printed in its pages and determines both the Gospel we preach, the Church to which we

belong, and the hope that is before us. Dispensational Truth is not confined to one aspect

or phase of the Divine purpose, for every dealing of God with man, whether under law or

grace, whether with saint or sinner has its own dispensational colouring which is inherent

in its teaching and is in nowise accidental. Much has yet to be written and presented

along these suggestive and attractive lines of study, but the particular application of this

principle now before us, focuses the reader's attention upon one fact, namely, that while

in the mind of God the whole purpose of the ages is seen as one and its end assured, in

the outworking of that purpose, the fact that moral creatures are involved, creatures that

can, and alas do, exercise their liberty to disobey as well as to obey the revealed will of

God; this fact has had an effect upon the manifest unfolding of the purpose of the ages.

This is seen as a series of "gaps" and "postponements" which are filled by new phases

and aspects of the purpose until at length He Who was once "All" in a universe that

mechanically and unconsciously obeyed, will at length be "All in all" in a universe of

willing and intelligent creatures, whose standing will not be that of Creation and Nature,

but in Redemption and Grace.

Here we can do little else than indicate the presence of these "gaps", and consider the

terms that are employed in the Hebrew of the O.T. and the Greek of the N.T. and of the

70: The well-known example of the Saviour's recognition of a "gap" in the prophecy

of Isa. 61: must be repeated for the sake of completeness and for the value of its

endorsement. We learn from the fourth chapter of Luke's Gospel, that the Lord attended

the service in the synagogue at Nazareth, and, apparently, after the reading of the law by

the official, He stood up "for to read" the Haphthorah, or the recognized portion from the

Prophets that was appointed for the day. He found the place, and commenced to read

Isa. 61: Now it is laid down by Maimonides that "He that reads in the prophets, was to

read at least one and twenty verses" but he allowed that if "the sense" was finished in

less, then the reader was under no necessity to read so many. Even so, it must have

caused a deal of surprise to the congregation that gathered for Christ to read what is

one verse in our Bible, an one sentence of the second verse, shut the book and sit down.

He did so because "the sense" was indeed finished in "less than twenty-one verses". He

was about to focus attention upon one aspect of His Work, and said:

The sentence with which the Saviour closed His reading of Isa. 61: was "to proclaim

the acceptable year of the Lord". The next sentence, separated in the A.V. by but a

comma read "And the day of vengeance of our God", yet that comma represents a gap

of at least nineteen hundred years, for the day of vengeance are not referred to until

Luke 21: 22 where the Second Coming and the end of the age is in view.

The word translated "fullness" is the Greek pleroma, and its first occurrence in the

N.T. places it in contrast with a "rent" or a "gap". The three references in the Gospels