+I. Consider how we are saved through faith.+--1. Without faith we
cannot be saved. 2. All who have faith will be saved.
+II. What place and influence works have in our salvation.+--1. In
what sense our salvation is not of works. (1) We are not saved by
works considered as a fulfilment of the original law of nature.
(2) We are not saved by virtue of any works done before faith in
Christ, for none of these are properly good. 2. There is a sense in
which good works are of absolute necessity to salvation. (1) They are
necessary as being radically included in that faith by which we are
saved. (2) A temper disposing us to good works is a necessary
qualification for heaven. (3) Works are necessary as evidences of our
faith in Christ and of our title to heaven. (4) Good works
essentially belong to religion. (5) Works are necessary to adorn our
professions and honour our religion before men. (6) By them we are to
be judged in the great day of the Lord.
+III. The necessity of works does not diminish the grace of God in
our salvation nor afford us any pretence for boasting.+--1. Humility
essentially belongs to the Christian temper. 2. The mighty
preparation God has made for our recovery teaches that the human race
is of great importance in the scale of rational beings and in the
scheme of God's universal government. 3. It infinitely concerns us to
comply with the proposals of the Gospel. 4. Let no man flatter
himself that he is in a state of salvation as long as he lives in the
neglect of good works. 5. Let us be careful that we mistake not the
nature of good works.--_Lathrop._
Ver. 8. _True Justifying Faith is not of Ourselves._--It is through
grace that we believe in the grace of God. God's grace and love, the
source; faith, the instrument; both His gift. The origin of our
coming to Christ is of God. Justifying faith, not human assent, but a
powerful, vivifying thing which immediately works a change in the man
and makes him a new creature and leads him to an entirely new and
altered mode of life and conduct. Hence justifying faith is a Divine
work.
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verse_ 10.
_The Christian Life a Divine Creation._
+I. The true Christian a specimen of the Divine handiwork.+--"We are
His workmanship." So far is man from being the author of his own
salvation, or from procuring salvation for the sake of any works of
his own, that not only was his first creation as a man the work of
God, but his new spiritual creation is wholly the result of Divine
power. Man, in the marvellous mechanism of his body, and in his
unique mental and spiritual endowments, is the noblest work of God.
He is the lord and high priest of nature and has such dominion over
it as to be able to combine and utilise its forces. But the creation
of the new spiritual man in Christ Jesus is a far grander work, and a
more perfect and exalted specimen of the Divine handiwork. It is a
nearer approach to a more perfect image of the Divine character and
perfections. As the best work of the most gifted genius is a
reflection of his loftiest powers, so the new spiritual creation is a
fuller revelation of the infinite resources of the Divine Worker.
+II. The Christian life is eminently practical.+--"Created in Christ
Jesus for good works" (R.V.). The apostle never calls the works of
the law good works. We are not saved by, but created unto, good
works. Works do not justify, but the justified man works, and thus
demonstrates the reality of his new creation. "I should have thought
mowers very idle people," said John Newton, "but they work while they
whet the scythe. Now devotedness to God, whether it mows or whets the
scythe, still goes on with the work. A Christian should never plead
spirituality for being a sloven; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he
should be the best in the parish."
+III. The opportunities and motives for Christian usefulness are
Divinely provided.+--"Which God hath before ordained that we should
walk in them." Every man has his daily work of body or mind appointed
him. There is not a moment without a duty. Each one has a vineyard;
let him see that he till it, and not say, "No man hath hired us."
"The situation," says Carlyle, "that has not its duty, its ideal, was
never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable,
hampered, despicable Actual wherein thou even now standest, here or
nowhere is thy ideal. Work it out therefrom, and working, believe,
live, and be free." There is no romance in a minister's proposing and
hoping to forward a great moral revolution on the earth, for the
religion he is appointed to preach was intended and is adapted to
work deeply and widely and to change the face of society.
Christianity was not ushered into the world with such a stupendous
preparation, it was not foreshown through so many ages by enraptured
prophets, it was not proclaimed so joyfully through the songs of
angels, it was not preached by such holy lips and sealed by such
precious blood, to be only a pageant, a form, a sound, a show. Oh no!
It has come from heaven, with heaven's life and power--come to make
all things new, to make the wilderness glad, and the desert blossom
as the rose, to break the stony heart, to set free the guilt-burdened
and earth-bound spirit, and to present it faultless before God's
glory with exceeding joy.
+Lessons.+--1. _Christianity is not a creed, but a life._ 2. _The
Christian life has a manifest Divine origin._ 3. _The Christian life
must be practically developed in harmony with the Divine mind._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSE._
Ver. 10. _Interruptions in our Work, and the Way to deal with
Them._--In proportion to the seriousness with which a Christian does
his work will be his sensitiveness to interruptions, and this
sensitiveness is apt to disturb his peace. The remedy is a closer
study of the mind that was in Christ, as that mind transpires in His
recorded conduct. The point in the life of our Lord is the apparent
want of what may be called method or plan. His good works were not in
pursuance of some scheme laid down by Himself, but such as entered
into God's scheme for Him, such as the Father had prepared for Him to
walk in.
+I. Notice His discourses both in their occasions and their
contexture.+--1. His discourses often take their rise from some
object which is thrown across His path in nature, from some
occurrence which takes place under His eyes, or from some question
which is put to Him. 2. The contexture of His discourses are not
systematic in the usual sense of the word. There is the intellectual
method, and the method of a full mind and loving heart. The only plan
observable in our Lord's discourses is that of a loving heart pouring
itself out as occasion serves for the edification of mankind.
+II. Study the life of Christ.+--The absence of mere human plan, or
rather strict faithfulness to the plan of God as hourly developed by
the movements of His providence, characterises the life of our Lord
even more than His discourses. Illustrated from Matthew ix. God has a
plan of life for each one of us, and occasions of doing or receiving
good are mapped out for each in His eternal counsels. Little
incidents, as well as great crises of life, are under the control of
God's providence. Events have a voice for us if we will listen to it.
Let us view our interruptions as part of God's plan for us. We may
receive good, even when we cannot do good. It is self-will which weds
us to our own plans and makes us resent interference with them. In
the providence of God there seems to be entanglements, perplexities,
interruptions, confusions, contradictions, without end; but you may
be sure there is one ruling thought, one master-design, to which all
these are subordinate. Be not clamorous for another or more dignified
character than that which is allotted to you. Be it your sole aim to
conspire with the Author, and to subserve His grand and wise
conception. Thus shall you find peace in submitting yourself to the
wisdom which is of God.--_E. M. Goulburn._
_The New Spiritual Creation._--God has kindled in us a new spiritual
life by baptism and the influence of the Holy Spirit connected
therewith. He has laid the foundation of recreating us into His
image. He has made us other men in a far more essential sense than it
was once said to Saul--"Thou shalt be turned into another man." What
is the principal fruit and end of this new creation? A living hope.
Its object is not only our future resurrection, but the whole
plenitude of the salvation still to be revealed by Jesus Christ, even
until the new heavens and the new earth shall appear. Birth implies
life; so is it with the hope of believers, which is the very opposite
of the vain, lost, and powerless hope of the worldly-minded. It is
powerful, and quickens the heart by comforting, strengthening, and
encouraging it, by making it joyous and cheerful in God. Its
quickening influence enters even into our physical life. Hope is not
only the fulfilment of the new life created in regeneration, but also
the innermost kernel of the same.--_Weiss._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 11, 12.
_The Forlorn State of the Gentile World._
+I. Outcast.+--"Gentiles, . . . called Uncircumcision by that which
is called the Circumcision" (ver. 11). The circumcised Jew regarded
himself as a special favourite of Heaven, and superior to all other
men. He hardly felt himself a member of the human family. He was
accustomed to speak of himself as chosen of God, and as holy and
clean; whilst the Gentiles were treated as sinners, dogs, polluted,
unclean, outcast, and God-abandoned. Between Jew and Gentile there
was constant hatred and antagonism, as there is now between the
Church and the world. On the one hand, the old religion, with its
time-honoured teachings, its ancient traditions, the Church of the
Fathers, the guardian of revelation, the depositary of the faith, the
staunchness that tends to degenerate into bigotry--here is the Jew.
On the other hand, the intellectual searchings, the political
aspirations and mechanical contrivings--science, art, literature,
commerce, sociology, the liberty which threatens to luxuriate into
licence--here is the Gentile. Ever and again the old feud breaks out.
Ever and again there is a crack and a rent. The gulf widens, and
disruption is threatened. The majority is outside the circle of the
Church.
+II. Christless.+--"That at that time ye were without Christ." The
promises of a coming Deliverer were made to the Jews, and they were
slow to see that any other people had any right to the blessings of
the Messiah, or that it was their duty to instruct the world
concerning Him. They drew a hard line between the sons of Abraham and
the dogs of Greeks. They erected a middle wall of partition,
thrusting out the Gentile into the outer court. Christ has broken
down the barrier. On the area thus cleared He has erected a larger,
loftier, holier temple, a universal brotherhood which acknowledges no
preferences and knows no distinctions. In Christ Jesus now there is
neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all and in all--a vivid contrast
to the Christlessness of a former age.
+III. Hopeless.+--"Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope" (ver. 12).
Where there is no promise there is no hope. Cut off from any
knowledge of the promises revealed to the Jews, the Gentiles were
sinking into despair.
+IV. Godless.+--"Without God in the world." With numberless deities
the Gentiles had no God. They had everything else, but this one thing
they lacked--knowledge of God their Father; and without this all
their magnificent gifts could not satisfy, could not save, them.
Culture and civilisation, arts and commerce, institutions and laws,
no nation can afford to undervalue these; but not only do all these
things soon fade, but the people themselves fall into corruption and
decay, if the Breath of Life is wanting. As with nations, so is it
with individuals. Man cannot with impunity ignore or deny the Father
of earth and heaven.
+Lessons.+--1. _Man left to himself inevitably degenerates._ 2. _When
man abandons God his case is desperate._ 3. _The rescue of man from
utter ruin is an act of Divine mercy._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._
Vers. 11, 12. _The Condition of the Ephesians before their Conversion
descriptive of the State of Sinners under the Gospel._
+I. They were in time past Gentiles in the flesh.+--He admonishes
them not to forget the dismal state of heathenism out of which they
had been called, and often to reflect upon it, that they might ever
maintain a sense of their unworthiness and awaken thankful and
admiring apprehensions of that grace which had wrought in them so
glorious a change.
+II. Reminds them of the contempt with which they had been treated by
the Jews.+--The Jews, instead of improving the distinction of their
circumcision to gratitude and obedience, perverted it to pride,
self-confidence, and contempt of mankind. They not only excluded
other nations from the benefit of religious communion, but even
denied them the common offices of humanity. One of their greatest
objections to the Gospel was that it offered salvation to the
Gentiles.
+III. They were without Christ.+--To the Jews were chiefly confined
the discoveries which God made of a Saviour to come. From them in
their captivities and dispersions the Gentiles obtained the knowledge
they had of this glorious Person. This knowledge was imperfect, mixed
with error and uncertainty, and at best extended only to a few. The
Gentiles, contemplating the Messiah as a temporal prince, regarded
His appearing as a calamity rather than a blessing.
+IV. They were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.+--To the forms
of worship instituted in the Mosaic law none was admitted but Jews
and such as were proselyted to the Jewish religion. All uncircumcised
heathens were excluded as aliens.
+V. They were strangers from the covenants of promise.+--The
discovery of the covenants of promise until the Saviour came was
almost wholly confined to the Jews. How unhappy was the condition of
the Gentile world in the dark, benighted ages which preceded the
Gospel!
+VI. They had no clear hope of a future existence.+--Many of them
scarcely believed or thought of a life beyond this. They had no
apprehension, hardly the idea of a restoration of the body. Those who
believed in a future state had but obscure and some of them very
absurd conceptions of it. Still more ignorant were they of the
qualifications necessary for happiness after death.
+VII. They were atheists in a world in which God was manifest.+--The
heathens generally had some apprehension of a Deity; but they were
without a knowledge of the one true God and without a just idea of
His character. There are more atheists in the world than profess
themselves such. Many who profess to know God in works deny
Him.--_Lathrop._
Ver. 12. _Hopeless and Godless._--The soul that has no God has no
hope. The character of the God we love and worship will determine the
character of our hope. 1. The heathen religion was the _seeking_
religion. Their search arose out of a deeply felt want. They felt the
need of something they did not possess; and the finest intellects the
world has ever known bravely and anxiously devoted all their colossal
powers to the task of fathoming the mysteries of life. The hope of
discovery buoyed them up and urged them onwards; but their united
endeavours brought them only to the borderland of the unseen and the
unknown, where they caught but glimmerings of a truth that ever
receded into the great beyond. "The world by wisdom knew not God,"
and therefore had no hope. 2. The Hebrew religion was the _hoping_
religion. Favoured with a revelation of the only true God, their hope
expanded with every advancing step of the progressive revelation.
Their hope was based on _faith,_ as all true hope must be--faith in
the promises of God. They had the promise of a _Deliverer_ whose
wisdom should excel that of Moses and Solomon, and whose power should
surpass that of Joshua and of his heroic successors in the most
brilliant period of their military career; and, through the centuries
of prosperity and decline, of scattering and captivity, and amid
unparalleled sufferings which would have extinguished any other
nation, hope fastened and fed upon the promises till the true Messiah
came, whom St. Paul justly described as "the Hope of Israel, the Hope
of the promise made of God unto our fathers." 3. The _Christian_
religion is the _complement_ and _perfection_ of all previously
existing systems; it is the grand realisation of what the heathen
sought, and the Hebrew hoped for. It is in Jesus we have the
clearest, fullest, and most authoritative revelation of God, and it
is in Him, and in Him alone, that the loftiest hope of man finds its
restful and all-sufficient realisation. The apostle Paul refers to
Jesus specifically as our Hope--"Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is our
Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1). 4. In the light of this great and indubitable
truth the words of our text may be clearly and unmistakably
interpreted, and they assume a terrible significance. _To be without
Christ is to be without God and without hope._ (1) Hope is not simply
_expectation._ We expect many things we do not hope for. In the
natural course of things we expect difficulties, we expect opposition
and misrepresentation--"black wounding calumny the whitest virtue
strikes"--we expect infirmities and disabilities of age; but we are
none of us so fond of trouble for trouble's sake as to hope for any
of these things. (2) Hope is not simply _desire._ Our desires are as
thick and plentiful as apple blossoms, few of which ever ripen into
the fruit they promise. We desire uninterrupted health, we desire
wealth--the most dangerous and disappointing of all human wishes--we
desire pleasure, success in life, and the realisation of the most
ambitious dreams; but we have no reasonable ground for hoping that
all our desires will ever be attained. (3) Hope is the _expectation
of the desirable,_ and it must have a foundation on which the
expectation rests and an object to which the desire can rise. The
foundation of hope is Christ, and the object of hope is to live with
Him in eternal glory. To be without hope and without God does not
mean that hope and God do not exist. The world is full of both; they
are among you, they surround you, the very air vibrates with the
ever-active presence of these grand realities; but they are as though
they did not exist for you unless you know and feel they do exist
within you. (4) Hope _presupposes faith_; they cannot exist apart.
Faith discovers "the only foundation which is laid, which is Christ
Jesus," fastens the soul to and settles it on this foundation, and
faith and hope rouse all the activities of the soul to build on this
foundation a superstructure which shall grow in solidity, in
symmetry, and in beauty, until it becomes a perfect marvel of moral
architecture, richly ornamented with the most delicate tracery and
shimmering and flashing with the resplendent glory of God. (5) _Hope
is the balloon of the soul,_ soaring majestically into the heavens,
scanning scenes of beauty and grandeur never beheld by our
earth-bound senses, and faithfully reporting to the soul the state of
affairs in the skies; but it is a _captive balloon,_ and the
connecting cords are firmly held in the hand of faith. The loftiest
flights and the swing of what might seem the most eccentric gyrations
of hope are held in check by the friendly, the sympathetic, but
unswerving grasp of faith. "My dear Hope," Faith says, "it is very
nice for you to be up there, basking in the cloudless sunshine and
drinking in the melody of the ascending lark as it ripples up the
heights; and I like you to be there. I could never get there myself;
and you tell me of things I should never otherwise know, and they do
me good. But, remember, I cannot let you go. We are linked together
in the sacred bonds of a holy wedlock. We are necessary to each other
and cannot do without each other. If you were to break away from me,
you would vanish like vapour into space, and I should be left forlorn
and powerless." And Hope replies: "I know it, my dear Faith. Divorce
would be fatal to us both, and our union is too sweet and precious
ever to dream of separation. I live in these upper regions purely for
your sake. You know I have cheered you up many a time and will do so
again. My joy is to brighten your life of toil and conflict down
there. When the soul has done with you it will have done with me, and
when my work is finished I shall be content to die." Thus, faith and
hope are essentially united, and both are wedded together by the
soul's living union with Christ. (6) A false hope is really _no
hope._ It rests on no solid foundation; it is not justified by sound
reason. It is but the blue light of a frantic conjecture generated
amid the restless tumults of a soul in the last stages of despair. At
the best a false hope is but a beautiful dream spun from the gossamer
threads of a busy and excited fancy, a dream _of what we wish might
be,_ and, like all other dreams having no substantial basis, it
dissolves into space under the first touch of reality. A false hope
lures its victims on to destruction, as the flickering lights of the
marsh gases seduce the belated traveller into the dismal swamps from
which there is no release.
_A State of Sin a State of Ungodliness._--1. Men do not recognise the
existence of God. 2. They do not acknowledge His moral government.
3. They do not seek His favour as their chief good. 4. They do not
delight in His communion. 5. They do not anticipate their final
reckoning with Him. 6. They do not accept His own disclosures
concerning the attributes of His nature and the principles of His
administration.--_G. Brooks._
_Man without God._--He is like a ship tossed about on a stormy sea
without chart or compass. The ship drifts as the waves carry it. The
night is dark. The pilot knows not which way to steer. He may be
close to rocks and quicksands. Perhaps a flash of lightning falls on
a rock, or he hears the waves breaking over it. But how shall he
escape, or how prepare to meet the danger? Shall he trust in
providence? What providence has he to trust in? Poor man! He is
without God. Shall he throw out an anchor? But he has no anchor. He
wants the best and only safe anchor, hope--the anchor of the soul.
Such is the state of man when he is far off, without a God to trust
in, without hope to comfort and support him. But give the man a true
and lively faith in Christ, tell him of a merciful and loving Father
who careth for us and would have us cast all our care upon Him, show
him that hope which is firm to the end, and straightway you make a
happy man of him. You give him a course to steer, a chart and compass
to guide him, an anchor which will enable him to withstand the
buffeting of every storm. You insure him against shipwreck, and you
assure him of a blessed haven where at length he will arrive and be
at rest.--_A. W. Hare._
_Practical Atheism._--If it had been without friends, without
shelter, without food, that would have made a gloomy sound; but
without God! That there should be men who can survey the creation
with a scientific enlargement of intelligence and then say there is
no God is one of the most hideous phenomena in the world.
+I. The text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of
God's all-disposing government and providence+--who have no thought
of the course of things but just as going on, going on some way or
other, just as it can be; to whom it appears abandoned to a strife
and competition of various mortal powers, or surrendered to something
they call general laws, and these blended with chance.
+II. Is a description of all those who are forming or pursuing their
scheme of life and happiness independent of Him.+--They do not
consult His counsel or will as to what that scheme should be in its
ends or means. His favour, His blessing are not absolutely
indispensable. We can be happy leaving Him out of the account.
+III. Is a description of those who have but a slight sense of
universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority+--who have
not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him and
testifying for Him. This insensibility of accountableness exists
almost entire--a stupefaction of conscience--in very many minds. In
others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling. To be thus
with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him--without
Him as a friend, approver, and patron. Each thought of Him tells the
soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very
fearful sense it never can be without.
+IV. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is
no communion with Him+ maintained or even sought with cordial
aspiration. How lamentable to be thus without God! Consider it in one
single view only, that of the _loneliness_ of a human soul in this
destitution.
+V. A description of the state of mind in which there is no habitual
anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence
of God;+ in which there is an absence of the thought of being with
Him in another world, of being with Him in judgment, and whether to
be with Him for ever.
+VI. A description of those who, professing to retain God in their
thoughts, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him
according to their own speculation and fancy.+--Will the Almighty
acknowledge your feigned God for Himself, and admit your religion as
equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should
not, you are without God in the world. Let us implore Him not to
permit our spirits to be detached from Him, abandoned, exposed, and
lost; not to let them be trying to feed their immortal fires on
transitory sustenance, but to attract them, exalt them, and hold them
in His communion for ever.--_John Foster._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 13-18.
_Christ the Great Peacemaker._
+I. His mission on earth was one of peace.+--"And came and preached
peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh" (ver.
17). His advent was heralded by the angelic song, "Peace on earth,
and goodwill toward men." The world is racked with moral discord; He
is constantly striving to introduce the music of a heavenly harmony.
It is distracted with war; He is propagating principles that will
by-and-by make war impossible. The work of the peacemaker is
Christ-like. Shenkyn, one of whose anomalies was that with all his
burning passions he was a notorious peacemaker, and had means of
pouring oil upon troubled waters, once upon a time was deputed to try
his well-known skill upon a Church whose strife of tongues had become
quite notorious. He reluctantly complied and attended a meeting which
soon proved to his satisfaction that the people were possessed by a
demon that could not easily be expelled. The peacemaker got up, staff
in hand, paced the little chapel, and with his spirit deeply moved,
cried out, "Lord, is this Thy spouse?" Faster and faster he walked,
thumping his huge stick on the floor, and still crying out, "Lord, is
this Thy spouse? Slay her!" Then there came, as it were from another,
a response, "No, I will not." "Sell her, then!" "No, I will not."
"Deny her, then!" Still the answer came, "I will not." Then he lifted
up his voice, saying, "I have bought her with My precious blood; how
can I give her up? How can I forsake her?" The strife had now ceased,
and the people looked on with amazement, crying out for pardon.
+II. He made peace between man and man.+--"For He is our peace, who
hath made both one; . . . to make in Himself of twain one new man, so
making peace" (vers. 14, 15). The hostility of Jew and Gentile was
conquered; the new spiritual nature created in both formed a bond of
brotherhood and harmony. The Jew no longer despised the Gentile; the
Gentile no longer hated and persecuted the Jew. Where the Christian
spirit predominates personal quarrels are speedily adjusted.
+III. He made peace between man and God.+--"That He might reconcile
both unto God in one body by the cross" (ver. 16). The enmity of man
against God is disarmed and conquered by the voluntary suffering of
Jesus in man's stead, and by Him thus opening up the way of
reconciliation of man with God. God can now be just, and the
justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. The violated law is now
atoned for, and the violator may obtain forgiveness and regain the
forfeited favour of the offended God. There is peace only through
forgiveness.
+IV. His death removed the great barrier to peace.+--This paragraph
is very rich and suggestive in the phrases used to explain this
blessed result: "Ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ" (ver. 13).
"By the cross, having slain the enmity thereby" (ver. 16). "Hath
broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His
flesh the enmity" (vers. 14, 15). It is not the calm, silent,
featureless, helpless, forceless, _peace of death,_ but a living,
active, aggressive, ever-conquering peace. The death was the result
of agonising struggle and intense suffering, and the peace purchased
is a powerfully operating influence in the believing soul.
"A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser."--_Shakespeare._
+V. True peace is realised only in Christ.+--"But now in Christ Jesus
ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ"
(ver. 13). "For He is our peace" (ver. 14). "For through Him we both
have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (ver. 18). "Christ takes
us by the hand, and leads us to the Father." Men seek peace in the
excitements of worldly pleasures, or in the pursuit of ambitious
aims, but in vain. They only stimulate the malady they seek to cure.
Christ is the restful centre of the universe, and the sin-tossed soul
gains peace only as it converges towards Him. The efforts of men to
find rest independent of Christ only reveal their need of Him, and it
is a mercy when this revelation and consciousness of need does not
come too late.
+Lessons.+--1. _Sin is the instigator of quarrels and strife._
2. _Only as sin is conquered does peace become possible._ 3. _Christ
introduces peace by abolishing sin._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._