erected' somewhat more worthy of the invaluable teaching with which the congregation are privileged,' as one gentleman said, who concluded his speech with a donation of one hundred guineas. It appears that Dr. Leask has received several sums towards the new chapel through the RAINBOW; and it must have been very gratifying to him to hear the encomiums passed upon that magazine, both by gentlemen from a distance, and by members of the church, as an advocate of pure Gospel truth, a powerful agent in the new Reformation.""

"ISPAH."-You "can hardly credit the rumour." It is, nevertheless, a fact. Truth is strong and brave, and can afford to be charitable, so that we pity rather than condemn. The guardians of orthodox" errors and terrors" must be in a sad plight!

"A. G. S."—We can give you, in all sincerity, an apostolic answer: "I have learned in whatsoever state I am to be content."

"A. M. P." and " M. P." thank us for the sermon on "The End of all Evil," March No.-and add: "It clears up so satisfactorily the difficulty respecting pruning that the universalists contend for in Matt. xxv. 46. No words," says "A. M. P.," "can express the gratitude I feel to you for the light I receive through the RAINBOW." You ask the meaning of Matt. xi. 11. John was the greatest of the prophets (Luke vii. 27, 28) because he was the Lord's Herald, and had the honour of pointing Him out as having come, whilst the other prophets said that He would come. But in "the kingdom" the humblest ambassadors of the King will tell the nations of "the finished mystery of God," and demand instant allegiance to the Divine sceptre. John proclaimed "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," and was not believed by the influential ones; but the Saviour intimated, by the words under notice, that it should come nevertheless; and when its immortal preachers appear they will say, It has come in imposing glory! Greater," not in personal character, but in the wonderfully altered circumstances. And poor desponding John would rejoice before the headsman's axe smote him, when his disciples told him what they had seen and heard, that, after all, dark as the outlook was, he was not deceived-not the herald of a false Messiah, or an imaginary kingdom!

"E. S.," Baldock, says: "I have been reperusing your interesting tract on The Rich Man and Lazarus,' and was gratified to find that the views I have lately received concerning the second death accord with those you have so clearly expressed in your pamphlet."

"R. W. B.," India, says: "Your explanation of the cloud of witnesses' is far more to the point than the common exposition. It strikes a fatal blow to the intermediate state, which is so cherished by so-called orthodoxy."

"J. G."-The word gehenna (hell) is not found in the Apocalypse. In the authorised version the word hell occurs four times, but in each instance it is hades-the realm of the dead.

"NEMO."-The Bible is our rule of faith, our authority, our creed. In another page you will find the judgment of the illustrious Baxter on "Creeds." We commend it to your study.

THE RAINBOW:

I Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Bebealed Future of the Church and the World.

JUNE, 1881.

STUDIES IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

No. V.

Annunciations and Prophecies. "The Highest," and "His Prophet."

COMPARISON of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus A brings out in a striking manner the solitary glory of the latter. Both were announced by the same heavenly messenger, both were out of the ordinary course of nature, and it is this very parallelism that brings into prominence the profound and eternal gulf that otherwise separates them. John was the child of Zacharias. "Elisabeth shall bear thee a son." The annunciation to Joseph was that Jesus was not a child of man. To Mary it was said, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing (rò ayiov) (no parallel to it existing anywhere) which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." We come to see that the very circumstances in connection with the birth of John which seem to bring it near in significance to that of Christ, only remove the Lord's to an infinite distance in proportion as they are significant. For John's greatness is altogether due to his office, and the glories of his birth and of his ministry are solely derived from that Lord whose ways he went before to prepare. How great must be that Being, whose herald even must be provided in a way out of the ordinary course of nature, and filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb? But when He uttered his first cry in the wilderness world, the heavens were silent over Palestine; no portent blazed among the constellations, no strangely habited men came with offerings and with worship; indeed, the first to worship Jesus had been John, unborn (Luke i. 20, 41, 44). The news spread quietly, and no further than among a small company of "neighbours and cousins" who came to Elisabeth to rejoice with her.

And when the tongue of Zacharias was loosed he speaks not the glories of his son, but of the "horn of salvation raised up for us in the house of His servant David." Gabriel had said to Mary, "The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee," and of Jesus, "He shall be called the Son of the Highest," therefore Zacharias broke out, "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins. Through the tender mercy of our God: whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Not a word is spoken of his Kingship, though indeed by Jordan's banks he ruled with a mightier power than kings'; and as he entered the world silently, so, his work being done, " in turning "in many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just," (grand life!) he quits the world as quietly as he entered it. To him, as unto Peter, an angel came in the recesses of his dungeon, but it was an angel in disguise, and as the head that would not bow to Herod fell beneath the sword, the chains fell off, the prison doors were opened, the wilderness was passed. Jesus testified, "Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." Consider then how great must He be "whose shoes' latchet " John said he was unworthy to unloose."

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John died a martyr to the truth he taught as much as Christ did, and if this were all in the death of Christ, it is strange that the apostles have no word to say of John's in all their doctrine. His death has no other significance than its example; the great something that was in Christ's death was not in his; no apostle preached it as a death for men, and for all we can see, the very record of it might have been spared were there not important lessons in the crime of Herod and his family, and in the withdrawal of the Forerunner-the dying of the morning star in the beams of the dayspring from on high.

Strikingly different is the testimony borne of Christ by those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and great the difference of the matter of the two annunciations. John's "greatness," as we have already said, is distinctly referable to his official relationship to Christ, "He shall be great in the sight of the Lord," ""he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias." Of Jesus it was said (and the prescribed name of Saviour is momentous," for He shall save His people from their sins"), The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever (or unto the ages), and of His kingdom there shall be no end." And if the glories of His birth made the dumb invisible to speak and to

appear, the glories and meaning of His death and resurrection have awakened an unending song among the sons of men. When Jesus uttered "It is finished," then the song began, and the expiring breath of the Son of the Highest upon Calvary blew into a lasting flame the ardent love of His disciples-a flame that on the altar of men's hearts persists and grows, propagating itself through century after century, with a constancy and victory that confounds philosophy, and makes sport of every other faith and want of faith.

John's work was in the highest degree necessary. It was to prepare a people whose minds were imbued with simply carnal notions of the Messiah's kingdom for a Deliverer from evils and bondage of which they had a most inadequate conception. The redemption of man and of man's world must begin at the core of man's being his spiritual nature. From the seat of his capacities as a worshipping child of God must proceed, as from the centre and energy of the whole, the renovation of his being and the restitution of all things. Hence Christ's first kingdom must needs be a spiritual and invisible one, and the work of the Forerunner must be a preparation of men's hearts. John in effect preached: "It is not subjection to Rome that you are suffering from. The independent kingdom you long after is not the kingdom you have lost. The oppressions you groan under are not your heaviest yokes. The contempt you endure is not your deepest degradation. Look within look without! at your neighbours--he that hath no coat and no meat. Was it your unrighteousness towards him that gave you two coats and a full larder? If so, make restitution. You farmers of the revenue, stop your extortions! exact no more than is appointed you. You soldiers, who are regularly fed and clothed, and are in constant pay [good things that millions sigh for in vain in Christendom to-day!] dare not by violence and false accusation to add unto your wages. Oh, generation of vipers, ye do well to ask me, What shall we do? for the axe is now laid at the root of every one of you, and every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."

Fear drove the listeners to their first good works, which worked themselves clear of the impurity of motive as they were continued. For in all obedience to the will of God, if it be only from the dread of God, there is an immediate reward, and what begins under a base constraint is repeated from a new affection, and is finally clung to as a principle of life, and connected inseparably with the love of God. Laws these of a spiritual kingdom owing their origin and energy to the "Lamb slain before the foundation of the world." John the Baptist, in fact, introduced a new and brief dispensation--the dispensation of repentance towards God, which was to be succeeded by the present dispensation of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. John's

plough went up and down the hearts of men, uprooting their old notions of Israel's salvation, and begetting tears and cries and resolves in his hearers, which made them crane their necks heavenward for a healer of hearts, a forgiver of sins, a restorer of righteousness. Under his preaching mountains of pride were laid low, the depressions of the humble-minded were uplifted, the "crooked ways of the worldly and the covetous were made straight. Jordan's rapid stream was stemmed by the multitudes that came to be baptized, and ere it reached the Sea of Death it was salted by the tears that fell. It was a dispensation unto life for those who got no further. Apollos was saved under it, but the brighter light was always the better, and Apollos was to see it before he died.

Water is a sign of the "faith" which "purifies," but fire is the far stronger symbol. "I indeed baptize you with water: but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable." Thus did John prepare a highway for his Lord.

And Elias is to come again. Again, when the very opposite work will require to be done, but by the same kind of preaching, as a preparation for the Second Advent and the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. When men shall have made of Christ's religion, not a practical workday principle of righteousness and family life, all men being to one another as Father and children, but a thing for Sundays and the world to come. When the kingdom of God will be relegated to the region beyond death, and the idea of its practical exhibition in Time be derided as Utopian. When the salvation of men will have really come to mean the salvation of angels, and the notion of the human race being redeemed by the coming and sacrifice of Christ to a glorious life upon the very spot which has been drenched with their blood, their sufferings and their sin, be scouted and condemned as the carnal dreams of enthusiasts who lack the heavenly wisdom.

In those days-when the support of creeds and doctrines shall be made the vantage ground for the ostentatious display of piety and benevolence; when offerings to God, costly enough to make men gape, shall smell offensively of fraud and oppression-the future of saved humanity will still be thought of as mainly consisting of hymns and wings and clouds. To the Christian philosopher faith will grant a lute whereon to whistle throughout eternity, and to the Christian statesman will be accorded a pretty palm to wave up and down for ever and ever. All the heroes and martyrs will fill niches somewhere in the clouds, and formal ceremonial praise will not even be diversified by prayer. While these will be expectations entertained respecting the future of the privileged few, the great broad stream of humanity untouched, unblessed, un