o men of God's commandments of old; longing eyes
had seen a coming day and been glad and confidently foretold it, now the
message was 'the coming one has come.'

It is as the record and vehicle of that spoken Gospel, as well as of its
earlier premonitions, that the Bible has come to be called the word of
God, and the name is true in that He speaks in this book. But much harm
has resulted from the appropriation of the name exclusively to the book,
and the forgetfulness that a vehicle is one thing and that which it
carries quite another.

II. The purpose and power of the word.

The sword is the only offensive weapon in the list. The spear which
played so great a part in ancient warfare is not named. It may well be
noted that only a couple of verses before our text we read of the Gospel
of peace, and that here with remarkable freedom of use of his metaphors,
Paul makes the word of God, which as we have seen is substantially
equivalent to the preached Gospel, the one weapon with which Christian
men are to cut and thrust. Jesus said 'I come not to send peace, but a
sword,' but Paul makes the apparent contradiction still more acute when
he makes the very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel,
and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the
Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper
than any two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent
symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the
candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded
a sharp, two-edged sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment of our
Lord's own words which we have just quoted, and implies the penetrating
power of the word which Christ's gentle lips have uttered. Gracious and
healing as it is, a Gospel of peace, it has an edge and a point which
cut down through all sophistications of human error, and lay bare the
'thoughts and intents of the heart.' The revelation made by Christ has
other purposes which are not less important than its ministering of
consolation and hope. It is intended to help us in our fight with evil,
and the solemn old utterance, 'with the breath of His mouth He will slay
the wicked,' is true in reference to the effect of the word of Christ on
moral evil. Such slaying is but the other side of the life-giving power
which the word exercises on a heart subject to its influence. For the
Christian soldier's conflict with evil as