AS holiness and sin are opposites, so our feeling toward these must be represented by the sentiments of love and hatred. To grow cool in love for righteousness is to lose some of the abhorrence for sin. Let us, therefore, cultivate in ourselves hatred for sin, selfishness, impurity, and every evil way, that we may find it the easier to cultivate in our hearts the beautiful graces of the Spirit.

“We hear so much said of this suspected text, and that doubtful passage; of this probable interpolation from the margin, and of the long quarrel which scholars have waged over that Greek letter, mark, or accent, that we sometime forget that God, in his constitution of the Bible, has made it impossible to seriously pervert it.

THERE is a particular reason why God should permit persecution to come upon his consecrated ones. “The Lord your God doth prove you,” test you. Why? What is he proving? We profess to be his loyal children. We profess to be laying down all that we have. And now “the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

SATAN, the Adversary of the church, is strong and lion-like, vigilant and fully awake. As the Apostle Paul declares, he seeks to use every opportunity against us. He lies in wait, seeking to devour us.

Meantime, according to divine arrangement, we must use our earthly bodies, it follows that “we cannot do the things that we would,” because “in our flesh dwelleth no perfection.” But if, through the weakness or ignorance of the flesh we err, the divine provision for us is that our Advocate, whose ransom merit was applied to us, will appear for us (figuratively apply his merit) for the cancellation of our unintentional misdeeds and thus maintain us in the Father’s sight without spot or wrinkle.

Intelligent people consider it very wise and proper that several years of study be devoted to preparation for the few years of earthly life. How much study, then, should be considered proper for our preparation for the eternal life and kingdom blessings?

As every Israelite was required to gather manna for himself, so each Christian is required to gather and appropriate the truth. We must do our own part along spiritual lines, as well as along earthly lines. The graces of the Holy Spirit cannot be expected to come to perfection without preparatory planting, pruning, and cultivating.

As he sacrificed earthly interests and advantages and privileges and pleasures that he might die the sacrificial death in accord with the divine plan, so let us remember that we have covenanted similarly to be “dead with him.”

All the work of this Gospel Age, is the getting ready of the food for the world, and of the blood which will be sprinkled upon them. But the Message of our Lord in our text was not intended for the world. As He tells us, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Divine light shows us the temple at Jerusalem as more than a house of worship for its time, as a type of a greater Temple to be built by a greater than Solomon. That greater Temple, the New Testament assures us, is the Church, the Body of Christ, of which he is the Head. This is the Temple of which St. Peter declares that himself and all of the Lord’s thoroughly consecrated followers are antitypical, the living stones or members.