when exhorting believers to consider Jesus, "Lest ye be weary and faint in your minds." Again, "Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye not."

faint

It is manifestly possible for such lassitude, from continued trial, to overpower the believer, that he becomes an easy prey to the devices of the enemy; forgetting that "God giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength" (Isaiah xl. 29).

Rest was presented to the eye of the Prophet, and his heart already longed for it. The bait is gilded over by a brother's reputation; he takes it, and falls. Sad consequences for him, yet full of instruction to us.

It surely was a time of general apostasy and grievous departure from God, when the circumstances detailed in our narrative occurred. Yet, so much the more culpable was the disobedience of the Prophet of Judah. Just as in our day to acknowledge the ruined condition of the Church, involves responsibility to God, not incurred by those who do not recognise it. In the days of the Prophet Micah, how lamentable the evil by which he was surrounded, how dark the picture: yet how blessed the conclusion to which he was brought! "He could not trust in a friend, or put confidence in a guide." "Therefore (he says) I will look unto the Lord: I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me" And so in Malachi iii. 16: "They that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it."

The Prophet of Bethel, who thus led his brother astray, he too has his hour of sorrow. Perhaps he was jealous of the testimony God had confided to the Prophet of Judah, as also of the honour put upon him in the work the Lord had done by him that day in Bethel. Be this as it might, there was a spark in his heart, which needed but the enemy to fan into a flame, and he became a fit instrument for his brother's destruction. Not that he foresaw the consequences, though he was the tool to bring them about. Nor did his sin in tempting, excuse the other in yielding to the temptation. His soul, out of

communion with God, devised a lie to deceive, and the soul of the other, out of communion, was easily betrayed. Sad was the fate of the victim, and sorrowful the lamentation of the old Prophet of Bethel (verses 26, 27, 28, 29). "And the old Prophet came to the city to mourn and to bury him. And he laid his carcase in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother! And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones: for the saying which he cried by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass."

Sorrowful picture of human frailty and its consequences. He mourns the dead he betrayed when living, and accredits the testimony borne by his brother as according to God: seeking consolation for his grief, saying, "When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones."

"The Lord give us understanding in all things" (2 Tim. ii. 7).

L.

"The path narrows as we near the goal." Every prop must fall but one.

"Thy rod and thy staff."-Jacob crossed the Jordan with it, and it is beautiful to see him close the scene in worship" leaning on the top of his staff." May it be ours, too, so to close this earthly pilgrimage, if we are called to die, or patient hold it till the Lord Himself call us hence away-to be "for ever with the Lord."-S.

No. III.

CONCERNING THE NEAR

APPEARING OR

PRESENCE OF FALSE PROPHETS.

1 JOHN iv. 1-6.

THIS little treatise is addressed to those who not only know Jesus to be a Saviour, but who know Him as their Lord, to whom their allegiance and obedience is due. Happy those who look wholly to His good pleasure as their Lord. They ought also to know that this is a time when allegiance to Him will be put to the test. It will be quite a different proof than heretofore, because Satan will deceive with far more deceivableness than heretofore. The deception will begin with unbelief in the Lordship of Jesus, and by insubjection to it; and in speaking therefore of the world and not of heavenly things, but perhaps often commending what is earthily religious, and thus enhancing the deceit. One can hardly believe that it is not already the case, and they are not in themselves so apparent, as not to require that the spirit by which they speak should not be tried by you, that you be not misled. We are desired to try the spirits, to bring them to proof by the works of the prophets who speak by these spirits. 1st. They must be proved by their works, and their works are not holding Jesus to be come in the flesh, and therefore immediate Lord over all men; and, 2ndly, speaking of the world. These are two very simple things, so there is no need that simple men should be deceived; it is the want of knowing Jesus as Lord that may lead even the elect into danger. Obedience to Jesus as Lord will disown what He disowns-will make a good confession of the hope He has left, and will worship according to the power that Spirit, that is of Him and the Father. We must not suppose, that having the spirit of antichrist is to make those, who by this spirit, speak of the world and

of

its hopes, like men possessed so as to act violently and madly; they would in this case be quickly suspected or disregarded; but these require to be tested in the knowledge of God and of Christ, because they soberly lead from God and His obedience. Persons would gain no credit, and that their master knows, if they were to proclaim principles that would shock mankind. In order to persuade men, they must propose some advantage, something that does honour to mankind and not dishonour, and no one is taught in the honour and reward of obedience to Christ. A condition that would need forgiveness of God they would repudiate. They will say that man in his own honour and dignity, and educated therein, has a true nobility; that death is no judgment of God; and if they acknowledge a continuance of existence after death (not a restoration of the dead to life by the power of God), it is to their own honour, and the extension of the self-importance with which they have dignified themselves. With a future life, however, they trouble themselves but little. The mark given in addition to the denial of Christ come in the flesh is, that they speak of the world, and the world heareth them. What is now more common than these two marks? God warns us now against these. Against the world He has already warned us. The world perisheth, and the works thereof; and the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life are of the world, and not of the Father. The world will be judged and the works thereof, but of this those that scoff are willingly ignorant. They have known it, or at least have heard the testimony and rejected it. No one can get rid of the judgments that God has appointed by His word. Disbelief does not alter the truth of any thing. What is, is; and what shall be, shall be. Man does not make any thing untrue by his disbelief. So nothing that is false can be made true because I am deceived by it, even if it were to my ruin; nor do my convictions make any thing true, nor bind God in His judgments, or else my judgment would bind God. Men deceived by themselves are easily deceived by others who prophesy

according to the blindness of the people; and who is so foolish as to think, that a man thinking he sees, or that he has a true mental apprehension of a thing will make it certain? God is never moved from His throne, and He will be justified in the day when all things will be judged; and if my affections are with God, I say, "Let God be true, though all be liars." Now God has revealed the resurrection of all men, and they will stand just as they now are to be tried in their present capacity of conscience, by His presence and not by their own thoughts; and their judgment will be final and righteously so, for God has not failed to make known His goodness by His word. A true prophet believes that Jesus Christ has appeared in the flesh, and will come to blessing or judgment. Such a one therefore speaks of things to come; he speaks of the peace made by blood, and that God has loved, receives men for the sake of His Son whom He has given.

Now false prophets are in this Scripture prophesied of; they prophesy false things, and the reverse of God's judgment of the world. They will speak of the capacities of it and its greatness; of the perfectibility of man, and of the world's institutions becoming his noble condition, and the world heareth them. How quickly are the ears of man caught by the false evangelist, or these inspired pretenders! How Christ's coming to judgment, and as Lord over the world would be scorned, though the price was paid for his deliverance from Satan in body and soul, as well as that for other men!

It is quite true, that at present some men have not gone as far as others in the denial of the Lordship of Jesus, but their words and position are in a strange contradiction one to the other. Religion is not yet always rejected by those who listen to the false prophets, but few would listen, did any do more than accidentally speak of it. Man was so formed of God, that some acknowledgment of Him is natural, and necessary to him as a right condition of his existence. Wholly to reject is to denaturalise himself; but they do not acknowledge a Lordship in Jesus, and the world heareth