It was my privilege once to use this text and course of thought as an introduction to an appeal for an offering for foreign missions; and I think there is no other kind of appeal that brings the tones of the Master Himself more distinctly to a Christian congregation. In much of our religious and charitable work natural sentiment, and even self-interest, come in to re-enforce our Christian principle. We might be doing the same thing for other reasons if we were not Christians at all. But this work of supplying the Gospel of Christ to distant unknown races of men is the one thing which we almost certainly would not attempt except for His sake, and through motives of obedience to Him. Our response to this appeal will show, better than almost anything else, perhaps, how we are disposed to treat Him for His own sake, when He comes up to our door alone.

Blessings await that elect Church, or that elect Christian, who on hearing such a summons makes haste to open the large upper room, ready and furnished.

That disciple of old whose soul was most susceptible to the honor and the significance of the divine election became by a gracious necessity the Apostle to the Gentiles, the great missionary of the early Church. That great doctrine of election which the Church has been studying ever since

from his lips was for him little more than a chapter from his own religious experience; and the practical and inevitable outcome of the doctrine for the man himself was that imperial ambition to preach among the nations everywhere the unsearchable riches of Christ. He must preach at Antioch, Galatia, Macedonia, Greece, Rome, Spain; the call by which his Lord had honored him had put him in debt to all men everywhere; and he could know no rest until that debt was paid. We have been asking what you must add to the common ethical ideals of men to make them Christian, or what is the distinctive peculiarity of the duties to which Christ elects His disciples, and I do not believe you can find anywhere a more illuminating answer than the personality of this man himself, this missionary, Paul.

CHAPTER IX

WALKING WITH GOD

WE have been dwelling upon the thought that God's election of men is to service. The election imposes grave responsibility; and to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.

Nevertheless, it remains true that when God chooses a man He is showing him the greatest possible favor. The election is to service truly; but the service itself is a high privilege, and, when faithfully rendered, brings also great recompense of reward.

It would not be right to close our study of this scriptural theme without furnishing some clear statement of the favor involved in the choice of God. The favor, as the last two chapters have prepared us to expect, is nothing less than the fellowship of God Himself for time and for eternity. The service to which He elects His chosen ones is a co-operation with Himself; and the reward is His continued presence. "I am continually with thee," cries the Psalmist, speaking for all elect souls everywhere; "thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and

afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forever more." 1

So our Lord incorporates this entire doctrine of the Divine call in His parable, when He says of the shepherd, "He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him; for they know his voice." 2 Paul also ends his rhapsody on the glories of the elect by declaring his persuasion that "neither death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The high privilege, therefore, to which God chooses men is nothing less than eternal fellowship with Himself.

My little book shall close with two scriptural representations of this privilege, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New. That from the Old Testament is found in the book of Genesis, the twenty-fourth verse of the fifth chapter: "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him."

1Ps. lxxiii, 23–25 ; xvi, 11.

John X,
3, 4.

'Rom. viii, 38, 39.

The New Testament is largely a book of doctrine and of action, revealing the truths that we need to know concerning God; and also painting the picture of a life of active service, the life of Jesus first, and then of His disciples. The picture shows the outside of these lives, but we often long to know more about their inner history, their secret temptations, conflicts, prayers, victories. Generally we have to guess at that part of the story. Paul's phrase, "things which it is unlawful for a man to utter,” seems to express the feeling of all the New Testament saints about that side of their life which "is hid with Christ in God."

Now, is not this one reason why God has caused those books of the Old Testament to be bound up into one Bible with the books of the New? Because the Old does often tell that other part of the story; -in the Psalms, for instance; it opens out the hidden side of a good man's life and growth, and often tells us much more about him, and what he thinks, and what he fears, and what he hopes, and what at last he begins to believe, than about what he visibly does. Those earlier narratives have the transparency of childhood; and just as a child, or an older person whose mind retains still the immaturity and simplicity of childhood, can open his heart to us and tell his inner experiences in a way that becomes impossible after a certain degree of mental and