NO. 2 EDITION

THE TWO OFFERINGS OF CAIN AND ABEL,.

THE CLEAN HEART,

SEVEN STEPS TO THE BLESSED LIFE,

THE COMING OF THE LORD,

THE OVERCOMING LIFE.

FIVE LECTURES

DELIVERED BY

MRS. BAEYERTZ, The Converted Jewess

WITH THE STORY OF

HER CONVERSION FROM JUDAISM

TO CHRISTIANITY.

PRICE, 25 CENTS-

TORONTO, ONT

Printed for the Authoress by Hill & Weir, Temperance Street.

1891.

These addresses by Mrs. Baeyertz contained in this little book I had the pleasure of hearing. They are well worthy of being presented in this more permanent form; and Mrs. Baeyertz has done well in acceding to the wish of the many hundreds who earnestly desired the publication of them. They will, I am sure, be read with interest and profit by thousands, although their form on the printed page conveys but an inadequate idea of the power that accompanied their delivery. It is my hope that they may be widely circulated, and it is my conviction that they will help those who read them to a fuller understanding of the great truths which they set forth. May He to whose grace they testify bless them to that end.

Thomas Wardrope,

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church,

Canada, November 2nd, 1891.

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I esteem it a privilege to be asked to write a few lines by way of introduction for the book being issued by Mrs. Baeyertz. It was my good fortune to be present when the addresses which it contains were delivered during the special services held in Ottawa. I was much benefitted as were all those who attended day after day! and I desire to commend to the Christian people the careful perusal of its pages. One cannot read or hear Mrs. Baeyertz's addresses without feeling that it is not so touch she who speaks as the Holy Spirit who speaks through her. The promise is that He will guide into all truth, and certainly light has been shed upon the sacred page, and passages of Scripture hitherto obscure have suddenly opened up in a wonderful manner as she expounds the Word. While Mrs. Baeyertz earnest words made a deep impression on the unsaved and were the means of leading many to Christ, her exposition of Bible truths caused Christians to study the Bible for themselves, and the interest thus created has done incalculable good. My earnest desire and prayer is that the book will be a blessing to many, and that it may be used by Him as the previous one has been to lead souls to Christ.

Robert Stewart, President Y. M. C. A., Ottawa, Canada.

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'From Darkness to Light."

'He that scattereth Israel will gather him.’—Jer. xxxi. 10.

I HAVE been asked by one of my friends to write a brief sketch of my conversion, and 1 do it believing that the precious Saviour, whose I am and whom I serve, will bless this simple testimony to His grace and power to save.

Nine years ago I came to Australia with the intention of staying a short time with my friends here, as I had passed through some very bitter trials in the old country, and my dear parents thought that the change of scene might help me to forget the past.

Before proceeding, 1 must tell you that I and my family for ages back were strict Jews, and I had been brought up by good, religious parents. How the memory of the old days comes over me as I write! Never shall I forget my father's earnest prayer the last hour I spent under his roof; he gave me up to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and prayed that the angel that redeemed them from all evil might bless me.

I landed in Australia upon a Sunday evening, and when I arrived at my destination I found a party assembled, and joined with all my heart in the mirth around me. For twelve months I went into every kind of gaiety Melbourne afforded—dress, balls, the opera; in fact, pleasure of every kind seemed my only thought. About this time I met a gentleman to whom I became deeply attached; but though our affection was mutual, the thought of marriage I could not entertain, as he, being a Christian, and I heart and soul a Jewess, it seemed out of the question. However, time wore on, and I at last consented to marry him, though I knew it would involve leaving all who were dear to me, and-that it would bring a stigma upon my family. Before we were married I exacted a promise from my husband that he would never use any arguments to make me believe, as I was determined to live and die a Jewess. I will not dwell upon my married life; my husband was all in all to me—I wanted nothing more. God

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blessed us with two dear little children, and He who gave them me only knows the agony of mind I endured in the thought, "How shall I teach these little ones what I do not believe myself?" for I had made up my mind, smply out of love to my husband, that they should be brought up in their father's faith.

Although I attended God's house regularly, my heart was in no way changed, and I never thought of Jesus as my Saviour. After my second child was born, I became earnestly impressed with a desire to become a Christian. My prayer at that time always was—"O God! if it be right, let me believe." I could not see that it was honoring the Father to honor the Son; and although I really wanted to be a Christian, I did not seek God with my whole heart; my husband and my children were all that I desired.

And now there came a time of trial that I must pass over as quickly as possible. By an accident my beloved husband was taken from me in a few days. So terribly sudden was the blow that I could hardly realize that he had gone forever; and, oh, what a gulf separated us!—it seemed to me impassible. I knew he had died in the faith of Jesus, and I—I was as far off being a Christian as the first day I met him, I was very bitter and hard in my grief, and felt that God had dealt cruelly in crushing me so, taking all the youth and brightness out of my life. It seemed impossible to live, and I felt nothing bur the desire to be with my loved one again. Many a day I have laid on his grave in the damp, and prayed that God would take me; but God " while I was yet a long way off," took compassion, and raised up dear friends who showed me that only in one way could I ever hope to see my husband again. The desire to be a Christian now became so intense as to become a part of my life. No half-heartedness about it. I began to seek the Lord with all my might. "When ye seek Me with your whole heart, ye shall find Me," is a promise I have proved.

One day I was reading the old, old story, when something whispered to my soul, ^“He suffered all this for you," and the truth seemed to burst upon me like a flash of lightning. I had found the Saviour my Saviour, and such a flood of love as came into my heart for Him I cannot describe. I went into my room and on my knees I sobbed aloud, not for sorrow this time, but for joy. Words fail me in attempting to tell you half my Saviour is to me. He is indeed my all; and I can say—"The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who

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loved me and gave Himself for me." It is now some years since I found my precious Saviour, and although my trials have seemed sometimes as though they would overwhelm time, I have never doubted from the moment that I first believed in-Jesus, but have thanked God on my dear husband's grave, for taking him (oh it, is only for a short time), and giving me the rich gift of His Son. My Jesus is no far-away God to me, but a very near and present help; I trust Him for all things and He never fails me. Should there be some who read this who have not as yet known the precious Saviour, I do most earnestly and prayerfully implore you to seek Him with your whole heart. In looking back I see I never knew what real happiness was; there was always a want the Saviour alone can fill. And, dear unsaved reader, down deep in your heart there is the same aching want. Oh, I beseech you, receive that One who is able to satisfy and fill up your life. He the “I Am," who heard the groanings and knew the sorrows of the Israelites, has come and died upon Calvary's cross for you. He offers to save you; then pause and think what must be the eternity that awaits you if you reject Him. You will be lost—lost —LOST! not because of your sins, but because you deliberately put from you God's Christ. (John in. 19.) You cannot be saved, you cannot be made fit for the presence of God in any other way than by taking Jesus as your Substitute. By reason of sin you are "condemned already." As you enter on the duties of the day; as you go to your worldly amusements; as you lay your head on your pillow to rest; as you read this, remember you are " condemned already." God has said so. Oh! that He may awaken you to a knowledge of this. Oh listen to God's Word—"The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. Do not then harden your heart against such love as His; take this precious Saviour, and the moment you do so His glorious, beautiful life is yours, and He will be henceforth the strength of your life, and your heart will be tuned to sing—

"I've found the Pearl of Greatest Price; -

My heart doth sing for joy—

And sing I must for Christ is mine;

Christ shall my song employ."

Should this fall into the hands of any of Israel, whom I love, oh, let me ask you, have you ever seriously thought whether that despised Nazarene may not after all be your looked-for Mes-

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siah? Have you ever honestly asked the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to show you whether that lowly, humble Son of Mary is really the One of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said —" Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bare a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel"? If you will only read the books of Moses you will see there in what character our Messiah was to come. All those slain Iambs, those burnt offerings, those morning and evening sacrifices, the blood shed and sprinkled, and the scapegoat, all pointed to one who was to come to bear the sins of His people and make atonement for them by giving up His own life You need a Saviour—a Substitute—for you have sinned against God, and "the soul that sinneth it shall die." Jesus was God's Son; all the miracles He, did proved His divinity. Accept that crucified King of the Jews, and you will say with joy, "I have found the Messiah, the Hope of Israel."

E L Baeyertz.

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The Two Offerings of Cain And Abel.

THERE are no two characters in the whole Word of God so thoroughly misunderstood as these two, Cain and Abel. To put it briefly, Cain is generally represented as a wicked man, who went to hell, and Abel a good man, who went to heaven; but this is altogether wrong. Cain was a sinner, and Abel was a sinner, too; the great difference was in the offering. Abel in his acknowledging that he was a sinner, whereas there was no such recognition in Cain's.

Another popular error to be corrected in regard to these two characters is that conveyed by the ordinary wall-pictures, which represent them as mere youths, whereas at the time of the account in the 4th chapter of Genesis they were not only fully grown men, but much older than any man here to-night.

Cain was a religious man, but he had a religion of his own; it is called in Jude, "The way of Cain." He was not an infidel, or else he would not have been found bringing his offering. If he were living to-day, he would attend church regularly; but he would take care to go where he would not hear about Christ in His death or the need of atonement; he would prefer beautiful moral essays shewing that there is something good in man which only needed developing to fit him for the Kingdom of Heaven. Cain's religion was not founded on bloodshedding, and every religion like that is a lifeless thing and not found inside the covers of the Bible There are no less than five hundred and thirty quotations from the Old Testament found in the New, and every one throws a valuable light on the characters of the Old.

Now Cain, being a religious man, brings his offering to God, and, no doubt, it was a magnificent display of fruits and flowers, which by hard work, toil and labour he had succeeded in bringing to a high state of perfection, and of which he felt proud, as shewing the very best the earth could produce. Doubtless, too, he built

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an altar and set thereon his fruits and flowers in splendid array. We read in the third verse that it was "in process of time" that Cain made his offering, but in the margin you see it says, “at the end of days," which I take to mean the seventh day; there we have the first hint of the observance of the seventh day, which was afterwards the Jewish Sabbath. So, as far as external observance was concerned, Cain was not only a religious man, but an exemplary one as well. Now having arranged his offering upon the altar with the wood beneath, he waited for God's fire to come and consume it as an evidence of His acceptance.

This was the way all through the Old Testament, you remember; in Lev. 9: 24, God sent the fire when Moses and Aaron offered their offering; in-2 Chron. 7: 1, at the dedication of Solomon's temple; and on Mount Carmel when Elijah slew the prophets of Baal, 1 Kings 18: 38. As Cain waited for this sign of God's acceptance, he would very likely think how pleased Jehovah ought to be at this magnificent display of fruits and flowers brought to such a high degree of perfection- by my own energy and skill! But he waits in vain for any sign from God. At last he has to acknowledge that he is rejected and his offering, too.

Now, men of reason here will say, what better offering could a man bring to God than that which cost him something? Cain, in spite of the teaching he must have received from his parents, brings to God as an offering the fruit of the ground which God had cursed, and the insufficiency of which He had taught Adam and Eve by rejecting their garments of fig leaves and clothing them in the skins of animals, where we have the first sacrifice, Gen. 3: 21. At that time God had impressed on their hearts the necessity of atonement.

In his offering Cain does not approach God with any acknowledgment that he is a sinner; and if there are any here to-night who are doing this very thing, trying to win acceptance from God by their own works, saying or thinking that when their evil deeds are placed beside their good actions, the latter will more than balance the former, I tell you solemnly that in God's sight you have not a single good deed to rest upon, for all your righteousness is as filthy rags," and the verdict is, "weighed in the balance and found wanting."

Turn now to Abel and see him bringing as an offering to God, a spotless, innocent lamb. See him as he kills it with his shepherd's knife, and as he watches its blood ebbing away, he can say, “There goes my life blood.” Not that the blood of animals could

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wash away sin; the sacrifices in the Old Testament were all types of Christ, and Abel was saved, as I am, by the death of Christ on the cross. This was God's appointed way of setting forth the atonement of Christ, and Abel and all the Old Testament saints were saved by His atonement alone.

Next he lays the dead lamb upon the altar and bows in reverence, his eyes fixed upon the lamb, waiting for the fire, and we can put into Abel's lips what we have so often sung,—

" My all is on the altar, I'm waiting for the fire."

"The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering," and the fire came down from heaven.

Every one must die either in his own person, or in the person of his substitute, and God has provided a substitute for all mankind, even Jesus Christ. As John the Baptist said, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" like Abel, we may be all saved by the blood of Christ; ^“He tasted death for every man" and oh, at what a cost!

See the Saviour in the garden of Gethsemane: as God, He was holy and incapable of sin, yet He had to bear sin, to be led forth as the scape-goat bearing the sin upon His head. Oh what agony for Him; no wonder that His infinite holiness would recoil from it. As Luther says: " To be looked upon by God as if He were all the sinners in the world, and as if He had committed all the sin that ever had been committed by His people," for it was all laid on Him, and on Him must the chastisement fall, that He might bear away upon Himself, like the scape-goat of old, what ought to have fallen upon the guilty sinner.

All the cruel treatment He had received showed the natural hatred of man to God, and as His soul came into contact with sin, and the shadow of the cross was thrown across Him; as He knelt there, no wonder His soul was heavy, no wonder He sweat as it were great drops of blood, to be numbered with such transgressors. "Jehovah had made the iniquities of us all to meet on Him." You know how He prayed in the garden, that if it were possible the cup might pass from Him; but no—for this cause came He into the world, and having “loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end" In Hebrews 5: 7, we read, "He was heard in that He feared;" might He not have felt His human body failing beneath the fearful anguish? May it not be that He feared lest death should come to Him there, before He

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reached the cross? But an angel appeared to Him, strengthening Him, for had He died in the garden, the devil could have plucked Abel out of heaven, for all who have entered there, from Abel to the last one saved, are there by virtue of His death. He went to the cross and bore the sin, and never came down until He could say, "It is finished," until He could be both "Just and the Justifier of them that believe," and until He had fulfilled all types and all Scripture.

As you hear these truths taught from Jewish lips, remember that if yours is a bloodless religion, it is dead; there must be substitution, there must be shedding of blood, there must be atonement; and the one all-sufficient atonement is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now turn again to Cain. When God rejected him and his offering, we read that “he was very wroth, and his countenance fell." He was indeed angry, for he was a proud man and a self-righteous one. Then God comes to him and says, “Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen?" Now the next verse is mistranslated; it should read, " If thou offerest correctly, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou offerest not correctly, the sin-offering (i.e., the Lamb) croucheth at the door." Remember that in Cain's offering there was not only no blood, but no thought of substitution, and it was as if God said to him, "If you have made a mistake in the past, go out and bring in the lamb and I will accept thee." But Cain was too proud to do this and he turned away from God.

The Lord is here to-night and is saying to every man and woman, if you have made a mistake in the past by offering your own good works, come now and trust Christ, the Lamb of God! Proud man! you must come down from your pedestal of pride and acknowledge that the atonement of Jesus Christ was made for you and on your behalf. I beseech you, do not reject God's offer of mercy, do not' go the way of Cain; Jesus says, I am the way, and there is "none other name under heaven given among men, whereby ye must be saved." It is no use admiring the character of Christ, no use calling Him a good man, and saying He died a martyr's death. No! no! He was not a martyr! He was the God-given substitute, "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world," and nothing else can find any acceptance with God. There is no other remedy for sin; but if you accept Christ your sin will separate from you once and forever, and you will be justified in Him. Oh! what a joy and rest, after one has been striving

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and struggling, to find it all done by Christ, and nothing for as to do but accept His finished work.

Cain turned away in anger, little knowing to what further dreadful sin this rejection of God would lead him. I do not suppose for a moment that the murder was premeditated, but he went and told it to Abel his brother, and suddenly "he rose up against Abel his brother and slew him." Cain had his opportunity. All men have. I mean that sometime in every man's life, God, who perhaps has called them often before, comes so near that there must be a deliberate and definite choice, either yes or no; acceptance or rejection. This call, beloved, is the one time when you may be saved; indeed it is the one time when you must be saved if you are ever going to be. And remember that the second call is the call to judgment, and that decides nothing. It is like the judgment of the Great White Throne, simply to receive the sentence, and when Cain heard his sentence he cried out,—"Mine iniquity is greater than may be forgiven;" not as commonly read, “My punishment is greater than 1 can bear."

What was this sin for which there was no forgivenness? Was it murder? No; for there are many instances of murderers having been savingly converted. One case in particular, that I had on the authority of Rev. Mr. Birch, of New Zealand:—A young man was on trial in Manchester, for the murder of his sweetheart; the court-room was crowded to the very doors, when a middle aged woman, dressed in black, tried to push her way up the aisle, but could not for the crowd, until she cried, "Oh, let me go to him, I'm his mother!" Then the crowd which had just been hissing him, and would have lynched him could they have laid hold of him, made way for the poor mother to pass. She did not see the crowd, nor hear the hisses which gave way to a solemn hush as she pushed forward; she did not see the murderer, the hardened criminal, she saw only her boy, her only son, whom she had prayed for since he lay in her arms a baby. When she reached the dock where he was, she cried to him, "Jack! Jack! stoop down and let me kiss thee lad, and I’ll go home and pray for thy lost soul!" But he drew himself up proudly and said, " No, mother, I'm a murderer," and the crowd hissed again, and the police tried to lead her away, but she cried again, "Jack, give us thy hand lad!" But he answered, "No, mother, this hand murdered her." And the hissing became an uproar, and the police tried to remove the poor mother, but she cried again, "Jack, Jack; there's nobody loves thee but thy mother; now lad, stoop

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down and let me kiss thee, and I'll go home and pray for thy lost soul." He broke down and caught his mother in his arms and wept on her neck, the first tears of penitence he had ever shed. They took her away fainting from the court. They led him to his cell, a criminal, condemned to death for murder. But his mother's prayers were answered, for he gave such glorious evidence of an entire change of heart, that all the ministers who visited him were satisfied that he went from the gallows to glory. No: murder is not the sin that can have no forgiveness—there is a sin that God hates more than the sin of murder, and that is the rejection of the atonement. That was Cain's sin.

If you reject the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, then you go the way of Cain; there is no salvation for you apart from Him, for there is no religion in the Bible that is not founded on blood and atonement The unpardonable sin is the deliberate turning away from the atonement, the persistent rejection of God's way of salvation. Each one must accept Christ for Himself or herself, and may the Lord help many of you to so decide to-night!