forms and ceremonies, regardless of the presence or absence of soulful worship.Beecher said truly enough; “We are not Christians because we keep the Sabbath Day, nor because we pray, nor because we read the Bible, nor because we perform duties. They are Christians through whose spirit is struck that vitalizing influence by which the soul says ‘Father’ and beholds God.” Ceremonies that reveal Him are worthy, but those that attract attention to themselves and so hide God’s face from our vision are a hindrance, not a help.THE NEW NOT BEST BY WAY OF THE OLD Let us remember further that the new is not best approached by way of the old. Because Christianity is a natural development of Judaism, bringing all its dead forms to spiritual existences, is no reason why we should come to Christianity by way of Judaism. You remember the Hebrew Christians had that notion. They demanded that men who wished membership in their Jewish-Christian Church should first be proselytes of the gate and submit to the Jewish ceremonies. Paul and the other Apostles opposed that teaching and affirmed, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Galatians 6:15), as the one and only requisite to spiritual light and life. We need to emphasize that fact to this hour.

People are still coming to Mount Sion by way of Sinai. Three-fourths of the Christians in this house came that way.When you were first convicted of sin, instead of looking off to Jesus, the great Saviour, you looked within and said, “What a wretch am I!

Who shall deliver me? I have broken the commandments; I have sinned, and God’s frown is on me, and the lightnings of His judgment threaten my life.”It was a dreadful hour! It was dark! It was thunderous, and God was full of wrath to you! Why? Because you came up to Mount Sinai instead of Sion; to the Law instead of the Gospel.The mount of God’s wrath and judgment is always dark and frowning and causing fear. Whoever seeks to be saved by the Law, to meet the requirements of the voice from Sinai, will be full of fear, and come, eventually to signal failure and despair of soul. Some people contend that all that is necessary.

They tell us how Paul saw a light from Heaven and was stricken down and was blind for days, and so we all must come to Jesus by way of mourning and darkness and despair. Peter didn’t come that way; John didn’t; James didn’t; Lydia didn’t. They went directly to Christ. They had sins, but instead of waiting for days to grieve over them and attempting to atone for them by tears and get God’s favor by presenting a gloomy face and a sad heart, they rose and went direct to Him. They forgot the Law with its demands in the joy of the Gospel. They forgot that Moses ever lived, and cared but little what the priest of old had said when they saw Christ and heard the great Mediator speak the promise of pardon and peace.One of the most genuine conversions that ever came under my observation knew no thought of Law.

Nina Brown of La Fayette, Indiana, came forward at the close of service, and with a sweet, peaceful face said, “I want to be a Christian. Show me the way.” I turned to John 6:37 and read, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”, and asked, “Will you accept that offer of Christ?” She said with a face full of light, “I will,” and went home with perfect trust and a happy heart.

People who saw her, and knew that she had spent no hours in agony, comparing her weaknesses with a perfect Law, and weeping as a result, doubted her conversion; but nobody who knew her life long doubted. On the other hand, they coveted her faith and love and wished for a kindred life in Christ.She came straight to Jesus! She knew about the thunders of Sinai but felt no distress because she fled at once to the arms of Christ.Everything Mosaic excites fear and produces distrust in self to compel trust in God. Everything Christian whispers peace and love to the soul that starts toward the Cross and goes by the straight path of perfect trust. These very emblems of “The Lord’s Supper” whisper pardon and peace, and are full of consolation. They stand for a stricken Christ, for one who died to meet every demand of the Law, and provide for men that better way of Grace.

He suffered that we might be free from the Law, and by these symbols He says, “The last demand of Sinai I fulfilled; have no fear, but come! The last dart from God’s bow drank the blood of My heart; have no fear, but come!

The last sin of any soul I atoned on the Cross; have no fear, but come! ‘See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh’.”

Hebrews 12:19-21

THE OLD AND THE NEW Hebrews 12:18-25. IN our former discourse upon this text it was only possible to compass a small part of the wondrous truth it contains. The thirty minutes of study only served to show the purpose of the Apostle’s contrast of the Old and New. But this language carries the sympathetic student’s thought beyond the mental exercise of comparing religions, and noting points of inferiority here, and superiority there. It is well suited to lift up the soul to the loftiest altitudes of experience, and set it on peaks of spiritual joy and faith and love. If the fact that our religion is grandly superior to the religion of the Israelitish fathers—the religion of letter and Law—filled us with thanksgiving, how shall we express our pleasure if a closer study of this text teaches us clearly that Christianity is a perfect religion and its provisions of grace are suited to meet every necessity of the soul, whether for time or eternity?If that does not come to be our faith, the point of failure will be in us—in our want of appreciation of the good that we have in Christ and His Gospel.But how certainly we do fail to correctly estimate our riches in Christ Jesus! We were born into an atmosphere, sweet with the holy breath of the Christian religion. Many of us were rocked by the feet of Christian mothers, and into our earliest youth there came the imperceptible, yet character-making influences of this new faith; and we, like rich-bred children, have accepted the bounty of God and thought too little on the magnificent heights, the fathomless depths and immeasurable breadths of riches in Christ Jesus.It is even to be feared that our familiarity with our faith breeds contempt. The poor sinner, saved but yesterday from the life of a sot, knows the riches of redeeming grace as we cannot; and yet it is ours to know the greater riches still of the grace that keeps the soul, sanctifies the life, fills the heart, and floods the whole spiritual man with a sense of God’s goodness. A young laborer came to me a few days since, in great need of money, and with a face furrowed with concern for his family comforts and household goods. A few days later I saw him and his features were all aglow, because he had heard of the noble fortune of $15,000 coming to his wife from the estate of her German ancestry.Our freedom in Christ, our privileges in the Gospel, our inheritance in Christianity—these things we have enjoyed in such noble measures that we have come to think too little upon them, to set too small store by them, to get too meager happiness from them.It will be our agreeable task to so interpret this text today as to excite a deeper sense of the blessed facts of the Christian faith. It might almost seem that the poet of song was thinking of this morning’s text when he wrote:“Would we be joyful in the Lord? Then count the riches o’er, Revealed to faith within His Word And note the boundless store.” This text certainly bespeaks some of the riches of the religion of Christ. RENDS THE VEIL THAT WOULD SHUT MEN AWAY FROM GOD There are at least four sentences in this text that present that truth. The writer of Hebrews declares that by this new faith, you are not come to a mount where fire and darkness and tempest shut you away from God, but to Mount Sion, where God is; unto the City of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem; and even to God Himself, the Judge of all.There is no more blessed fact in our faith than this, that God’s face is no longer veiled from the Christian, and God’s presence is no longer shut into some small holy of holies.The whole tenor of the Christian system of truth tends to a more perfect revelation of God to men. Since Christ came, God has seemed to live and move among us. You will remember in the time of the Exodus God said to Moses, “Thou canst not see My face: for there shall no man see Me, and live” (Exodus 33:20); but Christ’s religion has given to men this blessed revelation on which an embargo was laid in the time of the Law:“If ye had known Me”, He said to His disciples,“ye should have known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him. “Philip saith unto; Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. “Jesus saith unto Him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:7-9). In every immortal soul there is a cry for God. It may be a cry stifled by the hand of lust, hushed by the hand of sin; but down deep in our hearts that cry lives. Hugh Price Hughes in a sermon on “The Light of God” said, “The profoundest theological proverb in any native language, is in the Welsh, and is still profoundly true: ‘Without God, without anything. God and enough.’”Such is the brief literal translation of a deep saying, which declares that God Himself is the greatest and only absolute necessity of every man. If you, be you who you may, turn to your hard and weary heart, and put to it the straight, plain question, “What do you want?” and are willing to hear the answer, your heart will say, “I want God.” It was not Christianity that gave God to the world; but it was Christ’s life and Gospel that revealed His Fatherhood to every believer and His eternal love to every soul, and took the veil from the holy of holies and let every longing heart look straight into the face of infinite compassion.It was Christianity that taught the blessed fact that every soul should expect and receive His favor. The Law was exclusive, and under its supremacy Israel alone dared to hope for the grace of Jehovah.

But Christianity was no sooner well begun than it became evident even to the prejudiced Apostles that God, in the expression of His favors, was equally well-disposed toward every man of any nation. Peter learned that when he knew that God had heard the prayer of Cornelius and blessed him, and confessed:“Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; “But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:34-35). In the convention at Jerusalem, called to discuss that point, Peter and James and Barnabas and Paul united four of the most eloquent voices of inspiration and put the thought of God’s purpose of favor to every man forever beyond dispute.Ah, how gracious that the man from the jungles of Africa cries for light and God hears; that the poor Karen from Burma’s heathenism is heard by Jehovah when he prays; that the most benighted Hakka of China can get the ear of the gracious Jehovah; that even the blood-thirsty cannibal of Borneo was not beyond the reach of God’s mercy, and no sooner did he set his face toward the light than the Sun of Righteousness rose before him with healing in His wings.The old localized idea of God that associated His presence with the place of the ark is fast giving way before the expanded faith of Christianity. God no longer dwells in one temple, or in many temples for that matter. No sacred mountain is His special resort, no peculiar valley the Eden of His rambles, but in every nook and corner of the universe, God is present.It is a sweet faith. The devout Samaritans Were greatly disturbed lest, after all, their prayers died on the winds and never reached His ear to whom they were uttered.The woman who met Christ at Jacob’s well, no sooner perceived that He was a Prophet than she hastened to get His judgment on this much mooted question—Can God hear prayer made toward the hill of Samaria? Who can ever forget the Master’s reply! It encompassed the wideness of Christianity and destroyed forever the narrowness of Judaism.“Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. * * . “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21; John 4:24). The child of Rome’s faith is taught that if, on fast-day, he forgets and eats flesh, he must post off to the priest and obtain pardon. But the child of Christ’s better teaching knows that if he commits wrong that there and then, ere he has moved from his tracks, he may bend the knee, call to Heaven, and get the ear of God. Paul taught the Athenians this better faith. He knew that their gods dwelt in temples and lived on hill-tops, and he affirmed the sweet fact that Jehovah was not far from every one of us, since “in Him we live, and move, and have our being”.To the question, “Where is God?” Phillips Brooks said, “Shall I think of God as throned in some distant majesty, set upon some awful hilltop of His omnipotence; shall I think of myself, after many struggles, arriving, wearied at His footstool, only wondering that I have ever arrived at all?” So the heathen soul has seen its far-off deity.But Christ comes to us and says, “You cannot go to God, for God is here. You cannot lift yourself up and go far away, for He is not far away.” The great truth comes to you that closer than anything you can touch, closer than thinking, closer than breathing, is God to you all the time! It is a bright faith!

It is best appreciated when God is needed most. Your life is in danger; your child is exceeding sick; you don’t have to hunt the place of the ark; you don’t need to seek the silence of the sanctuary.

The ark is now in every house of faith, and God’s sanctuary is the universe. Pray where you are and you speak straight into His ear. The child of our Sunday School Superintendent at Lafayette was said to be dying one night. In the home a few of the closest friends were on their knees; off in a closet alone the father bowed; down at the church a larger number pled that death be stayed; and up in Chicago and out on the engines of the railroad that the father served, men looked Heavenward and prayed. God heard all and answered and the dying boy revived. Ah, Christianity is the incomparable religion in that it rends the veil that would keep men from coming face to face with God! CLAIMS TO FURNISH ITS THE PUREST AND BEST Read again the description of the company into which the Christian convert comes. When we accept Christ we come“to an innumerable company of angels, “To the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, “And to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant” (Hebrews 12:22-24). Many societies of secular basis boast the superior character of those who walk together in their orders. But none would claim to compete with this catalogue. The best men are here, and the best women, and the best children. All other things being equal, those men make the noblest comrades, and those women the sweetest companions, and those children the safest associates who have Christ in the heart. There may be faithful friends in the world, and some worldling may seem a delightful companion, and yet he is never a good companion unless his spirit is at least in keeping with the Spirit of Christ. Christianity is not a mere name; Christianity in character and companionship cannot be helpful, wholesome and pleasing except the Christ spirit is exhibited.

It is claimed that Bob Ingersoll was a very pleasant companion. Suppose you could have subtracted from Bob’s brain and heart and behavior the Christianity that his Presbyterian parents had drilled into his youth, and left only that character which his infidelity has produced, would you have had a desirable friend in him or a helpful one?The follower of Jesus has not only the right to walk side by side with the blessed spirits of those who make up the “general assembly and Church of the firstborn” but to enjoy as well those best hours of irreligious men, those hours in which Christ seems to get possession of their purposes and control them to sweetness.

We, who are Christ’s, have all had friends from the world that were faithful, affectionate, and true. But the hours in which they were most to us, the hours in which their friendship was sweetest, were those exceptional hours in which their words had in them the Christ-tone, their deeds exhibited the Christ-character, and their very thoughts seemed touched by Christ’s mind.The eminent Dr. Robert Collyer, thinking to keep up his accustomed heterodoxy, declared that when Christianity had outgrown its limitations and dogmas it would win the world. “But,” he added, “it will take into full fellowship the old fakir I heard of in India in the time of the great Sepoy Rebellion who found an English child alive in the thick of the carnage of a town—the only living thing. He took it in his arms and made for the nearest English post, defending it by the way, until he was sorely wounded. When he reached his destination and carried the child in and laid it down before its friends they offered him a large money reward, but he refused it and vanished, to be seen of them no more. That man would not have to stand outside the Christian pale because he was not called by the name of Christian.

Jesus said, ‘And, other sheep I have, which are not of this fold’. He meant, as I believe, men like that.”All right, Mr.

Collyer. Yes, then that man is a companion of the Christian. We lock arms with him in the hour of that deed and claim him as a member of that matchless circle who walk Heavenward in the Name of Christ. Grant that he belongs to Christ and we ask no more.“God is no respecter of persons: “But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:34-35). Gather the God-fearing, righteous-doing children out of every nation, and you call together the company that the Christian convert joins. There are many men and many women who long to get into the best circles of the earth, into the select company of social favorites.I have to tell you today, be you who you may, rich or poor, high or low, plainly dressed or grandly attired, there is a circle superior to all others that walk the earth, the circle whose central figure is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and into that you are welcome to come.There is a company on whom Heaven smiles and with whom angels walk and unto whom the Lord attends, and into that you have a special invitation, written by its blessed Master, sealed with His precious Blood, and sent by servants specially delegated to present it to you. Will you join that Christian company?The time is coming when that company shall be immeasurably increased in numbers and glory. “To the general assembly and Church of the firstborn”, an innumerable “company of angels” is to be added. Oh it will be a blessed hour when that conjunction of companions, suited by character to be eternal companions, shall occur! It will be an hour which found a faint illustration of itself in the close of our Civil War.You remember that sixty-five years ago that awful conflict ended. The boys who had braved all its dangers, bled on all its fields, experienced all its suffering, were at last ready to go home.

Appomattox was finished, the rebellion crushed, the flag saved, and peace had begun to reign. In trains, on cavalry, on foot, they made their way to the precious spots where loved ones impatiently ‘bided their approach. As the war-worn, battle-scarred boys drew nigh the home, the loved ones who had remained by the property and kept the house and lived in peace from shot and shell, came out to meet them. Ah, what clasping of hands, what shouts of joy, what expressions of thanksgiving, what kisses of love characterized the sweet reunion. God’s child cannot help anticipating with joy the hour, when all the soldiers of the King who have fought beneath the crimson flag of our common Faith, suffered under the hot fires of satanic hosts, shall be ready to go Home and meet yonder the pure ones, who have on them no smell of a brother’s blood, no stain of dust or war, no tattered garments on which the instruments of the enemy wrought; but with spotless robe and sinless history and smiling face, they who have kept our eternal treasures and watched our Heavenly Home, shall come to greet us, join us, love us, live with us ever more!THE COMES INTO THE OF JESUS Christianity is a peerless religion in point of companionship for the subjects of its faith. But better even than to walk with the good men of the world, better than to join the spirits of just men made perfect, better than the sweet presence of pure angels in innumerable companies, is the truth that the Christian comes eventually into the conscious companionship of Jesus, “the Mediator of the New Covenant”.There are great companies with whom it is a delight to move. But he is a queer man who does not find in some single friend, joys that crowds can never give. Heaven would be a strange world if it did not furnish some subject who should fill every need of a supreme affection on the part of a perfectly sanctified soul.When Stephen was dying his eyes did not set in death as do those of most men, but beamed toward Heaven, seeing Him who satisfieth the soul, and so far feasted on His glorious face that suffering was forgotten.When Paul came near to the close of his wondrous career he seemed to get greater glimpses of Jesus, and much as he loved his work, and wedded as he was to his earthly friends, he declared that to be with Jesus was the pleasure that he coveted above all else. If He seems so precious to sinful men in the flesh, what will His presence be to saved and sanctified souls in Heaven?A. C.

Morrow related that a poor peasant in passing to and from his work, went at morning and evening into a little church and sat for an hour. His pastor, who loved him, watched to see what he did upon entering the sacred place. Seeing that he seemed to sit in perfect silence he finally asked: “My good father, what do you say to our Lord in these long visits you pay Him every day?” “I say nothing to Him”, was the answer, “I look at Him and He looks at me.” What more was needful!Would you know how to come to God and how to get His pardon and His peace? Would you enjoy the company of good men, of sanctified spirits, of angels and of Christ? Christianity explains all and offers all, “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh”.

Hebrews 12:22-23

IS THE CHURCH DEAD OR DYING? Hebrews 12:22-23; Matthew 16:18. TRAVEL by auto is not conducive to reading nor compatible with book study. And yet, a while ago on a western auto trip certain articles upon which my eyes fell suggested this sermon; and to them I may appeal in quotations.On that trip I purchased and read Leslie H. Allen’s volume on “Bryan and Darrow at Dayton” —the famous Scopes’ trial. In the office of a brother pastor I found the Baptist of November 16th, 1929, carrying an article on “The Church’s Deepest Wound” by Dr. Charles E. Jefferson of New York City.

On another day I read with interest, in the “Literary Digest” of November 30th, 1929, an article on “The Coroner Not Needed for the Church.” Inasmuch as these three publications all dealt with the same subject, the life or death of the Church, my mind naturally dwelt much upon the question, “Will the Church Live or Die?”The two texts to which I call your attention would seem to be the inspired answer to this uninspired query. In the first of these texts we are told what the Church is: “new born ones” whose names are “written in Heaven”. That fact would, to say the least, mean its immortality. But in the second, we have the assurance of Jesus, the infinitely wise Son of God, that “the gates of heir shall “not prevail” against it.However, neither text promises the Church exemption from test, trial, or even temporary defeat. There are three things, then, that one may say concerning the Church; and in each statement be assured of the backing of the Bible: 1. The Church Must Suffer! 2.

The Church Cannot Die! 3. The Church Will Conquer!THE CHURCH MUST SUFFER It is an interesting study to see at what points Christ suffered and, then, to parallel His experiences as the Head with that of the Church, which is the Body of Christ.Christ suffered at the hands of His enemies; Christ endured the betrayal of professed friends; and Christ was sorely disappointed in genuine disciples.The Church was never promised exemption at any of these points.It has, and will continue to have, its bitter enemies. The Pharisees were never more determined upon His death, and the Sadducees were never more ready to lend assistance in the same, than certain individuals and organizations of the present are set upon the destruction of the Church.For the first time in American history a great state, through one of its judges, has provided a charter to an organization, the express purpose of which is “to destroy the Church.” And while Atheism is brazen enough to thus avow its definite intention, there are literally scores of individuals, and no small number of organizations, that entertain the same malignant purpose.But this is nothing new under the sun. Christ Himself said,“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. “Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you * *. “All these things will they do unto you for My Name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me” (John 15:18-21). It is most amazing what calumnies can be hurled against the Church. Atheism charges her with “ignorance,” “bigotry,” “oppression,” with being “the chief foe of progress,” “the malignant enemy of man”; but it remains for the professed churchman, a prominent modernistic pastor, to charge her with all the brutalities of the late war—yea, with the war itself. As Judas Iscariot, who was a professed Apostle of the Christian faith, sought to incriminate Jesus, as a self-seeking waster of precious perfume, when Mary, without announcement, broke the vial over His head, so this disciple of the new theology charges the Church of God with the selfish waste of the war that broke unexpectedly over the Church, and brought her nothing but sorrow and sobs.From avowed enemies cruel charges are to be expected; but alas, for the deeper betrayal of professed friends.The true Church of God, the “Heaven born,” whose names are “written in Heaven”, had nothing to do with the late war, except to grieve it. And they had no responsibility whatever to either prevent or bring that war to an end, since the Church is not commissioned as a peace-maker.Christ, its great Head, was clear upon this point. He came not to control the conduct of the unregenerate world, nor yet to arbitrate disputes as between nations. “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division” (Luke 12:51).The most superficial student of the Bible would see that Christ’s first appearance was not as “the Prince of Peace”, but rather, as a personal Saviour.

That coming was to the end that the lost might be sought and found (Luke 19:10), and that individual regenerations, in response to faith, might be wrought. I challenge any student of the Book to find within the pages of the New Testament any Church commission which looks to the arbitration and possible adjustment of international difficulties.It is little wonder that modernism, in discussing “The Church’s Deepest Wound” never makes a remote reference to a Bible text; and, by thus ignoring what that sacred Book has to say, it joins the enemies of the Church itself to send into her side another stab.The betrayal of professed friends is most painful.

Jesus faced His open enemies; but never did He suffer by their acrimonious speech, never from the spit that fell upon His face, nay, not even from the nails that pierced His hands and feet or the thorned-crown that bled His brow, as He did when He looked into the face of Judas and realized that He was betrayed by a professed friend. Perhaps in all human or even Divine speech, no more withering sarcasm was ever employed than this: “FRIEND, wherefore art thou come?” (Matthew 26:50)?In view of that fact I have been running through my New Testament to see who, in the Church, stabbed it the deepest. I suspect that the inspired record of human conduct is very incomplete, and that many disciples betrayed the Church in one way or another, and the inspired Book flung over their conduct the merciful cloak of non-record. But there are some men’s behavior blazoned on the sacred page. The Book of Acts, if not a full record, is at least an efficient one of the early Church history. Did it ever occur to you that Ananias and Sapphira held the highest place of infamy in that record because of their attempt to deceive and even betray the Church of the Living God?

Has it ever occurred to you that, in all probability, few sins have smitten the Church more often than that of falsifying facts concerning one’s wealth and gifts?Second to these, stands Simon, the sorcerer, who thought to make the Holy Ghost a medium of personal profit.Ray Stanard Baker, in an article published in the “Literary Digest” some years ago, called attention to the real wounds from which the Church of God is suffering when he said, “In recent years the unthinkable sum of billions of dollars has been given by American people for various philanthropies,” and although prominent Christians are named by him as the most munificent of these givers, he is compelled to say, “Only a small proportion of this, goes to the churches.” And he adds, “Not only the dollars of the rich, but the pennies of the poor have been diverted, in large measure, from the Church.”This past week I walked daily to the end of the blind street in Los Angeles, on one side of which stands a great Bible Institute, erected very largely by the gifts of one consecrated Christian, but now suffering for funds; exactly opposite it is being perfected, at the present time, a club house, the elegance of which will beggar description. For this building a few hundred men, many of them church-members, are laying on the altar of personal pleasure $1,000 per month each, until the same shall be completed.

And since this building, stretching skyward in height and swept about with decks that would do credit to the greatest steamer that ever sailed the seas, is due to the club’s choice, it is natural to suppose that these contributions are willingly made.The Church of God in America carries on its rolls a multitude of men whose hands are open for every social or semi-religious, or purely secular enterprise, that makes appeal to their office, but closed against the only institution that has brought light to the world’s darkness and salt to its moral rottenness; and therein the Church suffers.But a further step must be taken: The Church suffers at the hands of its best representatives. Here again the parallelism between the experiences of the Head, Christ, and the Body, the Church, is evident.It was Christ’s best disciples who slept while He faced Gethsemane alone; and it was Christ’s most notable Apostle, the greatest preacher of the Twelve, who denied Him in Caiaphas’ porch. The simple truth is that the Church suffers after a kindred manner. The best of us are but poor representatives of His Spirit. We fail Him in His hour of need. We shrink when there is opportunity to fill up His sufferings.

We employ condemnable speech and indulge in unchristian conduct at the very hour when He needs us most. Henry Mabie said what should be true, but what we fear is not the fact, when he declared: “As God in Christ spared not Himself, so, we, who believe, are to spare ourselves no conformity to the Redeemer’s will.” We are to stop not short of complete crucifixion; to stop on nothing that stands between us and obedience to Him.

The Pauline confession is the ideal expression of it: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me”. Said the eloquent Lacordare, “The Church was born crucified.”But is it not a fact that we have now come upon a time when those of us who constitute it, are seeking to draw out the nails, remove the crown of thorns, push aside the sword, and live a life of selfish and personal comfort rather than share with Him the Cross?These are the true wounds of the Church and they have little or nothing to do with “the late war,” save as some men, who named the Name of Christ, incited that war to gratify pride of station, extent of country, or to seek the filthy profits of the same. It is a strange thing to charge the Church— “little flock”—in the minority everywhere, with what the godless majority wrought.But, such a charge is in perfect keeping with the false notion that because there are Christians in Germany, the German nation is a Christian nation; that because there are Christians in England or America that England and America are Christian nations. There are no Christian nations! The Bible knows no such thought for this era. The Church is in the world, but not of it. Here, it is a pilgrim and a stranger; and destined to the treatment to which pilgrims and strangers have always been subjected.But this only leads up to my second remark:THE CHURCH CANNOT DIE Its Head, Christ, is not more immortal than is “His Body, the Church”. They wreathed the Head about with thorns; they drove nails through the hands and feet; they thrust a sword through the body. But both “Head” and “Body” of Christ came back from the grave. The lesson is not far to seek!The wounds of the Church will never prove fatal. The one who charges it with responsibility of the late war has been mistaken in many things. His disloyalty to the authority of the Book is as widely known as is his name. But he was never more mistaken than when he said of the late war: “It was a Christian war; fought by Christian nations.”A sentence like that stabs afresh the Church of Christ. But that is not the first stab from this source.

It was the same author who wrote of the Bible, “The Bible is not infallible in its words, for no translation is faultless. It is not infallible in its language; for though the style is good, it is not perfect. It is not infallible in its facts, for an historian occasionally slips. It is not infallible in its theories, for its theories of the physical universe are mistaken. It is not infallible in its arguments, for some of its arguments are weak. It is not infallible in its moral sanctions, for the Hebrews undoubtedly sometimes confounded their own impulses with the voice of God.

It is not infallible in the expectations of even its greatest men, for all the Apostles expected Jesus to return within their own lifetime.”Is it a strange matter that the man who removes “the foundations” should have some fears lest the house collapse?But this is not for believers; they hold another and a better view of that blessed institution, “His Body”.It is not chargeable with the world’s follies. The late war was a world-folly; nothing was ever more so.

It was born of world-ambitions; it was carried forward by world-inventions; it crushed and destroyed world-discoveries.Sir Robert Anderson, a man who was the head of Scotland Yards, knew perhaps as much of the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil as any living human being; and yet, a man who, as a student of the Sacred Scriptures, was unquestionably Spirit-taught, said, “False conceptions of the Church are working great mischief. The most of the perverts to Rome are duped by them; and advocates of the sham, ‘Higher Criticism’, appeal to them to justify their rejection of Scripture, for with mingled effrontery and folly they make the doctrine of the Spirit’s presence in the Church an excuse for rejecting the teaching of the inspired Apostles and Prophets of the New Testament. It is essential to distinguish between The Church’ as a society, the administration of which was entrusted to men on earth, and ‘the Church’ as the Body of Christ, dependent only upon Himself as its Lord and Head. The building of ‘the Church, which is His Body’ is His own work, and it cannot fail. But surely fanaticism or folly alone can refuse to recognize that The gates of hell’ have prevailed against the organized society on earth— The outward frame’ as Alford calls it, which, in its full and final development or evil will appear as ‘the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus’.”That there is a great proportion of the Church, apostate now, keen observers do not deny. But that many in it are yet loyal is evidenced in certain facts to which the “Literary Digest” recently called attention.Mr.

Ramsey MacDonald is quoted as having declared that the peace movement of the present is due to the advocacy of the Christian churches; while the vociferous Mr. Shearer, would-be wielder of international thunderbolts, bewails the attempt of the Church to further international good will.

Professor Millikan, one of the best known and highly honored of America’s physicists, writing on, “What I Believe,” declares that “a large fraction of the altruistic, humanitarian, and forward-looking work of the world in all its forms, has today its mainspring in the Christian churches. My observation is that about 95 per cent of it has come, and is coming, from the influence of organized religion.”These are tributes to the vitality of the Church of God; to the evidences that there remains a spiritual and self-sacrificing Body of which Jesus spake when He said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.But to the last question,WILL THE CHURCH CONQUER? It is a question to which the believer can give but one answer—Yes!It has immortality itself. It is “His Body”. He is not dead; He is alive! That is more than an Easter message; that is a fact of history. As Christ conquered against death and the grave, so for 2,000 years the Church has risen from every coffin in which men sought to shut her up. It has come out of every grave in which they expected to permanently place her form.The Church is not a short-lived individual to be judged adversely by a single incident. The Church is old; 2,000 years she has walked bravely on. The fires of persecution have wrought for her only what they did for the three Hebrew children, namely, burned her bands away and brought her to greater liberty.

The sword has accomplished for her only what it did for Christ—it has thrust her side only to prove her immortality. Betrayal has wrought for her only what betrayal wrought for Jesus—it has flung her but temporarily into the hands of enemies, while her betrayers have gone to an eternal doom. As Christ lives, the Church lives. As the powers of Heaven and earth are lodged in Him, so also with it. By faith it can remove mountains; and by obedience it has determined the courses of the streams of the centuries.Its success is assured by His Word. It was Christ who said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

Even now when it is attacked, the secular press rises to its defense and says, ‘“The minister of religion is not manning a sinking ship; not serving a lost cause, or debating a dead issue. He is the servant of a living Master and a living Church, mediating the truth of an eternal life to men in the midst of their brief and fleeting years.” Those lukewarm friends of the Church—“modernists”—admit that practically every beneficent feature of modern civilization reveals the touch of the Church. “Wherever man has been bettered and society has been made more beautiful, the good seed of God’s Word has been sown by the Church.” One Sunday afternoon I called on Dr.

O. P. Gifford, that most lucid thinker, that compiler of perfect sentences; and while the years are upon him, his mind knows nothing of senility, and the visit brought to memory the days of our fellowship in Chicago, when as neighbor pastors the lad listened to the more mature man, to be always interested and profited in all that he said. It was Gifford who said, “The greatest man that ever entered Europe was Paul, the Apostle. He has done more for her civilization than all her armies and navies. Near Blair castle in Scotland, was a bare grim crag, one of the unsightly features of the great estate. No one dared climb its face to conquer its ugliness. There were two small cannon on the castle grounds.

Alexander Nasmyth had a number of canisters made to fit the cannon, filled them with living seeds of grass, shrub and tree, and fired them against the rocky face. The blow shattered the shells, scattered the seeds, and the seeds transformed the crags into; living beauty.” So thought Gifford, the eternal seeds of truth, scattered over the nations by the hand of the Church of God, have produced all that is worth while in every civilization.This is true of Asia and of Europe. It is true of Africa and the Americas. It is true of every spot that the true Church of God has touched. It is the Church of God that has brought man from barbarism and savagery; that has created all moral and ethical interests and brought society more and more toward the ideal that Christ had and holds for the future world. The Church has been His instrument in all this work.The Church will conquer by Christ’s presence.

He is now its Saviour. His one mission in this age is to turn men from sin to holiness.

But He will come again to take the throne, wear the crown, rule from sea to sea. Then He will sit as the Prince of Peace; and at that time—not now, but then— bloodshed will end. The Prophet’s vision will find a perfect fulfilment:“He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”. “For the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it”.