Ada Willerton
(Aged 9 years).
Corby, Grantham.
I have found, by a strict and diligent observation, that a due observance of the duty of Sunday has ever had joined to it a blessing upon the rest of my time.—Sir Matthew Hale.
OUR BIBLE CLASS.
THE CROSS OF CHRIST.
The "cross of Christ" is mentioned by the Apostle Paul in his Epistles to different Churches, but we may confidently say that the wooden gibbet upon which the Saviour suffered was never loved or reverenced by that honoured servant of the Lord, or the people to whom he wrote.
The brazen serpent, that divinely appointed means of Israel's cure, was broken in pieces by good Hezekiah, who contemptuously called it a bit of brass, because the Israelites worshipped it; and their idolatry is described as a base crime in 2 Kings xviii. 4, although it was a figure of Him that was to come; and Jesus Himself declared, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John iii. 14, 15); and the "true cross," if it now existed, would only be a bit of wood—a thing in itself worthless—and the adoration of it would be nothing better than idolatry.
"Christ and Him crucified" is the sinner's hope, the believer's joy, and this is what we are to understand by the apostolic mention of the cross of Jesus.