They came to Him again and again with the design of betraying Him, through subtle questions, into a denial of Moses. They wanted Him to assail that sacred law of the Old Testament, and sought in every way to push Him to this extremity, that thus they might destroy Him. But they labored in vain to this end. He foiled all their deepest-laid plots. A lawyer came thus tempting Him, asking what he should do to gain eternal life, hoping and expecting that He would announce some new doctrine that Moses never taught. The reply was, "What is written in the law? How readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." The lawyer was foiled. Jesus had no new doctrine to offer in opposition to the law of Moses. He planted himself squarely upon that law and its Divine authority, only demanding that it should be understood according to its true intent and meaning.

The very charge, too, upon which Jesus was arraigned before the high court of the nation on trial for His life, was that of subverting the laws and institutions of Moses. It is confidently asserted in our day, that the Old Testament Scriptures are abolished, and this by the authority and doctrine of Jesus. This was the very crime laid to His charge by the Jewish rulers, and which they sought to substantiate by all the testimony, true or false, that they could collect. His enemies were mad against Him to establish this very fact to His destruction. And with what result? They failed-signally failed. Jesus had never uttered one syllable derogatory to the Old Testament or its institutions. He had ever honored them in the eyes of the nation, had ever appealed to them as the

undoubted Word of God, of binding authority, and sustaining every doctrine that He preached. He had ever taught men to search the Scriptures, to find there the evidence to His own divine mission, asserting that Moses and all the prophets bore united witness to Him.

There is no doctrine, therefore, which Jesus would so indignantly denounce, as the one accepted to such an extent in our day, that He destroyed the Old Testament, or set it aside. It contradicts His whole life and teachings. "I came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil: for till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." That is the doctrine of Jesus and our Christianity. Every declaration of the Old Testament, as well as the New, is the word of God, to be fulfilled to the last letter. We stand by this Book as a revelation from heaven-the whole of it; and that most clearly is not the Christianity of Christ which denies and repudiates Moses and the prophets. We believe with Paul, that God, at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, and that He hath also, in these last days, spoken unto us by His Son. And that wherever, whenever, or to whomsoever God has spoken, there we find a true revelation from God to man, to be humbly and reverently received.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHRIST'S EXALTATION.

THE ascension of Christ to heaven, and His exaltation to the right hand of power, have been regarded, in later' times, as His assumption of the kingdom and promised throne of David, in fulfilment of the prophecies of the

Old Testament. Accordingly, it is common to speak of His kingdom as already established, and of Him as occu pying the throne. He has not only entered upon His priesthood, but has "received the kingdom" also, although He has not returned. Thus having really begun the administration thereof, His people have lost their interest in that return, and do not look for it until the final day of judgment, and in connection with the closing up of all earthly things.

Do the Scriptures teach that the departure of Christ from earth, and His exaltation in heaven, are the same with the possession of the kingdom promised Him as the heir of David?

It is true that we speak of the government of Christ over this world-of His accomplishing all His purposes and performing His pleasure-of all power in heaven and earth being in His hands, so that He can defeat the machinations of His enemies. This, undoubtedly, is a fact and doctrine of revelation. But was not the same true before the ascension of Christ ?-as true before as since? Has the ascension of Jesus to heaven made any difference in such government of the world? Has not Christ possessed this supremacy from the beginning, even before there was any throne of David known or promised on earth? Christ appears in two characters in revelation: one, as the divine Word, from everlasting, dwelling between the cherubim; the other, as the woman's seed, revealed in our nature. As the former, He made the world, and manages all its affairs. He was King in Israel from the foundation of the nation, their Creator and Redeemer, Jehovah, the coming One. Not only, too, did He reign over Israel, but the heathen nations also, though they knew Him not, nor bowed to His authority. But this sovereignty of Christ over the world most clearly is not what is intended by the kingdom promised Him, as the

seed of the woman and the heir of David. That was an event far distant in the future, hoped and waited for by God's people. That was the kingdom announced by John the Baptist, and by Jesus himself, as approaching, but not yet established or experienced. It was something, therefore, widely different from that general government which Christ has always maintained over the world. It is the introduction of that blessed era, when the power shall be transferred from the Prince of darkness to Christ; when the dominion shall be taken from the ambitious, grasping rulers of the world, and put into the hands of our Immanuel, and He shall reign whose right it is, even from sea to sea, making earth to bloom again like paradise. This is the reign of David's greater Son, prophesied of and promised, when God should again make His tabernacle among men, and dwell with them, and be their God, and they His people. Has this specific event, so long prayed and waited for, come? Or is Christ still administering His general government over the world, even as He has from the beginning, acknowledged by a chosen remnant who endure with patience, dying in faith, not having received the promises, but seen them afar off, and still confessing themselves strangers and pilgrims here? Is Christ still rejected by the unbelieving nations-denied by His ancient Israel, who are wandering as exiles to the ends of the earth? Christ is reigning in His relation of the divine Word, and controlling the affairs of providence as from the beginning. But that sovereignty of earth, which was promised Him as the seed of the woman and the heir of David, is still a future event, nearer at hand, indeed, but no more realized now than three thousand years ago. Christ is still waiting "till His enemies be made His footstool," and laughing at all the impotent rage of the kings and the counsels of the rulers to break His bands asunder and cast away His cords from them.

With this statement of facts we are prepared to study the true significance of Christ's absence from earth, and His ascension to heaven.

That departure, both at the time and before it took place, was to the disciples an inexplicable mystery, a cause of deepest trial and sorrow; and that, because they looked upon it as contrary to the tenor of the Scriptures, and frustrating the whole mission of the Messiah. They could not comprehend how Christ could fulfil His work by departing from earth, and before the kingdom was established. The thing was dark and dreadful beyond all imagination, and involved, to their view, the abandonment of all hope that Jesus could be the Messiah they expected. Therefore "were they afraid to ask Him" of this matter.

How does Jesus meet this state of the disciples, and comfort them in this hour of their sorrow? He states two things. The first, that it was expedient for them that He should go away for a season. The second, that He would return again to fulfil all their hopes, and that they must wait and watch for His appearing.

These assurances do not sanction, neither did they convey the idea, that Christ was to depart, as a matter of course, because His presence here and continuance were not to be desired. On the contrary, the comforting assurance to His disciples was, that His absence was only for a season, and that He would come again to fulfil all their fondest hopes-come in His kingdom and glory— come to occupy the throne of David, and reign in righteousness and truth, subduing all enemies under His feet. He did not tell them that His presence here was not to be desired, and that they had carnal and worldly views to set their hearts upon such an object. He does not hint, in the remotest manner, that they had misapprehended the whole spirit of the Scriptures, and should