The young people are the hope of the Church.  The congregation whose young people are loyal to Christ and true to the Covenant is greatly blessed of God.  The Covenant embraces children, claims their allegiance, calls for their service, honors them with responsibilities, and lays at their feet the privileges and beatitudes of the kingdom of heaven.

* * * * *

Points for the class.

1.  Does the Covenant of the fathers include posterity?

2.  How did the children suffer in the persecution?

3.  Describe the case of Andrew Forsyth.

4.  How did Bessie Willison meet her trials?

5.  Tell about the little children of a persecuted town.

6.  Describe the cruelty done to the babe of Mr. and Mrs. Gibson.

7.  What may the Church expect, when her young people are true?

XLIII.

The Covenanters’ Bible.

The Covenanters dearly loved the Bible.  They esteemed it very highly for the sake of God, its Author.  They believed in its inspiration, genuineness, infallibility, majesty, and power.  The Bible inspired?  Yes, the Covenanters had no troublesome thoughts on that question.  The Holy Spirit, in their estimation, was the source of that Book; the contents were all His own.  He produced every sentence, formed every clause, chose every word found in the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and filled all brimful and overflowing with God’s own meaning.  He did all this through the men who were employed as the inspired writers.  The Covenanters believed in the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible.

They discovered also a second inspiration.  The Holy Spirit inspires the devout reader.  He opens the heart to receive the Scriptures, and He opens the Scriptures to yield their meaning.  Then, and only then, the Bible appears in its true greatness.  Then is it the effective voice of God, tender as the sob of a babe, and majestic as thunder; it then is the temple of living truth, filled with the glory of the Lord’s presence; it then is the revelation of the eternal world, showing the beauty of holiness, the mystery of the cross, the conquest of death, the horrors of sin, the doom of the lost, the joy of the saved.  Oh, what a Book the Bible is to the inspired reader!  It becomes transparent.  The light of the face of Jesus flashes from the lines and between the lines, through the words and amidst the letters, turning the page into heaven’s bright scenery, and the chapters into the unveiling of the wonders of redemption.  Such was the Book of God to the Covenanters, as they passed through the fires of persecution.