15 Because ye have said, Yahweh hath raised us up prophets in Babylon;

The spirit of life from the Deity

Leaving these transitory matters, it will be appropriate to the present remarks to look at the foundations upon which we stand, and in connection with that, at the instrumentality that God has employed in the process of leading men back to the apostolic faith and practice; from which all the world has long been in a state of apostacy.

Looking at the universality and greatness of the departure that has been made from the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus; we cannot esteem the present recovery of long-buried principles, as anything less than a clear case of divine interposition, and the result of a most active and divinely directed providence, exercised in the interests of the results now secured—results that had no existence anywhere upon earth little more than fifty years ago.

The development of a community of people planted wholly upon the "foundation of the apostles and prophets," co-incident with the "time of the end," cannot but be regarded by all the truly enlightened as one of the foremost signs of the times. What the researches of a Layard have done for buried cities, the researches and work of Dr. Thomas have done for the long-buried treasure, that God deposited in those "earthen vessels," which he filled with the spirit for the declaration of his purpose, eighteen hundred years ago.

The Doctor himself, naturally disinclined (like Jonah), towards the work that God wished to place in his hands, was first the personal subject of the providence, which afterward co-operated with him, in the literary productions to which he was led subsequently to put his hand. Step by step, the Doctor was conducted into the full blaze of the revealed purpose of God.

From being a speaker he became a writer, otherwise the results of his labour would for the most part have perished in the course of a few years, as one of the consequences of disaffection; and a tendency on the part of some, to get away to conditions that admitted of a larger fellowship with the world, and a less trenchant attitude on behalf of the newly recovered system of doctrine and practice.

On to the noble vine brought out of Egypt, there were not wanting those whose desire it was to graft thereupon their many crotchets, and their equally many mis-interpretations of the divine counsel. This was fortunately the case before the Doctor was off the scene. We say fortunately, for thus happening, we have the advantage of knowing how Doctor Thomas dealt with these attempts to weaken and displace his work.

Did he seek to conciliate such? or did he agree to compromise those things in which it was considered that he was extreme beyond what was called for, by those who could not go the length of his entire return to Bible doctrine? He did neither one nor the other. The world was large: if they would go to the left, he would go to the right; failing this there was nothing left for them but the fire and sword of his testimony, upon whoever dared, for any reasons whatsoever, to obstruct the course of the truth's work, either far off or near at hand.

None know better what this meant than those who were the subjects of it; for the doctor never lifted his pen for nothing, nor without the most destructive result, upon all the high towers of mere human imagination unproved by the word and testimony of the Eternal.

He did not do this however for the mere sake of laying foes and fears, but while engaging in it as circumstances required, he had always the greatest regard at the same time to the upbuilding and confirmation of all those who were truly in love with the entire counsel of the Spirit; and highly appreciative and discerning in respect of the privileges that had come to them, by the instrumentality of a providentially developed situation.

Apart from this object, he could do nothing; in fruitless controversies he never engaged; when he unsheathed his sword, one might be sure the very Gospel in some of its elements was at stake.

***

His writings were every way calculated to produce the greatest revolution in human thought. We are happily in possession of pretty near all he did in the way of writing, which, however, compared with the vastness of the field of labour upon which he entered, and the all-embracing character of the subjects of which he treated, are by no means voluminous. In this particular they are, so far as any mere human writings can be, like the very oracles of God.

There is a lucidity of expression about them, and a penetrating power in them, that leaves nothing to be desired. They are clear as crystal, and by far the most wonderful elucidation of the history and prophesy-recording Spirit of God, that ever cheered the heart of man. After pretty near eighteen centuries of darkness and apostacy; some such work as this seems to have been required as a preparation for the Lord's coming, now so near at hand.

Enlightened reason can see this; it is but meet that the Lord should find a people watching and waiting for his promised advent. What of this sort of thing may be supposed to have existed before the advent of the Doctor's works, or wholly outside the range of their influence, is next to very darkness itself—mere glimmerings, as it were, clogged on to various forms of the Papal Upas tree.

The difference between the one and the other is the difference between a competently devised system of truth, harmonising and requiring all parts of the divine testimony for its exposition; and a "wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked" divinity that is Laodicean from centre to circumference; and about as fit to have charge of the Lord's house during his absence, as the "dumb dogs" that gave Israel no true warnings of the coming break up of their house and home in the Holy Land.

Marvellous to say, but in Elpis Israel, The Herald of the Kingdom, Eureka, and the various other works that have come from the Doctor's pen, there is scarcely anything in the Scriptures of importance that has not received either passing or larger attention in the course of the general exhibition of the divine purpose; and where the Doctor touched anything in ever so slight a way, he generally dropped the key to its meaning as he passed by.

Since the Doctor dropped out of sight, many who were supposed to estimate his work at its right value, whilst he was in the land of the living, have taken to improving, as they think, upon his conclusions, upon sundry matters affecting the structural symmetry and unity of the system of truth. Others have ceased to read his works, or recommend their brethren to pay little or no regard to them.

There is a seeming wisdom about recommending people to read their Bibles instead of Elpis Israel and Eureka; but the wisdom and godliness of the thing is very superficial when the facts of the case are to the front. Bible-reading is unavailing, so long as the papal veil (of one thickness or other) covers the mental eyes. The Gentile as like the Jews in this particular, "blindness is happened" to them, and there is "a veil upon their heart."

The writings of Dr. Thomas have had the effect of removing this veil in the case of a good number of this generation's children as no unenlightened Bible reading ever did. What they did for the first generation of the Truth's disciples they are as able to do for the second and the third.

It will generally be found that they who speak lightly of these first works of the truth, or accord faint praise to the instrumentality that God employed so successfully in their production—it will generally be found that these have either some other doctrine (in some particulars) to submit to you; or they desire to stand in front of the Dr. as the expounders of what they have searched out for themselves by their own unaided effort; or (if pressed upon the point), with but small recognition of indebtedness to him to whom in the providence of God they owe (either directly or indirectly) the entire system of saving knowledge which they possess.

If this be not so, then they may as well have stayed just where they were, each in the system from which he came, as the result of either reading Elpis Israel, or hearing those who had read it, in conjunction with other works constructed upon the same lines. Those who read Elpis Israel and Eureka will not be likely to read their Bibles less, but more than ever they did before.

This is a result that can only be accounted for upon the principle that those books present us with a present-day interpretation of the bearings of the principal prophetic utterances, and a framework of history that is the very counterpart of the Spirit's messages; together with such a setting of faith, hope, and love as tells us with trumpet tongue that the truth is here enshrined, with all the adaptation to our age that belongs to a case of prophecy fulfilled, and now fulfilling before our eyes.

Bro Shuttleworth

The Christadelphian, Jan 1888