May 10

He hath made him to be sin for us. — 2 COR. v. 21.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have eternal life. — JOHN iii. 14, 15.

MEN are bitten by fiery serpents, and they die because human skill can furnish no antidote. By divine command a brazen image of the fiery serpent is "lifted up" among them, and every bitten one who looks up to that serpent-likeness finds the death-current checked and life again coursing through his veins (Numbers xxi. 6-9). Thus sin is a virulent poison, caused by the bite of that "old serpent . . . the devil." Physicians have ever been studying the case and prescribing remedies. But nature furnishes no antidote: therefore all their panaceas fail, and the poison spreads, working death, physical, spiritual, eternal. Is there then no hope? Plainly there can be none except it come from God himself. Such is the suggestion of that strange transaction "in the wilderness," and the direct teaching of these words of our Lord. God himself has undertaken the case. "His own Son," having been made "in the likeness of sinful flesh," has been "lifted up," first on the cross, that he might make expiation, "bearing our sins" — as it were, receiving the poison for us — "in his own body;" then to "the right hand of power," that he might send "the Spirit of grace" and thus make "the preaching of the cross" effectual in inducing the perishing to look unto him and live.

J. V. N. Talmarg

He left his starry crown,

And laid his robes aside,

On wings of love came down,

And wept and bled and died;

What he endured, oh, who can tell,

To save our souls from death and hell!

S. STENNETT