A TRUE TOKEN.

Hoa Maori, Issue 44, 1 October 1897, Page 13

A TRUE TOKEN.

“ Give me a true token . . . And the men said unto her, We will bo blameless of this thine oath which thou hast made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by : and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethern, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee. And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless : and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him.”—Joshua ii. 12-19. JERICHO, viewed from a gospel stand-point, represents the world under wrath wrath of God. What was it, think you, that kindled the divine displeasure, and caused it to hang like

a dark heavy pall over the doomed city? There can be but one answer. It was S-l-N— Sin. Yet Jericho appears to have made great pretensions. Do you know what its name signifies ? Some say it means ‘The city of the moon.’ That is how man regarded it—a fair and lovely place; but that is just what it really was not. The character of the city gave the lie to the name it bore, for it was corrupt and vile —full of lust, cruelty and idolatry. People sometimes affect suprise and horror at God telling Israel to put the Canaan! the sword, and exterminate them; but what surprises me is the wonderful patience and mercy of the great moral Governor of the universe in bearing with their iniquity as long as He did. Why, four hundred years before this they might have been righteously destroyed ; but mercy interposed, and judgement was delayed because the iniquity of the Amorites was not then full. And has not God displayed the same longsuffering grace with the world at large? It is 1800 years since Jesus died—since He said, Now is the judgment of this world ’’—and though even then the world before God was ended and judged, yet the execution of the sentence pronounced upon it has lingered century after century. But man, foolish man, trifles with divine grace—" Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” (Eccl. vm. II.) Howbeit, judgment is near. God cannot forget the cross. He must avenge the death of His own dear Son. The world is stained by the foulest murder conceiveable, and it will surely stand arraigned before God’s bar, red-handed with the blood of its rejected Lord. All the world are alike guilty, for all were represented at the cross-Romans, Greeks, Jews— were there, and had a hand in that dark deed when Jesus was put to death ! Unconverted hearer, you did not literally crucify Christ, but in rejecting Him jou have sided with those who did. The cross divides this audience into two classes—for Christ and against Him. Friends, on which side are we found 1 To which do we belong Jericho then was, as it were, the world in a nutshell. Built nigh by Jordan, the river of death, which flows into the salt sea —the sea of judgment— have in it the past, present, and future of every lost sinner. Past—sin; present—sin and death : future— death, and judgment! How awful to see thousands around struggling in the black, murky waters of death as they

are swept away—away into judgment. Does not all this trouble some of you 1 I think it does though you may not like to say so. Have you not qualms of conscience and secret misgivings as to the future 1 Is it not sol Jericho had “ heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea/’ and how He had “ utterly • destroyed ” the two kings, Sihon and Og, and it was troubled “■ A guilty conscience trembles at the sound of a falling leaf. how much more so when the thunders of the approaching storm of judgment begin to mutter. Said Rahab to the spies, I know that God hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us.” There is locked up in every sinner’s heart a secret dread of ■ God, whether he owns to it or not. Still he often hardens himself against God, despite his convictions, and, like Jericho, brazens it out to the end. Wrath fell upon that wretched city at last,as it will in a more terrible way upon the world ere long —and it was taken, sacked, and destroyed, only Rahab and those in her house, under shelter of the scarlet line, being saved. GRACE was the SOURCE of it. Rahab was a Gentile; yea, she was worse than that; she was a harlot. In Cornelius we have the first Gentile convert under Christianity. But he was a just man, and, doubtless, born again —otherwise his alms and prayers could not have gone up acceptable to God ; but Rahab had nothing of this to commend her. I know that, seeing was an ancestress of Christ, some have left no stone. unturned to resque her name from the infamy attached to it. They have even tried to make out that the word “ harlot ” might be rendered “ hostess,” or “ tavern-keeper but it is all in vain. Their very efforts do but betray their, ignorance of what grace is.