WE are now approaching the end of the second division of the book of Matthew, which deals with the King's propaganda. We have heard His Enunciation of Laws; we have seen His Exhibition of Benefits; and we are now approaching the end of the section dealing with His Enforcement of Claims.

In this paragraph we see the last coming of the rulers to Him, before He broke with them, and the nation, and the crowds; and devoted Himself to His own disciples, and to that sacred ministry which led up to, and culminated in, the Passion. In this paragraph, therefore, we have His last reply to the rulers during their period of probation. After Caesarea Philippi, His relation to these men was that of judge, and His message that of denunciation. He never dealt with them again, save, directly or indirectly, to emphasize the doom that had fallen upon the nation that had rejected Him.

In this paragraph we have also the final proof of how little His disciples had understood His methods; for when He said to them after the Pharisees had left, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees," they were so dull of apprehension, that they imagined He was talking to them about a certain kind of leaven, for the Pharisees were very punctilious about leaven. They did use certain kinds under certain circumstances, but they were particular not to use any contaminated by Gentile use. They thought that He was afraid that they would have some of the Pharisees' bread in which was leaven. He said to them, "O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have no bread. Do ye not yet perceive?" It is in some senses a pathetic picture of Jesus Christ which this paragraph presents to us. By the rulers of His people His laws were rejected, His benefits contemned, His claims ignored. By His own, that little group of disciples He had gathered about Him, His spiritual meanings were entirely missed. It is the story of the failure of His times to know Him. It is the story of the failure of His own disciples to appreciate Him. The revelation that this paragraph gives us is the revelation of the absolute inability of man, unaided, to understand the highest and best things of God. We must be very careful that we do not speak of His failure. There is a danger, there is a peril, there is quite a tendency to imagine that He experimented and tried one method after another, and that when one failed He tried a new one. That is not the story. It is rather the story of consecutive links in one great chain. The master hand forged them all. He failed at no point, but by His patient persistence toward victory, He brought into view the failure of man. Thank God there is another chapter, the story of the Passion. Had there been nothing but Propaganda it would have been disastrous in its failure, but because there was a Passion, the Propaganda presently became powerful, and all the great harvest of that patient, suffering, lonely ministry was garnered.

Let us, then, look first of all at the King and the rulers, as they are revealed to us in the first four verses; and then at the disciples and the King, as they are revealed to us in verses five to twelve.

In looking at the King and the rulers, the first matter that attracts our attention is the coalition of criticism. "And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and trying Him, asked Him to show them a sign from heaven." Some of us have read that so constantly, and have been so accustomed to put all these men in the same list-Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes-that we think of them as all alike. So they were in one particular, and yet it must have been a startling thing to those who knew them to see these men together at all, and together on a matter of religious principle, and on a mission to a religious teacher.

Who were the Pharisees? They were the ritualists of their day; or, to use the word that more correctly reveals them, they were the traditionalists of their day. They believed in God, they believed in the work of the Holy Spirit, not exactly as we understand it to-day, but in the fact of the Spirit's operation. They believed in the essential purity and holiness of God. They believed in the fundamental things. They believed in angels; they believed in resurrection; they held all the spiritual verities; but they hid them from the people whom they were supposed to teach and lead. They hid the spiritualities underneath the grave-clothes of ritualism and tradition. They heaped upon men's shoulders burdens too heavy to be borne, and as Jesus once said, did "not move them with their finger."

Who were the Sadducees? The rationalists of their day. They did not believe in spirits, they did not believe in angels, they did not believe in resurrection. They denied all the supernatural elements in religion. They made religion a mere ethical code. They declared that a man ought to be true to certain high and noble principles without any aid from an unseen world.

The Pharisee had no dealings with the Sadducee; the Sadducee looked with supreme contempt on the Pharisee. The Sadducee would speak of the Pharisee as the man of fanaticism, as being out of date, not level with his times; that he was still enslaved, not merely by the tradition that characterized his teaching, but by these very obsolete ideas concerning angels, and demons, and resurrection, and spirits. The Sadducee was the cultured man of the age, and nearly all the wealthy families of the time were Sadducees. The high priest himself, strange and marvellous mockery, in the midst of Hebraism was a Sadducee. It was the correct thing of the hour to be a Sadducee! They had left Jesus alone up to this point That kind of man always professes to hold in contempt a man who believes in the spiritual and the supernatural.

These were the men who came with one purpose to ask a question, and to puzzle Jesus Christ-the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Men absolutely divided as between themselves were united on this occasion. Some of the old writers got right to the heart of this Scripture in ways that are somewhat rough. Trapp, referring to this passage, says, "Dogs, though they fight never so fierce, and mutually inter-tear one another, yet if a hare run by, give over, and run after her." That is the whole story of the coalition between Pharisees and Sadducees in their coming to Christ. The Pharisees found Him irreligious because He swept away their tradition. The Sadducees counted Him irrational because He insisted upon the spiritual.

Now, what was it they wanted? One is inclined to think that the Pharisees framed the request in view of the fact that the Sadducees were with them. They came and asked Him for "a sign from heaven." The emphasis is to be put on the words from heaven. The Pharisees taught that demons and false gods could give signs on earth. The feeding of five thousand or four thousand might be done by some false deity or demon: and it was a part of their teaching that signs from heaven were the final proofs of the working of God; and if the sun might be made to stand still, if fire might fall from heaven, if there might come to them some miraculous portent on the sky; then they would believe. Jesus had been working miracles on earth-healing sick, feeding men. As miracles they had the peculiar quality that they had touched the things of earth, and these men would be more impressed by a thunderbolt than by the healing of a man; by some vivid illumination of the sky in an impossible hour on a dark night, than by the fact that Jesus had gathered the hungry crowd of men and women together and fed them. These men were always seeking the spectacular, and Jesus religiously declined to satisfy their curiosity. He could have given them signs from heaven. "Thinkest thou," He said in the hour of His extremity, "that I cannot beseech My Father, and He shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?" One sigh lifted to heaven, and all the armies of heaven would have been let loose through the ambient air!

They asked Him this question "trying Him," which means to say that they did not at all believe that He could give a sign from heaven. What they wanted to do was to lead Him out into a realm where they thought that a sign of His power could not be manifested. Perhaps in their request there was a revelation of the fact that they still believed what they had suggested so long ago, that He wrought miracles by Beelzebub.

Mark the effect of this coalition. The Pharisees would say, This thing can be, there can be signs out of heaven, but He cannot produce them; therefore let us ask Him to do it The Sadducees would say, There could be no sign out of heaven, so you are safe in asking Him to do it. We have two opposing ideas, but united in their opposition to Him. And so in a. common hostility to Him, a common desire to see His defeat, these men came to Him.

Now mark our Lord's answer, "He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather." Notice the italics here, "it will be" These words have been inserted to help us. We should be better without them. "When it is evening, ye say, Fair weather; for the heaven is red. And in the morning"-again miss the it will be-"Foul weather today, for the heaven is red and lowering. Ye know how to discern the face of the heaven: but ye cannot the signs of the times." The more we ponder His method with those men, and the matchless marvel of His wisdom with them, the more we are driven into the place of adoration, when we see the calm, quiet, satirical dignity of the whole movement; for we cannot read the story of Jesus and His teaching without finding a vein of satire, but which was never cruel and brutal. It was the satire of the summer lightning that clears the atmosphere; but it could become a thunderbolt that smote to death if men persisted in hypocritical criticism.

Jesus Christ did not say these men were wrong. They came to criticize Him, but they went away criticized; they came to measure Him, but they went away measured. He knew the measure of their incapacity as well as the measure of their ability. They were equal to watching precedents and sequences in the realm of the external, but they were not equal to watching precedents and sequences in the realm of the spiritual. Said Jesus, You ask Me for a sign out of heaven. The air is full of signs. All about you are the voices of the eternal and infinite speaking to you, but you are blind concerning the things of God.

And He said much more than this. He accounted for their blindness in His use of the words-"An evil and adulterous generation." That was their measurement, that lay behind their inability, and was the reason for it. "Evil," that described them as wicked in themselves and as exerting an influence which was harmful. When Jesus used the word "adulterous" He did so in the spiritual realm, in the sense in which the old prophets had used it, as revealing the failure in relation between God and His people. "I will betroth thee unto Me for ever," was the great love-message of God to His people. The most scathing indictment brought by the prophets against the people was that they had played the harlot. Jesus employed the prophetic message of the past and flung it red-hot upon them. He said, How can you interpret religion when you are evil in yourselves, and adulterous in your relationship to God, unfaithful to the covenant with God? And now you come and ask for a sign, such a sign as will satisfy your debased and depraved nature, a sign in the realm which you think you understand. "There shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah." That was but a repetition of what our Lord had said to them on another occasion at greater length. The sign of Jonah was not a sign given to Israel but to Nineveh. It was the sign of a man coming into Nineveh who had been flung out to death, and of that man's preaching in Nineveh. Jesus had amplified the illustration before, when He had said: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." The man who had been in the heart of the fish, flung out to death, came back and preached; and the Lord told these men that the last time they would have this sign, which condemned their whole system, both of traditionalism and rationalism, would be when the voice that had been attempting to interpret the spiritualities to them, and which they would silence in death, would again be heard; and their traditional blunders would perish while His message would live on. He told the Sadducees, who held in contempt the whole story of the supernatural, that the Man whom they attempted to trap in His conversation, would come back to deny their rationalism by the fact of resurrection. That was their sign. They must wait for it.

"And He left them, and departed." In these words we have a revelation of the hopelessness of their condition, and an account of the act of the saddened and rejected King.

Now let us turn to observe the King and His own. They crossed over and they came to the other side, and when they got there Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees;" take heed of that which is in itself corrupt, and which produces corruption; of that which is in itself disintegrating, and which, communicated to other things, will carry on that process of disintegration. "Take heed," that is, discern it, know it, be acquainted with it; literally-stare at it And then "Beware" literally, hold yourself against it. These were Christ's two words concerning the leaven of the Pharisees-the influence of traditionalism; and the leaven of the Sadducees-the influence of rationalism. Thus the King was guarding the religion of His own disciples, the religion for which He Himself stood, against His most insidious enemies for all time, for He knew the things that would most harm Christianity would be these two things-the addition of tradition, and the subtraction of the supernatural. These repeat themselves in every successive century. There are no men now wearing phylacteries, but there are a great many Pharisees who are saying, You must do this, which God has not commanded, or else you are not doing what God has commanded. Let us protest against that. Also against the naturalism of the Sadducees which brings Christianity to the level of a cult, of a system of ethics, of an ideal. Let us still believe in the virgin birth; let us still believe in the actual resurrection of the body of Jesus; and that at the right hand of the Majesty on high, is the Man of Nazareth, the great Mystery of spiritual Omnipresence, and yet a physical form, existing in oneness with God.

But how came the disciples to misinterpret Him? They said, He is warning us against them because we forgot to take bread. Perhaps their misinterpretation was due first to preoccupation of mind. They were worrying about loaves. He reminded them they had seen Him feed four thousand before, and five thousand a little earlier "O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves?", do you not remember what I have done? Preoccupation with loaves was due to lack of faith. We cannot quite understand the lack of faith when we remember that they had seen Him twice over, quite recently, feed the multitudes; when we consider that-

If they had seen Him feed five thousand with five loaves, surely they need not have been afraid so long as He was present. Somehow they forgot. Let the failure of these men utter its warning to us. Let us not imagine that victory in the past means that faith will never tremble again. The disciples saw the tongues of fire only once; then they had to work the spiritual fact out in their lives. Do not let us think too much about loaves. God help us to keep our mind upon the Master. Lack of faith, which means preoccupation with loaves, issues in spiritual blindness.

What did He do with them? He chided them for their lack of faith. He revealed to them that He was more occupied with the sustenance of the spiritual than the material. And it is written that at last they understood Him. He Who turned His back in satirical scorn upon the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come for no other purpose than to tempt Him, was very patient with the blundering disciples and waited for them. Oh He is a wonderful Master! He will say it again if we do not understand it the first time. If you are a Pharisee or a Sadducee with your animosity, and your criticism, and your cleverness, He will laugh at you in high heaven, and He will turn His back upon you. But if you are a weak, trembling, foolish, frail child, thinking about loaves when you ought to be thinking about spiritual things, He will say it again. Oh it is these second things that reveal His patience!

Thus ends, as to its apparent failure, the King's enforcement of His claims. His laws have been enunciated and rejected; His benefits have been exhibited and contemned; His claims have been enforced and refused. Nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity for more than propaganda in this very apparent failure of Jesus. To end here is to end at failure. Take the Gospel of Matthew and take out the last part, the story of the via dolorosa and the Passion, and the Resurrection, and Christ was a failure. But thank God the Passion is also here, and the victory is won. If He had ended here He would have been a failure, not as the Revealer of ideals, for His ideals are high and noble; not as the Teacher of an ethic, for His ethic is unmatched; but as a Helper of souls, as One able to take hold of the incompetent and make him competent. If that were the end, then our Lord was but a great Experimenter. The failure of such methods was due to man's incapacity, until touched with the new light and life to see the Kingdom and to enter in. He had said so at the beginning, "Except one be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." The failure was evident to His own mind from the very beginning; but it must be revealed; and on the way to the Passion He explained it.

This explains a great deal that perplexes us. We often think God is slow in the interests of His eternal throne and universe; but things that lie hidden in human life must be wrought out into manifestation; and that accounts for the slowness of the centuries. But, as to Propaganda He added Passion, so to Passion He will add His Perfect Victory.

THIS is one of the most remarkable passages in the whole of this Gospel of the King. Here we are at the centre of our story; here we find light which flashes backward and forward, illuminating the path we have already travelled, and casting its light upon what remains to us of the study of this book.

The central matters of the paragraph are evidently those of the confession of Peter, and the answer of Christ to that confession. All the surrounding statements we may therefore treat first by way of introduction.

There is certainly some significance in the place where Peter's confession was made, and where our Lord uttered His first words concerning the Church. Csasarea Philippi was situated at the northern extremity of Jewish territory. It was a district which had been peculiarly and terribly associated with idol worship. To this day there are remains of temples and altars which were raised in connection with idolatry.

There was also a political and religious significance in the place. It was in this vicinity that Herod the Great had raised a temple of white marble to Caesar Augustus, a temple recognizing the element of worship in the attitude of the Roman Empire to the Emperor.

The place in the ministry of our Lord is of supreme interest The King was practically already rejected, in spirit if not outwardly and openly. The King was about to proceed to that new work, by which His Kingship would be established, and His Kingdom ensured.

Having gathered His disciples into this remarkable locality, He said to them, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" The term, "the Son of man," is personal, and not generic here. It was perhaps sometimes used in a generic sense, but not by our Lord; and in this instance the disciples did not so understand it, or they would never have answered, "Elijah," "John the Baptist," "Jeremiah or one of the prophets." They understood it as a personal question. In effect Jesus said to these men, What is the result of My work so far? What do men say about Me? He did not need information; He was perfectly familiar with the general attitude towards Himself; but in order to prepare the way for the new movement, to lead these men forward, He gathered them quietly about Him at Caesarea Philippi, and said to them, if we may reverently change the phrasing; Now let us see what all My work so far amounts to. What is the result of My preaching and teaching and working of miracles, and your preaching and teaching? "Who do men say that the Son of man is?"

Their reply was one that shows the measure in which He had succeeded; that there had come to His age a remarkable conviction concerning Him. But it also shows that the men of the age had not appreciated Him, and that the measure of their understanding was distinctly limited. These disciples at Caesarea Philippi told Him only the best things they had heard about Him. Although they had heard men say, He is beside Himself, He hath a devil; they said, "Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."

Taking that answer very broadly, and accepting their testimony, as a correct estimate of the best which the age had discovered about Jesus; it is evident that there was widespread conviction that there was something supernatural about Him. Men had come so far as to decide that they could not account for Him in any ordinary way; they could not place Him in any school of the prophets of their own day. They listened to other men, and detected the accent of Hillel, or the accent of Gamaliel, or of some other teacher.

They could not do so with Jesus. They said, It is John the Baptist come again; or the prophecy that Elijah should come again is being fulfilled; or Jeremiah has returned with his thunder and his tears; or one of the prophets of the past has returned. They ranked Him amongst the prophets, the men of vision, the men who declared God's word to their age. They could not account for Him in any other way.

If we remember the differences between John, and Elijah, and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, it is evident that these differing opinions constitute a revelation of the variety of the message and mission of Jesus. They said, We cannot quite place Him. We can hear something of the lamentations of Jeremiah; we have seen a good deal of the fire of Mount Carmel flashing from His eyes; we have also heard the tones of the sweet lullaby of Zephaniah's final love-song. We do not know where to place Him; He has notes which remind us of them all. His own age had come so far as that, but it had not discovered the deepest truth concerning Him.

Then He narrowed the inquiry. Instead of the wider sweep, He turned to the smaller circle, to those who had been with Him, and still were with Him. He said, You have been with Me, you have walked this highway between Jerusalem and Jericho with Me, you have seen the healing and heard the teaching, and watched the opposition, and seen how I have dealt with it. The age has come so far and no farther; the age has lived in the twilight; have you found the light? "Who say ye that I am?" That leads us to the heart of our passage, to Peter's confession.

Nineteen centuries have passed, and the phrasing of this wonderful passage has been the familiar language of the Church of God for all that time; and we have often robbed it of its glory by attempting to add to its meaning. We have twisted it and contorted it, to establish some philosophy of our own, to bolster up some preconceived notion, until we are in danger of missing its music.

The simplest way in which to hear this confession is to attempt to lift ourselves out of our present position, and to put ourselves back into the midst of that first little group of disciples, and to listen as they listened to Peter's confession and our Lord's answer thereto. Peter looked at Him and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Let us take the first part of Peter's confession in all its simplicity; and hear only what Peter undoubtedly desired to express, the Hebrew thought, "Thou art the Messiah." If we say To-day, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, we have a larger conception of the meaning of the title Christ than Peter had. The very word Christ has taken on a more spacious, radiant, and mystic meaning. Peter was a Hebrew, a. child of the Hebrew race. He was born in its midst, and had been nurtured upon its thinking. Every fibre of his personality was affected by its conceptions, and it was as a Hebrew that he said to that Man Who styled Himself "The Son of man," "Thou are the Christ," the Messiah. That is, Thou art the Fulfiller of all the expectations of the Hebrew people, the One by Whom our hopes are to be realized, the One in Whom the economy culminates, the One from Whom there is to break the dawn of a new day and a new era. The Hebrew seers, psalmists, and prophets, had all looked for the coming of One. All through their literature we see the ideal merging into a personality. If we read Isaiah with any carefulness, we see how through the national ideal there gradually emerges into view a Person, and that Person is at once Servant and King; oppressed, broken, afflicted; and triumphant, crowned, victorious. All the men of vision of the Hebrew economy had looked for One Who should fulfill their expectations, realize their hopes. The Hebrew prophets were perpetually speaking of the day of God. Their eyes were always looking forward, and as some of them climbed higher than others on the great mountain peaks, they saw farther along the distances, and, with wonderful accuracy, they described that Person. They waited for Him and watched for Him. He was to break oppression, to establish righteousness, to baptize the nations with the river of God, and wherever the river came there would be life.

At last a son of the nation, a fisherman only, standing in the neighbourhood of the ruins of the ancient temples of idolatry, looking into the face of this Man, Whom he had heard teaching and preaching for nearly three years, said to Him, "Thou art the Messiah," the One for Whom we have all been waiting, for Whom we have all been looking; and he added to that, "The Son of the living God."

We must read the question and answer carefully, if we would find the values. Jesus first said, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" When He spoke to the disciples He said, "Who say ye that I am?" Thus He identified Himself with the Son of man. Peter said, "Thou," the Son of man, "art the Christ, the Son of the living God." The description, "the Son of the living God," is correlative to Christ's description, "the Son of man." I am the Son of man, said Jesus in effect, Who am I? "Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God," said Peter. So as the title, "the Christ," answered the question "Who;" the description, "the Son of the living God," stood in correlation to "the Son of man."

Peter's confession was a very definite one, and yet one that recognized his consciousness of the mystic element in this Man, beyond the things the age had seen. The age had caught the comprehensiveness of the prophetic note. The age had recognized more-the super-naturalness of this Teacher. Peter, recognizing all this, defined it, and went beyond the age, and said; "Thou art the Messiah;" more than John the forerunner, more than Elijah the foreteller, more than Jeremiah the watcher and the one who waited; Thou art the One toward Whom they all looked. There is manifested in all Thy doing, and in all Thy teaching, something that differentiates Thee from all other teachers and men. Son of man, but Son of the living God, the Messiah. United to us in that Thou art our Messiah, yet distanced from us by the mystic gleaming of Thy glory, the fair brightness of Thy Person as it falls upon our lives.

In the King's answer to this great confession let us notice first, His Beatitude;

Secondly, His great announcement;

Finally, the warning note, strange and peculiar at first seeming, yet necessary when carefully considered;

First, the Beatitude. Jesus did not pronounce a reward upon Peter, for the discovery he had made, when He said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah." On the contrary, He was rather describing the condition into which Peter had come by the gain of this new knowledge which he had confessed. Such confession, that He was the Christ, and the Son of the living God, was in itself the result of Divine illumination. Not in the confession, but in the consciousness out of which the confession was born, was Peter blessed. Probably he spoke for the rest as well as for himself, but one man at least had made contact with the purposes and power of God. He said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah." That is the key to the situation. That is the discovery upon which the human soul is remade. That is the discovery upon which human society is to be remade. That is the discovery upon which the city of God is to be built, and the everlasting Kingdom established.

How did Peter learn this fact? Let the Lord continue, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven." He took hold of a common colloquialism of His times and used it. The man in the street would say, Flesh and blood cannot endure this; flesh and blood cannot see through this. Christ said, That confession you have made is not something that another man told you; you have not discovered it; My Father hath revealed it unto thee.

How did the Father reveal that to Peter? Men have tried to account for it in various ways, and all the while the naming truth is in front of them-Through Christ Himself. What Jesus said in effect was this-There is My victory as Revealer. I have come to reveal the Father, and I have been successful, for here is one man who finds in Me the expression of the Father, and knows My relation to the Father, not by the wit or wisdom of man, but by My own revelation of the Father. One soul at least had seen God in Him, and heard God through Him. He had followed and listened, and had come over the mountains, and through the driving mists, until at last it had flamed upon his consciousness that there was God, in His Son, the long-looked-for Messiah, and he confessed it. He had found God, he had touched the eternal principles, he had come into contact with the purposes and plan and power of God. That was the beginning of the new era; the first movement of which, as Christians, we are the continuation.

Then our Lord went farther. He said, "Thou art Peter." That is when he really obtained his name; he had never possessed it properly before. In the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, we read, "He findeth first his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah (which is, being interpreted, Christ). He brought him unto Jesus." Andrew brought his brother Simon. Jesus looked upon him, and said, "Thou art Simon the son of John: thou shalt be called Cephas (which, is by interpretation, Peter)." Now at Csesarea Philippi He said, "Thou art Peter"-I told you what you would be when first My eyes rested upon you. I knew your human setting and pedigree; but I said to you, You shall be rock, a man of strength. He had led the man on and on, and at last He brought him to Caesarea Philippi, and said, Now do you know Me, Simon? Simon said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus said, "Blessed art thou;" not by the discovery of thy flesh-and-blood nature, which is represented by the symbol of Simon Bar-Jonah, hath it been revealed unto thee; but through My speech and life thou hast come to the light. Now thou art Petros, rock.

Then what? "Upon this rock"-not Petros, a piece of rock, a. fragment of the rock nature, but Petra, the essential rock-"Upon this rock I will build My Church." Thou art of the rock nature, and thou shalt be built upon the rock foundation.

"Upon this rock." Remember, He was talking to Hebrews. If we trace the figurative use of the word rock through the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that it is never used symbolically of man, but always of God. So here at Caesarea Philippi. It is not upon Peter that the Church is built. Jesus did not trifle with figures of speech. He took up their old Hebrew illustration-rock, always the symbol of Deity-and said, Upon God Himself I will build My Church. My Kingdom shall consist of those who are built into God, "partakers of the Divine nature."

Mark the intention carefully by taking Peter's final words first-"The living God." Then the word immediately preceding-"the Son of the living God;" and then the first word-"Thou art Messiah." Jesus said; On that, I will build My Church, on Jehovah God, manifest in time in His Son, administering the affairs of the world through that Son as Messiah. Peter had found the foundation, had touched Jehovah, and by touching Him had become petros.

As to the structure to be erected on this foundation our Lord said, "I will build My Church." Our word Church does not correctly express the idea. The word ecclesia was a very familiar word in our Lord's time, and it had a Hebrew and a Greek use. The Hebrews spoke of the ecclesia. They had two words very much alike in their intention, and yet separated in use-synagogue, and ecclesia. They marked the facts in which the Hebrew people were different from other nations. Synagogue meant the assembling together of God's people in worship. Jesus did not say, My synagogue, He said, My ecclesia. The Hebrew use of the word ecclesia marked the Hebrew people as a selected people, as a Theocracy. That was the great thought in the word, a God-governed people, not governed by policy or by human kings. That was the underlying thought in the Hebrew mind. Ecclesia was also in common use in Greek cities at the time. In one of the later chapters of the book of Acts we find that the whole ecclesia came together to discuss their affairs. It does not mean the Church of God. It was the town meeting, an assemblage of free men. No slave could be a member of the ecclesia. Jesus stood in the midst of these Hebrew and Greek ideas, and said, "My ecclesia;" My people, My Theocracy; and My assembly for the purpose of authority and government in the affairs of the world. "My Church."

Of that Church Christ said, "I will build." There was no unveiling here of the method, save as it is illuminated by the happening at the moment, when this one man was brought into relationship with Jesus Christ. We must wait for the teaching of the Spirit in the epistles perfectly to comprehend the meaning of the Master. The thought was afterwards elaborated in the teaching of Peter and of Paul. When Peter himself, later on, wrote about the building of the Church, he spoke of living stones, built on a living Stone. He introduced the thought of life. He lifted the figure out of its natural realm, and infused into it a new quantity and a new element, something which differentiated it from the figure itself, so that by the disparity we learn quite as much as by the actual symbolism. For illumination as to the process of the building we turn to that wonderful fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, with its unveiling of the Church in the process of its erection; "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling." That is the whole fact of the Church. One Body, Christ the Head and all believers the members; One Spirit, the common life of Christ shared by the members. That is the catholic Church.

From that the Apostle proceeded to show how men come into that Body, and share that life, "One Lord," the object of faith presented to the mind; "one faith," fastening upon the Lordship, and yielding to it; " one baptism," that of the Holy Spirit, whereby the believer is made a member of the Lord. Through the illustration of Paul's phrasing we go back to Caesarea Philippi, and watch the process. "One Lord," Jesus; "one faith," the faith which says, "Thou are the Messiah, the Son of the living God;" "one baptism" of the Spirit, that whereby Peter was at Pentecost made a partaker of the nature of his Lord, and a member of the body of Christ, a living stone in the great building. Then the Apostle completed his statement, "One God and Father of us all, Who is over all, and through all, and in all."

This is the Master's method of building His Church, but it will never be seen in all its perfect glory until the morning of the second Advent, when, gathered into perfect unity with Jesus, all the scaffolding removed, it will be manifested in its splendid beauty and glory.

Because Jesus said, "I will build," we are sure of the impregnability of the Church, that nothing can destroy it, that all the forces of darkness can never finally prevent the completion of His Church. No rite or ceremony of man can admit us to that Church. Its strength lies in the fact that He builds it stone for stone, fitting each into its proper place, taking only such as by living faith participate in His own nature, and therefore are ready to be built into His great Church.

We know from that declaration also that the Church will be glorious in beauty. If we are inclined to say that we have not seen very much of its beauty yet, we must remember that we have never seen its corporate beauty. We have, all of us, thank God, had some glimpses of the glory of the Church in its individual members. We have seen and known Christly souls who have not only caught the Spirit of Christ, but who so share the life of Christ, that His beauty, His compassion, and His tenderness are all manifested in their lives. Think for one prophetic moment, in which we forecast the future, of what it will be when that whole glorious company is gathered out and completed, and He presents His Church to God, a glorious thing, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. The beauty of His Church will consist, first of all, in the diversity of individual lives, all types and temperaments gathered into one great harmony; and the beauty will consist finally in the unity of the manifestation of the glories of Christ. In the letter to the Ephesians the Apostle urges us "to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," and, as the argument proceeds, we see that we are to "grow up in all things into Him, Who is the Head, even Christ." If we take that passage as indicating the necessity and importance of individual development, we must not imagine that to be its only meaning, or that it exhausts the passage; "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" Individually we can never come to that. It will take the whole Church to realize the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

The Colossiah epistle, which is the twin epistle of the Ephesian one, throws light upon this, "It was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell ... in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The fullness of God is the fullness of Christ; and the fullness of Christ is the fullness of the Church. That is the radiant splendour of the Church, that when He has completed His building upon the Rock foundation; then His ransomed and redeemed Church will be a medium through which all the glory of God, realized in Himself, shall flash in resplendent glory through ages that are yet unborn.

Christ then went on to speak of two present activities or influences of the Church. First, "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it," That is a description of the aggressive mission, or the destructive powers of the Church. This word of Jesus needs careful consideration. In common with many of the utterances of our Lord, we have been in danger of dealing with it superficially. First, notice that there is a difference between the inclusive statement, "I will build My Church," and the next word, "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." The first word declares His construction of the instrument. The second word declares partially what the function of the instrument shall be; " The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" This cannot refer to the strength of the Church against attack. Careless reading would give us to think that Jesus meant, I build My Church, and though all Hades come up against it, it cannot overcome it The figure the Lord uses does not admit that interpretation. An attacking force never carries its city gates up when it goes to fight It is not a figure of the defensive strength of the Church.

Neither does it mean that the Church shall be able to capture Hades. The Church does not desire to possess Hades. We must look more closely, or we miss the meaning of this great word. It is the figure of escape. It is a declaration of the fact that the Church will be able to make a way of escape from a beleagured city, which is in harmony with the perpetual outlook upon death in the life of the Christian. Death in the New Testament is never getting into harbour; it is getting out of the harbour on to the boundless sea. Tennyson caught the New Testament idea when he sang,

That crossing is outward, not inward. It is a false figure of speech that imagines that in the case of the Christian, death is running into harbour with rent cordage and tattered sails. When Paul speaks of death he speaks of his departure, unloosing, the cutting of the cord that binds him, the liberating of the ship from the restraint of the harbour to the boundless sea for which it was made. Here the idea is the same. The Church is seen in a beleaguered city; and Jesus says, The Church will take the gates of the city and escape into the larger life that lies beyond.

But that is not the deepest thing of all. What is death in the economy of Jesus? The last enemy. What are the enemies that precede death? First, sin, or rebellion, for sin in its genesis is rebellion against God's government. Next, sorrow, in its widest sense, as including all lack and limitation. Then the final enemy-death. There they stand, the three great enemies of the race; sin, sorrow, death. The Christian man sings an anthem when he looks at death, "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" How can he thus sing in the face of death, the last enemy, that has held the race enthralled so long? "The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, Who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Victory begins over sin; it proceeds over sorrow; it ends over death. Jesus Christ says, My Church which I build shall be a great aggressive force. Jesus was always merging the two figures of battle and building. He is the Builder, Who needs builders that He can depend upon. He is the King going forth to conquest, Who needs soldiers He can depend upon. For the moment He speaks as the great Commander leading His Church as an aggressive force, and as the great Commander He sees, not merely the battle, but all the issues of the campaign. The whole field was in the vision of Jesus, as He stood at Csesarea Philippi. He Himself was about to enter into conflict with sin; to enter into conflict with sorrow, wiping tears away, healing wounds; mastering death; and all His people coming after Him, must be people in conflict with sin and sorrow, and finally in conflict with death.

Jesus here saw the whole field stretched out before Him, and with the tone of assured victory in His voice, He did not stay to enumerate the battles and the foes, but passed to the last, and said, "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." My Church shall be an aggressive force moving ever on, overcoming foe after foe, until, presently, when they come to the gates of lie beleaguered city, they shall find their way through them and into the life that lies beyond.

In the view of Jesus the world itself is seen as a beleaguered city held in death's power. In the midst of the world, not outside it, He Himself is working, building; and His Church in the beleaguered city is to be a force intended to wage war against things that harm, and open the way out into life for the beleaguered peoples. The war is within, not without. The Church wins its victory over sin by His blood; wins its victory over sorrow by His sympathy manifest in the presence of sorrow; wins its victory over death by breaking down the fear of death in trusting hearts, and, as the individual soldiers come down to the end, they find that the gates are captured, and they march through, not passing through swollen rivers as we sometimes sing, but dry-shod into the land that lies beyond, without a thread of the garments wetted even by the dews that rise from the river. "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."

If the Church has not been victorious in the conflict with sin and sorrow and death, it is due to the unfaithfulness of the Church. Let us not blame the Master and Leader. Did we but realize all His preciousness, that the security and energy of His life is at our disposal by the Spirit, we should be perpetually victorious, and the Church of God would not only be, "Fair as the moon, Clear as the sun," but "Terrible as an army with banners." If we are defeated in the fight it is because, like the Israelites, we have some Achan in the camp with a wedge of gold or Babylonish garment; and that complicity with the things that are against God, weakens us in our conflict.

But further, the King said; "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven." What are these keys? He was speaking to Hebrews, and the phrase, "the keys" was perfectly familiar to them. They were the insignia of the office of the scribe, the teacher of the law of God. The key was the sign, not of priestly office, but of the office of the scribe. The keys committed to Peter were not the keys of the Church, but the keys of the Kingdom. When Jesus spoke to Peter upon this occasion He spoke to him as a scribe. In chapter thirteen we have the parables of the Kingdom, and they end with the words, "Therefore," because ye have understood, "every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." The parting of the ways had come at Csesarea Philippi. Because Peter had answered, "Thou art the Messiah," he had become a scribe instructed in the Kingdom of heaven. Now, said Christ, I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. You are My scribe. The keys of the Kingdom were given to the illuminated, to those who understood the principle of the Kingdom, the laws of the Kingdom, the method of the Kingdom. When Jesus said to Peter, "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom," He spoke to him as representative man, He spoke to him as the first man who had gained the vision of illumination, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven;" thou shalt have the keys of the Kingdom.

To-day these keys belong to every one who proclaims that Kingdom. They are the warrant for the preacher. They do not constitute a warrant for priesthood, but for the scribe instructed in the Kingdom, preaching, teaching the Kingdom, unlocking its meaning, explaining its law. So that Christ said not merely; My Church is to be an aggressive force; but My Church is to be a constructive force in the midst of the age, teaching the Kingdom and holding the keys of the Kingdom; not to lock, or shut out, or exclude, but to interpret and administer.

In close connection follow the words; "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." In these words He committed to His Church the final authority in human life. These phrases were perfectly familiar to the Jew, we find them in the literature of the time. They said, Shammai binds this, but Hillel looses; which simply meant, Shammai makes this obligatory, but Hillel leaves it optional. Binding simply meant an authoritative declaration concerning what must be done, or what must not be done. Loosing meant permission given to. men to do or not to do. It was purely and simply a Hebrew method of describing ethical authority. Jesus said, In the history of the world, My Church shall not merely be an aggressive force to which Hades' gates shall yield; My Church shall hold the keys of interpretation of the Divine Will; My Church shall erect the moral standards for the world. Whatever My Church shall bind, shall be bound; whatever it shall loose, shall be loosed. In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew Jesus is reported to have said, speaking of the scribes and Pharisees, "They bind heavy burdens," using the word in the same sense as that in which He used it of His Church. The Church is to be the standard of ethics. All the binding and loosing of the Church is to be based upon His authority, and that is what He meant when He said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." In that word of Jesus is discovered the central authority; it is the will of God. Consequently the Church is to be, not merely an aggressive force, conquering His enemies, and opening a way out of all prisons; but it is also to interpret to the world the moral standards of life, and to teach men the will of God.

Every high ideal that obtains to-day in civilized countries has been learnt from the Church of God. The final ethic of the world was born with Jesus. Everything that is high, and noble, and uplifting, in the thinking and legislation of the nations, has come out of His heart by the interpretation of His Church.

If we had been true to Him the world would have learnt more rapidly; but the measure in which it has learnt is the measure in which the Church has been the interpreter of the ethic of God.

In conclusion let us glance at the warning that He addressed to these men. It seems a very strange thing that He said; "Then charged He the disciples that they should tell no man that He was the Christ." If we connect the word "they "of verse twenty with the "My Father" of verse seventeen, we shall better understand the meaning of that charge. Jesus said to Peter, "Blessed art thou, Simon BarJonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven." Then He charged them "that they should tell no man He was the Christ." That is to say, it is not in the power of the Church to reveal the truth about Christ to the soul of a man; that must be the work of God. The work of the Church is not that of preaching a theory, even though it be a correct theory, of the Person of Christ; the work of the Church is that of preaching the Kingdom of God, the evangel of salvation, by bringing men into personal contact with Christ.

We can do what was done when Peter was led to Jesus, we can say to men, "Come and see." But they must look for themselves, they must have God's revelation in their own soul. If men attempt to depend for their Christianity upon another's theory of the Christ, they will be lost. If a man for himself listen, and watch, and wait, until there is personal revelation, there will come to him the light of the Father's own manifestation. So shall he be changed into a living stone, be built upon the Rock, become a member of His Church.

All this was teaching in advance, so far as these men were concerned. They did not understand Him perfectly. He had to begin now to show them how He could put His radiant, virtuous, victorious life at their disposal through dying; and when He did so, they were afraid. Never did they understand Him until the Spirit came, and, in answer to their faith, baptized them into living union with their Lord. They received their final explanation of Christ, His Cross, and His Church, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and so must we.

THE words with which this paragraph opens indicate a new beginning in the mission of the King. "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things . . . and be killed, and the third day be raised up." We are not necessarily to understand that He at once said all these things exactly in this form. He then began to tell them these things. This declaration is Matthew's summary, and constitutes the key to the final section of the Gospel. The ministry of Jesus was no longer mainly a ministry to the multitudes, but a ministry to His own. He devoted himself largely to preparing them for the experience of His Passion. Presently He went up to Jerusalem in solemn and Kingly glory in order to denounce and reject the whole Hebrew nation. Finally we see Him passing through the Passion experiences to complete triumph.

From here, then, to the end, we see the King; first, unveiling His Cross to His own disciples; secondly, authoritatively and officially casting off the Hebrew nation; thirdly, giving His disciples the programme of the coming economy; and, finally, passing to His Passion, and His triumph.

At the commencement of this division dealing with the Passion of the King, we have this section; and there is a sense in which everything that follows is mirrored in this scene. It is, as it were, a preface to the rest. In it we see all the principles operating discovered to the end of the story.

These, moreover, are the principles of action from then until now, and throughout the whole of this age. The understanding of these is absolutely necessary to us at all times as we face our work for our Lord and Master.

The first matter of importance is that of the antagonism revealed. Christ began to talk of His Cross, and Peter at once objected. For a moment, very reverently, let us forget the persons, Christ and Peter, and see the antagonistic principles. The contrast is made plain in the words, "The things of God-the things of men" "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee." Jesus began to say that He must suffer; Peter began to object and to say, "Be it far from Thee, Lord." The things of God are Christ's estimate of necessity and of method. The Son of Man "must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer . . . and be killed . . . and be raised up." The things of men are revealed in Peter's thought, Lord, not that; pity Thyself, have mercy upon Thyself; that be far from Thee; anything but that. The things of God; the method of the, Cross that merges into the victory of resurrection. The things of men; the method of self-seeking that shuns the Cross, and ends in ultimate destruction.

Let us look at these things of God more carefully. "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples that He must go unto Jerusalem." Jerusalem was the place of danger and peril. The line of policy was to miss Jerusalem. The line of expediency, from human standards, was that, wherever else He went, He should not go to Jerusalem. And He began by saying The Son of Man "must go unto Jerusalem." The emphasis of that "must" continues throughout the statement. "He must suffer many things," and "must be killed," and "must be raised again the third day." If we thus repeat the "must" before each of these declarations we notice that there is a value in the "must" which may be interpreted along the line of human experience and passion, and that there is a value in the "must" which defies any such interpretation. There is a sense in which the "must" was the "must" of human surroundings. "He must suffer and be killed," because that was the natural outcome of all that He had been saying and doing. It had been made perfectly evident in the period of the propaganda that men would not have Him, that they would reject Him. They were declining His ethic, refusing His ideal, laughing at Him, and attempting to get rid of Him; and He said to His disciples, There is only one issue to all this; I am compelled to go to Jerusalem, I must suffer, I must be killed. It was heroism, if we only look at it from the low level of human standpoint. Why must He? These men would not have made Him suffer, and would not have killed Hun if He would have accommodated the standard of His teaching to their ideals. But in the mind of the King there was the "must" of a tremendous conviction, and an absolute loyalty to that conviction. It was as though Jesus said, I cannot lower My standard, I cannot deny My ideal, I cannot unsay My manifesto. I have not been uttering theories which I have learned in schools, and which can be abandoned upon occasion. I have talked out of the fibre of My personality. I must. And the "must" means that men who have shown their hostility will carry it out to consummation, and I shall suffer and die.

But that is not the deepest note. His last word was not of suffering. He did not end with dying. There was another must. He must be "raised again." That was not the language merely of an obedient man. It was not the language of a man who said; Well, I have done my best and I am prepared to die for it. It was the language of One Who knew that He held in His own hands the issue of all the way through which He was going; I am Master of the suffering, Master o the killing. I must be raised again. That was the must of the Divine procedure. I must go unto Jerusalem; and the immediate result will be that I shall suffer and be killed; but beyond that will operate the divine power; I must be raised up.

That "must" was older than the circumstances. That "must" came thundering in music out of eternity. When Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, saying, I must go, and I must suffer, and I must be killed, and I roust be raised up again, the force propelling Him was not merely the force of human devotion to an ideal, it was the force of His own ageless life; the Divine and eternal counsels of God were operating in Him and through Him, and driving Him along that pathway. That is what Peter, who misunderstood Him for a little while, came to understand presently. When we turn to the Acts of the Apostles and listen to Peter preaching for the first time in the power of Pentecost, the man who had shunned the Cross because he did not understand it, said, "Him" that-is, Jesus-"being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay." Thus he put the "must" back upon its true basis. He came at last to know that when Jesus said " must," He spoke with the authority of the eternal counsel of God, and was acting under the impulse of the things that are ageless and abiding; that He knew all the movements of eternity; that he saw through the mists of the moment all that lay beyond; past the bloody baptism of His Passion to the radiant morning of His crowning. These are "the things of God."

But what are "the things of men"? First, the things of men are characterized by their lack. Peter did not see the ultimate, did not feel the original. He lived in the small conceptions of the immediate. That is always faulty and a failure. No man can live this hour unless he feels behind him the infinite movement of the ages gone, and before him the infinite pull of the ages unborn. If we live in the power of the things unseen we march to certain victory. Peter, in his letter, subsequently referred to those who see only the things which are near, having forgotten the cleansing. Near-sightedness! Peter was suffering from it at this point. He did not hear the music of the past; did not see the light of the future; his was the limited outlook, and therefore the present was misunderstood. And this was the attitude of all the disciples. They feared the present, and that because of the enthronement of self. They were still living for self, they were still considering self. Jesus Christ was so absolutely void of self-centred life that it did not matter to Him what suffering He endured if the great and ultimate victory should be achieved. We read, "For the joy that is set before Him, "He" endured the Cross." Not the joy of His own victory but of God's victory. It was His joy to know that God, through the processes of His suffering, would win His victory and triumph. Peter saw only the things of men; present darkness, present pain, and present suffering. When he said to Jesus, "Be it far from Thee," he was speaking in affection, but it was near-sighted affection. When we stand in the presence of a soul suffering in the will of God, and employ such words as these, are we not asserting our own inability to bear that very pain, and is not that a refined form of the assertion of self-love within us? A self-centered man is self-circumferenced; a God-centered man is a God-circumferenced man, and to be God-circumferenced is to take in past eternity and coming eternity. Peter, being self-centered, was self-circumferenced, and being self-circumferenced lived in the dust of an hour, and saw only the pain of a process, and none of the glory of the ultimate issue.

But these are antagonistic ideals, they are mutually destructive. The things of God are a stumbling-block to the man who is minding the things of men. Christ placed before Peter the methods of His work, told him of the Cross, and it was a stumbling-block. That is what Paul said in writing to the Corinthians, "The Cross . . . unto Jews a stumbling-block." A man mining the things of men always finds the Cross a stumbling-block.

But it is equally true that the things of men are a stumbling-block to him who minds the things of God.

There is a very remarkable scene here. Peter took Him aside, just a little way from all the rest, and began to rebuke Him. We must not soften that word. Indeed, if we would have the real meaning of it, we must make it a little harsher. He chided Him, he was angry with Him. He said, What is coming to Your Kingdom if You die? How are You going to do the things You hope to do? Then Jesus turned. Probably He turned from him; He turned His back upon him, and His face to the other disciples; and said, "Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me." The man who loves Jesus, but who shuns God's method, is a stumbling-block to Him. A little while before Jesus had said, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church." Now He said: Thou art a skandalon, a rock of offence, a rock still, but a rock in the way; a rock lying across My pathway to hinder Me. He turned His back upon. him because the "must" of eternity was upon His Spirit. Thus with sternness and severity He rebuked the man who, minding the things of men had ventured to rebuke Him, a Man Who was minding the things of God.

How often the very stones of Christ's Church have become stones of stumbling in His way? When does a man become a scandal to the Church? When he obtrudes his view of method as against God's view of method; when he tries to build God's Kingdom without God's Cross, and without God's suffering; when he ventures to say in answer to the "must" of God spoken from the lips of Jesus, Not that way, that is a mistake, but by some easier method; when he attempts to make the method of His victory easy. Every suggestion of this age which leads us to imagine that we may bring His Kingdom in by softness and by sweetness, without blood and suffering, and agony, is a scandal, a stumbling-block.

In view of that mistake of Peter our Lord restated the terms of His discipleship, "If any man would come after

Me." They all wanted to, they all loved Him, they all had affection for Him. He said, If this is so, if any man desires to come after me let him first "Deny himself;" and secondly, "Take up his Cross." Let us consider those conditions carefully. Denying of self is far more than self-denial in our usual sense of that term. Perhaps we may best illustrate it by declaring that we have no right to make any sacrifice for Jesus Christ which He does not appoint. When a man takes on him some effort of sacrifice, simply because he thinks sacrifice is the right thing, and does not wait for orders, he is as surely a skandalon to his Lord as when he does not deny himself and take up his cross at the command of the Master. The true disciple chooses neither song nor dirge, neither sunshine nor shadow; has no choice but to know his Master's will and to do it. If He appoint for us the blue waters of the lake and all the sunshine of the summer, then let us rejoice therein, and not vex our souls because we know no suffering and pain. If He appoint a via dolorosa and a sunless sky, then God make us willing to take the way, because the way is His appointment. We must be in His will if we are to cooperate with Him.

The programme of the disciple is expressed in these words, "Follow Me." That is, make the "must" of My life the "must" of your life. I must. Does not that mean suffering? It may, or it may not. Suffering is not the deepest thing in the "must." The deepest thing is this; I must cooperate with the purpose of God, whatsoever it may be. I must co-operate with Him towards that resurrection that means ransom and redemption. On the way there may be the suffering and the killing there surely will be some measure of it but the suffering and the killing are not the deepest things. The deepest thing is that we get into touch with God and do His will; and whether it be laughter or crying, sorrowing or sighing, the secret of life is to follow Him on the pathway of loyalty to the Divine will.

He explained this in gracious terms when He said, "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it." This is the commonplace philosophy of true life. It is always so. Find any man who is always saving his life, and he will lose it. The way to lose our physical life is always to be saving it. The way to lose our mental life is to be careful that it never feels the storms and bruises of passion. The way to lose our spiritual life is to be so perpetually anxious to get into heaven that we never move into line with God in His work for the building of His Kingdom here on earth.

Then the King made His appeal in two questions: "What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory."

The Judge will be the Lord, Whose Cross you will not share to-day. To whom will you appeal from His verdict? The last throne is His throne, and at the final assize He presides.

If you save your life to-day, how will you buy it back, for the Man for Whom you will not suffer is the Man coming to reign in His glory?

The final appeal, therefore, is that we fall into line with His progress, and with the things of God; because He is also to come in the glory of His Father; and the glory of His Father is the outworking in history of the things of God upon which His heart and mind were set in the days of His flesh. And that means, first of all, a facing of the Cross.

The antagonism abides. We need not go far to find it; we can find it in our own heart. We hear in our own heart the searching and tremendous voice saying, "I must." We hear also in our own heart something that says; Not that, let me escape that, let that be far from me. To which are we going to yield? Let us in imagination hurry back to the rocky places of Caesarea Philippi and ask ourselves, Which "must" shall master us? Are we going with Him in the will of God, enwrapped by the forces of eternity, to suffer and to triumph; or are we going to stand alone, saving our own miserable lives, and so lose them? May God help us to decision.