(Revised by the Writer.)
I THANK God with you for His mercy to your son and daughter, and trust you may have the comfort of seeing them grow in the knowledge and likeness of the Lord, walking in the truth, and being ensamples to their brethren, as well as witnesses to sinners.
What a marvelous thing Christianity is I would that we realized far more than we do its character and power. In olden times God was hidden behind the veil, and man could not get near Him. It would have been death to him, “save the high priest once every year, not without blood.” “The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.” (Hebrews 9:88The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: (Hebrews 9:8).) The light that in those days shone “at sundry times and in divers manners.... unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:11God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, (Hebrews 1:1)), served only to make the darkness and distance from God to be the more painfully felt by the godly. The prophets themselves, as the Holy Ghost tells us in 1 Peter 1:10-12,10Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: 11Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 12Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:10‑12) searched diligently into their own testimonies, and the most enlightened of them all was constrained to cry, “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” (Isaiah 45:1515Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. (Isaiah 45:15).) Enough had been revealed to enable the prophet to call God a Saviour, and at the same time to convey the sense of His hiding Himself. When the blessed Lord came upon the scene, there was no longer a hiding. It was God come out from behind the veil, in the person of His Son, that man might know Him, and be blessed with His presence. The true light was now amongst men. This introduced a great change; but it only made manifest man’s moral ruin to the full. The ways of God’s goodness before the law, and under the law, had proved the incompetency of man to meet the righteous claims of God; so the presence on earth amongst us of Him in whom all goodness dwelt, and displayed itself in every act, and in every word, only found that in his best estate, as descended from Adam, man was incapable of appreciating even the goodness of God Himself; for he hated and crucified the Lord of life and glory. The cross of Christ was thus the undeniable expression of our natural enmity against God, and at the same time the highest possible expression of the love of God to us; and in virtue of the atoning work accomplished thereby, the God of all grace—having raised up the Lord Jesus from the dead, and given Him, as man, a place in the heavens—is calling sinners into eternal life and blessing in association with Him there through faith. The believer is blessed with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ; for we are accepted in Him, and His hopes and interests are ours. (Read Ephesians 1 and 2. Our citizenship is no longer in this world, “but in heaven; from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body,” &c. (Philippians 3:2121Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:21)); when we shall be taken to be with Him also, where He now is, forever (read 1 Thessalonians 4:13-1513But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. (1 Thessalonians 4:13‑15)); where this coming of the Lord to receive us to Himself, according to His promise in John 14, is presented to us in detail as our immediate hope.
In the meantime the believers are, by one Spirit, baptized into one body, of which Christ is the Head. This is what distinguishes Christianity from all that went before it. The blessing committed to Adam’s keeping was earthly, and he forfeited it through sin. The blessing presented to the Jews was earthly also; it was national pre-eminence, with Jehovah for their God dwelling with them, the fountain of all blessing down hero upon earth— “Immanuel, God with us.” But Immanuel was rejected and crucified, and the blessing of Israel, and of the nations of the earth under His blessed rule, is in abeyance until the Lord shall have completed His parenthetical work, which occupies the interval between His being rejected, and crucified in weakness, and His coming forth again in the day of His power. But if, as we have seen, man would not have gone with Him to bless Him on earth, how marvelous is the grace of God that will have men with Himself, in His own blessed sphere and region! How marvelous the grace that turned men’s shutting out from earth of the Son of the living God, into the opening of the way for men into heaven itself! “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
May your children so learn their true place and blessedness in Christ, as to have their hearts set upon Him; and that communion with Him may be the home of their spirits, and the doing of His good pleasure, the sufficient reward of their service of Him, in a world that calls itself Christian, but sees no beauty in anything that is His.