THE terms covenant and testament are often used in this epistle. In His infinite wisdom, the Most High dealt with man from the beginning federally. In a covenant there must be two parties. In the covenant of works the Creator and man were the contracting parties. We ought to banish the idea from our mind that it was this covenant that bound Adam to obey the holy law of his Maker. All rational creatures are bound to love the Lord their God with all their powers, and to render that obedience which the law demands. But when God entered into a covenant with man new obligations were incurred. Man became responsible to fulfil certain conditions upon the fulfilment of which he could claim eternal life. The Creator promised this freely to Adam. Adam, on the other hand, was most plainly told of the result, should he break this covenant, both upon himself and his posterity. “And the Lord God commanded man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. ii. 16, 17). Notwithstanding, Adam broke the covenant, and thereby fell from his original righteousness, and became a sinner. He became an enemy to God in his mind, and all the thoughts and imaginations of his heart became evil. But though man fell away from his allegiance to God, his obligations did not cease. The miseries which sin brought upon Adam and his posterity in this life itself are awful, but they are only a drop out of the ocean of that wrath of God which is the wages of sin in eternity. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. vi. 23). “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all, for that all have sinned” (Rom. v. 12).
God, in infinite mercy, looked down from the height of His eternal glory upon the most awful condition into which Adam fell, came to him, and revealed to him a way of deliverance through the seed of the woman. This was the first announcement made of the Saviour, and of the covenant of grace. It is this covenant of grace, with its modes of outward ordinances, of which the Apostle writes to the Hebrews. He shows them in this epistle that Christ is the substance of all the sacrifices and ritual of the covenant made with them at Mount Sinai; that all these ceremonies held forth Christ in His obedience and atoning death; and that they all had their efficacy from His person as the rays of light have their power from the sun. In meditating upon the words of our text we shall endeavour, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to consider three things in particular:—
I. The Testator;
II. The necessity under which He was;
III. The Testament.
I. The Testator.
The Apostle, in this epistle, keeps before the mind of the reader the two terms “covenant” and “testament.” These two describe the covenant of grace. It was a covenant, properly speaking, as it was made with Christ, but sinners receive its benefits as Christ’s testament.
(1) Let us consider the spiritual condition of those for whom Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
First of all they were guilty. They had broken the holy law of God, and nothing but death could meet its sentence. If they should face this sentence in their own persons, the punishment would necessarily be endless. So awful are the demands of justice against the sinner for the dishonour done to the Lord’s majesty by sin, that it not only claims at the hands of the offender a perfect obedience (which was man’s obligation under the covenant of works), but also to suffer the utmost penalty of the law—even death in its threefold aspect—temporal, spiritual, and eternal. The sinner lay quite helpless under this righteous, but most terrible doom. God’s justice is like great mountains, and His judgments are deep as floods. The justice which man impugned is the habitation of God’s throne, and thus it became necessary to punish the creature whose aim in sin was to overturn the government and throne of the Most High. The only sentence which can bear the least proportion to such a crime is, that the floods of God’s wrath throughout eternity should be let loose upon the guilty. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek. xviii. 20). This will appear clear to our own reason and conscience if we consider that this will be the aim of the sinner throughout eternity. The enmity begotten through sin in the mind of man cannot be removed except by grace. No education, example, or environment can change man’s nature; nothing can do that but regeneration. The sinner could not extricate himself from this awful condition. Though an angel, or all the angels of glory should come to his aid they could do nothing. One sin brought myriads of angels in an instant from heaven to hell. So terrible is sin when we look to its effects on rational creatures that we must conclude that one sin is sufficient to bring eternal death upon any number of them, let their dignity as creatures be what it may. So there was no help for man in himself, or in any creature whatsoever. He would have to perish eternally without remedy had not the Lord, in His infinite mercy, provided a way of escape.
(2) In the covenant made with Israel on Mount Sinai many sacrifices for sin were set up.
There was a mercy-seat set up in the most holy place, and a high priest was appointed whose duty it was to enter that place once a year with the blood of the sacrifices, on the great day of atonement, to intercede for Israel before that mercy-seat; while other priests were set apart to offer sacrifices daily for the sins of the people. All these sacrifices could not take away sin. The awakened conscience could find no rest or peace in them. The blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin. This is as clearly set forth in the Old Testament as it is in the New. “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah vi. 6, 7). Though rivers of the blood of animals had been spilt for sin, the guilt of it still remained. The tabernacle, the mercy-seat, the altar, the high priest, and all the sacrifices typified Christ. They were shadows of Him; for those who by faith saw in and by them the great sacrifice of Calvary, they were efficacious; but to all who looked only to the merit of these sacrifices as they were in themselves there was no efficacy in them. It is not only the justice of God that demands death as the wages of sin; the conscience of the sinner, when awakened, demands the same. So those who were taught of the Holy Ghost before the coming of Christ in the flesh, understood the nature of the atonement, and looked to His death as the only way of deliverance. The word of God is the only rule of faith. In the first promise the bruising of Satan’s head was to be by the bruising of the heel of the woman’s seed. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah the great sacrifice for sin is held forth as clearly as in the Gospels. The same thing is true of the Psalms.
(3) Let us briefly consider the person, and humiliation of the Testator.
In the first chapter of this epistle the Apostle proves that He was God. He shows that there are passages in the Old Testament which God the Father spake, and that they can neither be applied to angels or men. “For,” says He, “unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.” God never asked any of his rational creatures to worship a mere creature; therefore Christ is God. The Apostle then takes up other truths to prove that Christ is the moral Governor of the universe. “But to the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of the kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” He then goes on to show that God the Father spake to Christ as the Creator of all things. “And, Thou, O Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: they shall perish; but thou remainest” (Heb. i. 5-11). In the second chapter the Apostle takes up the proof of the human nature of Christ, and of His humiliation and sufferings. For though it is proved to the satisfaction of any who submit to the truth of God in matters of faith, in the above quotations, that Jesus Christ is a divine person, and equal to God the Father, Christ had a human nature; and therefore the Apostle goes on to prove that the Word of God spoke of him as having it. “What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.” Under whom? under any of the sons of Adam. He speaks of him here as having absolutely all things in this world and in that which is to come put under him. Now there never was such a man among the human race. The Apostle shows that this was fulfilled in Jesus. “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour.” In this epistle we, as well as the Hebrews, are taught infallibly that Jesus of Nazareth was God, and when He became man did not cease to be what He was—God. Therefore, the second Adam, or covenant head on the sinner’s side, is the Lord from heaven.
The Scriptures speak of the covenant of grace as being between the Father and the Son. The Father took the side of the offended Godhead; the Son took the place of the sinner. He thus became responsible to God the Father to make amends for the breach of the covenant of works, by rendering to the moral law a perfect obedience, and by laying down His own life as an expiation for the sins of such as shall be saved. It was to the Testator a covenant in the strictest meaning of the term; but to them for whom He stood, the blessings of this covenant came in the form of a will or testament. This is the well-ordered and sure covenant which is offered to sinners in the Gospel. None but God could pay the penalty due to sin, and this had to be done in the sinner’s nature. This is the Testator—the eternal Son of God, who became man, and so was, and continues to be, both God and man in two distinct natures, and one person for ever.
II. The necessity under which He was.
We have endeavoured to show the awful condition into which man fell by sin. We must keep that in view when speaking or thinking of the mediation of Christ. He became responsible to God for the sins of the elect. He took the very place legally which belonged to them. The guilt of their sin was transferred from them to Him. The curse of God against sin became His also. This became His when the iniquity of His people was laid upon Him. He who was made under the law, in order to obey its precepts and penalties, was the Creator of heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is. Every step of His obedience, from the manger in Bethlehem to Calvary’s cross, were the steps of God, the second Person of the adorable Trinity, in man’s nature. It was God in human nature that obeyed the holy law. This magnified the law and made it honourable. When an innocent creature—man or angel—obeys the moral law he must say:—”I am an unprofitable servant: I have done that which was my duty to do.” Not so with Christ. He put an honour on the holy law infinitely greater than the dishonour man put upon it. He sits upon the circle of the earth; and the inhabitants of it are like grass-hoppers before Him, or as the small dust of the balance. Christ’s obedience, when set over against the disobedience of the creature, makes the sins of the elect like the dust of the clouds before God the Father. In order to attain this He had to become a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He emptied Himself so fully that He had to say:—”Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has not where to lay his head” (Matt. viii. 20). He emptied Himself so that creatures ministered to Him with their substance. He who made all things, and to whom all things belong helped by His own creatures! Why? Because the sinner forfeited his right to one drop of cold water, and He was now in the place of the sinner before God; and on account of the love which He bore to His own people, and to His Father’s glory. He loved the Lord His God with all His heart, with all His soul, with all His strength, and with all His mind; and His neighbour as Himself. Though He was made a curse for sin, His love to the Father knew no abatement; but He loved the law, by which He was accursed for the sins of His people, with a perfect love. Though He was hated by men, He loved them with a perfect love. “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John xiii. 1).
Humiliation with a life of sorrows and griefs was not the climax of His sufferings. The death sentence passed by God on man for sin had to be met. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. ix. 22). We have drawn attention already to the truth that the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin. Christ took to Himself the body which the Father prepared for Him. This was written of Him, “Burnt offering and sin offering thou hast not required. Then I said, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Psalm xl. 68). This is the will of which He so submissively spoke in the garden of Gethsemane:—”Not my will but thine be done” (Luke xxii. 42). The Holy Ghost gives us an infallible comment on this great truth:—”By this will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. x. 10). The body and soul of the Lord Jesus had to be offered as a sacrifice to God for the sins of an elect world. Christ, in His own person was the priest, sacrifice, and altar, when He offered Himself without spot to God. This was the most amazing sight ever seen. The Father Himself speaks of it as such:—”For who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me? saith the Lord” (Jer. xxx. 21).
The flaming sword of divine justice, which appeared at the gate of the garden of Eden to keep Adam out from the tree of life, was commanded to awaken against God’s only begotten Son. “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn my hand upon the little ones” (Zech. xiii. 7). Christ applies this truth to what took place consequent to his apprehension at the garden of Gethsemane:—”Then Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad” (Matt. xxvi. 31). No doubt wicked men, who are declared to be God’s sword, did their utmost, urged on by Satan, also Satan and the powers of darkness, to cause as much agony to the Lord of glory as lay in their power. The twenty-second Psalm bears this out fully. But the sting of all the agony of Christ’s soul and body on Calvary’s cross is to be found in the cry, “My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” He was made a curse for His people. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. iii. 13). He grappled in his death with the eternal death, which is the wages of sin, and dried up the hell of the elect upon the cross. His eternal power as God upheld his human nature, till all the wrath and curse which were due to sin from a just God were fully exhausted upon His soul and body on the cross. Had he been a creature, as the Socinians of our day hold Him forth in their teaching, He would have lain eternally under the burden. He, by His death, swallowed up death in victory; made an end of sin; finished transgression; and brought in an everlasting righteousness. He came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. This was the errand upon which the Son of God came into the world. “He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John xix. 30). On the day of the resurrection He said to the two disciples who were on their way to Emaus:—”Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory” (Luke xxiv. 26). These are a few of the necessities into which the Testator brought Himself by becoming the surety of His people, who were strangers and enemies.
By His obedience and atoning death He redeemed their persons from the curse of the law, and purchased for them an inheritance, which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, in the heavens. He opened a way for the mercy of God to flow forth like a river from the throne of God to perishing sinners of mankind. The Father put all things under Him that He might give eternal life to as many as the Father gave Him. These are the things of which we will now endeavour to say a few words under the third head.
III. The Testament.
In a testament or will, among men, there are several parties concerned. This text speaks to us after the manner of men declaring dark sayings of old in parables, or similitudes. First, there is the testator. He has something which he desires to bestow upon others after his death. “A testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth (Heb. ix. 17). He, therefore, makes his will so that his affairs after his death may be settled according to his own mind. Second, there is the lawyer before whom the testimony is to be written and attested. His duty is, that everything which the testator desires to be written should be inserted in the testament exactly in accordance with the testator’s desire. Thirdly, there is the witness who hears and writes the testament from the mouth of the testator; and also attests it as witness of the transaction. Fourthly, there are those unto whom the testator makes over his riches after his death. The benefits they are to receive are set down carefully in the testament, and what each individual is to get is definitely stated. None can make any changes in this transaction but the testator himself. Two copies are written of the testament; one of them is sealed and the other is left open. The sealed copy is not to be looked into till after the testator’s death. Death is the confirmation of it.
The testament of Christ is written, and is called the Old and the New Testaments. Not because they are two different Testaments, but because there were two periods of time embraced by them. Under the Old Testament, sinners received the blessings of salvation upon the credit of Christ’s faithfulness to pay their debt when the fulness of time should come. Under the New the atonement is an accomplished fact. Whether under the Old or New Testaments sinners were saved, it was by faith in Christ as the head and mediator of the covenant of grace, they were saved. It was the blessings of His purchase that they all received.
In our day brutish men are tampering with Christ’s Testament, and declaring that it is full of errors, &c. This only proves that there is nothing in it for them; for those who expect that there is anything in it for them, they want to leave it as it is. Audacious men may take the awful responsibility of adding to it, or taking from it, and thereby bring guilt and the curse of God upon themselves, but Christ ever liveth to see that all the blessings which He has purchased for His people shall be made theirs. The copy on earth may be tampered with by thieves, but the copy in heaven is beyond their reach. It seems to us a miracle that, after all the attacks made upon God’s Word in this world, it should have passed unscathed out of the hands of such wicked men.
(1) This Testament has to be read in this world to all the chosen of God.
They must hear it. For this purpose Christ has set up a ministry, and the means of grace in the world. The duty of Christ’s ministers is to read and expound the contents of this Testament to the people. It is not their duty to add anything to it or take from it. It is their duty to tell the character and conduct of the parties to whom its blessings are freely offered, and the awful doom that awaits such as die without getting a share in it. On the other hand, it is the duty of the people to assemble together in order that they may hear, believe, and be saved. If they neglect this, they are accounting themselves unworthy of eternal life. Paul sets this before us:—”How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?” (Rom. x. 14, 15). He tells most distinctly what the ministers of Christ are to preach:—”I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word” (2 Tim. iv. 1, 2). Now this testament is read to men spiritually dead. It is God’s word, or voice, that can quicken the dead. In the prophecy of Ezekiel (xxxvii. 1-10) we have a full description given us of the duty of the prophet, his text, and the work of the Holy Spirit among the dead. The bringing of a sinner to spiritual life is as great a miracle as the calling of the dead out of their graves. The reading and expounding by men of God, of Christ’s Testament has quickened many a dead soul, and will continue to do so till the end of time, till all the elect are saved. This is the way God has chosen, and He is pleased to save sinners by it:—”For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. i. 21). Saving faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
(2) Let us consider a few of the things conferred on sinners in this Testament.
First: Christ Himself must be received by faith as the first and unspeakable gift of this Testament. Christ is offered in the gospel to sinners as a Saviour. Until sinners accept of Him as offered in the Word of God, they are without an actual interest in the covenant of grace, without God and without hope in the world. The Holy Ghost convinces every sinner that is saved of the truth of this. The reason and conscience of the sinner are quickened to concur with the testimony of God’s truth against himself. He is convinced that he is a sinner. He cannot call himself now by any other name:—”God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke xviii. 13). He feels his guilt, and is convinced that he must perish for ever if God will not have mercy on him. This name—sinner—is quite new to him now. The Spirit leads him to the truth that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This raises a desire in his mind after Christ. His fear before may have been that he should be cast into hell for ever; but his greatest fear now is that he may die without obtaining a saving interest in Christ. He begins to seek Christ. He is now convinced that his inability to accept of Christ offered to him in the gospel is the sin which will be, if God interpose not, his ruin. He searches for Him in the Scriptures, in private prayer, and if within his reach, in the public means of salvation. We read of two—a newly married couple—in the north of Scotland, who, being awakened to a sense of their lost and Christless condition, began to search the Scriptures, and so intent were they, that many a time the fire would be quite extinguished and the hearth cold, before either of them would observe that it was so. “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God” (Prov. ii. 35). The things of time are forgotten in the concerns of eternity. The mind cannot be kept from eternal and spiritual things; the perishable objects of this world are little thought of. One told us that, at such a period of his life, he was for three years that he could not think of anything but eternity:—”But,” he said, “it is as difficult for me to bring my mind now away from the things of this world, as it would have been then to bring it from the things of eternity.” The Lord may bring this change about in a moment; so we don’t mean that He, in His infinite wisdom, deals in the same way with every sinner.
The Spirit of God opens the eyes of the mind of the sinner, and presents Christ to him in the promise of the Word of God, enabling him to embrace and rest upon Him alone for salvation. Faith never comes alone into the soul. Love, hope, confidence, &c., come along with it. When the sinner thus embraces Christ by faith, he views Him as the atoning sacrifice for sin. He feels in his conscience that his sins are forgiven him; he also sees by faith the ground of his justification—that God is just when He justifies the ungodly sinner that believes in Christ. Christ is now his righteousness before God:—”Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. v. 1). The peace of God fills his soul. Everything becomes new to him. He sees a beauty even in the material creation that he never saw before. He is surrounded with gladness:—”For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isa. lv. 12). He is like David:—”He brought me also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he put a new song in my mouth, even praises to our God” (Ps. xl. 2, 3). He is now an heir of God and joint heir with Christ. All things are his, because Christ is his. Christ’s Testament is a real thing to him now; and what rejoices his heart is, that though Christ died to bring all the blessings of the covenant of grace to him, He ever lives to confer these blessings, and to enjoy them with the saved sinner throughout an endless eternity.
Many a cloud may come over his evidences, but where God hath begun the good work, He will accomplish it until the day of Jesus Christ. Unbelief will come, Satan will come, the world will come, and the flesh will come; but God will not cast off the heirs of salvation. The sinner will have often to go back to the Testament to see if there be anything for him in it. Sometimes he finds nothing, at other times he finds that his name is there. I read of a young girl, at the time of persecution in Scotland, who went away on a Sabbath morning to attend a Convective at a distance. The troopers met her and asked her where was she going. She said to them that her elder brother had died, that he had left a large legacy, and that she was going to see if he left anything for her. They allowed her to pass, not understanding what she meant.
It is generally the case that people are full of confidence that something is left to them when a wealthy friend dies. Christ is the sinner’s friend. Many, therefore, take it for granted that He has left heaven in His Testament for them, who make little conscience of making their calling and election sure. There will be awful surprises awaiting such when the Book of Life is opened at the last day. Name after name shall be called, and the self-confident sinner will be expecting to hear his own next; but that next will not come till the whole are read off. The deluded sinner then will see his own folly in having taken for granted that, because he had good hopes of his own case, he was sure of heaven at last. Many will curse their deceitful hearts that day, who think now that they have good hearts. The truth of God, however, never deceived any man. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.
Others will hear their names read out on the great day, who often concluded in this world that there was nothing in Christ’s legacy for them. They were finding so much sin and corruption in their heart that they could not see how grace could be in them at all. This was causing them to abhor themselves, and to think it a wonder that God bore with them so long:—”If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps. cxxx. 3). Two of the crowned heads of Europe met once, and the one said to the other who had come to visit him:—”I will give you any of the condemned criminals in such a prison, whom you will select, and you can give him his liberty.” They both went to the prison. The prisoners were brought forth, and the king asked each in turn:—”What crime hast thou committed?” Every one told him that he had not been guilty of any crime, but that he was wrongfully condemned. He met one man among them who, when he asked him the above question, answered:—”If you should ask me—What crime hast thou not committed?—it would be easier for me to answer.” “Then,” he said, “you confess that you are justly condemned!” “Yes,” he said, “and the wonder to me is that I was not condemned to die!” The king passed along until he had gone through them all. He then stood forth, and called this man by his name; but the man did not so much as look up. He called him again with the same result. The third time he called him, and the man looked towards him. He said to him:—”I give you your freedom; for you are too bad a man to be left in the company of such innocent companions.” The Lord’s people have nothing good to say of themselves. They know themselves too well for that, and still they discover evils in their hearts every day, of which they were formerly ignorant. All His children shall be taught of God. Their confidence in the flesh is gone. All their hope and confidence is placed in Christ alone. Salvation by grace alone meets their case. If one good thought should be held forth as a condition upon which they should receive the blessings of the covenant, they would conclude that they could not fulfil it; but because salvation is of free and sovereign grace, they have some hope. This hope is altogether through the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The Apostle sums up their possessions in these words:—”For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. iii. 21-23). Poor child of God, behold your possessions!—”Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev. iii. 11).
The children of God have eternal life by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but what have the rest of the human race who are Christless? All are by nature children of wrath, but the unrepentant shall be lost eternally. God declares on His oath that He has no delight in the death of the sinner, but that His delight is that sinners should turn unto Him and live. Oh, sinner! will you continue in your carnal ease and security, while God is telling you clearly in His word that you must be cast into outer darkness after death? You are yet in time where Christ is in your offer, and you are called to come to Him just as you are and be saved. Listen to Him who speaks from heaven, and come with your eye upon the atonement made on Calvary’s cross as your only plea for mercy. “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out” (John vi. 37).