hem now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of
truth is come, he will guide you into all truth." John 16:12, 13. Let us
look at some of these things which were reserved for future revelation.
The purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom was not understood by
the apostles till after the day of Pentecost, for we find them asking,
just before his ascension, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel?" a question which he did not answer, but referred
them to the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:6-8. Another of the
things which they could not bear was the abolition, through Christ's
propitiatory sacrifice, of the Mosaic law, and with it, of the middle
wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. This great truth was
reserved to be revealed practically in the progress of the gospel, as
recorded in the book of Acts, and doctrinally in the epistles of Paul.
Then what a rich unfolding we have in the apostolic epistles of the
meaning of our Lord's death on Calvary, and in connection with this, of
the doctrine of justification by faith--faith not simply in Christ, but
in _Christ crucified_. Faith in Christ's person the disciples had before
his death; but faith in him as crucified for the sins of the world they
could not have till after his resurrection and exaltation to the right
hand of God. The abovenamed truths--not to specify others, as, for
example, what Paul says of the resurrection, 1 Cor., ch. 15; 1. Thess.
4:13-18--enter into the very substance of the gospel. They are, in fact,
integral parts of it. Can we suppose that our Lord began the revelation
of his gospel by his own infallible wisdom, and then left it to be
completed by the fallible wisdom of men? If Augustine and Jerome in the
latter period of the Roman empire, if Anselm and Bernard in the middle
ages, if Luther and Calvin at the era of the Reformation, if Wesley and
Edwards in later days, commit errors, the mischief is comparatively
small; for, upon the supposition that the apostles were qualified by the
Holy Ghost to teach and write without error, we have in their writings
an infallible standard by which to try the doctrines of later uninspired
men. But if the apostles whom Christ himself appointed to finish the
revelation which he had begun, and whom he endowed with miraculous
powers, as the seal of their commission, had been left without a sure
guarantee against error, then there would be no standard of truth to
which the church in later age