The Sin that Easily Besets.
By Editor
A full explanation of these scriptures would require much to be written; and should such an explanation be given, we apprehend it would contain many a declaration and many a rebuke which would come close home to professors of the present day. Hebrews xi, is a portion of scripture worthy of earnest contemplation and study. It contains a definition of faith, and many illustrations of the same in the lives and actions of the ancient worthies. From what is written in that chapter as a whole, the Apostle makes an application in the first verse of chap. xii: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, (who are these witnesses? Those just mentioned in the previous chapter. And what did they bear witness to? To the efficacy of saving faith,) let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, (what is this sin? That which these witnesses have testified against, which is the want of faith, or unbelief,) and run with patience the race set before us." So Heb. xi, is a lesson on faith illustrated—not with the pencil and graver, but with an inspired record of what it has accomplished in ages past for its possessors. It will accomplish the same for us now, if we will but exercise it. It has lost none of its efficacy. Then let us lay aside the sin of unbelief which besets so easily, which ere we are aware creeps in, and strikes at the very root of every plant of a religious growth, till it droops and dies. Let us contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. On 1 Cor. xiv, 39, it will be sufficient to remark that it can not be found in the writings of the New Testament, that the gifts were ever designed to cease from the church. When therefore the church shall get on to gospel ground, we shall see a speedy restoration of those gifts which were exercised in gospel days. In 1 Cor. xii, the Apostle instructs us concerning the gifts of the Spirit, and tells us to covet earnestly the best gifts. The gift of prophesying as defined in chap. xiv, 3, is the most valuable, because the most useful of the gifts; therefore, says he, [verse 39,] brethren covet to prophesy. To the other texts we are disposed to give their literal and obvious meaning. We know not in what other light to look upon them; and if this be right how far beneath our duty and our privilege are we living!