the house of God, as from a burning building, leaving his overcoat behind him, when the themometer stood twenty degrees below zero, and it remained there in the seat from which he fled one week, before he remembered where he left it, and then one told him of it.

A WARNING TO ALL

This ought to be a lesson to all. It may be that you are just now doing the very thing that will cause the Holy Spirit to depart from you never to return. God's ways are past finding out, yet God can not always bear slight and insult. Just as each of us may, for a time, overlook slight and insult till at last the whole being seems to rise in indignation, to resent it, so with God. The way the Spirit works is not always the same. It may be the Spirit will come and plead with persistence year in and year out. It may be that like the awful storm that soon spends its fury, so the Holy Spirit may storm your very being. If this should be true, it is all the more likely that all the sooner will He depart and leave you, never, never to return. The Spirit's power and pleadings may be present at stated times. It may come in some sermon you chance to hear, that seems to touch the very inner, hidden springs of your being, while the heart grows

hungry for the love of God and His forgiveness. As we have said, God alone knows the ways and the workings of the Spirit. Remember the Spirit will not always strive. Moreover, every time you resist, it makes it all the harder for you to yield later. It is easier to give your heart to God, now, than it will be later. An illustration may enable you to grasp this. One day we went out into the yard and pulled up a little tree. It was perfect in every way. But it had grown only for a short time. It had sprouted from the seed that Spring. In the same yard were trees that had grown for years, that we did not attempt to pull up. Just so with sins. The longer they are left the harder it is to uproot them.

How may I know that I am a child of God? That I have been born again? Go to God's Word for the answer to this greatest of all questions to the soul's aspirations, longings, desires. No answer of man's will be safe, from you or me. My own personal experience may help you a bit. God's Word told me, "Those who are born again, love the brethren." This was the first ray of peace that came to my heart on this vital of all questions. Then, years later, I met another verse of Scripture that flooded my soul with certainty that amazed and surprised me. I had always based my hope of salvation and the hope of ETERNAL life upon the

words of Jesus as uttered in John 3:16. We had come to know the great word of that verse was the word of action-BELIEVE, BELIEVE, that is the word of all words in that verse. All who believe, get one thing worth every thing else in all the world, ETERNAL LIFE. We said to our own heart, for believing in Jesus Christ, the World's Saviour, we get ETERNAL life. When? As soon as we believe. If we get that, then it is impossible to ever lose it for then it would not be ETERNAL LIFE to us, if we could back slide, fall away, grow cold, yes, we might in enthusiasm cool off, but we can never lose the thing, for it's eternal.

We knew we believed in Jesus as our Saviour, He had spoken peace, peace so wonderful and marvelous to our heart, there was no doubting it. But to state it so others would believe and understand it as we did, that was for years a problem too great for us. Oft times we attempted it, and failed. One day in our personal work, we were talking with one of the members of our church who had for years been a Christian. Of this they were certain, but now in their home they were trying to lead one to Christ, and the sticking point was this, "How may I know, I'm born again?" God's Spirit lead us to say this. "Do you believe in Christ as your Saviour?" "I do." Then like a bolt of lighten

ing out of heaven's blue came this. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." I Jno. 5:1. And the word whosoever as in John 3:16 in the Greek is All here as it is there. "All who BELIEVE that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." "Why how simple, how marvelously simple, and yet how it floods my heart," this was the burst of joy from the one we were talking with. God's Spirit lead us to so use that, and so we give God the glory for the fullness of the Word. It explains, unfolds, illumines itself. Take it, let it lead and it will open every dark and obscure page and flood life's pathway with sunshine.

Let us summarize the points we have tried to make plain. You have enjoyed the privileges and the blessings of a Christian land. You have heard from the lips of God's servants, the truths concerning Christ, the Saviour. Just as you were instructed in the public schools, so, from the pulpit and the Sabbath school, you have been instructed in the truths of Christianity. More, you have enjoyed and have appreciated, to some degree at least, the blessings of the goodness of the gospel. You have felt the strivings of the Holy Spirit. You have realized that the passion and the death of Jesus Christ, as represented in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, has been fulfilled to the most minute detail in the death and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. "He

was led as a lamb, to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he, opened not his mouth," i. e. you recognize the promises of the Old Testament have been fulfilled, and realized in the Christ as revealed in the gospels. You have seen the power of the gospel as it has wrought such mighty influences, lifting the down cast, setting them upon pinnacles of fame and honor. You have seen the man taken from the last ditches of sin, whom no one respected, whom no one loved, not even those bound by the closest bonds of affection and through the blood of Jesus Christ, the Saviour, he has gained the respect and confidence, yea, love, not alone of loved ones, but of all the community; nay more, of all the world. Witness John B. Gough. It changed a Saul, a persecutor, into a Paul, a Christ-like man. It made of Bunyan, the blasphemer, the Christian writer. "It can take Delia, the blue bird of Mulberry bend, a prostitute, a drunkard, living in the midst of the vilest characters of New York City, her face disfigured, her body diseased, her soul sin-scarred, and make of her one of the sweetest saints that ever labored for Christ, her spirit so akin to the Master's that souls were won from their sins by the fragrance of her life, her face so beautiful that as she lay in her coffin they said, "It seemed like the face of an angel." This same love transformed Jerry Mc