Ver. 2.-The Divine vera,ci,ty. "God, who cannot lie." Man can lie. Man does be. Tiis word is not always his bond. He indulges in exaggeration. He tells half- truths, which are ever tbe worst of lies. I. SoME THINGS GoD CANNOT DO. He who gave the moral Law embodies in himself that Law. He cannot do that which is untrue, unrighteous, unjust! "God is not a man, that he shou:d lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." This is our con- solation in trouble. God is faithful, who bath promised-faithful in all that is exquisitely minute as well as all that is magnificently great. And in the wide sweep of the Divine promises we may find our rest in all times of tribulation. "All the promises of God in him [in Christ] are Yea and Amen, to the glory of God the Father." He cannot lie. II i,oMI!: THINGS THAT WE TOO OFTEN DO. 1. Carry our own cares, because we will not trlll!t our Father, and cast all our care on him. 2. Recall our past sins, and so torture our hearts with remembrance of them, when God has said that he has blotted them all out, and will re11,ember th_em against us no ;11ore. 3. Lose the bright vision of 1MKLven, and so become cast down m old age, forgettmg that there can be no suppressio ven or suppression of truth with our Saviour. "1-go to prepare a place for yuu; if it wer; not so I would have t~ld you." Tliis should be the rest of our hearts, if we have believed ~ Christ to the salvation of our souls. "We are in him that is trve."'- W. M. S. Ver. 2.-Tl,e Divine fore11igl,t. "Before the world began." 'fhis is one of the glories of the gospel. It foresees all events in history, and provides for all the neoessitiea of a being who is burn to be redeemed. L 'l'li!!:RE ARE NO AFTER-THOUGHTS WITH Goo. Our vision is imperfect. Our plans DlltiC&rry, becaus11 we have not taken in all aspects of the futu,.e. Sometimes our pro- OB. 1, 1-16,] THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 16
v1s1on for that future is too limited; sometimes it is ill adapted, and we say, had we foreseen, we could have avoided disappointment, disaster, and defeat. All the future . lies clearly before the omniscient gazP ofGo<l. "The Lamb was slain before the foundatio11 of the world." II. GoD'B PURPOSES ARE REVEALED 1N HIS PROMISES. Not before the earth began, but before the world began-the world of busy men and women ; the world of toil and strifP, of sin an,l sorrow, and the developments of g,1ilt and grief. Then it was that God declared that" the Seed of the woman should bruise the ser1•ent's head." Thi involves all. Sin would have involved death; but the eternal life which Rt. Paul speak of here was the gift of God in the incarnate Saviour. "This is life eternal, to know the the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou bast sent."-W. M. S.
Ver. 3.-The DiviM procl,amation. "But bath in dne times manifested h.is Word through preaching, . . . according to the commandment of God our Saviour." The entire dispensation of Divine mercy from the earliest ages is a manifestation, or a "showing forth." This takes place in God's own way and in God's own time. We who are Christians now wait for "the manifestation of the sons of God." I. THERE IS ALWAYS A DUE TIME. The clock of time is set to the order of Divine events. Generations give place to the age, and the age to the day, and thP. day to tbe hour. "Father, the hour is come." This was the fulness of tiwe. Then the Romans had prepared the roads for the ambassadors of Christ to travel; and the Greeks had provided a perfect 14nguage for the written record of the revelation ; and the disperse<l Jews had circulated the Old Testament Scriptures, arid had settled in foreign lands and planted synagogues; and Philosophy had confessed her failures in the opinion of her leaders, that there must be a Divine Deliverer, if deliverance comes at all; so that when men by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God in such a fulness of time to send forth his Son. JI. THERE WILL ALWAYS BB THE PREACHER. Truth, like the gospel, needs a loving heart a11d a living voice and a living experience to utter its sweet enchantments. It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save such as believe. Tha~ is to say, what the world calls foolishness. But men will al ways listen to and love the human voice when charged with truth and tenderness and pity. The presH is doin~ a noble work, but it will not supplant the pulpit. Style changes, and methods change; but God "fashioneth their hearts alike." Dickens spoke his own works, and thousands flocki,d to hear. Carlyle and Emerson both acknowledge the mighty and immortal power of speech. A preaching which has intellect, conscience, and heart in it, and which is filled with the Spirit of Uhrist and the cross, will never become effete. It is God's own way, and his ways are higher than our ways.-W. M. S. Ver. 4.-Believed in everywhere. "The common faith." Amid all diversities there is unity. In this sense we know that what is called "Catpolic" authority rests on what was believed "always, everywhere, and by all." Theories of religion vary, but the great facts and doctrines are the things which cannot be shaken, and still remain. The word "faitb " is sometimes used for that experience of the soul which we call trust, and as such is an in ward reception of Christ and his cross; but it is also used, and ill IIO wied here_ as descriptive of the gospel revelation itself. l ·1 IIE AP0S'l'LES DIE, BUT THE FAl'l'li K!SMAINB. We are not disciples of Paul, or ..-rnabas, or Timothy, or Titus, but of Christ. These apostles did not draw men to themselves, but to Christ. They were, as Paul declares, "ministers by whom ye believed.'· To be iu the true succession is to have the spirit of tbe apostles, and to hold the faitt of the apostles. So far as the gospel has been perverted by mediaival superstition 01 the earlier traditions of the fathers, it is not the common faith. An inspired revelatiou of truth euablcs us in every age to preserve the common faith. As the philosophic Coleridge said," It is evident that John and Paul held Christ to be Divine." The glorious gospel of the grace of God is preserved to us intact by the holy Gospeh1 and tb.e Epistles, and men true to the Bible harmonize in their acceptance of "the common faith." II. 'l'HE LIFE OF THE TRUE CHURUH IS '!'HE SAllB IN EVERY A0E, The root must be the same, because the fruit is th11 same. First truth aud then life The ,~ry for 18 THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. [OB. L 1-18.