THE VALUE OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.

T had come to my knowledge that some Spiritualists were holding meetings at a village near my house, and it was pressed upon my heart to go there and distribute some Gospel books.

Now Spiritualists deny the atonement, and the divinity of Christ; they claim to be in communication with the spirits of the dead; certain among them termed "mediums" are said to be under the influence of the spirits who speak through them, and, among other things, describe the unseen world and the condition of the departed.

It is one of the most awful wiles that Satan has ever invented for the destruction of men; it is a revival of that abominable system which Jehovah warned Israel against in Deut. xviii. 9-12, for the spirits who speak through the mediums are not those of the dead, they are demons who personate the departed, and, as the agents of the devil, allure millions to eternal destruction. Paul spoke of it as a terrible form of wickedness that should characterise the latter times-" Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils" (demons), 1 Tim. iv. 1.

Well, one Lord's Day I and my two brothers

started off with a quantity of Gospel books, and on arriving at the village, went from house to house distributing them. We had nearly finished our work, when I was directed in a most wonderful way to the house of the leader of the Spiritualists. The door was opened by a respectably dressed, elderly woman, to whom I at once gave a book. As she glanced at it, I said, "It is about the Lord Jesus Christ."

Oh," remarked she quietly.

"Yes," I said, "there's nothing like the blood, is there?"

We don't believe in His blood," she quickly replied; "it's His love."

"And because of His love He shed His blood for us," said I.

It's a lie," roared a voice from behind a screen that hid the other occupants of the room from me. Oh, but," replied I, "God's Word says, 'The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.'"

"It's corruption," again roared the voice.

"I've been a Christian for years," said the woman," and I know all about these things."

"Yes," said I; "and you will know something else if you die unsaved and stand before the Great White Throne of Judgment—you will then know that you are lost for ever, because you haven't got Christ."

It's all rubbish," shouted the unseen speaker; we don't believe in it."

It's our works that'll save us," said the woman confidently.

I replied, "God says, 'without the shedding of blood is no remission,' for 'it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul"" (Heb. ix.; Lev. xvii.).

While I was speaking the door was banged in my face, but as I turned away from these determined rejecters of the blood, I thanked God for having permitted me to deliver my message, and prayed that His blessing might rest upon it.

At the present moment there is to be seen on all sides an awful disposition among men to treat the death of Christ as a thing of nought. Much of the popular preaching, and the so-called Christian literature of the present day, while descanting upon the life of Jesus, and holding it up for imitation by unregenerate men, as a means of their moral and social improvement, and ultimate salvation, deliberately keeps His death in the background, or else ignores it altogether.

It is easy enough to trace this soul-destroying system to its source. Satan is deceiving men as to their true position before God, leading them to think lightly of sin, and persuading them, that as God is love, He will not punish His creatures; and because this suits the sinner's desires, he eagerly embraces the lying suggestion. But God is also light, and the cross is the eternal witness to created intelligences of God's abhorrence of sin. His holiness and love were there fully and perfectly dis

played. His holiness in the judgment of sin in the person of the Son of His love made sin, though personally sinless. His love in the wonderful fact, that that Son, as the only one who could enter into the question of sin with God, so as to make a perfect and eternal atonement for it, was sent to the cross to endure the judgment instead of the sinner, that the latter might be saved.

It is thus in atonement-the very work that men are seeking to discard-that God, in His nature and character, has been perfectly manifested, and can alone be fully known.

Now, whosoever refuses to avail himself of that expiatory sacrifice, is the destroyer of his own soul, for he shuts up to himself the only way of escape from hell, and must personally bear the weight of God's wrath for ever and ever.

The life of Jesus could never save the sinner, for God had said, "Without the shedding of blood is no remission," for "It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." Without doubt, His life was a wonderful one. It stands on the page of eternal truth in all the glory of its absolute devotedness to God, the standing witness against the terrible and irretrievable failure of the whole human race.

Never before was man's utter ruin and incompetency to fulfil God's righteous requirements made so manifest. It was a divine light that fully disclosed his condition, his guilt, and the condemnation in which he lay on account thereof.

But man refused the light, and cast Jesus out of

the world; the crucifixion of God's Son was the most complete proof of the incurable evil of man's wretched nature. The descendants of the crucifiers are amongst us to-day, preaching salvation by works, as determined rejecters of the light as their fathers.

It is an awful proof of his blindness and ignorance of the truth of God, when an unregenerate man coolly, and without exercise of conscience, expatiates upon the perfection of a life which is but the witness and measure of his own failure; for the life of Jesus never assists the sinner to do better than he has done, it merely shows him what is lacking in his own. To endeavour to imitate it, is to demonstrate at once his weakness, and to court still greater failure; the divine and only remedy is to be found in the expiation for sin made by a dead Christ, and the communication of a new and divine life and nature by Christ risen from the dead.

Jesus sounded the death knell of every hope and aspiration of fallen human nature when He said to the fairest and best of unregenerate men, "YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN;" but He instantly pointed to Himself as the one who, when lifted up at Calvary as representing the sinner, should receive in His own sinless person the judgment due to unregenerate man, that out of His death everlasting life might spring forth as the gift of God to every sinner that believeth (John iii.), a life which should connect the receiver with Himself as the one risen out of death, and ascended into the glory of God.