2. Miracle. 3. Resurrection. (1) The Spirit of God vindicated Christ as God beforehand by the marvellous prophetic portrait which found in Him alone fulfilment. He prepared a minute predictive delineation of the coming Messiah; and when Christ was born, every new development filled out some prophetic feature until the correspondence was complete. (2) Miracle. The Spirit in Christ vindicated His claim. His words and works were such as could have been spoken and wrought only by God. Never before nor since were there such teaching and such working, such wisdom and power conjoined. It is inconceivable that these could be connected with a fanatic or impostor. (3) Resurrection. Here was the crowning vindication of Christ's deity. As prophecy anticipated His human career, so this followed it. When He was dead and ceased to speak or work in the flesh, the Spirit of God, who dwelt in Him, proved Him to be God by the fact that death had over Him no dominion, and that decay could not touch him even in the grave. Compare Romans i. 4.

II. What was He? The second couplet answers. He was the appoint ed Saviour; and hence His character and work were properly attested and proclaimed. In this second couplet the first member is probably mistranslated. Angels is a word meaning simply messengers, and so should be rendered

seen of messengers," in which case it includes both the angelic and the human messengers who were appointed of God to witness to the fact of His resurrection. Everything hung upon Christ's rising from the dead. Without this He could not be the justifier of sinners, for the death penalty would be yet upon Him; He would be a false prophet, for He foretold His own resurrection. He could not be the Deliverer from death while yet under its power, nor from Satan, who had the power of death committed to him. It was, therefore, of first importance that Christ should be fully and incontrovertibly

witnessed as having risen; and so messengers chosen of God, both angelic and human, saw Him and bore witness to His glorious rising, and He was preached to the nations by those who saw Him and ate and drank with Him after His rising.

III. Where is He? The third couplet beautifully responds: He is in the world as the present and living Saviour of all believers; and He has been caught up into glory as the advocate at God's right hand, a Prince and a Saviour, to carry on redemption to its consummation. No greater vindication of all Christ's claims as God can be found even on prophecy and miracle than this double fact; by faith He dwells with every penitent believing soul; to faith He is the perpetually exalted and crowned King and Lord. What He can be to you in this world you may test; love Him, trust Him, keep His words, and He will come and make His abode in you. What He can be to you as the King on the throne you may easily test by prayer. Ask Him what you will present your needs, your sins, your sorrows, your work for souls; let Him be the partner of your life and toil and see how He will vindicate you as His servant, and your work as His work.

In conclusion, note the three great characteristic facts of Christ's career: Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension. The first proved His true humanity; the second His divinity; the third the union of humanity with divinity in His person. We make not too much of His birth and death, but too little of His resurrection and ascension. Particularly His ascension; for the most stupendous mystery of all is this Man-Christ Jesus actually bearing up to the throne of the universe the body and nature of man. In His Incarnation God came down. In His Resurrection the Divine Spirit overcame death and brought out of the grave His body. But in the Ascension man went up where God is, and became, in Christ, God. Can any human mind have invented a mystery

Not ashamed of the Gospel (Romans i. 16). Paul means that he does not blush for the Gospel.

1. Its genealogy. It is the old Gospel descended by a long and honorable lineage from prophets and apostles, and Jesus Himself, from the first Father, God.

2. Its ethics. Its moral teachings lead in all ethical teachings, complete beyond addition, and allowing no subtraction.

3. Its great example. Christ, whether in His attitude toward God or toward men, was beyond comparison.

4. Its universal applicability. It touches and reaches man as man. Salvation for all sinners. A Brahman said to me, Preach the Gospel, and let it defend itself. Don't prove it, but preach it."

5. Its missionary character, to be preached to the whole world. Every disciple a debtor to declare it to man.

6. Its simple terms. The only way for peace of conscience, reconciliation with God, and charity toward manforgiveness, justification, sanctification.

7. Its promises. Life and immortality brought to light.

8. The power of God is in this Gospel. G. F. PENTECOST.

POWER IN PRAYER.-In Abraham's intercession for Sodom it is to be observed that, although he so importunately pressed his plea that for the sake of the righteous therein the city might be spared, and notwithstanding he feared the anger of the Lord if he carried his importunity too far, it was Abraham himself and not the Lord who set the limit to his prayer. "Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but this once; peradventure there be ten found there." Although he had gone from fifty to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, the Lord showed no impatience with his pleading; but it was the patriarch's courage that gave

Who can tell how much farther he might have carried his intercession ! Moreover, it is noticeable that when God did destroy the city, He did what Abraham had not asked, He delivered Lot, the one righteous man that was there, and his family, and sordid abuudantly above all that the patriarch had asked.

THE LAND OF PROMISE was undoubtedly the type of God's "exceeding great and precious promises," which are the believer's inheritance. If we examine carefully the gradual unfolding of God's thought in the Old Testament, we may find a rich lesson taught us as to our duty and privilege in relation to the promises.

Abraham was called to

1. Separation to come out from the semi-idolatrous land and people of Haran, and come into the land God would show him.

2. Survey. Arise, lift up thine eyes, look." He was to take a comprehensive view of the land, get some adequate conception of its length and breadth.

3. Appropriation. "Arise, walk through the length and breadth of it." He was to measure it off by his own feet, claiming it for his own by placing his pilgrim feet upon it (comp. Josh. i. 3).

4. Abode. He and his descendants were to pitch their tents there and abide in the land.

5. Cultivation. Afterward we find God leading Isaac to sow the fields, and so bring out the riches of the land, and we are told what an abundant crop he obtained.

What is all this but a type of the believer separating himself unto God, then surveying his inheritance in Christ, then taking possession, abiding in the promises, and diligently improving his privileges to make the promises fruitful in his life and power and service!

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE enriches preaching which is essentially a testi

Mr.

mony, not the mouth of a message only, but the mouth of an experience. Spurgeon says that when he has nothing else to say to his people he puts himself in his gun and fires it off. He means that from time to time he uses his own inner life, the knowledge God has given him of spiritual things in his own soul, the experience of answered prayer, rewarded toil, compensated suffering, fruitful faith, to illustrate God's faithfulness, and the privilege of believers. In lands where there is an established church men are prone to degrade the ministry to a profession, whose requisite is culture, and whose perquisite is whatever price it can command. We should think of the ministry as a Divine vocation, and its highest requisite is a rich, deep, personal experience. In fact, there is no true knowledge of the Scripture to him who is not rooted and grounded in love, and so able to comprehend the wondrous things of God.

A HEARER'S CONTRIBUTION to the eloquence of the pulpit. Gladstone says that eloquence is the pouring back on an audience in a flood what is first received from the auditors in the form of vapor, as the skies send back in rain the moisture that is first drawn by evaporation from the earth itself. What a devout and appreciative hearer contributes to the power of the speaker is something never yet adequately apprehended. Peter could not help being a power in the house of Cornelius. Think of a preacher of the Gospel being met, at the very threshold of his work, by a body of hearers, who say, "Now, then, we are all here present before God, to hear all things which are commanded thee of God." There had been, before he came to Cornelius, fasting and prayer-a deep desire to know saving truth. The centurion had gathered together an audience of those who were like-minded with himself, and from the moment Peter opened his mouth he was met by open hearts, re

ceptive toward the truth and will of God; and it is remarkable that as Peter "began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell" on all those that heard the Word. The Spirit of God was divinely impatient to bestow blessing where souls were divinely impatient to receive blessing; and so Peter had no sooner got out of his mouth enough truth to be the basis of saving power, than the Spirit of God came in His own might and brought that whole body of hearers to Jesus' feet. Suppose, in a modern church, disciples should rise early on the Lord's day, and spend an hour with God praying for a blessing on the day's duties, and especially the preaching of the Word, should then avoid excess of eating, that the whole mind might be awake and unclogged by a sluggish body, should themselves commune with the Word of God, and come to the house of prayer to hear all things commanded of God, what new power would attend preaching! How would the weakest man be uplifted and upborne on the wings of his people's prayers. The preachers to such a people could not long stay if he did not respond to their devoutness and craving hunger for spiritual food. Such a people would compel a preacher either to preach the Gospel or else make way for some one who would.

THERE are four types of religious life: 1. The rationalistic, in which all truth and doctrine are submitted to the reason as the supreme arbiter. 2. The ecclesiastic, in which the Church is practically the final authority. 3. The mys tic, in which the "inner light" interprets even Christian doctrine. 4. The evangelic, in which the soul bows to the authority of the inspired Word, and makes the reason, the voice of the Church, and the inner instincts and impulses subordinate, as fallible sources of authority, to the one supreme tribunal of Scripture. Between these four every believer must make his elec tion.

culties of every kind, the ruined walls were rapidly rebuilt, the government of the city was thoroughly attended to, abuses and oppressions were hunted out, and the people began to get heart and hope again.

How was Nehemiah to get his pay for all his toil and trouble? There was one way, and that was the corrupt, oppressive, Oriental way-the hurt of which for all the years has been striking at the vitals of the Turkish Empire. When a man would get the government of a province in the Turkish Empire, he must first make the Sultan a present of a good many hundred thousand dollars often, then pledge the payment of so much every year into the national treasury from the province, and then look out for his own pay by a still further squeezing of the poor people of his province. How much he squeezes for himself the government does not care, provided he does well the promised squeezing for the government. This too was the financial method of ancient Persia. Such was the usual way, the expected way, the only alternative to which was the paying one's own charges out of one's own pocket. As methods of government were going then, it would not have been the wrong way had Nehemiah been governor of a prosperous province. But circumstances do alter cases Those returned Hebrew exiles were poor, and at difficult work in a hard place; and so Nehemiah would dare say "No" to the usual and expected and self-rewarding thing. Out of his own means he provided for himself, and showed hospitality to others. And the secret of Nehemiah's strong, sweet, stalwart, tender, great and gracious character-as the Scripture portrays it for us-lies in this ability of saying "No" where it should be said. "So did not I"-that is, as all the other governors had done-“because of the fear of God."

I have the picture of a man, philosopher, seer, poet-perhaps the man most royally endowed of his entire century; and yet when you measure what Cole

ridge did by what he might have done, his life is almost as pitiable a failure and fragment as can be found in literary history. "It used to be said of him that whenever either natural obligation or voluntary undertaking made it his duty to do anything, the fact seemed sufficient reason for his not doing it." There was no veto-power in him. There was no rocky ability of saying “No,” like Nehemiah's. So he was but a mass of seaweed-a very gorgeous mass indeed, but drifted here and yonder as the tides listed, when he might have been a noble island or even a continent, had he but possessed anchoring power.

Our character and destiny are largely and really in our own hands, and that character and destiny must be, in great degree, as we use our veto-power; and, like Nehemiah, say when we ought to say it, a grand, firm "No" to things.

We must say this "No" in the realm of the thought. A young artist once asked an older and distinguished artist for some word of advice which would help him in the toilful professional struggle upward. The distinguished artist, looking round the young man's room, saw some rough, mean sketches hanging on the walls. "Take those down," he said, "for no young man desirous of rising in his 'profession should ever allow his eye to become familiar with any but the highest forms of art." And this artist went on to say that if the young man could not afford to buy good oil paintings of the firstclass, he should either get good engravings of great pictures or have nothing on his walls. For the constant sight of vulgarity in art would surely result in depraved taste in the man who looked upon it.

Now we live in an evil world, and there is in ourselves enough of evil inherited and acquired, and so there is enough of bad pigment without us and within us to set the imagination at painting evil pictures. And so, here in the realm of our thought, we must put forth veto-power upon our thought and say "No" sternly and squarely. As a man