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gratification, and on principles which are mainly self-centered if not actually selfish.

"But what a travesty of the formula does such a conception involve! What an immeasurable distance are we straying from its meaning when we suffer ourselves to think thus of God! Think for a moment what the words import. Consider what love really is. Love, the spendthrift; love, the prodigal; love, that gives all, asking nothing in return-and yet, by some mysterious law of its being, sows the seeds of gain in loss itself, reaping harvests of waste from its own lavish waste, and garnering stores of profit out of its very profusion. Of its boundless extravagance love takes no reckoning, With a perverse economy love 'seeketh not its own.' Love keeps no profit and loss account. Love strikes no balance between mine and thine. For to love, all things are loss. And to love all loss is gain.

"But if this be so, then it is obvious that we must totally reconstruct the very basis of our conception of God. We must look upon Him now as the Supreme Altruist, Who has never known a selfish thought, and Whose whole existence is one vast expenditure an outpouring of Himself in passionate selfsacrifice, for the welfare and happiness of His children. More than a father's affection, more than a mother's self-forgetting devotion, more than a lover's love more a thousandfold than all these is the love of God, 'which passeth knowledge,' and which sets no bounds to its bounty save only those which our limitations supply. It was no empty figure of speech which declared 'all things are yours'."

We add a suggestive prayer of Dr. Matheson:

"Lord let not the sun go down upon my wrath! Life is too short for quarrels. Yet it is not because life is short that I would have peace. It is because eternity is long. How strange my old quarrels look in the light of vanished years! Methinks they will look stranger still in the light of Thine eternity. I am ambitious now, and I shall be ambitious then; but the things for which I am ambitious now are not the things for which I shall be ambitious then. Now I strive to get; then I shall strive to give. Now I seek possession; then I shall try to be dis

possest. Now I covet the uppermost seat; then I shall descend the stair. Now I select the best robe; then I shall choose the servant's form. I see Paul and Barnabas standing before Thy presence and there is still a strife between them. But the cause of strife is changed-Paul wishes Barnabas to be first, and Barnabas is eager to remain second; they wonder at their old quarrel in the light of Thy throne. Reveal that light to me, O Lord! In my hour of quarrel, in the hour when I strive to be first, give me a glimpse of the soul's last judgment on itself -its reversed judgment! Let me see Cain rejoicing over the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice! Let me see Lot repudiating the richer share! Let me see Sarah making a home for Ishmael ! Let me see Jacob refusing his brother's birthright! Let me see Joseph exalting his brethren in his dreams! Let me see David take Uriah's place in the battle! Let me see Jonah intent on sparing Nineveh! Let me see Herod exulting in the sustenance of the babes of Bethlehem! Then shall the light of eternity arrest the strife of time." 3

* Representative Men of the New Testament, by George Matheson, D.D., page 259 (A. C. Armstrong & Son, New York).

XXI

HAS GOD A PURPOSE IN DEATH?

THE only way any of us ever enters life is by a birth. Creation is also nothing more nor less than a generation. "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created" (Gen. 2:4).

The only way we ever leave life is by a death. These two processes always go hand in hand. We die to one form of life and live to another. "Ex cept a corn of wheat die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24).

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In the Old Testament, especially in God's dealing with Israel, the sanctions or punishments referred to belonged, largely, to this life. This world was to be for them the place of reward, and the death threatened was in reference to this earthly life; but there were just enough other references and inferences of another life to prepare the way for the clearer and higher unfoldings of the New Testament. It is with the New Testament truth therefore that we will have most to do.

Death is always transition. Take physical death or the death of the body, "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." Take spiritual

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death: it is leaving the realm of light and entering the realm of darkness; leaving the realm of love and unselfishness and entering the realm of alienation, self-will and selfishness; leaving the realm of harmony with the divine will and entering the realm of discord with the divine will; leaving the spiritual and entering the realm of the worldly and grossly material.

Death never means annihilation; there is no such thing anywhere as absolute annihilation. We sympathize with our Annihilationist friends in their effort to get rid of the blot on God's name; but the Scripture has a better way than theirs.

Death does not mean life in endless torment. For death is always a transition; and there is no such thing as endless time. The phrase is selfcontradictory; for time always carries with it the idea of temporary and besides there can not be an endless temporary anything. (See chapter on Eternity Not Time.)

We read; "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth" (1 Tim. 5:6). That is, a death has taken place in reference to the spiritual and serious realm of life, and she is alive on a worldly and natural plane. The reckoning of one's self "dead indeed to sin" is in order to be "alive unto God" (Rom. 6:11).

There was a real death that took place in our first parents on the day they sinned, viz., a spiritual death. They died to the spiritual, and

they became alive on a new and lower plane. This spiritual death affected their whole being. Before they sinned they were glorious like the angels; but they died to that glorious state, lost their body of glory, and knew that they were naked. The death of the gross physical body they had acquired did not follow till years afterward. There are two distinct stages in their death; the spiritual and the physical. The spiritual death brought them to a natural plane; and the physical death to the natural brought them to a more spiritual plane, if not the ultimate spiritual, at least one that was on the way back to the spiritual. It is only as the plant is dying that it brings forth the seed of another life.

Death came in as an enemy. God makes death overcome itself and bring forth life. It is by death that death is rendered powerless, and there arises an upspringing, conquering life. It is by Christ's death that all death is thus overcome. God limits the influence of every enemy; and when the round is complete, He makes everything work good.

Because man died to the state in which he was originally created by a sort of a twofold death, the only way back is by a twofold death; and both of these deaths have been potentially wrought for us by Christ's death on the cross. The first is a death to the outward, the material and natural of this earthly, worldly plane, "the cross of our

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