CHAPTER XIII.

CHILDREN OF THE WICKED ONE.

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.-John viii. 44.

OUR LORD in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares speaks of some who appear to form a yet much worse class of false converts than either those "of the will of the flesh" or 66 of the will of man considered in the last four Chapters.

For He speaks of them as not merely deceived by the devil, as no doubt those others are, but as his children.

"He that soweth the good seed," He said, "is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one" (Matt. xiii. 37, 38).

It was long before I understood that there were these children of the devil in the kingdom of God. For though I thought I believed all God's Word, and certainly meant to do so, yet I passed over such parts of it as declare their existence and their evil work for their father, without at all fully entering into their meaning.

I used to have a vague notion that as the Wheat certainly means all God's righteous ones in Christ, so the Tares mean all who by neglecting (Heb. ii. 3; Is. liii. 1) or despising and rejecting (Is. liii. 3) Him, remain in the wickedness in which we all alike were by nature (Eph. ii. 3).

But then I saw that this could not stand; for the great mass of neglecters or despisers and rejecters of Christ have no spiritual life good or bad, being merely the dead soil of the field (for "the field is the world," and these worldlings collectively form "the world") in which the living seed, good or bad, is sown. But the tares evidently have life as truly as the wheat, and apparently as much life as it has, though of such a different sort, hellish instead of heavenly, yet with its character so masked that the two are not by us easily distinguishable the one from the other (Matt. xiii. 28, 29).

I can say scarcely anything about this the worst class of false converts except that I think, but am not at all sure, that I have once or twice fallen in with one or two of them. For the devil works so much in the dark, so much in the way of deceit, being such an adept at lying as well as murdering, and indeed at murdering by the very means of lying, by his six thousand years of practice at it, and his children are so like himself, for our Lord says of them, "Ye do the deeds of your father," and "ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him: when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it" (John viii. 41, 44), that it is no wonder if we cannot certainly discern them, especially when they come to us, as we know by God's Word they often do, "transformed as the ministers of righteousness," as he himself comes "transformed into an angel of light" (2 Cor. xi. 14, 15).

CHAPTER XIV.

FALSE PROPHETS.

Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.-Matt. vii. 15. .

THEN there are conversions, and very marked and powerful ones too, such as it is extremely difficult to class anywhere. The subjects of them cannot be put among the true converts because, though naming "the name of Christ," they do not "depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. ii. 19). Yet they do not seem to be self-made or man-made, for there are in them what appear to be supernatural gifts, and God does blessed work by them in the true conversion of souls by the word that He gives them to preach.

But if they are indeed the devil's children, it would seem as if God takes them and endows them with great power for his own service (“I girded thee, though thou hast not known me," Is. xlv. 5), and then lets them go and use it according to their own devilish nature in their wicked ambition inherited from their father to make themselves great ones in the church (3 John 9), for their own glory and not from any love for souls or for the glory of God: thus serving their own lusts (Ezek. xvi. 17), and yet used of God to carry out his purposes of love and mercy (Acts ii. 23) to souls that He has prepared to receive his Word from them.

When I was younger in the faith I could not believe there were such evil yet successful workers for God, but used to think whenever I saw success in his work that the one through whom He was pleased to give it must be his child. I remember very long ago saying to a successful worker for Him who I feel sure truly was his child: "I suppose it all depends on a man's own nearness to God:" but he answered, "Indeed it depends on nothing of the sort: I could show you a man "-I do not at all know to whom he alluded-" by whom God is working numbers of undoubted conversions whose private life you would be shocked at if you knew it.”

Bunyan, when God began to convert souls by his ministry, saw clearly this possibility of being used by Him without having anything to do with Him as regards one's own personal salvation. He says he saw it was written, not that He gives gifts and glory, but that He gives grace and glory. And again on those words of St. Paul: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor. xiii. 1), he says, "A tinkling cymbal is an instrument of music with which a skilful player can make such melodious and heart-inflaming music that all who hear him play can scarcely hold from dancing. And yet behold the cymbal hath not life; neither comes the music from it, but because of the art of him that plays therewith.

"Just thus I saw it was, and will be with them that have gifts but want saving grace. They are in the hand of Christ, as the cymbal in the hand of David and as David could with the cymbal make that mirth in the service of God as to elevate the hearts of the worshippers, so Christ can use these gifted men as with them to affect the souls of his

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people in his church, yet when He hath done all, hang them by as lifeless though sounding cymbals."

And Baxter in a terrible sermon which he preached on one of the Puritan fast days before the House of Parliament on "The vain religion of the formal hypocrite," makes special mention of these gifted though false converts, and of the blessing for which God often uses them to his people.

He says we all know that the devil is the author of all evil, and that he uses the pleasures of this world to lure poor souls down to his den: but that religion which God meant for our deliverance from his power should be his chief means of deceiving them and bringing them down there, this is the masterpiece of his cunning, the deepest depth of the mystery of iniquity.

He then shows for what the vain religion of the formal hypocrite is not vain: not vain for the pacifying of a man's conscience; for when that is alarmed the poor wretch, between it and the law of God, is like the corn between the two mill-stones, and will grasp at anything to get relief from his misery; and then the devil comes and offers him religion and persuades him to take up with that, instead of pressing on to the knowledge of salvation in Christ; and so he does, and thus pacifies his conscience though with only a devil's peace, and settles down content though really further from salvation and from God than ever before: next that it is not vain for a man's character in the world, because, though the world hates Christ (John vii. 7; xv. 18), it has no objection at all to religion apart from Him, but admires and praises it; and not vain for a man's character even among the children of God, as those who have no better religion at heart may yet be so like them in outward things that they may live and