II. How Wl!J ABE TO PROFIT BY TFIE FULL COMING OF THE TIME OJI' ,JEsua. we can only profit by the coming of this time as we m11ke it to profit. The time of Jesus hn!i to come fully with each of ue. Not a human being who has ever trod this planet but hne to come somewhere nnd somehow in contact with Jesus. We can no morn cscapo Jesus thnn wo can escnpe death. Life is narrowing day by day, and wo arc getting pushed on to n wicket-gate where face-to-face dealing with Jesus is inevitable. The time he.e fully come for Jesus to be showing somethin;:; of his s:iving power in our experience. Whenever Jesus, in the days of his flesh, met with those ,vho bar! divers diseases nnd infirmities, the time wa.s fully come for him to t11ke those diseases and infirmities away. And eo the time of Jesu8 is folly come to save whenever the sinner feels hie need of saving. When tho lifeboat is built and put in the lifeboat-house, the time is fully come for the boat to do its work. Whenever the work is ready for it., it is ready for the work. So Jesus is ready for the sinner whenever the sinner is ready for him. Ready to save, ready to govern, ready to comfort, ready to put in the way of a full recompense for an obedient life.-Y. Ver. 17.-0lirist's authority and the way to a.qcertain U. It was very natural for a Jerusalem audience to say with respect to Jesus, "Why should we listen to this lino?" 1. It is very natural that any one making special claims should be regarded with special caution. Jesus knew quite well that he woulrl not be readily received on his own valuation. Thanks are owing to those who opposed and criticized him in the days of his flesh. Their very way of talking to him, the true Teacher, showed how little the instruction of other teachers had done for them. 2. Jesus had not been brought up among the people who were recognized as having the right to send forth teacher3. A3 we should say, Jesus had not been to Oxford or Cambridge. He would not speak like a.n educated Jew of Jerusalem, but like the son of a working-man from far-off Galilee. So Jesus had to explain the marvel how he seemed to know the Law and the Prophets at least as well as those whose whole lives had been spent in acquiring the knowledge. I. LOOK AT THE OLA.SS WHO ABE SPECIALLY INTERESTED IN THIS VERSE, Those who wanted to know something certain about the authority and doctrine of Christ. These people in Jerusalem had all sorts of thoughts about Jesus. Some said he was a good man; others, a deceiver of tlie people. It was once said of him that he cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons. Some thought he was Elijah; some Jeremiah, or, at all events, one of the prophets. There was no certainty about him in the minds of many. And in the minds of many the same uncertainty still prevails. Learned men spend years examining the Gospels, and they have nothing indubitable to report in the end. Yet be sure Jesus wants effectually to help all that are in real perplexity about him. Did he not say, "Blessed is he whosoever is not offended in me"? II. How TIDS CLASS IS TO BE HELPED. This class will always find a stumbling-block in Jesus till it grows through a great inward change. Those who have no will to do the will of God will never find out the truth as it is in Jesus. Our own self-will and self- conceit form the greatest stumbling-block. Self-willed people find it very uncom- fortable the more they come to close quarters with Jesus. He never speaks without contradicting some dear desire of the unrenewed heart. Jesus was ever on the look-out for people who wanted to do the will of God-people who felt they had come into the world to do the will of him who made them and the world into which they had come. God has his wishes just as much a.s any of us. A conscientious and loving servant, who is far away from his master, will ever have the thought of the master's wish before him; and when oftentimes he sees not quite clearly what the master would have him to do, he will be on the look-out for every source of instruction. If, then, at such a moment a messenger should come from the master, meanly clad, and with a message written on a scrap of the commonest po.per, he will not think less of the message if it tells him just what he wants to know. When John Williams the missionary was building his chapel in Rarotonga, he had occasion one day to send to his wife for some- thing he had forgotten, 1;0 he scribbled the necessary message on a chip with a bit of charcoal, He took the materials at hand, but the message WllS none the less valiJ., none the less understood. And so the greatest of all messages, from the infinite and eternal God, is none the less his message because it came through One who was born in th~ lowlies& surroundings and brought up in tho home of a Galiutw working man. li w, THE GOSPEL ACCORntN"C'-r '1'0 ST. JOttN. [err. vm. 1-llO.
are resolutely on the side of God, God will help us into all truth, security, peace, and bles~cdness.-Y.