will say, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son." It was the publican whom Luke portrays as having been so conscious of God that he smote upon his breast saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The story of the crucifixion as depicted by Luke tells the story of the cross as the divine estimate of sin, as well as the divine remedy for sin.

In connection with this very truth there is another certainty closely related; that the final idea of God is his sovereign fatherhood by the union of love and righteousness in him; not the Father of sentimentalism and of indulgence, but one who loves men because he hates sin in men, and because of what they may be. As Dr. John Watson has said, "With Jesus, God and Father were identical." Fatherhood was not a side of deity, it was the center. God might be a king and judge. He was first of all, last of all, and through all a father. Under fatherhood is gathered every other revelation. Jesus even reasoned in terms of the Father. "If then ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." And then Luke enlarges upon God's fatherhood, as he makes it a universal fatherhood. When one compares the genealogies of Matthew and Luke as portraying the lineage of Christ, Matthew writes for the Jew and traces the lineage of Jesus only to Abraham. Matthew was only emphasizing his Jewish ancestry. But Luke, with the thought of the relation of God to the whole race through Jesus Christ, traces the lineage of Christ through many a long line of Jewish ancestry, back through Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, back through Shem and Noah and Enoch and Seth, "the son of Adam, the son of God." The humanity of Jesus traced

through all these mighty progenitors, and then "Son of God"-God the Father of all men by creation-God the Father of all men in that he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come unto him to live. Through Jesus Christ, God as Father has made provision for all mankind,

"For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man's mind;

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind.”

There follows from this great thought the logical and natural result of the responsibilities of God's children who have said, "We are not only thine by right, but thine by choice." "And ye shall be witness unto me," saith Luke, "both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” The certainties of religion give it the missionary character, give it its witnessing character, because Christ has made God to be understood, to be believed in, to be loved, to be followed; because Christ has given the soul a consciousness of its sinful nature through his revelation of God; because Christ has revealed God as a sovereign Father, as the final idea of God, and revealed him as a universal Father. Luke gathers together these certainties and uses them with tremendous propulsive force as he exclaims, "Ye shall be witnesses everywhere, for ye shall be endued with power from on high." It is a proof of the certitude of the things in which he instructed Theophilus and all the world, that these certainties have introduced the missionary age of the church, and with great accumulating power is the church rising to her responsibility. The relation of Christ to the individual causes him to issue his command to the individuals, “Go ye into all the world and

preach the gospel to every creature." But may one not believe that in this day when co-operation is being emphasized and expressed as the great solvent of material and spiritual problems, the Christ at the heart of society should exclaim to society, to organizations, even to the great Anglo-Saxon race, "Go ye into all the world." Events are just now rapidly developing with reference to this mighty accomplishment of a world's salvation. This war with Spain is not so significant in itself, but it has already forced America out from its hermitage, as it has been encircled by the mountain range of the Monroe Doctrine, that it may find itself leveling he mountains which have circumscribed it, and allying itself with Great Britain, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the pagan races of the world. One may well

believe that nations will be born in a day, as races surcharged with God's certainties shall give momentum to spiritual forces greater than the forces which annihilate the fortifications of an enemy, or destroy navies and armies.

But the certainties of religion must take account of the other life, and of this Luke was not unmindful, as he makes his gospel lay such stress upon the continuity of life as an impregnable certainty. Life is not affected by the dissolution of soul and body, for Luke reveals that "Lazarus the beggar died, and that the rich man also died, and the rich man lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and seeth Abraham afar and Lazarus in his bosom." Life is represented as a continuity. The Sadducees, the skeptics of that day, would try to entangle him as to the resurrection by proposing a question as to the wife who had seven husbands, and "whose wife shall she be?" And Jesus made an epoch in the history of religion when he seized the opportunity to unfold the doctrine of the future life: "The children

of this world marry and are given in marriage, but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now, that the dead are raised even Moses showed at the bush when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living." And then the narrative culminates in the crucifixion work and the resurrection triumph, and the certainty of eternal life is confirmed, for eternal life begins in him who heareth his word and believeth on him who sent Jesus Christ into the world.

This has been the comfort of the great as well as of the humble. Gladstone's greatness revealed itself not only as a statesman and an orator, a scholar and an author and financier, but as one who calmly and confidently waited for the great change to come to him; and, believing that life in Christ knew no ending, could say as the shadows gathered, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee;" for he was established in the certainties of religion.

And so we look upon this record of Luke, and upon what Mr. Gladstone calls "the Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," as the foundation of our certitude. And it is then that we are able to say, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have delivered to him against that day."

Text:

THE WHITE FIELDS AND THE FEW

LABORERS.

BY REV. MARCUS SCOTT,*

*

Pastor Central Presbyterian Church, Detroit.

'Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.” John 4:35.

The scene depicted here is intensely interesting. Our Savior was busy teaching and healing in the towns and villages of Galilee. Multitudes followed him, attracted by his love, and from his interest in them led to look to him with hope. Their helpless condition struck a chord in that heart that is never appealed to in vain. Jesus was moved with compassion; for he saw them his own fellow-countrymen-scattered abroad as sheep, shepherdless and uncared for, and turning to his disciples he said, "Say not ye, there are yet four months and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they

* Mr. Scott is a native of Berwickshire, Scotland. He studied four years in Edinburgh University, and four years in New College, Edinburgh, under Professors Blackie and Calderwood, Davidson and Rainy. In 1887 he came to Canada and was assistant to Rev. D. J. Macdonnell, St. Andrews church, Toronto. In 1889 he accepted a call to Campbellford, and 1895 to Central church, Detroit. He took a post-graduate course at Queen's College, Can., and received the degree of B. A., 1893.