ted severe punishment. To my surprise he met
me with a smile. Taking me by the hand he said: "Let us go out into
the orchard." We sat down upon the fallen trunk of an apple tree, and
gently placing one arm around my neck, he said: "Peter, do you know
that I love you?" I instantly broke down under the weight of this arm
of love, and answered as well as my sobs would let me, "Yes, sir!" "Do
you love me?" he next said. Again I answered, "Yes, sir!" "Then never
again disobey me, my boy, and we will have a sweet and happy life
together." And I can say from my heart, right here, I never did.

I now think, dear Brethren, that you are prepared to understand what
Peter meant by the words: "Unto you therefore which believe he is
precious." You feel that he is precious to you, because he has taken
away your sins by giving you a _new heart_ and filling you with his
love. You can now say with the Apostle John: "We love him because he
first loved us." Now then, inasmuch as ye love him, "abide in his
love," and "the God of love and peace shall be with you." May his
grace, mercy and peace be with us all forever. Amen!

_Sermon by Elder John Kline._

_Preached at Tobbins,
Sunday, January 10._

TEXT.--As ye therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk
ye in him.--Col. 2:6.

Paul addressed these words to the church at Colosse, a city of Asia
Minor, in the Roman province called Phrygia. It may be of interest to
you for me to tell you something about the character of these people
at the time Paul first visited them. Ancient history gives a very dark
picture of this. What Paul said of Athens applied equally to Colosse:
"The city was wholly given to idolatry." The lower classes, especially,
were very ignorant, having no knowledge of God save that which the
light of nature gave them.

But when Paul went into their midst, preaching the Gospel of
salvation, the prophecy of Isaiah, concerning Zebulon and Naphtali,
was fulfilled unto them, as it had been before at Capernaum on the
shore of the Galilean Sea: "The people which sat in darkness saw a
great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death,
to them did light spring up." They opened their eyes to the light and
rejoiced to see it; and their hearts to the love it revealed, and they
took it in. They accepted Christ Jesus the Lord in all his fullness.
Faith became to them a living principle. They felt its truth as surely
as though with their natural