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What is the Key Note?

to it, mainly as we began, by a dead lift of exhortations, arguments and motives of a personal nature. "First, that which is natural”— and always that which is natural. The proposition that the spring of Christlikeness in us must be the same that it was in Christ himself, is recognized but is not 'taken as altogether practical. That the Father, his glory, and his will, were simply all-in-all to Jesus, as it ought to be all-in-all to us, will be admitted but we do not find this emphasized and insisted on, as the sole essence of our Christian morals, or "practical piety." This is the key note of Christ and of the Christ life, but it is not the key note (though not quite absent), of Christian confessions and homiletics.

The common objection that so high a key note is impracticable but for a few of advanced spiritual culture, seems plausible, but nothing could be more fallacious. The rawest recruit in the ranks of a patriot army-one who could not understand the use of a single step in his drill, or imagine the meaning of strategy, or have the least idea of the political or legal rights at issue can as clearly recognize the great object of the war, and lay down his life for it with as high a sentiment of patriotism, as any general or statesman. president or king, that is over him. Exactly so the Christ's recruit, though but a babe in Christ, can feel the transcendent rights of the Father of mankind, and the supreme interest of His Kingship and His Kingdom, as they are emphasized in the first words of the Lord's prayer, no less keenly, if not more so, than the greatest of theologians. The little one will start from that key note on through all the gamut of Christ life from its heights down to the humblest details of obedience, with a joyous impetus and enthusiasm that could never be wrought up in a life-time of practice on lessons of the ordinary lower kind. The higher the key note on which we begin, and continue, the higher, clearer, stronger, will be the Christian character throughout all its detail. The great cause of the paralytic condition of the Church is that the key note is not high enough, is something less than Divine.

A few in some quarters are struggling up toward the standard of Christ, in doctrine and intent, even if not in full development. That must be the watchword of the watchmen who shall see eye to eye, and will be the general standard of endeavor, when the Lord shall bring again Zion,

What is the Key Note?

THE ATTITUDE OF CONSECRATION.

WHOLENESS.

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"The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him." Do you know the meaning of that little word perfect? In the 27th of Deuteronomy we read: "Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God with whole stones." Perfect is the word that is here translated whole. Now read it. "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in behalf of them whose heart is whole towards Him." You know what it is to give four-fifths and keep back one-fifth. You know what it is to give all except one little thing that you hold in your hand behind. God wants the whole. Consecration means a whole heart.

SPIRITUAL POWER A MATTER OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS GOD.

We need not trouble about power; we need not trouble about anything, so long as our attitude is right towards God. There is plenty of power; it is all in God and there is no evidence of effort on the part of the consecrated heart. Just the contrary! Where there is whole-hearted consecration God will give the power. You say: "I should like to have it, before using it." You cannot. You will not. Just at the moment when it is needed, if your attitude is right, the stream of power will flow through you. The river is flowing, and you must be in the river if you want the power.

THIS ATTITUDE MUST BE CONSTANTLY CONFIRMED.

Every morning when you wake your first thought should be, Is the attitude right? A few moments of thoughtful meditation before God, getting into a right attitude before Him, are worth hours of aimless prayer. Get into a right attitude, and the Spirit will come and fill you, and you will know how to pray and what to pray for. And so, though you have been living in a right attitude, you need perpetually to have it confirmed, at the beginning of each morning; and throughout the day, moment by moment, remember your attitude towards God."-Rev. Evan H. Hopkins, at Keswick: in "The Life of Faith."

"RICH TOWARD GOD."

Rev. Dr. Stearns, of Philadelphia, among the requests for prayer, in "Kingdom Tidings," says: Let our readers pray for Miss Ely, of St. Louis, who is on her way to Morocco to give herself and her wealth to the women of that land. There are others, also. Would that their zeal might "provoke very many."

HOW WILL YOU PROVE IT?

"While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions are suffering the horrors of heathenism, the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were intended by Him to keep you out of the mission field."-Keith Falconer.

Critical Study of the Bible.

HISTORICAL OUTLINES.

BI-MILLENNIUM OF ABRAHAM: SECOND QUARTER, CLOSING.

THE CHASTISEMENTS OF DAVID'S CRIMES.

"Therefore let no man glory in men" (I Cor. 11:21).

The tremendous issues of David's fall as the typical head of the Organic Kingdom on earth, were of no temporary nature or effect (as before suggested), but were and are as far-reaching as the continuous trial and failure of the Children of Israel themselves in their analogous capacity. The whole history of the Kingdom is a trial of its human element, with failure, from first to last, for the sole glory of God in "that Man whom He ordained" and begat, and who alone proved worthy to triumph for us over the Author of our fall "and all our wo."

Moreover, it is a consideration of the utmost value, theologically and practically: that the history of the Kingdom is one long trial of Satan also, and of his power against Man and the God Man; coming at last to a promised end in the destruction of the Devil with all his works, even to the first and last of them-Death. (Rev. xx:14.)

The present chapter is, therefore, by no means misplaced, though with unwonted prominence, in the Outlines of Sacred History, as like no other and second to no other, except the Trial and Fall of Adam and the Trial and Triumph of the "Second Adam;" or possibly except such great epochs as the preservation of the Church at the great purgation by the Flood, or its establishment in Abraham and in Moses, or its manifestation and restoration in Babylon through Daniel.

There is also an unparallelled lesson of Divine grace afforded by the guilty, calamitous, erring, and yet saving, experiences of David's later years. We are unable to comprehend the possibility that such a man as David is represented on the whole, could be guilty of such consummate crimes as are written against him, unless we realize as a fact the unlimited power of Satan in man, whoever the man may be, who is left to the Tempter, unshielded by the interposition of a

The Chastisements of David's Crimes.

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Divine Savior. Again, we cannot accept David pardoned, restored and rejoicing, as we find him after all the evil he had done, unless we have first found faith for ourselves in unlimited mercy of God to the penitent, to put-away both sin and evil under His own Atonement; and then we discover anew, in this transcendent example, an illimitable grace in God and virtue in the blood of His Son, such as else the world never saw, nor we (perhaps) ever sounded in the depths of our own sin and salvation.

"Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy Law."-Ps. cxix:18.

But, once more: How could David have been the man after God's own heart, as revealed to Samuel (1 Sam. XIII:14) and quoted by Paul (Acts xiii:20) with enlargement from the 89th psalm? The latter passage, indeed, is wholly Messianic, and the much-quoted expression, "a man after His own heart," which has been to many a stumbling block, may be properly understood as prophetic of the Divine perfection of that Son of David to whom the name David is so often directly applied by the prophets.

In its application to David himself, however, the consistency of Divine satisfaction is shown by the Scriptures which everywhere exalt that implicit faith in God, of which David was so wonderful an example, as the one quality, or attitude, on which God's choice among sinful men can turn.

Among natural qualities, also, we find in David one to which God has given great honor in the revelation of Himself: that of tender mercy. In David's temperament, however, the sympathetic and emotional too heavily overbalanced the ethical. While it made him the most rapturous of psalmists, worshippers, and revealers of God's own tenderness; and also, together with his commanding heroism, won the hearts of a whole people more than any other king in history; yet it weakened him pitifully in the due proportions of a ruler. He could not punish, either as king or father, with the strength of justice, except in those instances where the generous magnanimity that could not but condone offences against himself, was stirred to anger by offences done in his own behalf, such as the killing of Saul, Ishbosheth, etc. The fierce "sons of Zeruiah" were "too strong for him;" and nothing his own sons could do was bad enough to nerve his justice against his fond

ness.

That erotic susceptibility which is often "the last infirmity"

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of richly sympathetic natures, made an opening for Satan's deadliest dart, and dissolved the very foundations of the kingdom in the four mighty insurrections of Absalom, Sheba, Adonijah, and finally of Jeroboam, that completed at length the alienation of Saul's "Israel" from the house and tribe of David; although Saul's own tribe of Benjamin seems to have been won and retained by David's splendid magnanimity towards them and their fallen dynasty, or perhaps as much by neighborhood intimacy.

THE RETRIBUTIVE REBELLION UNDER ABSALOM.

Of all David's sons, Absalom seems to have been pre-eminently the apparent heir, by personal advantages and kingly talents, which gained him the favor of Joab, the military chief, of Ahithophel, the chief counsellor of state, and of many other persons of consequence at the capital; besides the extended popularity which he cultivated by taking advantage of the lax administration of justice which was a glaring defect of David's reign, to pose as a reformer and demagogue. Not only from the explicit statement that we have of these facts, but also to a remarkable degree further from his bold assumption of royal state as the crown prince, attended by a body-guard of fifty men with "chariots and horses" (where David himself, and Solomon, rode only a mule 1 Kings 1:33); does Absalom appear to have enjoyed an undisputed pre-eminence as the coming king. When the infamy of Bathsheba's exaltation, and her unworthy ascendancy over David, threatened the succession with something worse than illegitimacy, what wonder that the eyes of a discontented public were turned to the splendid prince who already outshone the royal state of his father, and with favor to his movement to seize the forfeited dignity of the throne?

When Absalom's plans were ripe, he left Jerusalem, with a retinue of two hundred of his most conspicuous and devoted adherents but without revealing to them his intentions; proceeded to Hebron under pretence of sacrifices becoming to a coming king; called to him there his confederate, Ahithophel, the chief counsellor of the king himself; and sent confidential agents throughout all the tribes to give the signal by the sound of trumpets at the proper noment for a simultaneous proclamation of the new king, crowned at Hebron.

In a word, the revolution was universal and complete. We need not follow farther the indications condensed in the 15th chapter of