When we have arrived at a Scriptural answer to these questions dispensational truth

will either open or shut the door, give entrance or forbid access according to whether the

command does or does not belong to the present economy.

"To whom, when, where and why" are the wards on this key of all truth. Quite a

number of the Lord's people sweep aside all these questions as unprofitable, and say that

all they are interested in is "practice". These are the people who seem to have a great

fondness for "brass tacks" for calling a "spade a spade" the very opposite of these

fantastic hair splitters, known by the unworthy title "Ultra-dispensationalists". Let us

face this matter squarely.  Christian practice arises out of Christian doctrine.  The

Christian doctrine of grace differs from Mosaic doctrine of law, consequently before we

can "practice" we must know what is our calling, whether we are under law or under

grace, whether we are dispensationally a "wild olive graft contrary to nature" into the

olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11:), or whether we belong to that newly created "one new man"

the other side of the demolished "middle wall of partition" (Eph. 2:).

One word employed in the Scriptures to designate "practice" is the word "walk". This

is true under law or under grace, but surely the walk enjoined upon those who were under

the law cannot be the same as the walk of those who are under grace, for the full

statement of this practical outworking of truth is that all such "walk" must be worthy.

Now the word worthy (axios) suggests the beam of a balance, a correspondence, an

equivalence, and following the exhortation of Eph. 4: 1, the walk enjoined must be

"worthy", it must correspond with the "vocation" or "calling". We must believe and

know Eph. 1:-3: before we can do and follow 4:-6: Until a builder sees and studies

the plans that have been drawn up and approved, he cannot commence "work". Should

he "saw" wood, "lay" bricks, or execute any other of the processes involved in building

before consulting his plans, he would but waste precious time and material. In the same

way, a believer who does not know his calling cannot walk "worthy" of it. It is useless to

stress Eph. 4:-6: when Eph. 1:-3: is either ignored, misunderstood or denied. If we

place ourselves in the Acts of the Apostles, with its two baptisms we shall find it

impossible implicitly to accept the one baptism of Eph. 4:  We shall find ourselves

attempting to explain away this insistence on "one". We repeat our contention that when

once we accept the all covering authority of dispensational truth we need all that is

written, just as it is written, to whom it is written, without alteration, modification or

private interpretation. Practice is the fruit, Doctrine is the root, the character of both

depends upon the tree that has been planted, the soil in which its roots are fed, the climate

that decides the growth and produce. In other words both doctrine and practice are

governed and decided by the dispensation to which they belong. I have seen date palms

and orange trees growing in the open garden of a friend, but if I imagined that it was

mere "ultra-horticulturalism" to tell me that a back garden in a London suburb was "all

one and the same" as a vineyard in the South of France, nature would go its own way in

spite of all my labour, prayers and so-called "faith".  I should get no fruit. Such

gardening would have ignored time, place and condition, in other words, it would be

undispensational to attempt to grow plants whose habitat is so different from the one I

know. Some objectors to dispensational truth adopt the attitude that so long as we are