burden, and be with Him concerned not only for the living, but be baptized for the dead. When the full results of this principle of race-unity are wrought out, then indeed shall His praise be shown forth to all generations (Ps. lxxix, 13), and all generations shall call Him blessed. It will be seen that "His salvation is from generation to generation" (Is. li, 8)—not for the benefit merely of all generations in some subsequent golden age, but wrought for all by One "who calleth the generations from the beginning, the Lord, the First and the Last" (Is. xli, 4), and who is able to raise up and restore "the foundations of many generations" (Is. lviii, 12). It is only in the light of this great principle that we shall be able to join with true intelligence in the prayer and doxology which the Holy Spirit inspires St. Paul to utter as he caught a glimpse of the "mystery hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest to the saints."

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the Church by Christ Jesus unto all generations forever and ever. Amen."

JEREMIAH XXXI.

In the heart of the Book of Jeremiah there is found one of the longest and most precious promises of Israel's restoration contained in the Bible. It runs through four chapters, from the thirtieth to the thirty-fourth. With every variety of phrase and illustration the prophet predicts the future regathering and blessing of the people. To suppose, as is commonly done, that the dead of Israel are excluded from these promises, and that they are not interested in the blessings here portrayed, is not only to belittle this word of God; it is to wholly miss its meaning. For the blessing of some future generation would scarcely begin to make good the prophet's word. He has in view throughout, the Israel that had been suffering for its sins under the chastising hand of God, that had been carried afar into a land of captivity, that had been devoured of enemies (xxx, 12-17), and by the sword, famine, and pestilence (xxxii, 24). It was the men who had suffered these calamities who were to be restored. If death were to put an end to all their hopes and shut them out forever from all participation in the promised restoration, then would the word of God mean less, and be of less value, than the word of men.

There is one passage in the thirty-first chapter which so plainly implies blessing for the dead that there is no escape from the conclusion that the whole prophecy was meant to cover their case and to show that death had not and could not put God's people beyond the reach of His power to bless them:

Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.

In proof that the children here referred to had been lost in death we have: *

1. The fact that no such restoration of the living generation to whom these words were spoken took place during their natural life.

2. It was not to be a deliverance of the men of some future generation, but of the children whom Rachel had lost.

3. The language employed favors the idea that they had gone into captivity to death. It is said "They were not," and "they shall come again from the land of the enemy."

4. In the application of this prophecy to the slaughtered infants at Bethlehem (Matt. ii, 17, 18) it certainly there applies to the case of the dead.

That there is nothing strained in such an application of it appears from the fact, that in other notable passages the spirit of prophecy declares in language the most direct that Israel's promised restoration includes the dead, as, for example, in the vision of Ezekiel xxxvii, where we read in answer to the complaint of "the whole house of Israel" who say "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts," "Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your

graves, and bring you into the land of Israel." Another instance is that of Hosea xiii, 14, where we read "I will ransom them from the power of sheol; I will redeem them from death: O death, where are thy plagues? O sheol, where is thy destruction ?"

The fact is that those who read the Old Testament, and find therein no promises of future blessing to the sinful dead through their subsequent recovery from the grasp of death, not only stumble blindly in their interpretation of these prophecies; they fail to apprehend the meaning of the whole scheme of redemption and of the gospel of the grace of God. However we may fail in our attempts to apply this principle of the redemptive value of resurrection to the solution of the mysteries of man's being and destiny, the principle itself remains true. It lies, indeed, at the very foundation of all God's gracious dealings toward sinful man and is the key to the whole Bible.

We may add that nothing is so much needed in our day to clear away the dark clouds and mists that obscure the whole subject of man's present condition and future destiny as the recognition of this principle. The Church is blindly groping in the whole realm of eschatology and even in theology for the lack of it. And worse than this, she has lost in large measure the spiritual energy with which she was at first endowed, because she has lost the true meaning of her election as the channel of God's saving power and grace to the whole human race, living and dead. She is unable, therefore, to enter into the full meaning and practical experience of what it is to have fellowship with Christ in the world's redemption and to be with Him "baptized for the dead."

And the Bible teaching about retribution, in her hands, fails of its legitimate power over the minds of men. For a diminished view of the meaning and value of resurrection diminishes the effect of the sentence to death, which is the wages of sin; while the attempt to substitute for that sentence a doctrine of eternal torment tends more to shock and benumb the energies of the soul than to stimulate them to right moral action. There needs to be a revival in the minds of wicked men of the fear of death as a prolonged and gloomy captivity in "the land of the enemy," from which resurrection brings deliverance only according to character, to every man in his own order and to every seed his own body-a doctrine which would influence men, because it would be seen to be in harmony with the divine dealings in the whole realm of life and of human experience.

WHAT IS SALVATION?

Salvation has been too commonly regarded as a blessing to be attained after death and beyond the sphere of this present life. Of course it has an immense future value, but it is to be remembered that the evils which afflict man and from which he needs deliverance are those under which he is now suffering. Whatever harvest of sorrow he may reap in the future, the seeds of it are being sown here and And with many men hell begins this side the grave. It is impossible to look into the faces of the crowds of men and women one meets along the streets without being impressed with the thought that something wrong has controlled the development of most of these lives. Scarcely

now.