Earlier text: General ArticlesThe Ostrogoths Enter the Western Empire.
By J.
In another place we shall have to give in full the history of Attila; here we can only give that portion which is essential to the understanding of the establishment of the independence of the Ostrogoths. Suffice it therefore, to say, in this place, that before the raid into Gaul, Attila had demanded the hand of the Princess Honoria—the daughter of Placidia, sister to Valentinian III.—and his offer was rejected. The next year after the battle of Châlons he renewed his demand, and it being again rejected, he, A. D. 452, again took the field; passed the Alps; invaded Italy, ravaging the country as he went; took possession of the royal palace of Milan; and “declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome.” Valentinian III. had fled to Rome, and it was there decided by him, the Senate, and the people, to send a “solemn and suppliant embassy,” headed by Pope Leo the Great, to deprecate the wrath of Attila. “The barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the Princess Honoria.” “Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the Princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the treaty. Yet, in the meanwhile, Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour, from the banquet to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures, or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger as well as the death [A. D. 453] of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach.” “The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and resented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects, the warlike Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of freedom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of the river Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevie infantry, the light arms of the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported each other; and the victory of Ardaric was accompanied with the slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. “Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad; his early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people, whom he subdued; and his father, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death of Ellac. His brother Dengisich, with an army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. “The Pannonian conquests from Vienna to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes, who had so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly distributed, according to the measure of their respective strength.”—Id. chap. 35, par. 15, 16.” From their Pannonian possessions the Ostrogoths first exert and enlarge their power at the expense of the Eastern Empire; afterwards, in A. D. 488, they turn from that entirely, and enlarge their dominions toward the West. “When the Hunnish Empire broke in pieces on the death of Attila [A. D. 453], the East-Goths recovered their full independence. They now entered into relations with the Empire, and settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the fifth century, the East-Goths play in Southeastern Europe nearly the same part which the West-Goths played [there] in the century before. They were seen going to and fro, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, till, just as the West-Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West.”—Encyclopedia Britannica, article Goths, par. 14. It was under the reign of the great Theodoric that the Ostrogothic power was extended into the West; and of the course of events from the establishment of their independence, up to his accession to the Gothic throne, A. D. 475, we read as follows:— “Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of the royal line of the Amali, was born in the neighborhood of Vienna [A. D. 455] two years after the death of Attila. A recent victory had restored the independence of the Ostrogoths; and the three brothers, Walamir, Theodemir, and Widimir, who ruled that warlike nation with united counsels, had separately pitched their habitations in the fertile though desolate province of Pannonia. The Huns still threatened their revolted subjects, but their hasty attack was repelled by the single forces of Walamir, and the news of his victory reached the distant camp of his brother in the same auspicious moment that the favorite concubine of Theodemir was delivered of a son and heir. In the eighth year of his age, Theodoric was reluctantly yielded by his father to the public interest, as the pledge of the alliance which Leo, emperor of the East, had consented to purchase by an annual subsidy of three hundred pounds of gold. The royal hostage was educated at Constantinople with care and tenderness. His body was formed to all the exercises of war, his mind was expanded by the habits of liberal conversation; he frequented the schools of the most skillful masters; but he disdained or neglected the arts of Greece; and so ignorant did he always remain of the first elements of science, that a rude mark was contrived to represent the signature of the illiterate king of Italy.—The four first letters of his name (ΘΣΥΔ) were inscribed on a gold plate, and when it was fixed on the paper, the king drew his pen through the intervals.—[Note.] As soon as he had attained the age of eighteen, he was restored to the wishes of the Ostrogoths, whom the emperor aspired to gain by liberality and confidence. “Walamir had fallen in battle; the youngest of the brothers, Widimir, had led away into Italy and Gaul an army of barbarians, and the whole nation acknowledged [A. D. 455–475] for their king the father of Theodoric. His ferocious subjects admired the strength and stature of their young prince; and he soon convinced them that he had not degenerated from the valor of his ancestors. At the head of six thousand volunteers, he secretly left the camp in quest of adventures, descended the Danube as far as Singidunum, or Belgrade, and soon returned to his father with the spoils of a Sarmatian king whom he had vanquished and slain. Such triumphs, however, were productive only of fame, and the invincible Ostrogoths were reduced to extreme distress by the want of clothing and food. They unanimously resolved to desert their Pannonian encampments, and boldly to advance into the warm and wealthy neighborhood of the Byzantine court, which already maintained in pride and luxury so many bands of confederate Goths. After proving, by some acts of hostility that they could be dangerous, or at least troublesome enemies, the Ostrogoths sold at a high price their reconciliation and fidelity, accepted a donative of lands and money, and were intrusted with the defense of the Lower Danube, under the command of Theodoric, who succeeded after his father’s death, to the hereditary throne of the Amali.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 39, par. 2. Although Gibbon says they “resolved to desert their Pannonian encampments,” it must not be understood that this is spoken of the whole nation, nor that these renounced either their claim or their possessions there; because the history that follows as we shall see later, clearly shows that the Ostrogoths dwelt there and that their superior power was exercised and gratefully acknowledged over all Pannonia, during the whole fifty-one-years’ reign of Theodoric. But before following the Ostrogoths further, we must find the remaining ones of the ten kingdoms. J. At a largely attended meeting in London last June, Lord Robert Montague, a recent convert from Romanism, thus referred to the Jesuits, with whom he had been most intimately associated. We copy from the English Churchman of July 8:— “His lordship said the Church of Rome, since 1870, was, in fact, a mere extension of the Jesuit Society. The first point in the Jesuit Society was its militant character. It was founded to fight against the Reformation with all the ruses of war; and its secret agents all obeyed the orders of its general. The year after the Society was sanctioned by the Pope, he sent two Jesuits on a secret mission to Ireland; and Ignatius Loyola, in his instructions, told them to imitate the wiles of the devil. They were a great militant order intended to mix in the world, and shape its destinies; and members of the Society were placed in all the various courts of Europe, in order to gather intelligence, and influence policy. “Another characteristic was duplicity. They have always advocated contraries on every question, and have always mixed with and influenced opposing parties in every dispute. The third characteristic is their want of principle, not only in morality (which is well-known), but in theology too. For example, a Jesuit wrote to prove that the Virgin Mary was God, and was in fact the same as God the Father. A quotation from the work of a Jesuit, announcing and endeavoring to prove this astounding doctrine was given at length. The fourth characteristic was their unceasing and continued attempt to create divisions and sow discords between Protestant churches, between statesmen, between nations, and between members of the same family. Quotations from the works of Jesuits and others were given to show that this policy was deliberately undertaken and adhered to by the Society.” A Witness Against Thy Neighbor
“BE not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with thy lips.” Prov. 24: 28. Inherent Immortality.
By Mrs. E. H. Adams.
SEVERAL times, recently, a cultured Christian woman, in conversation with the writer on the subject of man's immortality, has used the following expressions at the close of our talk:— “No, I cannot, I do not want to believe that we do not live right on after the death of the body, nor that every human being will not live forever. I believe there is a spark of the divine life in every one of us, and that nothing can extinguish it.” Ah, that is the trouble. Men do not want to believe the plain, often-repeated statements of the word of God on these points, but prefer to cling to an error whose final outcome for the impenitent is eternal torment, inflicted by a holy Being whose very name and nature are love, who declares himself to be pitiful and long-suffering! Omitting many passages in the Scriptures which prove conclusively that both the righteous and the wicked sleep in their graves until their respective resurrections, may it not help some to clearer views and wiser action in the case, to let the Bible settle the question whether eternal life is inherent in man? In John 10 : 10 Christ declared: “I am come that they might have life.” That is very high authority. This was the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, telling living men that he had come that they might have life. What a paradox! Did he mean physical life? They possessed that already. The Saviour's life and death upon the earth seems to have effected little change for mankind in reference to their mortal existence, except that the lofty principles he taught have lifted many to a higher plane of sympathy, self-denial, and effort for the race. Generally speaking, the period of human life is not materially prolonged by his advent. He must therefore have spoken of some other life than that of the body, and, moreover, of a life which men did not have but which it was very important they should possess. The Scriptures speak of but two stages of life for men,—the present, and that to come, or life eternal. We conclude, therefore, that Christ came that we might have the latter,—life after physical death. If that be so, eternal life cannot be inborn in us, indestructible, and of which “no power can deprive us;” else Christ died to no purpose, to secure us that which we already had. This is irrational. The word of God abounds in passages which show that without Christ, we were without hope of a life after death, and were in a condition “most miserable.” Hear some of the “words.” “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Then but for the sending of Christ, man's prospect for the future must have been to “perish.” When a thing is perished, it exists no longer, if words have any meaning. It is dead, “gone to destruction.” Certainly, eternal life is not inherent in it. Has any being in the universe “life in himself”? Just two. “The Father hath life in himself,” and “hath given to the Son to have life in himself.” And now, to all those who “by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for . . . immortality,” God will “render” “eternal life.” Then it is because we seek it, and continue in well-doing, that God restores to men what they have lost—eternal life—and not because they have it naturally. “This is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.” Immortality is ours, then, by promise, and not by natural birth. But this is not all. Turning back to Deut. 30 : 19, we read: “I call Heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” That the great Lawgiver here made no reference to physical life and death, is evident, because he makes these results matters of choice, and dependent on moral conduct, as appears still more plainly from the fifteenth verse: “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” Since both the righteous and the wicked alike live their mortal lives, and alike succumb to physical decay, the latter can hardly be the death that the Lord through Moses presses them to shun; nor the former the life he urges them to choose. It must therefore be the life forevermore. If men may then accept or reject it, as they please, it can scarcely be inbred in them. How sore, consequently, in the final day will be the disappointment of those who, depending for future life upon their inherent immortality, fail to make this choice! I know it may be said that in this noble charge to the Hebrew people, Moses had reference simply to their disruption as a nation and banishment from Palestine, or to their perpetuity therein as God's people. That these important results were in his mind, there is no doubt; but this does not make void the ground taken, that life and death eternal were to them individually, and are to every soul of man now, matters of choice. This is a truth so well understood, and so generally accepted, albeit too often forgotten, that further effort to prove it need not be made. How amazing that man is unwilling to take life on God's terms! He so much prefers to climb up some other way. Instead of possessing this boasted “spark of immortality,” his life is “alienated from the life of God,” a condition in which our first parents were not before the commandment was broken. Eternal life is now the gift of God. “This life is in his Son.” “He that hath not the Son, hath not life.” MRS. E. H. ADAMS. Love as a Motive to Christian Life.
THE one great and only efficient motive to a Christian life is not fear, but Love. Fear may have a place among the motives that lead men to a better life. It is the lowest motive. It belongs to the lowest stage of moral development. “Rod and candy” are for child-minded men. In the early barbarous ages this motive was in large request. But it is quite impossible that mere dread of hell should make men virtuous, loving, Christ-like. The man who would steal if he was not afraid of the penitentiary is a thief. That he is kept back from the act by the penalty does not make him one whit more an honest man. So the man who practices the outward forms of religion because he is afraid of hell, has no religion worth speaking of. Duty is a higher motive, and may lead to a life worthy of all respect. But it is not until the life is “touched with emotion,” inspired by love to Christ, that souls enter into the liberty and joy of a regenerated life. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God,” says Paul, “they are the sons of God,”—not slaves, not captives trembling at the sentence of Divine judgment, but sons. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” To say father, is to have the feeling of sonship, which is love. How is this feeling begotten in us? John tells us. “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. . . . Herein is our love made perfect.” It is the knowledge of God’s goodness, brought home with reality and power to the heart, that makes men religious in the true and Christian sense. If this motive does not persuade men, no other will. Herein is the power of the gospel. God sent his Son into the world to declare, and to be to the race a representative of, the Infinite Love. Nothing else can make men the children of God in deed and in truth.—Christian at Work. “BUILD a little fence of trust
Around to-day;
Fill the space with loving work,
And therein stay.” “Look not from out the sheltering bars
Upon to-morrow;
For God will help you bear what comes
Of joy or sorrow.” “The Christian Walk.”
By A. J. Gordon, D. D.
A TRUE Christian walk is a reproducing in our lives of the righteousness which is already ours in Christ. Joined to the Lord by faith, we become “partakers of his holiness.” But not that thereby we may be exempted from the necessity of personal holiness. It is rather that such personal holiness may have a new and higher obligation, since it has become a new possibility. The double purpose of our union to Christ must never for a moment be forgotten, nor its heavenward and earthward aspects for an instant separated in our apprehension. It is in order that we may be as he is in the reckoning of God, and equally that we may be as he is before the eyes of men. “No condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” is one phase of this blessed truth. But, O believer, forget not the other, lest you bring upon yourself the curse of a dry and barren Antinomianism: “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” The branches are the product and the measure of the roots, the one spreading as widely as the other strikes deeply. And how solemn the obligation resting upon those who are as truly rooted in Christ, to reach forth their branches and cover that area of good works which they have underlaid, and so to speak, pre-empted by their faith. Our privileges in Jesus are glorious beyond comparison. But they are awful when we remember that they are the pledge and measure of our obligations.—A. J. Gordon. D. D. Growth of Christian Character.
A GREAT deal of the preaching of the present day is an exhortation to self-development, with scarcely any reference to divine assistance. We hear men urged to perfect and beautify their character, to build themselves up into a higher and nobler manhood, and to reach out after the true, the good, and the beautiful, as though the moral and spiritual elevation of men was a matter of mere education, and that they are capable, by their own efforts, of attaining to the highest standard of moral excellence. There never was greater nonsense than this if we accept the teachings of the word of God. If there is one truth taught more clearly in the Bible than another, it is that of our utter helplessness without spiritual and divine aid. We are represented in our natural condition as without strength, as in a state of spiritual death, as needing divine quickening, and, without Christ, as incapable of doing anything acceptable to God. All true spiritual development and growth springs from the inner principle of spiritual vitality implanted in the soul by our heavenly Father in the renewal of our nature. This principle of divine life, under the continual influence of the divine Spirit, is cultivated by faith and obedience, resulting in the development and strengthening of all the graces of the Spirit that adorn and beautify the Christian character. Separated from this principle of spiritual life in the soul, there is no development of the true, the good, and the beautiful, in human life. In urging men to higher attainments in Christian character, it must be in connection with the divine and spiritual agencies which God has placed at the foundation of all moral excellence. To do otherwise is to reject God's method of elevating our race and to mislead our fellow-men.—Methodist Recorder. We think the reader who has carefully followed us through the seventh of Romans and the third of Galatians, will have no difficulty in seeing how thoroughly the majesty of the law is vindicated throughout, and its perpetuity shown, and also how beautiful is the harmony between the law and the gospel. Right here we wish to quote a pertinent passage from John Wesley:— “It is the ordinary method of the Spirit of God, to convict sinners by the law. It is this, which being set home on the conscience, generally breaks the rock in pieces. It is more especially this part of the word of God which is ‘quick and powerful,’ full of life and energy, and ‘sharper than any two-edged sword.’ This, in the hand of God and of those whom he hath sent, pierces through all the folds of a deceitful heart, and ‘divides asunder even the soul and spirit;’ yea, as it were, the very ‘joints and marrow.’ By this is the sinner discovered to himself. All his fig leaves are torn away, and he sees that he is ‘wretched, and poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked.’ The law flashes conviction on every side. He feels himself a mere sinner. He has nothing to pay. His ‘mouth is stopped,’ and he stands ‘guilty before God.’” “To slay the sinner is then the first use of the law; to destroy the life and strength wherein he trusts, and convince him that he is dead while he liveth; not only under the sentence of death, but actually dead unto God, void of all spiritual life, ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’ The second use of it is to bring him unto life,—unto Christ that he may live. It is true, in performing both these offices, it acts the part of a severe schoolmaster. It drives us by force, rather than draws us by love. And yet love is the spring of all. It is the spirit of love which, by this painful means, tears away our confidence in the flesh, which leaves us no broken reed whereon to trust, and so constrains the sinner, stripped of all, to cry out in the bitterness of his soul, or groan in the depth of his heart,—” ‘I give up every plea beside,—
Lord, I am damned, but thou hast died.’ “The third use of the law is to keep us alive. It is the grand means whereby the Holy Spirit prepares the believer for larger communications of the life of God. I am afraid this great and important truth is little understood, not only by the world, but even by many whom God hath taken out of the world, who are real children of God by faith. Many of these lay it down as an unquestioned truth that when we come to Christ we have done with the law, and that in this sense ‘Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth.’ ‘The end of the law’—so he is ‘for righteousness,’ for justification, ‘to every one that believeth.’ Herein the law is at an end. It justifies none, but only brings them to Christ, who is also, in another respect, the end, or scope of the law,—the point at which it continually aims. But when it has brought us to him, it has yet a farther office, namely, to keep us with him. For it is continually exciting all believers, the more they see of its height, and depth, and length, and breadth, to exhort one another so much the more:—” ‘Closer and closer let us cleave
To his beloved embrace;
Expect his fullness to receive,
And grace to answer grace.’” “Therefore, I cannot spare the law one moment, no more than I can spare Christ, seeing I now want it as much to keep me to Christ as I ever wanted it to bring me to him. Otherwise this ‘evil heart of unbelief’ would immediately ‘depart from the living God.’ Indeed, each is continually sending me to the other,—the law to Christ, and Christ to the law. On the one hand, the height and depth of the law constrain me to fly to the love of God in Christ; on the other, the love of God in Christ endears the law to me ‘above gold or precious stones.’”—Sermon 24, “Properties of the Law.” The above view of the law is a just one. But all have not so clear an understanding of the law and the gospel as Wesley had. Since some, following the lead of Dr. Clarke, have either confounded the moral law with the Levitical or ceremonial, or else have supposed that the third of Galatians refers principally to the ceremonial law, it may not be amiss to show briefly why it is impossible that the ceremonial law should be the subject of discourse in that chapter. A few points will suffice. 1. Paul says that “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Verse 13. Now (a) There was nothing in the ordinances of the ceremonial law to condemn any one. Condemnation could come only through violation of the ten commandments. The ceremonial law was the sum of the gospel ordinances in the Jewish age. And there was no curse in any way attached to it, any more than there is to the gospel. It certainly did not curse those who carried it out with a sincere heart; for such, like David, offered “sacrifices of joy;” and those who neglected it and thus showed their unbelief, were condemned by the moral law alone, because of their sins; as Christ said, “he that believeth not is condemned already.” (b) Even admitting that the ceremonial law had a curse connected with it, or was itself a curse, “we” never had any connection with that law, and consequently could not be redeemed from it. (c) The Galatians, to whom this epistle was personally addressed, were chiefly converts from among the heathen, and had never had any connection with the ceremonial law. Therefore, although Paul might properly tell them to keep clear of it, he could not say that they had been redeemed from it. (d) The result of Christ’s being made a curse for us is “that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” And the blessing of Abraham comes on the Gentiles only as they are redeemed from iniquity,—the transgression of the moral law. 2. Therefore “the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” Gal. 3:22. Only the moral law could conclude men “under sin.” There was nothing in the rites and ceremonies of the Levitical law that was of primary obligation,—nothing that could show men to be sinners. 3. “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” Gal. 3:23. This is in no sense true of the ceremonial law. It did not precede faith, but followed it. No one ever heard of such a thing as the ceremonies of the Levitical law being performed by one who knew nothing of Christ. But it is true of all men that, before they have faith in Christ, they are “under the law,” condemned, and “shut up” to the faith which may be revealed to them, as the only means of freedom from condemnation. 4. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Gal. 3:24. By no possibility can this refer to the ceremonial law. This text is sometimes read as though it said that the law was our schoolmaster to point us to Christ, and then it is asked, “What is there in the moral law that points to Christ?” The answer is, of course, that there is nothing. But the text says the law brings us to Christ. We have shown how the moral law does this, by giving the convicted sinner no rest until he flees to Christ. The ceremonial law, however, brought no one to Christ. It was simply the means by which those who already believed in Christ as the one who should be offered for sin, might indicate their faith in him. The ceremonial law comprised the gospel ordinances of the Jewish age. The order was, first the moral law to convict of sin and show the necessity for Christ, and then the rites of the ceremonial law to indicate and keep alive the faith that they already had. See Leviticus 4, noting especially verses 2, 13, 22, and 27. Justification has reference only to the moral law. From the transgression of that, man needs justification; but the law cannot justify any sinner, it can only condemn. And so it drives him to Christ, that he may be justified by faith. “But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” Gal. 3:25. But it was only after faith came that people had anything to do with the ceremonial law. Is there a man in this age who has more faith than Moses, or David, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Daniel, who all prophesied of Christ, and who looked to him for salvation? Those men “through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” Heb. 11:33, 34. And yet all their lives long they performed the rites of the ceremonial law. If Gal. 3:25 refers to the ceremonial law, those faithful men ought never to have offered one of the sacrifices of that law. It was their faith, however, that led them to offer the sacrifices of the ceremonial law, as Paul says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Heb. 11:4. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Gal. 3:24. The past tense can be used here only by those who have come to Christ and have been justified by faith, as Paul shows in the next verse. Since the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, it must still be the schoolmaster (pedagogue) to those who are not in Christ, and must retain that office until every one who will accept Christ is brought to him. Therefore the law will be a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, as long as probation lasts. But the Levitical law passed away hundreds of years ago; therefore it cannot be the law referred to here. To put the matter briefly, we may say that if the law is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, to divest it of that office while there are men still out of Christ, yet willing to come to him, would be to prematurely cut them off from hope of salvation. We would by no means be understood as holding that the ceremonial law does not figure in the epistle to the Galatians. The controversy over the ceremonial law drew out the epistle. But there was in that controversy, which this epistle must have effectually settled for all candid minds, something deeper than the mere question whether or not men should be circumcised. Paul repeatedly asserts that it makes no difference whether or not a man is circumcised. “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.” But when men submitted to it as a means of justification, that moment it became a serious matter, for such an act is a rejection of Christ. Suppose a man has accepted Christ and in him has been made “a new creature.” Now suppose that he is led to accept circumcision, or any other work, as a means of justification, thereby rejecting Christ; what will be the immediate result? He will at once go into sin; for out of Christ no man can by any possibility refrain from sinning. No matter to what heights of holiness a man may have attained, just as soon as he loses sight of Christ as his “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,” he becomes carnal and cannot please God. This was the case with the Galatian brethren. They had been called into the grace of Christ; but some had troubled them with another gospel—a gospel of works and not of faith—which was no gospel at all, and by accepting it they had lost their faith in Christ, and consequently had become sinners “under the law.” And it is on this535account that the apostle exclaims, ‘O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth (Compare Ps. 119:142, 151), before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?’ (Gal. 3:1;) and again, ‘Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?’ Gal. 5:7. But this is sufficient. We did not design to discuss the whole book of Galatians, but simply to show that it gives no comfort to the enemies of the law of God. We wish the reader to keep in view the main thought in our study,—that God desires that all men should be saved. His love is as boundless as the universe, and reaches to the least of his creatures. But he cannot save a wicked person. Sin is entirely out of harmony with his character, and he cannot endure it in his presence. Neither could the sinner be happy in the presence of the pure and holy God. Nay, more, it would be impossible for the sinner even to look upon God. Everything that dwells with God must be in perfect accord with him. But all men have violated his holy law, and are by it condemned to death. God has a glorious inheritance promised to the righteous, but who can obtain it? No one can make himself righteous. The sinner studies the law, and learns what sort of a character he ought to have, but that only condemns him the more. It provides no way of escape, but drives him toward the door of mercy, which is ever open. Then, instead of profitless struggles, being justified by faith he has peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the law proves to be the strongest ally of the promise by faith. And this tutorship it exercises until the Seed comes to whom and through whom the promise was made, and then God’s people being all righteous, it ceases to drive them. They are “in Christ,” and the law is in their hearts. In Christ they find everything. No need have they now to teach one another the way of truth, because the truth is in their hearts. More than this, they are all taught of God, and their peace is like a river, constantly flowing. Fully reconciled to God, they see his face, and in his presence find fullness of joy, and at his right hand enjoy pleasures forevermore. Reader, ‘now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.’ “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;” but if with sincerity you pray with the psalmist, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,’ he will for Christ’s sake pardon all your iniquity, and then, being a new creature in Christ, you can say, ‘O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.’ Ps. 119:97. W.