eart, he was
to be persecuted, stoned, crucified. No. They had the key of
knowledge; and no man could enter in, unless they chose to open the
door. Nothing new could be true. John the Baptist came neither
eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He hath a devil.' The Son of
Man came eating and drinking, and they said, 'Behold a gluttonous
man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.' And
meanwhile the poor, the ignorant, those whose hearts were really in
earnest, were looking out for a prophet and a deliverer--often going
after false prophets, with Theudas and Barcochab, into the
wilderness; but going, too, to be baptized with the baptism of John,
and crowding in thousands to hear our Lord preach to them of the
living God of whom Moses had preached of old; while the scribes and
Pharisees sat at home, wrapped up in their narrow, shallow book-
divinity, and said, 'This people, who knoweth not the law, is
accursed.' Nothing new could be true. It must be put down,
persecuted down, lest the Romans should come and take away their
place and nation.

But they did not succeed. Our Lord and his truth, whom they
crucified and buried, rose again the third day and conquered; and
the Romans came after all, and took away their place and nation.
And so they failed, as all will fail, who will not believe in the
living God.

My friends, all these things were written for our example. As it
was then, so may it be again.

There may come a time in this land when people shall profess to
worship the word of God; and yet, like those old scribes, make it of
none effect by their own commandments and traditions. When they
shall command men, like the scribes, to honour every word and letter
of the Bible, and yet forbid them to take the Bible simply and
literally as it stands, but only their interpretation of the Bible;
when they shall say, with the scribes, 'Nothing new can be true.
God taught the Apostles, and therefore he is not teaching us. God
worked miracles of old; but whosoever thinks that God is working
miracles now is a Pantheist and a blasphemer. God taught men of old
the thing which they knew not; but whosoever dares to say that he
does so now is bringing heresy and false doctrine, and undermining
the Christian faith by science falsely so called.'

And all because they have lost all faith in the living God--the
ever-working, ever-teaching, ever-inspiring, ever-governing God whom
our Lord Jesus Christ revealed