teaching of Jesus brought down to this day and applied to the conditions of our complex civilization.  It is the true teaching; none of us can doubt it.  And I wish that we could all begin the new year with the earnest purpose to put ourselves under the leadership of the Prince of Life.  I know that we should find His yoke easy and His burden light, and that there would be rest for our souls in the paths into which He would lead us.  We should know, if we shared His life, that we were really living; and we should know also that we wore helping others to live; that we were doing what we could to put an end to the ravages of the destroyers and the devourers, and to fill the earth with the abundance of peace.

Is not this, fellow men, the right way to live?  Does not all that is deepest and divinest in you consent to this way of life into which Jesus Christ is calling us, as the right way, the royal way, the blessed way?  Choose it, then, with all the energy of your volition, and walk in it with a glad heart and a hope that maketh not ashamed.

CLIFFORD

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

John Clifford, Baptist divine, was born at Lawley, Derbyshire, in 1836.  He was educated at the Baptist College, Nottingham, and University College, London.  He has had much editorial as well as ministerial experience and has published a number of works upon religious, educational and social questions.  The Rev. William Durban, the editor, writing from London of John Clifford in the Homiletic Review, styles him “the renowned Baptist preacher, undoubtedly the most conspicuous figure in his own denomination.”  He speaks of “the profundity of thought,” “simplicity and beauty of diction,” the “compactness of argument” and “instructive expository character” of this preacher’s discourses.

CLIFFORD

BORN IN 1836

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

I believe in the forgiveness of sins.—­Apostles’ Creed.

This is the first note of personal experience in the Apostles’ Creed.  We here come into the society of men like John Bunyan and go with them through the wicket-gate of repentance, through the Slough of Despond, getting out on the right side of it, reaching at length the cross, to find the burden fall from our backs as we look upon Him who died for us; and then we travel on our way until we come to the River of Death and cross it, discovering that it is not so deep after all, and that on the other side is the fulness of the life everlasting.

It is a new note, and it is a little surprizing—­is it not?—­to most students of this creed that we should have to travel through so many clauses before we reach it.  It scarcely seems to be in keeping with the spirit and temper of the early Christian Church that we should have all this analysis of thought, this statement of the facts of Christian revelation, this testimony as to the power of the Holy Spirit, before we get any utterance as to that individual faith by which the Christian Church has been created, and owing to which there has been the helpful and inspiring fellowship of the saints.