The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1900, Page 25

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PUBLISHED BY THE HEvancELicaAL LuTHERAN SynopicaL CoNnFERENCE oF NortH AMERICA.
R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Office at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter.

St. Louis, Mo., July, 1900.

Vol: XXII.

Looking to Jesus.

Jesus, Saviour, Son of God,
Bearer of the sinner’s load,
I to Thee will look and live,
And in looking, praises give.
Looking lightens, looking heals,
Looking all the gladness seals;
Looking breaks the binding chain,
Looking sets us free again;
Looking scatters all our night,
Makes our faces shine with light;
Looking quickens, strengthens, brings
Heavenly gladness on its wings.
Jesus, Saviour, Son of God,
Bearer of the sinner’s load,
I would rise to Thee above,
I would look and praise and love;
Ever looking let me be
At the blood-besprinkled tree,

’ Blessing Thee with lip and soul
While the endless ages roll.

HOnratTius Bonar.

—> ae

“1 can't keep the Commandments.”’

. A young lady came to a pastor concerned
about her salvation and expressing her desire
to ‘‘join the church.’’? She was told that she
must be a Christian before she could join the
church, and when asked how she expected to
be saved, she promptly answered, ‘‘By keep-
ing the.commandments.’’

The pastor, who knew her character very
well, said, ‘‘Now, you go home and keep the
commandments for one week.’’ He then ex-
plained the commandments, showing that they
reach to every thought and feeling, as well.as
every word and act, and sent her away with
the promise on her part that she would cer-
tainly keep them in their true intent.

At the close of the week she came to the
pastor’s study, and before she had taken a
seat, with streaming eyes, she cried out, ‘‘Oh,
I can’t keep the commandments.” ‘Indeed ?’”
replied the pastor, ‘‘perhaps you have not tried
hard enough.”’ “‘I have tried, God knows how
earnestly I have tried; but the more I try, the
more do wicked thoughts come into my mind.’
“From this it is clear,’ “he said, ‘that you can
hot be saved by keeping the “commandments,
and therefore if saved at all you ‘must be: saved

in some other way.’’ He then preached unto
her Jesus, the Saviour of all that are lost, and
the trembling sinner joyfully received Him as
all her salvation and all her desire.

“TY can’t keep the commandments.”’ This
must be the confession of every one that
honestly tries to keep God’s law in its true
meaning. The law reaches to the very heart
of man, and demands perfect obedience, not
only as to acts and words, but also as to
thoughts, and feelings, and desires. ‘Thou
shalt not kill,’ says the fifth commandment.
A man may keep this commandment as to the
outward act, but every thought and feeling
of anger, and hatred, and envy makes him a
transgressor and subject to the curse of the
law, ‘*Whosoever hateth his brother is a mur-
derer,’’ says the Bible. So it is with all the
commandments. They reach to the very heart
of man and cry out, ‘‘Guilty! Guilty !’’

How foolish and wicked it is to direct help-
less souls to keep the commandments in order
to be saved!. The commandments were not
given to save lost men, but to convince them
of their sin and of their need of a Saviour.
St. Paul says, ‘‘By the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by
the law is the knowledge of sin.’”? And again
he says, ‘The law was our schoolmaster unto
Christ.’’ Yes, the law is a schoolmaster, and
a very severe schoolmaster it is, cursing and
lashing us for our ever returning failures.
There is nothing wrong about the law. St. Paul
says, ‘‘The law is holy, and the commandments
holy, and just, and good.’’ There is nothing
wrong about the law, but everything is wrong
about the sinner, and when he honestly applies
the rule of God’s law to himself he soon finds
out that he is undone, a-:lost, helpless, and
condenined sinner.

* What is such a sinner to do?’ He is to fly
from the law to the Gospel, from the com-
mandments to Him who perfectly fulfilled all
the commandments in our stead, from the
curse of the law to Him who bore the curse for
us and whose blood cleanses us from all sin.
In Jesus, and in Him only, there is rest; and
peace, ‘and ‘salvation for every weary and
heavy Jaden sinner. * Listen to His sweet in-
yitation +: ‘Come unto ‘me, ail yé that labor

and are heavy laden, and I will give you
Test.’? Come, then, to Jesus, your Saviour
and Redeemer! Cling only to Him!

“None but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.’?

0-09

Blotted Out.

“I will blot out, as a thick cloud, thy trans-
gressions.’” .
There is a story told of a boy who ran to
his mother one day after he had read that

promise, and said:

“Mother, what does God mean when He
says He will blot out my sins? What is He
going to do with them? I can’t see how God
can really blot them out and put them away.
What does it mean — blot out?”

The wise mother said to the boy, ‘‘Didn’t
I see you yesterday writing on your slate?’

‘*Yes,’? he said.

‘tWell, fetch it to me.’’

He fetched the slate. Holding it in front
of him, the mother said, ‘‘Where is what you
wrote?”’

*Oh,”’ he said, ‘‘I rubbed it out.”

‘tWell, where is it?”’

‘‘Why, mother, I don’t know.
was there, and it is gone.’”

““Well,’’ she said, ‘‘that is what God means
when He says, ‘I will blot out thy transgres-
sions.’’”

And so God will blot out your transgres-
sions, dark and black and heavy though they
are, if you come to Him in repentance and
faith in Jesus Christ, and, though you may.
not know just how it was done, your sorrows
will be gone, your rebuking conscience will
have peace.

——~ <0

The Greatest Discovery.

I know it

The famous physician Dr. Simpson, the dis-
coverer of the effects of chloroform and the
inventor of many. medical instruments, was
asked which of his discoveries he considered
the greatest. He replied, ‘The greatest dis-
covery that I ever made is this,” that I am
a poor sinner ‘and that Jesus Christ is my
Saviour.” :