DECEMBER 23, 1886.

A Grand Service.

Thus on the river, on board all manner of vessels, from the humble barges at Putney to the great ships at Gravesend, Tilbury, and Thames Haven, sailors and passengers of every nation are evangelised by the agents of the mission. I have seen them at work on board the stately ocean liner and the grimy coal lighter; I know the welcome they receive, the attention their words awaken; I know that many are ready to testify, "From your lips we first heard the Word of Life; but for you we should have remained in ignorance."

Shall this work, which God has so largely blessed be continued in all its vigour? Then must those who love His Gospel, by prayer and gifts support it liberally. As we have Fly abroad, often been reminded, it will not do to sing, thou mighty Gospel," if we are not prepared to find the means. Truly, the time is short, and the command presses, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." The T.C.M. seeks to do so on the river and in the docks, but it must be liberally supported by those to whom the Lord hath committed the silver and the gold.

The Living Word.

Words Spoken from a West End Pulpit.

FROM A HEARER'S NOTES.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things And the light were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was That made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John i. 1-5, 9-14).

N the beginning God created the heavens and

and of earth" the Word was with God, and the Word was God." All things created had their origin; but the Creator is eternal. "By Him [the Lord Jesus] visible and invisible, were all things created. whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." By Him all are sustained. When we trace in nature the evidences of intelligence, and wisdom, and will, we are tracing the working of Him who, as a poor man, walked up and down those fields of Palestine eighteen hundred years ago, "The Man Christ Jesus," whom His disciples knew and loved, and who appeared to them greater and wiser than all other men; but on whose minds the thought of His Divinity had at first, perhaps, but dimly dawned.

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"In the beginning was the Word." We have evidence here that the birth of Christ was not His We canbeginning. Our births are our beginnings. not go beyond them. We have no antecedents; but He who was born in Bethlehem was the Eternal, the Almighty God. "Great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh." I cannot explain it -(who can ?)-how the infinite God could become "an Infant of days," growing up through boyhood to man's estate, and thus giving testimony of His true humanity to all around Him. I often wonder what these disciples thought of Him as, day by day, He companied with them, sharing their humble fare, and condescending to their low estate; yet working the works of God, and speaking as man never spake.

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Some of us may think that it is only in this Gospel that the mystery is clearly stated. Listen while I read from an anterior Gospel-" All things are delivered unto Me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Matt. xi. 27). Listen againWhen the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory and before Him shall be gathered all nations and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats" (ch. xxv., 31). Listen yet again-" Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of THE SON, and of the Holy Ghost" (ch. xxviii. 19).

thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" Yes, in the Man Christ Jesus, God is made manifest-the heart of God, the mind of God, the purpose and the power of God. We have God translated into humanity that we may understand Him, the language of heaven translated into that of earth, that we may know what God would have us to know-"In the beginning was the Word." As the word translates the thoughts of a true man, so the Incarnate, the Eternal Word reveals to us the thoughts of God and makes us acquainted with the desires and the designs of our Father in heaven.

What record do the Scriptures give of the Lord Jesus Christ? This is a very important question. If we are shaken in the very least, and uncertain that Jesus is very God of very God, we do well to get this question settled: for without the Divinity of Christ there is no atonement for sin.

The true and proper Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ stands on the very threshold of the things connected with the salvation of God. What then saith the Scripture? "The Word was God." No language could be more explicit, and it is thoroughly borne out by other statements in the Book, too numerous to be referred to in the brief time at our disposal now. The names, the attributes, and the works peculiar to Deity are constantly ascribed to the Lord Jesus. We have already seen that the work of creation is His. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." So, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are told that He, being the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person, having made all things and upholding them by His power, can also change them by His power. "As a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." And, in the eighth verse, "unto the Son He [the Father] saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom."

"Without Him was not anything made that was made." The sun, the moon, the stars, He made them all, wheeled them into space, and guides their

course.

All the stupendous wonders of creation, all the marvels of physical science, are the works of Christ, of that same "Son of Man" who for three years went about the land of Judea "teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. Well may we stand amazed as we contemplate Him!

"The Man Christ Jesus" is the eternal God, one with the Father, one with the Holy Ghost. Can I understand the Trinity? No; but I believe in it. I believe there are the three Persons in the one God, equal in power, in glory, and in dignity. I believe now, and I am content to know if it be possible by and by. I can know nothing even of earthly science without believing. I must believe my sense of touch, of taste, of sight-believe them implicitly-must simply trust them; and by so doing I learn a great deal. So in spiritual things I must begin by believing God, who is greater than all the senses of all that ever lived, and accepting on trust all that He says.

This Lord Jesus, this humble, lowly Man, who per

mitted men to nail Him to the cross, is, then, the infinite God, the eternal and ever blessed Son of the Father. He condescended to man's low estate, and that He might act as Mediator, bringing God and man together, by making atonement for man's sin, He condescended to the death on Calvary.

"In Him is life." Life of a certain kind is in us, but it is He who gives it in the first instance. Some people talk of life in Christ; and they mean by it that only those who are united to Him by faith are to live for ever, while those who are unsaved are by and by to cease to be. And they assert that this was taught by the early fathers of Christianity; but they forget that these early fathers were meeting certain statements made by unbelievers, who maintained that men had in themselves everlasting life apart from God. No! "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son;" but they believed, as we do, that all men are immortal in this sense, that body and soul shall live for ever after this earthly life is ended, because God has so appointed.

"In Him was life," independent, essential life, as we read in 1 John i. 2, "The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us," manifested here on earth, in human form. The Divine life incarnated itself in the Man Christ Jesus, the infinite life somehow took on human limitations. The eternal life is far away out of the reach of our natural vision, but God made it known to us in this brief life, lived upon earth eighteen hundred years ago. And this life became the light of men, illuminating the whole sphere of knowledge.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was inclined to believe that there was no possibility of discerning God, because the finite can never know the infinite. But even then I had not lost faith, because I knew that God had come down and revealed Himself to man, and on this solid ground I could stand amid all the doubts which science suggests. For though I cannot reach Him, He has reached and revealed Himself to me. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." There is the answer to all the cavils, all the doubts, about the unknowableness of God.

In all the acts of Christ, and in all His words, we have the outcome of God's will, and the declaration of His purpose. Ah, yes; but "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

Let light shine, and darkness disappears. But this is not physical light.

This, the Light of Life, shines and the darkness deepens when it is not dispelled. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, beeause they are spiritually discerned."

Here is God dwelling amongst men, and they see Him not. I wonder how much even His own apostles understood of the mysterious One walking at their side?

"Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say Thou art John the Baptist, some say Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye

Mord and Work.

IN

DECEMBER 23rd, 1886.

Topics-TerSE AND TIMELY.

'N Joseph Cook's Boston Lectures for 1886* there are many strong and noteworthy statements of Christian doctrine. The language in which New England Theology clothes itself is not always intelligible to readers on this side of the Atlantic. Words have not in every case the same meaning here as there. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to trace a substantial agreement between most of Mr. Cook's arguments and those in common use among evangelical writers in this country. For instance, he unhesitatingly rejects as insufficient the "moral influence" theory of the Atonement, and writes of it in these terms :-" The moral influence theory of the Atonement-what is it? Anything in the Atonement that leads us to behold the enormity of our guilt, the glory of the Divine holiness, and the Divine readiness to pardon sin on repentance. What can show us this more than such a doctrine of the Atonement as our Lord Himself taught ; of a ransom, a propitiation, a sacrifice, a vicarious substitution? They who say, We want nothing of propitiation and sacrifice, and need only the moral influence of the Atonement, are like those who say: Cut down the tree; all we want is its shade. The supreme wealth of moral influence of the Atonement can be the result only of such a presentation of it as our Lord Himself made."

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HE New Theology receives full justice at the hands of Mr. Cook. He subjects it to a searching cross-examination, from which it retires humbled and discomfited. Often, by a happy offset of one modern opinion against another, he aims a destructive blow at both. "Two self-styled progressive new orthodoxies," he writes, "contradict each otherconditional immortality, as it is taught in a few quarters in England, on exegetical and ethical grounds; probation after death, as it is taught in a few quarters here (America), on the same grounds, answer each other. These theories cannot both be maintained on the basis of an appeal to exegetical learning, and the most sensitive instincts of the Christian consciousness. Voltaire said of the holy Roman Empire, that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor empire. So we must say of each of these selfstyled progressive new orthodoxies, that it is neither progressive, nor new, nor orthodoxy."

success. It is said that three hundred of this class are interested in Christian doctrines.

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YOMMENTING on the Census of religious worship which has appeared in the pages of the British Weekly, the Daily News calls attention to the fact that more than double the number of sittings occupied are provided, though if fifty per cent. of the population wished to go to church on any Sunday more than eight hundred thousand of them would fail to find seats. The general results of the Census are thus summed up :

As might perhaps have been expected in London, the Church of England had a larger attendance than all the Nonconformist Churches put together. The figures were in the morning--Established Church, 265,577; Nonconformists, 172,523; in the evening the disproportion was less, the Established Church 264,752, and the Nonconformist Churches 194,639. Of the Nonconformist bodies, the Congregationalists come first with 53,299 attendants in the morning, and 59,545 in the evening; the Baptists come close behind with 49.188, and 59,014; the Wesleyans follow with 32,942, and 36,996. Then come the Roman Catholics with 26,090 and 28,225. These are the highest figures. The Presbyterians numbered 14,867 and 15,503; the Methodists 10,651 and 12,133; and the other denominations are classed together with a total of 11,576 and 11,448. The figures will bear and deserve much further analysis. But their chief interest is in their general bearing, as indicating a certain failure of religious organisations to keep their hold on the Metropolis, and as suggesting very serious consideration as to the future of religion in London.

The value of this Census, as we remarked at the time it was made, is greatly lessened by the absence of information as to the doctrine preached in the various churches. If we were informed as to the attendance where High Church, Broad Church, and Low Church were represented, we would have some intimation of the growth of opinion within the Church of England; and if we were told whether rationalistic or evangelical doctrines were taught in the various Nonconformist places of worship, we would likewise know in what direction the classes who attend them are drifting. As it is, it only records the number of people who attended church on one Sunday, and apparently it does so with no great accuracy.

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F course, if it depended on ourselves we would confine the reading of our boys and girls to the most useful books in our libraries. Unfortunately, however, we cannot put old heads on young shoulders, and our young people will only read books which interest them. In our own boyhood we have a vivid recollection of the pleasure we found in perusing tales of red Indians and adventures at sea. These we found in a now-forgotten volume called The Excitement, a book for inducing young people to read. Therefore our sympathies are not quite severed from the young folk. In these days, however, it becomes of the greatest importance to secure them against the taint of the impure and injurious literature with which the country is flooded. Happily there are now many attempts made to supply books full of incident and yet wholesome in spirit and tone. Among the most noteworthy are the annual volumes of the Boy's Own Paper and the Girl's Own Paper, published by the Religious Tract Society. We have looked into the volumes for the present year, and find them bright, attractive, and instructive, while great care has been taken to keep them pure and to make them stimulating in the best sense. As presents they will be found at once handsome and helpful.