February 20

I was set up from everlasting. — PROV. VIII. 23.

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. — JOHN VIII. 56, 58.

THE continuous life of Christ in creation and in the history of this world from first to last underruns various questions as to redemption and salvation, solving many such problems satisfactorily. The work of Christ through the Divine Spirit is potent alike in external and indwelling Christian life. The lack of the Christ-life among professing Christians, as it seems, causes Tolstoy and other able leaders to question whether true Christianity as yet exists to any considerable extent on this planet. Far from being a religion worn out and ready to pass away, the perfect day of Christ, the true Christendom, is yet to come: for the real Christian's true life has this unmistakable quality. — it is inevitably and invariably manifest in the self-sacrificing, self-effacing devotion to God and humanity of Christ-like living. The ground of Christian missions then is not so much the fear of hell as the love of God. The Church's missionary charter is our Lord's commission, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature: go, teach all nations!" Christians, incited to daily Christian living at home, are thus directed to undertake devoted efforts reaching far abroad, for those enlightened by the gospel day owe a vast unpaid debt to Abraham and the past. To Greece and Rome and Egypt, to learning, whether of the orient or occident, as well as to Mahometan scholars and the Jewish Scriptures, Christians owe a debt of honor, to be paid in proportion as we teach all that they may come to see and know the truth as it is in Jesus, and that so finally may be fulfilled our Lord's high-priestly prayer that "all may be one."