veins.  This standard they carried boldly into the battle in defence of Christ and His Church.  The deadly missiles that tattered its folds, and plowed through their flesh, could not subdue their spirit.  Their blood often stained it, but it was never surrendered.  One standard-bearer fell, and the flag-staff was grasped by another.  Thus the Old Blue Banner, in all its significance, has come down through the ages; it is the Covenanter’s banner yet.

THE COVENANTERS’ STANDARD OF RELIGION.

The standard of truth is the real banner of the Covenant.  The standard of religion in the Covenanted Church exalts the truth of Christ, and makes it most conspicuous.  Nothing in a nation so public as her colors.  Where the flag flies, the power, honor, and greatness of the country are represented by the folds that flap on the winds.  The Covenant commits the Covenanted Church to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of God’s Word.  This obligation, when honored, carries the Covenanter into all truth, and all truth into the Covenanter.  The doctrines of grace will throb in his heart, flow in his veins, illumine his mind, dominate his thoughts, deepen his life, enlarge his capacities, control his actions, and purify all the fountains of his being.  To all such the truth is concrete, not abstract; it has form, color, action, energy, atmosphere, horizon, immensity:  To the true Covenanter, knowledge is experience; he deals with God, worships in spirit, battles with sin, glories in Jesus, and listens to the Eternal Spirit.  His faith is power; his love is life; his hope is realization.  The invisible world looms up with awful visibility before him.  Such is the life that is distinguished by Covenant fidelity; in it the truth of God has grandest publicity.  It shines like the sun.  The voice of that life has the majesty of thunder, testifying for Christ.  They who are thus animated with the truth cannot hide the great principles of the Church.  They will glory in her Covenant and publish the truth.  Behold the martyrs, how they witnessed for Jesus Christ, while fire and sword had no more power over their faith than over the stars.  The truth demands publicity.  Our poor, deceived, demon-ridden world needs the truth, Gospel truth shining like the sun, convicting truth pointed like lightning; the sweet truth of love and the fiery truth of wrath; truth that reveals life, death, immortality, judgment, heaven, hell, and eternity.  The world needs the truth that will rend the heavens with prayer, and make the earth quake with fear.

[Illustration:  The banner of the covenant.]

THE HIGHEST TYPE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.