would be raised. This showed the immense importance of the fact of Christ's Resurrection.

If fifty or more years ago he had told that meeting that he had that afternoon been conversing with someone in South Wales, he would have been regarded as romancing, but now any stupid person would make and another stupid person could use a telephone. He remembered one connected with the making of the first telephone telling him the thrill with which he heard for the first time the human voice transmitted along the wire; but when once the original telephone worked all the rest was a mere matter of detail. So with the Resurrection of Christ. If God once broke the power of death by raising Him, He could easily raise millions, as the Apostle Paul said to Agrippa, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you if God should raise the dead?" The moment we bring God into the difficulty, it disappears.

As regards the present implications that Christ's Resurrection were intended to have for us, he judged that it set all our hopes, whether for ourselves or for humanity, upon a new basis, and instanced two remarkable utterances of S. Paul when in prison and under most depressing conditions. The first was in Philippians iii. 11, where he wrote of the one goal before him, as being his attainment of the Resurrection, that is from among the dead, no matter by what means, even a martyr's death, that he reached it. The other was in his last letter to Timothy (chap ii. 8), wherein he exhorted him to "Remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead according to my Gospel," an exhortation we would do well to give heed to for ourselves.

Mr. W. HOSTE said:-I think the value of the paper we have listened to consists not only in its positive advocacy, but in the light it throws on the weakness of our opponents' arguments, and all the more for the impartiality with which we have heard them stated to-day. The theory that the women found the grave empty, only because they went to the wrong one, might have had strength had our Lord been buried in a cemetery instead of a garden, in which John tells us there was a new sepulchre.” In this sepulchre these very women had seen Him laid barely three days before. Dean Rashdall must not expect us to follow him in rejecting well attested evidence simply because unusual and, undreamt-of in our philosophy, otherwise the negro chief was right in scouting the idea of solid water. The testimony of Dr. Arnold is well-known and eloquent. "I have been used for many years to study the history of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair enquirer, than the great sign which God has given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead."

As for what Dr. Murray says on p. 145, are we to be ready to reconsider our premises and submit the most sacred matters of our life to impartial investigation, to keep up our reputation for openmindedness, and in the cant phrase of the day, "to follow the truth at any cost," which not seldom means, I fear, "giving up the truth at very small cost"? Are the legitimacy of the King, one's father's word, one's mother's character, and still less the resurrection of our Lord, to be subjects on which, at the bidding of the first unbeliever, I am to profess an open mind? The ocular and tangible proofs which satisfied large numbers of our Lord's disciples, naturally as sceptical as ourselves, may well satisfy us. The Lord was at pains to prove the reality of his corporeal Resurrection. "Handle Me and see for a spirit hath not flesh and blood as ye see Me have." His body was the same-it bore the marks of Calvary, yet not the same, real and tangible, but possessed of new spiritual properties. One hesitates even to attempt to explain, but may we not illustrate the wonderful change of the same body into a new body, by allotropy, the well-known property of certain substances of existing under different modifications, distinct in their physical and chemical properties? Thus, for instance, carbon exists in octahedral form of extreme hardness as the diamond, in hexagonal form of moderate hardness as graphite, and again as lampblack. A piece of yellow phosphorus heated under pressure is wholly changed into red phosphorus, with very modified properties. May not flesh occur in the two conditions-natural and spiritual.

I would close with the testimony of a great statesman and physicist, the late Lord Salisbury: "To me the central point is the Resurrection of Christ, which, I believe. Firstly, because it is testified by men who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose voracity was tested by the most tremendous trials during long lives. Secondly, because of the marvellous effect it had upon the world. As a moral phenomenon, the spread and mastery of Christianity is without a parallel. I can no more believe that colossal moral effects lasting for 2,000 years can be without cause, than I can believe that the various motions of the magnet are without a cause, though I cannot wholly explain them."

Rev. F. E. MARSH said:-There are three facts which proclaim the Resurrection a fact, and these are: The clothes as found in the sepulchre; the testimonies of those who saw Him alive; and the difference it made in the lives of those who saw Him. Let us ponder the first. When Peter and John came to the sepulchre, one thing which specially impressed them was "the linen clothes lying." Mark, not the empty tomb. John first "" saw the linen clothes lying," but he did not enter the tomb first. Peter went into the tomb first, and "seeth the linen clothes lie"; then John went in, and he saw and believed." What was it which specially impressed John? The fact of the tomb being empty certainly did; but more

than this, the clothes were lying as if they still enclosed the body of Christ. He, being raised, would naturally leave the clothes behind. The wrappings being there, could not make any impression, except there was something very peculiar about them. I believe there was something peculiar about the clothes. It seems to me that the grave clothes were lying as they had been in their convolutions round Christ's body. The clothes had never been unwrapped, but they were as if they still enclosed the body. Just as the chrysalis of the butterfly, after the butterfly has emerged from the case, the case retains the form of the chrysalis, although the insect has gone from it. The only difference being, the butterfly comes out of the end of the case, while with regard to Christ, He would pass through the clothes without disturbing them, as He passed through the locked doors of the Upper Room afterwards.

The custom of the East was not to put a shroud on a dead body, but to swathe it round and round with bands, as Dean Alford says: The word rendered grave clothes is explained to mean a sort of band or tow, used to swathe infants." When we remember this, the statement is the more impressive, for the clothes were lying as if they enclosed the body of Jesus, but He was not within them. The word rendered " lying and lie,' in John xx. 5, 6, is twice rendered "set" in the same gospel, (ii. 6, xix. 29) in speaking of vessels set in particular places. It is also used of a city which lieth foursquare in Rev. xxi. 16. In each case there is the thought of order, deliberate action, and fixedness.

The MASTER OF SELWYN, in conclusion, thanked the members for their reception of his paper. It had been so appreciated that he had no criticisms to which to reply.

643rd ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING,

HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM В,

THE CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, S.W., on Monday May 15th, 1922, at 4.30 p.m.

LIEUT.-COLONEL F. A. MOLONY, O.B.E., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed and the HON. SECRETARY announced the Election of the following: As Member, from Associate, Major H. Pelham Burn, and as Associates, the Rev. Tydeman Chilvers, and the Honourable Mrs. Francis Bridgeman.

The Chairman then introduced the Rev. E. L. Langston, M.A., and invited him to read his paper on "The Times of the Gentiles in relation to the End of the Age."

THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES.

IN RELATION TO THE END OF THE AGE.

BY THE REV. E. L. LANGSTON, M.A.

The times of the Gentiles is a definite period in the history of the world, and to understand its main features we must for a moment see it in its right setting. God has a plan for the world, and that plan is world redemption; therefore, when writing a paper on the times of the Gentiles in relation to the End of the Age, we must first briefly see it in relation to other Ages.

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The history of the world may be broken up into seven distinct Ages, and it must be remembered that the immediate purpose and calling of God is not the same in all ages. He has not dealt with men on one line alone, but in various methods and manners has He tested man, and each dispensation is characteristic, being the special dealing of God in that age, and a change in the mode of God's dealing makes change in the dispensation, and this fact, if lost sight of, will make many words in Scripture seem contradictory; but, to use the words of St. Augustine, distinguish the dispensations and the words will agree.

The First Age

being the period when Adam and Eve, our first parents, were created, and lived in the Garden of Eden, they were not sinful, neither were they holy, for they had not the knowledge of sin and evil, but they were innocent. In the form of a serpent is

He

seen the personification of evil, and as a result of the Fall came the consciousness of good and evil: Adam and Eve were no longer innocent, but they had a conscience, and that conscience convicted them of shame and guilt. The guilty one in the form of a serpent and the man and the woman are arraigned before God: the serpent is dealt with first. His doom is sealed. will bruise the seed of the woman (not of the man), and whose Seed he shall bruise shall in turn bruise his head. Thus is given the great promise of deliverance from the power of sin and evil. No sooner does man fall than God sets Himself to rescue man from the doom under which he has placed himself. But man has to learn several lessons before world redemption is effected. 1. The holiness of God.

2. The sinfulness of sin.

3. The utter helpless and hopeless condition of man in himself to save himself: and throughout succeeding ages these lessons in various ways are consistently taught. There is only one way of salvation, and that is through the Seed of the woman, the Second Adam." Each succeeding age reveals these great truths in one form or another.

The Second Age.

The first trial of man ended in utter failure, and judgment closes the dispensation of innocence. Man is now without law and without government; there is no law from God and no law between men-conscience is his only mentor. There was no law from Adam to Moses, yet sin was in the world." Consequently death reigned, and this age was pre-eminently an age of murders, violence, and unrestrained sin. Gen. vi. 5, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth. Man left to himself goes from bad to worse. Gen. vi. 12, God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." Thus this age had to be terminated by God through the Flood.

The Third Age.

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This dispensation extended from the Flood to the call of Abraham. Man had been tested, first in innocence, then by conscience without government or law, and in each case had lamentably failed, and judgment ended those dispensations. Government is now put into man's hands. God said to Noah, The

fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon all; into your hands are they delivered." Gen. ix. 6, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Capital punishment for murder is instituted; a law of government amongst

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