IDEA, SPIRIT AND BOOK.

257

save the soul and God; it ceases to be a local religion and becomes universal, and instead of remaining a national luxury becomes an aggressive, missionary and world-saving agency. If it can exist out of Palestine it can exist anywhere. God is the Saviour of all men. "All nations whom Thou hast made shall come and worship before Thee."* The golden age leaps to the front never to go behind again. The idea of everlasting progress, of upward development, of universal redemption, is horn in the hearts of these penitent and trustful souls; and they are constituted the Servants and Apostles and Missionaries of the Universal God to universal man.

(6) With glowing ardour and intense enthusiasm these elect souls go forth on this service, seeking to establish a knowledge of the true God, urging the heathen to accept the light they enjoy, and sharing with them as proselytes the peace and prosperity brought by truth and righteousness. The missionary SPIRIT, as well as the missionary IDEA, glows and throbs in the oracles and songs which represent the highest thought and the purest emotion of this time.

(7) And this was completed by the enlargement and recension of that unique and marvellous missionary agent, the Old Testament literature, so splendidly enriched with some of its most pathetic and consolatory contributions, so carefully transcribed and sacredly guarded by the "Scribes," who started into existence in these days; and so diligently pondered by those choice spirits who had learnt to sigh

*Psalm lxxxvi. 9.; Cf. The Divine Origin of Christianity, by R. S. Storrs, D.D., p. 222-224; Josephus Adv. Apiɔn, ií. 40. *Geikie, Hours with the Bible, vi. 384.

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NO DIVINE GOSPEL

for God as their exceeding joy, and to serve Him as their chief delight It was the Great Missionary Book.

"Salvation is of the Jews."

Believe it, then; exhausted men get fresh strength by trustful longing for God; renew their spiritual energy, their faith in goodness, their power for self-sacrificing work, for fleet-footed missions of mercy, by waiting on God and for God, listening to His word, speaking to Him in prayer, and communing with His Spirit. It is fact, demonstrated and unquestionable. It is history, and actual experience; not theory or speculation. It stands not in the wishes and hopes of men, but graven in the annals of the people of God.

Oh, let us, my brethren, hold fast our faith in the infinite fertility of patient and trustful suffering, and take to heart this grand historic proof, that the way to true service lies through heroic waiting upon God, looking out for His will and bravely doing or suffering it; that in penitence and faith lie concealed all our graces and powers; that we are so poor and foolish and vain that we cannot be trusted with prosperity, but like children need to be watched moment by moment, to be chastised into goodness and disciplined for service; and that at the back of all our tragedies and sorrows, there is written the consolatory Gospel, "Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe in Christ;" "Who, though He was a Son yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered;" believe that though "no chastisement is pleasant, but rather grievous yet afterwards it worketh out the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby."

V. Finally, this gospel, like all its fellows, never dies.

It endures for ever and ever as a living message, not effete though old, not wasted though abundantly used, but partaking of the unwearied energy and eternal reproductiveness of its Infinite Source. Man's wants are too diverse to be met by any one messenger. God speaks at sundry times, and by different voices; but no voice ever dies out, no message is ever wholly lost, and if not for one soul, yet for another and another, it is quick and powerful, renewing faith, and hope, and zeal. Do not we all need the gospel of this morning? Are we not conscious of waste and loss, of miserable insufficiency for service, and of poor and low aims, and poorer and lower achievements? Are there not moments, when the best of us are overtaken by fits of moral stupidity, and we do acts and utter words that punish us an hour afterwards so severely, that we walk softly for days and months in the memory of our irritating weakness? Do we not drift into the dark, and exiled from God and from peace, from light and joy, sigh for the return of His salvation and the presence of His free Spirit? Alas! these interruptions of the glad consciousness of strength occur often, and compel us to think God has forgotten us, and let slip our right. Oh! let us banish the unbelief and wait for Him, and upon Him, ready to welcome the cleansing fires of His love, if only we may know Him better, realize the free access of His power, and go forth on a career of glowing missionary activity for the help of the helpless, the healing of the sick, and the saving of the lost.

UR wills are ours, we know not how.

"OUR

Our wills are ours to make them Thine."

TENNYSON.

"The will is the spinal column of our personality."

BUSHNELL.

"The Bible never calls a man a crystal, a stone, a lifeless clod. It never in any manner gives the sinner to imagine for a moment that he is not a living spirit, and as such entirely accountable to God for what he is, and for the exercise of the original endowment of free-will."

PROF. COATS.

"God's everlasting love! What would'st thou more?'
O true and tender friend, well hast thou spoken !
My heart was restless, weary, sad and sore,

And longed and listened for some heaven-sent token;

And, like a child that knows not why it cried,

'Mid God's full promises it moaned Unsatisfied!'

"We thirst for God, our treasure is above,

Earth has no gift our one desire to meet;

And this desire is pledge of His own love.
Sweet question, with no answer!-oh, how sweet!

My heart in chiming gladness, o'er and o'er,

Sings on- God's everlasting love! What would'st thou

more?"

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.

The Gospel of the Exile Incarnate

in Ezekiel.

"BEHOLD, ALL SOULS ARE MINE; AS THE SOUL OF THE FATHER SO ALSO THE SOUL OF THE SON IS MINE; CAST

THE SOUL THAT SINNETH IT SHALL DIE.

AWAY FROM YOU ALL YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS WHEREIN
TE HAVE TRANSGRESSED, AND MAKE YOU A NEW HEART
AND A NEW SPIRIT, FOR WHY WILL YE DIE, O HOUSE
OF ISRAEL.
AND I WILL SPRINKLE

CLEAN

WATER UPON YOU, AND YE SHALL BE CLEAN.
A NEW HEART ALSO WILL I GIVE YOU, AND A NEW
SPIRIT WILL I PUT WITHIN YOU.

AND I WILL

PUT MY SPIRIT IN YOU, AND YE SHALL LIVE."

-Ezekiel xviii. 4-31; xxxvi. 25-26; xxxvii. 14.

Last Sunday I spoke on the Gospel of the Exile; this morning I want you to think with me for a few minutes. of the sanie good news as it appears incarnate and embodied in the life and work of the prophet Ezekiel.