REVIEW;

23

No. 2.-VOL. XXIX.

The New Jerusalem...

YHRISTIANITY, as it was when the

Apostles of Jesus completed their mission, is our object and aim. In ascertaining what True (Apostolic) Christianity really is, our appeal is not to the Church of Rome, nor to the State Church, nor to any other church or combination of churches. There are churches in Great Britain, in her Colonies, and in America, not a few, which approve our advocacy, and in whose faith and polity we see the leading and general features of Primitive Christianity. But these pages are not devoted to the advocacy of any article of faith or practice because held by those churches. According to our understanding of the truth of God, so shall we state and defend it, without regard to what is held by those who may seem to us most in accordance therewith. We shall as soon think of "seeking unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter," as to any man, church, or people under heaven, for an authoritative decision in the things of the Kingdom of God. "To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them." Our paper, then, is, in reality, unsectarian, undenominational. Not that we are without settled convictions-not that we intend to conceal or withhold those

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TERM

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PAYMENTS acknowledged only on the second page. DUNN, CARTER, AND Co., Booksellers, opposite Post Office, Melbourne, Australia, remit orders, or supply monthly. The several friends who have hitherto received orders and payments on our behalf will, no doubt, continue to do so; or subscribers can send P.0.0. direct. convictions-but they will be sustained solely by the authority of Christ and His Apostles. Whatever cannot be thus retained shall freely go, whoever may be displeased, and whatever the consequences. Desiring to be right, and only right, and for others to be right also, we shall speak freely and in love the truth we hold. To able, honest, loving men who see the truth otherwise, opportunity will not be withheld to correct us and our readers. We shall endeavour to set an example of courtesy to all, and shall exact it from all. No question of real worth to Christians or churches is excluded, but disproportionate advocacy on any and every topic must be discouraged.

LARD'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS.

WE are favoured with an early copy of this interesting work. In form it is a large wellprinted volume, on excellent paper, and well bound in cloth, bevelled edges, and lettered. It contains an interesting Introduction. The Greek text heads each section by the side of a New Translation thereof, followed by a Summary of the Section; and then the Commentary. At the close of the volume the whole of the New

Translation is reprinted in chapters, so that it may be read unbroken by annotation.

There

has not been sufficient time to enable us to speak as to agreement with the highly talented author in his dealing with the many difficult passages of Paul's Masterly Letter. But we have seen enough to satisfy us that in expecting a highly valuable work we have not been preparing for disappointment. Wherever we have opened we discern evidence of careful thought, the non-existence of anything like mere book-making haste, and the absence of assumption. There are not wanting indications that the author finds no difficulty in not pretending to know everything. After the title there is a dedicatory page, which reads, "To MY SAVIOUR, in Profound Humility and Reverence this Volume is gratefully Inscribed by the Author!" We should like to see those words appended to but very few, even of our best books, but they are in place here, as the volume seems to be the product of love to the Saviour and to His cause.

Several brief Reviews by American papers are to hand. The Christian says, "It bears on its face most unmistakable proof of close concentrated thought, of real painstaking study. The expression, too, has been most carefully considered. Every word in every sentence shows that he does not ask us to read what cost him no labour to write. Alexander Pope never scanned more critically a line of his mellifluous verse than has M. E. Lard the single sentences of the book which he has meant to be the great achievement of his life."

The "Apostolic Times," with numerous commendatory remarks, observes, "On every page and in every paragraph there are evidence of calm thought, patient deliberation, and an even balance of judgment, which do great credit to the Author and show him possessed of some of the finest qualities needful to the successful Commentator."

On one matter we guard the reader - this volume is not part of the New Testament Commentary now in course of publication. It is complete in itself, and so far as we have heard there is no intimation of further work of the kind from the same pen.

Within a few days after this notice meets the eyes of our readers, we shall send orders for a limited supply. Those who desire to secure an early copy had better send in their names without delay, as we intend to fill orders in the rotation in which they come to hand. ED.

Editorial Notices.

ERRATA.-Pressed for time, in order to get work out of hand before closing for Christmas festivities, the

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

printer inserted some uncorrected type, chiefly on the second page. He is requested to mind his ps and qs in the future. The Greek, on p. 6, is not, in some copies, entirely correct. The writer is not to blame.

SCHISM, SECTS, AND DIVISIONS."-This little work, by the Editor, though a very large edition was printed, is sold out. Not another copy can be supplied.

HYMN BOOKS.-The last edition of the Church Hymn Book is sold out. A few weeks may elapse before the new issue is out of the binder's hands. This will explain any little delay in executing orders.

INQUIRER.-The Lord's day and the Lord's Supper stand together; and this is understood and regarded by the Disciples and Churches generally, so far as known to us. The Lord's day is not Jewish Sabbath, and we have not precise rules as to what may and what may not be done on that day. But the Lord's name is upon it. It is His day, and should be observed to Him.

THE FREE DISTRIBUTION FUND has exceeded the amount first considered as probable, and, therefore, is a success. Still, in view of the subsequent proposal for the free distribution of 1,000 copies twice each month, not half the requisite sum has been forwarded. There is, then, ample room to enlarge the work by forwarding the means. In some instances churches having contributed take charge of copies thus paid for, and circulate them in their own neighbourhood. Others send a list of names for the committee to supply. Generally, however, the distribution is left to the discretion of the committee. Each contributor is perfectly at liberty in this respect.

AMERICAN BOOKS.-The New Testament Commentary, Vol. I. and Vol. IX., the Commentary on Romans, by M. E. Lard, are expected here shortly. Orders to hand meanwhile will be supplied immediately upon arrival of the books.

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Free Distribution Fund to Jan. 7th.-B. Hill, W. Ferguson, J. Ferguson, T. Thompson, W. Auchinachie, J. Peet, Thomas Kaye, W. Finlayson, J. Evans, R. Smith, H. Clarke, W. Ford, T. Langton, R. Rickell, J. Davidson, J. Reid, W. Watkin, W. D. Harris, S. Jenkins, G. Robertson, W. S. Scott, M. Gill, J. Andrews, W. Williams, A. F. Garden, M. Taylor, W. Johnson, G. Payne, R. Black, G. Hay, D. S. Čollin, G. Gillard, Jn. Nimmo, A. Ward, W. Ramshaw, Anonymous (Charles Henry Street), F. Ferrier. Also from the following churches: Aberchirder, Hindley, North Broomhill, Bathgate, Great Brook Street Birmingham, Bedling ton, Wolverhampton, North Shields, Manchester, Barker Gate Nottingham.

Training Fund: G. Payne, I. K. Tener.

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

M

SOUR GRAPES.

[OTHERS kind and loving there are by the million. The very instinct of maternity is tenderness and self-sacrifice; but then this instinct-God-implanted-the human mother shares with the brute mammal, while wisdom and sense of responsibility are her prerogative alone. God gave to the human mother the power of being wise-the power of reasoning, of investigating causes, of observing, of looking beyond the pleasant days of cradle-hymns and nursery-rhymes to the years when the babe should have grown into a youth, into a young man, into a middle-aged senior, doing his work in the world for good or for evil, for his own happiness or unhappiness; and influencing, it may be, masses of his fellow-men, leading them according to his own bias upwards to a terrestrial and celestial "Gloria in Excelsis," or reducing them into depths of sin and misery, where they must moan out, at least, a life-long "De profundis."

Very much has been said and written about. Christian mothers, and undoubtedly a Christian mother is a blessing for which one may thank God throughout eternity. Of all maternal gifts and graces Christianity must ever stand first; but the truth must be spoken-Christian mothers are not invariably wise! Indeed, they are often extremely unwise. Some of the most thoroughly and mischievously unwise mothers I have ever known were Christian women. But how is this? Will not God give them wisdom to bring up their children to His glory, and consequently to their own good and happiness? He will give wisdom and understanding to those who truly seek them; but "seeking is not mere praying. The Christian father never imagines, when he earnestly implores 46 Give us this day our daily bread," that he is to sit still, and wait for angels to bring food. God gave manna to those who had no other sustenance; and He sent the ravens to feed His prophet; but he will not directly provide dinners for people who can go and look after them for themselves. Neither will He grant to parents an inspiration which shall always lead them right. What would you think of a man who, going on a journey in a strange country, prayed to God to show him the paths he should take, and yet shut his eyes when he came to the cross-roads, refusing to look at the sign-posts, not caring to consult the compass, and keeping the map of the district snugly in his pocket? Such a man would be far more likely to find himself in a Slough of Despond than on the Delectable Mountains. If the man had been blind, or had reached the cross-roads in a dark night, and he had asked for help, I believe God

would have heard him, and guided his footsteps aright, for they who trust in Him will never be confounded; but, idly or presumptuously scorning the use of means, I do not think God would hear him or give him help.

The fact is, God teaches us very much as we teach children; not by granting at all times direct information, but by giving the sources of it, and by setting lessons which must be learned with pains and patience. It is not of the least use to kneel down and say, "Lord, show me how to train my children," and then to rise up and train them according to the humour of the hour, or in accordance with some miserable, contracted theory. Reason is ours, that we may use it carefully; and powers of reflection, and of observance, and of calculation, are ours, that we may cultivate them duly. And what is true of the intellectual is true also of the moral and spiritual faculties.

I suppose that most who read this believe in the Bible! Listen, then, to these words, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."* I know this is commonly interpreted as meaning that God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, etc., etc. But then the way in which sins are visited is not by such interpreters, properly understood. I remember being taught in my childhood that God was so very angry with the wicked that He would not only punish them, but their descendants, in order to show the intensity of his displeasure. It is not so. What would be said of a man who took vengeance on his enemy's innocent posterity?

God has established laws which are immutable and unchangeable, and there is one great law which underlies the whole moral strata of the universe--the law of consequences. The faults of the parents are likely to be repeated in the child, or else which is perhaps more generalthe parents' faults having been perceived and decried by the child, have created in him antagonistic faults, which are frequently more serious than the faults which were the original provocation.

And I suppose by "fathers" we are to understand the two sexes of parenthood; and it would seem that in many cases the mother, being chiefly entrusted with the training of the family, it is rather the sour grapes which she

has tasted than those which the father has eaten that have set the children's teeth on edge. The teeth set on edge! We know what that is physically, and shun it carefully. What it is in

"We have accepted this article from a contemporary because it says so much we were wanting to say to Christian mothers. This reference to the "Sour Grapes" fails to grasp the Old Testament teaching, but taking it as an independent proverb, the lesson is excellent. Ed.

the sense here used is a warping, and corrupting, and perverting of the moral nature, either in whole or in part.

What mothers, as a class, greatly want, is breadth of thought, of view, of understanding; and it is a common mistake to suppose that experience alone gives breadth. A woman may be as narrow after twenty years of maternity as she was when God gave her first the great and mysterious joy of motherhood. A narrowminded mother may be pious and self-denying, but she never can be a wise mother; and the children of an unwise mother will have the flavour of the sour grapes on their teeth so long as they shall live. A mother's education must be incessantly going on, as long as she has a son or a daughter under her control, or even under her influence.

Not just the way "my mother pursued," my mother pursued," because the requirements of one century are not those of the next. Education has but a few fixed principles, with a million varied applications thereof.

Another mistake, pregnant with mischief, is trying to mould our children into a certain fixed pattern, which shall be as nearly as possible the repetition of ourselves. Many a mother is sorely disappointed because her daughter, or her son, but especially the former, evinces tastes with which she has nothing in common. They display propensities which are, perhaps, not evil, but incongruous; they rush into an element in which she can scarcely breathe; they think thoughts which startle her, partly because they are novel, partly because they are the antipodes of her own; and then she commits the error of trying to repress all that she dislikes or fails to comprehend. It is only trying, for she seldom, if ever, succeeds. She simply loses the confidence of her children, and teaches them reserve, if not actual deceit.

Nothing that a child naturally displays as the bent of his disposition should be actually repressed-save revenge, lying, want of honour, and some other flagrant derelictions from the paths of virtue; and even these need caution in repression. Too often, through rough and hasty treatment of serious faults, the volcano that seems extinct only slumbers and smoulders through childhood and youth to burst forth in maturer years a terrible and devastating torrent, spreading death and desolation all around its path. Even early vices sometimes indicate the presence of superior gifts. The dogged obstinacy that tries the patience of the parent may be but the germ of a courage and a firmness which, in after years, shall make the child a giant among men. Our children's gifts too frequently become their curses; and it is chiefly, though

Observer, Jan. 15, 76.

not entirely, the fault of unwise mothers, who, either admiring too partially, or over-appreciating the gift, let it run riot, so that sour grapes are inevitably the result; or else, disliking it, try to crush it by main force, when something worse than sour grapes ensues that which should have been a fruitful vine growing up a deadly upas tree.

Many of our loveliest garden flowers and exotics are derived, by sedulous care and skill, from what are generally called weeds. And may not the wise mother vie with the horticulturist in the treatment of the human plant committed to her care? May she not, by a judicious treatment, change obstinacy into firmness, impudence into frankness, self-complacency into self-reliance, weakness into gentleness, levity into cheerfulness, undue sensitiveness into tenderness for others, and a sullen taciturnity into modest reticence?

But, it may be asked, Who is sufficient for this? What wisdom, what discretion, what patience, what courage, what knowledge, does not the mother need who would so winnow out the chaff, nor hurt the precious grain? To this I answer, All wisdom may be hers who truly seeks it; all knowledge is to be had by those who persevere in knowing; all courage is given to those who bravely and unflinchingly pursue the right; all patience is woman's own heritage, if only she be content to renounce selfishness.

The

The height or depth, rather of maternal unwisdom is injustice / not the coarse, wicked, injustice of favouritism, that, as our French neighbours say, "goes without telling;" but the injustice which arises out of infirmities of temper -the mother's temper, not the child's. action which pleases, or at worst is ignored to-day, displeases and is punished to-morrow; the liberty which is permitted, if not encouraged, this week, is checked the next; the grace accorded in the morning is withheld at night; and not from principle, not from change of conviction, but simply from change of mood.

It

But this is cruel treatment of the young. makes them timid, and of timidity comes cowardice, and of cowardice falsehood, and falsehood opens wide the door for a troop of sins and evils. A mother who indulges herself in "moods" is of unwise mothers the unwisest perhaps of all. Of course, the moody mother cannot be a Christian? you say. I would not dare say she is not; for, indeed, my friends, some Christians do indulge in the dumps to a marvellous extent, and their dumps do a hundredfold more harm than the dumps of people who do not profess to be religius. Nothing sets the children's teeth more permanently on edge than the sour grapes of moodi

Observer, Jan. 15, '76.

ness and inequality of temper which the mother eats. Of course it is very bad if the father eats them; but we are speaking here of mothers, whose influence throughout the years of childhood and of early youth undoubtedly predomi

nates.

We cannot set up schools and colleges for mothers. No; mothers must teach themselves -earnestly, prayerfully, unremittingly, selfsacrificingly! They must come to the conclusion that it is not enough to be pious, or tender, or devoted even, unless also they are wise. And they must remember, too, that a mass of knowledge is not wisdom, and that experience is more or less valuable according to the use we make of it. A wise mother is firm as gentle, cheerful as pious, and uncapricious as kind. Her yea means yea, and her nay means nay, and her children know it, and her commands are absolute; but then she is scrupulously careful never to be exacting, or unreasonable, or despotic.

As years pass on the unwise mother either frets over the alienation of her children, or mourns that they have "turned out so ill." She remembers how she nursed them, how she toiled for them, perhaps how she prayed for them; perhaps, at the last, it dawns upon her wearied, saddened mind, that she was unwise! But the wise mother reaps the precious fruit of her labours. And when she is gone from earth her works shall remain, her memory shall be fragrant and blessed, and the children's teeth shall not be set on edge!

THE CHURCH-PLANTING AND
DEVELOPMENT.-No. II.

IT has already been shown that the Church of Christ was not organized till after His ascension to heaven; that not till after the baptism in the Holy Spirit, on the subsequent Pentecost, was it ever alluded to as actually existing.

The term Εκκλησία, selected by the Lord to designate the Church, is found in the New Testament over one hundred times. In all its occurrences, with the exception of four, it refers to one or more of those assemblies whose Head is the Lord Jesus, and whose members, on confession of faith, have been baptized into Him. The term itself, as recently stated by Dr. Vaughan (Middle Temple Readings of the Greek Testament), denotes "A body of persons called out from a larger body, by the voice of a herald, to form a body in permanent session." There could scarcely have been coined a more fit word to designate the Church of Christ. It was in response to heralds of salvation that, on the day of Pentecost three thousand came out, not as a

temporary assembly, but for permanent session as that entirely NEW institution of the New Covenant, known as the Church of Christ. Were this but understood, churches based, in part, upon the old covenant and upon flesh, would be abandoned as adverse to the letter and spirit of Christianity. This being so, we shall devote the remainder of this article to the covenants.

God made various covenants with holy men of old-with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not staying to notice the first we come to Abraham. The Lord said unto him, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." (Gen. xii. 1-3.)

After Isaac had been offered upon the altar (Gen. xxii.) this promise was renewed and confirmed by the Oath of God. It is there worded, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." In reference to this covenant the Apostle Paul wrote "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, and seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say,

the covenant which was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, could not disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. (Gal. iii.)

In Gen. xv. the Lord makes, over sacrifice, a further covenant with Abraham, giving to his seed the land of Canaan. In chap. xvii. He again appeared to him saying, "I will make my covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly thou shalt be a father of many nations." On this occasion his name is changed to Abraham, the land of Canaan is promised to him and to his seed, and circumcision is instituted and made binding upon his male descendants, and upon servants born in his house or bought with money.

In these four accounts we have two distinctly different covenants. The first concerning Christ and Abraham's spiritual seed. Therewith circumcision was not imposed. The other (Gen. xv.) has no reference to Christ, nor to the higher spiritual things. The possession of a goodly land and other temporal blessings are alone included. In the confirmation of this covenant (Gen. xvii.) circumcision is imposed, not upon the spiritual seed, but upon that of the flesh only. In the covenants then, made with Abraham and his seed, where we find Christ, we do not find circumcision, and where