outside the veil, with no sacrifice adequate to purge the conscience, we now have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, and having Him as an high-priest over the house of God, we are privileged to draw near with a true heart, in the full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. We are all consecrated priests unto God; all believers are a holy and a royal priesthood.

And now to these considerations add the crowning glory of this age, that the Holy Spirit has come; our Comforter, to abide with us forever; to show us these things, and all things that the Father hath, as ours in fellowship with Christ, who baptizes all believers into one body, and builds them together as an habitation of God. About the com"It is expedient

ing of this Comforter, the Saviour said: for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." About the fruit of His presence in us in this age, He was speaking when He said: "He that believeth on me, from within him shall flow rivers of living waters." This is the great blessing of this dispensation, as contrasted with the former one. Has any adequate expression been given to it in any creed of Christendom? Has the truth about so vastly important a matter been taught line upon line and precept upon precept to all the people? Or, have only the surface and the externals of the great characteristic doctrines of this age been taught to the mass of professing Christians? Have men shunned to declare the whole counsel of God? Are many professing Christians now like the company of believers Paul found at Ephesus, to whom he put the question, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?"

The system of teaching and interpretation which leaves out of view, or does not present with clearness and fullness in proportion to its prime importance, the characteristic

truth of the Christian dispensation, viz., the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every believer, and His baptizing them together as the body of Christ, and building them together as the habitation of God, together with the immense enlargement in consequence of the privileges and responsibility of the Church,—such teaching and interpretation egregiously fail to put due honor on the precious, perfect truth of the word of God revealed for this day.

THE INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY.

It is a not uncommon opinion, though it may not be often distinctly and boldly avowed, that prophecy constitutes a small portion of the Scriptures, and an unimportant one in comparison with other portions deemed of greater and especially of more practical importance. It would be nearer the truth to say that all Scripture is prophetic. History demonstrates nothing more clearly than this, that man has failed in every place of responsibility and privilege in which God has placed him. And man will continue thus to fail to the end, "For no flesh shall glory in God's presence." Scripture tells us that we do well to take heed to prophecy as "unto a light that shineth in a dark place." Man's failure brings in ruin and darkness. In that darkness arises the light of prophecy to teach all men as Israel was taught, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help." Prophecy points to resources of help and blessing in God above and beyond all the failure of man and the ruin he has wrought. Look at the protevangelium from the Lord's own mouth in the garden, before man has been banished from Eden: "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." By one man's disobedience many have been made sinners. Sin has entered into the world, and death by sin, and has passed upon all men. How sweet and comforting in such darkness and

misery to hear that most comprehensive of all prophecies, which still awaits fulfillment, when Satan shall be bruised under our feet shortly, and the kingdom of our Father shall come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

In the abounding iniquity of the last of the antediluvian days, there sounds out the prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, which was partially fulfilled with judgment of God upon the wicked in the days of Noah, but awaits its final and complete fulfillment when the Son of man shall come in the clouds of heaven in the day of the judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Look at the abounding iniquities of the Canaanites in the land when God gave to the long-tried faith of Abraham those prophetic promises of blessing to all the nations of the earth through the seed to be born to him, in fulfillment of which Israel shall yet blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.

As Israel embraces the abominable idolatries of the surrounding nations, see how, with prophecy after prophecy, light is shed on the darkness for all who will cleave to God. When the deeper darkness of the captivity comes, as the stars come out to view in the blackness of the night, so in the clear and full light of the prophecies of that period, God reveals times of future blessing, restoration, and glory yet to appear in their full and final measure of splendor.

The prophecies of the Lord himself in the Gospels point to, and are a provision for, the days when iniquity shall abound and the love of many shall wax cold. And with what splendor of light and clearness in the midst of growing darkness come out the prophecies of Paul, Peter, Jude, and John, in days when there have already come many antichrists, and scoffers have arisen, and when the Lord himself, looking down over His Church with allseeing eye, finds even Ephesus to have left its first love, Satan entrenched at Pergamos, the abomination of Balaam,

and the Nicolaitanes, and of Jezebel, rife and rampant, churches with a name to live, but dead, a few in the midst of the deepening darkness and the prevalence of Laodicean indifference to truth, holding fast to His word, and not denying His name.

As the Lord thus provides prophecy as a light in the dark places for His people in all ages, and has interwoven it with the whole texture of Scripture, and as in this age of the Church the Spirit is given to guide us "into all the truth, and to show us things to come," what must we be compelled to say of interpretation of Scripture that ignores prophecy, or relegates it to a subordinate or unimportant place in the scheme, or turns from its study as from "an intricate and thorny path"? Such interpretation, however orthodox and correct it may be, as far as it goes, must be grossly defective in preserving the proper proportions of truth. And it must be very different from the teaching of Paul, who taught even young converts to be themselves always waiting for God's Son to come from heaven, and to know perfectly, so that they needed not that he should write to them of the judgments impending over the world. They had no vain dreams of the conversion of the world, but knew perfectly that the day of the Lord would come as a thief in the night to the ungodly, just as the deluge came upon them in the days of Noah, and the fire from heaven in the days of Lot came upon the cities of the plain.

THINGS NEW AND OLD.

God hath spoken at sundry times and in divers measures by the mouth of the prophets of past ages, but in these last days in fullness of revelation by His Son, and by those to whom having given the Spirit of His Son, He allotted the work of completing the Scriptures. The earlier utterances in divers measures of clearness and fullness are

all of divine fitness for their times, and for all time, especially as serving to lead immature believers by easy, elemental lessons, as it were, into the possession of full knowledge. Let the Passover in the Old Testament and the New furnish an illustration. In 1 Cor. v. 7, we learn that Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, and we are exhorted also to keep the feast of unleavened bread. Looking back to the institution of the Passover and of the feast following it, in Exodus xii. we find the Spirit going into a number of details with great particularity and minuteness. Shall I throw these aside as of no importance, the whole ceremony being now obsolete and of no importance for me now to study? Not if I properly honor and use God's word.

Can a spiritual mind doubt that the Lord himself dwelt on all these details and explained them to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus? Look at them. The passover is to begin the year. We, by nature the children of wrath, are dead in sin in God's sight until sheltered by faith in the blood of Christ our Passover. Then we begin to live. Again, the lamb must be without spot. So Christ offered Himself to God. Again, all the congregation of Israel killed the lamb together in the evening. Christians are not Christians in separation and isolation like grains of sand. They are brethren. The first instinct of the new life is to love the brethren. By this we know that we have passed from death to life. Again, the lamb was kept up four days before its sacrifice. How carefully during those days would parental love see to it that there was really no spot on the lamb. For on this hung the life of the first-born. Through what searching tests was Christ shown to be without spot before He offered Himself!

But the flesh of the lamb was to be eaten that night, to give strength for the journey. So now, the life of Christ