Sound Reasoning Paralleled.
THE secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, Rev. Arthur Mitchell, D. D., delivered a sermon at the late meeting of the Board, on the "Necessity of Foreign Missions." In this sermon he took decided ground against the too prevalent idea that in some way or other the heathen will be saved without the gospel. Commenting on Acts 26:17, 18, he said:— "Christ's words and his action here exhibited the necessity of sending this missionary [Paul] to the heathen, in order that they might 'receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified.' That necessity was so great that it justified the reopening of Heaven by the ascended Saviour in order that it might be met; justified the appointment of the first of living men [as missionary]; justified Christ's devotement of himself to a life which should wear him out and prematurely kill him. For Christ to do all this, and to say that he did it in order that the heathen might be forgiven and saved, when he knew that there was no781necessity for it in order that they might be saved—when in fact he knew that they would be saved anyway whether the gospel were carried to them or not—would have been impossible." No one can deny that this is sound reasoning. As Dr. Mitchell says, it is impossible to conceive of Christ sending Paul to preach to the heathen at such an immense sacrifice, unless there was an urgent necessity for such preaching. We think there are few, if any, professed Christians who would question the correctness of this reasoning. And now we wish to present a few thoughts in exactly the same line. Christ himself said to the Jews, "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." John 5:40. This text would imply that he had life to bestow, and this is proved in the twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter, in which Christ says that he has life in himself. In John 10:10 Christ, speaking of the people, said, "I am come that they might have life." Again we read in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." These last two texts show that Christ came for no other purpose but to give life to those who should believe on him, and that those who do not believe on him could not have life, but should perish. Now we say that for Christ to come to this earth and voluntarily take upon himself man's nature with all its attendant ills, and for God to send his only begotten Son to be tempted of Satan, despised and rejected of men, and put to a shameful death, in order that men might have life, when they were already in possession of it, would have been an utter impossibility. Such a supposition is an impeachment not only of the love but of the wisdom of God. And yet this ground is really taken by every one who holds that man is immortal; that he is by nature endowed with a life which cannot be extinguished. Who can fail to see that the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul really exhibits God in the light of a monster who would sacrifice his only Son for nothing? And yet there are persons who tell us that it is of no practical importance what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul.