Division JBS I L 7 5 
 Section .B.MS4 
 
Wheiein Have We Robbed God^? 
 
XVorK-s of 
 
 G. Campbell Morgcin 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
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 'Robbed God? 
 
 Malachi's Message to the Men of To-day 
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WHEREIN HAVE WE 
 ROBBED GOD? 
 
 Malachi's Message to 
 the Men of To-day 
 
 Rev. G. Campbell Morgan 
 
 Author of " Discipleship," " The Hidden Years at Nazareth, 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature 
 
Copyright, 1898 
 
 BY 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 These studies in the book of Malachi were 
 delivered as addresses to the students at Mr. 
 Moody's Bible School in Chicago, and then to 
 my own congregation. 
 
 They have also appeared in ^'The Record of 
 Christian Work " in the United States, and in 
 "Out and Out" in England. 
 
 They are now sent out in a more permanent 
 form, after careful revision, with the prayer that 
 they may be used of God in calling His own 
 children into the place of power without which 
 form is nothing. 
 
 G. CAMPBELL MORGAN 
 
 New Court Chapel 
 
 TOLLINGTON ParK, LoNDON, N. 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTOEY 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Tpie Spirit of the Age 25 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Complaints of Jehovah . . 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Divine Attitude 63 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Elect Remnant 85 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Final Word 109 
 
I 
 
 INTEODUCTOEY 
 
INTEODUCTOET 
 
 In" order that we may approach the study of 
 this book intelligently, it is necessary that cer- 
 tain principles of interpretation should be rec- 
 ognized and accepted. To the statement and 
 consideration of these principles this introduc- 
 tory chapter is devoted. 
 
 Eead first in Paul's letters to the Eomans, 
 XV. 4 : " For whatsoever things were written 
 aforetime were written for our learning, that 
 we through patience and comfort of the Scrip- 
 tures might have hope." If we consider that 
 verse in its setting we shall find that Paul, 
 having made a quotation from the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures, interpolates upon the general 
 scheme of his argument, a declaration that the 
 inspired writing of Scripture does not exhaust 
 itself in that particular age to which it is ad- 
 dressed. That is one of the peculiar notes of 
 inspiration. Inspired writings differ from all 
 others, in that they are not produced for one 
 age exclusively, but have perpetually a varying 
 application to varying ages. 
 11 
 
12 "Wherein?" 
 
 The finest literature the Avorld has produced, 
 apart from the literature of the Bible, while it 
 will remain interesting for long years — even 
 though the conditions of the age to which it 
 appealed may have changed — will not have a 
 living and practical application to any age save 
 that in which it was penned. The writings of 
 Chaucer are of absorbing interest to English- 
 men to-day, because they reveal to us the age 
 in which they were produced, but they have 
 no vital message to the men of to-day. 
 
 In that particular, this whole Book of God 
 is in entire contrast to all other writings. All 
 Scripture " written aforetime " had a local ap- 
 plication, and a distinctive message to the 
 times in which it was written, but it was writ- 
 ten also " for our learning." 
 
 The apostle, in this verse, makes use of the 
 word " Scriptures " — " that we through pa- 
 tience and comfort of the Scriptures might have 
 hope." This word occurs in the JS'ew Testa- 
 ment no less than fifty-one times ; and, with 
 only one exception, is used in reference to the 
 recognized Scriptures of the people of Israel, 
 known to us as the Old Testament. It may be 
 well for us to turn to that one exception, be- 
 cause it will enable us to keep that fact in 
 mind. 2 Peter iii. 16 : "As also in all his epis- 
 tles, speaking in them of these things ; in which 
 are some things hard to be understood, which 
 
Introductory 13 
 
 they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as 
 they do also the other Scriptures, unto their 
 own destruction." 
 
 It is probable that when Peter makes use of 
 the phrase " other Scriptures," he may be re- 
 ferring principally to New Testament writings 
 which are beginning to be scattered. It is not 
 an established fact. He may have referred in 
 this case, as in every other, to the Old Testa- 
 ment, but there is a probability that he is 
 making reference to New Testament writings 
 —to those letters that are being distributed to 
 the Church of Jesus Christ. That is the only 
 case in the New Testament where it is at all 
 possible to read into the expression "Scrip- 
 tures" that interpretation. In every other 
 case the term refers to the recognized Scrip- 
 tures of the Jewish people ; and in that fact 
 we discover that the New Testament has put 
 its decided seal upon the Old. You cannot 
 say, " I take the New and not the Old." If 
 you accept the New, the Old is interwoven 
 into every book that the New contains. 
 
 In this connection I would suggest a pro- 
 foundly interesting experiment to Bible stu- 
 dents, which, while it is an experiment, is nev- 
 ertheless profitable. Take your New Testa- 
 ment, and for once read it through from a lit- 
 erary standpoint, with the object of finding 
 out how many chapters there are in which 
 
14 "Wherein?" 
 
 there is no quotation from, and no allusion to, 
 the Old, and see how much you have left. 
 
 Here then is a principle that we must keep 
 In memory — what was "written aforetime" 
 was written not only with a direct bearing 
 upon the time, but "for our learning." In 
 other words, when the Holy Spirit of God 
 moved men of old to write, He not only moved 
 them to write with a view to the interests of 
 the times in which they lived, but with a view 
 to all who should come after them. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us now turn to one of the most impor- 
 tant of the Old Testament Scriptures, Deuter- 
 onomy vi. 1-4, " JN'ow these are the command- 
 ments, the statutes, and the judgments, which 
 the Lord your God commanded to teach you, 
 that ye might do them in the land whither ye 
 go to possess it : That thou mightest fear the 
 Lord thy God, to keep all His statutes and His 
 commandments, which I command thee, thou, 
 and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of 
 thy life ; and that th}^ days may be prolonged. 
 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it ; 
 that it may be well with thee, and that ye may 
 increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fath- 
 ers hath promised thee, in the land that flow- 
 eth with milk anc^ honey. Hear, O Israel: 
 The Lord our God is one Lord." Among the 
 
Introductory 1 5 
 
 tuiiij^.*! '" written aforetime " is to be found this 
 statei!^ ent of a great principle underlying all 
 life. The whole economy of Divine Govern- 
 ment gathers round that verse: "Hear, O 
 Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord." That 
 was the special truth that was committed to 
 the nation of Israel to preserve as a sacred 
 thing, amid the nations of the earth. It is the 
 central truth of all Divine Government and of 
 all human life : " God is one." 
 
 Mathematics is spoken of as being an exact 
 science. Is it exact ? I think not. IS'othing 
 is absolutely proved. That two and two make 
 four, no one can prove. It never has been 
 proved, and it is quite impossible to prove it — ■ 
 that is, you cannot demonstrate the truth of 
 it. 
 
 Euclid is exact surely ; it is built up step by 
 step ; you cannot do Book 11. , until you have 
 done Book I. Come back to the early days of 
 school life, and every boy knows he cannot do 
 his " Pons Asinorum " without knowing the 
 first proposition. It must then be exact. Let 
 us examine it. How is it built up ? Unless 
 you learn your definitions, and believe in them, 
 you cannot do Euclid. What are your defini- 
 tions ? "A point is position without magni- 
 tude." Absolutely absurd ! You cannot have 
 position without magnitude. The instant you 
 admit position you admit magnitude, " A line 
 
l6 " Wherein ? " 
 
 is length without breadth." Equally absurd ! 
 You cannot have one without the other. 
 
 So our exact things are built up on impossi- 
 bilities and absurd positions. All mathemat- 
 ical science may be reduced to a common fact. 
 What is that common fact? One! "When 
 you have said " one " you have said " two," 
 and when you have said a " million " you have 
 said " one." You cannot get beyond " one." 
 One is essential, two is accidental. 
 
 " The Lord your God is one Lord." God is 
 behind everything the final certain One. You 
 cannot analyze, or divide, or explain Him, yet 
 He is the one and only absolute certainty. 
 He is One, all-comprehending, indivisible. 
 When you have said that, you have said all. 
 When you have omitted that, you have left 
 everything out, and babbled only in chaotic 
 confusion. 
 
 From that truth I make a deduction. If 
 God is one^ then the principles and the pur- 
 poses of His government never vary. Dispen- 
 sations and methods change ; the will of God 
 never changes, never varies, never progresses, 
 in that sense. What does progress mean? 
 Failure! What does advancement mean? 
 Past limitations ! You cannot progress unless 
 there has been failure somcAvhere. If I can 
 be better in five minutes than I am now, I am 
 Avrong now. Progress is a confession of fail- 
 
Introductory \n 
 
 ure. When this age boasts of its vaunted 
 progress, it is telling the story of the failure 
 of the past. God never makes progress, never 
 advances. Consequently He is not always do- 
 ing as we are, legislating for man — framing 
 new laws because the old ones have failed. 
 The will of right, love, and tenderness. His 
 will is eternal. 
 
 Dispensations come and go, dawm and van- 
 ish; but God remains the same, underneath, 
 with, and in each. Some i^eople speak as 
 though God had not only altered His methods, 
 but His mind. I agree that He has changed 
 His methods, but His mind, never ! God did 
 not begin to love man Avhen Jesus came. 
 Jesus came to roll back the curtain and show 
 man the heart that Avas eternal, the love that 
 was always there. Christianity is not God's 
 alteration of attitude toward man. It is not 
 that in the old dispensation He was a police- 
 man, and in this a father. He has always 
 been a father. He never changes. 
 
 Dispensations and methods mark the change 
 of man, and the necessary change in the way 
 the Divine Hand is placed upon human life, 
 but behind everything — God ! 
 
 God the same abiding, 
 His praise shall tune my voice, 
 
 And while in Him confiding 
 I cannot but rejoice. 
 
i8 "Wherein?" 
 
 We must get our feet down upon this abid- 
 ing rock. It is for this reason that the Old 
 Testament Scriptures are of value. The acci- 
 dents of human life perpetually change ; the 
 essentials abide forever. 
 
 Ill 
 
 If we accept these principles we can now 
 move forward another step. The prophetic 
 messages are preeminently suited, as it seems 
 to me, to the age in which we live, and there 
 is a sense in which they are of more value to- 
 day than even the writings of the apostles. 
 
 I do not undervalue these apostolic writings, 
 but there are reasons why the prophetic utter- 
 ances come with greater force. 
 
 The apostolic writings are expositions of 
 God's new application of eternal truth in a 
 new dispensation. With Jesus, the new dis- 
 pensation dawned, a fresh light broke upon 
 the senses of man. New methods came into 
 operation. The Eternal God is the same, 
 but fresh light from the essential light of 
 Deity broke forth, and the apostles under in- 
 spiration — inspiration which grew out of local 
 requirements — wrote their definition of that 
 new light. To us, their writings are the prisms 
 which divide the essential light into its com- 
 ponent parts and glories. And so I read the 
 apostolic writings, and I have my theology. 
 
Introductory ig 
 
 Tliey are most valuable, we can never do with- 
 out them. // 
 
 The prophetic Avritings are not expositions 
 of truth in that sense at all. They are almost 
 invariably addressed to people who know 
 truth as enshrined in their own dispensation, 
 and they are messages to call these people to 
 be obedient thereto. 
 
 In that sense the prophetic writings come 
 to us with a force that the apostolic writings 
 do not possess. We know the truth of God as 
 no other age has ever linown it, and yet there 
 never was a time when men, knowing and liv- 
 ing under its blessings, were less obedient to it 
 than now. So then the " Scriptures written 
 aforetime for our learning" demand our at- 
 tention, and will always repay solemn search- 
 ing, and prayerful inquiry as to their deep and 
 inner meaning. Such are the principles upon 
 which we base our study. 
 
 IV 
 
 Now as to the times of the book of Malachi 
 and its author. It is almost universally ad- 
 mitted — indeed, one may say that it is so far 
 admitted that there remains no doubt or ques- 
 tion about it — that the book occupies its right 
 place in the arrangement of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures, that Malachi himself was the last of 
 the Old Testament prophets. 
 
20 " Wherein ? " 
 
 There can be little doubt further, that the 
 message is closely associated with the work of 
 J^ehemiah, and if Malachi is to be read intelli- 
 gently, N^ehemiah should be read at the same 
 time. Malachi bears a Divine message to the 
 condition of things portrayed in the history of 
 Nehemiah. The proofs of this are largely and 
 mostly to be found in the books themselves. 
 Let us turn to only three coincidences. 
 
 i. ]S"ehemiah xiii. 29 : " Eemember them, O 
 my God, because they have defiled the priest- 
 hood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and 
 of the Levites." Eemembering the force of 
 these words, turn to the prophecy of Malachi 
 ii. 8 : " But ye are departed out of the way ; 
 ye have caused man}^ to stumble at the law ; 
 ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith 
 the Lord of Hosts." Xehemiah complains in 
 the closing years of his history that the priest- 
 hood has corrupted the covenant ; while Mala- 
 chi, in this second chapter, addresses himself 
 very largely to the priests, and the specific 
 charge that he brings against them is that 
 they have corrupted the covenant of Levi. It 
 is a peculiar expression which we shall con- 
 sider more closely when we come to study the 
 book itself. 
 
 ii. In that same chapter of E'ehemiah (read- 
 ing from the twenty-third verse to the twenty- 
 seventh) you find that J^ehemiah complains 
 
Introductory 2 1 
 
 that the peculiar people of God have entered 
 into nnholy alliance with idolaters in the way 
 of marriage, and follows that complaint by 
 separating those thus united. Malachi speaks 
 of exactly the same condition of things in the 
 second chapter (verses ten to sixteen), the evil 
 of mixed marriages, and the awful neglect 
 which ends in the tears and sobs of the women 
 about the altars of God. 
 
 iii. Again, in the last chapter of Nehemiah 
 and the tenth verse : " I perceived that the 
 portions of the Levites had not been given 
 them: for the Levites and the singers, that 
 did the work, were fled every one to his field." 
 Malachi iii. 10 calls attention to this omission, 
 saying, " Bring ye all the tithes into the store- 
 house, that there may be meat in Mine house, 
 and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of 
 heaven." These three notes establish the fact 
 that Malachi's prophecy was uttered in the 
 days of ISTehemiah's influence. I do not say in 
 the days of N'ehemiah. I know that it is a re- 
 markable thing, upon which comment has not 
 been wanting, that Malachi's name does not 
 appear either in the book of Ezra or ISTehemiah. 
 It seems most probable that Malachi's name is 
 not mentioned because he follows immediately 
 after Nehemiah. The people have fallen back 
 into the very abuses that Nehemiah set him- 
 
:21 " Wherein ? " 
 
 self to rectify, and Malachi is raised up, the 
 last of the prophets, to bear this message to 
 them. 
 
 ISTothing whatever is known of the nation- 
 ality or parentage of Malachi. The name 
 itself is a significant one, and there have been 
 those who have read the name simply as a 
 title — "My messenger." Others say that 
 Malachi was an incarnation of an angelic 
 messenger. I do not accept either of these 
 theories. I believe the man's name was Mala- 
 chi. The Septuagint gives it as Malachius, 
 and so most likely Malachi is an abbreviated 
 form of Malachia. It means " the messenger of 
 Jehovah," but if, because it has that peculiar 
 meaning, we argue it is merely a title, let it be 
 remembered, Joel means " the Lord Jehovah." 
 
 But while that is so, it is noticeable that he 
 was exceedingly careful to speak of himself 
 only as " a bearer of the burden of the word 
 of God." He says nothing of himself. You 
 cannot read this prophecy without seeing how 
 he has excluded himself from it. You read 
 Amos, and right through, you discover his 
 calling in the figures he uses. The man lives 
 in it, very beautifully, but in this case the 
 Lord's messenger is absolutely hidden behind 
 the message he comes to bring. There is noth- 
 ing from which we can gather his past history 
 or trace anything concerning him. He is 
 
Introductory 23 
 
 simply Malaclii, the messenger, he comes to 
 bear the message, and the burden of the word 
 of the Lord is so upon him, and so consumes 
 him, that we never hear a whisper of his own 
 personality, or catch the faintest glimpse of 
 himself. 
 
 The peculiar need of the age in which he 
 spoke and wrote Avas a distinct and direct 
 message, and it was that distinct and direct 
 message from God that he came to pronounce. 
 In that fact I find one of the strongest argu- 
 ments for the application of that message to 
 this age. We need more than anything else 
 to-day, that our preachers should be messen- 
 gers of God, that the people should be spoken 
 to, as out of the divine oracles ; not that the 
 preacher is to be an oracle, for that would be 
 a return to the worst form of priestism, but 
 that he is to be a messenger, and that even the 
 fact of his being a messenger is to be lost 
 sight of in the enormous weight of the mes- 
 sage he comes to proclaim. 
 
 Standing upon these rock foundations, we 
 come to the consideration of truths that are 
 fresh as the Spring ; new, as God is new, and 
 not simply to delve among parchments and 
 musty history. 
 
n 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE 
 
II 
 
 THE SPIEIT OF THE AGE 
 
 We come now to the consideration of the 
 condition of the people at the time when 
 Malachi uttered his prophecy. There is a key- 
 word in the book revealing this condition, a 
 word these people used in reply to every mes- 
 sage which the prophet delivered to them, 
 showing what their real attitude was. It is 
 the word "Wherein." Let us consider the 
 seven occasions of its use : — • 
 
 (1) Chap, i., ver. 2. — "I have loved you, 
 
 saith the Lord. Yet ye say. Wherein 
 hast Thou loved us ? " 
 
 (2) Chap, i., ver. 6. — "A son honoreth his 
 
 father, and a servant his master : if then 
 I be a Father, where is Mine honor ? and 
 if I be a Master, where is My fear? 
 saith the Lord of Hosts unto you, O 
 priests, that despise My name. And ye 
 say. Wherein have we despised Thy 
 name ? " 
 
 (3) Chap, i., ver. 7. — "Ye offer polluted 
 
 bread upon Mine altar. And ye say, 
 Wherein have we polluted Thee ? " 
 27 
 
28 " Wherein ? " 
 
 (4) Chap, ii., ver. 17. — " Ye have wearied the 
 
 Lord with your Avords. Yet ye say, 
 Wherein have we wearied Him ? " 
 
 (5) Chap, iii., ver. 7. — " Eeturn unto Me, and 
 
 I will return unto 3^ou, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts. But ye said, WJierein shall Ave 
 return ? " 
 
 (6) Chap, iii., ver. 8.—" Will a man rob God ? 
 
 Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say. 
 Where m haA^e Ave robbed Thee ? " 
 
 (7) Chap, iii., ver. 13. — " Your Avords haA^e 
 
 been stout against Me, saith the Lord, 
 Yet ye say, Wherein have we spoken so 
 much against Thee ? " 
 You notice in this last instance the author- 
 ized version gives the Avord " AVhat," which is 
 a peculiar accident of translation. It is the 
 same AVord in the Hebrew, and ought to have 
 been translated "Wherein," as in the other 
 cases. 
 
 Thus Ave have this Avord, " Wherein," put by 
 the prophet into the mouth of those people 
 seA^en distinct times, Avith reference to seven 
 distinct announcements. He comes to them 
 first of all Avith the declaration : " I haA^e 
 loved you, saith the Lord," and they say, 
 " Wherein hast Thou loved us?" Then he 
 says, " Ye have despised the Lord," and they 
 say, -" Wherein have Ave despised Him ? " And 
 then : "Ye have polluted My altar," and they 
 
The Spirit of the Age 29 
 
 say, " W/ierein have we polhited Thine altar ?" 
 And then : " Ye have wearied Me," and they 
 say, " W/ierem have we wearied Thee ? " And 
 then: "Return to Me," and they say, 
 " Wherein shall we return ? " And then : 
 " Ye have robbed Me," and they say, " Wherein 
 have we robbed Thee ? " And lastly : " Ye 
 have spoken against Me," and they say, 
 " Wherein have we spoken against Thee ? " 
 
 This word shows us the condition of these 
 people in a lurid light. The temple is rebuilt, 
 the altar is set up, the sacrifices are offered, the 
 feasts and fasts are alike observed, and to these 
 people — with outward form and ritual, perfect 
 to the very last and minutest detail — the 
 prophecy comes, the Divine complaint is made. 
 And they look at the prophet with mingled 
 astonishment and incredulity, and they say, 
 " Wherein ? AYhat do you mean ? You charge 
 us with having despised God and polluted His 
 altar, with having wearied Him, and Avith wan- 
 dering from and refusing to return to Him, and 
 accuse us of robbing and speaking against 
 Him ; we don't see that we have done these 
 things, so why should we be subjected to these 
 accusations ? You come and say we despise 
 God's work. Look at our sacrifices and offer- 
 ings ! You tell us that we have polluted the 
 altar. We have brought our gifts ! You tell 
 us that we have wearied Him. We don't see 
 
30 Wherein?" 
 
 Avhere or when ! We are not conscious of hav- 
 ing done anything to displease Him ! You tell 
 us to return. A¥e don't see where we are to 
 return from ; we don't see where we are to re- 
 turn to ! You tell us we have robbed God. 
 We want to know when ? You say we have 
 spoken against God. We don't remember 
 having spoken against Ilim ; when was it ? " 
 
 What is the significance of this Avord 
 " Wherein ? " These people are not in open 
 rebellion against God, nor do they deny His 
 right to offerings, but they are laboring under 
 the delusion, that because they have brought 
 offerings, they have been true to Him all along. 
 Theirs is not the language of a people throw- 
 ing off a yoke and saying, " We will not be 
 loyal," but of a people established in the tem- 
 ple. It is not the language of a people who 
 say, " Let us cease to sacrifice, and worship ; 
 and let us do as we please " ; but it is the lan- 
 guage of a people who say, " We are sacrificing 
 and worshipping to please God," and yet He 
 says, by the mouth of His servant, " Ye have 
 wearied Me : ye have robbed and spoken 
 against Me." 
 
 They have been most particular and strict 
 in outward observances, but their hearts have 
 been far away from their ceremonials. They 
 have been boasting themselves in their knoAvl- 
 edge of truth, responding to that knowledge 
 
The Spirit of the Age 31 
 
 mechaniccillj, technically; but their hearts, 
 their lives, their characters, the inwardness of 
 their natures, have been a perpetual contra- 
 diction in the eye of Heaven, to the will of 
 God ; and, when the prophet tells them what 
 God thinks of them, they, with astonishment 
 and impertinence, look into his face and say, 
 " We don't see this at all I " To translate it 
 into the language of the ISTew Testament — 
 " having the form of godliness, they deny the 
 power." They have passed into the fearful 
 condition of imagining that what God asks for 
 is but the letter, and they are failing to under- 
 stand that the letter is, at best, but an awk- 
 ward representation of what God is demand- 
 ing in the spirit. v- 
 
 I say " awkward," simply because the letter 
 never can convey all the spiritual meanings. 
 When a man is willing to obey the letter with 
 spiritual intent, then God has more to say than 
 the letter can contain. These people have 
 come simply to bear a literal yoke. They are 
 the most orthodox people, and yet their whole 
 heart is outside the matter, and the facts of 
 their lives are hidden, alas ! from themselves, 
 so subtle and awful in the influence of getting 
 away from direct and close dealing with God. 
 I say these facts are hidden from their own 
 eyes. They are not conscious of it, but God is 
 changed to their conception. The God of 
 
32 "Wherein?" 
 
 their fathers is not their God. The God of 
 spiritual communion with His people, who 
 walked and talked with the patriarchs, is not 
 their God. The god of Israel in the days of 
 Malachi, the god whom they had invented, 
 and were trying to appease and Avorship, was 
 the god of trivialities, of mechanical observ- 
 ances, the god who asks for a temple with a 
 set number of stones and corners, the altar of 
 such a shape, and so many sacrifices and 
 prayers, without any reference to character. 
 When the prophet came to these people, he 
 came to a people who were feeling thoroughly 
 satisfied with their religious observances, and 
 were prepared to say, " Wherein have we done 
 this, or failed to do that ? " 
 
 II 
 
 Now let us go further to discover the reason 
 of their condition. The second chapter begins 
 with these words : " And now, O ye priests, 
 this commandment is for you ; " and the sev- 
 enth verse reads : " For the priest's lips should 
 keep knowledge, and they should seek the law 
 at his mouth : for he is the messenger of the 
 Lord of Hosts." That is the Divine concep- 
 tion of the priesthood. The priest should not 
 only have the knowledge, but should keep it, 
 that is, walk in it, be obedient to it, be the 
 embodiment of the knowledge he holds, of 
 
The Spirit of the Age 33 
 
 which he is the depositary for the time being. 
 The people " should seek the law at his mouth," 
 for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts. 
 More, he is to tell them the will of God, and 
 that not simply as one who possesses it as a 
 wonderful theory, but as one who is himself 
 living within the realm thereof. 
 
 That is the ideal. What then has the 
 prophet to say to the priests ? (ii. 8) : " Ye are 
 departed out of the way ; ye have caused 
 many to stumble at the law; ye have cor- 
 rupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts." I l^^ow all this teaches us, that at the 
 back of the declension of the people is the de- 
 clension and corruption of the priest ; that the 
 people failed to have a right conception of 
 God, because the priest ceased to give them 
 the true conception. The whole company of 
 the people have passed out of the high spir- 
 itual realm of past history, because the priest 
 has tampered with — corrupted as the word is 
 here — the very covenant of God. 
 
 In reading Nehemiah in connection with 
 Malachi, you will have noticed something to 
 which I shall ask you to refer for a moment. 
 Nehemiah xiii. 28, 29 : " And one of the sons 
 of Joiada, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, 
 was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite: 
 therefore I chased him from me. Kemember 
 them, O my God, because they have defiled 
 
34 " Wherein ? " 
 
 the priesthood, and the covenant of the priest- 
 hood and of the Levites." There you have an 
 example, a historic statement of this very 
 thing, the case of a priest marrying the daugh- 
 ter of Sanballat the Horonite. 
 
 Eead the history of l^Tehemiah and see how 
 much Sanballat was, or was not, in accord 
 with the purpose of God. Sanballat was the 
 embodiment of the spirit that was antagonistic 
 to the Word and Spirit of God. One of the 
 priests of God has married his daughter, and 
 Nehemiah says with that magnificent vehe- 
 mence which characterized all his splendid 
 work : " I chased him from me." Why did 
 you do it, J^ehemiah? Why did you chase 
 him away? "Because he had defiled the 
 priesthood, by defiling the covenant of the 
 priesthood and the Levites." The same word 
 occurs in Malachi : "Ye are departed out of 
 the Avay ; ye have caused many to stumble at 
 the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of 
 Levi, saith the Lord of Hosts." The priesthood, 
 instead of keeping the law, had " departed out 
 of the way." The priests had announced the 
 law, they had read its articles, they had pro- 
 claimed it as law, and then had debased it 
 themselves. Corruption had come into the 
 covenant by the way of the priesthood. 
 
 What was the priesthood for? The only 
 reason for its existence was that there should 
 
The Spirit of the Age 35 
 
 be on the human side a guarding of the ar- 
 ticles of the covenant of God, and no man who 
 himself corrupts, tampers with, breaks the 
 covenant, can for a single moment, by his 
 teaching, uphold it ; and the trouble at the 
 back of the national declension was the de- 
 clension of the priesthood. The teachers of 
 the people, the messengers of God, had them- 
 selves done despite to the law of God, by pro- 
 claiming it as fact, and denying it in their own 
 lives. 
 
 This then was the spirit of the age. For- 
 malism, ritual, ceremonial — everything so far 
 as mechanical and outAvard observance — com- 
 plete. A Divine messenger came voicing the 
 complaint of God, and the people in astonish- 
 ment and anger, and with marked imperti- 
 nence, looked into the very face of high heaven 
 and said, "We don't see this thing at all — 
 Wherein?" And all this because God's ap- 
 pointed messengers have themselves, in life, 
 and work, and conversation corrupted the cov- 
 enant, and have passed into the region of 
 baseness and contempt in the eyes of the 
 people. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There is, I fear, an awful sense in which 
 that picture is a picture of the age in which 
 we live. Never was there a day when organ- 
 
36 " Wherein ? " 
 
 izations were more complete, and outward 
 and mechanical forms of service more numer- 
 ous than they are now, but I am not going to 
 dwell merely upon ritual. 
 
 I have made reference to a verse Avith which 
 you are all familiar — 2 Timothy iii. 1-4 : 
 " This know also, that in the last daj^s perilous 
 times shall come. For men shall be lovers of 
 their ownselves, covetous, boasters, proud, 
 blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthank- 
 ful, unholy. Without natural affection, truce- 
 breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, 
 despisers of those that are good. Traitors, 
 heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more 
 than lovers of God." I ask you very solemnly 
 to read that description and apply it to the 
 age in which we live. 
 
 Take the next verse, five, for it is that to which 
 I wish to come : " Having a form of godliness, 
 but denying the power thereof." Will you — 
 bearing that verse in mind — turn to Paul's 
 letter to the Eomans (second chaj^ter and the 
 twentieth verse), and very patiently follow the 
 thought ? You must go back for a moment to the 
 seventeenth verse in order to catch the meaning 
 of his words : " Thou art called a Jew — an in- 
 structor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, 
 which hast Xh^forin of knowledge and of the 
 truth in the law." I have read that passage in 
 order that we may bring these tAVo words 
 
The Spirit of the Age 37 
 
 together. In the twentieth verse of the second 
 chapter of Komans and in the fifth verse of 
 the third chapter of second Timothy you have 
 the same word " form." These are the only 
 two occasions where that actual word occurs 
 in the whole of the l^ew Testament. Of 
 course, you get the word " form " translated 
 from other words, but this word is iwpil^wcn':, 
 and it means " formation " rather than " form." 
 It refers to the possibility of a process rather 
 than to a thing accomplished. When Paul 
 said to Timothy that in these last days perilous 
 times should come, that men would have the 
 form of godliness and yet deny the power 
 he marked a danger more subtle than that of 
 ritualism. It means that in the last days men 
 will actually come to possess the truth itself 
 which is the formative power of godliness, and 
 yet will deny the power. A man may have 
 the very formation of godliness, he may hold 
 the truth, he may be the most orthodox man 
 in the whole city, and yet deny the power. 
 
 That is one of the dangers of the present 
 day. Take Christendom at large. You have 
 thousands of people who can give you good 
 reasons for belonging to the Church, who have 
 some purity in their lives responding to the 
 claims of Jesus Christ, and seem to be not only 
 maintaining the outward forms, but appear 
 also to hold tenaciously to the truth Avhich is 
 
38 " Wherein ? " 
 
 the formative power of the Church, and yet 
 whose lives are not in correspondence to the 
 truth they hold. 
 
 In this sense there is an element of danger 
 in our great conventions. Do not misunder- 
 stand me. I am not undervaluing them. I 
 thank God for the blessed work being accom- 
 plished through them, but there are men and 
 women who are able to enunciate the whole 
 scheme, not only of regeneration but also of 
 sanctification, and yet in their actual life, — 
 when lifted away from the crowd of their fel- 
 low Christians, and from the opinion of their 
 fellow men, into the white light of Divine re- 
 quirement, which alone reveals character, — it 
 can be said of them "denying the power." 
 
 Tell such men it is not a new extension 
 scheme, not a discussion of this constitution or 
 that, we need, but a red-hot fire purging out 
 the dross, and they say " Wherein ? Have we 
 not all these things? Do we not hold the 
 truth ? Are we not orthodox ? — Wherein ? " 
 
 What is at the back of all this ? As in the 
 old days, so now, there bas been a corrupting 
 of the priesthood, there has been a corrupting 
 of the covenant by the teachers, who ought to 
 have led us into the deep things of God. 
 
 What is God's covenant ? If you read the 
 eighth chapter of Hebrews in connection with 
 the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah, beginning 
 
The Spirit of the Age 39 
 
 with the thirty-first verse and reading on, you 
 will find that the covenant of God with His 
 people, for this dispensation, is in advance of 
 the old covenant. That was a covenant in 
 which God was married to His people, and 
 they were to be kept by outward laws, words 
 written upon tables of stone, commandments 
 uttered in their hearing, and the marriage re- 
 lationship was to be maintained between the 
 chosen people and God, in that covenant, by 
 obedience to those laws. 
 
 What is the new covenant ? The new cove- 
 nant is, "I will write my law upon your heart 
 and upon your mind," and the relation of peo- 
 ple in the new covenant to God is to be the 
 relation of a new birth, of an actual affinity, 
 of a marvellous identification. I am no longer 
 married to God in the sense of maintaining the 
 relation by obedience to an outward rule of 
 life, but in the union of a child of God, born 
 again in His Spirit ; with His law, not given 
 to me from the outside, but written on my 
 mind and on my heart. 
 
 Is that covenant corrupted, nay, is not Chris- 
 tendom corrupted from end to end ? If a man 
 begin to talk about iuAvard cleansing, about 
 the necessity for the fire-blood cleansing of 
 the nature, before men can live in communion 
 with God, how many there are who say at 
 once, " We are talking of things that are im- 
 
40 " Wherein ? '* 
 
 possible.^' So long as we who teach corrupt 
 the covenant by going back to Judaism, by 
 lowering the high and awful requirement of 
 actual new birth and spiritual affinity, just so 
 long will the people be content with holding 
 a form of truth and denying the power„ 
 
 There is then an awful application of Mala- 
 chi's daj^s and the spirit of his age to this age 
 and to these days. There was a lowering of 
 the standard of the Divine requirement by the 
 priest — using that word in the Divine sense of 
 the messenger of God — and the people boast- 
 ing too often in their correct theory of worship, 
 super-orthodox, were yet, in their inner life, in 
 the depth of their own nature, in the actual 
 fact of what God alone knows, " denying the 
 power." 
 
 Let us go alone into His presence, for that 
 is light, and fire, and life, and ceasing to be 
 content with conventional religion let each 
 one for himself and herself, in that awful 
 Presence say, "O God, save me from mere 
 correctness of view, and that curiosity to 
 know, for the sake of knowing only, which 
 has blighted my life, and make me what Thou 
 wouldst have me to be in actual character." 
 
m 
 
 THE COMPLAINTS OF JEHOVAH 
 
Ill 
 
 THE COMPLAINTS OF JEHOVAH 
 
 Against this people — formal and self-satis- 
 fied — God, by the mouth of His messenger, 
 uttered seven complaints which may thus be 
 summarized : Profanity, Sacrilege, Greed, 
 Weariness in service. Honoring of vice — or 
 Treason against the covenant of Heaven — ■ 
 Kobbery from God, and Blasphemy against 
 Him. To these complaints they responded 
 with the question " Wherein ? " There is a 
 profanity far worse than that of the slum ; a 
 sacrilege far more terrible than the act of 
 breaking into the sacred place and purloining 
 the vessels of the sanctuary ; a greed which is 
 more atrocious than the greed of a man who 
 professes no godliness, but openly worships 
 Mammon ; a weariness in service which even 
 exceeds in wickedness an entire abstention 
 from service ; a form of treason by the honor- 
 ing of vice, which is more awful than outward 
 and open plotting — however diabolic it may 
 be — to dethrone God ; a kind of robbery 
 which is more terrible than the actual abstrac- 
 tion of coins from the treasury of the Most 
 High ; a kind of blasphemy that in compari- 
 
 43 
 
44 
 
 " Wherein '? 
 
 son makes the revolting blasphemy of the 
 streets seem almost insi^i^nificant and obtuse. 
 
 ^iD' 
 
 In proceeding to consider the first — Profan- 
 ity, turn to the first chapter of the prophecy, 
 and read the sixth and seventh verses: "A 
 son honoreth his father, and a servant his 
 master : if then I be a Father, where is Mine 
 honor ? and if I be a Master, where is My 
 fear ? " N"ow pass to the seventh verse : " Ye 
 offer polluted bread upon Mine altar " — and 
 the last sentence of the verse — " in that," that 
 is to say, in the offering of the polluted bread, 
 " in that ye say, the table of the Lord is con- 
 temptible." 
 
 Here we find the people calling God, 
 "Father," and yet giving Him no honor; 
 calling Him " Master," and having no fear of 
 Him ; saying the table is contemptible by 
 placing upon that table polluted bread ; and 
 yet they say " Wherein ? " that is, they are 
 perfectly satisfied that God is their Father, 
 they are perfectly orthodox in that matter, 
 they will not for a moment dispute Avith any 
 one the fact that God is their Master, but fight 
 for the position when any one dares to trav- 
 erse it. Yet God comes and says : " Ye call 
 Me Father, and ye call Me Master : where is 
 My honor, and where is My fear ? " 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 45 
 
 They bring their bread to the altar, and, I 
 think that if you had had the opportunity of 
 examining it, you would not have found it 
 polluted in the ordinary, literal sense of the 
 word. With a surprised inflection in your 
 voice you would have said, " That bread is not 
 polluted ! " Yet it was polluted, by the hands 
 of the very men who placed it there. What 
 is profanity ? The root meaning of the word 
 is "^way from the temple" (2>r^3 from; 
 famom, temple), and it has come to be used 
 vvith reference to things not sacred, but com- 
 monplace. 
 
 These people were guilty of profanity in the 
 worst possible way, in that they took the 
 names of God, and claimed tlie relationship 
 that those names imply : Father, " honor " ; 
 Master, " fear " ; and yet they did not fear 
 Ilim; they accorded Ilim no honor save in 
 their words, and their creeds, and their out- 
 Avard doings. Thus they degraded the sacred 
 things of God to the common level of medioc- 
 rity, and in effect made the statement, " The 
 table is contemptible." 
 
 No polluted man can offer pure bread upon 
 God's altar ; in taking or rejecting gifts He 
 measures them by the character of the man 
 wdio brings them. Let us take an illustration. 
 It has often been asked wdiy Abel's gift was 
 accepted and Cain's refused. Sometimes we 
 
46 "Wherein?" 
 
 have been told because Abel brought a lamb 
 and Cain fruit. The true reason was that 
 Abel was righteous and Cain was unrighteous. 
 Both of these men brought of the first-fruits of 
 their OAvn labor, and peculiar calling in life. 
 I know there is another side to the subject, and 
 one full of interest, that the very righteous- 
 ness of Abel had spoken to him of his need of 
 sacrifice, and therefore he was prompted to 
 offer a lamb ; but Cain's gift was refused be- 
 cause Cain was refused, and Abel's gift was 
 accepted because Abel was accepted. In this 
 case, men approached the table and laid their 
 gifts upon it, saying " Father," and " Master " ; 
 but before they came to that table there had 
 been no " honor " for the " Father," no " fear " 
 for the " Master." They themselves were not 
 accepted, and their gifts, therefore, were re- 
 fused. 
 
 Profanity at its worst is to be found in the 
 place of outward service, in the very taber- 
 nacles of the Most High. To-day, it is the 
 profanity of Christendom. I do not say the 
 profanity of the Church : the Church and 
 Christendom are two things. Christendom is 
 the outward profession of Christianity, which 
 has libelled Christ, and driven the mass of the 
 people away from our services and our ordi- 
 nances. There is no profanity which is so 
 awful as that of orthodox expression and 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 47 
 
 heterodox heart. Gifts presented to God by 
 hands that are impure, are themselves impure, 
 for God only receives the gift according as He 
 has received the giver. The offering that we 
 bring to God is the true expression of the 
 value at which we appraise the altar. If a 
 man says, " I honor the altar of God," and 
 then puts upon it something that his own life 
 has contaminated, his true estimate of the 
 value of the altar is not the statement he 
 vouchsafes, but his contaminated gift. Such 
 a consideration should make us exceedingly 
 careful how we give to God, and save us from 
 that heresy of heresies, of imagining that we 
 can purchase our acceptance by our gifts. 
 God receives or rejects all the gifts of man in 
 proportion as He has received or rejected the 
 giver. 
 
 If that be a true statement, how many gifts 
 are not received by God which have been 
 placed upon His altar ? And is not this pro- 
 fanity within Christendom to-day more terri- 
 bly profane and far-reaching in its evil influ- 
 ence than all the profanity of the slum ? 
 
 II 
 
 The second of these complaints is to be 
 found in the eighth verse of the same chapter : 
 " And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it 
 not evil ? and if ye offer the lame and the 
 
48 "Wherein?" 
 
 sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy 
 Governor; will he be pleased with thee, or 
 accept thy person ? saith the Lord of Hosts." 
 Here is a movement forward in evil, some- 
 thing beyond profanity, viz, sacrilege; the 
 sin which grows out of profanity, as surely as 
 the sin of profanity is committed. These men 
 are now absolutely offering to God the blind, 
 and the lame, and the sick. The Divine re- 
 quirement under the Mosaic economy was that 
 "the lamb placed upon the altar should be 
 without spot or blemish — the finest of the 
 flock," but these men have lost the sense of 
 what worship means, in that they have re- 
 tained the finest of the flock for themselves, 
 and brought to the altar that which engen- 
 ders its contempt, simply to keep up the 
 form of sacrifice and the appearance which 
 they so much covet. God calls them to ac- 
 count for this display of meanness, and He 
 says — mark the poignant sarcasm of the 
 prophet's words — " offer it to your Governor, 
 the man who rules over you, the kind of offer- 
 ing you are j)iitting upon Mine altar — will he 
 accept it ? " 
 
 Why this complaint ? Because the offerings 
 put upon the altar were valueless to the men 
 who placed them there, and God always val- 
 ues the offering by what it cost the man who 
 brings it, and never by its intrinsic worth. 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 49 
 
 Have we learned that lesson even to-day ; a 
 lesson which the Master emphasized when He 
 sat and watched the people of His own time — 
 the direct descendants of these men of Mala- 
 chi — putting their oif erings into the treasury ? 
 He did not measure a single gift, intrinsically ; 
 but by its cost to the soul who offered it. The 
 rich men gave of their abundance. He saw 
 every gift, recognized its worth, was cognizant 
 of its marketable value, in every case. Pres- 
 ently there came along a woman who was a 
 widow, and she dropped in two mites. Listen 
 to the Master of the treasury, — the One to 
 whom the gifts are brought. What did He 
 say ? " That woman has done well " ? He 
 said something far more sweeping than that. 
 Did He say, " She has cast in more than any 
 man"? :N'o! hui " More than tJiei/ all ^ In 
 effect. He said, " Bring all the gifts that have 
 fallen into the treasury to-day, and put them 
 together, and these mites outweigh them all in 
 the balances of God." 
 
 He measured the gift then, as ever, by its 
 cost to the giver. The men who had put into 
 the treasury out of their abundance did not 
 forego any luxury when they reached home. 
 There was no self-denial in their giving, and 
 each might have said, as men often say to-day, 
 " I do not miss what I give." To such, let me 
 say, God does not thank you for your gift. 
 
50 "Wherein?" 
 
 The widow sadly missed her two mites. They 
 meant a meal, and the only meal in view, and 
 because her gift was sacrificial, God accepted 
 and prized it infinitely more than any other. 
 What does sacrifice reveal ? JSTot a selfish 
 seeking for favor, but a soul's estimate of the 
 One to whom the gift is offered. 
 
 Sacrilege we have ahvays thought was the 
 breaking into a church and stealing there- 
 from. That is not so ; it is going into Church 
 and putting something on the ^late. Do not 
 forget that. Sacrilege is centered in offering 
 God something which costs nothing, because 
 you think God is worth nothing. God looks 
 for the giving at His altar of a gift that costs 
 something. 
 
 Men are perpetually bringing into the Chris- 
 tian Church the things they do not need them- 
 selves. I know there is much sacrificial giv- 
 ing, thank God, but there is also an enormous 
 amount of sacrilegious giving abroad in the 
 world to-day, giving devoid of sacrifice. We 
 offer to God in the Church, things which we 
 would never offer to our governors. This is 
 sacrilege. If the giving in the Church of God 
 to-day was of the type and the pattern of the 
 gift of the widow to the treasury in the days 
 long since passed away, the work of God 
 would never have to go begging to men and 
 women outside the Church. 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 51 
 
 III 
 
 In the tenth verse, God asks the people: 
 "Who is there even among you that would 
 shut the doors for nought ? neither do ye kin- 
 dle fire on Mine altar for nought." ^ This is 
 the most awful indictment of greed to be 
 found in the book. These people were open- 
 ing His doors and kindling fires, because they 
 anticipated gain thereby. There was an ulte- 
 rior motive in every gift placed upon the altar, 
 and in every deed performed, and service ren- 
 dered. The service of God had degenerated 
 into the slavery of a selfish interest; men 
 " opened doors and kindled fires " in order that 
 they might secure a reward. This utterance 
 is in the form of a question and in that form 
 only shall I make any application of it to the 
 age in which we live. " Who is there among 
 you that would shut the doors for nought ? " 
 Why do we render God service ? — and I am 
 going to take the highest point of view which 
 
 * The majority of Modern Commentators in common with 
 the revised version agree in translating the Hebrew word 
 chinnCim, " in vain." This word occurs thirty-two times in 
 the Old Testament, and out of that number is translated six 
 times "for nought "in the Authorized. Five of these the Re- 
 vised retains, and only here makes the alteration. The root 
 idea of the word is "without a cause," and so it is translated 
 fifteen times. I have deliberately followed the example of 
 Dr. Pusey and retained the older translation as being more in 
 harmony with the word in its original meaning, and with the 
 general sjjirit of the context as I understand it. 
 
52 " Wherein ? " 
 
 is also the most solemn — because we hope for 
 reward in the future ? If so, we are treacling 
 dangerously near this most awful manifesta- 
 tion of greed. 
 
 God wants men who will render service to 
 Ilim for the very love of Him, even though 
 they never have reward. You remember 
 Job's great word : " Though He slay me, yet 
 Avill I trust Him." How often is that passage 
 erroneously quoted, as though Job meant to 
 say, " If He slay me, it will be all right ; there 
 is something beyond it, I shall not lose every- 
 thing." That is not the true interpretation. 
 The word " slay " goes to the deepest fact of 
 his being, and he intended to say, " Though He 
 slay me " — not " Though He permit me to be 
 slain by my enemies " — but, " Though I have 
 no future, and never see Him on His throne, 
 though He blot me out, yet I trust Him." 
 That is magnificent trust, and goes far beyond 
 the trust that hopes for rcAvard. 
 
 Of course this is much higher ground than 
 that intended in Malachi's days, but then Ave 
 are living in a much higher dispensation. Is 
 our service Divine or human ? When we give 
 the cup of cold water, if we give it for the 
 sake of reward we do not give it at all. "When 
 we minister to men who are sick and in prison, 
 if we do it in order that He may give us His 
 word in days to come Ave do not minister at 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 53 
 
 all. God is asking for that abandonment of 
 man to Himself which says, " We pour all at 
 Thy feet, and if Thou shouldst crown us, we 
 would rejoice, but only that a crown was ours 
 to cast at the feet of Christ." When men 
 reach that point, greed has gone out of their 
 service. I make no application of this study 
 save in the words of the text. Who among 
 
 as 
 
 9 
 
 IV 
 
 Will 3^ou now turn to the thirteenth verse of 
 the same chapter: "Ye said also. Behold, 
 what a weariness is it ! and ye have snuffed at 
 it." There is a process of degradation in the 
 lives of these men. Profanity, sacrilege, greed, 
 and then weariness. If a man is seeking for 
 reward when he opens a door and kindles a 
 fire, he will soon be tired of the business, and 
 Avill say " Oh, what a weariness ! " and will 
 snuff at it ; but if, putting forth every effort 
 and exerting his whole energy, he seeks the 
 Kingdom for its own sake, he will never com- 
 plain of fatigue. 
 
 I believe this is one of the most remarkable 
 signs of the present time. Great principles are 
 revealed in small things and unexpected ways, 
 and Christendom is saying " The thing is a 
 weariness," not in actual words, but none the 
 less certainly. The ritualistic movement is 
 
54 
 
 "Wherein^" 
 
 Christendom saying, " God is a weariness," 
 and snuffing at His law. This care concerning 
 vestments, incense, and the like — what does it 
 mean ? That men are tired of spiritual wor- 
 ship, and must have the sensual side of their 
 nature pleased and tickled instead thereof. 
 The stern days of our fathers, when they 
 worshipped in barns, and sat, cold and cheer- 
 less, for long hours in spirit conflict with God, 
 and spirit worship of God — where are they ? 
 Gone, and now we must have everything that 
 is aesthetic, and when Ave demand the aesthetic, 
 Ave are saying of real Avorship, " What a Aveari- 
 ness it is ! " and are asking that things may be 
 made pleasant and easy for us. Free Church- 
 men are not exempt from the same snare. All 
 the unhalloAved and ungodly cry for short ser- 
 mons is evidence that men are saying, " What 
 a weariness it is ! " Scores of people in our 
 churches to-day, Avho Avill hear an opera 
 through and through — and not once only, — 
 Avill pull out their Avatches and become anxious 
 and fidgety if a preacher exceeds, by a fcAv 
 minutes' space, what is recognized as his al- 
 lotted time. 
 
 It is a serious matter — a serious matter. 
 When men are tired of hearing and meditat- 
 ing upon the things of God, the fault lies 
 Avithin ; in the background there is greed, and 
 behind that sacrilege, and behind that again 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 55 
 
 profanity. Let us search our hearts, and find 
 whether the things of God have become merely 
 a dut}^, a weariness, that we would relinquisli 
 if we dare, and to which we onlj^ hold for the 
 sake of appearances. 
 
 You will notice in the seventeenth verse of 
 the second chapter that there is something 
 further still: "Ye have wearied the Lord 
 with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have 
 we wearied Him ? When ye say, Every one 
 that doeth evil is good in the sight of the 
 Lord, and He delighteth in them ; or. Where 
 is the God of judgment ? " What did they 
 mean ? " Our God is a God of love ; there is 
 no judgment. That man you say is evil, is 
 good, if you only knew it. God delights in 
 him." That is beyond weariness and snuiRng ; 
 that is treason of the very worst form. That 
 is a countenancing and an excusing of sin. 
 That is an attempt to gloss evil and treat it 
 lightly, as of no importance. When man be- 
 gins to excuse sin, and to say that it does not 
 matter so much, that God delights in them 
 that do evil, that there is no judgment ; then 
 he is committing high treason. 
 
 That again is a peculiar sin of our own day. 
 Find me anywhere a people who are weary of 
 a strong and robust Christianity and seek aes- 
 
56 "Wherein?'' 
 
 thetic worship, and I find you a people whol 
 cannot bear to be told of the judgment of God. ' 
 
 What are such people really doing ? Lower- 
 ing the standard of Divine government, and 
 the moment a man within the Church is guilty 
 of that, he is flagrantly guilty of high treason 
 against God. 
 
 All this talk about God being such a God of 
 love that He passes lightly over sin, is the mis- 
 understanding of what love is. Love is the 
 sworn foe of sin forever, and the instant God 
 begins to excuse sin, as we are too often rashly 
 doing, He proves He does not love man. JSTar- 
 row that down to your own personality, or 
 rather let me speak of mine. If God excuse 
 sin in me, and let me go on, just saying, "Well, 
 he is frail and infirm, it does not matter," God 
 Himself by such action ensures my ruin. It 
 is because He is a consuming fire to sin, and 
 never signs a truce with it within the sphere 
 of His own kingdom, or in the world any- 
 where, that He is a God of love ; and directly 
 people begin to say, "Where is the God of 
 judgment ? " they are guilty of high treason, 
 and I believe that has been the peculiar sin of 
 many years. 
 
 The men of our own times whom God has 
 most signally used have been sons of fire as 
 well as sons of consolation. Who were the 
 sons of consolation? They were Boanerges, 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 57 
 
 the sons of thunder, and no man is a true son 
 of consolation unless he is also a son of 
 thunder. 
 
 A man must have a keen, clear vision of sin, 
 as an enormity of the ages never to be ex- 
 cused, if he is to be tender and compassionate 
 toward the man who is a sinner. That is a 
 false conception of love Avhich imagines God is 
 not a God of judgment. 
 
 VI 
 
 Again, in the third chapter and the eighth 
 verse, you have the sixth complaint, " Will a 
 man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me." 
 What a fearful charge ! How had they robbed 
 Him? For they said, "Wherein have we 
 robbed Thee?" "In tithes and offerings." 
 In other words, there was a certain Divine 
 claim that God made upon these people ; there 
 was a tithe to be given to Him, and they had 
 responded to the demand. " That is what God 
 asked," you say ; " surely that was right." Do 
 not make a mistake. People are habitually 
 telling us that God demanded the tithe. That 
 is utterly at variance with the true position. 
 God demanded the tithe only as a nniniimim^ 
 and they had carelessly given Him what He 
 claimed — the minimum — in tithes and offerings. 
 They had robbed God in that they had not re- 
 sponded to the Divine claim in the spirit in 
 
58 " Wherein ? " 
 
 which it was made, but had offered that which 
 was allowed by measurement and rule rather 
 than in the spirit of love. 
 
 What is the Divine claim upon Christendom 
 —or Christianity, shall I rather say ? God is 
 not asking you for a tithe. Some give a tithe 
 of their income. That may be the correct 
 thing ; but while there are instances in which 
 it is right, there is a reverse side to the picture. 
 Some men have no business to give a tithe of 
 their earnings — they cannot afford it ; and 
 there are men who are robbing God by giving 
 only a tithe of their incomes. I knew a Con- 
 gregational Church some years ago in which a 
 man sat in one pew and another man imme- 
 diately behind him. The income of the first 
 man may roughly be estimated at £10,000 a 
 year, and he and his family gave two pounds 
 conscientiously and regularly every week. He 
 gave an occasional £100 and other sums, but 
 tAvo pounds was his regular weekly gift. The 
 man who sat behind him was a laborer, earn- 
 ing eighteen shillings a week, out of whicli he 
 gave one shilling. (We have simply got down 
 to money values because they appeal most 
 strongly to the minds of men in this age.) 
 Which man gave the most ? I do not commit 
 any one else to this ; but I told the "man be- 
 hind " that he had no right, with his wife and 
 family of five bairns, to give a whole shilling 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 59 
 
 out of a weekly wage of eighteen. God does 
 not ask it. Of the man in front— well, his 
 offering was meanness embodied in compari- 
 son. A tithe is all right if it is something you 
 feel. If it is something which puts you in 
 danger of being dishonest, it is wrong ; and if 
 it is out of harmony with your own success in 
 Hfe, it is absolutely wrong. I do not believe 
 in insisting upon the tithe. God's claim is all 
 —everything to be His. Every coin used self- 
 ishly is robbery in the Christian dispensation ; 
 and, as I have already said of sacrilege, we 
 should never be compelled to beg from the 
 devil to carry on God's work, if He were not 
 being plundered. 
 
 VII 
 
 In the thirteenth and fourteenth verses we 
 read, " Your words have been stout against 
 Me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say. Wherein 
 (what) have we spoken so much against Thee ? 
 Ye have said. It is vain to serve God ; and 
 what profit is it that we have kept His ordi- 
 nance, and that we have walked mournfully 
 before the Lord of Hosts ? " :N^ow, this is the 
 sin of blasphemy. What is blasphemy ? The 
 word means to speak injuriously, to say some- 
 thing that shall injure the one against whom 
 you have spoken it ; and men have come to 
 use it mostly of Divine things. To blaspheme 
 
6o " Wherein ? '* 
 
 is to say that which injures God, and His cause 
 and His kingdom. He says to these people, 
 "Your words have been stout against Me," 
 that is to say, " You have blasphemed Me 
 stoutly " ; and they say, " Wherein ? " And 
 He goes on, " You have said, It is vain to serve 
 God ; and what profit is it that we have kept 
 His ordinance, and that we have walked 'in 
 black ' before the Lord ? What is the profit 
 of all this ? " Do you suppose any of these 
 people have been saying that in actual words ? 
 You cannot suppose it for a moment. 
 
 The very worst form of blasphemy is the 
 misrepresentation of God by people who pro- 
 fess to love His name, and look apparently 
 with exuberant delight for the coming of His 
 kingdom. The man who openly blasphemes, 
 and who, standing under the sun, looks up at 
 the heavens and says, " I hate God," is far less 
 dangerous in the influence of his life than the 
 man who says "I love God" and disobeys 
 Him. The blasphemy of which to be afraid is 
 that which joins with the great congregation 
 in saying, " Thy will be done, Thy kingdom 
 come," and all the while thwarts the will of 
 God and denies His kingshi]) within. Oh 
 brethren, if the Church believed in God's king- 
 dom and God's will, and if the whole catholic 
 Church of Jesus Christ, on Sunday next, in the 
 power of the Spirit, breathed that prayer with 
 
The Complaints of Jehovah 6l 
 
 unquestionable honesty, how the kingdom 
 would come on apace ! It is on account of the 
 blasphemy within our own immediate circle, of 
 men and women who pray the prayer and do 
 not believe in the kingdom, that the thing is 
 hindered, and that the Church of Jesus Christ 
 has become an enervated dilettante in the coun- 
 cils of kings, doing nothing in its corporate 
 capacity to lift the world to heaven and to 
 God. 
 
 There are souls, however, to-day, forming 
 God's elect (of whom we shall speak before 
 finishing this series) whom God is using to lay 
 His own foundations, and to do His own work, 
 prior to the coming of the Master to His 
 Church ; but Christendom as a whole is at 
 fault and powerless, because Christendom has 
 not believed nor acted upon the teaching of 
 the Master. I know this picture is appalling ; 
 but if you can find a brighter one in your out- 
 look, you can do that of which I am absolutely 
 incapable. Do not, however, form final esti- 
 mates, until we have completed this series of 
 studies. There is a bright light, and one 
 which is brighter in the Church than ever it 
 has been in the past decades. 
 
IV 
 
 THE DIVINE ATTITUDE 
 
IV 
 
 THE DIVINE ATTITUDE 
 
 " The burden of the word of the Lord to 
 Israel by Malachi — I have loved you, saith the 
 Lord " (i. 1, 2). That is the all-comprehensive 
 word which Malachi was sent to proclaim. 
 The love of God ! That is the burden. Every 
 Avord addressed to them concerning the details 
 and conditions of their life springs out of that. 
 In chapter iii. verses 10-12, we have the Di- 
 vine call : " Bring ye all the tithes into the 
 storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine 
 house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the win- 
 doAvs of heaven, and pour you out a blessing 
 that there shall not be room enough to receive 
 it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your 
 sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of 
 your ground ; neither shall your vine cast her 
 fruit before the time in the field, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts. And all nations shall call you 
 blessed : for ye shall be a delightsome land, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." In these two pas- 
 sages, the one declaring the burden of the 
 (prophet, and the other giving the direct ap- 
 
 65 
 
66 "Wherein^" 
 
 peal of Jehovah, we have the call of love to 
 these people. 
 
 We must bear in mind their condition, for 
 it is a remarkable background to this study. 
 They were perfectly satisfied men and women, 
 and yet God, looking at them, charged them 
 as He did, with sacrilege, profanity, greed, 
 and so forth. To the people in such a condi- 
 tion, what has God to say ? 
 
 " I have loved you, saith the Lord." The 
 word is infinitely stronger than appears upon 
 the surface. " I have loved you, and do love 
 you, I have loved you, saith the Lord." This 
 declaration was made in the time of their sin 
 and neglect, in the day in which He had 
 to make the complaint which is so severe and 
 searching, and yet He says to them : " I have 
 loved you, saith the Lord." This is the htirden 
 of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. 
 He came to warn them that a day was com- 
 ing, burning as an oven, wherein all stubble 
 should be destroyed, because God loved them. 
 Every message of coming judgment or bless- 
 ing is a message of love, — whether sj^oken in 
 words that sound hard, and harsh, and severe, 
 revealing to them their true condition, or in 
 words of tenderness, and comfort and Avooing 
 pathos. 
 
The Divine Attitude 67 
 
 If we consider God's claim to the honor and 
 fear of these people, it is based upon love. Why 
 does God want them to honor Him ? Why is 
 He anxious that they should fear Him ? Sim- 
 ply to glorify Himself ? ]S"ay, verily, but for 
 their blessing and good. " But," says some 
 one, "is it not a Divine prerogative to seek 
 for glory ? Is not God, at all times, seeking 
 His own glory ? " Most emphatically yes ; 
 but what do we mean Avhen we speak of God 
 seeking His own glory ? How is God glori- 
 fied ? I sometimes think that we have an 
 idea that our song and presence in heaven will 
 add something to God. JSTever ! You cannot 
 add to God. ]^o tinge of brightness can you 
 put upon the beauty of His character, no 
 greater fullness of love can you give. How 
 then can I glorify Him ? God is glorified in 
 the perfect realization on the part of His peo- 
 ple of all the gracious purposes of His love for 
 them. 
 
 The daisy that lifts its head from the sod to 
 salute the king of day glorifies God, but does 
 it add lustre to the Divine ? Assuredly not. 
 It is all that God meant it to be, and God is 
 glorified by the realization of His own purpose. 
 So with us. God wants us to honor and fear 
 Him, because by doing so Ave shall realize His 
 purpose. Why does He at times lift His rod 
 upon His wayward and wandering children ? 
 
68 "Wherein?" 
 
 Never " willingly," but because it is an abso- 
 lute necessity for the creation of character. 
 "The severest words of God to man, and Ilis 
 ; severest treatment, manifest most perfectly 
 ' His unvarying and unchanging love. Let 
 your mind go back quickly over the history of 
 God's people, Israel. Mr. Richard Le Galli- 
 enne has written a book, " If I were God." I 
 have often read the history of the ancient peo- 
 ple, and felt " if I were God " they would have 
 been blotted out. How conclusively that 
 proves that neither Mr. Le Gallienne nor I 
 know of what we talk when we propose such 
 an hypothesis. And yet we can only argue of 
 themes of the infinite wisdom and love by such 
 daring leaps in the dark. Let us always con- 
 fess when we cannot understand His methods 
 that it is because we are finite, and He is infi- 
 nite. 
 
 " Forty years was I grieved with this gener- 
 ation." Eead the history of the forty years 
 and see how He treated them ! He fed them, 
 He carried them through all the days. He bore 
 with their murmurings and patiently waited 
 for them. He took all their rebellion and suf- 
 fered it in long-sufi'ering patience. He pro- 
 tected them during the watches of the night, 
 and waited for them at the doors of the morn- 
 ing, and carried them through all the years — 
 years in which lie vxis grieved with them. Let 
 
The Divine Attitude 69 
 
 us never forget this burden of love. Is it not 
 this attitude of God that makes their attitude 
 to Him so awful, and, moreover, is not the 
 key-word of Malachi the one that gives its 
 character to the whole book, so that the 
 prophecy of Malachi to us is not a dirge as it 
 would be, if we only read of their condition ; 
 but a shout of triumph because God says, " I 
 have loved you " ? That is the key-word to 
 the whole prophecy, and with the background 
 of our previous consideration, how brightly 
 and beautifully the Divine love and tender- 
 ness shine out as we hear that word of the 
 prophet. 
 
 This is an eternal truth — each Avord and 
 deed and movement of God toward man is of 
 inlinite love. It is not always that men have 
 understood this as clearly as did Malachi. 
 Preachers sometimes forget it ; but the truth 
 stands that every God-called, ordained, in- 
 spired messenger of Divine things may ap- 
 proach the people to whom he speaks, saying, 
 " The burden of the word of the Lord to you : 
 I have loved you, saith the Lord." 
 
 II 
 
 Let us now turn from the key-word to the 
 special call. He has made His complaint ; He 
 has heard their perpetual responses, coming in 
 
yo "Wherein?" 
 
 that awful monotone — " Wherein ? " and now 
 He says to them by the mouth of His servant : 
 " Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse 
 that there may be meat in Mine house, and 
 prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of 
 heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there 
 shall not be room enough to receive it. And 
 I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and 
 he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, 
 neither shall your vine cast her fruit before 
 the time in the field, saith the Lord of Hosts. 
 And all nations shall call you blessed ; for ye 
 shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts." "We have in these three verses four 
 notes : — 
 
 (1) The call of God: "Bring ye all the 
 
 tithes into the storehouse." 
 
 (2) The challenge of God : " And prove Me 
 
 now herewith, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts." 
 
 (3) The promise of God : "I will open you 
 
 the windows of heaven, and pour you 
 out a blessing that there shall not be 
 room enough to receive it ; and I will 
 rebuke the devourer for your sakes, 
 and he shall not destroy the fruits of 
 your ground, neither shall your vine 
 cast her fruit before the time in the 
 field." 
 
The Divine Attitude 71 
 
 (4) The result : " And all nations shall call 
 you blessed ; for ye shall he a delight- 
 some land, saith the Lord of Hosts." 
 Eemembering the condition of this people, 
 rebellious, and yet perfectly satisfied with their 
 own position, let us ponder this message of 
 God to them. 
 
 i. First, there is the call: "Bring all the 
 tithes into the storehouse." There were 
 necessarily two sides to the covenant existing 
 between God and the nation. There were 
 mutual obligations. His promises were made 
 upon conditions. If they failed to fulfill these 
 conditions, the covenant was broken. They 
 had failed, and yet He in grace called them to 
 a renewal by the way of return to obedience. 
 "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse." 
 What is God really asking for? Does He 
 want a tenth part of their wheat, of their 
 flocks, of their possessions, simply for Himself, 
 to possess it? Assuredly not. He asks for 
 the tenth part as a proof that they recognize 
 His love toward them. The tithe is only 
 valuable as a recognition of love, and the onl}/ 
 force which is strong enough to provide the 
 tithe is the consciousness of the truth of that 
 first word of Malachi: "I have loved you, 
 saith the Lord." If these people forget God 
 loves, they will very soon forget to bring the 
 tithe; and the only service that God seeks 
 
72 " Wherein ? '' 
 
 is the service of love that responds to His 
 love. 
 
 He asks for the " whole tithe." It is an in- 
 finitely better word than "all the tithes." 
 That is a mathematical phrase, and seems to 
 suggest a mathematical or mechanical religion, 
 but the "whole tithe" means not only the 
 produce of their land and labor, not only the 
 outward form, but its inner intention. " All 
 the tithes "is not necessarily " the whole 
 tithe." 
 
 Supposing one of these men had possessed a 
 hundred shekels. Has he not fulfilled the 
 Divine requirement when he has brought of 
 these hundred, ten for God, for mathematically 
 that is the tithe ? ISTo ! out of the hundred, 
 ten perfect shekels may be placed upon the 
 altar, the coins genuine to the eye of man, but 
 in God's sight — counterfeit. They did not 
 constitute "the whole." What was lacking? 
 The recognition of love. There was not the 
 response of love to love for which God is al- 
 ways asking : " Bring the whole tithe." There 
 is an apparent wholeness to us that is the 
 utterest fraud in the sight of God. There is a 
 mechanical correctness, devoid of essential 
 love, which God spurns. "Bring the whole 
 tithe," and bring it in the right way ; let it 
 come as the recognition of His love. When it 
 is thus brought, it means, borrowing a sen- 
 
The Divine Attitude 73 
 
 tence from the 'New Testament, "We love 
 Him, because He first loved us." Our love is 
 but the offspring of His love, our tithe given, 
 a recognition of His all bestowed. 
 
 God is calling for the investiture of form 
 with power, and the one power which God 
 recognizes is that of love. If we would see 
 our organizations invested with power they 
 must be invested with love, and the preacher 
 is to preach, and the worker to work, not to 
 give God a mechanical quantity, but in re- 
 sponse to love. When that is an established 
 fact the tithes are brought into the storehouse. 
 
 ii. liow for the challenge : " Prove Me now 
 herewith." Get to know Me by answering 
 My love with your love ; respond to the love 
 that is ever upon you, even in your rebellion 
 and sin, with love, and by that response be ad- 
 mitted into love and knowledge and under- 
 standing. " Prove Me now herewith." This 
 was God's challenge to the people. 
 
 iii. Mark the promise : " Prove Me if I will 
 not open you the windows of heaven, and pour 
 you out a blessing that there shall not be room 
 enough to receive it. " The source of blessing 
 — heaven's windows open ; the measure of 
 blessing — until there shall not be room enough 
 to receive ito Now the word really is, until 
 there shall not be a " sufficiency." 
 
 It is possible that our translators both in the 
 
74 "Wherein?" 
 
 Authorized and Revised versions have caught 
 the true spirit of the word, but it is somewhat 
 ambiguous. One daring commentator of other 
 days suggests that it should read ; " Prove 
 Me noAV hercAvith, saith God, till there shall 
 not be a sufficiency," " that is to say," says the 
 writer, "God will keep on pouring blessing 
 out until His own sufficiency ends ; and when 
 can that be ? JN'ever ! " The writer says this 
 is the most remarkable figure in the whole 
 book. It is a magnificent conception even if 
 it does not catch the first and true meaning of 
 the word. The thought is that of the " prodi- 
 gality " of Divine love. It runs over every 
 measure, and goes before us, and encompasses 
 us even in our sin, and He says : "If you will 
 but bring the tithe, acknowledge the love, and 
 look up and say ' Eternal Love, we love,' I will 
 open the windows of heaven and pour out a 
 blessing that you cannot receive it." 
 
 What else ? "I will rebuke the devourer." 
 The insect that is destroying your crops I will 
 destroy for your sakes. That word " rebuke " 
 is the same which is used in the second chap- 
 ter and the third verse, translated there : " Be- 
 hold, I will coTTujpt your seed." Corrupt is 
 the correct word. Lift that word and put it 
 in here. " I will corrupt the devourer." The 
 punishment was that all the seed was to be 
 corrupt. The blessing was that not the seed, 
 
The Divine Attitude 75 
 
 but the devourer was to be corrupted. "I 
 will corrupt the devourer." 
 
 And then follows that perfect figure of 
 beauty and strength : " [N'either shall your 
 vine cast her fruit before the time in the 
 field." 
 
 iv. What is to be the result of this blessing ? 
 '' All nations shall call you happy." God says 
 that when His people return to Him, bringing 
 the tithes, and He returns to them in blessing, 
 there is to be a great consensus of opinion as 
 to their condition. All the nations of the 
 world will make an admission concerning 
 them. There shall be none who shall deny 
 their blessedness and happiness. " All nations 
 shall call you blessed." The world is waiting 
 for that. I do not think it has ever seen it. 
 The blessing of God for the people has not 
 been seen in Israel's history or in the history 
 of the Christian Church. We have never 
 reached it. I think it Avill come when the 
 King comes, and in His own Kingdom He sets 
 up the blessings of love which He described in 
 the Sermon on the Mount; then all the na- 
 tions shall say, "Happy is the people whose 
 God is the Lord." 
 
 And what more? "Yours shall be a de- 
 lightsome land," perfect in itself, the ideal 
 realized as the result of obedience. 
 
76 " Wh 
 
 erein 
 
 III 
 
 What are the thoughts which this study of 
 the Divine attitude suggests for us ? First, 
 that of the great eternal love. Notwithstand- 
 ing all the varied and varying conditions of 
 humanity, love underlies all the Divine deal- 
 ings, and love still marks the attitude of God 
 to His people despite their failures, their rebel- 
 lion, alas ! alas ! so often evident. There is a 
 very considerable tendency to-day, on the part 
 of the people whose eyes are open, and who 
 are in a measure responding to the Divine call, 
 to become a clique, or class, and look down on 
 the failure of their brethren and sisters who 
 are living the lower life of formalism. Di- 
 rectly you find ^^ourself looking down with 
 lack of love upon your fellow Christians, rest 
 assured that you are departing from that very 
 blessing of which you have been j)roud. 
 
 God is saying to us : "I have loved you." 
 That is why He never gives you any rest about 
 that particular habit, which appears so inno- 
 cent, and yet which is the very crux of the 
 controversy between you and Himself. "I 
 have loved you, saith the Lord." It is the in- 
 finite proof of love when God does not let you 
 rest. It is as dangerous to let your conscience 
 assume a state of apathy as it would be to al- 
 low a sleepy man to slumber in the snows of 
 
The Divine Attitude 77 
 
 the Sierras. Have you a controversy with 
 God which has been going on for weeks, aye, 
 for months, and even years, until you are 
 weary of it, and in danger of growing rebel- 
 lious because of Ilis interference — Hold, man ! 
 — " I have loved you ! " If God had not loved 
 you, He would have left you to your own de- 
 vices and evil. Your evil habit, selfish indul- 
 gence, is your enemy, and while God brings 
 you back to this point, time after time. He is 
 proving His love for your soul. " I have loved 
 you." We must live in the element of this 
 Divine love. 
 
 The next lesson I gather is that of the rela- 
 tion which exists between tithe and blessing. 
 " Bring the tithe, and I will open the windows 
 of heaven." How perpetually people in prayer- 
 meetings pray the promise and forget the con- 
 ditions. We pray : " Open the Avindows of 
 heaven and pour us out a blessing," and God 
 replies : " Bring the tithes." It is as though 
 God said to you : " It is for you to open the 
 windows." What? the windows of heaven? 
 Yes ! heaven's windows always swing upon 
 love's hinges. There is a very radical and 
 practical application of this phrase, which one 
 is slow to make and yet it must be made. Do 
 not imagine because ^ve are living in a spirit- 
 ual dispensation we are no longer bound in 
 the matter of material giving. We are to 
 
78 " Wherein ? " 
 
 bring the tithes. It is not the tithe that God 
 asks from you, but everything! You may 
 make a proportionate statement of it if you 
 Avill. As the Christian dispensation is greater 
 than the Jewish, so must my giving be greater 
 than a tithe, and when you have worked out 
 the first ratio you will begin to understand 
 the second. When men come and say, " Here 
 we are, our interests, ourselves, our business — • 
 everything," then the windows of heaven are 
 never shut — never ! 
 
 I want you to see the subtle connection be- 
 tween tithe and blessing. You know that lit- 
 tle verse that people sing in Conventions — 
 
 "' My all is on the altar, 
 I'm waiting for the fire." 
 
 It is an absolute absurdity. Nobody ever 
 waited for the fire when all was on the altar. 
 Let a man sing if he like — 
 
 " A part is on the altar. 
 I'm waiting for the fire." 
 
 I do not know that he ought to waste the time 
 in singing even that, but bestir himself to get 
 the other portion on the altar. That is his 
 business. When you and I put our all upon 
 the altar the fire falls directly. You read in 
 the story of Elijah how the fire descended 
 straightway. God's conditions being fulfilled 
 —God's promises never halt. It is you and I 
 
The Divine Attitude 
 
 79 
 
 that are maimed, and lame, and halt. God 
 does not halt. "Bring the tithes," and the 
 moment they come the windows open and the 
 showers of blessing descend. That is a law 
 which applies equally to the individual, to the 
 nation, to the Church, and to the world. We 
 begin with ourselves. When my all is upon 
 the altar, then the windows of heaven are 
 open and the blessing descends. When the 
 Church brings the tithe into the storehouse, 
 and acknowledging and honoring Him, sweeps 
 aAvay all methods that so detract from the ful- 
 fillment of her mission and says, "Only for 
 Thy glory do I exist," then the blessing is 
 given. Mail's tithes and GocTs windows. 
 
 Then we must go further still and notice, 
 not only the relationship between tithe and 
 blessing, but that between love and tithe. 
 Tithes never reach the storehouse except in 
 response to love. Mechanical religion cannot 
 last ; it always becomes weary and ceases. I 
 may preach to you and use every argument I 
 know as to your giving to God. You will 
 never do it in response to human eloquence. 
 When do men give to God ? When they have 
 a true vision of Him. That is the secret of 
 giving tithes, and that, in its turn, is the secret 
 of the opening of heaven's windows. 
 
 Out of that grows another question. How 
 can we love ? Only as we prove God in the 
 
8o " Wherein ? " 
 
 patli of obedience. This is a burden laid upon 
 my own heart perpetually. I love God in pro- 
 portion as I obey Him. The first steps may 
 be taken in the dark without seeing a reason, 
 but take them, and you begin to see the wis- 
 dom and tenderness, and compassion, and love 
 of God. I love when I obey, and when I love, 
 I obey. Which is cause and which is effect ? 
 There is an inter-relation in the progress of 
 Christian love„ But obedience is the first 
 thing. In the beginning, seek first the King- 
 dom, and when the soul seeks the Kingdom by 
 obeying the King, the soul discovers the Fa- 
 ther, and discovering the Father obeys more 
 readily, and obeying more readily, has a larger 
 revelation which makes obedience easy and 
 the horizon greater. We are changed from 
 glory into glory, and at last we shall be like 
 Him, and obey perfectly. Such is the Divine 
 arrangement. 
 
 A delightsome land in the mind of God is 
 acknowledged happy by the nations. How is 
 it that the world is so sick and tired of Chris- 
 tianity? How is it that men outside the 
 Church have come to look upon us with dis- 
 dain ? Is it not so ? You business men, tell 
 me, is there not a sort of pity in the heart of 
 scores of worldly men for Christian men to- 
 day? Why is this? It is the fault of the 
 Church, of the people themselves, not the 
 
The Divine Attitude 8l 
 
 creed. " Give me," said John Wesley, " a hun- 
 dred men Avho love God with all their hearts, 
 and fear nothing but sin, and I will move the 
 world." People who saw and mocked them 
 in the early days grew to love them, and came 
 to sa}^: "These people have what we have 
 not ; we will go with them, for God is with 
 them." Again and again God has raised up a 
 despised and unknown people to render con- 
 crete the blessings of His Kingdom and Gov- 
 ernment ; and where this has been done the 
 world has said, " This is a delightsome land," 
 and where the world has ceased to say that, it 
 is because the people have wandered away 
 from Him. Brethren, if the Church of Jesus 
 Christ in this land returned to the Kingdom 
 to-morrow morning, and every one of its mem- 
 bers returned to the Kingship of Jesus Christ, 
 the whole country would be impressed straight- 
 way, and within one twelvemonth would say, 
 " These are the people, this is the delightsome 
 land, these the men and women of delights." 
 Some one says to me : " What do you mean by 
 returning to the Kingdom ? Everything di- 
 vided, having all things in common ? " I mean 
 one thing when I say returning to the King- 
 dom. Let them return to love, to the love 
 " that suff ereth long and is kind — that thinketh 
 no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquit}^, but rejoiceth 
 in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all 
 
82 " Wherein ? " 
 
 things, hopeth all things." Love like that, and 
 you will never say a bitter thing about an ab- 
 sent neighbor ! You will never suffer an un- 
 kind thing to be said about some one " afar 
 off." That is the place to begin, and if the 
 Church of Jesus Christ did but reveal His will 
 in all its breadth, and beauty of love, the na- 
 tions would begin to say, " This is a delight- 
 some land ; surely God is with this people, we 
 will go with them also." 
 
 This is God's call to the Church, with its 
 sleeping, slumbering energies. Oh yes, one 
 must put it like that, because if the Church, 
 the great company of men and women in the 
 world to-day, who name the name of Christ, 
 were living in the Kingdom, actuated by the 
 love of God, responding to the forces of His 
 Spirit, we could settle every question straight- 
 way. God is brooding over His sleeping peo- 
 ple, His sleeping Church, and saying, " I have 
 loved you." " Bring ye all the tithes into the 
 storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine 
 house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the win- 
 dows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, 
 that there shall not be room enough to receive 
 it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your 
 sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of 
 your ground ; neither shall your vine cast her 
 fruit before the time in the field, saith the 
 
The Divine Attitude 83 
 
 Lord of Hosts. And all nations shall call you 
 blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." ^' Prove Me," says 
 God. There is one question for us: "Who 
 hears the Divine call ? and hearing, who will 
 respond ? " 
 
V 
 
 THE ELECT KEMNANT 
 
THE ELECT EEMNAISTT 
 
 God has never left Himself without a defi- 
 nite and clear witness to the truths upon which 
 the well-being of humanity is based. In the 
 first chapter of John's gospel, verses four and 
 five, we read : " In Him was life, and the life 
 was the light of men. And the light shineth 
 in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it 
 not." The Eevised Version has altered the 
 word " comprehended " to " apprehended " ; 
 and I am not perfectly sure that it has made 
 the passage more luminous by the alteration. 
 The idea of the verse is not that the darkness 
 was not able to understand the light ; but that 
 the darkness never succeeded in overtaking 
 and extinguishing the light. " The light shin- 
 eth in darkness, and the darkness compre- 
 hended it not," that is — did not apprehend, 
 overtake, or put out. There have been times 
 in the history of man when it has seemed as 
 though the whole world has been given over 
 to darkness ; but it has never really been so. 
 The light of God has ever been shining. 
 Elijah once said in the agony of his disap- 
 
 87 
 
88 " Wherein '? '^ 
 
 pointed spirit, " I, even I, only am left," and 
 God said to him, " I have left Me seven thou- 
 sand in Israel, all the knees which have not 
 bowed unto Baal." Thus in every successive 
 age, when it has seemed for a while as though 
 God were beaten out of His own world, and 
 black and impenetrable darkness had com- 
 pletely overpowered the light, that has only 
 been the false vision of men and women who 
 have not been able to enclose the Divine hori- 
 zon at one glance. Somewhere or other, al- 
 though it may not have been discernible to 
 the ordinary vision, the light has still been 
 burning. 
 
 It was so in the days of Malachi. Notwith- 
 standing all the fearful darkness that had 
 settled upon the nation, God had His own 
 people. His Elect Kemnant ; and through them 
 the light still shone, and witness was still 
 borne to the great truths and principles uj)on 
 which all the Divine activity is based for the 
 well-being of man. It is on the shining of the 
 Divine light in that dark period of the history 
 of the ancient people of God that we shall now 
 ^x our attention. We shall consider firstly 
 the Elect Eemnant as it is revealed in these 
 verses ; then we shall notice the Divine atti- 
 tude toward that Remnant ; and lastly, hear 
 the Divine word spoken concerning them. 
 
The Elect Remnant 89 
 
 " Then they that feared the Lord spake often 
 one to another." Eight in the midst of that 
 day — when the nation, considered as a whole, 
 had passed into the region of life characterized 
 by perfect self-satisfaction, and by the fact that 
 they brought no satisfaction to the Divine 
 Heart — God pronounced His complaint against 
 them, and they, ahnost speechless with in- 
 credulity, looked into His face and said, 
 " Wherein f " Then there existed a feeble 
 yet faithful few who were the light-bearers of 
 God. 
 
 Let us notice the character of this Elect 
 Eemnant : " They that feared." At the close 
 of the sixteenth verse of the third chapter, 
 that first fact is not only repeated, but em- 
 phasized by the addition of another: "They 
 that feared the Lord, and that thought ujpon 
 His nameP "We have here a revelation of 
 the character of these people, which is full of 
 interest and of meaning. "They feared the 
 Lord, and thought upon His name." 
 
 Let us take the first part of that description. 
 If you turn back to the sixth verse of the first 
 chapter, you will find that in the opening note 
 of the Divine complaint the prophet said : " A 
 son honoreth his father, and a servant his mas- 
 ter; if, then, I be a Father, where is Mine 
 
go "Wherein?* 
 
 honor? and if I be a Master, where is My 
 fear ? " Here is a company that hcwe " feared 
 the Lord," and have "thought upon His 
 name " ; so that amid all the mass of people 
 who had lost the sense of their fear to their 
 Master, there was an Elect Remnant, a select 
 few, who not only called Him " Master," but 
 also feared Him. The thought of fear is 
 linked, then, with the word master, and with 
 all that that word implies. If you speak of a 
 master, you at once think of a servant ; and 
 while the relationship of the master to the 
 servant is that of authority and will and guid- 
 ance, the relation of the servant to the master 
 is that of obedience and service. Bearing this 
 in mind, you notice that service is looked upon 
 here rather as condition than action. Charac- 
 ter is marked in this word, " They that feared 
 the Lord " ; they that lived within the con- 
 scious realm of the Divine, and responded to 
 that claim ; that number of units in the great 
 crowd who recognized the Divine Kingship, not 
 merely as theory, or as something of which 
 they made a boast to other people, but as the 
 power in which they lived their lives and 
 spent all their days : " They feared the Lord." 
 There were men and women all around mak- 
 ino^ offering's, and crowdino^ the courts of the 
 temple at the hour of worship. Among those 
 who came, God detected the men and women 
 
The Elect Remnant 91 
 
 who really feared, and He selected only the 
 gifts of those who presented something — not 
 as an attempt to make up what they lacked in 
 character, but as an output of character, and 
 as a revelation of what they were within 
 themselves. " They feared the Lord." 
 
 Let us now turn to the second part of this 
 description : " They thought upon His name." 
 The word " thought " is one of intense mean- 
 ing, and I should like to trace it in one or two 
 passages of Scripture in order that we may 
 more clearly understand it. 
 
 In the seventeenth verse of the thirteenth 
 chapter of Isaiah we read : " Behold, I will stir 
 up the Medes against them, which shall not 
 regard silver ; and as for gold, they shall not 
 delight in it." The only purpose for which we 
 have turned to this verse is that we may extract 
 the word " regard " from it, and see how it is 
 used in this particular case. The Medes will 
 not " regard " silver — that is to say, that they 
 will set no value on silver. The Medes, stirred 
 up against the ancient people of God, will not 
 be bought off by silver. They do not set any 
 value upon it, they do not " regard " it. The 
 connection between this thought and that of 
 our text is centered in the fact that the Hebrew 
 word translated " think " in Malachi is exactly 
 the same word which is translated " regard " 
 in Isaiah. They thought upon His name, they 
 
92 "Wherein?" 
 
 regard ed His name, they set a value upon His 
 name. 
 
 Take another case in which the same word 
 is again translated "regard." Isaiah xxxiii. 
 8, "The highways lie waste, the wayfaring 
 man ceaseth : he hath broken the Covenant, 
 he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no 
 man." That is, he sets no value upon man. 
 The word is identical with that translated in 
 Malachi : " They that thought upon the Lord " 
 — that is to say, what these people did not do 
 concerning man, the Elect Eemnant did con- 
 cerning God. I do not say there is any con- 
 nection between these passages ; we are simply 
 getting the light of them upon a particular 
 word in our present study. They regarded 
 God, they set a value upon Him. In the ter- 
 rible day described by Isaiah the personal man 
 was not regarded, he was accounted as " noth- 
 ing worth," valueless ; but this Elect Eemnant 
 set regard upon the name of the Lord ; they 
 did for that JSTame what the Medes did not do 
 for silver, and what was not done for man in 
 the days of which Isaiah writes. 
 
 In the same prophecy a very remarkable 
 case occurs. Isaiah liii. 3 : " He is despised 
 and rejected of men ; a Man of sorrows, and 
 acquainted with grief : and we hid as it were 
 our faces from Him ; He was despised, and we 
 esteemed Him not." "Esteemed" is the 
 
The Elect Remnant 93 
 
 word ; it is the same Hebrew word translated 
 "thought" in Malachi. You see the word 
 again abnost more wonderfuby presented here 
 than in other instances. " We esteemed Him 
 not." We thought nothing of Him ; we set no 
 vabie upon Him ; His worth in our sight was 
 nothing, and we spurned Him from us. He 
 came to His own, and they received Him not ; 
 they perceived no beauty in Him that they 
 should desire Him. But the Elect Eemnant 
 esteemed the name of the Lord ; they " thought 
 upon His name" — they set a high value 
 thereon. 
 
 To follow this thought a little further in 
 order that we may get additional light upon 
 it, turn to the letter of Paul to the Philippians, 
 iv. 8 : " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are honest, what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are 
 pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report ; if there be any vir- 
 tue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
 things." The Greek word translated " think " 
 here is a word which means " Take an inven- 
 tory." What are the things of which men, as 
 a rule, take an inventory ? Things which they 
 value ; and Paul, in writing, is practically say- 
 ing, " Do not reckon as riches things perish- 
 ing ; but those things which make you rich in- 
 deed, the things which are true, honest, just, 
 
94 "Wherein*?" 
 
 pure, lovely, of good report, take an inventory 
 of these, keep your mind upon them, set a 
 value upon them." In the Septuagint the 
 translators have taken this word which Paul 
 uses, and have used it in the three cases in 
 Isaiah — to which we have already referred — so 
 that when you read, " These men thought on 
 the name of the Lord," it is not a matter of 
 little moment ; they did not simply meditate 
 upon His name, and meet together to endeavor 
 to comprehend its deep riches. All this I be- 
 lieve they did ; but their position as described 
 by this word is far more Avonderf ul than that. 
 It is that they set value upon the name of the 
 Lord, esteemed it, made an inventory in it, ac- 
 counted it as their property, wealth, riches. 
 It was the chief thing ; nothing else was worth 
 consideration to these faithful people. They 
 took an inventory in the name of the Lord. 
 
 That leads us to another point. The Master 
 Himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, chron- 
 icled in Matthew v., vi., vii., gave utterance to 
 these words : " Where your treasure is, there 
 will your heart be also." That is one of the 
 sayings of Jesus Christ which is of such smi- 
 plicity that I may use it as an everyday truth 
 in my experience, and yet it is at the same 
 time the statement of a great fundamental 
 principle in all human life. "Where your 
 treasure is, there will your heart be also." The 
 
The Elect Remnant 95 
 
 masses of the people of Malachi's day found 
 their treasure in their possessions, in their na- 
 tionality, and in the temple, and consequently 
 their hearts reached no higher altitude than 
 the platform of things mundane ; but the Elect 
 Eemnant set store by the name of the great 
 Jehovah, and their hearts Avere therefore 
 homed in God. 
 
 Turn once more to Proverbs xxiii. 7, where 
 these words occur : " As a man thinketh in his 
 heart, so is he." These people thought upon 
 the name of the Lord, and where their treas- 
 ure was their heart nestled, the result being 
 that their whole life assumed form and char« 
 acter from their conception of treasure, and 
 from the things upon which their hearts medi- 
 tated. 
 
 " They thought upon the name of the Lord." 
 That word reveals a company of people who 
 valued the N^ame, and counted it as their chief 
 treasure, with the result that their character 
 became responsive to all that the IS'ame signi- 
 fied, and their life grew in closer correspond- 
 ence to the will of God. 
 
 What a name was that on which they thus 
 thought may be gathered from a study of the 
 titles associated therewith in the mind of the 
 Hebrew. JehovaJi-Jireh — The Lord will pro- 
 vide; Jehovah-Tsidkenu — The Lord our right- 
 eousness; Jehovcth-SJialom — The Lord send 
 
96 "Wherein?" 
 
 peace ; Jeliovali-Nissi — The Lord our ban- 
 ner; Jehovah -Shammah — The Lord is there. 
 Search the matter out for yourselves, and you 
 will find that these people had a marvellous 
 heritage in the name of Jehovah. He had 
 revealed Himself by names continually, and 
 there had been along the line of their history 
 new beauty, new glory, perpetually breaking 
 out by means of these very names by which 
 God had approached them time after time. 
 These people thought upon the name of the 
 Lord, of His provision for them ; His right- 
 eousness ; His banner, the proof of love in His 
 conflict with sin ; of His presence, and, think- 
 ing of these things, their nature was trans- 
 formed into correspondence with His own, so 
 that they became righteous, and they became 
 peaceful, and they became quiet in the pres- 
 ence of their faithful God. So much for the 
 character of this Elect Eemnant. 
 
 A word or two concerning their occupation. 
 " They that feared the Lord spake one to an- 
 other." The word " often " is omitted in the 
 Revised Version, and does not occur in the 
 original. It is one of those words that seem 
 to add to, but in reality detract from, the 
 meaning of the text. " Spake often one to 
 another" admits of gaps in the fellowship. 
 " Spake one to another " tells the whole story 
 of their communication, for it marks the atti- 
 
The Elect Remnant 07 
 
 tilde rather than the occupation of a life. 
 " They spake one to another." It is the great 
 statement of fellowship, of the gathering to- 
 gether in a community of hearts holding the 
 same treasure, of characters that were grow- 
 ing into the same likeness ; it is the statement 
 of a great necessity, darkness all around, light 
 becomes focused ; evil spreading its ramifica- 
 tions on every hand, children of righteousness 
 come close together. " They spake one to an- 
 other ; " and of what did they speak ? Surely 
 concerning that of which they thought ; they 
 spoke of His name, their mutual possession in 
 that name, their mutual joy in that name, 
 their mutual sorrow by reason of the fact that 
 that name was being blasphemed by the nation 
 they were bound to love, because they them- 
 selves formed a part of it. 
 
 Mark, the great value of this fellowship of 
 kindred spirits lay in the fact that they were 
 strong by reason thereof. Scattered souls are 
 ever weaker than those bound together in 
 feeling, and principle, and desire. This Elect 
 Kemnant, so weak and feeble that I venture 
 to say that none but God would have found 
 it, or known it existed, was the one thing 
 that saved the nation from absolute and total 
 Nv^reckage and deplorable ruin — the little group 
 df souls who feared the Lord, and who gath- 
 ered together to speak to each other concern- 
 
gS " Wherein ? " 
 
 ing Ilim. Just notice in passing that it was 
 not a prayer-meeting; it was a fellowship- 
 meeting, if a meeting at all. I do not say 
 these people did not pray ; but I am much in- 
 clined to think that they had passed into the 
 higher realm of prayer, to which men and 
 women always pass under the stress of adver- 
 sity, when the storm-clouds threaten to envelop 
 their lives. Their gatherings were the means 
 for fellowship rather than the place for peti- 
 tion, and " they spake one to another." 
 
 II 
 
 Secondly, what is the Divine attitude to- 
 ward this Elect Kemnant ? " The Lord 
 hearlcened and fieardP Please to omit the 
 word " it " ! The words " hearkened " and 
 " heard " are not identical ; there is a great 
 necessity that they should both appear. He 
 hearkened — He heard. The root meaning of 
 " hearkened " is to prick the ears. You have 
 known Avhat it is to drive a horse which is 
 familiar with your voice and loves you. After 
 travelling several miles along your journey 
 you suddenly speak, and you see the animal's 
 ears instantly pricking. That is the true 
 meaning of the word " hearkened " — prick- 
 ing the ears. "The Lord hearkened." Of 
 course, these illustrations appear to be degrad- 
 ing to the thought of the Divine, and yet, the 
 
The Elect Remnant 99 
 
 whole of human speech is human; we have 
 not yet learned the language of the spirit 
 world, we have not yet begun to spell out 
 the alphabet of the true communication be- 
 tween God and those who inhabit that world ; 
 we are bound to take these words in all their 
 human sense. God condescends to take up 
 the words with which we are most familiar 
 and teach us through this avenue, because we 
 could not understand if He did not condense 
 the great thoughts of His mind into the com- 
 pass of simple language. 
 
 " The Lord hearkened." Mark the extreme 
 sensitiveness of the Divine love. Here is a 
 crowd of people bringing their offerings, ut- 
 tering their prayers, thronging the courts of 
 the temple ; and the prophet is telling them 
 of their sin, and charging them with sacrilege, 
 profanity, and so forth, and they, with their 
 faces transformed into veritable notes of in- 
 terrogation, and stamped with surprise, reply : 
 " Wherein? " Over there is a group who have 
 met together to talk about God. To them He 
 hearkened. This teaches the sensitiveness of 
 the eternal love. 
 
 The word translated " heard " means He 
 bent over them in order that He might miss 
 no syllable of their conversation. The first is 
 a word that marks arrest — " He hearkened ! " 
 The second shows the infinite patience of God ; 
 
loo "Wherein?" 
 
 listening to their words as they talked, not to 
 Him, but to one another about Him — "The 
 Lord heard." While the word " hearkened " 
 marks the sensitiveness of the Divine love, the 
 word "heard" marks the strength of that 
 love. These are companion thoughts, they al- 
 ways go together. That is not strong love 
 which is vehement, passionate, loud, and bois- 
 terous. Strong love is the love of the soft 
 footfall, and the beautiful patience that 
 watches with unceasing wakefulness by the 
 bedside of the sick, and nurses the suffering and 
 almost flickering life back to health and 
 strength. That is strong love — the love which 
 through long and weary nights of watchful- 
 ness wins the life from the black angel Death. 
 " The Lord heard " — He bent over them and 
 attended to them, caught every syllable that 
 fell from their lips, every intonation and in- 
 flection of their voices ; and amid all the dis- 
 cord of that awful day in which man had 
 wandered from Him, and forgotten Him, here 
 was music for Him, something satisfying even 
 to His heart — an Elect Remnant that feared 
 Him., thought upon His name, and spake one 
 to another. 
 
 The Lord hearkened and heard, and a Book 
 of Remembrance Avas written before Him ; for 
 " them that feared the Lord, and thought upon 
 3," a Book of Remembrance, God's 
 
The Elect Remnant loi 
 
 Scroll of Honor. The highest privilege that 
 could be conferred upon the men of that or 
 any age is that their names should be written 
 therein. When the disciples came back from 
 their mission, and said, "Master, even the 
 devils are subject to us," Christ replied, " Ee- 
 joice rather that your names are written in 
 heaven." We had not yet learned to see these 
 things as we shall do some day, when all the 
 wrongs of earth are righted, and we reach 
 consummation and finality. There is only one 
 Scroll of Honor, and it is never kept on the 
 earth, but in the heavens ; and in that Book 
 of Eemembrance have been written the names 
 of those who, amidst rampant apostasy, have 
 been faithful ; amidst the prevalence of dark- 
 ness have witnessed to the light ; amidst the 
 seeming conquest of evil have been true to 
 righteousness and God. Those names are in- 
 scribed in God's Book of Remembrance in in- 
 delible ink, and that little group of souls, the 
 Elect Eemnant, who feared Him and thought 
 upon His name, although they little knew it, 
 their names were being written in the Book of 
 Eemembrance. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Take the last point and notice the Divine 
 determination concerning these people. " They 
 shall be Mine, saith the Lord in that day I 
 
102 "Wherein?" 
 
 act." There has been some difficulty about 
 this translation. The Revised has altered the 
 old form with some apparent hesitation. The 
 Hebrew word translated " make " or " do 
 make " is one that is used in the broadest pos- 
 sible sense to indicate activity, and the refer- 
 ence here is undoubtedly to the day when God 
 will act. Some people are afraid lest the 
 thought of God's people being His jewels 
 should be lost by this rendering, but it is not. 
 n you read it as it is in the Authorized, " They 
 shall be Mine, saith the Lord, in that day 
 when I make up My jewels," you have an idea 
 conveyed to j^our mind that a day is coming 
 when God will gather His jewels and make 
 them up into one great whole, but this, while 
 perfectly true, is nevertheless a very partial 
 idea. The real idea is best expressed thus : 
 " They shall be Mine, saith the Lord in the 
 day Avhen I act — My jewels." The word 
 " jewels "is in the nominative case in apposi- 
 tlonTo the pronoun " they," at the beginning 
 of the sentence, "They shall be Mine in the 
 day when I act, My special treasure." So that 
 you have not merely the assuring and blessed 
 word that God will gather these people to- 
 gether. His own precious treasure ; but there 
 is another word, which goes deeper and is 
 more full of blessed assurance still, that God 
 is coming " to do " — " to act," coming in upon 
 
The Elect Remnant 103 
 
 all this indifference to set it right ; and God 
 sa3^s, " In the day I act, these people who have 
 been faithful, and have feared My name, and 
 thought upon My name, shall be My special 
 treasure." You see there is nothing lost. We 
 still have the sweet assurance that He will 
 gather His own people as His jewels ; but we 
 have also the great assertion that He is com- 
 ing to act, that while the present is man's day, 
 God's day lies ahead. He will manifest Him- 
 self in greater power and glory than ever be- 
 fore. In that day they shall be Mine, My 
 jewels, My special treasure." 
 
 Beside the places in which Israel is spoken 
 of as such, this word " special treasure," only 
 occurs twice in the Bible. First it is used of 
 " David's treasures laid up for building the 
 temple " (1 Chron. xxix. 3), and in the other 
 place it is used in Ecclesiastes ii. 8 : " And the 
 peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces." 
 David stored away the precious things for the 
 building of the temple ; God is storing away 
 His special treasure for the construction of His 
 own Kingdom. Kings had treasures upon 
 which they set special value ; God has His 
 also, upon which He sets special value, human 
 character responsive to the Divine will, fearing 
 Him and thinking upon His name ; and of the 
 men and women of such character He declares, 
 ^'They shall be Mine." Thus you have the 
 
104 "Wherein?'* 
 
 announcement that God has not forsaken His 
 world, and the further declaration that when 
 He conies to consummate His purposes, the 
 faithful ones amid faithless days, shall be His 
 — His special treasure. 
 
 From that study of the Elect Eemnant let 
 us gather one or two thoughts for ourselves. 
 God has His Elect Eemnant to-day in those 
 who fear Him and think upon His name. I 
 am not going to attempt, by any word I say, 
 to measure that Eemnant, and I rejoice that it 
 has never been revealed to man in any dispen- 
 sation. It has always been known only and 
 exclusively to the Divine heart, to the Divine 
 love. If you show me a few people who say, 
 " We are the Elect Eemnant, we are the Eem- 
 nant, we are the people who pronounce words 
 in this particular way, or look in that particu- 
 lar direction, we are the people of God's Elect 
 Eemnant " — the claim is the sufficient proof of 
 its falseness ! l^ever ! God's Elect Eemnant 
 in this age is not marked off by any little hu- 
 man boundary of sect or party. God has His 
 faithful souls in the Eoman Catholic Church. 
 Let us not blunder about that. I, for one, will 
 not join in all the hateful, indiscriminate out- 
 cry against Eoman Catholics. The Eomish 
 system is one of the most awful the world has 
 ever seen ; but in that system are men who 
 were born in it, and are devout in it, and are 
 
The Elect Remnant loj; 
 
 better than it, who form part of God's Elect 
 Eenmant. I have known such. You will find 
 part of them in the great Anglican Church of 
 this country ; thank God there are thousands 
 in that Church who must be, by virtue of the 
 saintliness and tenderness and compassion of 
 their lives, God's Elect Remnant. You find 
 them in all sections of the Free Church, and a 
 great number, alas ! outside the Church alto- 
 gether. JSTo one Church can mark off the Rem- 
 nant of God. Men entitled to that distinction 
 are found everywhere. What are their char- 
 acteristics ? Men who fear Him and who are 
 so conscious of His Kingdom that they live in 
 it ; and of His Mastership that they respond 
 to it. ]^ot the men and women who say 
 " Lord, Lord," but they who do the things that 
 God approves, l^ot the great heterogeneous 
 crowd that bow the head, and say " Thy King- 
 dom come. Thy will be done " ; but the saintly 
 souls in whose life the Kingdom is come, and 
 the will is being done. 
 
 These are His Elect people, and thank God, 
 they are not confined to one section of this 
 poor, broken-up, fragmentary Christendom of 
 ours, but are everywhere. Yet, is it not im- 
 portant that such should gather together to- 
 day in closest fellowship? That we should 
 fear His name, and think upon His name, 
 and learn to set greater value upon His name 
 
lo6 "Wherein?" 
 
 than upon any other ? Is it not high time that 
 we ceased to attempt, either by picnic in 
 Switzerland, or conference at home, to arrange 
 an organic union ? Is it not better that we 
 should recognize and nourish the true unit}^ of 
 heart that exists between those who think 
 upon His name, and take an inventory, not in 
 the wealth, nor in the organizations of to-day, 
 but in that great Eternal IS'ame which is a 
 strong tower of righteousness ? 
 
 If in this connection I make any plea, it is 
 this : That in this day of large failure, those 
 who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity 
 and truth — and that term is synonymous with 
 the Old Testament one, " They that feared the 
 Lord " — should come together, and enjoy this 
 fellowship, this oneness of heart. Take the 
 old declaration and put it in the new dispensa- 
 tion : " The Lord hearkened and the Lord 
 heard ; " that marks God's present interest, and 
 His great promise made concerning such is 
 still " They shall be Mine in that day when I 
 act." What interests God most in this age ? 
 I am bold to assert that there is nothing more 
 interesting to the heart of the Divine than the 
 " closing together " of Christian souls, not to 
 try to make their creeds fit in, or their organ- 
 izations coalesce ; but in order that there may 
 be a creation of character that is to be the 
 shining of the Divine light amid the darkness 
 
The Elect Remnant 107 
 
 of the world. The Lord hears, and no syllable 
 whispered one to the other, that has in it the 
 element of permanence, does His ear ever miss, 
 because He is righteousness and love ; and of 
 the people who utter these words, He says, 
 " They shall be Mine in the day when I act. 
 My special treasure." 
 
 Surely it is such souls that salt and season 
 all the earth. The little company gathered 
 together when Jesus 'came, who were they ? 
 The Elect Kemnant ; Zacharias and Elizabeth ; 
 Joseph and Mary; Simeon and Anna; Shep- 
 herds on the plains, and Wise Men from afar 
 — larger than a Jewish nationality, wider 
 afield than the strip of land called Palestine — 
 God's Elect souls united by no bond of human 
 organization, held together by no creed of hu- 
 man manufacture, but one in that " they feared 
 the Lord, and thought upon His name." 
 
 And so, when dawns God's next great day 
 — and some of us believe the dawning very 
 near — the Elect Remnant will be found, not 
 bound together by human organizations, not 
 held by creeds ; but from the North and the 
 South, from the East and from the West, 
 from all lands and climes, from all the 
 churches, shall come the Church — God's Eem- 
 nant, fearing Him and thinking upon His 
 name. 
 
YI 
 THE FINAL WOED 
 
YI 
 
 THE FINAL WOED 
 
 " For, behold, the day cometh, that shall 
 burn as an oven ; and all the proud, yea, and 
 all that do wickedly, shall be stubble : and the 
 day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither 
 root nor branch. But unto you that fear My 
 name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with 
 healing in His wings ; and ye shall go forth, 
 and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye 
 shall tread down the wicked ; for they shall 
 be ashes under the soles of your feet in the 
 day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts. Eemember ye the law of Moses my 
 servant, which I commanded unto him in 
 Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and 
 judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah 
 the prophet before the coming of the great 
 and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall 
 turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
 and the heart of the children to their fathers, 
 lest I come and smite the earth with a curse " 
 (Malachi iv.). 
 
 " With a curse " — so ends this prophecy of 
 Malachi. After this there is to be no prophetic 
 111 
 
112 "Wherein?" 
 
 voice, no direct message from God for over 
 four hundred years. It is of the utmost im- 
 portance that the word shall be one that shall 
 arrest attention, one possessed of the power to 
 abide. What is it ? The word " curse?'' This 
 is, moreover, the last word of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and that, I believe, of Divine purpose, 
 with solemn intention. As we look at it a 
 little more closely, we shall see, that behind 
 the fact that the canon ends thus, lies the 
 tenderness of the Divine heart. God's last 
 message to these people is intended to arouse 
 them, in order that the threatened curse may 
 never rest upon them. Let us proceed to con- 
 sider : — 
 
 (1) The final word itself. 
 
 (2) The Gospel of love by which it is per- 
 meated. 
 
 (3) The great announcement : " Behold, the 
 day Cometh." 
 
 The Final Word. — The whole history of 
 man to this point is one of failure ; the only 
 word therefore that is possible from the God 
 of all perfection, as revealing His attitude to- 
 ward this state of things, is the Avord " curse." 
 Read that history from the standpoint of the 
 Divine, and observe how constantly it mani- 
 fests the faithfulness of God, the tendanip^ ^^ 
 
The Final Word 113 
 
 His heart, and the ever-moving compassion of 
 His nature toward all men ; but side by side 
 Avith the bright and wondrous story of infinite 
 pity and untiring compassion, you have the 
 record of human failure, disobedience, rebel- 
 lion, murmuring. Every dispensation — the 
 Garden of Eden, the Period of Conscience, the 
 Patriarchal Age, the Mosaic Economy, the 
 Days of the Kings, the Times of the Prophets 
 — ends in failure, and when God looks upon 
 the people whom he had called and created, in 
 order that they might be a blessing to the 
 whole earth, He says to them : " Lest I come 
 and smite the earth with a curse." But in 
 that first word of the last clause shines a ray of 
 hope and of gladness — " Lest I come." 
 
 The Old Testament does not end with a 
 curse pronounced, but with a curse threatened, 
 not with a word declaring that hope is forever 
 past, and that there can be no redemption and 
 no deliverance, no further word, but with a 
 statement intended to teach that God has not 
 yet pronounced this curse, and that He does 
 not desire to do so. " Lest I come and smite 
 the earth with a curse." The word with which 
 the prophecy and the old dispensation end — 
 end, that is, so far as their teaching is con- 
 cerned — is the last appeal of love, and is aimed 
 at averting calamity, by announcing it as the 
 natural sequence of disloyalty and sin. 
 
114 
 
 " Wherein ? " 
 
 The Jew always understood this as a mes- 
 sage of love, and the Kabbis in the Synagogue 
 from then until the coming of Christ, and in 
 the days of Christ, and until this day, never 
 end Malachi with its last verse. They con- 
 clude with the fifth verse. Eeading the last : 
 " And He shall turn the heart of the fathers 
 to the children ; and the heart of the children 
 to their fathers, lest I come and smite the 
 earth with a curse ; '' they revert to the fifth : 
 " Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, 
 before the coming of the great and dreadful 
 day of the Lord." 
 
 In the Septuagint, the fourth verse is lifted 
 out of its place and put at the end, so that the 
 Bible does not end with the curse. Take the 
 verses five, six, and four, and read them in 
 sequence : " Behold, I will send you Elijah, 
 the prophet, before the coming of the great 
 and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall 
 turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
 and the heart of the children to their fathers, 
 lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. 
 Eemember ye the law of Moses, my servant, 
 which I commanded unto him in Iloreb for all 
 Israel, with the statutes and judgments." The 
 fact that the Rabbis read the passage in this 
 way, and that the Septuagint has lifted the 
 fourth verse without altering the number, and 
 put it at the end, reveals most unmistakably 
 
The Final Word 115 
 
 the way in which the Hebrew nation under- 
 stood this message. They did not regard it as 
 a message of anger, but as a message of love ; 
 not the pronouncement of a curse, but a warn- 
 ing against an awful calamity which might 
 befall them. It is evident that they under- 
 stood this final message to be a gospel, not of 
 wrath but of love, and there is no room for 
 doubt that their exposition was a correct inter- 
 pretation of the meaning intended — that God, 
 looking at this people in their apostasy, fool- 
 hardiness, and impertinence, yet gave them 
 this last message before He sealed the pro- 
 phetic book — a message not of anger but of 
 infinite love. 
 
 II 
 
 . This final word then, being a warning, and 
 not a sentence, is a Gospel of Love, and is 
 closely connected with a declaration of the 
 possibility of escape from the threatened 
 curse, and a statement of the condition of 
 such escape. 
 
 In the promise of the coming of Elijah it is 
 said that "He shall turn the heart of the 
 fathers to the children, and the heart of the 
 children to their fathers." That turning of 
 heart marks the condition upon which the 
 curse may be averted. The mission of Elijah, 
 as here indicated, is not social, but spiritual. 
 
Il6 "Wherein?'* 
 
 It is not that he will come to bring about 
 reconciliation in the families of the people. 
 " The fathers " are the patriarchs Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Israel, from whose ideals of life and 
 state of heart these children have so sadly 
 wandered, and the mission of Elijah shall be 
 that of turning these wandering ones back to 
 those ideals, and to that state of heart. 
 
 Paraphrasing the statement, getting the in- 
 ner thought of it, and putting it in other 
 words, we may say, Israel shall be in that 
 day Israel indeed, in spirit and inward life, 
 and not in the mere outward tokens of their 
 ritual and service. The existing position, as 
 we have seen, was that of an altar set up, Avith 
 sacrifices laid thereon, and feasts, and fasts, 
 and all the externals strictly observed, wdiich 
 marked them off as the peculiar people of 
 God, while their heart was far aw^ay ; so that 
 of them Abraham, if he had moved into their 
 midst, would have said, "These are not my 
 children ; " or Jacob, " These are surely not 
 the sons of the man whom God called Israel." 
 They had missed their way, and corrupted the 
 covenant ; but God's purpose could not be al- 
 tered, and therefore if the curse threatened 
 is not to become actual, then it will be be- 
 cause " their heart shall be turned back to the 
 fathers, and the heart of the fathers to the 
 children." When they shall go back to His 
 
The Final Word 117 
 
 principles, and be what He intended they 
 should be : when the externals with which 
 they have been satisfied shall be nothing in 
 their eyes, save the outward expression of the 
 inner meaning of the covenant of their God 
 with them ; then shall the curse be removed, 
 and showers of blessing fall from opened win- 
 dows. That is the gospel of love. 
 
 And how is this to be brought about ? " Be* 
 hold I will send you Elijah before the coming 
 of the great and dreadful day of ■ the Lord 
 (verse iiYe). Elijah, another messenger, is to be 
 sent. The prophecy is not fulfilled ; the mat- 
 ter is still open, one other voice is to sound, 
 one other message to be delivered, and that 
 voice will sound and that message be deliv- 
 ered just as the King Himself is coming. 
 
 The fulfillment of that promise, we all un- 
 derstand, was in the coming of John the Bap- 
 tist ; but because there are apparently contra- 
 dictory verses concerning it, let us make a 
 digression to consider them. 
 
 John i. 21 : " And they asked him " — that is 
 John the Baptist — " What then ? Art thou 
 Elias ? And he saith, I am not." Matt. xvii. 
 10-13: "And His disciples asked Him," that 
 is Jesus, " saying, Why then say the scribes 
 that Elias must first come ? Jesus answered 
 and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, 
 and restore all things. But I say unto you, 
 
Ii8 "Wherein?'* 
 
 that Elias is come already, and they knew him 
 not, but have done unto him whatsoever they 
 listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man 
 suffer of them. Then the disciples understood 
 that He spake unto them of John the Baptist." 
 Here is an apparent contradiction. John says, 
 " I am not." Jesus says, " He is." The in- 
 terpretation of Scripture is always within it- 
 self, and the solution in this case is to be found 
 in yet another gospel — Luke i. 16, 17. The 
 heavenly messenger in announcing the coming 
 of the Baptist, says of him : " Many of the 
 children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord 
 their God. And he shall go before Him in 
 the spirit and power of Elias " — mark how the 
 very words and thoughts of Malachi's proph- 
 ecy are taken — " to turn the hearts of the 
 fathers to the children, and the disobedient to 
 the wisdom of the just ; to make ready a peo- 
 ple prepared for the Lord." John said, " I am 
 not." That was John's answer to the literal- 
 ness of the outlook of the people of his day. 
 They were in direct succession to those to 
 whom Malachi spoke, living in externals, 
 slavishly following the letter. When John 
 came, they said, " Art thou really Elias ? " 
 He replied, " I am not." It was a negative to 
 the literalness that had grown out of their 
 apostasy of heart. But the King Himself said, 
 "Elias is already come," and they knew He 
 
The Final Word I19 
 
 meant John. "With reference to his coming, 
 the angel sang, " John shall come in the spirit 
 and power of Elias," and it was in this spiritual 
 sense that Jesus claimed John as the fulfillment 
 of the word. John was perfectly right there- 
 fore when he corrected their literalness by 
 saying he was not Elias ; and the King was 
 true when He said he was Elias, that there 
 Avas in him a fulfillment of the last prophecy 
 of Malachi. This is an interesting illustration 
 of the comprehension of the old dispensation 
 in the new, by a spiritual interpretation of the 
 things of God, which renders impossible that 
 which is merely literal and external. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Between the time of Malachi and this com- 
 ing of one in the spirit and power of Elias, 
 four hundred years ran their course. During 
 this period the Gospel contained in these final 
 words was the only message to man. What 
 was the forceful element therein ? Wherever 
 it was a word of power, transforming lives and 
 changing conduct, as in the cases of Simeon 
 and Anna, and doubtless many beside, it was 
 so, by virtue of the promise of the dawn of the 
 day of God. To those who looked for the 
 time of Divine interposition, and lived as in 
 hourly expectation of it, life became a new 
 experience, and in their character the Gospel 
 
no "Wherein?'^ 
 
 of Love wrought miracles of transformation 
 and beauty. The first three verses of chapter 
 four contain the words of that promise : " Be- 
 hold the day cometh that shall burn as an 
 oven ; and all the proud, yea, and all that do 
 wickedly, shall be stubble ; and the day that 
 cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root 
 nor branch. But unto you that fear My name 
 shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing 
 in His wings : and ye shall go forth, and grow 
 up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread 
 down the wicked ; for they shall be ashes un- 
 der the souls of your feet in the day that I act, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." 
 
 This is the great announcement, which abode 
 upon the heart and consciousness of this peo- 
 ple for four hundred years. Certain it is that 
 they slighted it, and most probably argued 
 against it, and tried to prove it was not literal ; 
 but it was the forceful element in the Gospel 
 of Love during that whole period. When 
 Jesus came, Simeon and Anna and a few wise 
 shepherds forming God's Elect Eemnant, were 
 waiting for the day that should " burn as an 
 oven " ; for the " rising of the Sun with heal- 
 ing in His wings." 
 
 l^otice particularly here that while two 
 things are stated, they are in reality one : 
 " Behold, the day cometh that shall burn as 
 
The Final Word 121 
 
 an oven ;— but unto you that fear My name 
 shall the Sun of righteousness arise with heal- 
 ing in His wings." This is one event having 
 two sides to it. It may be in the matter of 
 thne, reckoning things by human methods, 
 that one will precede the other, but the suc- 
 cession is within the unity. The great an- 
 nouncement is that of the Divine activity of 
 the future. God is leaving this people with- 
 out a prophetic message for four hundred 
 years; but His final word is, "I am not 
 abandoning the earth ; evil is not a triumphant 
 force ; while they Avho perform evil appear to 
 be flourishing to-day, there is an end coming 
 to all these things." God will act ! The day 
 cometh which shall burn ; all against which 
 the plaintive protest of love has been uttered 
 in vain, shall be destroyed and swept away 
 when that day begins. " But to you that fear 
 My name " — the Elect Remnant — " the Sun of 
 righteousness shall arise with healing in His 
 wings." 
 
 And how will He act ? As a fire of destruc- 
 tion to impurity and as a sweet balm of heal- 
 ing to those that fear His name. And this 
 day will be ushered in, not by any gradual 
 process, overcoming the evil of the age, but 
 by a sudden, abrupt transition. Elijah first, 
 with his last message, and then the King, 
 coming suddenly to His temple, the day break- 
 
122 "Wherein?" 
 
 ing, the " Sun rising with healing in His 
 wings." How beautifully these things coa- 
 lesce so far as the great central fact is con- 
 cerned ! "Behold the day cometh." "The 
 Sun shall rise." The same thing. " The day 
 cometh ; the Sun shall rise." " A day shall 
 burn as an oven." " The Sun shall have heal- 
 ing in His wings." It is all one day. " A day 
 cometh." When will it come ? " When the 
 Sun rises." "The day that is coming will 
 burn." How will it burn ? The Sun shall be 
 the scorching heat that will burn, but the Sun 
 will also have healing in His wings. It de- 
 pends on the character of the men ujjon whom 
 His light falls whether they shall he hurned or 
 healed. It is the same day. 
 
 Look at it again yet more closely. " The 
 day cometh that shall burn as an oven." In 
 the fifteenth verse of the third chapter you 
 find these words, " And now we call the proud 
 happy; yea, they that work wickedness are 
 set up — they that worh wichedness are set up^ 
 N'ow notice chapter four, verse one : " All the 
 proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be 
 stubble." Do you see the change? When 
 that day cometh the old order of things 
 shall be reversed. To-day you are setting up 
 the wicked, calling them happy; but when 
 God's day breaks the proud and wicked shall 
 be as stubble. The '' set-up" things of an 
 
The Final Word 123 
 
 apostate age shall be stubble in the day of 
 God ; stubble when the Sun of righteousness 
 is shining. 
 
 But how can these apparently contradictory 
 things be the same ? They can be no other 
 than the same. How is day ever made but 
 by the coming of the Sun, and to follow inter- 
 pretation finely, it is by the rising of the Sun 
 that there shall be healing. What men shall 
 catch daybreak first ? Not the men who are 
 wicked and are to be as stubble, but the 
 watchers on the mountains ; souls who have 
 been tired of the apostate age and have been 
 saying, " Lord, come ! come ! " They first will 
 see the break of the day, and to them its rosy 
 tints will bring healing, " and the Sun shall rise 
 with healing in His wings " ; and, then, when 
 He is risen in the meridians, strong with 
 scorching heat, all things stubble shall be 
 burned up. 
 
 We all know the different effect the sun has 
 upon different things. There is a tree planted 
 by the river; the running stream waters its 
 roots, and the summer sunshine, falling upon 
 it, makes it spring to green and beauty ; and 
 here is a field of stubble, and the same sun 
 that touches the tree by the river into beauty, 
 burns the stubble with its scorching rays. 
 The same thing brings in the one case life, 
 and in the other barrenness and waste. God's 
 
124 "Wherein?'* 
 
 message is, " My day is coming. I shall act." 
 " Behold, the day cometh which will heal and 
 burn." It will heal the souls that wait for Him, 
 the wounded souls of the night. It will heal 
 them, why ? Because they are planted by the 
 rivers of water, because all their springs are 
 in God, and to them God's Sun comes with 
 beauty, health, and light, and " healing in His 
 wings " ; but to those on this side, the men of 
 stubble that are set up to-day, that have no 
 springs outside themselves, that have not found 
 their roots spreading out by the river's edge 
 to the eternal waters, the Sun shall be a 
 scorching heat ; they shall be stubble in that 
 day. 
 
 So the word ends, Malachi's voice ceases. 
 He had described their condition, told them of 
 God's infinite love; and he makes this final 
 announcement, that God is not abandoning 
 them nor the world, that the day is coming 
 when the Sun will rise. He declares to them 
 the different result produced upon two condi- 
 tions of life, and then with pathos in every 
 tone of his voice he utters the Divine words : 
 "I will send you Elijah before that day to 
 turn your heart to the fathers, and the heart 
 of the fathers to the children, lest God smite 
 the earth with a curse." 
 
 Before considering the application of this 
 final message to the age in which we live, it 
 
The Final Word 125 
 
 should he noted that the second part of the 
 Divine programme — second in order, though 
 first named as most needed by the people to 
 whom it was addressed, Mai. iii. 1 — has not 
 yet been carried out. The King came and 
 preached " the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 There He closed the book. " The day of 
 vengeance of our God " still lies ahead. For 
 reasons that lie deep in the infinite wisdom of 
 the Eternal He still waits, and while we some- 
 times sigh for day, we rejoice by faith in His 
 " long-suffering," knowing that with Him our 
 weary years are not, for " one day is with the 
 Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand 
 years as one day." Yet surely His first ad- 
 vent did scatter fire on the earth, which is 
 even now at work amid all the upheaval and 
 collapse of human might and wisdom, prepar- 
 ing the way for the new day of God, at the 
 dawn of which the burning of the first kindled 
 fire shall answer the new fire revelation, and 
 leave of things wicked no root nor branch. 
 
 Point by point we have seen how solemn the 
 application of this final word of the old pro- 
 phetic age is to the age in which we live. Chris- 
 tendom is largely astray to-day, and I hope 
 you notice I have been careful to differentiate 
 between the Church of Christ and Christen- 
 dom. The Church of Jesus Christ no man 
 knoweth but Himself and the Father. No 
 
126 "Wherein'?" 
 
 man can say this or that is the Church, or that 
 it is here or there. The Church is a sacred 
 entity that He alone knows, which is loyal to 
 Him to-day and ever has been. Christendom, 
 the mixed multitude that calls itself by the 
 name of Christ, that says to Him, " Lord, 
 Lord," and yet does not the things that He 
 says, is sadly astray ; and yet the Divine love 
 is still brooding over all, and calling in words 
 of infinite tenderness, complaining to His own 
 people who are forgetful of the principles of 
 righteousness by which He will complete His 
 work in the days to come. Thanlv God, there 
 is an Elect Eemnant. He has never left Him- 
 self without a witness, and, I believe, there 
 never were so many hearts loyal to Christ as 
 there are to-day — men and women desiring 
 that His kingdom should come to the earth, 
 and realizing that it must come in their own 
 lives and hearts ; an Elect Remnant, fearing 
 the Lord, hearkening to, and honoring the 
 voice of the Master. 
 
 How ends the word of inspiration for this 
 age ? AYill you turn to the last word of the 
 'New Testament ? " The grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ be with you all." The Revised 
 Version has an important alteration in this 
 passage. " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 be with the saints," instead of " with you all." 
 " With the saints." The last word of the Old 
 
The Final Word 127 
 
 Testament is " Curse " ; the last word of the 
 'New, according to the revision, is " Saints.'' 
 And jet in the inner thought of these two 
 words there is an identity of meaning. The 
 word translated " curse " in the Old is the 
 word " devoted," as in the case of Achan and 
 his treasure " devoted " to destruction. " Lest 
 I smite the earth with a curse " — that is, lest I 
 devote it to judgment. The last word of the 
 New Testament describes the people of God as 
 "saints," separated, set apart, devoted. The 
 devotion in the two cases is as wide asunder as 
 the poles, but the inner thought is identical ; 
 it is that of the sovereignty of God. " Lest I 
 smite the earth with a devotion to destruc- 
 tion." " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 be with those devoted to the will of God ; " 
 God's sovereignty wearied by the old to be 
 realized by the new — Moses and Jesus. God 
 is behind and over all, and He asserts Himself 
 in the closing words of both Old and JSTew. 
 
 It is needless for me to say I believe in ver- 
 bal and plenary inspiration. If Ave could only 
 read from the writing of the original manu- 
 scripts we should find every preposition in its 
 place, and the smallest words alive with in- 
 finite meaning. That is my stand with re- 
 gard to this book of God, and I therefore see 
 tremendous force in this fact concerning the 
 closing words of the Testaments. What is the 
 
128 "Wherein?" 
 
 last word of tlie New ? " The grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ be with the saints." What 
 is grace ? The law revealed. The grace of 
 God is that which pleases God, and in its ap- 
 plication to us it is the unmerited favor of 
 God. What is the favor which is unmerited ? 
 It is the love which, stooping to our condition, 
 teaches us how to obey the law, and not only 
 teaches us how, but energizes us for obedience. 
 I am so anxious that men should understand 
 that grace does not mean that God has put 
 morality on one side, or excuses anybody for 
 immorality or impurity. Grace means, we are 
 to be all that God intended us to be. It means 
 that Christ, by life and death, and resurrection 
 and living power, will bring into our lives, 
 poor, weak, wretched as they are, all the req- 
 uisite force that we may obey every word 
 that God has spoken in His declaration of His 
 requirement concerning man. 
 
 And what is the element of force in this new 
 Gospel of love ? In the twelfth verse of the 
 same chapter you have the announcement, 
 " Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is 
 with Me." Just as the old covenant ended 
 with the voice that told of the coming of the 
 Lord, so does the new. I am not going to at- 
 tempt to deal fully with the subject of the 
 coming of Jesus Christ. Let me simply say 
 that what is before us to-day — the next thing 
 
The Final Word 129 
 
 — is His second advent. What was the last 
 thing? His first coming and Pentecost. 
 Nothing has happened since then! Write 
 your history, total up your battles fought, and 
 won, and lost, talk in praise of statesmen and 
 politicians if you will — yet nothing has hap- 
 pened ! As God watches the movements of 
 men He counts upon the strokes of the great 
 clock of Eternity, and the last was the birth 
 of Christ and His work and Cross and Pente- 
 cost ; and the next, " Behold I come quickly." 
 There is nothing between. Some of us believe 
 we are very near to the next. It cannot be 
 very long before that voice sounds ; but there 
 will be a twofold aspect of this day of God, 
 " The Sun rising with healing in His wings '-' ; 
 " A day that will burn as an oven," — follow- 
 ing one another, but only one event, the com- 
 ing of Christ — first the Sun of righteousness 
 with healing in His wings, and then the day 
 that follows it, a day that burns. Our eyes 
 are toward that event, the eyes of the world 
 should also be toward that event. Knowingly 
 or unknowingly, humanity waits in its sufter- 
 ing, sorrow, and sin, in its baptism of tears 
 and blood, — for what ? For the King. Parties 
 are leaderless, and nations are all at unrest. 
 
 " Broken lies creation, 
 Shaken earth's foundation, 
 Anchorless each nation : 
 Lord, come away 1 " 
 
130 "Wherein'?" 
 
 The Kingdom is waiting for the King. Men 
 who do not realize it are nevertheless waiting 
 for Him. What will His coming mean ? It 
 depends upon individual character. To those 
 who fear His name — the Sun of righteousness 
 and healing. To the proud and all who do 
 wickedly — fire ! burning them as stubble. 
 
 That is no pessimistic outlook: it is the 
 only optimism. To hope for the conversion 
 of the world by the preaching of the Word of 
 God in this dis]3ensation, is to hope against 
 revelation and fact. People are multiplying 
 by the natural laws of increase, far more 
 swiftly than converts are being made. Nay, 
 the King is coming and that is the final mes- 
 sage. 
 
 I end with a question and I leave the 
 thought for answering solemnly when we are 
 alone. Revelation xxii. 16, 17 : "I Jesus have 
 sent my angel to testify unto you these things 
 in the Churches. I am the root and the off- 
 spring of David, and the bright and morning 
 star." We, if we are in the Church, wait for 
 the rising of that Star. " And the Spirit and 
 the Bride say. Come." Can I say, " Come " to 
 Christ's announcement that He is coming? 
 " Behold, I come quickly " ; can I say " Come, 
 Lord Jesus " ? There is no test concerning 
 holiness of life and character equal to that. 
 " I cannot say ' Come,' " says one : " there arr 
 
The Final Word 131 
 
 ties that hokl me here." Well, the sooner the 
 earthly tie is riven the better ; and the sooner 
 in harmony with the Spirit we can say to Him 
 " Come ! " the better it will be for us and the 
 earth. Elijah came before the coming of Jesus 
 long ago, and the hearts of the children were 
 turned to the fathers by thousands through 
 his preaching, and I believe that to-day the 
 signs of the times point to the nearness of the 
 coming of Jesus Christ. There never was a 
 day when the hunger for spirituality of work 
 and definite teaching concerning the Book of 
 God was as keen as it is to-day. Everywhere 
 churches are crying out for definite spiritual 
 life. What does it portend ? I believe it is 
 the latter rain ; and next : the King ! /^ 
 
 That we may not be ashamed at His coming, 
 let us walk with persistent and never-ceasing 
 care. The externals are of secondary import, 
 and will, of a natural sequence, fall into true 
 place, if in the deepest recesses of our inner 
 life we are true to Him. 
 
 To lonely, personal, solemn heart-searching 
 would I call the whole of God's people to-day, 
 and if the thought that rises most easily be 
 the one expressed in the olden day by the 
 question WHEEEIN ? then in very deed is 
 the need for humbling before God most sure. ^ 
 
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 The Holiest of All. An exposition of the Ep'stle 
 
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 Envelope Series of Booklets, 1 2 tracts. Per dozen, 
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By Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D. 
 
 The Mintstfy of the Spirit. Introduction by Re% 
 
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 How Christ Came to Church: The Pastor's Dream. 
 
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 In Christ; or, the Believer's Union with his Lord. 
 
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 Ecce Venit; or, Behold, He Cometh, ismo, cloth, 
 
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 Yet Speaking. Unpublished Addresses. i6mo, 
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 Cheap Edition, «f/, IOC. ; per doz., «f/ i.oo 
 
 The Coronation Hymnal. 400 Hymns, with Music. 
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 Two editions : An edition for general use, and a Baptist 
 
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 Adoniram Judson Gordon. A Biography. By his 
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Date Due 
 
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 Whenn have we robbed God7:Malachi 
 
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