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of the Old Testament scriptures and see that there
is a great but simple plan underlying and connect
ing all of these books with their various lines of
teaching.
The satne can be seen in the arrangement of the
New Testament books. Take the gospels: Why the
necessity for four gospels'? The critics have made
great capital out of the fact that the gospels are
lacking in harmony. They have criticised them
as if they were written by four men with the same
purpose in view, which is not the case at all.
The redson Why We have four gospels is very
evident; Matthew Wrbte for the dew. His pur
pose was to ‘reVeal Christ as the Messiah. He want
ed to show wherein Christ fulfilled the Jewish idea
of the Messiah. Mark wrote for. the Romans. His
idea was to reveal Christ in His power. The Ro
mans could not appreciate anything that was not
keyed to power. They were a power-loving people.
So Mark dwelt especially on that phase of Christ.
Luke wrote for the Greeks, and his purpose was to
set forth Christ as the Son of Man. John wrote
for the world and set forth the deity of Christ,
showing that He is the Son of God.
And so all through the New Testament, as in
the Old, each book has a separate and distinct
lesson to teach, and is arranged with this in view.
Christ the Center of All.
But the plan of God is nowhere more clearly
seen than in the way the books and all the writ
ings of the Scriptures point to Christ. Just as it
was said in days of old that all roads led to Rome,
so all the teachings of the Scriptures lead to
Christi The whole purpose of the Scriptures is
to reveal Christ as the Savior of the world. The
law could not save. It never was intended to save,
even in the days of the reign of law. Faith in the
coming Messiah was essential to salvation. This is
seen in the case of Moses and Joshua. Moses,
although one of the greatest men that the Bible
could not take the people of Israel into
the promised land. Had he been privileged to do
so he would have offset the whole scheme of God.
Moses stood for the law. He was its representa
tive and the law was never intended to save. It
had its definite work to do, which was to lead to
Christ, but no further. Joshua, whose name means
“savior,” appeared as a type of Christ and led the
people of Israel into Canaan.
How clear this is in revealing God’s great plan
in all this marvelous putting together of His holy
book. Surely a proper comprehension of it gives
glory and honor to Him who stands as its great
central magnet. We shall never know how’ to
properly appreciate Christ until we know the Bible.
As I have come recently from a deeper study of
my Bible I have seen more of Jesus than I had
ever seen before. He is really a new person, with
a new love and a new power. I have been very
much like the woman who, when dying, kept saying
in a low, but distinct tone, “Bring,” “Bring,”
and her friends, not knowing what she wanted,
brought her various things that they thought she
might mean. Finally she gained strength enough
to say, “I do not care for these things. All I
want is to see Jesus.” Then she finished her sen
tence :
“Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown Him Lord of all.”
Oh, friends, would yon see more of Jesus? Would
you know what He really is? Then to your Bibles.
There you will see as nowhere else this side of
heaven.
* M
'Esther Terr all's Experiment.
(Continued from Page 2.)
He walked over to the mantel, and standing there,
pale and handsome, before her, said softly:
“The spell of the Xmas tide is upon me, Queen
Esther: I crave an audience.”
“Tis granted,” she answered, as she looked
dreamily into the fire.
“Also —a Xmas gift,” he said.
She raised one white hand, from which the lace
sleeve fell away, with one of the long stemmed
flowers in her grasp.
“Will a rose do, Mr. Hallam?” she asked.
“If the hand of the owner,” he said, in a rich,
The Golden Age for March 19, 1908.
n som saw sophisms”
G. Campbell Morgan 9 s Unique Lecture.
MONG the delighted thousands who
had followed Campbell Morgan through
his wonderful exposition of the Word
of God, there was a natural expectancy
as to how he would seem and be and
do as anything else but a preacher. The
astonishing audience that greeted him
when there was a fee at the door (to
be used for the expenses of the con-
til Issi fT
fereiice) was unmistakable evidence of the great
hold which the London preacher held on the thous
ands who had heard him speak along serious lines
of thought throughout the conference. There was
a ripple of expectant merriment also concerning
the subject of his lecture —“Some Saw Sophisms.”
Some people wondered who “saw sophisms” and
some wondered if some people are engaged in the
business of sawing sophisms, and why a saw was
needed anyhow for the purpose of severing such a
thing as a sophism. The speaker was at once en
rapport with his great audience, making clear the
fact that a “saw sophism” is just an old familiar
saying—a “saw” that is not so. The lecturer told
of a conundrum club in England where the custom
was for every man to bring to each meeting a
new conundrum. One Anderson brought this:
“When is apple pie?” After carrying the club
through a lot of intellectual genuflections, he an
nounced the startling wisdom: “Apple is pie when
it is associated with paste.”
Socrates said: “A sophist is a pretender to rea
son and truth.” Dr. Morgan touched on such say
ings as “exceptions prove the rule,” “seeing is
believing,” to both of which he gave a withering
negative, and when he touched that “saw,” that
popular expression “Everything is fair in love and
war,” he declared that it was nothing less than
immoral. “You can’t have your cake and eat it.”
“I submit,” declared the speaker, “that the only
way to have your cake is to eat it,” but the real
lecture began when he announced his first
sophism:
“To err is human—-to forgive is divine.” “A
fearful mistake,” declared the speaker. “It is
at the bottom of the awful and tragic fallacy that
‘a boy must sow his wild oats.’ Not a bit of it!
Let him learn that if he sows wild oats, he must
gather a harvest of oats that are wild.”
He quoted Blake, an English poet, as saying:
“A Robin-Red-Breast in a cage
Sets all heaven in a rage.
A starved , dog at his master’s gate
Predicts the'downfall of a state.”
“The place of Robin-Red-Breast is not in a cage,
but out in the free air, and a man who is mean
enough to starve his dog will be untrue £o his
state.”
“God made Cromwell and broke the mold.”
“God made Len. G. Broughton and broke the
mold.”
An expression like this seems to mean with many
people that God gathers Himself up occasionally in
a great effort to make a great man, and exhausts
Himself. Not a bit! God builds great men for
great occasions—and He builds a small man for a
meaning just as sacred. The greatest thought in
the language is God—the next is I. “To this end
tender voice, “accompanies the gift.”
Then, as she still kept the flower poised in air,
he put his strong white hand down over hers, as
he demanded:
“What does the Queen say? I loved you as a
little tennis girl, Esther. I pledged my loyalty to
you, when I knew you only as the wonderful voice
—the will-o’-the-wisp of my phone romance. But
all the time I was deeply interested in Aunt
Margaret’s idol, the girl for whom I built the
Ferrall Annex, the unusual girl capable of such
unique heroism —Lane’s sister. I ran away to
Europe, because you did not come to the dedication
exercises. ’ ’
He paused.
“I am happy to discover,” he went on thought’
was I born and for this hour came I into the
w’orld.” In a lower sense, of course, than the Mas
ter meant it, this expression ought to be true of
every man. The captain of the ship is useless
without the stoker down in the hold of the vessel.
“Os two evils choose the less.”
There are no necessary evils. If evil, it is not
necessary. If necessary, it is not evil. William
Booth, long before he became head of the Salva
tion Army, rode in a coach with some men who
were congratulating themselves on the splendid
deal they had just made for opening a “public
house,” corresponding to the American saloon,
when his righteous soul became so vexed with their
blatant speech that he could stand it no longer. He
turned on them with a volley of searching ques
tions that took their breath, portraying the evil,
the horrors and the sorrows that flow from a tip
pling house. For a moment they were dumb, and
then finally one answered: “But a man must
live!” “Live!” shouted William Booth. “If you
can’t live ■without ruining others, you had better
die.” Janie Douglas, the beloved young Scot, was
threatened with death if he did not tell the where
abouts of the great patriot he loved. Finally a
ruffian giant caught the slender youth in his arms
and held him over a high precipice. “Tell before
I count five or I will drop you to the bottom,” said
the ruffian voice, but Jamie Douglas looked up
with a smile and said: “Then, sir, you will have
to drop—it’s na sae deep as Hell.”
“Love is blind.”
Love is not blind. Love has clearest vision and
eyes washed with tears see most. The mother secs
the faults of the wayward child, but loves despite
his faults. Love as it reigns in the sacred realm
of marriage, ought not to be so blind that it will
not sacrifice itself sometimes for the sake of pos
terity.
“God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”
Some people think this is Scripture. There is
not a word of it true. It would be far better to
say: “God tempers the lamb to the wind.” God
puts wool on the lamb to protect it from the wind,
but if you shear the lamb God will not warm His
wind.
The one corrective of abortive life is to have the
right impulse reign within. There is no impulse
satisfying to God except that that is born in the
human heart by the birth of the Redeemer in the
soul of man. This is the gleam of truth that will
correct all sophisms; that will transform all lives
in which it reigns. I charge you, 0 man, “follow
the gleam.”
Essentially a Preacher.
The above is the veriest outline of Dr. Morgan’s
lecture, for the benefit of our thousands of readers
who could not hear him. It does him great injus
tice in a sense because they cannot see these ex
pressions cast in the mold of his own striking per
sonality. But much as his lecture was enjoyed,
we are sure that the great Englishman will be
gratified to know that the one unvarying comment
of the vast throng who heard him was this: “Camp
bell Morgan is essentially a preacher —a man sent
from God to expound His word. His lecture was
great —his sermons are infinitely greater.”
fully, “that my heart and head were in harmony
all the time; that the voice and my best girl friend
were one!”
He released her hand, squared his shoulders,
and crossed his arms.
“What has Queen Esther to say to my humble
petition? She must have cared a little, as the
phones and the cablegram attest.”
Esther looked up at him, with eyes of tenderest
comprehension; and then she put both hands in his.
“I think,” she said very simply, “that I loved
you, Dan, all the time.”
And the mistletoe under the candelabra swayed
softly, as if in psychic sympathy with the lovely
Xmas idyl.
(Finis.)
5
