DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY GRACES. MODESTY. INDUSTRIOUSNESS. LONGSUFFERING. FORBEARANCE. FORGIVENESS. COURAGE. CANDOR. LIBERALITY.

IN THE preceding three chapters we have been studying God's attributes. In the second we discussed fourteen of His attributes of being, and in the third and fourth chapters we treated on the elements and the primary attributes of God's character. We learned that a primary attribute of character is a quality expressed by the direct activity of an affection- organ, e.g., faith, a higher primary grace, is the quality exercised by the direct activity of the affection-organ called spirituality; and peace, a lower primary grace, is the quality exercised by the direct activity of the affection-organ called rest. Secondary graces do not have affection-organs which, by exercising themselves directly, express such graces. Rather, these act through the higher graces, laying hold on the lower affection-organs and suppressing their efforts to control us, e.g., if self-esteem is permitted to control us, we will be exercising pride, arrogance, self-exaltation, etc., which are disgraces, not graces; but if the higher primary graces—faith, hope, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love and charity—lay hold of and suppress self-esteem's efforts to control us, the result will be the expression of the quality, humility, a secondary grace. This illustration shows: (1) that humility does not exercise itself through the direct activity of the affection-organ of self-esteem, nor through the direct activity of any other affection-organ, as the quality expression of that organ; but (2) that it results from certain graces suppressing the efforts of the lower

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affection-organ of self-esteem to control us; and (3) that the secondary graces sustain a negative relation to the lower affection-organs, arising as they do from higher primary graces suppressing the efforts of the lower affection-organs to control us. Thus the suppression of the affection-organ of love for rest from controlling us develops industriousness, of the affection-organ of combativeness from controlling us develops longsuffering, of the affection-organ of destructiveness from controlling us develops forbearance and forgiveness, and so with the other lower affection- organs. It is this suppressive feature connected with the expressions of the secondary graces that prompt some to speak of them, not as secondary, but as negative or passive graces.

Not only do the secondary graces have no affection- organs that are their direct agencies of expression, and not only are they derived, or dependent graces, but they are dependent graces from another standpoint. They cannot be permitted to control, but must act or not act as the higher primary graces dictate, if their action or non-action be proper; for if one should allow a secondary grace to control in what the higher primary grace demands that it should not act, wrong would result, e.g., the husband and father who longsufferingly permits his wife and children to disregard his headship in the family to the displacement of him as the family's head and to the consequent moral injury of the wife and children, allows longsuffering to act controllingly in a situation where the higher primary graces forbid such action. And such exercise of longsuffering is wrong—it has ceased to be a virtue, and has become a fault. What such a situation requires is the suppression of such longsuffering by the higher primary graces laying hold on combativeness or destructiveness and using it as a servant of righteousness in making the husband's and father's headship in the' family to be respected by the

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recalcitrant wife and children. But while so doing he must not permit combativeness or destructiveness to control, but by the higher primary graces must exercise such control over combativeness or destructiveness as will permit the longsuffering necessary to make certain allowances for the weaknesses of the wife and children, so that proper conditions may be re-established as gently and peaceably as can be done compatibly with its re-establishment. The same principle, whose activity we have just illustrated in the case of longsuffering, applies to all the other secondary graces— they are not masters, nor equals, but servants of the higher primary graces.

The Scriptures, ascribing to God the secondary graces, prove that He has them. Many of them are expressly by name ascribed to Him in the Bible, and the others are implied there, as being in Him. Thus the Bible teaches that God has humility, modesty, industriousness, longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, bravery, candor, liberality, temperance, (symbolic) chastity, impartiality, etc. We will not discuss all of these in this article; but will take up most of them for consideration. While describing self-esteem as one of God's lower primary graces, we sufficiently discussed God's humility for the purposes of this chapter, and will therefore now pass it by and take up another as the first secondary grace for our study, the grace of modesty.

By modesty we understand the quality whereby one exercises reticence, and instead of feeling over-sensitive at reproach and unpopularity, conducts himself unostentatiously and unabashedly before others. This definition shows the negative relation of modesty to approbativeness, and this proves the correctness of the definition; for proper modesty results from the higher primary graces suppressing the efforts of approbativeness to control. Approbativeness desires the good opinion of others, and when this

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can be exercised in harmony with the higher primary graces, it is proper, and is thus a lower primary grace. But  if it were allowed to control these higher primary graces, instead of being controlled by them, it would feel over­ sensitive and too deeply hurt in feeling—touchy—when such good opinion is withheld, or when criticism and unpopularity arise; or to prevent such unpopularity or over­ sensitiveness it would compromise principle; as also, if it were allowed to control these graces instead of being controlled by them, it would, to win others' approval, seek to show off in more or less affectation, ostentatiousness and vanity. Thus its rulership to the setting aside of the rulership of the higher primary graces, results in the disgraces of touchiness, ostentatiousness and vanity. But the suppression of its efforts to control by the higher primary graces produces the secondary grace of modesty, which remains unabashed amid criticism and unpopularity, unspoiled and simple amid praise, and properly reticent before others at all times. God has this quality in perfection.

God has been much misrepresented and criticized and has been more or less unpopular. Those who represent Him as cruel, through the teaching of eternal torment, the consciousness of the dead and the absolute predestination of some angels and the human family to sin and death, the absolute reprobation of the non-elect to eternal torment and the damnation of infants, idiots and unenlightened heathen to eternal torment, certainly misrepresent Him and give Him a bad reputation among many of our race. Those who represent Him as non-existent, or as an impersonal force, as nature, or as weak, unwise, unjust and loveless, certainly misrepresent Him and give Him a bad name among those whom they can convince. Those who blame Him for their lot in life, their troubles and misfortunes, or who are full of murmuring and complaint, certainly criticize Him. And who will deny

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that such misrepresentations and criticisms have not made Him unpopular among many? In many cases they have led people to despise and dishonor Him and to bring Him into scorn, ridicule, mockery and execration. For over six thousand years He has been thus reproached, but amid such reproaches and unpopularity He has remained modest. He has not allowed Himself to feel over-sensitive about this evil treatment. Touchiness has not characterized Him amid such experiences. We do not say that He has not felt these criticisms, misrepresentations and infamies; for God certainly has the quality of approbativeness whereby He desires the good opinion of others; but His not having gotten it has not hurt His feelings overmuch. Never has He stooped to compromising His principles to gain the good opinion of His creatures. He has ever remained loyal to His principles and course, however unpopular they have been; and they certainly have been such among the heathen and among His nominal people. He has been content to be misunderstood and misrepresented and to suffer the consequent unpopularity, since the principles of wisdom, justice, love and power called upon Him to undergo these. So He has maintained modesty in its reticence and unabashedness.

Nor has He allowed the facts, that He desires the esteem of His creatures, and that He has received it from the better of these, to make Him put on affectation and ostentatiousness and feel vain. He knows that the good angels hold Him in the highest esteem. He also knows that the faithful among men regard Him highly. But to get this He has not put on affectation and ostentatiousness. Nor does the fact that He receives this make Him vain and pompous. He receives it, because He knows that it is in the best interests of those who give it, and He rejoices with them in the blessing they receive by giving it to Him. Thus He, from this standpoint, exercises a glorious

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modesty in unostentatiousness. Therefore, by remaining unabashed and uncorrupted amid misrepresentations, despisings and unpopularity, by remaining unaffected and unostentatious amid His desire to receive the approval of His creatures and by keeping free from vanity while getting the latter's approval, He shows a most noble exercise of the quality of modesty, which is kept active by the graces of wisdom, justice, love and power, perfectly controlling His desire for the approval of others. And in this He gives us an example most worthy of our appreciation and imitation.

Certainly, if God were over-sensitive, He would have been having an exceedingly disagreeable time from His experiences with misrepresentations, criticisms and unpopularity. And if there were anything of vanity and ostentatiousness in Him He would have elaborated systems of ceremonies and successions of spectacles revolving about Him as a center in such a way as to give ostentatiousness and vanity full play. Instead, we find Him to be modesty itself. Where is the elaborate ritual directing every motion, word, tone and look connected with an approach to Him? On the contrary, in modesty and simplicity He is pleased with those who worship Him in spirit and in truth, regardless of forms, ceremonies, rituals, rites, etc. God's modesty and simplicity enable Him to dispense with these and with elaborate temples where they are in vogue, and to dwell with the poor and contrite in spirit, full of reverence for His Person, Character, Plan and Work, and to make them, however despised by man, His temple, in which holy qualities offer the sacrifice and the incense.

The next of God's secondary graces that we would consider is His industriousness. This quality, being a secondary grace, must result from the higher primary grace suppressing the controlling activity of some lower affection-organ. The affection-organ here concerned in the suppression of its control is

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love for ease. This affection-organ properly exercised in its activities by Divine wisdom, justice, love and power, manifests itself in restfulness and peace in God. And the suppression of its controllership produces industriousness. The disgrace that we would develop, if we allowed the love of ease to control us, is laziness. There is no laziness in God; on the contrary, its opposite is in Him— industriousness, and that because His wisdom, justice, love and power, suppress the controllership of His love for ease. God is very active. Great was His industriousness in planning for, in assembling the materials, and in doing the work of creation, which includes every law, force, sun, planet, etc., of the universe, as well as the created beings therein. And this vast universe is the sphere of His providential work, whereby He preserves, supports and governs all things therein. Some of His activities have spent themselves in making the Divine Plan of the Ages. In the outworking of this plan, He performed the work of emptying the Logos of His prehuman nature, honor and work, and of making Him a perfect human being, whereby He might become God's agent in the work of redemption. In the carrying out of that work He recreated Him to another plane of being—the Divine—while sacrificing His human nature for mankind.

And God's activities have also embraced the Church. He has by Christ taught the Church, as due, the Truth that shines for them on the height, depth, length and breadth of the Divine person, character, plan and works. He likewise effected as one of His works the justification of believers, and working on them by His Word and providence He brought them to consecration and spirit-begettal in the time for that work. Further activities of His have enabled His past Faithful and are now enabling His present Faithful to lay down their humanity sacrificially for His Plan, while His industriousness has throughout the Gospel Age

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been recreating them as new creatures for the Divine nature. Similarly, He is working on the Great Company to prepare them for a change of nature; and He is working on the Youthful Worthies, in the same general manner as He wrought on the Ancient Worthies, to make them perfect human beings on earth for the Millennium. He will finish such creative work for these four elect classes in the beginning of the Millennium by bringing them to perfect existence on their three planes of being; and at the end of the Millennium, so far as the Ancient and Youthful Worthies are concerned, He will add the finishing touches of His creative work on them by raising them to spirit existence. Much and constant and varied work must be done on these four elect classes to fit them for their final planes of being, millennially and post-millennially.

But this is not all, so far as God's plan respecting man is concerned. There is a larger, though less exalted, feature of it as respects the non-elect. Creatively He is permitting evil to afflict them, so as to teach them by experience the terrible nature and fearful effects of sin. To bring this experience about, He timed man's creation so as to bring a sufficient number of humans into existence while the earth is in a condition unprepared to support perfect life, and this insures the experience with evil for the fallen race. But this is only a preparatory step to a greater one—the experience with righteousness, amid which man will undergo a regeneration unto perfection, for which experience with righteousness the earth will be prepared unto perfection. These two experiences are but the two features of a creative process as respects mankind, whereby a perfect race will be brought into existence, illustrating the reign of moral law forever; while those who will refuse to use such a creative process in harmony with this reign of moral law will be destroyed forever. A similar activity marks God as respects those of the angels who have fallen into

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sin. Thus we see that He has been active and will continue to a completion His activity as respects His plan for man and angels. The making and executing of this plan demonstrates God's industriousness.

The Scriptures indicate further fields of God's activities, so far as the creation and preservation of other beings not yet created are concerned. In telling us that in the Ages to come God will show forth the exceeding riches of His kindness in and by the Elect, in speaking of them as Heirs of God and Joint-heirs with Christ as respects the universe, and in speaking of their kingdom increasing without end, the Bible implies that in the Ages to come they will  develop their inheritance. This implies not only the perfecting of the various worlds about us, but the bringing into existence of various orders of beings as their inhabitants and fitting them through their remaining in harmony with moral law for eternal existence. Thus a separate plan or feature of a plan will be for each distinct order of beings, and the making of such plans, as well as the carrying out of them, will be manifestations of God's industriousness. His love of rest will be suppressed from controllership, and as a result His industriousness will be active through the controllership of His love of ease by His higher graces.

The character of God's works is seen in the following passages: Gen. 1: 10, 18, 21, 25; Deut. 32: 4; Ps. 26: 7; 33: 4; 40: 5; 66: 3; 86: 8; 92: 4; 111: 2, 4, 6; Eccles. 3: 11, 14. His creative works are treated on in the following passages: Gen. 1: 1-31; 2: 1-4, 7; Neh. 9: 6; Job 9: 8, 9; 12: 7-9; 28: 23-26; 37: 16, 18; 38: 4-38; Ps. 104: 2, 3, 5, 6, 24, 30. His works of providence are described in the following passages: Gen. 1: 29, 30; 8: 22; 49: 24, 25; Lev. 25: 20-22; 26 4-6, 10; Deut. 7: 13-15; 32: 11-14; Job 5: 6-11; Matt. 5: 45; 6: 26, 30-33; Rom. 8: 28. The following passages  show His redemptive work: John 3: 16, 17; Rom. 8: 32; 2 Cor.  5: 18; 1 Tim. 4: 10; 2 Tim. 1: 9;

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Tit. 2: 10; 1 John 4: 9, 10. The following passages set  forth His teaching work: Is. 55: 13; Dan. 2: 20-22, 28; John 8: 26, 28; 12: 49, 50; 14: 10, 24; 15: 15; 17: 18, 26. The following passages treat of His justifying work: Rom. 3: 21-30; 4: 5-25; 8: 30-33; 1 Cor. 1: 30; 6: 11; Gal. 3: 8; Tit. 3: 7. The following passages treat of His sanctifying work: John 17: 17; Acts 26: 17; Rom. 6: 1-11; 15: 16; 1 Cor. 1: 2, 30; Eph. 1: 3, 4; Col. 2: 11, 12; 1 Thes. 4: 3, 4; 5: 23; 2 Thes. 2: 13; 2 Tim. 2: 11, 12, 21; Heb. 2: 11; 1 Pet. 1: 2; Jude 1. The following passages show that He delivers: Matt. 6: 13; 1 Cor. 1: 30; 2 Cor. 1: 10; 12: 8, 9; Gal. 1: 4; Col. 1: 13; 2 Tim. 3: 11; 4: 17, 18; 2 Pet. 2: 9. Thus we see that the Bible teaches that God is active—industrious.

Longsuffering is the third of God's secondary graces that we will study. The word is almost self-explanatory. If  asked for a definition of it, we might suggest the following: Longsuffering is a calm and unresentful carriage of oneself amid naturally exasperating conditions. It characterizes both the internal feelings and the external acts. It exercises itself amid untoward and disagreeable conditions. These conditions naturally are oppositional or exasperating to their subjects. The average man amid them loses his temper and becomes angry, because they provoke his resentment. This fact shows that one's combativeness has been aroused by these oppositional or exasperating conditions to the resenting of them in anger and displeasure. Hence longsuffering bears a relation to combativeness. This relation is not that longsuffering is an expression of combativeness, for it is not. None of the secondary graces has an affection-organ for its expression. Longsuffering is, generally speaking, the opposite of combativeness; and it results, when properly exercised, from the higher primary graces suppressing the controllership of combativeness. When people say or do things that tend to

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arouse our opposition in combativeness, i.e., to arouse our anger and displeasure, and we by faith, hope, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love or charity, suppress the efforts of such anger to control us, we exercise longsuffering. It is one of the most passive of graces; and in a strong character it is one of the hardest to exercise. Indeed in a strong character it implies the presence of large balance of character.

God has this quality in richest measure. God's position as the supreme and absolute Ruler and the presence of sin among men and some angels, furnish the conditions that contain very many elements tending to exasperation in God. The ingratitude of men and demons toward God is one of these conditions. The fact that they fell into sin, though created perfect and averse to sin, is another of these. The substitution of other beings and things in His place as the supreme thing in their affections is another of these. The blasphemies of which they have been guilty in ascribing to Him characteristics, plans and works that are foreign to Him, in denying Him such characteristics, plans and works as are His, in ascribing to others such characteristics, plans and works as are exclusively His, and in speaking irreverently of Him, furnish another set of conditions tending to exasperation. Another of these is the unbelief that denies His existence or personality, that limits the scope of His interests and activities, that rejects His revelation and plan, that distrusts His character, word and works, and that trusts persons or things other than Him in matters wherein they should trust Him. Another of these is the insubordination of subjects to higher powers in family, state, school, business, etc. Another of these is demoniacal and human unkindness to fellows, expressing itself in minor forms of unkindness, increasingly so in its worse forms and culminatingly so in the worst form—of taking life. Another of these is the violation of solemn vows made to God,

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or to man in general, or to husband and wife in particular. Still another of these is the violation of the property rights of others, increasingly from petty objects to empires. Another of these is the violation of veracity, with respect to self or others, gradually descending from "white lies" to the worst forms of misrepresentation and perjury. Another of these is the greediness that seeks, regardless of others' rights, to possess oneself of what is others' at the latters' loss. And what shall we say more? For sin's ramifications are almost limitless, and every one of them is an affront to God, being, as they are, acts of rebellion against His authority and law. Yet, amid these conditions, how longsuffering God has been!

Many are the Scriptures treating of His longsuffering. He allowed antediluvian wickedness a long time before He set the limit of it 120 years further on, by a flood (Gen. 6: 3). He restrained for hundreds of years His anger against the Amorites, letting them fill up their iniquity before manifesting it (Gen. 15: 16). To Moses the Lord declared Himself longsuffering as respects sinners (Ex. 34: 6; Num. 14: 18). The Psalmist in highest poetic flights praises God's longsuffering (Ps. 86: 15; 103: 8-10). Isaiah takes up the strain and carries it to a high pitch (Is. 30: 18; 48: 9, 11). How pathetically God's longsuffering with Israel is described by Jeremiah as: "rising up early and  speaking, but ye heard [heeded] not," and as: sending them the prophets, "daily rising up early and sending them" (Jer. 7: 13, 23-25). Ezekiel tells the same story (Ezek. 20: 17). Joel extols it as a reason for Israel's repentance (Joel 2: 13). Habakkuk shows that God is longsuffering with those who oppress His people and servants (Hab. 1: 2-4). Jesus declares that it was due to God's longsuffering that God permitted more than one ground for divorce in the Old Testament (Matt. 19: 8). God's longsuffering is parabolically set forth in Matt. 21: 33-41. Most

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eloquently and pathetically is God's longsuffering with Jerusalem and Israel set forth in Matt. 23: 37, even to attempting to gather them as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Still in another parable, that of the barren fig tree, is the Lord's longsuffering set forth by Jesus (Luke 13: 6-9). St. Paul tells of God's Old Testament longsuffering with the nations (Acts 16: 16; 17: 30). Such longsuffering has shown itself even to those who have despised it and other noble qualities in God (Rom. 2: 4). It was exercised toward people in their past sins in view of the sacrifice of Christ (Rom. 3: 25). It also has characterized God in His dealings with those fitted for wrath and those fitted for mercy (Rom. 9: 22, 23). St. Peter calls special attention to it as it was exercised in the days of Noah before the flood (1 Pet. 3: 20). He also shows that its exercise is a reason for our hoping for salvation (2 Pet. 3: 9, 15). Even with the wicked papal church, as antitypical Jezebel (Rev. 2: 21), did God exercise longsuffering, giving her space to repent, as He has also done with Protestant sectarianism since the Reformation.

And does not history corroborate the teachings of these Scriptures as to God's longsuffering? The 6,000 years of  the reign of evil mightily prove God's longsuffering. The iniquity of the antediluvians, of Sodom and the other cities of the plain attests it. Egypt's oppression of Israel and the gradual increase in the severity of the plagues testify to it. Israel's wilderness experience is replete with examples of it. The fearful and long-drawn-out iniquities of the seven nations of Canaan demonstrate it. The many and long oppressions of the Israelites by various nations in the  period of the judges declare it. God's dealings with the Israelites desiring a king and the headiness of Saul, their first king, manifest it. How many occasions for its exercise were furnished by the wayward and checkered course of  the Israelites under their

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kings! How great was the longsuffering of God toward the Gentile nations in their 2520 years of treading down Israel, as it has also been amid the great wrongs that the Gentile nations have wrought upon one another in "nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom" in disregard of right!

But the greatest sphere in the exercise of God's longsuffering has been evidenced in His quietly permitting the injustice done by the nominal people of God against the real people of God. It was one of the hardest tests of God's longsuffering for Him to stand still at the mistreatment that His Son Jesus received from Israel. But this was not all; for during nearly forty years longer He quietly allowed the mistreatment that His Jewish Harvest people had to undergo from Jews and Gentiles. Mark His great longsuffering with the Roman Empire during its nearly three centuries' cruel persecution of the early Church. Even greater was His longsuffering that unresentfully stood the many more centuries' pressure on, and oppression of His people by Antichrist—the papacy. For Him to hear their wrongs crying out for vindication and yet waiting until the last one of them was put on the altar for sacrificial death in 1914 before His vengeance began to strike their oppressors (Rev. 6: 9-11) is a most marvelous piece of longsuffering. Let us not forget that God loves His faithful people as His dearest treasure. This treasure He could have permitted seeing so grossly mistreated without striking down their injurers, only by the exercise of the greatest longsuffering. His over 6,000 years' quiet carrying of Himself amid the oppositions of Satan and His nearly 4,500 years' quiet carrying of Himself amid the other fallen angels' opposition, will forever stand as the supreme example of longsuffering, containing as it does all forms of exasperating circumstances.

And to each one of us individually is God's longsuffering a matter of great moment. As all of us

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look over our past life we note many a wrong, many a slip, many an omission, many a failure and many a lack, to remain quiet under which called upon God to exercise longsuffering with us. Some of us became His early in life, but have not profited as we should have done and have in some cases yielded almost no fruit. Some of us have perhaps spent the larger part of our life in the service of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, and the little that we have had left to give Him, compared with the much that we have wasted, seems almost negligible. Yet He has been kind and longsuffering toward us, waiting long and lovingly for us to respond to His drawings. Our best efforts are but lame and halt when measured by the rule of perfection. And it certainly takes longsuffering to count them perfect as He does in the merit of our Lord and Savior. If He should give up being longsuffering with us, our case would be helpless and hopeless. But He never does, as long as our hearts remain right with Him. And it is this glorious quality manifesting itself so unweariedly toward us that St. Peter encourages us to account as salvation (2 Pet. 3: 9, 15), because through its exercise we can gradually be developed unto salvation by grace Divine. Let us therefore laud and magnify God in His longsuffering, and let us allow it to work mightily in us such a spirit of gratitude and appreciation as will impel us to be more faithful and energetic to honor Him and to yield Him more fruit.

God's longsuffering, being a secondary grace, cannot be permitted by Him to control Him; for only the higher primary graces have the office of such control. He therefore keeps His longsuffering in perfect control. Hence at times He keeps it in abeyance, suspending its activity. This He does whenever the considerations of wisdom, justice, love and power call for it. Hence we read in the Scriptures of His being angry on certain occasions. This does not mean

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that He loses self-control and surrenders Himself to the control of anger. Rather, it implies that He is displeased and in His displeasure in perfect self-possession He proceeds to enforce the requirements of wisdom, justice, love and power, through the exercise of His combativeness. We are not to think of God as being a putty-like character, who good-naturedly will accept every evil course with complacency. On the contrary, He exercises longsuffering only when it will work out some purpose of His wisdom, justice, love and power. But if such a purpose cannot be thereby effected and, on the contrary, if such a purpose would be negatived by longsuffering, He immediately suspends its activity and sets into exercise another quality that will effect such a purpose, because under such circumstances longsuffering ceases to be a virtue—it becomes the reverse. Therefore, we read in the Scriptures of God ceasing to deal longsufferingly and of His taking the aggressive in punishing those whom further longsuffering would injure and whom punishment would advantage or whose punishment would prevent disadvantage to others. Accordingly, whether God will exercise or abstain from exercising longsuffering depends on the demands of wisdom, justice, love and power in each given case. This is proper and shows that God is ruled by principle and not by passion. As such He is all the more adorable, appreciable and imitable.

Therefore we find in the Scriptures many examples of God's ceasing to exercise longsuffering. When the antediluvians fully rejected Noah's Divinely given warning, God caused the flood to overthrow the wicked. It was only after the culmination of the sins of Sodom in their ungodly attempt on the two angels that Divine longsuffering ceased and the cities of the plains were given over to destruction. It was only after the unholy sexual excesses of the inhabitants of Canaan threatened to make syphilitic the then known

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world that God commissioned Israel to extirpate them. It was due to Pharaoh's and Egypt's sins reaching their double climax that God inflicted death on the firstborn and on the Egyptian host. The same principle is seen as having operated in the history of Midian, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Judea, Rome and in the ten-languaged nations into which Rome disintegrated. This principle was notably manifest in the World War as the first great feature of the great tribulation, through which, in its revolutionary and anarchistic phases, with accompanying famines and pestilences, not only will every nation as now constituted be destroyed, but also Satan's Empire will go down into irretrievable ruin. And in this supreme catastrophe of all history God's longsuffering with organized evil will have ended for ever, except for a little while after the Millennium it will be allowed a brief opportunity of asserting itself for a final test of the regenerated race. Thereafter iniquity will never be suffered again to open its mouth (Ps. 107: 42); and thereafter there shall be no more sin (1 Cor. 15: 24-26, 54-57); for God's longsuffering toward sin and sinners will forever have ceased, because wisdom, justice, love and power will have then decreed that longsuffering with them will no more be a virtue.

But doubtless God's longsuffering will thereafter find other spheres for its activities; yet in such spheres it will not be sin nor sinners that will call it forth; for they will be no more. Nor does the Bible reveal what these conditions will be, further than giving hints along lines of new creations, which, of course, without sin, will be at first immature and without crystallized character. And, mindful of the fact that the things not revealed do not belong to us, but to the Lord, we do well not to speculate on what and how those conditions will be, contenting ourselves with the knowledge that they will be sinless, even though

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temporarily immature, so far as the newly-created moral agents of those times are concerned. But what He has so graciously revealed to us of His longsuffering greatly enhances Him in our appreciation and veneration. Truly Jehovah is good and worthy of infinitely more than we are able to give Him; but let us out of devotion to, and appreciation of Him be wholly and always His for His praise, glory and honor.

God's forbearance is the next of God's secondary attributes of character that we will study. This attribute and longsuffering are to the average mind the same, but there are differences between them, which the Bible indicates by using them co-ordinately with one another and other qualities (Rom. 2: 4; Col. 2: 12, 13). In the first place they differ as to the affection-organs whose control— suppression by the higher primary graces—produces them. When the higher primary graces suppress the efforts of combativeness to control us, longsuffering results; but when these same graces suppress the efforts of destructiveness to control us, forbearance results. Longsuffering is the opposite of anger, while forbearance is the opposite of rage. Longsuffering excludes resentfulness; forbearance excludes vindictiveness. Longsuffering is exercised amid exasperating circumstances; forbearance amid enraging circumstances. Longsuffering makes one quiet; forbearance makes one mild. We are now by these contrasts prepared to see the difference between them in a definition of each, given one after the other: Longsuffering is a quiet and unresentful carriage of oneself amid naturally exasperating circumstances; forbearance is a mild and unvindictive carriage of oneself amid naturally enraging circumstances. In God this implies that He, by His wisdom, justice, love and power, amid naturally enraging, circumstances suppresses the controllership of destructiveness.

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Varied are the circumstances conducive to wrath or rage. Those that inflict real or supposed wrong on one naturally tend to arouse his wrath. Frequently oppositional tactics on the part of others have the same tendency. Then, the observation of these things exercised against persons, principles or things of more or less interest to us, naturally prompts to the exercise of the same quality. Wrongs are continually done to God. His person is wronged by practical and theoretical atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, materialism and polytheism, as well as by the ascription to others of things exclusively belonging to His person or of His exclusive qualities to others or by denying to Him qualities that are His. His character is wronged by refusal to ascribe to it the qualities that belong to it, by ascribing to it qualities that do not belong to it and by ascribing to others qualities that belong exclusively to it. God is further wronged when His Word is perverted by false translation, by misrepresenting its actual teachings and by ascribing to it teachings that it does not contain. Under this head come all the false teachings of infidelism, heathendom, Mohammedanism, Jewry and Christendom on faith, practice and organization. Chiefly this has been done by the doctrines that make God the cause of sin, the doctrines of man's immortality, of the consciousness of the dead, of eternal torment and of the consubstantiality, co-equality and co-eternity of any other being or thing with God. Sin in devils and humans has furnished innumerable circumstances greatly tending to wrath in God. Nevertheless, He has restrained His wrath until it became wrong longer to do so. And whenever He expresses His wrath at the demand of justice, it is always tempered by being controlled as a servant of His wisdom, justice, love and power. He never allows it to control Him. He always controls it, making it His servant and not His master. Thus He always uses it aright.

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When we consider the many wrath-tending circumstances amid which God has found Himself, we stand astounded at His forbearance. Never has any other being, not even our Lord, been so wronged in Himself or in the persons, principles and things in which he has been interested, as our Heavenly Father. When we consider the manifold benefits with which He has blessed His creatures and then realize how many of these have proven ungrateful, rebellious and malicious toward Him from whom they received nothing but good, we gain a slight idea of the many and varied circumstances of Jehovah's life naturally tending to arouse wrath. A few examples of these will show the matter in its true light. Satan's course is pre-eminently the example of wrath-tending circumstances. Created a cherub, one of the highest, most powerful and most favored of God's creatures, perhaps next in rank, power and favor to our prehuman Lord, he failed to remain grateful and appreciative toward his almighty Creator and Benefactor. Not only so, but ingratitude, envy and covetousness filled his heart against God. Plotting, he hatched a gigantic conspiracy that had as its object the establishment of himself as God's equal and rival and of a kingdom equal to and rivalrous of God's. This conspiracy did not only involve himself, but many of the angelic host and the whole human family. To maintain his ambition he has stooped to disobedience, rebellion, deception, murder, misrepresentation, counterfeit, blasphemy, self-exaltation, idolatry, unbelief, exploitation, theft, perjury, slander, degradation of self and others, persecution and every other kind of wrong. Particularly has he with evil intent and boundless stubbornness practiced these things in his efforts to blacken God's person, character, word and works and to thwart the execution of God's plan for the recovery  of fallen men and angels. The over six thousand years since the start of Satan's rebellion have been

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daily and hourly filled by the above mentioned and indicated wrongs on Satan's part. To bear with these things has called for the greatest exhibition of forbearance from God ever exemplified and perhaps ever to be exemplified. We stand lost in wonder, love and praise when we consider it. How truly sublime and beautiful is this attribute in God's character, as it has been expressed toward Satan's person, character, plans and works during these over 6,000 years!

Great, too, has been His forbearance toward the fallen angels. After man's fall into sin, and before the flood, the Lord gave the good angels charge of the human family. Their efforts before the flood to reform sinful men failed; and in their bewilderment over their failure Satan, pointing out that man's degeneracy was due to an evil heredity, suggested that they use their power of creating human bodies and of appearing in them as men, to propagate a sinless race, by their imparting their sinless and perfect powers to their offspring by women. Some of the angels refused to do this as being unauthorized by God; but, alas, others, so intent at stopping human degradation as not to scrutinize carefully the methods recommended therefore, fell in with Satan's suggestion and hence generated, not perfect and sinless humans, but a hybrid giant race that added to human sin (Gen. 6: 1-4). Too late, after sinning, they found out that, like Mother Eve, they had been deceived into sin by her deceiver. Their sin debarring them from God's presence and leading to their confinement within the atmosphere of this earth, they have been further entrapped by Satan to become his associates in the administration of his empire, and as a result have supported him in the evils that he has committed against God and men. Indeed, we have reason to believe that not a few of them have gone so far in their opposition to truth and righteousness as, like Satan, completely to have undermined their

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characters so that they are proving incorrigible. Others of these, sickened by their sin and its unhappy consequences, seemingly are strenuously seeking to regain their former rectitude. For these the Bible holds out hope of  a restoration to God's favor through the operation of the Millennial judgment. But these seem, only after Christ finished his work on earth, to have started to arise from the pit of sin and the mire of iniquity. Accordingly, from at least 120 years before the flood (Gen. 6: 1, 3, 4, 2) until after Pentecost, a period of about 2,600 years, all of them supported Satan and many of them have continued to do so ever since. Well can we comprehend in a measure how much of forbearance on God's part was called for by their unholy course. But His forbearance was equal to the task of giving Him all the mildness and unvindictiveness that their wrongs against Him, and the persons, principles and things in which He was interested, called for Him to exercise in order to bring victory out of the chaos of sin and the curse.

So, too, has man's course toward God and the persons, principles and things in which God has been interested, called upon God to exercise forbearance in order to effect His purpose with reference to man. Eve's deception called for some exercise of forbearance on God's part; but Adam's willfulness called for more; and this forbearance showed itself, not in withholding the sentence that justice required to be inflicted, but in the manner, method and purpose of its infliction. The gradualness of its infliction shows God's forbearance in its infliction. Permitting man to make the best of his death-producing surroundings during its infliction is another example of God's forbearance therein. His educative purpose of teaching man by its infliction the bad nature and fearful effects of sin, in order to bring about his hatred and avoidance of sin, is still another evidence of God's forbearance therein. Not only was the antediluvian wickedness

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of mankind an example of God's long-suffering, it  was even more so an example of His forbearance. Then to have forborne for 120 years the climacteric forms of antediluvian transgression strikingly exemplifies God's forbearance. The development of heathen religions after the flood, so blasphemous as to God, so degrading as to man and so harmful as to Truth, was another stage for the play of God's forbearance toward man; for as the Apostle in Rom. 1 assures us, the introduction of such religions among mankind was due to the increasing human depravity—a thing taken advantage of by Satan as the occasion and the means of their spread. How expressive of God's forbearance with the Amorites is the statement that wrath delayed to express itself, and that for nearly 500 years, because their iniquity was not yet full (Gen. 15: 16)!

Certainly the wrongs committed against Jacob and Joseph called for God to act forbearingly toward the oppressors of His faithful servants. The over-a-century­ long oppression of Israel by the Egyptians and the formers' groans and cries to their covenant God, bring to mind another major example of God's forbearance. The manner, the kinds and the occasions of the ten plagues in Egypt and the circumstances of the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, also strikingly illustrate Jehovah's forbearance toward obstinate man. Israel's waywardness, greediness, idolatry, discontent, murmursomeness, disobedience, and unchastity, one and all furnished occasions for the exercise of God's forbearance. Their repeated apostasies during the period of the Judges and Kings, their persecution of God's prophets, their espousing of false religions, their unbelief as to God's covenant protection, their prohibited association with heathen nations and peoples and their increase in sin, one and all were very forbearingly endured by God. And when the Lord did arise and punish them, it was

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forbearingly done, and He was quickly moved to mildness and non-vindictiveness toward them. His returning of them from their many captivities to His favor, especially from Babylon, were acts of forbearance. And greatly did He forbear the corruption of real religion among them into an external ceremonialism by the scribes and Pharisees. His bearing with them for 1,845 years in spite of their many wrath tending activities remarkably shows His forbearance.

One of the greatest exhibitions of forbearance on God's part is His attitude amid the mistreatment that His Christ class has received. The Christ class consists of Jesus and His faithful followers. Of all God's creatures, these are the closest to His heart. A mother may forget her sucking child, but He never can forget these. Heaven and earth will pass away, but His love for, and delight in these abide eternal, unchangeable and unalloyed. Whoever touches these touches the apple of His eye. We can form no adequate conception of the height and depth, length and breadth of God's love for these. But of all His creatures they have  been the most hated, despised and mistreated, and that because of their loyalty to Him, His principles, His cause and His people, and because of the enmity of those who are out of harmony with the course that such loyalty makes them take. When we see the baiting that Jesus endured for over three years from the Jewish clergy and consider the final harrowing experiences through which He passed because of His loyalty and their consequent enmity, and then remember how God felt toward Him, we can form a faint idea of the forbearance of God, who could contain Himself amid such scenes. The long-drawn-out, untoward experiences through which Jesus' faithful followers have passed because of their loyalty and because of the enmity of God's and their foes, present us with another very remarkable exhibition of God's forbearance. The persecution of the Jewish Christians

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by their Israelitish brethren furnishes many examples of God's forbearance. The ten pagan persecutions of the Christians in the Roman Empire, coupled with the fiendish tortures, blood-thirsty cruelties, prolonged agonies and devilish revilings that Roman hardheartedness inflicted for nearly three long centuries, furnished innumerable occasions for vindictiveness on God's part; yet He was forbearing throughout them, compatibly with perfecting  His saints amid suffering.

But the climax of human, yea, fiendish cruelty, was reached in the papal persecutions of the saints, through which the apostate Church of Rome spotted her garments with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. As if excommunication, outlawry, interdicts, curses, exile, infamy, imprisonment and wars, were not enough of evil with which to afflict them, Rome must needs institute the Inquisition for their special torture. The following are some of the things that the Inquisition, under sanction of "infallible" popes, did to God's saints: scourged them, stretched them on racks six to eight inches longer than their natural sizes, disjointed their bones, broke their teeth with hammers, cut out their tongues, sliced off their cheeks, cut off their ears, lips and noses, gouged out their eyes, poured melted lead into their empty eye sockets, into their ears and down their throats, pulled out their nails with hot pincers, cut off their fingers, toes, hands and feet, cut off the breasts of women, ripped open pregnant women, tearing from them their unborn infants, which they sometimes burned at the stake with their prospective mothers, tortured with special instruments the most sensitive parts of the human body, skinned, boiled, roasted and burned them alive, forced  urine and glass-mixed excrement down their throats, broke their arms by suddenly raising and letting them fall not quite to the floor, with chains attached to pulleys in the ceilings and fastened to their hands, which were back of them and with heavy

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weights attached to their feet, forced them to submit to the embraces of a machine called the "kissing virgin," which was covered with horse-shoe nails and knife-blades, whose points entered the bodies pressed against the machine, and to a "crushing virgin," inside of which the victims were similarly pierced while being crushed, applied to them thumb screws and "Spanish boots" made of iron, the former crushing their thumbs at the nails and the latter, with their iron wedges pounded by sledge hammers between the boots and the legs very shortly reduced their feet and legs to the knees to pulp, made them sit on the Spanish donkey, whose sharp point entered the body, heavy weights being tied to their hands and feet, impaled them, pulled their legs out by tying their feet with long ropes to two horses which were made to run at full speed in opposite directions, tied them naked to fleet horses which dragged them until dead over rocky fields, made them sit naked astride narrow straddles with heavy weights attached to the arms and legs, cast them off precipices upon spears below, where they hung until dead, beheaded, dismembered, disemboweled, burned, drowned, hanged them, buried them alive, tortured and murdered their nearest relatives before their eyes, made their children infamous, outlaws and exiles, etc., etc., etc. These things were done, not for a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade or a century, but for many centuries.

These are the main things the "Holy" Inquisition did against them, but the papacy used other means: stirring up kings and nations to war on them. Innocent III, mightiest of the popes, by the promise of a plenary indulgence raised a crusade of 500,000 French, Italian and German soldiers against the French Waldenses and Albigenses. These devastated entire provinces, slaughtering at Beziers 60,000 men, women and children, at Lavaur, a slightly smaller number, and in one day, after attending a morning mass,

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slaughtered 100,000 Albigenses, as well as laid waste the fair province of Languedoc, the clergy publicly thanking God for "this glorious victory" over the heretics. Charles V and Philip II, at papal instigation, martyred 100,000 Protestants in the Netherlands alone. The French kings, Francis, Henry, Charles and Louis XIV, at papal instigation, fiendishly persecuted the Huguenots in France, slaughtering them with great cruelty by the hundreds of thousands and exiling over a million of them. Papacy boasted over, struck a medal for, and made an approving painting of, the massacres of "St. Bartholomew's" times, when from 70,000 to 100,000 of them were treacherously slain as a result of papal intrigue and duplicity. The papacy, in order to exterminate the Protestants, stirred up the Thirty Years War, one of the major curses of the human family. The papacy stirred up the religious war of 1641 that destroyed 154,000 Protestant men, women and children in Ulster alone. The above are only the leading evils that papacy brought upon God's saints in the way of violence. Almost everywhere and always was it for more than a thousand years seeking to root up and destroy the Faithful. As to all of this God was able to bear and forbear. His purpose of perfecting in character the Faithful like our Lord, through suffering, for the high and responsible offices of Kings and Priests for the world, kept Him in this forbearing attitude. But even so, we stand astounded at the strength of character that enabled Him to continue such forbearance amid such, to Him, heart-touching scenes of His children's sufferings.

Just one other sphere wherein God's forbearance has greatly exercised itself—the sphere of Truth and right principles. Jehovah is the God of all Truth and right principle. He has been pleased to reveal to us His Truth and its principles. These are calculated to free men from the power of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness—the four foundations of Satan's power

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and empire. Satan recognizes such to be the function of God's Truth and its principles of righteousness, and therein rightly recognizes them to be a menace to his purposes and empire. Therefore he has set himself to the work of suppressing them and their exponents. His efforts to suppress the Truth and its principles have expressed themselves especially in the ways: (1) of suppressing their exponents, so that having no defenders they would perish from men's minds; and (2) of counterfeiting them and palming off these counterfeits, as the genuine, and thus also seeking to make them perish from men's minds. In working out his first purpose he brought the persecutions, tortures and wars above-mentioned, against the exponents of Truth and its principles, and in working out his second purpose he sought to seduce from their loyalty the exponents of these, and has succeeded more or less with all except the Faithful. Through those thus seduced he palms off error for truth and truth for error, right for wrong and wrong for right. This accounts for the false religions in the world, particularly in Christendom. Satan was one of the most attentive hearers that Jesus and the Apostles had; and when from their teachings he had learned the real plan of God, he worked out a counterfeit for each of its features. Thus he perverted every feature of God's plan and perverted the principles of Christian life that it teaches. This counterfeit he palmed off on the world through the measurably disloyal teachers of God's Word, who, among others, are pictured forth by Balaam, greedy for honor, power and wealth, and willing to compromise Truth and righteousness to gain these. Satan has used the very brightest minds that he could get to work skillfully on his counterfeit and to make it appear the genuine article. God's faithful servants, to the degree that they perceived various features of the counterfeit as such, set themselves in opposition to it and sought to vindicate as against it the Truth

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and its principles which were counterfeited by it. This has been carried on for centuries—yea, ever since Satan started out to palm off his counterfeit in its various features. The Faithful's fighting to gain or retain a footing for the Truth and its principles is called the controversy of Zion in the Scriptures (Is. 34: 8). Many a saint has worn himself out unto death in this struggle. God was pleased in His forbearance to allow them and the Truth and its principles for which they contended to be crushed temporarily to the earth and seemingly to suffer defeat. But their seeming defeat was a real victory, because their faithfulness to death qualified them for kingship and priesthood in the Millennium, when under Christ they will crush the head of him (Satan) who in this life bruised their heel—made it so hard for them to walk the narrow way. But "Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again," and in this case has risen again and is triumphantly holding the field against every counterfeit of the true. But this treading down of Truth and its principles has furnished God with untold circumstances calling for Him to exercise forbearance. And with a steadfast holding in His heart and mind of His purpose in leaving His Faithful so hard a warfare to wage for Truth and its principles, He has always exercised the requisite amount of forbearance, and thus has revealed to us in His acts, as well as in His Word, the marvels of His forbearance.

But God is not forbearing under all circumstances. He exercises this quality at the direction of wisdom, justice, love and power; so, also, at their dictation, He refrains from its exercise. This accounts for His many punishments of sin and sinners. These are abundantly exemplified in the curse, in the deluge, in the judgment upon the cities of the plain, upon Egypt, upon the seven nations in Canaan and the surrounding nations, and upon Israel, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome and the nations into which the

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latter has disintegrated. We are now living in the Day of Wrath, which began specifically with the World War, will proceed through a world revolution and come to a climax in world anarchy. This wrath will strike all nations, particularly of Christendom, and in Christendom will especially be poured out on papacy, ending in its eternal ruin. In this wrath time, God has ceased to exercise His former forbearance toward evil institutions. The purposes of their permission having been about accomplished, their downfall will be as a result and as an expression of God's wrath, which will burn unto a completion. Thus we see His wonderful forbearance when required by wisdom, justice, love and power; and thus we see His wonderful forbearance held in abeyance as required by these same qualities. Praised be our God for all His works: for those of forbearance and for those of wrath; for all of them are done in wisdom, justice, love and power for the ultimate good of all!

Forgiveness is the next secondary attribute of God's character that we desire to study. By forgiveness we understand the quality of heart and mind whereby one ceases to cherish displeasure or resentment and to inflict punishment for wrong done him and in their place puts pleasure at and friendliness toward the offender and remits any punishment that may be due for such wrong. According to this definition, forgiveness consists of two elements: (1) an internal active characteristic, and (2) an external act. It presupposes that one has been wronged and that this wrong has worked the displeasure and resentment of the wronged person who, in some form or other, holds something  against the wrongdoer. The thing held against the latter is punishment for the wrong. The punishment that he enforces or seeks to enforce against the wrongdoer may be simply a mental one, or it may be a verbal one, or it may be one expressed, in act. The punishment may consist in the negative withholding of some benefit or

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the positive infliction of some injury. Forgiveness acts under such conditions. It puts aside the displeasure and resentment held against the wrongdoer, takes on the  attitude of pleasure in, and friendliness toward him and remits the negative or positive punishment due or thought due for the wrong. In every real forgiveness the above things will be found. Accordingly, when we say that God is forgiving we thereby imply that, while He has been wronged and such wrong displeases Him, arouses His resentment and He punishes or arranges to punish the wrongdoer, yet for certain reasons He ceases to cherish displeasure and resentment at the wrongdoer and, on the other hand, cherishes pleasure and friendliness toward him and ceases to arrange for his punishment or desists from inflicting it, or He would not forgive.

Certainly God has been greatly wronged. Sin is the form that all such wrongs take. Sometimes these wrongs are done Him directly and sometimes they are done indirectly. Direct wrongs against God are done when He is refused the place of supremacy in our dispositions, thoughts, motives, words and acts, or when such supremacy is accorded others with or apart from Him, especially so when these others are inimical to Him. Again, God is directly wronged when His person is denounced or traduced, His character is misrepresented or detracted from, His plans are  disbelieved, misbelieved, misrepresented, corrupted or vilified and His works are denounced, renounced, misrepresented, resisted or vilified. So, too, is He directly sinned against when He is disbelieved, despaired in, hated and disobeyed. Frequently direct sin against God takes the form of ingratitude, inappreciation and impiety, as they may also be omissions of duty toward Him. Whoever does any of these or kindred things directly sins against God. Such things displease Him, arouse His resentment and lead to the infliction of some just punishment. On the other hand, God is indirectly sinned

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against when wrong is done to His creatures, especially those of His creatures who become His sons and servants. Dishonoring parents, civil rulers, teachers or, other superiors is a sin against God, though indirect. So, too, to hate or injure or kill one's neighbor, to violate his home, to injure him in his property rights or reputation, or in any unfair way to seek to divert anything of his from him, are sins against God, none the less real by being indirect. The reason for this is that God has given all certain rights and demands of all respect for such rights, hence to violate these is an attack on God's laws, ordinances and creatures, and hence it arouses His displeasure, resentment and consequent punishment against the wrongdoer.

Sometimes such punishment takes the form of God's hiding Himself from the offender, whereby He makes him feel His displeasure and resentment. Sometimes it takes the form of depriving him of evidences of former favors, e.g., taking Truth, graces and opportunities of service from him, taking physical blessings from him, like health, friends, business, position, relatives, etc. Indeed, the entire curse is an expression of punishment for sin, culminating in death. It is seen in the driving of our first parents from Eden, in Cain's vagabond life, in the flood, the confusing of tongues, the scattering of the nations, the destruction of the cities of the plain, the ten plagues on Egypt, the destruction of the Egyptian host in the Red Sea, the plagues on, and the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness, the destruction of the seven nations of Canaan, the oppressions of Israel during the periods of the judges and kings, Israel's various calamities, captivities and dispersions among the nations, the evils that persecutors endured, the afflictions of sectarianism and the present troubles in the world beginning with and resulting from the Word War. Yea, in its very nature sin brings some kind of punishment upon the sinner.

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God, as the Source, Expounder and Maintainer of justice, must punish sin, as He must feel displeasure at, and resentment toward it. His justice is unbending and therefore exacting. But, blessed be His name, His love also operates and has under the direction of wisdom made it possible in harmony with justice to cease cherishing displeasure at, resentment toward, and punishment for our sin. We are not to think that God, as it were, ignores the dictates of justice when He exercises forgiveness. This would make Him unjust, which He is not. Rather He gives His justice full sway while giving His love full sway and thus, without violating His justice, He in love forgives. This brings us to the most amazing expression of love ever so far manifested and, so far as our knowledge goes, the most amazing expression of love that ever will be manifested: God gave up His own well-beloved and only begotten Son to meet the sentence of His own law against sinners so that He might remain just while forgiving them (Rom. 3: 24-26). And our Lord Jesus in the loyalty of His heart was also equal to the meeting of the situation by facing for us the demands of justice for the world's sin, that He might thus redeem us from the sentence of justice, and thus make it possible for God's love to forgive us in harmony with His justice (Rom. 5: 6-11; 2 Cor. 5: 18-21). Herein we glory and hereby we attain forgiveness (Rom. 4: 24-5: 1). Thus we see that God does not become unjust while forgiving us. Having justly sentenced the sinner, He could not forgive him unless the sinner were made good for to God's justice. And God Himself made the hard sacrifice—surrendering His Son unto death for enemies—and Jesus willingly carried it out, so that we might enjoy forgiveness from God for Christ's sake.

To enjoy such forgiveness we have something to do. Not that we can merit it; for being condemned to utter bankruptcy we have nothing of worth, nor can

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have anything of worth that is not forfeited. All the merit is our Lord's and all the grace is God's and Christ's. Yet, for us fully to receive God's forgiveness, there are certain conditions that we must fulfill. These are three: (1) repentance toward God, (2) faith toward our Lord Jesus and

(3) consecration of ourselves to God fully. The first implies that in addition to being sorry for sin, especially because it displeases God, we hate and forsake it, seeking to make amends to all concerned, and that we heartily love and practice righteousness toward God and man. The second implies that we distrust our own ability to commend ourselves to God's approval and heartily trust and act upon the trust that Jesus' righteousness makes up for all our lacks and sins before God for our justification before God. The third implies that we heartily give up self-will and world- will and heartily accept God's will as ours. Those who so have done during the Gospel Age have received fully and actually God's forgiveness, i.e., God ceased to cherish displeasure, resentment and punishment toward them and cherished pleasure, friendliness and remission of punishment toward them. Indeed, in a tentative way those who fulfilled the first and second conditions for forgiveness have during the Gospel Age enjoyed forgiveness from God.

God's purpose in forgiving sins is a manifold one. The chief purpose is to bring about full reconciliation between Himself and those who experience it. He desires to be friendly toward and pleased with them; and He desires them to be friendly toward and pleased with Him. Hence He is glad to exercise His quality of forgiveness on all who will respond to His conditions for forgiveness. Then, too, He wishes to uplift the fallen, and exercising His forgiving love is one of the most effective methods of making them willing to receive His uplifting help. Further, He has desired to draw the forgiven ones closer to Him along

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selective lines so that they might become fitted for life eternal and in it be instrumental in helping others to come to God in reconciliation. Indeed, this has been the main practical purpose in God's exercising His Gospel-Age forgiving spirit. And out of this purpose will be developed three elect classes Who, together with the faithful of the Old Testament, will be wonderfully used by Him as His Millennial agents to help the rest of mankind to draw near to God in reconciliation. Doubtless there is forgiveness with God, that His name, character, may be revered. By showing us His forgiving love, not only when we were first justified, but all through our lives in the almost infinitude  of our lacks, faults, mistakes and sins, God has been revealing to us a most merciful, kind, long-suffering, forbearing, patient, self-controlling and generous disposition; and when we contrast our many shortcomings with His perfections and tireless forgiveness of our sins of weakness and ignorance, the longer and more devoutly we contemplate Him in these respects, the more do we grow in reverence for Him—a reverence that expresses itself in gratitude, praise, worship, adoration, honor, devotion and service. And this, in turn, makes us more like God, more responsive to Him and more helpful to our fellows. Another of God's purposes in exercising forgiveness is to encourage those not yet forgiven, but desirous of forgiveness, to seek it by taking the necessary steps thereto. Then, too, He exercises it so that when the world comes in the Millennial Age to see its privileges, it will be encouraged the better to profit from God's past dealings with His people in pre­ millennial times. Such forgiveness has also the purpose of reflecting credit upon God and Christ and to make us all the more hate sin and practice righteousness. Accordingly, God's purposes in connection with forgiveness is not an encouragement of sin, but the

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reverse—a most effectual discouragement to sin and an encouragement to righteousness.

The qualities that characterize God's forgiveness are worthy of our study. It is pitiful. God deeply feels for the sinner in the misfortunes that immerse him. Man's degradation, physical, mental, moral and religious, deeply touches God's heart. God feels for him at his losses, disappointments, lacks and pains, incidental to his sin. God pities him because of sin's alienation of him from God. God's sympathy is keen toward him because of the sufferings that sin brings on him; and God pities him because ultimately sin must accomplish his destruction. Therefore pity certainly characterizes God's forgiveness. Also God's forgiveness is characterized by His love. His heart is full of good will, both the good will of justice and the good will of charity, and these express themselves in forgiveness. God loves the sinner himself, not for a profit that God would make out of him for Himself, but because He delights to bless him. He desires to see him get the advantages that will accrue to him, if he receives God's forgiveness. God desires him to enjoy the pleasures and profits of reconciliation with God. God desires him to be elevated, ennobled and hallowed, because this will profit him intrinsically. Then, God desires him to become a blessing in the ennoblement, elevation and hallowing of his fellows. God ardently longs for him to make an everlasting success of himself for himself and others. Therefore He greatly desires to forgive him as an essential step for these good things. Surely, His forgiveness is full of love.

Then, too, it is liberal. God does not have to be bribed into it by our supposed good works. He does not have to be constrained into it by physical, mental, moral or religious force. He does not give it grudgingly, unwillingly, upbraidingly and threateningly. He bestows it more freely than the air that we

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breathe, more unctuously than the most gracious heart of man can feel, more heartily than the most spontaneous lover can favor his love, and more readily than the most beneficent of benefactors can bestow his favors. His forgiveness is full. He does not forgive the little weaknesses and hold against us our large ones. He does not forgive part of our forgivable sins and hold against us the rest of them. He does not forgive our sins against man and hold against us those against Him. He forgives all our sins. He removes all of them as far from us as the East is from the West. Be they ever so many or few, ever so large or small, ever so gross or refined, ever so strong or weak, ever so monstrous or trivial, He stands ready to forgive them all, as He knew all about them and arranged to forgive them long before we applied to Him for forgiveness.

His forgiveness is unchangeable. Some people forgive for awhile and then become displeased, resentful and injurious over the wrongs that they forgave, but not so Jehovah. He forgives forever. He remembers the forgiven sins and iniquities no more. Our lives after forgiveness are a new copy book to Him, with none of its pages having any imperfect and mistaken writing. He chides us not for the sins of the past. He does not remind us of them. He treats us as though they were never committed, and He does not hold them to our disadvantage. Even in the case of those who after becoming His forsake Him, He does not hold against them the sins He forgave, but those only that they impenitently love and practice afterwards. He forgives graciously. He delights to forgive. His heart overflows with joy at forgiving. The chief joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, or over one erring child of God who turns again to the Lord, is that which God's own heart feels. He makes the one whom He forgives feel at least in a measure the pleasure that God feels at His forgiveness

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of others. While to the impenitent God turns His back, to the penitent He turns His face, beaming with a graciousness that is indescribable and all pervasive. And, finally, His forgiveness is costly—costly to Himself and to His Son. It is not as though God has been at no pains to be able to forgive. He made the supreme sacrifice, of which He, the Infinite One, was capable, in order to be able to forgive— He gave the most preciously loved possession that He might be able to forgive, even His only begotten and well beloved Son, and that, not for friends, but for enemies. O, come, let us adore Him for His forgiving grace! Let us bow down before Him and worship and praise Him who alone is so supremely good as to merit more than any of His creatures are able to give Him, when giving their best!

The Scriptures give us many testimonies as to God's forgiving sins. When the Lord proclaimed a number of His attributes to Moses on Mt. Sinai, He included forgiveness among them (Ex. 34: 6, 7). He arranged the typical sacrifices in a way to illustrate various phases of His forgiveness (Lev. 4: 20, 26; 5: 4-10). He makes known His forgiveness in suitable manners (Num. 14: 20). He exemplified it in His forgiving His servant David (2 Sam. 12: 13). Repeatedly did He forgive Israel; and at the dedication of the temple the prayer offered there indicates His readiness to forgive them (1 Kings 8: 33, 34). Even hidden or secret sins are not beyond His forgiving power (Ps. 19: 12). The sins of youth as well as of age He alike forgives (Ps. 25: 7). Their greatness and accompanying afflictions are no bar to His forgiveness (Ps. 25: 11, 18). An honest confession accompanied by resolution of amendment, with faith in God's grace and mercy, meets ready forgiveness from God (Ps. 32: 1, 2, 5). God's people, though overcome by sin, still find room for forgiveness (Ps. 65: 3). God's honor and character

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are a guarantee of forgiveness (Ps. 79: 9). His forgiveness does not only embrace individuals, but also His people as a whole (Ps. 85: 2). Even amid punishment for sin He stands ready to forgive, on the conditions therefore being fulfilled (Ps. 99: 8). He makes a thorough work of forgiveness (Ps. 103: 12). His forgiveness is in order to the betterment of the sinner (Ps. 130: 4). He stands ever ready to reason with the sinner in order to bring him to repentance (Is. 1: 18; 43: 26). He forgives so thoroughly as to forget our forgiven sins (Is. 43: 25). He pleads with His backslidden people to return and obtain forgiveness (Is. 44: 22). He invites people to seek His forgiving love while it is possible to obtain it, encouraging them by a gracious and forgiving reception (Is. 55: 6, 7). He asks for reformation as a condition of forgiveness (Jer. 5: 1, 7; Ezek. 33: 14, 15). Unlike many people who forgive, yet remember and upbraidingly make mention of the wrongs done them, God not only forgives but forgets and never mentions the forgiven sins upbraidingly (Jer. 31: 34; Ezek. 33: 16). His forgiveness embraces all sins, iniquities and transgressions (Jer. 33: 8). Thus we have given a summary of the main Old Testament passages that treat of God's forgiveness, acting toward human beings.

But the New Testament has much to say on this subject. Its opening chapter tells us that God sent Jesus to be the Savior of God's people from sin (Matt. 1: 21). God promises to forgive us as we forgive others, but refuses to forgive us unless we forgive others (Matt. 6: 12-14; Mark 11: 26). He illustrates the fact of His forgiving us as an inducement to us to forgive others, and of His withholding forgiveness from us, if we refuse to forgive others, in the parable of the two debtors (Matt. 18: 23-35). The New Testament more clearly than the Old Testament shows the meritorious cause of God's forgiveness—

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the ransom sacrifice of Christ (Matt. 26: 28). He requires the exercise of faith in Jesus for the attainment of His forgiveness (Mark 2: 5, 7; Acts 10: 36, 43). He forgives all kinds of sins except that against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3: 28). God caused John the Baptist to make the forgiveness of sins the main subject of his preaching (Luke 3: 3). And Jesus charged that it should be preached in His name along with repentance among all nations (Luke 24: 47). Graciously did the Lord forgive the woman taken in adultery (John 8: 11). The Lord empowered His faithful people to act as His mouthpieces in announcing His forgiveness (John 20: 23). He forgives that He may bestow the Holy Spirit (Acts 2: 38). God has arranged for the forgiveness of sins through Christ's sacrifice because there is no other way to gain it (Acts 13: 38, 39). One of the purposes of the ministry of God's Word is to bring forgiveness to the repentant believers and consecrating hearers (Acts 26: 16-18). It is indeed a blessing to obtain forgiveness from God (Rom. 4: 7, 8). We are encouraged to copy God's and Christ's gracious example in forgiveness (Eph. 4: 32). God forgives us that we may live (Col. 2: 13). Sins cannot be forgiven except by the sacrifice of Christ (Heb. 9: 22, 28). It is the privilege of God's people to help erring brethren and other people to come to the Lord for forgiveness (Jas. 5: 20). The blood of Christ works before God the cleansing of all our sins of weakness and ignorance (1 John 1: 7, 9). We should not sin; but if we do, we should not despair, but go to God through Christ, who as our Advocate is our propitiation for the forgiveness that will be ours (1 John 2: 1, 2). It is our privilege, not only to seek for the forgiveness of our own sins, but also to pray for the forgiveness of others' sins (1 John 5: 16). And in all our enjoyment of forgiveness let us not fail to give God the honor of giving us Christ

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as our Savior, through whom we have forgiveness of our sins (Eph. 1: 7; Col. 1: 14; Rev. 1: 5) from our Heavenly Father. We have just given a brief digest of the main New Testament passages on God's forgiveness. Certainly both parts of the Bible finely describe this subject and give us great comfort and peace in the consciousness of God's willingness to forgive.

God's forgiveness is a very fruitful thing. It results in putting away His enmity toward the sinner; and it makes the sinner friendly toward God. The consciousness of being forgiven takes away from our hearts the keenest sorrow of which we are capable—remorse—and in its place brings comfort from, and peace with God. Not only so, but our hearts are filled with joy through having it. To receive it we must change our attitude from one that loves sin and hates righteousness to one that hates sin and loves righteousness. Instead of former doubt of God we must have faith in Him to obtain forgiveness, and we must also give Him our  hearts in consecration. It fills our hearts with thankfulness to God and appreciation of the great goodness of God and Christ in making possible and actual our forgiveness. It is precedent to our receiving the Holy Spirit and all the benefits of sonship toward God. Accordingly, God's forgiveness is to each one of us a very beneficial thing. But our receiving forgiveness benefits others; for it prompts us to seek to help them to the same benefit. Our own hearts having been blessed by its reception, naturally and spontaneously we seek to have others gain these same blessings; and those who respond to our efforts to help them to repentance toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus and consecration to the Lord, receive the above- indicated blessing of heart and mind to the degree that they make this a motive of their very beings. Then, it is fruitful to God and Christ. It brings them the very results that they sought when the Father gave

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up His Son to become a sacrifice for sin and when the Son freely surrendered Himself to death so that God and man may become reconciled. Certainly the Father and the Son rejoice over men reconciled with God. They know the value of a human soul, and therefore know the worth of a saved soul. They love to see people turn to the better, and therefore greatly desire the deliverance of people from death. God and Christ deserve the praise, worship, adoration, love, service, thanksgiving and appreciation that those give Them who heartily receive God's forgiveness. God and Christ are thereby enriched by receiving more and more willing and loving hearts as theirs, made so by a proper reception of God's forgiving grace and love.

What we have said of God's forgiveness and its exercise we are to understand as referring to the Adamic sin and all the sins that result therefrom, i.e., all sins of weakness and ignorance. There is a sin that never is forgiven. This sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit, which means a willful sin against knowledge and ability. The sin against the Holy Spirit is any deliberate and willful sin committed, not from ignorance and weakness, but from the love of sin, fully knowing it to be sin and being fully able to avoid it, yet wickedly committing it. There are two forms of this sin, but neither of them is forgivable. The first form of this sin is committed when there is a measure of weakness or a measure of ignorance present, yet on the other hand there is also a measure of willfulness against some knowledge and ability as respects the sin. Such a sin we call a partially willful sin against the Holy Spirit. While God through the ransom forgives the weakness and ignorance in it, He does not forgive the willfulness in it. But such a partially willful sin is not the form of the sin against the Holy Spirit that puts one into the second death—the sin unto death, as St. John calls it (1 John 5: 16). How, then, does God deal with one who has committed partially willful

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sin, so far as its willfulness is concerned? He punishes this willfulness and thus makes the partially willful sinner expiate his own sin by stripes. While Christ died for the sin of Adam and its resultant sins, He did not die for the willfulness in any of our sins. Hence, the willfulness must be striped out of the person, i.e., he will receive such chastisement as will take away from his character the willfulness that prompted the sin. The Scriptures teach this to be the Divine arrangement with such sins (Luke 12: 47, 48).

But when the sin is totally willful, i.e., without any weakness or ignorance and against full knowledge of the nature and quality of the act and against full ability to avoid the act it is expiable only by eternal destruction. But such a sin is never committed by a sinner unless he has previously had the following five experiences: (1) He must have been enlightened as to the Truth in general, and particularly with reference to the act in question; (2) he must have been justified; (3) he must have been spirit-begotten; (4) he must have appreciated the deep things of God's Word or Plan; and (5) he must have appreciated the privilege of becoming one of the Kings and Priests of the next Age. In other  words only advanced Christians are capable of committing this sin. If such fall away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. For them is reserved eternal destruction (Heb. 6: 4-8). For them there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, since they have sinned away the merit of the one sacrifice with utter willfulness. In three ways this sin is committed: (1) by their repudiating the ransom sacrifice; (2) by their repudiating their share in the sacrificial sufferings of the Christ and (3) by their destroying the Holy Spirit in their hearts (Heb. 10: 26-29; 6: 6; 2 Pet. 2: 1; Jude 4; 1 John 5: 16). These things, however, cannot be done by one unless he has been an advanced spirit-begotten son of God. Frequently, taking advantage of the ignorance

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of those who have not had the five experiences of Heb. 6: 4, 5, Satan deceives them through their ignorance and tender consciences into believing that they have sinned the sin unto death, and thereby most grievously torments them. In not a few cases he has tormented them into insanity and suicide. One of the surest evidences that one has not committed this sin is great grief over what he thinks is it. Satan fails so to torment those who understand the situation. In almost every case those who have committed this sin are so hardened that they never come to remorse. Let us, therefore, turn a deaf ear to Satan's suggestions that we have committed this sin. Those who have committed it have so corrupted themselves as to be incapable of repentance, and God never forgives them. Since they are irreformable God mercifully destroys them, in order to prevent their becoming an eternal curse to themselves and to others. Their sin is expiable only by eternal annihilation. "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak."

Apart from the sin against the Holy Spirit, let us remember that there is forgiveness before God for all sins. Let this thought comfort us in our transgressions of weakness and ignorance; and let it lead us to prize our God with supreme appreciation for His wisdom, justice, love and power, which suppress the control of His combativeness and destructiveness, and which thus make Him longsuffering and forbearing and forgiving as to our sins. Hallelujah! What a Savior! And let this praise arise as holy incense to God out of every heart that has experienced God's forgiving grace in Christ!

The next secondary attribute of God's character that we will study is courage—the quality of heart and mind that faces dangers and difficulties with fortitude, calmness, firmness and perseverance. The sphere in which it acts is the dangerous and the difficult.

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Some quail before the dangerous and are depressed in spirit before the difficult. Their quality of heart and mind is in contrast with courage, or at least evinces a lack of courage. The opposite of courage is cowardice, which results from a habitual exercise of fear. Fear, as we have already noted, operates through the affection-organ of love for safety. God has this affection-organ and its resultant quality of cautiousness, or carefulness. But He fears no one and no thing. He does not have fear for His own personal safety. He exercises carefulness or cautiousness with respect to His dependents, His word and His works. If love for safety would control Him, He would become cowardly. He never allows it to control Him. He by His higher primary graces suppresses the controllership of His love of safety and thereby exercises the courage that faces dangers and difficulties with fortitude, calmness, firmness and perseverance. In this course there is no depression of spirit in Him. On the contrary, He is spirited and undaunted in the highest sense of these words. Therefore courage is an attribute of God's character; and it is a secondary attribute of His character, because it results from His higher primary graces suppressing the controllership of the lower primary affection-organ of love for safety and is worthy of God.

God Himself could never come into any circumstances in which He would personally come into danger. Hence when we studied God's lower primary grace  of cautiousness or carefulness, we saw that it was exercised, not in the interests of His own personal safety, but in the interests of His dependents, like His servants and His new- creaturely and angelic sons, and of His plans and works, to secure their safety. Accordingly, God's courage does not exercise itself in the presence of personal danger; for He has and can have no personal danger; but His courage acts in relation to the dangers and difficulties

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which His servants and sons, His plans and works, have had and do have. We do see that frequently the faithful Worthies of the Old Testament and of the Epiphany have been in dangerous and difficult situations. We do see that His angelic and new-creaturely sons have also been in dangerous and difficult situations. Furthermore, there have been phases of God's plan and features of His work that have been in the presence of dangers and difficulties. And amid these God has always shown courage, never quailing, never fearing, never feeling panic-stricken; but facing them with a fortitude that knows no trembling, a calmness that knows no ruffling, a firmness that knows no irresolution and a perseverance that knows no pause.

The agents that occasion God's exercise of courage are inimical to His dependents, His plans and works; and against the purposes and works of these God shows His courage. Satan is the chief of these agents. He seeks the seduction and perversion of God's dependents. He plans and works for the overthrow of God's angelic and new- creaturely sons' loyalty to God, His cause and His people. He plots to thwart God's plans and purposes and to put others into operation for the displacement of these. He tries to corrupt, bury in oblivion or counterfeit God's works. Against such fell plans, purposes and works, in connection with the dangers and difficulties that they involve, God sets Himself courageously, never fainting in His fortitude, calmness, firmness and perseverance. Satan finds support  in His putting dangers and difficulties in the way of God's dependents, sons, plans and works, in his associates—the fallen angels—who in every way of iniquity have sought to help him endanger and beset with difficulties God's servants, children, plans and works. The world, too, in proportion to its varying degrees of selfishness and sinfulness, which make it amenable to Satanic uses, has rendered Satan more or less efficient support in his endeavors to endanger

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and make difficulties for God's servants, sons, plans and works. And not 'the least efficient of these supporters of Satan is the flesh of God's new-creaturely sons. For in its very nature and relation to them, because of its sinfulness, selfishness, worldliness and erroneousness, it is a standing menace to their safety and a constant source of danger to them. Accordingly, it is because of the activities of Satan, the fallen angels, the world and the flesh, endangering and making matters difficult for God's servants, sons, plans and works, that God must exercise bravery on behalf of the latter against the former.

When we look at the experiences of God's dependents and sons and the circumstances of His plans and works, both in Biblical and post-Biblical times, we find many illustrations of God's courage. Indeed, to have conceived the plan for bringing the universe into existence and for maintaining its existence, as well as of filling it with, and preserving in it appropriate living creatures, is a remarkable display of courage on God's part, especially when we remember that God's foresight enabled Him to see how fraught with danger and difficulty such plans would be. Nor did His foreknowledge of the dangers and difficulties connected with the Plan of the Ages stay in fear His hand from the work of making and carrying it out. Connected with it were many dangers and difficulties. He did not allow the thought of Satan's rebellion to make Him fearful, but courageously He pressed on in spite of Satan's usurpation and direful works. The fall of the angels into rebellion against Him did not cause Him to lose heart and give up; but He kept up His fortitude, calmness, firmness and perseverance, despite their combined efforts to thwart Him. Much less did the rebellion of man discourage Him. If the sentencing of the race to the experience with evil unto death was a hard thing to do, He nevertheless did not lack the courage to put it into effect. The

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need of wiping out practically the whole human family by the flood to prevent universal corruption nerved His arm to the necessary work. When Satan sought through proud Egypt's power to destroy the earthly seed, God courageously put Himself into battle with the hosts of darkness and earth's mightiest empire and conquered in the battle of plagues and of the sea. Time and again His courage fought His way through in the opposition of the nations of Canaan and the neighboring nations. In His conflicts with earth's mightiest empires—Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome—in their efforts to destroy His people, He always courageously entered and victoriously came out of the fray. No matter how great were the dangers that His servants faced and no matter how appalling were the difficulties that beset them, He minded not the dangers, He heeded not the difficulties, and in the end He emerged victorious and brought them to victory. It was His courage that made brave in danger such heroes as Abraham against Chedorlaomer, Moses against Pharaoh, Joshua against the seven nations, Barak against Sisera, Gideon against Midian, Jephthah against Ammon, Samuel against the Philistines, David against Goliath, Jashobeam, Eleazar and Shammah against the Philistine garrison at Bethlehem, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego against the fiery furnace and Daniel against the lions.

But the greatest expressions of God's courage are found in connection with His risks related to His endangered sons, chiefly His firstborn Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. To change Him from a high spirit being to a human being was a dangerous procedure. Yet God was equal to the danger therein involved. To put Him on double trial for life—as a human being and as a new creature—with the risk that but the slightest imperfection would lose for Him His best beloved Son and wreck His entire plan for men, new creatures and angels, required a very rare courage

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indeed, perhaps the supreme example of courage of all times. Yet the pertinent courage God exercised, and came out of that battle with the greatest of all booty—a Son on the highest plane of existence, and a Vicegerent that could be depended upon under all possible dangers, difficulties and temptations to take God's side and successfully vindicate it. Rare, too, and only next in supremacy to that shown in the dangers and difficulties attendant on His First­ Begotten's trial, was the courage that God has been displaying in connection with the trial of Christ's Body; for here are persons that are weak and more or less out of the way, and to risk their lives and hopes in the sore trials amid which they must prove true to gain the Divine nature and Joint-heirship with His Chief Son, called upon Jehovah to manifest rare courage; and His courage has been equal to the prolonged warfare incidental to their conflicts. When we think of the very testful experiences that these have had, and when we think of the many complete failures that some have made, of the partial failures that others have made and of the great likelihood of failure for the rest of them, we  can more readily grasp the risks that God ran in developing a plan in connection with such subjects. Rare indeed has been His courage therein.

Look at it as it displayed itself in the martyr conflicts of Stephen and James, Peter and Paul, Ignatius and Polycarp, Perpetua and Felicitas, Pothinus and Lawrence, Huss and Cranmer, Savonarola and Servitus, Latimer and Ridley, who are but a few leading lights amid a great host of martyrs of Jesus. What courage was it that could run the risks involved in the loss of such noble souls as these! The names of the martyrs and multitudinous others and their deeds and sufferings are unique in human annals, with dangers and difficulties in proportion; yet God's courage in these circumstances did not fail Him; His bravery was not overcome by any of these. On the

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contrary, with a bravery unexampled, with a fearlessness that knew not the least trembling, with a courage that could suffer the risk of the greatest losses, God went onward in the course that He laid out for Himself to go, and is now emerging from the final scenes of the present warfare with the laurels of the greatest victory of the Ages. Courageous indeed is our God.

Shortly the conflict with evil and its agents will take on another aspect, its Millennial aspect; and by a combination of mercy and force applied as needed, all His enemies will be subdued for a thousand years, while He delivers their captives from the ruinous effects of the reign of sin. Thereby He will put the human race into a position to meet the final onslaught of sin, whose dangers and difficulties God will have the requisite courage to meet. The battle will last about forty years and will end in the eternal triumph of righteousness and the eternal defeat of sin and its supporters. Then will become fully known the real quality of God's courage, as based upon love for righteousness and hatred of iniquity. Then will the real courage of God shine out in the results attained by His permitting evil. It was a great risk undertaken by God, to allow evil to enter a moral order of affairs and to permit it to work even though restricted, within certain bounds. Knowing the power of Truth toward the faith class, and the power of experience both with evil and good as a teacher imparting hatred for sin and love for righteousness toward the unbelieving class, Jehovah had all the courage necessary to run the risks involved in carrying out the Plan of the Ages, in connection with which there were the greatest dangers and difficulties imaginable. Courageous indeed is our God. In this, as in all His other characteristics, Jehovah is supreme. And for it, as well as for His other graces, He perfectly deserves our gratitude, appreciation and worship.

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God's courage has been and will be very fruitful. Great indeed have been and will be His gains in the risks that He has taken in carrying out His Plan. So far it has gotten for Him the Ancient Worthies, Jesus and the bulk of the Little Flock, some of the Great Company and some of the Youthful Worthies. Before many years it will bring to Him as booty the rest of the Little Flock, Great Company and Youthful Worthies. With these four elect classes as gains from the risks connected with the elective features of His Plan, God will have been very fruitful in the results of His courage; for in these He will have won for Himself four dependable classes, the one, the Little Flock, dependable in the most exacting possible conditions; for these will be fitted in the endless succession of future Ages to fulfill all God's good pleasure. Then there are the rich gains that the Millennium will bring to His courage, a perfected human race forever firm in truth and righteousness as the inhabitants of this paradisaic earth, and the restored angels, delivered from their fallen condition and forever glad for their deliverance, and forever loyal to God, their Deliverer. Fruitful indeed will also be that feature of His courage that blots out of existence those who will not sever themselves from sin and its terrible effects. Thus from every standpoint will God be fruitful in the results achieved by His courage. So, too, will His exercise of courage be fruitful to others. To our Lord it will be fruitful in that He will forever have the Divine nature as His and the office of vicegerency for God in the execution of all Jehovah's plans and purposes. To the Little Flock it will be fruitful inasmuch as it will result in their having the Divine nature and Joint-heirship with our Lord in all His offices. To the Ancient and Youthful Worthies and the Great Company, God's courage will be fruitful inasmuch as it will result for them in their obtaining spiritual natures lower than the Divine, but much

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higher than the perfect human nature of the restitution class, and in their obtaining the office of the chief assistants of Christ and the Church. For the fallen angels God's bravery will result in their restoration to their former station and privileges; and for the obedient of the world it will result in their restoration to human perfection in God's image and likeness and in their having success in eternal life in Paradise. The fruitfulness of God's courageous course will be manifest in future creations, who will learn wisdom from the brave course of God in the risks involved in carrying out His glorious Plan of the Ages. Praised be our God for His great courage!

God's candor is His next secondary attribute that we desire to study. The grace of candor results from the higher primary graces laying hold on our affection-organ of love for hiding—secretiveness—and suppressing its efforts to control our conduct. By using this organ as a servant of truth and righteousness we develop tactfulness as a lower primary grace, which with the other main primary graces we have already studied. But there are circumstances in which tactfulness, with its accompanying secretiveness, would be out of order, and which require in the interests of truth and righteousness frankness of speech and action. The grace shown under such circumstances is candor. We may define candor as the quality of heart and mind that frankly tells what should be told in the prevailing circumstances. To hide the needed truth would be a misuse of secretiveness. To do so under some circumstances would result in evil to others—be the evil physical, mental, moral or religious, while the telling of the needed truth will often prevent evil to the person or to others. Candor is, therefore, a quality that is more or less associated with telling unpleasant or uncomplimentary things. Hence the prelude, to be candid, or, to speak candidly, is almost always used to introduce a statement of an unpleasant

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thought. But when it is necessary for another's welfare that such an unpleasant thought be expressed, and when it is frankly done, candor, in the good use of that word, is being exercised. But sometimes people are brutally candid. They tell the disagreeable thing in a way to make it sting unnecessarily. This is certainly an abuse of frankness. Even while candid we are to be tactful, lest we work evil by our candor.

God has this quality of candor. He is too tactful to be brutally frank. He tells the unpleasant or uncomplimentary truth because He aims at accomplishing good by telling it. He never needlessly tells people unpleasant and uncomplimentary things. He does it to rebuke and correct people who have gone into wrong, or to announce coming punishments for wrong, necessary to vindicate righteousness and truth, and to set aside wrong and error. Hence God's candor is a good quality. It results from His higher primary graces suppressing the controllership of secretiveness. In its exercise He ever keeps in mind, and works to realize, the purpose for which He exercises it. Therefore He suppresses every statement that would prevent His candor from being fruitful. People often flatter others wherein the proper exercise of candor would require a rebuke or correction. This God never does. He uses His candor as a servant of truth and righteousness and not selfishly, as many people do.

The commission of sin, the presence of faultful characteristics, the spread of error and the indulgence in selfishness and worldliness, afford God many opportunities to exercise candor for reformatory purposes. The lack of truth, righteousness, love and heavenly-mindedness furnish God with another set of conditions that calls for His exercise of His candor. So, too, the imperfect development of such qualities afford God another occasion for the use of frankness. As we study the Scriptural illustrations of God's frankness we find it manifesting itself in activity under

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just such circumstances. This candor marks Him in His dealings with friends and foes alike. God was candid with Adam and Eve before their trial, telling them just what to do and what to avoid; and when they disobeyed He was frank in pointing out their sin and their punishment. He was frank with Cain, both before and after his killing of Abel. He was candid with Noah in warning him of the coming flood and in His taking proper precautionary measures against it, as He was also candid with the other antediluvians, warning them to repent of their sins and threatening retribution on their failure so to do. He was aboveboard in warning both Abraham and Lot as to the coming punishment upon the cities of the plain. God frankly warned Pharaoh of the wrongs and dangers of his course of obstinacy. God was frank with Israel in offering the Law Covenant to them and in explaining its various provisions to them. When Israel sinned, e.g., in lusting after evil things, in idolatry, in illicit unions at Baal-peor, in complaining against the weariness of their pilgrim journey and in murmuring against Moses and Aaron and in becoming fearful at the evil report of ten of the spies, God in each case clearly set before them their wrong and frankly announced His displeasure.

He was just as candid with individual wrong as with national wrong. He candidly announced His displeasure with the evil sons of Eli and with Eli for permitting their wrongdoings. He did not hide from Saul His disapproval of his wrongs that finally led God to destroy him and take the kingdom from his family. To David He plainly said through Nathan, the prophet, "Thou art the man," when He by a parable told of the unjust course of David toward Uriah and Bathsheba. Through the other prophets He repeatedly sent plain rebukes for the sins of Israel as a nation and of individual Israelites, and often accompanied these with announcements of condigned punishments.

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Note the course of Jeremiah with Israel and its rulers and teachers, especially with Coniah and Zedekiah and the false prophets and corrupt priests of his day. Daniel did not hide the Lord's mind from Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar when their iniquities called for their correction and admonition to righteousness. Neither did Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi as God's servants remain silent in the presence of wrongdoers, regardless of whether they were great or small. They candidly as God's mouthpieces pointed out the wrongs committed, advised correction of the misconduct and announced the Lord's judgments pertinent to the several cases.

We find the same candor marking the Lord's New Testament dealings with His servants and enemies, especially as He spoke through Jesus and the Apostles. Some illustrations from New Testament history will show this. In considering these illustrations we are to remember that God exercised His candor through Jesus and the Apostles as His Agents. God's candor is marked in the plain preaching of repentance by John the Baptist, wherein sin and sinners are clearly rebuked. Jesus showed the Father's candor in the fact that He spoke very plainly in rebuke of sin, especially the sins of the religious leaders of His day. Matt. 23, containing Jesus' rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees, is a remarkable example of candor in rebuking the sins of religious leaders. Jesus' telling plainly the truth against Judas' treachery, Peter's officiousness and boasting and the disciples' forsaking Him, are examples of God's candor. Jesus' telling of the difficulties of the narrow way and urging all prospective consecrators to count the cost, is another example of candor. Our Lord's acknowledging His Messiahship and Divine sonship before the Sanhedrin and His kingship before Pilate, are other illustrations of His candor. On Pentecost by Divine inspiration St. Peter frankly told the Jews that they had murdered

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the Prince of life. A little later he and John candidly told  the Sanhedrin that the Lord Jesus whom they crucified was the one through whom they would have to seek salvation, if they were to attain it. Peter candidly upbraided Ananias and Saphira for their wrong, Simon, the sorcerer, for his wrong heart's attitude and attempt to purchase Divine powers and the exclusive Jewish brethren for not admitting that Gentiles as well as Jews were acceptable for high calling purposes. The Lord, acting through St. Paul, likewise manifested His candor. St. Paul furnishes us a stinging example of it in dealing with Elymas, the Sorcerer, a humble example of it in dealing with the heathen who attempted to worship him and Barnabas and a fearless example of it when he reasoned with Felix on righteousness, temperance and the judgment to come. St. Paul's refusal to accede to Barnabas' desire to take Mark along as a helper, after the latter had defaulted in that capacity on their previous trip, is another notable example of it. St. Paul's preaching and epistles, as well as the other writings of the New Testament, are splendid examples of candor. God's plain messages to persecuting Jews, heathen and nominal Christians, furnish us with many more examples of God's candor, just as His plain speech to His consecrated people throughout the Age, exemplifies the same quality. The book of Revelation, especially its first three chapters, markedly evidence God's frankness. Certainly the Bible and history since Bible times prove candor to be an attribute of God.

As such, it has been fruitful in staying sin within certain grooves, in keeping sinners within certain limits, and in leading responsive ones to repentance and faith in justification, to consecration and to the faithful carrying out of consecration. It will show similar good fruits in the next Age also. In this, as well as in every other quality of God's character, we may, therefore, well rejoice and praise our God.

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The next of God's secondary attributes of character that we will study is liberality. We have already studied the lower primary grace, providence, in contrast with which liberality stands. We recall that providence as a lower primary grace results from using as a servant of righteousness and holiness our love for gaining and retaining, which operates through the affection-organ of acquisitiveness. When acquisitiveness is allowed to control, it makes one covetous and miserly; but when wisdom, power, justice and love suppress its efforts to control, we become liberal, i.e., generous in our desire to see others prosper and bountiful and in bestowing of our possessions on others, especially on the needy. Liberality is, therefore, a quality both of the feelings and of the acts. In our feelings it makes us pleased with the prosperity of others. It does not permit us to envy their prosperity, to covet their gains, to seek to draw to ourselves the acquired possessions that they enjoy and to injure them by unfair competition. It makes us feel generous toward them, glad that they are prospering, helpful to them in increasing their prosperity and bountiful in bestowing of our means on them in their needs, i.e., on deserving and needy persons. Liberality, therefore, makes us generous and benevolent in spirit as well as generous and beneficent in action. From such generosity we freely give of our time, talents, strength, means, influence, etc., in order to bless and further others. It prevents our becoming misers, as well as self-seekers. This quality is especially active in the philanthropically and charitably inclined. It lavishes its gains on civic improvements, on benevolent institutions, like asylums, hospitals, etc., on the higher things of life, like religion, education, art, science and reform and uplift movements, as well as on the supply of more private need. It is preeminently the quality of the devotee of a cause; the philanthropist and the

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reformer. In the very nature of the case, it is one of the qualities of a truly consecrated Christian.

As in the case of every other good quality, its supreme exemplification is God. God is very liberal in His sentiments and acts. His benevolence makes Him rejoice in the prosperity of others. There is no envy in Him; covetousness finds no place in His heart; He does not plot and scheme to draw to Himself the possible or actual gains of others; and unfair competition finds no expression in His acts. He is generous in the highest significance of that word, and beneficent in the supreme sense of that quality. Owning all things as their Creator and Preserver, He is always giving and never weary in His beneficences. This we see in nature and in grace. He manipulates the laws of nature that they may bestow blessings upon those who would use them aright. He has put the idea of self-giving service into active operation throughout nature. The moon and stars give their light at His bidding to afford guidance to the benighted traveler. He made the sun to give light, warmth, health and strength to man and beast, fish and fowl, reptile and insect. He makes the seasons His servants in bestowing good upon His creatures, all of them contributing the sum total of means of subsistence, though in different ways. He makes water contribute to the comfort and support of His creatures. He causes the air to support their life, the ocean currents to make various agreeable and useful climatic changes, the oceans, lakes and rivers of earth to facilitate men's commercial and other needs, the soil to minister food and clothes for their bodies, the building materials of the earth to furnish man a variety of structures and homes, the metals to supply his practical and ornamental needs, the forces of nature to minister to man's enrichment and comfort. He has stored the bowels of the earth with treasures of metals, precious stones, coal, gas, petroleum, etc., for man's enrichment, comfort

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and support. He has stocked its waters, prairies, forests, fields and gardens with food for men's bodies. He has filled nature with scenes of beauty, grandeur and sublimity, to delight men's artistic senses. He has filled the universe and earth with such things, beings, conditions and laws as to give men's higher intellectual powers fruitful and pleasant occupation. He has, in a word, so constituted nature as to be His agent in constant giving of manifold blessings for the good of His creatures. And this proves that He is generous in bestowing the benefactions of nature, and that thus liberality is one of His secondary attributes of character.

But we can see this quality in God's character much more clearly as it displays itself in His works of grace. The whole plan of God, as well as every feature of it, displays His generous heart and beneficent deeds. His choosing to bring free moral agents into existence was an expression of generosity, since it implied His giving an endless succession of benefactions on all of them found worthy of everlasting life, as it also implied a more or less temporary continued giving to those who will not be found worthy of everlasting life. He is the Source of life as its Giver and the Source of the spiritual substances of which spiritual bodies consist, as well as the Source of the material substances of which material bodies consist. Accordingly, from His storehouse of spiritual and material substances and life, God gave the constituent elements for spirit beings and human beings as the things needed for their creation. Then He gave of His time and talents for their creation and thus had given a variety of beings existence. He gave them such powers of being and environment as were conducive to their happiness and continuance, which was another example of His generosity. After some of the angels and  the human family fell into sin, He gave them conditions conducive to their learning ultimately to benefit from their experiences and at the same time arranged to give them

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later such experiences as would insure these benefits to those rightly exercised by these experiences. Thus we see His generosity in this feature of His plan.

When we consider God's revelation of Himself and His plan, we see His generosity again displaying itself. To Adam and Eve under sentence the Lord gave a message of hope in His prophecy of the outcome of the conflict between God's children and Satan's children and Satan himself. Thus amid a condemnatory sentence His generosity gave some hope. It was His generosity that revealed to Noah the coming flood and a way of escape from it for the best part of the race, needed for a new start this side of the flood. In the main blessing, the one upon Shem, God revealed the blessings of the coming Elect, in the subordinate blessing, the one on Japheth, God revealed the blessing of the restitution class, and in the curse upon Ham God revealed the blessing of a universe clean of those who would mar it. In revealing the Abrahamic Covenant God gave in epitome a statement of His glorious plan that was to be a comfort to many and a blessing to all. In His dealings with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the Lord gave in the form of types elaborate pictures of the general features and main characters connected with His plan. This was indeed a generous gift. It was His generosity that revealed further unfoldings of His plan in the Law Covenant, and that from a variety of standpoints. In the history of Israel in Egypt, in the countries of their wandering and in their conquest of Canaan, the Lord gave us other typical pictures of future features of His plan. In the events of the periods of the judges, kings, exile and return, we have other pictures unfolding different views of God's plan. The writings of Moses, the Prophets and Holy Men of the Old Testament, are the depository of these and other revelations of God's plan, and, as the Old Testament, constitutes a generous book-gift of incalculable value.

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Then came the New Testament revelation as another great gift manifesting the generosity of God. The Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles and the Revelation, with the Old Testament revelations, give us the whole revelation of God to date. This part of God's revelation contains a richer, fuller and higher set of truths than those of the Old Testament, and constitutes a rare gift indeed, bestowing as it does the main doctrinal, preceptorial, promissory, hortatory, prophetical, historical and some important typical features of God's plan. Thus the New Testament is a most generous gift in the way of a revelation. Summing up the revelatory gift of God in the Old and New Testaments, we might say that the Bible is one of the most generous, rich and important gifts that God ever bestowed, whose value is all the more enhanced when we consider the great cost of its giving in the way of time, talent, thought, feeling, effort and the giving of its agents and servants, on God's part. Well may we sing of the generosity of this gift:—

Blessed Bible, precious Word! Boon most sacred from the Lord; Glory to His name be giv'n,

For this choicest gift from heav'n.

Then, too, God was very generous in the gifts that He has bestowed upon His Old Testament servants and friends and upon His New Testament servants and sons. To Abel He gave the gift of sacrificial acceptance; to Enoch the gift of fellowship and translation; to Noah the gift of knowledge of the coming flood, of deliverance and an unbreakable covenant. To Abraham He gave, apart from great wealth, the gift of the all-embracing covenant—the Abrahamic Covenant—as well as jointly to him and his seed the gift of the Oath-bound Covenant. He gave him the gift of constant protection and guidance, as well as the gift of personal friendship and privilege of typing some of the finest characters and things of God's plan.

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To Isaac He gave, apart from great wealth, the privilege of being the seed typical, as well as being a part of the earthly seed. Hence He gave him the privilege of typing in the main parts of his recorded career the Christ, Head and Body, as well as favored him with the covenant promises. Similar gifts He bestowed upon Jacob and Joseph. How generously God dealt out gifts of privilege, of office and of service to Moses, as well as used him signally as a variform type! God gave Israel, not only a share in the Abrahamic promises, but also the blessings of the Law Covenant and all its implications, e.g., God as their covenant God and them as His covenant people, with the teachings and other benefits of the Law Covenant, the land of Israel, the priesthood, the royalty and the prophetship. Centered in these blessings were myriads of gifts of love and favor. Certainly God's gifts of hope to His Old Testament servants and friends display great and abounding generosity whereby He delighted to bestow good on its subjects.

But God's liberality is even more patent in His dealings with His Gospel-Age sons and servants. To the Logos He gave the privilege of attaining the highest of all creaturely exaltation as the Supreme Agent of God's plan. This implied His carnation. And to Him came as gifts of love from God the privilege of offering His humanity as a sacrifice to God and His begettal to the Divine nature, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the High-priestly and the Prophet office. On His proving faithful unto death, God gave Him exaltation to the Divine nature, Headship over the Church and Vicegerency over the universe. Thus for mankind He has been given the offices of Priest, Prophet, King, Judge, Mediator, Physician and Father; and for the Church, Priest, Prophet, King, Judge, Advocate, Physician and Bridegroom. And God has in His exaltation given Him a position, honor and nature above every other created being. Surely

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God has been liberal in sentiment and act toward His Firstborn, our Lord Jesus Christ. So has He also been liberal toward His other Gospel-Age sons and servants. His liberality is manifest in the fact that, despite the fallen natural condition in which He foresaw this class as a whole, He yet prearranged for there being such a class, as well as for its glorious destiny. How astoundingly liberal was He toward them in giving up for them His only begotten Son to become a human being and as such to become a sacrifice unto death amid the most crucial sufferings, physical and mental! Jesus, a gift of gifts, was one of God's most liberal benefactions to them.

But, beside this redemptive gift of Jesus as their Ransom, God has given them the gift of the Truth, not simply the truth on the surface things of God's Word, but on its deepest and most confidential truths; and thereby He has shown them His confidence in them, and thereby has revealed to them the secrets which He keeps from all others. Such truths are exceedingly valuable and desirable, and are among the richest and most liberal of God's gifts. Additionally He gives them gratuitous justification through the merit of God's Son, God Himself providing it for us. This is a rich possession. The liberality of this gift can be seen from an analysis of what it is and does. It consists of the forgiveness of the Adamic sin and all its resultant sins (Rom. 3: 24-26; 4: 5-8), whereby we are freed from the Adamic death sentence, and of the imputation of Christ's righteousness as our own (Rom. 10: 4; 1 Cor. 1: 30; Phil. 3: 9). Thereby we are forever perfected in God's sight from all Adamic weaknesses and sins, as well as sentence, so that no more can we die the Adamic death. And this makes us acceptable and keeps us acceptable to God in our humanity even to death. It implies that God regards us as though we really have perfect bodies, with the right to life and its life- rights, as well as perfect

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characters. Accordingly, our gratuitous justification is a very liberal gift from God.

Furthermore, God liberally gives us sanctification with all that it implies, i.e., He gives us the privilege of being set apart from self and the world unto Him. As to our human all, this implies that He gives us the privilege of diverting it from selfishness and worldliness with all their unsatisfactions and disappointments, and of applying it to the most privileged service this side of heaven. Some consider it a great privilege to give their human all in the interests of education, reform, science, art, philosophy, social uplift, home, friends, relations, country, party, sect, fame, riches, position. But none of these, however good some of them are, is comparable to the privilege of giving our human all in the interests of God's plan—the greatest, best and noblest of all causes. It is to such a cause that God gives His faithful consecrated people the privilege of yielding their human all in service, and thus they spend and are spent in the best and most fruitful and most lasting of all causes. Truly God has been liberal in giving so great a privilege. But the gift, privilege, of sanctification implies more and greater privileges than those consisting of yielding our human all in God's service. It implies many things connected with our spirits, new creatures. In the first place, it implies our receiving the new creature—the Holy Spirit. This is one of the three highest and greatest of God's gifts, the others being Jesus and the Truth. It is the beginning of the Divine nature and is the pledge of its completion in the Faithful. It makes us sons of God, heirs of God and Joint-heirs with Christ. It gives us the privilege of membership in the Christ, with all the blessed prospects of glory, honor and immortality as ours. Moreover, God gives us as new creatures increased knowledge of the deep things and the privilege of making these known to fellow new

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creatures according to our ability, spirit and position in the Body of Christ.

He gives us in our new creatures the privilege to grow into more and more of His character likeness, and thus gives us all the graces—the higher and lower primary, the secondary and the tertiary graces. Therein He gives us the privilege of detaching our affections from earthly things and attaching them to corresponding heavenly things. And in these character features, after they are developed, He gives us strength, balance and crystallization. Not only does He give us these and thus gives us the best of all personal possessions—a perfected spiritual character—but He also gives us the privilege, according to ability, opportunity and spirit, to assist other new creatures to develop into the same kind of perfected spiritual characters. Then, too, He gives us the privilege of deliverance, thereby in our conflicts with the devil, the world and the flesh, enabling us, as we battle faithfully, to come off conquerors and to help other new creatures to the same kind of victories. And if we persevere faithfully in these conflicts unto death, He will give us the crowning feature of deliverance—victory over death unto the Divine nature in the first resurrection.

But these are not all the gifts that His liberality provides for His faithful Little Flock. Beyond the vail He has great gifts in reservation for them. They will as Divine beings have immortality—life in themselves, i.e., a death-proof condition—which will make them independent of all external conditions for existence. They will be given powers so great that they will be able to pass through any object, move worlds or make new ones and serve under Christ in the rulership of the universe. During the Millennium they will from God receive as gifts the privilege of being members of the world's King, Priest, Mediator, Judge, Physician, Prophet and Mother, which offices they will

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use for the awakening of the dead, establishing God's Kingdom, overthrowing conditions conducive to sin and error, introducing conditions conducive to righteousness and truth, blessing all mankind with favorable opportunities of coming into harmony with God and receiving gradual healing from the effects of the curse and gradual bestowment of restitution as they obey, until they will have ministered perfection to the obedient. Then God will give them the privilege of presiding over a final trial of mankind, which they will bring to a conclusion by giving life everlasting to the faithful in the paradisaic earth, which they will prepare, and death everlasting to the unfaithful. Thereafter God will give them the privilege of being an ever extending kingdom throughout the universe as their eternal employment. Surely the richness of His liberality toward the saints is beyond anything that man could think or ask.

Though in a smaller measure than to the saints, God has been exercising and will exercise His liberality to the Ancient Worthies, the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. To the first of these classes He liberally gave His Old Testament revelation with such of its truth as was due to them to see, gave them the privilege of a faith justification in view of Christ's coming sacrifice, and amid trials of faith and devotion to righteousness gave them the training fitting them for princeship throughout the earth in the Millennium (Ps. 45: 16). He will give them a resurrection better than the world will get (Heb. 11: 35), better because it will be 1,000 years ahead of theirs, because it will give them princeship, ruling in blessing over mankind, while the others will be their subjects under the Christ, and because it will give them at the end of the Millennium the privilege of becoming spiritual and receiving a heavenly home, which the world never will get. For them will be reserved a set of eternal privileges very high indeed, though inferior to those given the Little

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Flock. A contrast of their Millennial offices will prove this. The Little Flock will be Kings, they princes; the former Priests, the latter Kohathite Levites; the former the Mediator, the latter servants of the Mediator; the former the Physician, the latter nurses; the former the great Prophet, the latter subordinate prophets; the former the judge, the latter His deputies; the former the Mother, the latter children of this Mother, the nurses of the Mother's other children. The Little Flock's superiority to the Ancient Worthies will be eternal, but, though the latter will be the former's inferiors (Heb. 11: 40), they will nevertheless be very highly exalted as an expression of Jehovah's benevolence and beneficence.

What we have said of God's liberality to the Ancient Worthies applies in a less degree to the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. The Great Company, consisting of those who fail to qualify for the position of the Bride of Christ, through failure to sacrifice faithfully in the interests of the Lord's cause and through failure to develop a character like Christ, naturally fail of the Kingdom; but repentant of their course and later proving loyal, they will have as gifts from God a position as spirit beings in subordination to the Bride in the Kingdom and inferior in honor as Kingdom representatives to the Ancient Worthies. They will be noblemen in the Kingdom and Merari Levites to the Priests and the world, assisting the great Mediator, Physician, Prophet, Judge and Parents of mankind in a less honorable position of service than that of the Ancient Worthies, who were more faithful in this life than the former. Nevertheless, their position, nature and works will be wonderful expressions of God's liberality, especially considering that they were, under trial, found unworthy of Little-Flockship. The Youthful Worthies, consisting of those who consecrated too late to have opportunity to stand trial for Little-Flockship, but standing trial for a position inferior to the

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Ancient Worthies, are being given many liberal gifts of grace, mercy and truth by God, and millennially will be given the privilege of being an inferior order of princes in the earth, with all pertinent privileges, and post­ millennially will be raised with the Ancient Worthies to a spirit nature and a heavenly home. Accordingly, we see that God has been and will continue to be exceedingly liberal to all four elect classes of His plan.

God's liberality toward the non-elect world also has been exercising itself while the curse has rested on the race, and will in the next Age be manifest in a much clearer way. Remembering that the human family is by God's sentence through heredity from Adam a race of convicts doomed to death, we are in a better position to recognize how liberal God is by considering His kindness to convicts. Under certain restrictions compatible with the execution of His sentence on the race, He has been very generous and beneficent toward mankind. He has given them many blessings for body, mind and heart. The blessings of nature to the degree that they would be able to obtain them He freely sends them; for He makes the sun to shine on the evil as well as on the good, and sends the rain to the unjust as well as to the just. Man's main evils come to him through the keeper of his penitentiary—Satan—who selfishly uses his position to work evil on the convicts over whom he rules. When we consider the physical and mental blessings that the convict world has gotten in health, wealth, home, society, state, finance, industry, education, art, science, literature and law, all of which in the good they contain are due to God's liberality, we must admit that God is very benevolent and beneficent to His convicts. Nowhere is there His equal.

But His liberality appears in richer forms when we consider how richly He has given and will give in order to rescue the world from its fallen condition.

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His dealings with the Elect are to prepare them to deliver the non-elect! So greatly did He love the world that He gave up His Son to become a human being and to die, that they might gain eternal life by complying with its terms and conditions. And not only has He given His Firstborn—our Lord Jesus—unto death that the world might be rescued from the Adamic death and thus gain an opportunity of winning eternal life; but in the same liberal spirit He has been giving up the rest of His faithful Elect children even  to death in the interests of His plan, that the world may get the benefit of their millennial ministry. The same liberality prompted Him to prepare the subordinate elect—the Ancient Worthies, the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. Thus God's preparing the administrators of the Kingdom in order that they might administer its blessings to the whole race in the Millennium, is a glorious expression of His liberality toward them. This same quality of liberality will mark God's millennial deeds toward the world. Giving them thoroughly wise, just, loving and powerful helpers for their uplift is certainly an act of great generosity and beneficence. Forgiving them all their sins and remembering them no more against them, is another deed of the same kind. Putting them into the hands of a sheltering Mediator, who will shield them in their imperfections from the strict justice of God, is a work of the same character. Giving them the truth on every subject is a first class expression of liberality.

Raising the dead world and putting them under the same conditions, further demonstrates His liberality. Giving them every deterrent from evil and every encouragement to good, further exemplifies this noble quality in God toward the world. As they obey, His healing their physical, mental, moral and religious infirmities will in another way show His abounding liberality toward them. Pouring out His Spirit for all and giving it to the obedient will further prove His

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liberality. Helping the willing and obedient to grow in grace, knowledge and fruitfulness in service by giving them the necessary helps through His Spirit, Word and providence, gives another indication of His wonderful liberality. Giving man a paradisaic earth with perfect climate and fruitfulness is a stroke of God's liberality. Varying the kingdom conditions, opportunities and demands, according to the needs and abilities of each, will show how kindly disposed God will be to them. Even the stripes of that time will be for the reformation of all concerned, that they might thus be helped to everlasting life, and will thus be another evidence of His liberality. The same remark applies with reference to God's restraining during the Millennium evil angels and men from tempting and wronging any member of the human family. Thus His millennial dealings will be on a most magnificent scale of liberality toward the human family, all intended to restore it to perfection and life everlasting, as it obeys.

It is liberality that will mark God's post-millennial acts toward the world. He will not permit the trial of the Little Season to transcend the powers of perfect sinless human beings. Thus He will give all a fair and liberal trial, for which He will have been liberally preparing the race. Liberal will be His gift of grace sufficient to the faithful, delivering them in and from the trial, as they are loyal therein, and after they will have demonstrated loyalty therein to the end. And His crowning them with everlasting life in the paradisaic earth after the faithful have demonstrated loyalty to the end, will be the climax of His liberality to the world. Even the destruction of the incorrigible angels and men will be generous and beneficent to them, saving them from an eternity of sorrow; as it will also be generous and beneficent to the faithful for the incorrigible to be destroyed; for the continued existence of these would be an eternal menace to the righteous, as well as a constant source of trouble and sorrow to

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themselves. Accordingly, the final rewards and punishments at the end of the Little Season will be expressions of liberality.

And what shall we say of God's liberality in the Ages that will follow the Millennium in endless succession? We can say this, that with a perfect earth and perfect sinless human beings as a basis for Jehovah's post-millennial dealings, His wisdom, power, justice and love, in contact with such a set of conditions, may be depended upon to lavish with utmost liberality His bounties on His beloved earthly children. Is. 65: 17-25 describes the post-millennial conditions and it warrants us in declaring that as from a cornucopia God will pour out such an abundance of good things upon perfect humanity as will fully satisfy every exaction of their minds, every craving of their hearts and every need of their bodies. He will anticipate their every desire, even as verse 24 declares: "Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." He will give them every opportunity for the gratification of their every need and for the application of their every power. And what a wonderful world that will be; for if fallen man under imperfect conditions has in many individual cases accomplished so great things now, what will be the attainments and achievements of perfect men under God's liberal tuition! Surely God's liberality will then be one of the grounds of the human family joining in the general hallelujah chorus of Rev. 5: 13: "Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, forever and ever." And we who have tasted of His liberality to the Elect and know of His coming liberality to the non-elect, may well, in present enjoyment of our portion of His liberality and in anticipation of His future liberality to us and the world,  sing the high praises of our God and the Lamb; for they are, worthy of "power and riches

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and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing."—Rev. 5: 12, 13.

Liberality, being a secondary grace, arising from the higher primary graces suppressing the controllership of love for gaining and retaining, does not control God's acts. He never exercises it contrary to His wisdom, power, justice and love; but always in subordination to these. Hence when these forbid its exercise God keeps it in inactivity, e.g., God is always just before He is generous, and will not be generous, if His justice forbids. It is especially through the Ransom satisfying His justice that God can in harmony with justice be so very liberal as He is and will be to the Elect and non-elect. Hence to become in the full sense the beneficiaries of God's liberality we must approach Him through Jesus Christ as our High Priest and Advocate. Accordingly those who so do get immeasurably more from God's liberality than those who do not so do.

Impartiality is the tenth and last of God's secondary attributes of character that we will discuss in this connection. Hitherto we have discussed as God's secondary attributes of character His modesty, industriousness, longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, candor, courage and liberality; and in the chapter on God's Lower Primary Attributes of Character, in connection with God's self- esteem, we discussed His humility, a secondary grace. We trust that our study of Gods virtues and praises have not only helped all of us intellectually, but also morally and religiously; for to minister the latter two ways of help is our main design in writing these articles on God's attributes of character. Impartiality is a secondary grace, because it results from the higher primary graces laying hold of and suppressing the control of certain lower affection-organs; but it differs from the other secondary graces in this: Whereas each of the other secondary graces so far considered results from the higher primary graces suppressing the efforts, at controllership,

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of but one lower selfish affection-organ—the pertinent one in each case—impartiality results from the higher primary graces suppressing the efforts at controllership of any one or more than one of our social affection-organs.

This leads us to describe the sphere within which the grace of impartiality works—the social affection-organs, which connect us with our fellows as members of the same human or spiritual relations as ourselves. And it is within this sphere where the disgrace of partiality exercises itself. Thus, as against others, we are prone to exercise partiality toward the opposite sex, our spouses, parents, children, relatives, friends, associates, acquaintances, countrymen, co-religionists, etc., all of whom are united with us by one or another social tie. And such partiality expresses itself frequently toward all in each of these classes as against others, or toward certain individuals of most of these classes as against other individuals of these classes; for partiality is nothing less than the quality that feels and acts toward some individuals and classes as distinct from other individuals and classes, not from the standpoint of the character worth of those concerned, but because of some reason not connected with the character worth of the pertinent person or class. Thus if we should as against the character worth of an individual make him experience untoward things in order chat favor may be shown to someone else on account of the latter's appearance, birth, education, rank, office, title, wealth, station, influence, popularity, relation to us, etc., we would be showing partiality. But it is along such lines that we more or less allow partiality to mark our thoughts, feelings, words and acts with respect to those toward whom our social affections act. Partiality is almost exclusively exercised along the lines of the objects of our social affections— toward the opposite sex as such, our spouses, parents, children, relations, friends, associates, acquaintances,

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countrymen, co-religionists, etc., as well as toward certain ones as distinct from other ones in these classes.

These considerations better prepare us to understand and appreciate the quality of impartiality. It may be defined as the quality by which we think, feel, speak and act as to others from the standpoint of their character deserts, and not from the standpoint of other things, such as their appearance, birth, education, rank, office, title, wealth, station, influence, popularity, etc. Certainly God's thoughts, feelings, words and acts toward others are not based upon their appearance, birth, education, rank, office, title, wealth, station, influence, popularity, etc. The following Scriptures clearly show this: "He regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward [bribes]" (Deut. 10: 17). "But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature …; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance" (1 Sam. 16: 7). "He respecteth not any that are wise of heart" (Job 37: 24). "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10: 34). "There is no respect of persons with God" (Rom. 2: 11). "God accepteth no man's person" (Gal. 2: 6). "There is no respect of persons [with God]" (Col. 3: 25). "The Father, who without respect of persons judgeth" (1 Pet. 1: 17).

On the other hand the Scriptures teach that His varying thoughts, feelings, words and acts as to others are entirely dependent on their varying characters, in that He shows favor to the good and disfavor to the evil, but in every case acting in harmony with the principles underlying the case. God's acting from principle and not from any other consideration makes Him impartial as the following Scriptures show: "Man looketh on the outward appearance; but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16: 7). "Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any" (Job 36: 5). "God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he

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that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him" (Acts 10: 34, 35). "He will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2: 6). "Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free" (Eph. 6: 8). "But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done" (Col. 3: 25). "Call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every  man's work" (1 Pet. 1: 17). Thus these passages show that God does not regard persons from the standpoint of their external advantages, but from the standpoint of their hearts—their characters.

God's impartiality does not mean that He treats everybody alike; for He certainly does not so do. Nothing is plainer, both from the standpoint of the Scriptures and experience than that God does not treat everybody alike. Neither in the realm of nature nor in the realm of Grace, neither in the expressions of His justice nor in those of His love, does He treat everybody alike. Indeed, superficial thinkers, reasoning on the differences of treatment that some receive from that which others receive from God, deny His impartiality altogether. Among other things, the doctrine of election and its practical operation are the clearest of proofs that God does not treat all alike. But superficial thinkers, quoting passages like this: "There is no respect of persons with God," deny election. These people err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the character of God as Sovereign. While God is not a respecter of persons, He certainly is a respecter of character (Acts 10: 34, 35; Rom. 2: 6;  Eph. 6:  8;  Col. 3: 25;  1 Pet. 1: 17).  And  God

accordingly is not partial when, upon  the basis of character

differences in various people, He treats them differently, favoring those who reverence Him and work righteousness, and disfavoring those who are impious toward Him and work unrighteousness. On the contrary, such varying

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attitudes and acts in God are an expression of impartiality, because they prove that He variously regards people from the standpoint of their varying relation toward proper principles; for as we saw above, impartiality is the quality by which we think, feel, speak and act as to others from the standpoint of their character deserts, and not from the standpoint of such things as their appearance, birth, education, rank, office, title, wealth, station, influence, popularity, sex, work, party, etc.

Nor do the facts that God deals so variously with those whom He favors with elective blessings, and permits the rest to fare so differently from one another under the curse, prove that God is partial. The reason that He deals differently with some from what He does with others of His children is that their dispositions and attainments vary and that some must have different experiences from others on account of their character needs for their present and future place in His plan; and this proves His impartiality toward, great love for, and practical attitude to each of His children. And the reason that there are differences among the members of the world is in part that the Lord has permitted, not wrought these differences, in that He has given up the race under condemnation and deals no more with it on covenant basis. It is also in part that different experiences are needed by different characters in learning the lesson of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is finally in part that in the Age following this an adjustment of accounts will be made in those cases wherein, if they had been made in this life, the lesson of the exceeding sinfulness of sin would not have been universally learned. Hence there is no partiality in God in His varying acts toward His children and in His permitting varying conditions and experiences to come to the world under the curse. There is nothing in these two courses in God that is arbitrary or against principle, or flowing out of favoritism as

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against principle. Indeed, in and through it all God is seeking in harmony with good principles the best interests of each and all concerned, according to their character deserts in relation to good principles. Certainly He who gives the wisdom from above, which among other things is without partiality, is, as the source of that wisdom, impartial.—Jas. 3: 17.

If we examine God's acts we find that they are impartial. His rewards have always been along the lines of character fitness. His punishments have been along the lines of character unfitness and have been impartial, both as to His servants and non-servants. Notice how His rewards and punishments toward His servants and non-servants have been along lines of character expressions. The righteous Noah and his family were saved in the flood period, while the unrighteous world perished therein. Tested Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were blessed with the covenant promises, while their unfit relatives were passed by. Loyal Joseph was honored with the ministry of delivering millions from famine deaths, while his evil brethren were humiliated. Faithful Moses and Aaron were honored with the leadership of their people, and proud and rebellious Moses and Aaron were punished with exclusion from the holy land. Faithful Israel received the land in peaceful inheritance; backsliding Israel was punished with various oppressions and captivities, and penitent Israel was reinstated in God's favor. Faithful David was prospered in the kingdom, while disobedient David received condigned punishment. Loyal Ruth and Rahab were incorporated into Israel and into ancestralship of Christ, while apostates were cast off from the commonwealth of Israel. Devoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego were preserved in the fiery furnace, while their tormentors perished thereat. Uncompromising Daniel was preserved in the lions' den, while his traducers perished therein. Dependable Elijah was preserved amid the famine and rewarded with leading the

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nation back to the Divine service, while wicked Ahab and Jezebel miserably perished. Kings and prophets, nobles and plebeians, priests and people, in Israel, are in their varying experiences so many proofs of God's impartiality.

God's sending His Son to become the Savior of all is a remarkable expression of His impartiality. His selecting some because of their possession of the faith quality, which fits them for a trial for life now, and His rejecting others from the election because their unbelief unfits them for a present trial for life and His reserving them for a trial when the faith quality which they lack will not be indispensable, are very impressive evidences of God's impartiality— proving that He is actuated by the pertinent one's character fitness or unfitness and not by external considerations in mankind in the bestowal of His favors. His selecting the poor of this world, full of faith, as against the wise, the mighty, the noble, and prudent, shows the same quality (Jas. 2: 5; 1 Cor. 1: 26-29; Matt. 11: 25-27). God's rejecting disobedient Israelites and selecting God-fearing Gentiles, e.g., the scribes and Pharisees, etc., on the one hand, and Cornelius, Titus, etc., on the other hand, evidence the operation of the same quality. The same principle showed itself in the period between the harvests in a multitude of examples for both elective and non-elective individuals. Remarkably did it show itself in the Parousia—the great, the wise, the mighty, the rich being passed by and "the shirt seller" given chief place, because, impartiality acting on proper principle, God saw that this was best for all concerned. Then, too, only the loyal of Christendom were honored with the Harvest Truth, and the disloyal were allowed to wander away into all sorts of vagaries. The faithful He preserved in the Truth, while He permitted the unfaithful to fall in the Harvest siftings, always restoring the penitent on their repentance. The same principle is working in the Epiphany: the rebellious being

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relegated to the Great Company, the utterly faithless remanded to the second death, while the Faithful are kept standing and are rewarded with the advancing light.  Always and everywhere is God proving that His thoughts, feelings, words and acts as to others are based, not upon respect of persons, but upon respect of character.

This thought certainly is comforting. For one thing, the bulk of God's people do not have those things that man so highly regards. Hence if God made these His criterion of judging and dealing with us, the bulk of us would stand no chance of blessing from, and dealing with Him in the elective part of His plan. Moreover, this would give the advantage to the least responsive and base it on the accidental as distinct from the real worth. God's ways are equal and therein may we have comfort. Do we lack earthly beauty, strength, wealth, position, title, education, popularity? Well, what of it? These do not commend us to God, nor make Him favorable to us above others. His attitude is expressed in these words: "To this man will I look [show favor], even to him that is of a poor [humble] and contrite [crushed for sin] spirit and trembleth [is reverent] at My Word." This passage expresses both the heart of impartiality and the substance of grace. Herein may we rejoice and glory; for herein lies our hope for every good gift and every perfect gift. We therefore praise our God for His impartiality, mellowed by His grace; for herein is our hope grounded, that if we approach Him with true hearts through Jesus Christ, He will receive us, one and all, impartially; and that if we abide in such a true heart's attitude, He will impartially help us, one and all, to the very best of which we are capable in the way of development for our eternal inheritance.

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