Abra

Most High need not toil to build an abiding place. Theirs is made in the heavens. ham saw the city four thousand years ago, for he was looking for "the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." As the midnight of the age draws nigh, the

expectant church beholds the signs of the coming King, in whose kingdom they are to reign. Soon "that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God," will be a present reality. Bristol, Quebec.

Although the precious doctrine has sometimes been hedged about by crude and fantastic theories, it is still our privilege to love the appearing of the Lord. We rightly refuse to let the claims of an arrogant perfectionism hide from our eyes the beautiful possibilities of the life of faith. Nor should we permit extravagances of teaching to blind us to the power and beauty that live in the hope of the coming of the Lord.

The Christians of the early church were constantly inspired by the expectation that Jesus Christ would come back to earth, visibly and in solemn splendor. If we accept the testimony of James and Jude and John and Peter and Paul, we have unmistakable evidence that the disciples cherished this sublime anticipation. There are some New Testament passages in which possibly, if not probably, the coming of Christ refers to the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to the destruction of Jerusalem, to the presence of Christ by His Spirit in great world-crises and reforms, to the article of death. After making generous allowance for these there is a sturdy residuum that can refer only to that "divine event to which the whole creation moves." Indeed, many passages lose all meaning if they do not justify us in looking for the return of the now ascended Saviour.

And since the days when apostles announced the coming again of Jesus, the church has, through the creeds, been speaking without faltering of her joyous expectation. There have been hours when the hope-light burned dimly, when worldly-heartedness and a lurking skepticism have combined to belittle the promises.

Yet the confessions, from the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene, the Athanasian, down to the pronouncements made in our own times, have reflected faith in the promise of Christ's unveiling with its accompaniments of reward. "We believe that Thou shalt come."

The stress and earnestness characteristic of apostolic toils had their roots in this great hope. The early disciples had a passion for the saving of men; they were not star-gazers. They accepted the comfort of Christ's indwelling by His Spirit, while they ardently desired the day of Christ, knowing that His return to earth would mean the bringing in of a better day. When loved ones were laid away in the dust of the earth there was solace in the assurance that at His appearing the Lord of Life would raise them that slept. When sorely vexed in seeing "Captive Good attending Captain Ill,'' they learned patience in view of the coming of the Righteous Judge. When their own spiritual deformities brought them anguish, they were soothed and made buoyant in the confidence that in the fair Day of Christ they would bear the likeness of their Lord.

For us, as for them, this doctrine is surcharged with profound ethical consequence. To realize that our citizenship is in heaven where tarries our Saviour King, is to accept as holy tasks the obligations of earthly citizenship. To know that He watches over us as we watch for Him is to do lowly duties with cheerful hearts. Remembering that the hour draws on apace, we shall be saved from indolence; and Christ will find us ready in the day of His power. The promise of the coming forbids all morbid despair regarding the social order. We attack our problems with victory in our hearts.

Wherefore if we would be refreshed and girded for service, let us stand with the first disciples at Olivet and receive with meekness the message that turns mourning into gladness and sighing into song.

"For as a cloud received Him from their sight,
So with a cloud will He return ere long:
Therefore they stand on guard, by day, by night,
Strenuous and strong."

Kansas City, Kan.

The change in revivals is very significant, not to say alarming. No one can read the Bible accounts of revivals under the prophets and the apostles, but that they will note the manifest sorrow for sin, repentance towards God, and marked signs of regeneration. These were preceded by prayer that was pleading and anxious crying before God. At times, nights were spent in prayer, with great distress for the souls of men. Days of fasting were appointed for heart examination to get into close communion with God. Every example of effectual revival work in these times of primitive Christianity was one of deep spiritual power and blessing.

The ten days of Pentecost were of this kind. They were effectual in working mightily for God. It was in these days that the divine pattern for revival work and revival experience was seen in the strongest exhibition of divine love and grace. The Holy Spirit had such sway over the hearts of sinners, that with deep concern and great alarm they cried out and sought to know what they should do to have their hearts and lives changed.

This was the Lord's pattern of a revival and its friends were evident. I do not say we have entirely departed from this pattern, but there is every evidence that in a large measure, the saints in their revival work have drifted from the example and pattern of the living God. The Lord's Word does not and cannot change, grace cannot change, repentance cannot change, the blood in its power to cleanse from all sin, cannot change, the new birth in its nature and fact cannot change, and faith that appropriates the whole truth of the living God cannot change. Therefore, why do we see such frequent and extensive revivals, with so little evidence of concern on the part of those who are named in the discipleship of Jesus; and of the conversion of sinners after the divine pattern? Are we drifting away from the Word of God, its truths and requirements? Is it not strange, with Bibles in our hands, and its truths so patent and clear, that so many enter the door of church life, and give so little evidence of vital knowledge and union with Christ, or have even a semblance of heart experience in the Christ life?

Never have ministers had such possibilities as at the present time. Sinners everywhere are hungry for the bread of life. I do not say they always know just what their hunger craves. It may be they think it is pleasure, a church entertainment, some worldly device, wealth of earthly goods, the friendship of the world or worldly fame. But when all these have been tried and have failed to satisfy the soul's longing, they are still left hungry, dark and blinded by sin. They know not the way of life, and know not where to find it. They look on formal professors and see little evidence that their souls are feasting on heavenly manna, or hear little testimony to indicate that Christ is enthroned in their hearts.

There are great possibilities in the great revivals of our day, and a living ministry may throw off the worldly spirit. By consecration, prayer and faith, all may receive the blessed experience of the deeper Christ life, and spread the Christly banquet and feed the hungry multitude. If this is done, to the extent that is within our reach, the redeemed disciples would be speedily increased a hundred-fold. Birmingham, Ala.

Honor to whom Honor is Due.

To the Editor of "Record of Christian

Work":

I do not see why a publication should not be honored, as well as an individual, for usefulness. And if this is true, great credit is due to the Christian Herald for its magnificent benevolences in recent years. It has championed every needy cause and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for those who were in distress and want in every quarter of the globe. A few years ago it was the Russian peasants, again it was starving India, and more recently it has been Cuba's "reconcentrados," for whom the paper has collected over $138,000. Many a needy cause besides these has been aided by this paper, and through its efforts the kingdom of God has been extended.

After all, the world wants practical Christianity, whether in the individual, the church or the religious publication, and the work which Dr. Klopsch has accomplished by secur ing the interest and aid of his readers in behalf of practical Christianity is one of the most effective ministries of the times.

E. Northfield, Mass.

D. L. MOODY.

DEAR FRIEND:-Here are a few facts and figures that will give you some idea of the miseries suffered by the women of India. There are nearly twenty-three millions of widows, of these fourteen thousand are babywidows under four-years of age and sixty thousand girl widows between five and nine years of age. Nearly one-fourth of the whole number of widows are young. Besides, there are many millions of deserted wives, whose condition is as bad, and in some cases worse, than that of the widows. The lives of many millions of these poor women are made so miserable that they prefer death to life, and thousands commit suicide yearly.

Women are considered by the Hindus as a thing that exists solely for their use. She is given away like a lifeless thing to the man who is to be her husband, but who does not consider her his equal. He is commanded by the religion to enjoy her without attachment," and never to love her or put his confidence in her. Some women are set apart religiously for the use of the men of all classes and castes. They are consecrated and "married" to the idols in the temples, and are brought up from their girlhood to live as prostitutes.

Some time ago the Lord put it into my mind to start a mission especially to rescue and bring these poor miserable widows and deserted wives to the knowledge of Christ. The way was made clear last year and the mission started. The Lord has given nearly three hundred destitute young widows to me, and many more may come to our "Mukti home." two hundred and thirty of the above number have been converted and baptized, and I hope they will in time learn to love and preach to their sisters the Christ-like love which has made them pure and happy.

Over

But something more must be done for these children than rescuing and teaching them to read and write. A great deal is accomplished when they are converted, but greater work still remains to be done-it is to keep up the spiritual life in them. They must all be filled with the Holy Ghost and live Christ-like; otherwise they will be worse than heathens and more degraded than before. We must continually hold these girls up in prayer.

I wonder if there are Christian people who would be interested in taking one or more of my girls and make them special objects of prayer? Two, three or more Christian believers may take up one girl-pray for her spiritual well-being, by mentioning her name, and ask God to provide for her temporal needs also and to make her a missionary to her sisters. If prayer circles are started for the advancement of this New Mukti Mission to the widows, a vast amount of good will be done. I want to get Christian friends to pray definitely and regularly for this mission, and I believe that the prayers of believing Christians will so move the Throne of Grace, that all, or nearly all, of the widows and destitute wives and degraded women of India will be saved and become missionaries, and the whole female population of our country will be evangelized before long. Is there anything too hard for Him? Nothing! All is possible with God, and if we believingly ask and expect to get it, it shall be done for us.

I want you to interest Christian friends to form prayer circles for the benefit of the Indian widows whom God has given me. Friends may call these circles, "Mukti Prayer Circles," after the Mukti Mission to widows. God gave me this name Mukti for the mission -it means "Salvation." It is only a suggestion to our friends; they may take any other name they like. I shall be glad to give the names of girls to friends desiring to pray for them. Letters may be sent to me at any time through the RECORD OF CHRISTIAN WORK, E. Northfield, Mass.

In conclusion I thank you for the special interest you take in our mission and pray God to bless you abundantly.

VI.

"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven: and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked: for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of Hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Malachi iv.

"With a curse"-so ends this prophecy of Malachi. After this there is to be no prophetic voice, no direct message of God for over four hundred years. It is of the utmost importance that the word shall be one that shall arrest attention, one that shall be possessed of the power to abide. What is it? The word "CURSE." This is, moreover, the last word of the Old Testament, and that, I believe, of divine purpose, with solemn intention.

As we look at it a little more closely, we shall see that behind the fact that the canon ends thus, lies the tenderness of the divine heart. God's last message to these people is intended to arouse them, in order that the threatened curse may never rest upon them. Let us proceed to consider:

(1) The final word itself.

(2) The gospel of love by which it is permeated.

(3) The great announcement: "Behold the day cometh."'

I.

THE FINAL WORD.

The whole history of man to this point is one of failure, the only word therefore that is possible from the God of all per

fection, as revealing His attitude toward this state of things, is the word "curse." Read that history from the standpoint of the divine, and observe how constantly it manifests the faithfulness of God, the tenderness of His heart, and the ever-moving compassion of His nature toward all men; but side by side with the bright and wondrous story of infinite pity and untiring compassion, you have the record of human failure, disobedience, rebellion, murmuring. Every dispensation,-the Garden of Eden, the period of conscience, the patriarchal age, the Mosaic economy, the day of the Kings, the times of the prophets-ends in failure, and when God looks upon the people whom He had called and created, in order that they may be a blessing to the whole earth, He says to them:-"Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." But in that first word of the last clause shines a ray of hope and of gladness-"Lest I come."

The Old Testament does not end with a curse pronounced, but with a curse threatened; not with a word declaring that hope is forever past, and that there can be no redemption and no deliverance, no further word,— but with a statement intended to teach that God has not yet pronounced this curse and that He does not desire to do so. "Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." The word with which the prophecy and the old dispensation end, -end, that is so far as their teaching is concerned-is the last appeal of love, and is aimed at averting calamity, by announcing it as the natural sequence of disloyalty and sin.

The Jew always understood this as a message of love, and the Rabbis in the Synagogue from then until the coming of Christ, and in the days of Christ, and until this day, never end Malachi with its last verse. They conclude with the fifth verse. Reading the last: "And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children: and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse"; they revert to the fifth "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."

In the Septuagint, the fourth verse is lifted

out of its place and put at the end, so that the Bible does not end with the curse. Take the verses five, six and four, and read them in sequence: "Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments." The fact that the Rabbis read the message in this way, and that the Septuagint has lifted the fourth verse, without altering the number, and put it at the end, reveals most unmistakably the way in which the Hebrew nation understood this message. They did not regard it as a message of anger, but as a message of love; not the pronouncement of a curse, but a warning against an awful calamity which might befall them. It is evident that they understood this final message to be a gospel, not of wrath but of love, and there, is no room for doubt that their exposition was a correct interpretation of the meaning intended; that God, looking at this people in their apostasy, foolhardiness and impertinence, yet gave them this last message, before He sealed the prophetic book, a message not of anger but of infinite love.

II.

A GOSPEL OF LOVE.

This final word then, being a warning, and not a sentence, is a Gospel of Love, and is closely connected with a declaration of the possibility of escape from the threatened curse, and a statement of the condition of such escape.

In the promise of the coming of Elijah it is said that "He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers." That turning of heart marks the condition upon which the curse may be averted. The mission of Elijah as here indicated is not social but spiritual. It is not that he will come to bring about reconciliation in the families of the people. "The fathers," are the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, from whose ideals of life and state of heart these children have so sadly wandered, and the mission of Elijah shall be that of turning these wandering ones back to those ideals, and to that state of heart.

Paraphrasing the statement, getting the inner thought of it and putting it in other words we may say: Israel shall be in that day Israel indeed, in spirit and inward life, and not in the mere outward tokens of their ritual and service. The existing position, as we have seen, was that of an altar set up, with sacrifices laid thereon, and feasts, and fasts, and all the externals which marked them off as the peculiar people of God strictly observed, while their heart was far away; so that of them Abraham, if he had moved into their midst, would have said "These are not my children;" or Jacob-"These are surely not the sons of the man whom God called Israel." They had missed their way, and corrupted the covenant, but God's purpose could not be altered, and therefore if the curse threatened is not to become actual, then it will be because "their heart shall be turned back to the fathers, and the heart of the fathers to the children." When they shall go back to His principles and be what He intended they should be; when the externals with which they have been satisfied shall be nothing in their eyes, save the outward expression of the inner meaning of the covenant of their God with them, then shall the curse be removed, and showers of blessing fall from open windows. That is the gospel of love.

THE COMING OF ELIAS.

And how is this to be brought about? "Behold, I will send you Elijah before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (verse 5). Elijah, another messenger, is to be sent. The prophecy is not fulfilled; the matter is still open, one other voice is to be sounded, one other message to be delivered, and that voice will sound and that message be delivered just as the King Himself is coming.

Now, the fulfillment of that promise, we all understand, was in the coming of John the Baptist, but because there are apparently contradictory verses concerning it, let us make a digression to consider them.

John i. 21: "And they asked him❞—that is, John the Baptist,-"What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, 'I am not.'" Matt. xvii. 10: "And His disciples asked Him, "that is, Jesus,-"saying, 'Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?' Jesus answered and said unto them, 'Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things; but I say