their fellow Christians the most difficult to deal with, being the hardest, most covetous, most grasping of any, often descending to mean and paltry ways, such as upright and honourable worldlings scorn. By reason of which the direction contained 1 Cor. vi. 1-4 has been found impracticable to those who would willingly have walked according to it. Our conviction is deep and of long standing, that if some Christian men could see how, in their dealings with the world and their fellow Christians, their Master-with his eye upon them, looking them through and through-is "crucified afresh, and put to open shame," they would be horror-stricken at their ways, and would hesitate less than they do to shelter themselves in the refuge of lies which high doctrines afford. How it has been that believers have formed self-indulgent habits and appetites, allowing such to grow upon them by slow degrees, the conscience becoming habituated to wrong has ceased to witness against it, until at length, Apollyon, the destroyer, has gained his cursed end in cutting short their lives, and the light of this judgment seat reveals the dreadful fact that practically they have been suicides. It is perfectly shocking to think how the blessed doctrines of sovereign grace,-eternal foreknowledge, predestination, final perseverance, and overcoming of all believers are held in unrighteousness. Blessed truths, never to be called in question, still less denied; but we hesitate not to say that the way in which they are held by many changes the truth of God into a lie, and gives them license to live as they list, and continue in sin that grace may abound. We ask again, How is it to be with such at the judgment seat of Christ? Does the Scripture throw any light upon the question? It is easy enough to conclude that Matt. x. 33, has nothing to say to believers, because Christ cannot deny one of his blood-bought ones, but we observe that our Lord is at the time speaking expressly to his disciples, to those who are of more value to him than many sparrows. Nor do we apprehend it to be denial involving final dismission from his presence, such as the words, "I never knew you, depart from me indicate; but a denial of them as overcomers worthy of reward, a kingdom, and a crown. Whether Luke xii. has anything to say to these, where we find it written, "That servant which knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him, lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee thou shalt not depart thence till thou hast paid the very last mite," we shall then and there learn. Without adopting the Romish purgatory, we must admit these words of our Lord to have a meaning which popular theology finds it hard to explain. If these words have any meaning for the class now under consideration, we venture to suggest that in the neighbourhood of the judgment seat, outside and away from the marriage feast, there may be found a region called in the passage above quoted, a prison, where some will have to learn lessons they have failed to learn on earth, and where stripes of some sort, few or many will fall upon consciences that had become seared. "For all his ways are judgment-equitable (see Boothroyd)-a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he "who hath said, "Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me," for it is written, "Thou art not a God that hast pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee." Among the strange and startling revelations of that day will be our manner of dealing with the mammon of unrighteousness, and whether therewith we have made to ourselves friends or enemies. If we have bestowed it upon ourselves, our wives, our children, our friends already rich, we shall not find them able to befriend us in that day, if in so doing, we have made God our enemy. Dean Alford's comment hereupon is noteworthy: "We are to use this mammon of unrighteousness to make ourselves-not palaces, nor barns, nor estates, nor treasures-but friends; that is, to bestow it on the poor and needy, that when it shall fail they—that is the friends may receive us into the everlasting tabernacles." For God, and the holy angels, and all the saints will be on the side of the poor, and will befriend those who have befriended them. And especially will this be shown in our final act, in the disposition of our earthly estate by our last Will and Testament; an act which cannot take effect for good or ill until the seed sown thereby springs up and bears fruit, by which time the opportunity for repentance and amendment has with the life of the testator long passed away. But the fruit of such sowing must become apparent in the time and at the place we are now considering. The fearful responsibility of the Christian capitalist in this particular is, we fear, too little considered. What more natural than that the parent should" leave the rest of his substance to his babes!" Nothing more likely or more natural to the men of this world, but with the Christian-whose all is the Lord's confessedly-other claimants ought to be considered. If the children have claims, and perhaps the first claim on the parent, the right-minded Christian will recognise other claims, and in times like these, especially when philanthropic effort abounds everywhere, and is crippled for lack of means. To whom shall the philanthropist look for aid if not to the Christian class of society? And while many in their lifetime contribute more or less freely to charities, we are well aware that in the provisions of their last Will and Testament it is too often forgotten that with their life will cease those contributions unless provided for in some other form. Few seem to reflect that the £100 left to this or that charity is a permanent contribution of so much per cent. per annum. And fewer still, we fear, reflect that Heaven's blessing will rest on the portions left to others, if with them the poor can take a share. That selfish Will of that Christian man who, possessed of all his faculties, lived on to fourscore years, could not do otherwise than bear evil fruit, seeing that its provisions favoured only his widow and three children. The claims of his own poor personal relations and God's poor in the person of the widow, the orphan, the idiot, the blind, the dumb, and the incurable, altogether ignored, ample though his fortune was, to provide for each and all. We wonder not at seeing the two sons fall out, the elder driving the younger to sea, or some far-off land; the daughter married to some worthless husband who cared for her fortune only, and the widow bereft of reason, finds her home for life in some private asylum. Or that selfish Will of another who divides his fortune equally between his son and daughter, already well provided for on their mother's side of the family, so that both he and they could well afford to consider other poor and needy relatives of their own, as well as those God reckons his own poor. We wonder not at seeing the son and daughter fall out over some portion of the estate, and a life-long feud become the result. The deodand unpaid stood to the debit of the estate, and God has strange ways of taking his right when withheld by us. Will the survivors of these Christian men alone reap the evil fruit of an evil sowing, or shall the sowers themselves reap in some sort or sense at this judgment seat the fruit of their evil sowing? We ask the question suggestively, while we attempt not to answer it. "Ah! who shall thus the Master meet, Bearing but withered leaves, Ah! who shall at the Saviour's feet, Nothing but leaves!" In the light of this judgment seat, Matt. vii. 13, 14, and Luke xiii. 24, may contain a reading for some which to them will be strange and new. When asked, "Are there few that be saved ?" our Lord answered the question with an attempt to raise the faith of the inquirer from the lower level of bare salvation to the higher level of overcoming and "reigning in life," as the antithesis of being scarcely saved" with all our works gone to destruction. If the "destruction" here spoken of by our Lord, is a destruction of works-the worker "saved yet so as by fire"-it will be a new reading to some. And we conceive it possible that such latent truth may be in the passage; for whatever truth may lie upon the surface, there is mostly a deeper truth for those who can read it. 66 Our hope is that such heart-searching truth as we have attempted to suggest may not provoke a useless and hollow criticism, but rather a reverential inquiry, how much of truth may have been spoken, and what bearing it has upon the individual heart and conscience. If we expect our readers to be few,-in much that we have said we expect our sympathisers to be fewer still. "Yet we speak wisdom among the perfect" (1 Cor. ii. 6; see Alford), the matured in judgment, or such as seek to be; and if in anything any be otherwise minded, if we have the mind of Christ, let them seek to have it too, for what we have spoken that is true will continue true, and its importance will intensify as the time for its fulfilment draws near. We have seen the two classes of saved ones pass the scrutiny of the Judgment Seat. The one as overcomers having "their works wrought in God" through being "workers together with God." The light of the divine presence, as a fire, has manifested them and their work. Their work has gone into the fire, and come forth as gold, silver, and precious stones. Well has a Puritan writer of the 17th century said, "Have ye that in you that will endure the fire ?" "When I am tried I shall come forth like gold." ""Tis the righteousness of God only, not of man, that will endure this trial. 'Tis the divine nature only that can stand before devouring fire, and everlasting burnings. When this day breaks forth all the righteous Pharisees and formalists will be found to be the sinners in Zion that are afraid." (Goad's Sermons, 1653. "The Right Spirit of Christ.") And again, "Here is somewhat that is to be devoured in the fire, and somewhat that lives in the fire, that glorifies God in the fire, there is that lives in God who is a devouring fire, and everlasting burnings. All that is spiritual, all that is the new creature, therein it hath its life, it comes from God, and it lives in God" (Christ the only Sacrifice and Altar). Dean Alford, in his Commentary on Mark ix. 49, says: "It is with fire all men are to be salted. This fire is the divine purity and judgment in the covenant, whose promise is 'I will dwell among them.' And in and among this purifying fire shall the people of God ever walk and rejoice everlastingly. This is the right understanding of Isaiah xxxiii. 14, 15. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly."" The other class with their works wrought in self, having lived to self, self in the will, self-indulgent-whether as spendthrifts or covetous-the life-work of such likened to wood, hay, and stubble, we have seen go into the fire, but not go through the fire. "If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." (1 Cor. iii. 15.) The man saved, but the work lost, and with it all reward, in the honour and dignity of an entrance richly ministered into the millennial kingdom, or any appointment to rule and authority therein. We now proceed to consider the fall of Babylon on earth, and the Marriage supper of the Lamb in the heavenlies, the destruc tion of the counterfeit, and the manifestation of the true bride of Christ. IV. THE FALL OF BABYLON AND THE MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB. What we now want is for one to say, "Come hither, and I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon the many waters," (Rev. xvi. 1,) for all seeing, apart from his showing, will profit us nothing. What then did John see causing him to wonder with great astonishment? "A woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour,* and gilded with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of the Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth." And moreover, "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, sitting upon a scarlet-coloured wild beast full of names of blasphemy.' (See Alford.) We note the association of harlotry with blasphemy. And well might the seer wonder when it was given him to understand that in her he saw the type of the false church in all ages, the seed of the bondwoman born after the flesh, persecuting the seed born after the Spirit; the seed of Cain who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother, because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous; the profane seed of Esau which, despising its birthright, has ever sought to slay its brethren, the true seed of Israel; the seed of Balaam, who, with the word of the Lord in his mouth, carried covetousness in his heart, and taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel; the seed of Jezebel, who, though Israel's queen, slew the prophets of the Lord, and threatened the life of Elijah: and in the church of Thyatira, "calling herself a prophetess, yet teaching and seducing God's servants to commit fornication;" the generation at whose hands shall be required the blood of all the prophets which has been shed from the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zecharias, which perished between the altar and the temple; the stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, rebuked by the holy martyr, Stephen, in those scathing words, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers, who have * Simple and unsophisticated minds wonder with astonishment approaching that of John's to see the Roman, the Greek, the Anglican, and one or two other Churches, in robing their priesthood, adopting these very colours that seem to denote this woman's livery. |