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,I une 26, 1912] T H E F
in our Saviour's farewell address to His dis,
ipies He said, "1 will not leave you desolate,
1 will come to you." This spake He of the
Spirit, aud of that Spirit He said in the same
connection, "He will convince the world of
sin." The whole context shows that the ungodly
world was meant exclusively. And as
tins whole address relates to things in which
the disciples were directly concerned, it is reasonable
to suppose that a world-wide work of
tin Spirit would begin in the life time of at
least one of them.
There is no inspired pen to give in the details
of the church's progress in Gibbon's happy
period, and the age was so utterly illiterate
that it furnishes little history of any sort. The
so-culled fathers were exceeding few, and even
these seem to have had no regard for posterity.
Perhaps they thought there would not
be any worth considering. But as God made
the world in darkness, and as the Spirit moved
upon the waters in the night of chaos, so the
sou laid the foundations of his earthly kingdom
quietly and in obscurity. He had said one hundred
years before, that so it would be. Luke
17 .00
1 i?IV(
Kusebius, the "father of church history,"
wrote nearly two hundred years after the beginning
of this period. He says "in the reign
of Comraodus peace prevailed in the churches
throughout the whole world," and that "the
Ciospel had brought the minds of men from every
race on earth to the devout veneration of
the Supreme God." All historians agree that
in this century the Christian community "had
become vastly numerous." "Of this fact,"
says Mosheim, "we have the clearest testimony
of the ancients." Moreover, it is also admitted
that this wonderful progress was ascribed
by the writers of the time almost exclusively
to "the efficient will of God, to the energy of
divine truth, and the miracles wrought by
Christians." The Spirit breathed upon the
slain," and they lived and became an exceed
ing great army." The kingdom had come and
come to stay. The despised weakling of the
iirst century had become an unconquerable
giant. It had developed a strength which no
liuman power could overcome or resist. The
celebrated Irenaeus and Tertullian lived in this
period, one in the western the other in the eastern
part of the Empire. Their statements are
so startling that they have been accused of
gross exaggeration, but there is no space to
quote or to discuss them here. There is another
fact which might of itself justify the interpretation
given of this text. "When Milman
describes the direct causes which led to the
'lisestablishment of the church visible of the
Old Testament, he fixes the date at which they
I'cgan to operate and manifest themselves as
fJ8 A. D.! Here then we find an object sufficiently
grand to bring the Son of God to
' irth, the ending (de facto) of the old dispensation
and the beginning (de facto) of the
sew.
In foretelling and describing the destruction
of Jerusalem, our Saviour uses imagery which
"fight be applied to His final coming. Hence
probably most ordinary readers, and many of
the best interpreters: Scott, Henry, Alford,
etc., regard that destruction as a real nomine
ot Christ. But it was only the beginning of
the end. The end did not come until the year
135 when Iby the act of God the Jewish State
was annihilated and the remnants scattered to
the winds. Soon afterwards a Christian temple
adorned the Holy City. A Gentile was its
Pastor and other pastors with their flocks were
ln the contiguous territory. From Jerusalem
and its precincts every Jew was forever b&nish'"'l
and the Sod of Israel was worshipped there
RESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
only in or through the person of the crucified.
1. It is evident that this interpretation of
our text harmonize far better with unfulfilled
Scriptural prophecies than any other. For instance,
the "thousand years" of chap. 20 and
others. The scientist also would say that it
harmonizes better with the 'signs of the times,'
which indicate that the world is rather in its
youth than in its dotage and decay, and that it
is hardly reasonable to suppose that it is upon
the verge of its last fiery dissolution, when it
is just beginning to disclose the boundless possibilities,
that lie within the range of its hidden
powers and resources.
2. It may dispel some of the perplexities
with which Satan afflicts doubting Christians,
and it may help to restrain the mouthings of
skeptics who in the spirit of Peter's last day
scoffers would have us doubt the plenary inspiration
of the Bible or at least of the book of
Revelation. j *
3. It may give to all of us more faith and
fervor when we pray "thy kingdom come."
It is God's plan to "convince the world of sin."
So, as we have seen, He did at the establish^,^4
TT:_ -T i
uoui ui xiis cxiurcxi visiDie, so ue did at the
downfall of Roman Paganism under Constantine,
vividly described acording to most interpreters
in Rev. 6:12 to 17.
A world movement should not surprise us.
It is just as easy for God to convict or even
convert a whole ungodly race at once, as one
individual of that race, and to our view it certainly
would be far more glorious. That we
are in the midst of a great world movement today
which has been gathering and growing for
more than a decade is evident to all. That it
portends fearful convulsions and upheavals is
very likely, but may we not confidently hope
and pray that at the evening time there will
be light and that to us at 'least this text is
literally true "surely He comes quickly."
THE MISER'S SOLILOQUY.
Take not my silver, nor my gold.
Every mite will I with-hold.
They say my money is my God,
And that my grave with it I'll sod?
That never in this life I'll bless,
The poor, not those In sore distress,
And on my death-bed I will say,
I'll take it 'long my way to pay.
In my cold hands I then will hold
That for which all else I sold,
If in this world 'twill all things buy
Eternal life with it I'll try.
They say that God did lend It. me,
But this I ne'er could clearly see?
And when I stand before the throne,
I must account for this great loan.
How beautiful, they say, to give!
For It Is then we truly live,
'And Ifhaaa ?to/l Vl-1- J? ?
?? ? mwvo WMU VUVB n c AlOiy wvruttjr
Along their weary, toilsome way.
Will In that glad eternal home,
Rejoice with angels when we come,
For they o.ur Christ did represent
Lo! 'Twaa the Lord for whom we spent!
But how can I from my gold part,
When all the time 'tis on my heart?
Naught else is there to fill my days
But thoughts of gain, and means, and ways
Of how to make my hoard to grow,
But not a mite of It 'bestow
Upon this world of sin and woe?
Part with It thus? I can't I know!
O, woe Is thine Idolater!
Thou hast been Minrt ?nH nnniM n/4? au
True Joys of earth thou didst all miss
And Heaven hath naughit to offer thee!
4 ?Carrie Primrose.
4
In self-denial for Christ's sake we too often
look at what we give up but not at what we
receive.
iDTH (679) 3
A WORD TO MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL
AND TO CHRISTIAN WORKERS.
Ill a most comforting and strengthening letter
received a few days ago from a brother
minister of our Southern Presbyterian Church,
now a missionary on the other side of the
world, the two closing sentences are as follows:
"1 may mention incidentally that an address
you made in on home miso
l Alio irutrn /\P U 44 1 I- 1 1 ~
oiuuo guvu vuc ui tuc uist impulses X Iiuu LOwards
missionary work. I started a little
home missionary society among my boy friends
at the time."
The address to which allusion is made was
delivered thirty years ago and nothing has
ever been heard from it, until now it is revealed
that it exerted an inlluencc in the life
of a boy which helped to awaken him to the
service of the Master and to bring him to higher
conceptions of Christian duty. At present
he is laboring in a foreign field and giving his
energies of body and mind to the glory of
God in the rescue of millions of souls and the
extension and upbuilding of the divine kingdom
unto the ends of the earth.
This narration of simple facts seems to suggest
to ministers of the Gospel and Christian
WnrL'Offl thai mnnK nf* 4-Kn 4
.. wuv uiuvu ul luc muucuuc UlCJf CACH
aud of the good they accomplished in the service
of the Master is unknown to them, and
ought to be an inspiration to labor on to the
end, strenuously working for the upbuilding of
the Kingdom of God, trusting implicity in Him,
leaving the results of their efforts to the Spirit
of all grace and their reward to Him who rules
in their hearts and lives.
About the year 1863, the writer was privileged
to make the acquaintance of a consecrated
and useful minister of the Baptist
church in Southside Virginia. In a conversation
which ensued, he asked, "Mr. ,
where is Rev. Dr. W. S. Pin miner t'' Following
my reply, he went on to say that he was a
native of and reared in Hanover County and
that in his youth, Dr. Plummer, then pastor
fif til A 1 at Prnohvtnrio? ^ 1
.... ^.WV ^ vuuj ivwuil U1IU1UU Ui lilUllUlUUU,
on one Sunday afternoon drove down to a
church near his father's house and preached to
a large and deeply interested congregation, after
which he returned to Richmond to fill his
own pulpit that night. Soon after this a revival
service was held in the Hanover church,
resulting in the conversation of many souls,
among whom were scores of men, women and
youth, who attributed their awakening and salvation
to the instrumentality of Dr. Plummer's
sermon, of the number being his wife
and himself. He then went on to say, "I doubt
whether Dr. Plummer ever heard of this and I
tell you of it that if at any time you shall meet
him, I will thank you to let him know
about it."
several years after this it was my good fortune
to meet Dr. Pluramer and to narrate the
above stated facts, to which he listened with
intense interest, and at the conclusion of my
message, he lifted his hands reverently and
with deep emotion expressed in his countenance
and voice, exclaimed, *4Thank the Lord!
Thank the Lord!
"Go, labor on, spend and be spent,
Thy joy to do the Father's will;
It is the way the Master went,
Shall not the servant tread it still?"
An Old Preacher.
'f a man's device can produce pure white
paper from filthy rags, what should hinder
God to raise from the dead that vile body and
fashion it like the glorious body of Christ t?
Gotthold.