"Dhis is the mystery of "His of the fulness of times He might in Christ, tu whom we also Eph. 1.91. will, that in the dispensation gather together im one all things have received an inheritance."
This is the last of a short series of sermons bearing on the trial of humanity of which we have been made of late so acutely conscious. Wo have seen that it is caused by the extension of our world—the sudden extension in recent times, and our moral failure to respond to this growing claim. The law of our being requires that the part should live for the whole—a law which was brought home to us in the old story of Reuben and Gad on the threshold of the Promised Land, how these were hidden to "go before their brethren armed and help them until they also had won their vest."' This unselfish service, however, demands a sufficient motive, and that brought us last Sunday to the thought that humanity has its champion and owes him all its faith. We considered then the spirit of Christ as our motive: it remains to consider his purpose as our programme.
1 want you to think of our Christian Faith this morning as a programme, When we engage in Biblical discussions or denominational controversies, our minds inevitably tun back to the past, and we forget the forward look of Christ and the prophetic quality of the Gospel. Christian hope has nothing like the place it ought to have, and so our faith goes limping.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.