God, and so restore them to His likeness. It seeks to lift them up to the original position of using this world to serve God. It would have them created anew in Christ Jesus, and so made Sons of God. And as Sons it helps them to glorify God by walking before Him in newness of life, in righteousness and true holiness. This love not only helps others to God, but it tries to make all things means of doing God's will and manifesting His glory. Thus love, by selfsacrifice, serves God in bringing men to Christ, in helping them to live for God, and in using the things of the world to do God's will.

This is the glorious truth, that the absolute sovereignty of God, carrying out a purpose of love, chose us in Christ Jesus in the eternity past, before the foundation of the world. In time it delivers us from the bondage of sin and restores us to our place as Sons of God, to rule the world for Him, and in Christ to subdue all to God's will. Then when the last enemy, Death, is destroyed, it places us on thrones of glory in heaven, where through eternity we shall serve God, leading the heavenly hosts, in giving praise, and honor, glory and dominion and power to our God.

THE PRINT OF THE NAILS

BISHOP THEODORE S. HENDERSON, CHATTANOOGA, TENN.

"Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails I will not believe." (John xx. 25.)

The

The demands of dogmatic skepticism are not infrequently more intolerant than the traditions of faith. Doubt may be an expression of investigation; dogmatism is liable to be an expression of ignorance. demand of Thomas in its spirit is the demand of a dogmatist, though at heart it was the plea of an honest doubter. The spirit of the demand was wrong; he would limit the evidence of the resurrection of Christ, and at the same time define its method. He who searches for truth will not impose limitations upon the truth giver; it is truth he seeks; he will be ready to receive it from any and every source, by any and every method. At heart Thomas was a real truth seeker and the demand he made of his fellow apostles was neither unrighteous nor unreasonable in the real content of the demand. He wanted to be sure that Jesus had risen; the craving of his heart was for reality; if his colleagues had seen the risen Redeemer, Thomas wanted to be sure that the man whom they had seen was the real Jesus whom he had known in Galilee and Samaria, in Bethany and Jerusalem. To Thomas the infallible proofs of the genuine Jesus were the marks of sacrifice which he bore; only the sacrificial Jesus could be the real Jesus. He had companied with Jesus long enough to know that his

Master carried with Him His own credentials; they were the credentials of sacrificial service, and doubtless to Thomas the supreme demonstration of the sacrificial Jesus was the crucified Jesus, crucified on the cross, in whose hands and feet nails had been driven.

I doubt whether Thomas went through any reasoning process along the lines I have indicated, but he knew the real Jesus in the flesh and did not want to lose Him; if Jesus be restored to him in his thought and life, then life itself would take on a new hue. Athwart his sky the clouds had been gathering deep and dark; for many days since the body of Jesus was laid by Joseph and Nicodemus in the tomb, no ray of light had illumined his benighted heart, but if the man whom his fellow apostles had seen were the real Jesus, the clouds would be shot through with glory, darkness would disappear and love would be enthroned in his soul; he would believe; he would more than mentally assent to the righteousness of that divine life; he would obey His commands, he would follow His teachings; he would be the perpetual slave of the risen Redeemer. Knowing the responsiveness of the heart of Thomas to the reality of His sacrifice, in tender compassion and in winsome word Christ brought to His perplexed follower the credentials of sacrifice, and when the revelation of the print of the nails was made, Thomas, this muchmisunderstood and too often maligned skeptic, was converted into the biggest and boldest believer of the apostolic circle, and without reservation or qualification exclaimed "My Lord and My God!" The print of the nails is the only test of reality; it tests the reality of God and the reality of godlikeness. Christ

won the complete obedience of His hesitant and perplexed and doubting disciple by presenting the credentials of the print of the nails. There is no other proof of genuineness acceptable to a thinking man; the evidential value of any cause is shown by the revelation of the print of the nails. It is one of God's methods of declaring Himself; He has credentialed Himself by carving the principle of the print of the nails in all His work. You may test the presence of God in any place by the presence of the print of the nails.

If God is in His world as modern science contends, then we will expect to find in nature the print of the nails. God does not disappoint us here; in field and forest, or rock-ribbed mountain and in fertile filled valleys; everywhere in nature God has written the law of sacrifice. Nothing in the realm of nature is made for adornment alone. Sun and stars are for light, burning themselves up in order that man may be benefited. The rich soil of the field and prairie are impoverished in order that man may feed; the trees of the forest are sacrificed in order that fires may be kindled and man be made. comfortable on the wintry night when biting, blasting storms beat without; trees that seem to have been grown for beauty alone are silent sufferers for the benefit of others.

Every harvest field waving its golden spears of grain, bending its heavy heads of ripened wheat or grain, is a demonstration of the print of the nails. Every season which produces a rich harvest produces also impoverished ground, for the soil yields its richness in order to make the harvest plenteous. A

bountiful harvest writes large the law that enrichment is possible only by impoverishment. Every spear of ripened grain making glad the heart of the tiller of the soil, stands in its own grave. The glory of the ripened grain is by the way of the grave. If the grain will not die, the greatest of all Teachers declares "that it abides alone." In that condition it is a scandal to itself and worthless to others. On every harvest field, whether of fruit or grain, God has written nature's interpretation of the print of the nails. If God had not written it so everywhere throughout His world, then skepticism might have concluded that God was not in His world and never had been. Modern science in reverent study has not put God out of His world, but rather has insisted that He is in His world, always has been in His world, and the credentials of His presence are the evidence of the print of the nails.

God's presence in the progress of the highest civilization has revealed the print of the nails. The civilization of Egypt and Babylon and Greece and Rome crumbled and came to naught because there was no evidence in these civilizations of the print of the nails. God was exiled from the counsels and conduct of the nations. Only as the print of the nails has been characteristic of modern civilization can we be assured that it has had the approval of God. The godless nations of the earth are demanding a revelation of the print of the nails before they will believe in the genuineness of the creed of the so-called Christian nations. The heathen of the Congo have a right to rise in dogmatic unbelief of European Christianity and say to Belgium with all its religious profession,