Daniel 12

Daniel 12:1-13

THE . . AND ASSIZE Daniel 12:1-13WITH this discourse we conclude our studies in the Book of Daniel. Twelve out of these fourteen addresses have dealt with the exposition of the text itself, and two of them have been specific appeals based upon texts in which we purposely disregarded the context. The three great prophetic Books of the Bible are Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation.Our two volumes on Revelation came from the Press some months since.Among all the books there are none more interesting than these prophetic ones. Humanity craves some knowledge of coming events, and Christianity, based as it is upon the Bible, is the only religion known to man that unfolds the future.We are accustomed to divide the Bible, or rather the Old Testament, into History, Poetry and Prophecy; but let it not be forgotten that the Prophets are 16 in number revealing the importance, in God’s sight, of glimpses into that which was destined to come to pass. Nor can it be forgotten that while from Isaiah and Malachi, inclusive, there are 16 Prophets, Moses, Joshua, Ezra, Nehemiah, David, and Solomon, and even other of the historic and also New Testament writers are, at times, guided by the Holy Ghost in Divine prediction.God never meant that man should face the future without any knowledge as to what it held, any more than He meant to give him so much knowledge of the same as would tempt him to presumption on the one side or to utter despair on the other.Prophecy seldom descends to the minutia of coming events. It only exhibits the great mountain peaks or promontories that by these men might enjoy such guidance as to find and follow “THE WAY.”This 12th chapter sets before us three such peaks or promontories among future events:—The Great Tribulation, The Great Separation, and The Great Assize.THE GREAT It shall fall upon the elect people of Israel. “And, at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the Children of thy people: and there shall he a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time” (Daniel 12:1). “At that time” refers, of course, to the period to which we had come in concluding the study of the 11th chapter. This prophecy had its partial and initial fulfilment when Antiochus-Ephiphanes was successfully opposed by the Maccabees, and will find its final and perfect fulfilment when the antichrist shall be successfully opposed by our coming Lord, the King of Glory.But, as Israel suffered under Antiochus who persecuted her and put her children to death, defying her God and desecrating her Holy Temple, so shall Israel again be trampled by the antichrist and become the special subject of that agonizing hour that is to come upon the earth,—the great tribulation. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their commentary, say that the transactions on earth which affected God’s people will have their correspondences in Heaven in the conflict between good and bad angels,—so that last great contest on earth which shall decide the ascendency of Christianity. The reference is to Revelation 12:7-10 which reads:—“And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, “And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. “And I heard a loud voice saying in Heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night”. This passage would almost seem to suggest that the war in Heaven in which Satan was defeated and cast down was a type of the war that he will wage on earth, and as there he and his angels fought against Michael and the loyal holy ones, so finally on earth he and all the powers at his command will oppose Christ and the people of God’s choice.There is some consolation in the certainty that as triumph was with Michael and his angels, victory will be with Christ and His people!But, tribulation precedes triumph. Israel’s agony is just as certain as is her rejection of her Messiah.It shall exceed, in fury, all previous persecutions. God’s elect people have passed through many times of trouble. The early Books of the Old Testament Scriptures are a record of Israel’s sufferings, sorrows, and defeats. The favor of God toward them was scarcely greater than the necessary judgments that fell upon them in their disloyalty and worldly lusts.The Major and Minor Prophets fairly screamed their warnings into the ears of their own kith and kin, but could not keep them back from the national sins and consequent sufferings and sorrows.Right now this people in most portions of the world are hated, opposed and persecuted; but, according to the text, the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 which brought sorrow, affliction, death, captivity and slavery to a great multitude of Jews, was small beside that which will break over this people when the time of this text is come.Jesus Himself anticipated, with grief, and voiced it in a sob.“Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). When we were speaking on the latter part of the second chapter of this volume to the theme, “The Doom of World Governments,” we called attention to the ingenious instruments of torture that characterized the last war. But we did not do as Philip Gibbs in his volume “Now It Can Be Told” describes the veritable hell in which the soldiers lived, not for days, nor for weeks, but for months and for years; and though we shall not so attempt description, that burning caldron of Flanders will be far exceeded in Israel’s final tribulation; in the Armageddon of prophecy.The saints shall be saved out of the same.“And at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the Book”. The majority of my brethren, and those for whom I have the highest regard, interpret this to mean that the penitent Jews shall be saved and suddenly translated out of this hell of earth’s scenes into the Heavenlies; that “the Israel remnant,” who do not join the anti-Christian blasphemy, will constitute the company thus to be caught up.Without at all being dogmatic on a matter where there is opportunity for honest division, this passage seems to me to teach rather the translation of the Church at the moment when the tribulation breaks upon the world.I recognize the fact that “thy people” is the phrase employed in both instances; and yet the context seems to me to suggest the difference between Israel in the first instance and the Church, the Bride of Christ, in the second: for in the first instance, “Michael * * the great prince * * standeth for the children of thy people” and Michael is commonly presented in Scripture as the guardian angel of Israel.In the second use of the term “thy people” it is followed by a defining phrase,—“Every one that shall be found written in the Book”. That phrase seems to me to compass “the saved by grace” whether Jew or Gentile, and I cannot find in my study of Scripture that God ever makes a difference between the Jew and Gentile when once one, from either blood, has been redeemed by the Blood of His Son.Still further, such an interpretation of this passage seems to me to harmonize with other passages relating to the same subject. The woman in the 12th chapter flies into the wilderness to be nourished for a time, times and half a time (the very period of the tribulation) from the face of the serpent.This is to us the type of the Church.Isaiah’s prophecy, “Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (Isaiah 26:20), can scarcely refer to Israel, for if it did that would indicate that all Israel would escape the tribulation,—a view that no one holds.I hold with A. J. Gordon that when Christ said, “Because thou hast kept the Word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”, He referred to the Church, the redeemed.“I will come * * as a thief and “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels”. He referred to the same company that Paul refers to in his Epistle to the Thessalonians when he speaks of the changed ones who are to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.He refers to this time; and, again, to the redeemed; and as Gordon in “Ecce Venit” tells us, as the disciples were safely kept in the hilltop of Pella when in A. D. 70 the Romans sacked Jerusalem, so when Satan through his direct representative on earth—the antichrist—shall smite the earth, those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be safely pavillioned with Him in the clouds of Heaven.Saved Jews of course will be there, and doubtless that is significant, for saved Jews are of the Church as well as Gentiles, and are of the Bride, and “there is no difference”.That is the significance of the later statement made to Daniel, “But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days” (Daniel 12:13).I realize perfectly the marvelous revelation of God’s grace in the promises made to the Church that she shall be caught up into the Heavens when the tribulation breaks upon the earth; but I also realize the temptation in the same teaching to sinful presumption.There are those who hold that the Church shall pass through the tribulation, and by its fires be refined. It is not mine to fight with them, and it is not mine to indulge in bitter controversy on this subject, but rather to “glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”. If, therefore, tribulation and refinement are linked as cause and effect, we could well afford to join with the poet in this prayer:“Let all that’s earthly from my being fall, Till naught of evil, either great or small, Remains to palliate the world’s contempt, Or make me from its bitt’rest hate exempt: If perfect likeness, O my Lord, to Thee Would my own crucifixion guarantee, I’m sure I’d say, ‘Now nail me to the cross,’ That I might be like Thee in earthly loss.” But we pass from the Great Tribulation to THE GREAT “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:2-3). We have already confessed having treated this text separately, and without reference to the context. Here again, there is a division of opinion among equally conscientious students and interpreters of the Book. The majority of those who hold with us the fundamentals of the Christian faith refer this passage solely to the Jew, and maintain that it has no reference whatever to the resurrection, but rather to their national waking, some to see in Jesus their Saviour and become the subjects of everlasting life, and others to deny Him even upon His appearance, and, consequently, to be brought to shame and everlasting contempt.In our judgment, this passage, like many others, has a dual significance. It is true, and history will attest the accuracy of the prophecy, that Israel, now buried among the nations, will enjoy before and at the coming of Jesus both a national and spiritual revival. But that a portion of them will then remain loyal to the antichrist and become the subjects of shame and everlasting contempt hardly harmonizes with Paul’s teaching,“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: “For this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. “As concerning the Gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers sakes. “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:25-29). Furthermore, placed as this Scripture is it seems to refer to the final resurrections, and does not involve, as some have claimed, a general resurrection, but when properly translated and treated harmonizes with premillenarian teaching. Since it is a fact that the resurrection will be connected with the Lord’s Coming and Second Appearance, we quote from Tregelles, “that these shall be unto everlasting life; but those, (the rest of the sleepers who do not awake at this time) shall be unto shame.” We know from other Scriptures that “the rest of the dead” will not rise until the one thousand years are finished; and Tregelles, we are told, is well supported by Jewish commentators in this view.This much is certain in the light of Scripture that at the very time of this tribulation the first resurrection will take place, for according to 1 Corinthians 15:23 that resurrection is promised at Christ’s Coming. It is equally clear from the Holy Word that there is no general resurrection since “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished”.The Scriptures also put it past dispute that that first resurrection is to everlasting life, and the second and final is to shame and everlasting contempt. It is our conviction that the third verse has only this relation to the second, namely, that of approving as wise those who proceed, in these final events, to turn many to righteousness, presenting as encouragement the certainty that they “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and * * as the stars for ever and ever”.Let us dwell, for a while then, on these two suggestions, first, the just shall rise to enjoy everlasting life, and the unrighteous shall come back to shame and everlasting contempt.The just shall rise to enjoy everlasting life. Who can tell the meaning of such a phrase—“everlasting life”—not everlasting existence. Life here is life at the full, life in excelsis; and, life forever!

Who can compass the glory of the thought? the imagination even is insufficient! Sometimes we have a high day, a wonderful day, a day never to be forgotten.

At the down-going of its sun, we want to sing, “The Close of a Perfect Day.” If that day has been free from sin, who can imagine what it can be to have it multiplied into weeks, years, centuries, millenniums, yea, into eternity? How often we part with a day that is so beautifully blessed that we grieve when it is gone, and want to live it over again. How wonderful it would be to have a perfect day, and then to have it multiplied indefinitely, into time, illimitable and eternal!MaClaren, speaking of lives that we have considered cut off in their youth or prime, and of our grieving over such richly endowed and trained young people, just come into the zenith of power, as a reflection on the economy of God’s Kingdom, adds according to Jesus, “Not so! They have simply gone from this fettered body to the place where adverse circumstances shall not longer be felt, and they are not to be thought of as withdrawn from the field, but rather as having moved forward to the van of battle. They are not dead. They are gloriously alive, and alive forever more!”I wish I could drop the subject here.

I wish I could terminate this discourse without any reference to the other portion of the Scripture, but such silence on my part might be sin, since men need the warning—The unjust shall come back to shame and everlasting contempt. These are days in which there is a widespread disposition to doubt this truth— days when materialism is the religion of many men, and when evolution would teach us that we originated from the clod, and having finished the round of animal existence, we return to dust again, and as a part of the earth, abide in unconsciousness for ever.But alas, such a philosophy is neither Scriptural nor scientific.

More and more the better scientists are consenting to immortality. John Stuart Mill argued for it. Thomas Huxley said, “Science has not a shred of evidence that the soul does not live on after death.” John Fisk delivered a series of lectures on the soul’s continuance, and Dr. F. W. H.

Myers, who for so many years was president of the Society for Physchical Research in England, said that he would predict that in the future men of thought would believe in life beyond the grave.But, oh, what will it mean to be raised to shame and everlasting contempt?I find it difficult to reflect upon the white light of the final judgment for the rejectors of Jesus, without having come back to my mind again that remarkable description of Hawthorne’s in the “Scarlet Letter.”They had built a scaffold, and Hester had stood with the letter A blazing on her bosom because of the ignominy that to her had been born a child out of wedlock; and Hawthorne tells of the time when Arthur Dimmesdale, the unknown father, walked as if in a dream, to this scaffold one night in early May, when a cloud muffled the whole expanse of the sky and when the town was all asleep. He went doubtless to stand in the same spot upon which she had stood, and in imagination to suffer with her with whom he had sinned!

Scarcely had he reached his place when he heard within the darkness a childish laugh, and recognized the tones of little Pearl, and he cried, “Hester; Pearl, are you there?” The answer was,“Yes, it is I and my little Pearl.”“What sent you hither?”“I have been watching at a deathbed,” answered Hester, “and I am on my way home.”“Come up hither thou and little Pearl! You have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand all three together!”She silently ascended the steps and stood on the platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the child’s other hand, and took it, and the moment he did so a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe, burning out to waste in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth.

The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light.

The wooden houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gablepeaks; the doorsteps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and, even in the marketplace, margined with green on either side,—all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets!How the sense of shame smote them then! They were doubtless children of the King, but caught in the toils of sin, and consequently destined to suffer shame and contempt for a time. Think of extending such shame and contempt to eternity. What soul could endure? And yet what possible promise of escape from that very fate can any bring to the impenitent sinner, to the man or woman who has put away God’s One, only, and adequate Substitute, the Saviour?Oh, to have to come back from the grave “to shame and * * contempt” eternally—God in His mercy save us!, for naturally that involves the next subject of this chapter,THE GREAT ASSIZE The time of that judgment was sought but not revealed. “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. “Then I Daniel looked, mid, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. “And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders”? (Daniel 12:4-6). And then he records,“And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto Heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished” (Daniel 12:7). This sounds like an answer to the question, and it is; and yet the answer fixes for us only the tribulation period, without determining when the tribulation itself shall break. The period shall be “for a time, times, and half a time”—three years and a half; forty and two months; 1260 days. Why do I so define the phrase “time, times, and half a time”? Because the Scriptures so define them! Exercise of the power of the beast “is forty and two months” (Revelation 13:5); The two witnesses that preach in sackcloth continue for 1260 days (Revelation 11:3); The woman who flees from the dragon into the wilderness is nourished for 1260 days—a time, times, and half a time (Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14).The persecution of Antiochus-Epiphanes lasted three years and six months. So will the tribulation!

And we know that so terrible will that period be that if it were not cut short, all flesh would perish from the earth; but when that day will break, as well as the Coming of His Son, belongs in the secret counsel of God.In the last few years, owing to fast fulfilling prophecy such as 2 Timothy 3, and other equally significant Scriptures, many men, who would create among the fellow-believers some sensation have sought to fix the time for the Coming of the Lord. One of these fixed it in 1914; Others in 1931, 1934, 1936, and some dare to say now that it will take place in the early forties.The truth is, no man knows when it will take place.

I shall quote what Joseph Parker says on this passage: “There are many persons who could tell Daniel what he didn’t understand. They have made their calculations, they have interpreted emblematic numbers, they have fitted in the Napoleons, Caesars, and Leos; they have discovered where Hannibal belongs, and where Pontius Pilate came in, and exactly the place of the Pope, and even now they are telling us just where the last Prime Minister or Dictator fits the scheme.”Parker sanely remarks, “It seems to me that numbers which are so infinitely accommodating ruin themselves by their generality.”Let us take our stand with Daniel, and believe without knowing the hour when it will break. It really seems to me sometimes that there are platform orators who are getting themselves all ready to be able to say, on the day when Christ descends the sky, “I TOLD YOU SO,” but since God didn’t tell me, and He hasn’t told any one else, I am not deeply concerned on what these modern prophets have to say on the subject. I am glad, rather, that the Bible absolutely veils this period of The Tribulation.Three years and a half! The last war lasted for four years. It was a hell in Flanders; but these three years and a half will be hell in all the world.

Thank God, He will cut them short!There are people who say, “Well, why should God permit it?” Doubtless to fulfil His high purpose toward His own people Israel—namely, their purification by fire, and their final and complete redemption, as well as to end the drunken orgy of man’s misrule!Campbell Morgan reminds us that the Church of Christ persecuted has become the Church of Christ pure, and the Church of Christ patronized has become the Church of Christ impure. The truth is that the tribulation may work better things for the world; yea, we know it will work better things for the world than 6,000 years of unabated blessing.Turning back to the same poet from whom we quoted some minutes ago, are we not compelled to say,“O blessed Christ, If I were more like Thee, I would, no doubt, more persecuted be; The world and formal Church would see far less To tolerate in me, and naught to bless: The toleration that is shown to me Is proof that I, my Lord, am less like Thee Than Peter, John, and Paul, and all who died For likeness to the Christ, the Crucified.” “And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall he taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days” (Daniel 12:11). What meaneth this? We had but 1260 days for the period of the tribulation, and now we have thirty days added, or 1290 days, and then forty-five more bringing it up to 1335 days! These numbers used to worry me, but I am inclined this morning to think they are simple enough. The day the tribulation ends will see Christ on the throne, but it will not witness a world in order. The moment Christ takes His throne and begins His rule, we can scarcely expect all to be in voluntary submission under His feet. “He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25).The average man has a very nebulous notion of Christ’s rulership. He has heard the Scripture so often spiritualized into nothingness that he doubts if the Lord will ever sit on His throne and sway His own scepter.But on this subject the Scripture leaves no question, and“As * * the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. “The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; “And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be trailing and gnashing of teeth. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:40-43). If but two months and one half are required for the final potentate of this world to rid it of all rebellion, and organize it into perfect order, then beyond doubt, all power belongeth unto Him, and all praise and glory will He deserve!I conclude this study, therefore, with this appeal; Are you ready for Christ to come? Will His Coming bring you joy and eternal happiness, or eventuate in your shame, your everlasting contempt? In other words, are you saved, and consequently safe?If not, let me tell you the way. I bring it from His own Word that faileth not,“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the Word of faith, which we preach, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. “For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:8-11). Not ashamed now, not ashamed in the day of judgment, not in shame and everlasting contempt for eternity! Are you the Lord’s?

Daniel 12:3

THE ’S WORK Daniel 12:3. AS you know, I have been on a sick-bed of late, and you will understand why I am brief today. This Scripture comes to us from a Divine description of the last day; with its judgments to eternal life for some, and shame and everlasting contempt for others. In the country neighborhood where I grew up, we often discussed in our debating society this question, “Resolved, That the hope of reward is a greater incentive to right action than the fear of punishment.” In the verse preceding our text, both of these incentives are employed to impress men with the solemnity of life and the certainty of judgment corresponding to the respective characters and conduct of men. It is my purpose today to pass by this appeal to men that comes from fear, and discuss, as best I am able, the subject of soul-saving and its reward; or if you please, the better theme, The Christian’s Crowning Work. This text seems to me to accurately compass that subject, “They that turn many to righteousness [shall shine] as the stars for ever and ever”. No one is likely to dispute this assertion.THE WORK OF A LIFE IS TO EFFECT do not propagate the heresy of attributing Divine power to weak men when I so speak. It is not in the arm of man to save a soul; but it is in God’s power to make men the mediums of His will, and active agents in His work.Christ accomplished most of His work by human hands. Soul-saving is no exception! If we could have an experience meeting here this morning, and each frankly told how he was led to the Lamb of God, it would be but a record of human efforts, so blessed of God as to save. Some of you were moved by the excellent example of a Christian friend to seek and find the Christ.

Others are the answers to prayer; importunate, pleading prayer.Some years ago Dr. Potts asked all the theological students of Princeton who believed their salvation to have been influenced by a mother’s prayers to rise.

The whole student body stood!Still others would tell how some Christian friend admonished them to right living, and so led them to God. But in almost every instance, whatever the peculiar circumstances that preceded conversion, some Christian would be acknowledged as the chief agent of redemption. So there we are—“labourers together with God”. In saving souls, men are God’s stewards!The privilege of soul-saving is not exclusive. It belongs to every Christian, to any Christian. “They that turn many to righteousness”, is indicative of God’s will. It is as if He said, “Whoever they are, they shall shine.” There are not a few Christians who excuse themselves from soul-saving work, saying, “I am not adapted to it; I am not talented in that direction.” But all such excuses are subterfuges.

It doesn’t take so much talent to turn men to righteousness. It takes consecration and spirituality, and the smallest, weakest Christian can have both if he wills.

Some years ago I baptized a little boy, who had not seen his eighth birthday as yet. He turned to saving work, and not a few of his playmates and schoolmates found in him their John the Baptist to point them to the Lamb of God.A business man, in an eastern city, was dying. The Christian wife wanted to send for her pastor to pray for his soul. “No,” said the sinking man, “I don’t want him. Call in John, our porter. He has lived Christlike before my eyes for twenty years, and I had rather have him pray for my soul.” Consecration! Christliness!

That makes a soul-winner!And of all the great things in Christ’s religion, none equals that of turning men to righteousness. It is a good thing to seek social reforms such as .make men’s habitations more endurable; but it is a better thing to seek man’s conversion, for when he turns to righteousness, he will turn his own home into a little heaven.

It is a good thing to seek to reform the drunken and debased, but the only reformation that reforms is regeneration. It is a good thing to be liberally beneficent, helping the needy, but every man’s first and chiefest necessity is salvation. Feed him sumptuously every day; clothe him with fine linen; lay bags of gold at his feet; and yet leave his soul unsaved, and God pronounces him, “Wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”. It is of the saved God says, “All is yours, of things present or things to come!”It was his profound conviction that to convert men from the error of their way was the Christian’s greater work. That led Prof. John Stuart Blackie, the renowned scholar, to give up his chair in Edinburgh University, and seek the salvation of the Highland peasantry. He went to the new work saying, “Let Greek die; let Hebrew die; let learning go to the dogs if need be, but let souls live, and human brotherhood survive.”In view of these facts, I remark further:NO SHOULD BE WITH WINNING A SMALL NUMBER OF SOULS!“They that turn MANY to righteousness [shall shine] as the stars for ever and ever”. It is a great thing to save one soul! No man or woman or child lives in vain who leads one sinner to the saving Christ. Better than all honor; better than all wealth; better than all station; better than all reputation is his lot who leads a soul to the fountain of life.To save a soul, God’s own Son counted the forfeit, Heaven; the hunger, hardships, ignominies, reproach, cruelty, and crucifixion of earth, as naught! There is not an angel in Heaven but would quit its rhapsodies at any moment for so glorious a work! Oh, Christians, let us remember this that “He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins”.What a work! A soul from death!And that is not all.

He has put a new agent of redemption into the world, and how great it may prove eternity alone can tell.Alice Tucker little dreamed what she was doing for the sin-stricken of Cuba when she sat beside a sick young Cuban in New York and administered medicine and cheer to one who was both a stranger to our language and our Lord, seeking every opportunity to introduce him to both; but truly, as a writer in the Southern Seminary magazine once said, “As long as Cuba, the beautiful queen of the Antilles, shall stand, and bathe her sky—kissing summits amid the clouds; as long as the waves of the old ocean shall murmur as they wash its golden sands, the name of Alice Tucker will be remembered on earth and honored in Heaven because she led Diaz to Christ.“Kings and Princes may covet dominions and empires, but her’s is a better crown than goes with earth’s loftiest thrones.” She saved a soul! She sent back to Cuba a soul-winner such as few countries or centuries have ever seen beside.And yet it is not enough to save a single soul.

It is a great work, but there is a greater; save many souls.It was a great thing to plunge into the Johnstown flood, fight your way to a floating door and rescue a child, as one man did on that sad memorable day, but it was a greater work that Edward C. Wills did, who at the imminent and momentary risk of life pushed his little boat about on that boiling flood seeking the sinking until he saved a score! It was a great work Alice Tucker did to save Diaz. But Diaz does a greater work, in winning thousands to Christ. It was an unspeakable privilege and honor that nameless Methodist minister had of pointing the lad, Charles Spurgeon, to the Lamb. But none question that Spurgeon accomplished the nobler part when he in turn pointed thousands to the same saving One.I am convinced that most of us are too easily satisfied with our successes.

The Church of Christ, as at present constituted, is playing with duty instead of doing honest work. One day we will become ashamed of this two cent a week business for missions and make an offering unto the Lord.

One day the question at convention times will not be, “How many now pledge themselves to try to win one soul to the Saviour this year?” but, “How many will try to win twenty, fifty, one hundred, five hundred, a thousand?” Hamilin, a man who had a positive passion for soul-winning said, “I feel like a man who has been wrecked at sea, and has got into the life-boat, but sees his fellows sinking all about him! I must hurry then, for while I am saving one, others are going down!” That conception of the work gives emphasis to our text. We must save many, for many are sinking.I had a room-mate at college who was present when a carriage load of six people were carried by unmanageable horses into the Kentucky river. He was an expert swimmer and saved three of them, and reached the fourth; but his strength was exhausted, and he had to give her up and let her go down. He said to me that never, till his dying day, did he expect to throw off the pall of sadness that settled like a cloud over his spirit when he saw those three struggling ones sink.One a year? Better, a thousand times, one than none!

But oh, will we be content to save one and let ninety-nine sink and die before our very eyes? I don’t know how you feel, brother, about this soul-winning work; but as for me, I want many, many trophies for my God in the next twelve months!But you say, the layman can’t hope to have so many since he speaks not to crowds but to single souls.That is the best way to win many.

One at a time we must take men for Christ if we capture them at all. The preaching to crowds seldom results in salvation. It produces conviction for sin, and sets the soul in the way to be saved; that is all!There then is your chance. Reap whereon I sow. Prof. Thobuck of Halle, by personal visits to, walks and talks with, the students of that institution, led over 1,000 young men to Christ in a few years. Passion for souls makes possible a mighty work by any man.One of the speakers at our association told somewhat effectively, yet with faulty memory, one of Mr. Moody’s stories, in which this statement is finally illustrated.

What Mr. Moody said was this: “I want to tell you how I got the first impulse to work solely for the conversion of men. For a long time after my conversion I didn’t accomplish anything. It was in 1860 the change came. In the Sunday School I had a pale, delicate young man as one of the teachers. I knew his burning piety, and assigned him to a class of girls, the worst in the school. They were out-breaking, but he got on with them better than any one else had done. One day he was absent, and I tried to teach them, but failed.

The next morning he came into the store, tottering and bloodless, and threw himself on some boxes. I asked, ‘What is the matter?’ He said, ‘I’ve been bleeding at the lungs and the Doctors have given me up to die.” “You are not afraid to die?” said Moody. “No,” he answered, “But I am afraid to stand before God and tell Him I left all those girls unsaved! Oh, if I could only see them saved!”Mr. Moody said, “I got a carriage and drove that dying man to each one of their homes, and to each, in faint voice, he said, ‘I must leave you! I am going to die; but I want you to come to the Saviour V And then he prayed as I never heard man pray before! For ten days he labored and prayed.

At the end of that time the last girl had yielded to the Saviour. The night before he left for the south, they met at his house.

All were saved, and it was the gate of Heaven! He prayed, I prayed, and each of them prayed, and we sang, ‘Blest be the tie that binds.’ Next morning, without any concerted arrangement, every girl came to the depot to say ‘Good-by.’ It was a second gate of Heaven, though in one respect so sad. The gong sounded. He was supported on to the platform, and he sang, ‘Shall we meet beyond the river Where the surges cease to roll, Where in all that bright forever Sorrow ne’er shall press the soul?’ And as the train moved off they responded, ‘We shall meet in that blest harbor, When our stormy voyage is o’er We shall meet and cast the anchor, By the fair celestial shore!’” Ten days’ work! Ah, if in earnest in soul-winning, how our work might tell for God!