LIBRARY OF THK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. OK- Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, 1894. Accessions No. . Class No. LAWS FROM HEAVEN LIFE ON EARTH. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. By the REV. WILLIAM ARNOT, Edinburgh. T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK. 1873. Ri 7 i UHI7BRSIT7 THESE illustrations of the Proverbs are not critical, con- tinuous, exhaustive. The comments, in imitation of the text, are intended to be brief, practical, miscellaneous, isolated. The reader may, however, perceive a principle of unity running through the whole, if he takes his stand at the outset on the writer '.s view point a aesire to lay the Christian System along the surface of common life, without removing it from its foundations in the doctrines of Grace. The authority of the instructions must be divine ; the form transparently human. Although the lessons should, with a pliant familiarity, lay themselves along the line of men's thoughts and actions, they will work no deliverance, unless redeeming love be every- where the power to press them in : but on the other hand, although evangelical doctrine be consistently maintained throughout, the teaching will come short of its purpose unless it go right into every crevice of a corrupt heart, and perse veringly double every turn of a- crooked path. Without " the love wherewith He loved us" as our motive power, we cannot reach for healing any of the deeper ailments of the world : but having such a power within our reach, we should not leave it dangling in the air ; we should bring it down, and make it bear on every sorrow that afflicts, and every sin that defiles humanity. The two extremes to be avoided are, abstract unpractical IV TO THE READER. speculation, and shallow, powerless, heathen morality ; the one a soul without a body, the other a body without a soul the one a ghost, the other a carcass. The aim is to be doctrinal without losing our hold of earth, and practical without losing our hold of heaven. Most certain it is that if the Church at any period, or any portion of the Church, has fallen into either of these extremes, it has been her own fault ; for the Bible, her standard, is clear from both imputations. Christ is its subject and its substance. His word is like Himself ; it is of heaven, but it lays itself closely around the life of men. Such is the Bible ; and such, in their own place and measure, should our expositions of it be. Had our object been a critical exposition of the Book, it would have been our duty to devote the larger share of our attention to the more difficult parts. But our aim from first to last has been rather to apply the obvious than to elucidate the obscure, and the selection of texts has been determined accordingly. As there is diversity of gifts, there should be division of labour. While scientific inquirers re-examine the joints of the machine, and de- monstrate anew the principles of its construction, it may not be amiss that a workman should set the machine a-going, and try its effects on the affairs of life. W A. NOTB. This edition in one volume is complete. In some cases, where the sections were short and the subjects cognate, two chapters have been combined under one designation; but they have been given in full. Some allusion to passing events, as the reader will perceive, bear reference to the date of the original publication, 1856-7. I. TEE PREACHER ... II. THE BOOK PROVERBS III. THE ROOT OF KNOWLEDGE IV. THE FAMILY V. FILIAL LOVE A BLOSSOM OF BEAUTY VI. THE FOE AND THE FIGHT VII. FILTHY LUCRE ... VIII. THE CRY OF WISDOM IX. A REVIVAL X. SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT XI. SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND XII. PERILS IN THE DEEP XIII. WISDOM RECEIVED AND RETAINED XIV. THE ART OF PRINTING XV. TRUST ... XVI. THE HEALTH OF HOLINESS XVII. CAPITAL AND PROFIT XVIII. A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION XIX. MAKING A FORTUNE XX. A LENGTHENED DAY, AND A PLEASANT PATH XXI. WISDOM MAKING AND MANAGING WORLDS ... XXII. CONFIDENCE IN GOD THE TRUE SAFEGUARD FROM TEMPTATION XXIII. THE RIGHT THING DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME XXIV. THE CURSE AND THE BLESSING UPON THE HOUSE XXV. PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE ,.. XXVI. HOLD FAST XXVII. THE PATH OF THE JUST ... XXVIII. THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STREAMS ... XXIX. FAMILY JOYS XXX. THE METHOD OF PROVIDENCE FOR RESTRAINING EVIL Page 9 14 17 21 25 28 44 49 55 59 66 72 77 81 85 89 91 93 99 102 105 107 111 115 117 119 121 124 130 134 VI CONTENTS. Pmq. XXXI. SEVEN HATEFUL THINGS ... ... ... .. ... 13G xxxn. MOTHER'S LAW ... ... ... ... ... ... 138 XXXIII. THE WORTH OF WISDOM AND THE FEAR OF THE LORD ... 143 XXXIV. RANK AND RICHES ... ... ... ... ... 146 XXXV. THE REDEEMER ANTICIPATING REDEMPTION ... ... 148 XXXVI. THE MARRIAGE SUPPER FOR THE KING'S SON ... ... 151 XXXVII. REPROOF ... ... ... ... ... ... 154 XXXVIII. THE PLEASURES OF SIN ... ... ... ... ... 159 XXXIX. THE PLACE AND POWER OF A SON ... ... ... ... 164 XL. DILIGENT IN BUSINESS ... ... ... ... ... 167 XLI. POSTHUMOUS FAME ... ... ... ... ... 168 XLII. THE WISE ARE TEACHABLE, THE UPRIGHT STRONG ... ... 170 XLIII. THE WELL OF LIFE, AND THE TREASURES OF WISDOM ... 172 XLIV. THE MONEY POWER ... ... ... ... ... 175 XLV. THE LIPS AND TONGUE ... ... ... ... ... 180 XLVI. THE BLESSING OF THE LORD MAKETH RICH .., ... ... 183 XLVII. A FOOL'S SPORT ... ... ... ... ... ... 187 XLVIII. FEARS REALIZED AND HOPES FULFILLED ... ... ... 190 XLIX. THE GREATNESS OF LITTLE THINGS ... ... ... 194 L. HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY ... ... ... ... 197 LI. ASSORTED PAIRS ... ... ... ... ... ... 201 III. HYPOCRITES AND TALE-BEARERS ... ... ... ... 204 LIII. DEBTS AND SURETIES ... ... ... ... ... 206 LIV. AS WE SOW, WE REAP ... ... ... ... ... 212 LV. A JEWEL ILL SET ... ... ... ... ... 215 LVI. THE DESIRE OF THE RIGHTEOUS ... ... ... ... 218 LVII. SCATTERING TO KEEP, AND KEEPING TO SCAITER ... ... 2'20 LVIII. THE WATERER IS WATERED ... ... ... ... 223 LIX. RAISING THE MARKET THE PRACTICE AND THE PENALTY ... 2J6 LX. THR TREE AND ITS BRANCH ... ... ... ... 229 LXI. 1 HE WISDOM OF WINNING SOULS ... ... ... ... 233 LXII. A BITTER BUT HEALTHFUL MOUSEL ... ... ... 235 LXIII. A HUSBAND'S CROWN ... ... ... ... ... 238 LX1V. THE WICKED ARE CRUEL THE LIARS ARE CAUGHT ... ... 240 LXV. HOPE DEFERRED ... ... ... ... ... 213 LXVI. GOD'S WORD THE PRESERVER OF NATIONS ... ... ... 245 LXVII. THE HARD WAY ... ... ... ... ... ... 247 LXVIII. THE CHOICE OF COMPANIONS ... ... ... ... 249 LXIX. THE FATHER WHO HATES HIS SON ... ... ... ... 252 LXX. SECULARISM ... ... ... ... ... ... 258 LXXI. WISDOM MODEST, AND FOLLY RASH ... ... ... 262 LXXH. SYMPATHY ... ... ... ... ... ... 266 IXXIII. A MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS BELIEF <* ,< .. ?S8 CONTENTS. VII P LXXIV. THE BACKSLIDER ... ... ... ... ... 272 LXXV. THE TRUSTFUL AND THE TRUTHFUL ... ... ... 275 LXXVI. WITNESSES ... ... ... ... ... ... 278 LXXVIL THE PLACE OF REFUGE ... ... ... ... ... 282 LXXVIII. ENVY THE DISEASE AND THE CURB ... ... ... 286 LXX1X. THE MERCIFUL ... ... ... ... ... ... 289 LXXX. THE TWO DEPARTURES THE HOPEFUL AND THE HOPELESS ... 294 LXXXI. THE TRUTH IN LOVE ... ... ... ... ... 299 LXXXII. THE ALL-SEEING ... ... ... ... ... 304 LXXXIII. A WHOLESOME TONGUE ... ... ... ... ... 313 LXXXIV. MIRTH A MEDICINE ... ... ... ... ... 318 LXXXV. TASTES DIFFER ... ... ... ... ... ... 323 LXXXVI. HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR ... ... ... ... 328 LXXXVII. THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE ... 332 LXXXVIII. THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE ... ... 338 LXXXIX. MERCY AND TRUTH ... ... ... ... ... 344 XC. PROVIDENCE ... ... ... ... ... ... 348 XCI. WISDOM AND WEALTH THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH ... 357 XCII. THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT .. ... ... ... 3CO XCIII. THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE ... ... ... ... 364 XCIV. THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS ... ... ... ... ... 3C8 XCV. FRIENDSHIP ... ... ... ... ... ... 376 ' XCVI1 TUK BIAiJ ON THE SIDE OF SELF ... ... .. ... 383 XCVII. A WIFE ... ... ... ... ... ... 387 XCVIII. ANGER ... ... ... ... ... 394 XCIX. A POOR MAN IS BETTER THAN A LIAR ... ... ... 398 C. THE DECEITFULNESS OF STRONG DRINK ... ... ... 401 CI. THE SLUGGARD SHALL COME TO WANT ... ... ... 409 CII. WISDOM MODEST, FOLLY OBTRUSIVE ... ... ... 413 CIII. TWO WITNESSES THE HEARING EAR AND THE SEEING EYE ... 417 CIV. BUYERS AND SELLERS ... ... ... ... ... 425 CV. A GOOD NAME ... ... ... ... ... ... 431 CVI. THE RICH AND THE POOR MEET TOGETHER ... ... ... 434 CVII. HIDING-PLACES FOR THE PRUDENT ... ... ... ... 438 CVIII. EDUCATION ... ... ... ... ... ... 441 CIX. THE BONDAGE OF THE BORROWER ... ... ... ... 452 CX. CONVENIENT FOOD ... ... ... ... ... 4(jo CXI. THE RIGHTS OF MAN ... ... ... ... ... 4(55 CXII. A FAITHFUL FATHER ... ... ... ... ... 473 CXIII. THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED ... ... ... ... 481 cxiv. A BROTHER'S KEEPER ... ... ... ... ... 435 CXV. PIETY AND PATRIOTISM ... ... ... ... ... 491 cxvi. THE SLUGGARD'S GARDEN ... ... ... 6 r'lll CONTENTS. ** CXVII. MONAP.CHS, UNDER GOD AND OVER MEN ... ... ... 500 CXVIII. A FAITHFUL MESSENGER ... ... ... ... ... 505 CXIX. THE FIRE THAT MELTS AN ENEMY ... ... ... ... 509 CXX. A TIME TO FROWN AND A TIME TO SMILE ... ... ... 515 CXXI. COLD WATERS TO THE THIRSTY SOUL ... ... ... 519 CXXII. AN IMPURE APPETITE SEEKS IMPURE FOOD ... ... 523 CXX1II. NOW, OR TO-MORROW ... ... ... ... ... 527 CXXIV. THE COUNTENANCE OF A FRIEND ... ... ... ... 533 CXXV. CONSCIENCE ... ... ... ... ... ... 537 CXXVI. SIN COVERED AND SIN CONFESSED ... ... ... ... 541 CXXVII. THE FEAR OF MAN BRINGETH A SNARE ... ... ... 550 CXXVIII. PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH ... ... ... ... ... 559 CXXIX. LEMUEL AND HIS MOTHER ... ... ... ... 568 CXXX. A HEROINE ... ... ... ... ... ... 571 CXXXI. FAITH AND OBEDIENCE WORK AND REST ... 578 LAWS FROM HEAVEN LIFE ON EARTH. W.I7.IBSITY The Proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel." i. 1. >D'S word is like God's world : it combines unity of per- vading principle with endless variety in detail. The whole Bible, considered as one book, stands entirely apart from all other writings ; and yet every several portion of it is distinguished from every other portion as much as one merely human writing is distinguished from another. This combination results from the manner in which it has pleased God to make known his will. One Divine Spirit inspires ; hence the unity of the whole. Men of diverse age, taste, and attainments write; hence the diversity of the parts. Although the books are written by Moses, David, Solomon, they are all alike the word of God : therefore they exhibit a complete separation from all other writings, and a perfect consistency among themselves. Again, although they are all one as being the word of God, they are as much the genuine product of different human minds as the ordinary writings of men are the work of their authors : therefore there is in mat- ter and manner an unconstrained, natural, life-like diversity. It was God who " spake unto the fathers," but it was " by the pro- 10 THE PKEACHEE. phets " that lie spoke ; not by their tongues only, but their under- standings, memories, tastes; in shortfall that constituted the men. There is as much individuality in the books of Scripture as in any other books. There is as much of Moses shining through the Pentateuch as of Gibbon in the Decline and Fall. As are the articulating lips to the soul whose thoughts they utter, so are the prophets to the Holy Spirit, whose mind they reveal. Every writer was chosen by God, as well as every word. He had a purpose to serve by the disposition, the acquirements, and the experience of each. The education of Moses as one of the royal race of Egypt was a qualification necessary to the leader of the exodus, and the writer of the Pentateuch. The experience of David, with its successive stages, like geological strata, touching each other in abrupt contrast, first as a shepherd youth, then as a fugitive warrior, and last as a victorious king, was a qualification indispensable to the sweet singer of Israel. God needed a human spirit as a mould to cast consolation in for every kindred in every age ; and he chose one whose experience was a compound of meek- ness and might, of deep distress and jubilant victory. These, when purged of their dross, and fused into one by the Spirit's baptism of fire, came forth an amalgam of sacred psalmody, which the whole church militant have been singing ever since, and " have not yet sung dry." Solomon did not, like David, pass his youth in pastoral sim- plicity, and his early manhood under cruel persecution. Solomon could not have written the twenty -third psalm " The Lord is my shepherd ;" nor the fifty-seventh A psalm of David when lie fled from Saul in the cave. His experience would never have suggested the plaintive strains of the ninetieth psalm A prayer of Moses the man of God " Lord, thou hast been our dwelling- place." But, on the other hand, Solomon went through a pecu- liar experience of his own, and God, who in nature gives sweet fruit to men through the root sap of a sour crab, when a new nature has been engrafted on the upper stem, did not disdain to bring forth fruits of righteousness through those parts of the king's experience that cleaved most closely to the dust. None of all the prophets could have written the Proverbs or the Preacher; for God is not wont, even in his miraculous interpositions, to make a fig-tree bear olive berries, or a vine figs : every creature THE PREACHER. 1 1 acts after its kind. When Solomon delineated the eager efforts of men in search of happiness, and the disappointment which ensued, he could say, like Bunyan, of that fierce and fruitless war, " I was there." The heights of human prosperity he had reached : the paths of human learning he had trodden further than any of his day : the pleasures of wealth, and power, and pomp he had tasted in all their variety. No spring of earthly delight could be named, of whose waters he had not deeply drunk. This is the man whom God has chosen as the schoolmaster to teach us the vanity of the world when it is made the portion of a soul, and He hath done all things well. The man who has drained the cup of pleasure can best tell the taste of its dregs. The choice of Solomon as one of the writers of the Bible at first sight startles, but on deeper study instructs. We would have expected a man of more exemplary life a man of uniform holi- ness. It is certain that, in the main, the vessels which the Spirit used were sanctified vessels ; " Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." But as they were all corrupt at first, so there were diversities in the operation whereby they were called and qualified for their work. There were diversities in the times, and degrees of their sanctification. Some were carried so near perfection in the body that human eyes could no longer discern spot or wrinkle; in others ^he principle of grace was so largely overlaid with earthliness that observers were left in doubt whether they had been turned to the Lord's side at all. But the diversity in all its extent is like the other ways of God; and He knows how to make either extreme fall into its place in the concert of his praise. He who made Saul an apostle did not disdain to use Solomon as a prophet. Very diverse were the two men, and very diverse their life course; yet in one thing they are perfectly alike, together in glory now, they .know themselves to have been only sinners, and agree in ascribing all their salvation to the mercy of God. Moreover, although good men wrote the Bible, our faith in the Bible does not rest on the goodness of the men who wrote it. The fatal facility with which men glide into the worship of men may suggest another reason why some of the channels chosen for conveying the mind of God were marred by glaring deficiencies. Among many earthen vessels, in various measures purged of their 1 2 THE PREACHER. filthiness, may not the Divine Administrator in wisdom select foi actual use some of the least pure, in order by that grosser argu- ment to force into grosser minds the conviction that the excel- lency of the power is all of God ? If all the writers of the Bible had been perfect in holiness if no stain of sin could be traced on their character, no error noted in their life, it is certain that the Bible would not have served all the purposes which it now serves among men. It would have been God-like, indeed, in matter and in mould, but it would not have reached down to the low estate of man it would not have penetrated to the sores of a human heart. For engraving the life lessons of his word, our Father uses only diamonds : but in every diamond there is a flaw, in some a greater and in some a less ; and who shall dare to dictate to the Omniscient the measure of defect that binds Him to fling the instrument as a useless thing away ? When God would leave on my mind in youth the lesson that the pleasures of sin are barbed arrows, he employs the experience of Solomon as the die to impress it indelibly upon my heart. I mark the wisdom of the choice. I get and keep the lesson, but the homage of my soul goes to God who gave it, and not to Solo- mon, the instrument through which it came. God can make the wrath of men to praise him, and their vanity too. He can make the clouds bear some benefits to the earth which the sun cannot bestow. He can make brine serve some purposes in nature which sweet water could not fulfil. So, practical lessons on some sub- jects come better through the heart and lips of the weary repent- ant king than through a man who had tasted fewer pleasures, and led a more even life. Two principles cover the whole case : " All things are of God ;" and "All things are for your sakes." We can never be sufficiently familiar with these two : 1. The universality of God's govern- ment ; and, 2, The special use for his own people to which he turns every person and every thing. All Solomon's wisdom and power, and glory and pleasure, were, an elaborate writing by the finger of God, containing a needful lesson to his children. The wisdom which we are invited to hear is divine wisdom ; the com- plicated life experience of Solomon is the machinery of articula- tion employed to convey it to the ears of men. In casting some of the separate letters, the king may have been seeking only his THE PREACHER. 13 own pleasure, yet the whole, when cast, are set by the Spirit, so that they give forth an important page of the word of truth. The thought recurs that the king of Jerusalem was not, from his antecedents, qualified to sit in the chair of authority and teach morality to mankind. No, he was not ; and perhaps on that very account the morality which he taught is all the more impressive. Here is a marvel; NOT A LINE OP SOLOMON'S WRITINGS TENDS TO PALLIATE SOLOMON'S SINS. How do you account for this ? The errors and follies were his own ; they were evil. But out of them the All-wise has brought good. The glaring imperfections of the man's life have been used as a dark ground to set off the lustre of that pure righteousness which the Spirit has spoken by his lips. II. "To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise and their dark sayings." i. 6. is safer and better to assume that all men know what a proverb is, than to attempt a logical definition of it. As a general rule, the things that are substantially best known are hardest to define. Proverbs are very abundant in all languages, and among all peoples. Many of them, though they seem fresh and full of sap on our lips to-day, have descended to us from the remotest antiquity. They deal with all manner of subjects, but chiefly with the broadest features of common life. The peculiar charm and power of the proverb are due to a combination of many elements. Among others are the condensed antithetic form of expression and the mingled plainness and darkness of the meaning. Often there is something to startle at first; and yet, on closer inspection, that which seemed paradox, turns out to be only intenser truth. Like those concentrated essences of food, which explorers carry in their knapsacks, the proverb may not present to the eye the appearance of the wisdom that it was originally made of; but a great quantity of the raw material has been used up in making one, and that one, when skilfully dissolved, will spread out to its original dimensions. Much matter is pressed into little room, that it may keep, and carry. Wisdom, in this portable form, acts an important part in human life. The character of a people gives shape to their proverbs ; and again, the proverbs go to mould the character of the people who use them. These well-worn words are precious, as being real gold ; and convenient, as being a port- able, stamped, and recognised currency. As a general rule, proverbs spring from the people at large, as herbage springs spontaneously from the soil, and the parentage of THE BOOK PROVERBS. 15 the individual remains for ever unknown. Very few proverbs are attached, even traditionally, to the name of any man as their author. From time to time collections of these products are made, and catalogued by the curious ; and the stock is continually in- creasing as the active life of a nation gives them oflf. In other cases, books of proverbs have an opposite origin. Persons who appreciate the proverbial form cast their own thoughts in that mould, and so make a book of sentences, which are proverbs in their nature, although not, in point of fact, generated by casual contact of mind with mind in miscellaneous human life. It is altogether probable that, as to its construction, the Book of Pro- verbs partook of both kinds. It is probable that Solomon gathered and recast many proverbs which had sprung from human experi- ence in preceding ages, and were floating past him on the tide of time ; and that he also elaborated many new ones from the material of his own experience. Towards the close of the book, indeed, are preserved some of Solomon's own sayings, that seem to have fallen from his lips in later life, and been gathered by other hands. Even in this one book the proverb appears under considerable diversity of form. Both in the beginning and towards the close, occur arguments, more or less lengthened, of continuous texture. But even in these the several links of the connected chain are cast in the proverbial mould; and the great central mass of the book consists of brief sayings, more or less arranged, indeed, but almost entirely isolated. Considering how great a place proverbs hold in human language, and how great a part they act in human life, it was to be expected that the Spirit would use that instrument, among others, jn con- veying the mind of God to men. Proverbs, like hymns and his- tories, are both in human life and in the Bible in the Bible, because they are in human life. If you wished to convey a message to a number of common people in France, you would not speak in Latin in order to display your own learning; you would speak in French in order to accomplish your object God's will to man is communicated by means of instruments which man already uses, and therefore understands. A greater than Solomon spoke in proverbs. He who knew what was in man sometimes took up that instrument, tc 16 THE BOOK PROVERBS. therewith the secrets of the heart. Some he gathered as they grew in nature, and others he created by his word ; but the old and the new alike are spirit and life, when they drop from the lips of Jesus. Of the proverbs current in the world many are light, and some are wicked. Those of this book are grave and good. God's words are pure, whether he speaks by the prophets of old, or by his own Son in the latter day. " More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold ; sweeter also than honey, and the honey- comb. Moreover, by tfiem is thy servant warned" (Ps. xix. 10, 11). The book from which the following studies are selected is peculiarly rich in "warnings," and the age in which we live peculiarly needs them. " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." III. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.' 1 L 7. JHE royal preacher begins his sermon at the beginning. He intends to discourse largely of knowledge and wisdom in all their aspects, and he lays his foundation deep in "the fear of the Lord." This brief announcement con- tains the germ of a far-reaching philosophy. Already it marks the book divine. The heathen of those days possessed no such doctrines. Solomon had access to a Teacher who was not known in their schools. "The fear of the Lord" is an expression of frequent occurrence throughout the Scriptures. It has various shades of meaning, marked by the circumstances in which it is found ; but in the main it implies a right state of heart toward God, as opposed to the alienation of an unconverted man. Though the word is "fear," it does not exclude a filial confidence, and a conscious peace. There may be such love as shall cast all the torment out of the fear, and yet leave full bodied, in a human heart, the reverential awe which creatures owe to the Highest One. "There is for-. giveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." " Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints ; for there is no want to them that fear him ! " "I am the Lord thy God;" behold the ground of submissive reverence: "which brought thee up from the land of Egypt;" behold the source of confiding love. What God is inspires awe ; what God has done for his people commands affection. See here the centrifugal and centripetal forces of the moral world, holding the creature reverently distant from the Creator, yet compassing the child about with everlasting love, to keep him near a Father in heaven. The whole of this complicated and reciprocal relation is often indicated in Scripture by the brief expression, " The fear of God." 18 THE ROOT OF KNOWLEDGE. "Knowledge" and "wisdom" are not distinguished here; at least they are not contrasted. Both terms may be employed to designate the same thing ; but when they are placed in antithesis, wisdom is the nobler of the two. Knowledge may be possessed in large measure by one who is destitute of wisdom, and who con- sequently does no good by his attainments, either to himself or his neighbours. A lucid definition of both, in their specific and distinct applications, is embodied in a proverb of this book, xv. 2, " The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright." The two terms taken together indicate, in this text, The best knowledge wisely used for the highest ends. What is the relation which subsists between the fear of the Lord and true wisdom 1 The one is the foundation, the other the imposed superstructure; the one is the sustaining root, the other the sustained branches ; the one is the living fountain, the other the issuing stream. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge : the mean- ing is, he who does not reverentially trust in God, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. His knowledge is partial and distorted. Whatever acquisitions in science he may attain, if his heart depart from the living God, he abides an ignorant man. He who in his heart says " No God," is a fool, however wise he may be in the estimation of the world, and his own. But how does this judgment accord with facts'? Have not some Atheists, or at least Infidels, reached the very highest attainments in various departments of knowledge 1 ? It is true that some men, who remain willingly ignorant of God, who even blaspheme his name and despise his word, have learned many languages, have acquired skill in the theory and application of mathematics, have stored their memories with the facts of history, and the maxims of politics this is true, and these branches of knowledge are not less precious because they are possessed by men whose whole life turns round on the pivot of one central and all-pervading error; but after this concession, our position remains intact. These men possess some fragments of the super- structure of knowledge, but they have not the foundation ; they possess some of the branches, but they have missed the root The knowledge of God his character and plans, his hatred of sin, his law of holiness, his way of mercy is more excellent than all THE ROOT OF KNOWLEDGE. 19 that an unbelieving philosopher has attained. If it be attainable, and if a Christian has reached it, then is a Christian peasant wiser than the wisest who know not God. It is a knowledge more deeply laid, more difficult of attainment, more fruitful, and more comprehensive, than all that philosophers know. What right has an unbelieving astronomer to despise a Chris- tian labourer as an ignorant man 1 Let them be compared as to the point in question, the possession of knowledge. Either is ignorant of the other's peculiar department, but it is an error to suppose the astronomer's department the higher of the two. The Christian knows God; the astronomer knows certain of his material works. The Christian knows moral, the astronomer physical laws. The subjects of the Christian's knowledge are as real as the heavenly bodies. The knowledge is as difficult, and perhaps, in its higher degrees, as rare. It reaches further, it lasts longer, it produces greater results. The astronomer knows the planet's path ; but if that planet should burst its bonds, and wander into darkness, his knowledge will not avail to cast a line around the prodigal and lead him home. He can mark the degrees of divergence, and predict the period of total loss, but after that he has no more that he can do. The Christian's knowledge, after it has detected the time, manner, and extent of the fallen spirit's aberration, avails further to lay a new bond unseen around him, soft, yet strong, which will compel him to come in again to his Father's house and his Father's bosom. The man who knows that, as sin hath reigned unto death, even so grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, possesses a deeper, more glorious, and more potential knowledge than the man who calculates the courses of the planets, and predicts the period of the comet's return. Men speak of the stupendous effects which knowledge, in the department of mechanical philosophy, has produced on the face of the world, and in the economy of human life ; but the per- manence of these acquisitions depends on the authority of moral laws in the consciences of men. If there were no fear of God, there would be no reverence for moral law in the bulk of man- kind. If moral restraints are removed from the multitude, society reverts to a savage state. Inventions in art, though once attained, are again lost, when a community feed on venison, and 20 THE ROOT OF KNOWLEDGE. clothe themselves with skins. So, " the fear of the Lord " is a fundamental necessity, on which high attainments, even in mate- rial prosperity, absolutely depend. True knowledge in the spirit- ual department, as to the authority, the sanction, and the rule of morality, is a greater thing than true knowledge in the material department, for the moral encircles and controls the economic in the affairs of men. The man whose knowledge begins and ends with matter and its laws, has got a superstructure without a foundation. In that learning the enduring relations of man as an immortal have no place, and the fabric topples over when the breath of life goes out. But this beginning of knowledge, resting on the being and attributes of God, and comprehending all the relations of the creature, is a foundation that cannot be shaken. On that solid base more and more knowledge will be reared, high as heaven, wide as the universe, lasting as eternity. The knowledge of God is the root of knowledge. When branches are cut from a tree and laid on the ground at a certain season, they retain for a time a portion of their sap. I have seen such branches, when the spring came round, pushing forth buds like their neighbours. But very soon the slender stock of sap was exhausted, and as there was no connection with a root, so as to procure a new supply, the buds withered away. How unlike the buds that spring from the branches growing in the living root ! This natural life is like a severed branch. The knowledge that springs from it is a bud put forth by the moisture residing in itself. When life passes, it withers away. When a human soul is, by the regeneration, " rooted in Him," the body's dissolution does not nip its knowledge in the bud. Transplanted into a more genial clime, that knowledge will flourish for ever. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, what it will grow to. IV. Jfrnnilg. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother." i. 8. [HE first and great commandment is the fear of God; and the second, which is next to it, and like to it, is obedience to parents. Wherever the root is planted, this is the first fruit which it bears. The teaching of the Decalogue, and of the Proverbs, though circumstantially different, is essentially the same. On the one hand we have the legislator formally recording a code of laws ; on the other, the aged, prosperous, and witty monarch collecting the best sayings that had been current at his court in that Augustan age of Hebrew literature. The cast of the writings corresponds with the position of the men ; yet there are evident marks of the same Spirit as the teacher, and the same truth as the lesson. The ten commandments are divided into two tables. The first lays the foundation of all duty in our relation to God, and the second rears the superstructure in the various offices of love between man and his fellow. In the Decalogue the fear of God lies deepest as the root; and of the manifold duties which man owes to man, the branch that springs forth first is filial love. It is precisely the same here. The beginning of the command- ment is, " Fear the Lord ;" and the earliest outcome is, " My son, hear the instruction of thy father." This verse of the Proverbs flows from the same well-spring that had already given forth the fifth commandment. God honours his own ordinance, the family. He gives parents rank next after himself. Filial love stands near, and leans on godliness. God is the author of the family constitution. He has con- ceived the plan, and executed it. Its laws are stamped in nature, 22 THE FAMILY. and declared in the word. The equal numbers of the sexes born into the world, the feebleness of childhood at first, and the returning frailty of age, are so many features of the family insti- tute left by the Creator indented on his work. They intimate not obscurely the marriage of one man with one woman, the sup- port of children by parents, and the support of decayed parents by the children grown. There are many such laws deeply im- printed in nature; and in nature, too, a terrible vengeance is stored up, which bursts with unerring exactitude on the head of the transgressor. One of the wonders of that little world in the dwelling is the adaptation by which all the powers of the elder children are exerted for the protection of the youngest. A boisterous and impulsive boy, able and willing to maintain his rights by force of arms against a rival older than himself, may be seen to check suddenly the embryo manhood that was spurting prematurely out, and put on a mimic motherliness, the moment that the infant appears, bent on a journey across the room, and tottering un- steady by. A condescending look, and a winning word, and a soft arm around, all the miniature man is put forth in self-for- getting benevolence. How exquisitely contrived is this machinery in nature, both for protecting the feeble thing that receives the kindness, and softening the rude hand that bestows it! There is fine material here for parents to watch and work upon. The stem is soft, you may train it; the growth is rapid, you must train it now. In proportion as men have adopted and carried out the ordi- nance in its purity, have the interests of society prospered. All deviations are at once displeasing to God and hurtful to men. The polygamy of Eastern peoples has made the richest portions of the earth like a howling wilderness. The festering sores opened in the body of the community by the licentiousness of individuals among ourselves, make it evident that if the course, which is now a too frequent exception, should become the general rule, society itself would soon waste away. It is chiefly by their effects in deranging the order of families that great manufactories deteriorate a community. Though the Socialist bodies, being so sickly and diseased in constitution, have never lived much beyond infancy amongst us ; yet, as they are founded on a reversal of the family THE FAMILY. 23 law, their effects, in as far as they have produced effects, are misery and ruin. The Romish priesthood, abjuring the divinely provided companionship of the household, and leaving no alterna- tive between solitude and sin, have ever been like a pin loose in the circling machinery of society, tearing every portion as it passes by. In the constitution of nature there is a self-acting apparatus for punishing the transgression of the family laws. The divine institute is hedged all round. The prickles tear the flesh of those who are so foolish as to kick against them. In practice, and for safety, keep families together as long as it is possible. When the young must go forth from a father's house, let a substitute be provided as closely allied to the normal institu- tion as the circumstances will admit. Let a sister be spared to live with the youths, and extemporize an off-shoot family near the great mart of business, with a dwelling that they may call their own. The cutting, though severed from the stem, being young and sapful, will readily strike root, and imitate the parent. This failing, let a lodging be found in a family where the youths will be treated as its members, participating at once in the enjoy- ments and restraints of a home. When the boy must needs be broken off from the parental stem, oh, throw him not an isolated atom on the sea of life that welters in a huge metropolis. Nor pen him up with a miscellaneous herd of a hundred men in the upper Hat of some huge mercantile establishment, a teeming islet lapsed into barbarism, with the waters of civilization circling all around. If you do not succeed in getting the severed branch engrafted into some stock that shall be an equivalent to the family, and so exercise the natural affections, the natural affections checked, will wither up within, or burst forth in wickedness. The youth will be ruined himself, and the ruined youth will be an element of corruption to fester in the heart of the society that neglected him. Honour thy father and thy mother. This is the pattern shown in the mount. The closer we keep to it, the better will it be both for the individual and the community. God is wiser than men. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right, and all right things are profitable. To violate the providential laws is both a crime and a blunder. Love to parents ranks next under reverence to God. That finst 24 THE FAMILY. and highest commandment is like the earth's allegiance to the sun by general law ; and filial obedience is like day and night, summer and winter, budding spring and ripening harvest, on the earth's surface. There could be none of these sweet changes and beneficent operations of nature on our globe if it were broken away from the sun. So when a people burst the first and greatest bond when a people cast off the fear of God, the family relations, with all their beauty and benefit, disappear. We may read this lesson in the fortunes of France. When the nation threw off the first commandment, the second went after it. When they repudi- ated the fear of God, they could not retain conjugal fidelity and filial love. Hence the wreck and ruin of all the relations between man and man. As well might they try to make a new world as to manage this one wanting the first and second, the primary and subordinate moral laws of its Maker. V. Jftlial ITofo a 'For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thj ueck." i. 9. seems an instinct of humanity to put ornaments upon the person. It is greatly modified in its development by circumstances, but it is certainly a uniform tend- ency of our nature. It does not rank high among the exercises of the human faculties, yet it is quite above the reach of all in- ferior creatures. The propensity is fully developed in tribes that lie lowest in the scale of humanity; yet no germ of it can be traced in species that form the culminating point in the brute creation. By so many and so various marks may be known the abrupt and absolute separation between men who have fallen the lowest, and other sentient beings that occupy the summit of their scale. Ornaments on the fallen, like many other innocent things, be- come the occasions of sin, but they are not in their own nature evil It is probable that the pleasure which we derive from them springs originally from some association with moral quali- ties. There is some connection between sensible beauty and moral goodness, although the instances of deception are so numerous as to deprive that connection of all value as a rule of life. To deck with external beauty that which is morally corrupt within, is a cheat which men practise on themselves and others ; but adornment of the person, modest in measure, and adopted instinctively by an innate sense of propriety, is conducive to vir- tue, and consistent with Scripture. Ornaments, however, are mentioned here not for their own sakes, either to commend or forbid them, but as a form of ex- pression to convey emphatically the truth that moral qualities, after all, are the true adornments of a human being. All the 26 FILIAL LOVE A BLOSSOM OF BEAUTY. graces of the Spirit are lovely; but here the foremost of relative duties, a child's reverential regard for a parent, is recommended as an ornament of surpassing beauty. Young men and young women, put that ornament on your heads twine that chain of gold around your necks ! These jewels from heaven, set deep within your souls, and glancing at every turn through the trans- parency of an unaffected life, will do more to make your persons attractive than all the diamonds that ever decked a queen. The world and its history teem with types of heaven. Beauty, and the love that fastens on it, are types, and they have their antitypes on high. The ransomed Church is the bride of the Lamb, and she is adorned for her husband. When the adorning is complete, she is all glorious, and the King greatly desires her beauty. When he presents unto himself a church without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, then shall he see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Put on now, son ! daughter ! put on these beautiful gar- ments ; love, obey, cherish, reverence your parents. These are in God's sight of great price. They are valued not only by the spiritually minded disciples of Jesus, but even by every man of sense around you. They are thought becoming by ah 1 but fools. These ornaments will not be out of date when time has run its course. They will be worn on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, when the fashion of this world shall have passed away. Over against this beaming beauty, of similar shape and size, a dark shadow stands. Whithersoever that comely body turns, this ghastly spectre follows it. It is a daughter, emerging into womanhood, with ruddy cheek and sparkling eye with beads on her neck and bracelets on her arms who has so crushed a mother's heart by constantly trampling down its desires, that the disconsolate mother never utters now the reproof which she knows would be despised. Personal beauty, aided by costly ornaments, cannot make that creature gainly. The deformity within will make itself felt through all the finery. The evil spirit that possesses the heart will glance from the eye, and tinkle on the tongue, in spite of every effort to act the angel. Every mind that retains in any measure a healthful moral tone, will, FILIAL LOVE A BLOSSOM OF BEAUTY. 27 in close contact with such a character, infallibly be sensible of a discord. Felt repulsive, she will be repelled. The disobedient daughter will gravitate down to the companionship of those who, having no sense of harmony, recoil not from a spirit out of tune. She is miserable, and knows not what ails her. She has broken that commandment which holds a promise in its hand, and been thrown over on the barbs of the counterpart curse. Those who see her impaled alive there, should learn that the moral laws of God have avenging sanctions, even in the powers of nature. Godliness is profitable unto all things. The first commandment is fruitful, even in this life ; and the second is like it : like it in its heavenly origin like it in its holy character like it in its glad results. Honour thy father and thy mother ; this is an ornament of solid gold. Unlike the gilding of superficial accom- plishments, the more rudely it is rubbed, the more brightly it glows. VI. Jfot atrtr % Jfigfii* My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not" i. 10. [IS verse, in brief compass and transparent terms, reveals the foe and the fight. It is a Father's voice. It speaketh unto us as unto children. With a kindness and wisdom altogether paternal, it warns the youth of the Danger that assails him, and suggests the method of Defence. The three preceding verses determine for us the character of the persons whom Solomon has here in his eye. They are not the ignorant, the outcast, the profligate. The stages over which he travels before he reaches this warning, show that he addresses the well-conditioned and hopeful portion of the community. In the seventh verse we have "the beginning of wisdom" laid in the fear of God ; in the eighth, the earliest outcome from that un- failing source, the obedience of children to their parents ; in the ninth, the beauty of this filial obedience, as the most winsome ornament that the young can wear. We have wisdom presented first in its sustaining root, next in its swelling buds, and last in its opening bloom of beauty. The preacher fastens upon persons who have had the fear of God early implanted in their hearts, who have reverently obeyed their parents during childhood, and who in youth have been observed by others as adorning the doc- trine of the Saviour. To these, as they are passing out of youth into the responsibilities of manhood, and from a father's house to the wide theatre of the world, he addresses this plain and pun- gent exhortation, " My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." The DANGER is, " If sinners entice thee." There are enticers and enticements ; the fowler and his snare. The enticers of youth may be divided into two great classes, * Tills chapter, with some additions, is published separately, as an Address to Young Mca THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 29 the internal and the external. There are a multitude of evil thoughts in the little world within, and a multitude of evil men in the great world without. The sinners that entice from within are the man's own thoughts and desires. There is quite an army of these sinners in a young man's breast. Thoughts have wings. They pass and repass un- observed. They issue forth from their home in the heart, and expatiate over every forbidden field, and return like doves to their windows, through the air, leaving no track of their path. These thoughts become acquainted with sin. They are accus- tomed to visit the haunts of vice without detection. They revel unchecked in every unclean thing. They open up the way, and prepare a trodden path on which the man may follow. A gos- samer thread is attached to an arrow, and shot through the air unseen, over an impassable chasm. Fixed on the other side, it is sufficient to draw over a cord ; the cord draws over a rope ; the rope draws over a bridge, by which a highway is opened for all comers. Thus is the gulf passed that lies between the goodly character of a youth fresh from his father's family, and the daring heights of iniquity on which veteran libertines stand. The sober youth stands on the solid platform of religious and moral worth. No one can think it possible that he should go over to the other side. But from the brink on this side he darts over a thought which makes itself fast to something on these forbidden regions. The film no one saw, as it sped through the air ; but it has made good a lodgment in that kingdom of darkness, and the deeds of wickedness will quickly follow when the way has been prepared. "Out of the heart," said He who knows it (Matt. xv. 19), "pro- ceed evil thoughts." Yes that is what we expected ; but what come out next ] " Murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." A horrible gang ! How quickly they come on ! How closely they follow their leaders ! Murders and adulteries march forth unblushingly ; but they follow in the wake of evil thoughts. Oh, if the fountain were cleansed, the streams of life would be pure ! So thought David, when, in an agony of grief, despairing of his own efforts, he cried, " Create in me a clean heart, God ! " This is the root of the evil, and no cure will be thorough or lasting that does not reach and re- move it. 30 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. The sinners that entice from without are fellow-men, who, having gone astray themselves, are busy leading others after them. The servants of Satan seem to be diligent and successful. When a society, associated for economical or benevolent purposes, desires to enlarge the number of its members, a common method is to request every one to bring in two others. Thus the mem- bership is tripled by a single effort. This seems to be the prin- ciple of administration adopted by the god of this world. All his subjects are busy. " Ye are of your father the devil, and the deeds of your father ye will do." The deed most characteristic that the father of lies ever did, was to lead others after him into sin. To entice into sin is specifically " the deed " of the devil, and that deed his children will instinctively do. An evil-doer has a craving for company in his wickedness. He cannot enjoy solitary crime. He is impelled to seek company, as a thirsty man is impelled to seek water. It is his vocation to draw others after him into sin. By a natural necessity, the licentious recruit among the ranks of the virtuous ; the drunken among the ranks of the sober. An enemy is amongst us : let the inexperienced beware. How great the danger that every youth incurs as he issues forth from his parents' control, to take his place in the race of life, and on the stage of time ! A dreadful conspiracy is organized against him. It is designed and directed by spiritual wickedness in high places ; its agents swarm unseen in his own heart, a legion of evil spirits, as it were, possessing him already. Co-operating with these intestine foes, are the whole host of evil-doers who come in contact with him in the world. Young man, this life is not the place to walk at ease in. If you slumber there, the Phili- stines will be upon you. Though you have a Samson's strength, they will put out your eyes, and make you grind in meanest slavery, and triumph in your misery and death. It is a power of nature that is taken and employed to enslave men. The disposition in youth to go together is a law of the human constitution. Men are gregarious. The principle of association is implanted in their nature, and is mighty according to the direction it gets, for good or evil. This great power gener- ally becomes a ready agency of ill. How faithfully a youth clings to a companion who has obtained an influence over him! THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 31 It often happens that the more vigorous mind has teen imbued with wickedness. The very abandonment of that leading spirit adds to his power. There is a reckless hardihood attained, where the restraints of conscience are unknown, that acts like a charm on softer minds. One bold, bad spirit often holds many gentler natures, as it were, in a mesmerized state. They are not masters of themselves. They have been drawn into the vortex of the more powerful orb ; destitute of an independent will, they flutter fascinated around him. The enticements, like the enticers, are manifold. As addressed to well-educated, well-conducted youth, they are always more or less disguised. The tempter always flings over at least his ugliest side some shred of an angel's garment. An enemy who desired to destroy you by your own deed, would not lead you straight to a yawning precipice, and bid you cast yourself down. He would rather lead you along a flowery winding path, until you should insensibly be drawn into a spot which would give way beneath you. Enticements to moral evil will generally take that form. You will not be persuaded all at once to plunge into deeds of darkness, knowing them to be such. Few young men who have enjoyed a religious education come to a sudden stand, and at once turn their back upon God and godliness. Most of those who fall, diverge at first by imperceptible degrees from the path of right- eousness. When it is intended, by a line of rails, to conduct a train off the main trunk, and turn it aside in another direction, the branch-line at first runs parallel with the trunk. It goes alongside for a space in the same direction ; but when it has thus got fairly off, then it turns more rapidly round, and bounds away at right angles to its former course. As engineers avoid the physical, so the tempters avoid the moral difficulty. An abrupt turn is not attempted in either case. The object is far more surely attained by a gently graduated divergence. The import- ance of the ancient rule, Obsta principiis (resist the beginnings), can never be over-rated. The prize is great. Everything is at stake. Life is at stake, both the lives. Time and eternity, body and soul ; all that you have or hope, is to be lost or won. Watch the begin- nings of evil " Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- tion." We must name and briefly describe some of these snares. 32 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. Their name is Legion. They cannot be numbered. "We shall uncover and expose two from among the multitude of betrayers that lurk beside your path, one peculiar to large towns, the other common to all places. High in the list of dangerous enticements to the young stands the theatre. We shall not waste time in a dispute regarding the possibility of obtaining innocent and harmless dramatic entertain- ments. Enough for our present purpose is the fact that there are none such. The idea wherewith some would fain excuse their in- dulgence, is a stage managed in accordance with pure morals. It is a vain imagination. Those who build and manage theatres do so with the view of a good investment and profitable employment. They know the tastes of their customers. They must either con- form to these tastes, or lose money by opposing them. A theatre conducted on such principles as would make it safe to the morals of 'youth would not pay its proprietor. There are many enlight- ened and benevolent citizens who rear and maintain institutions which do not bear their own charges. They submit to loss from zeal for the public good : but these men never choose theatres as the instruments of elevating the community. We scarcely know anything that would make us fear more for a young man than to hear that he was in the habit of attending the theatre. We know that the practice, besides its own proper evil, would not long stand alone. A man cannot take fire into his bosom without being burned. Does the impatient spirit of youth attempt to ward off our word, by averring that we would smother the joys of the young under the gloomy cloud of religion ? Oh, for a balance that could nicely discriminate the degrees of happiness that each enjoys ! We would enter the competition with the merriest frequenter of the stage. We would set any sensible, God-fearing youth in com- petition with him, and show that, even as to present gladness, the theatre is a cheat and a lie. Once, on a Sabbath morning, as the writer was going to church through the streets of a large city, he saw, flaunting gaudily on the walls, the stage placards of the preceding Saturday evening. In large, lying letters, they an- nounced, "A Cure for the Heartache." Avaunt, deceivers! Ye often inoculate your victims with the poison of that disease, but ye have no power to take it away. Can the company of rakea THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 33 and courtesans minister consolation to a mind distressed 1 Will they parody the griefs that wring a human heart? Will they make sport of that deep-set disease that Jesus died to heal 1 ? When a sinner's heart is aching, he must bend his steps to another place he must seek the skill of another Physician ! W T e have sometimes thought the matter of attending the theatre, and similar scenes of midnight merriment, might be profitably put in the form of a dilemma, thus : The unconverted (having other work before them) have no time to be there. The converted (having other joys within them) have no inclina- tion. The customs of society encouraging the use of intoxicating drinks constitute one of the most formidable dangers to youth in the present day. All are aware that drunkenness, in our country, is the most rampant vice. How broad and deep is the wave whereby it is desolating the land ! It is not our part, at present, to register an array of facts tending to show how many are held helpless in its chain, and how deeply that chain cuts into the life of the victim. The extent and the virulence of the malady we shall not prove, but assume to be known. Our special business is to remind the young of the enticements by which they are led into that horrible pit. It is specially true of this potent enemy, that it makes its approaches unsuspected and by slow degrees. We have known many drunkards. We have witnessed scenes of wretchedness which haunt our memory in shapes of terror still We have seen a youth brought down by it from a place of honour and hopefulness, laid upon his bed uttering hideous groans, twisting himself, in mingled bodily and mental agony, like a live eel upon a hook. We have seen an old man, who knew that drink was making his life-springs fail fast away, yet, in spite of threats and persuasion, going drunk to bed every night. We have heard that man, when sober, say, "If there is one place of hell worse than another, it must be mine, for I know the right, and do the wrong ;" and yet he drank himself to death. We have seen a female, with a gentle air and a tender frame, stand and tell that she had a batch of demons within her, uttering loud voices, and declaring that they had her surely bound over to hell. Reason had fled. Drink had brought madness on. And yet, tf) 3 34 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. whenever the delirium abated, she returned to the drink agaia What need of cases 1 We have seen drunkenness in most of ita stages, and forms, and effects; but we never yet met a drunkard who either became a drunkard all at once, or who designed to be- come one. In every case, without exception, the dreadful demon vice has crept over the faculties by slow degrees, and at last sur- prised the victim. The sinners with whom he kept company did not entice him to become a sot in a single night. They only invited him to go into cheerful company. They suggested that religion, when rightly understood, did not forbid a merry even- ing. He went, and the evening was merry. Strong drink con- tributed to its merriment. He was sober. He had no intention of becoming a drunkard, either then or on any subsequent occa- sion. A drunkard, however, he now is. He is in the pit, and who shall pull him out ! May God have mercy on the lost immortal, for he is beyond all help of man ! Let young men, as they value their souls, beware of these Satan-invented customs prevalent in society, which multiply the occasions of tasting strong drink. These habits of sipping so frequently, on every occasion of joy or sorrow, of idle ease or excessive toil, in freezing cold or in scorching heat these habits of a little now and a little then, seem to have been invented with fiendish ingenuity, to beget at last, in the greatest possible number, that fiery thirst which, when once awakened, will merci- lessly drag its subject down through a dishonoured life to an early grave. Leaning on the bank of the majestic river a few miles above Niagara, a little boat was floating on a summer day. A mother plied her industry in a neighbouring field. Her daughter, too young yet for useful labour, strolled from her side to the water's edge. The child leaped into the boat. It moved with her weight. The sensation was pleasant. Softly the boat glided down on the smooth bosom of the waters. More and more plea- sant were the sensations of the child. The trees on the shore were moving past in rows. The sunbeams glittered on the water, scarcely broken by the ripple of the stream. Softly and silently, but with ever-growing speed, the tiny vessel shot down the river with its glad unconscious freight. The mother raised her bended back and looked. She saw her child carried quickly by the cur- THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 35 rent toward the cataract. She screamed, and ran. She plunged into the water. She ventured far, but failed. The boat is caught in the foaming rapids it is carried over the precipice! The mother's treasure is crushed to atoms, and mingles with the spray that curls above Niagara. This is not a fiction; it is a fact reported in the newspapers of the day. But, though itself a sub- stantive event, it serves also as a mirror to see the shadow of others in. The image that you see glancing in that glass is real. It is not single. It may be seen, thousand upon thousand, stretch- ing away in reduplicating rows. Pleasant to the unconscious youth are the merry cup and the merry company. Lightly and happily he glides along. After a little the motion becomes uneasy. It is jolting, jumbling, sickly. He would fain escape now. Vain effort ! He is rocked a while in the rapids, and then sucked into the abyss. If many thousands of our population were annually lost in Niagara, the people, young and old, would conceive and manifest an instinctive horror of the smooth deceitful stream above it, which drew so many to their doom. Why, oh, why do the young madly intrust themselves to a more deceitful current, that is drawing a greater number to a more fearful death ? Such, young men, are some of your dangers. You should be ready to consider earnestly the means of escape. Even this cursory glance over the battle-field, and the array of the foe, should stir us up to "prove" both the armour that we wear, and our aptitude in using it. If the result of such survey should be a sense of utter weakness in presence of the adversary, and a cry from the helpless to the Lord God of hosts, it will be well : our labour will not be lost. The DEFENCE prescribed is, " Consent thou not." How may one successfully contend against these formidable foes? Observe the form of the Scripture injunction, " If sinners entice thee, con- sent thou not" It is a blunt, peremptory command. Your method of defence must be different from the adversary's mode of attack. His strength lies in making gradual approaches; yours in a resistance, sudden, resolute, total. For example, let a man who is now a drunkard look back on his course. He will find that he came into that state by imperceptible, unsuspected ad- vances. But if ever he get out of that state, it is not by slow 36 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. degrees that he will make his escape. It is not by lessening gradually the quantity of strong drink till he wean himself from the poison, and creep back from madness into himself again. The enemy can play at the graduated system better than he. His only safety lies in an abrupt, resolute refusal. The same method that is best suited for recovery is also best for prevention. It is not by partial compliance and polite excuses that you can successfully repel enticements to sin. This is an adversary with whom you are not obliged to keep terms. Gather from Scripture the attitude you should assume, and the language you should hold: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" "Save your- selves from this untoward generation." " Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and I will receive you." Much depends on the round, blunt refusal, the unfaltering, undiluted, dignified " No" of one who fears God more than the sneer of fools. Many stumble from neglect of this principle. They intend to refuse. They will not go all the way into sin ; but they will resist politely they will keep terms with the enticers. They are not willing to let it be known that they are so timid about their own integrity. It might not be reckoned manly. They are like those who were disciples secretly for fear of the Jews. Your enticers are honour- able men, and they would be hurt if you should meet their invitation by a prompt negative, and give your reasons. Well : and is it not enough for the disciple to be " as his Lord ? " He was 4n the same position : " Master, in so saying thou condemnest us also." Out with it unreservedly, whenever and wherever com- panions would wile you into evil. If you begin to pare away the edges of your declinature, lest it should bear too hardly upon your tempters if you make excuses that are not the real reasons, in order that under cover of them you may glide out of the way without the disagreeable shock of a direct collision you may escape for that time ; but some day your excuse will fail, and your foot will be taken. " If sinners entice thee, consent not." The shortest answer is the best. They speak of consecrated places; we believe there are con- secrated spots on this earth, and desecrated spots too. That spot is consecrated in the eye of God and all the good, where a con- demned transgressor has been born again, and taken into the number of God's children ; that spot is desecrated which has beeD THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 37 the turning-point where an immortal chose death rather than life. Many such places there are, both in rural lanes and in the city's thoroughfares. A youth is leaving his place of business in the evening, and making his way homewards. At a crossing he meets a knot of companions, who hail and stop him. They are con- vening to a place of danger, and deeds of sin. They invite him to go. He replies that he is going home. They insist they can- not go without him. As he hangs back and hesitates, a leading spirit of the club suddenly cries out he knows the reason: " Our friend is going to set up for saint he is going home to pray." A loud laugh runs round the ring. The youth is not prepared for this. He desired rather to go home, but he is not yet a good soldier of Jesus Christ. He cannot endure hardness. He gives way at this last thrust, and goes with them. That night he parts with a good conscience ; and it is but another step to make shipwreck of his faith. That spot where evil spirits embodied formed a circle round the youth, and won him that spot is desecrated. The blood of a soul is there. The writer was standing one day lately among a crowd of visitors under the dome of St. Paul's in London, gazing upward in silence on its grandeur, when a gentleman touched him, and requested him to remove his foot; he then pointed to a small cross mark made by a mason's chisel on the marble pavement, informing the by- standers that a person who cast himself from the dome aloft, had fallen there and died. The group of living beings who had gathered round our informant stood instinctively back and sighed. The living were awed in spirit when they found themselves standing on the spot that had been stained by the blood of a self-murdered man. Oh, if there were marks made in the ground at every place stained by the suicide cf a soul, how thickly dotted the world would be with the startling symbols ! how fearfully and tremblingly would the living thread their way between ! How much of the low spirits, the moody mind, the miserable incapacity, which abound, has been induced by violation of God's laws both the natural marked in our constitution, and the moral revealed in the Bible ! Appetites indulged grow strong. Beware lest the cub which you fondle and feed, insensibly become the lion which devours you. 38 THE FOE AND THE F1OHT. Friendship sealed by companionship in sin will not last long. It is not worth having. It deserves not to be known by that noble name. Friends that are glued together by the slime of their lusts will be torn asunder soon; and these foul exudations that seem now to bind them into one, will become the fuel to a flame of mutual hate, when first a spark of disagreement falls. They will bite and devour one another. The degree of their pri- vacy to each other's wickedness will be the measure of their dislike and distrust. After all, above all, including all, a reason why you should not consent to go with sinners is, you thereby displease God, crucify Christ, grieve the Spirit, and cast your own soul away. The means of resisting. We address those who have obtained a religious education. We do not speak here of the first and best means, the word of God and prayer. We assume that you know all that we could tell you regarding these, and only offer some suggestions on subordinate topics such as refinement of manners, profitable study, benevolent effort, and improving company. Refinement of manners. I know well that it is the state of the heart within that decides the outward demeanour ; but I know also that the outward demeanour has a reflex influence back upon the heart. I do not say that politeness will do as a substitute for religion; but politeness is of use as the handmaid of religion. Indeed, rude speech and manners are both the signs of moral evil already existing, and the causes of increasing it In many districts of the country, and among certain classes, rude habits are the open inlets to great crimes. To cultivate a refined and tasteful form of speech and manners would become a shield to protect from many prevailing temptations. Christianity, with its living power in the heart, will produce refinement in the manners ; and outward refinement will throw a shield round inward principle, and keep it out of harm's way. We do not mean to encourage show and fashion. The fop is most wretched himself, and most repulsive to an onlooker; but we would not avoid this extreme by leaping into the extreme of vulgar rudeness. We would not like a youth to be gilded; but neither would we like him to be rough and foul with rust. We would have him polished; that is the medium. SSome people are rusty: their harsh, ungainly manners eat out whatever is good in their own character, arid saw the very flesh of THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 39 those who come near them. Some people, again, are gilt : a very brilliant exterior they present, but the first brush of hard usage rubs off the gilding, and reveals the base material beneath. A third class are polished ; the polish, indeed, is on the surface, but it is a polish on the surface of solid worth ; and in the multifa- rious crosses of human life, the more it is rubbed the brighter it grows. This is the thing : not a gilding to hide the baseness, but a polish to set off and make more useful the real substantial excellence of the inner man. Even when the material is sound to the core, a polish on the surface both fits it for use and pro- tects it from injury. If we have two youths equal as to strength and soundness of Christian principle within, but unequal as to habits of refinement in intercourse with others, he who has out- ward politeness added to inward worth will be the more useful and the more safe. Profitable study. Occupation goes far as a means of safety. Add every day something to your store of knowledge. Study alternately books, and men, and things. Mere book-reading is not enough, without reflection and observation. Again, mere observation is not enough, if you do not enlarge your resources by the treasures which books contain. Both are best. You have many opportunities. You need not at any time be in want of a useful book. From experience we are able to say that a book perused intelligently, and with appetite in youth, will retain its hold better than information acquired at a later day. The few books to which we had access when we were young arc fresh in our memory still, both the good and the bad. The " Pilgrim's Progress " was greedily devoured, and indelibly impressed ; but so also were other books in which a like genius glowed, without a like baptism of holiness. The young of this generation may always have a book to read, and may choose a book that is worthy. Never let the machinery of your mind become rusty. The way to keep it sweet is to keep it going. We have two opposite experiences to look back upon. In our retrospect are times of intellectual idleness, and times of intellectual diligence. We remember precious hours spent by a circle of youthful companions in silly, useless conversation, a sort of slang which was directly vulgarizing, and indirectly demoralizing. We remember, too, times devoted to useful study, we mean the 40 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. leisure hours of a labour-day. The writer remembers the days when^as the dinner-hour was announced, and all gladly threw their work aside, he satisfied a fresh appetite during the first five minutes, and stretched beneath the shade of a tree, occupied the remaining fifty-five reading the wars of Ceesar, and the songs of Virgil, in the language of ancient Rome. It made his afternoon's toil lighter. It made his neighbours respect him; and what is more, young men, it made him respect himself. In virtue of that employment, the enticers did not so frequently assail him ; and he was supplied with an auxiliary means of defence. There are many branches of useful knowledge, easily accessible, from which you may choose, each according to his taste. We earnestly coun- sel young men to scour up, and keep in use all the powers of understanding and memory which God has given them. It will sweeten your labour. It will be something softer to lean on between your flesh and the iron instruments of toil. How great the privileges of youth in this country, and at the present day ! How great is the waste, if the museums, libraries, and public reading-rooms be not turned to good account ! Benevolent effort. Every one, young and old, rich and poor, should always be trying to do some good. There is abundant opportunity, if there be the willing mind. Try to live in the world so that you will be missed when you leave it. More especially if any young man trusts in Jesus, and loves souls, these affections will supply the impulse, and keep him going. Providence on God's part, and prudence on his, will soon shape out some useful work that he is able to do. You have not the gifts and graces to conduct with effect missionary work among the godless and ignorant? Well, if you have not the ten talents, are you willing, without the shame of pride, to labour in the lay- ing out of one? Will you become librarian, and distribute a few soiled books into more soiled hands in a needy district, at a stated hour on a Saturday evening 1 You are not clever enough to teach a school of destitute children, nor rich enough to pay another ? Well, will you be the whipper-in of the ragged parliament for a given lane, and see that none of the honourable members be absent from the lesson] If there were but the willing mind, every volunteer could be put into harness, so that his strength would uot be overtasked on the one hand, nor wasted on the other, THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 41 Over on the enemy's side all hands are called out, and every one is made to contribute to the mass of evil : the children of light should be wiser than they. Improving company. It is of great practical importance that young men have friends who will encourage and direct them. Union is strength. In the battle of life the want of a sym- pathizing companion may be the very point on which an other- wise brave combatant may at last give way. In this fight as well as others, "shoulder to shoulder" is a most potent principle, both for the defence and the onset. Here and there in history you may read of some hero, who single-handed has foiled an army ; but, taking the common standard of humanity, even a brave man is easily overpowered by numbers when he stands alone. There are some points of analogy between that warfare and ours. To most men the sympathy of tried friends is a substantial support in the conflict with moral evil. Eight-principled, true-hearted companions are often "the shields of the earth," which the all- ruling God has at his disposal, and throws around a youth to protect him from the fiery darts of the wicked one. But though the society of the good is an instrument of protec- tion not to be despised, it is still subordinate. There is another Companion. There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. " Call upon me in the day of trouble : I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me" (Ps. 1. 15). That He might get into communion with us, and we with him, God was manifested in the flesh. The man Christ Jesus, God with us, this is the companion by whose side a young man will be infallibly safe. We believe never youth could be more strongly assailed than Joseph in Potiphar's house. A sinner enticed him, and oh, how many things conspired to give force to the temptation, as if Satan had concentrated all his strength, to break through the chain of pur- posed mercy for Israel in the fall of Joseph ! a sinner enticed him, but he consented not. How? Whence did this stripling derive strength to defy and repel such a cunningly-devised and well-directed onset] He was weak like another man, but he had help at hand. He had a companion whom he had chosen, and with whom he walked. God was not far from Joseph; Joseph was not far from God. His answer was, " How can I do this great evil, and sin against God?" There there is Joseph's 42 THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. strength. Young man, you will be as strong as he was, if you lean on the Arm that supported him. The best way of moving a young heart is to please it. The surest way of turning a person from one pleasure is to give him a greater pleasure on the opposite side. A weeping willow, planted by a pond in a pleasure-garden, turns all to one side in its growth, and that the side on which the water lies. No dealing, either with its roots or with its branches, will avail to change its attitude ; but place a larger expanse of water on the opposite side, and the tree will turn spontaneously, and hang the other way. So it is with the out-branching affections of the human heart. Follies and vices on this side are sweet to its depraved nature. The joys are shallow at the best, but it knows no other, and to these it instinctively turns ; to these it grows forth. It acquires a bent in that direction which no human hand can turn. It will never be turned unless you can open a rival joy, wider and deeper, on the other side. And, blessed be God, greater are those joys that are for us, than all that are against us ! The enticements on the side of holiness and safety are in themselves greater than all that Satan can spread out ; and when a distracted mind can see, and a ladened heart can feel them as they are, it is forthwith won. " The love of Christ constraineth us." It is pleasure that can compete with pleasure. When you are entangled by the allure- ments of sin, and oppressed by the terror of wrath, " the joy of the Lord is your strength." The lowliness of the prodigal's place, the hunger he endured, the loathsome appearance of the husks and the swine, these things, doubtless, made some impression; but, alone, they could not save him. They might have crushed him in despair to the ground, but could not have borne him home in hope. It was the yearning of his father's love, it was the image of his father's open embrace, it was the presentiment of his father's weeping welcome, that drew the prodigal at once from his miseries and his sins. Even the truth of God entering the heart, and fastening on the conscience, has not power to turn a sinner from the error of his ways, while it comes in simply as a terror. What the law could not do, God did by sending his Son. What naked righteousness, with vengeance at its back, failed to do, manifested mercy in Christ achieved. Righteous mercy justice satisfied by Em- THE FOE AND THE FIGHT. 43 manuel's sacrifice, and divine compassion flowing free upon the lost this is the thing of Christ which the Holy Spirit wields as the weapon to win a human heart. This heart, young man, is a space that must and will be occupied. It is the battle-field between Satan and Satan's manifested Destroyer. Within you this holy war must be waged. How long halt ye between two opinions'? Who is on the Lord's side? let him come. Unless Christ dwell in your heart by faith, the enemy will return, or abide, in triumph. You cannot fight the enticements of sinful pleasure in your own strength. These iniquities, like the wind, will carry you away; but under the Captain of your salvation you may fight and win. The deceits and corruptions of your heart, which your own resolutions cannot overcome bring forth these enemies and slay them before Him. Drag forth these enticements of sinners that seemed so fresh and sweet to the carnal eye drag them forth and expose them there; their root will become rottenness, and their blossom will go up like dust. The faces of these tempters that beamed with mirth in the glare of kindled passions, will, when seen in the light of His love, appear hideous as spectres of the night. His entrance into the heart will turn the tide of the conflict ; and He is willing: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man open, I will come in." " Even so : come, Lord Jesua ! " VII f new. 'So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof." i. 19. HESE " ways," as described by Solomon in the preceding verses, are certainly some of the very worst. We have here literally the picture of a robber's den. The per- sons described are of the baser sort : the crimes enumerated are gross and rank : they would be outrageously disreputable in any society, of any age. Yet when these apples of Sodom are traced to their sustaining root, it turns out to be greed of gain. The love of money can bear all these. This scripture is not out of date in our day, or out of place in our community. The word of God is not left behind obsolete by the progress of events. " All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever" (1 Peter i. 24, 25). The Scripture traces sin to its fountain, and deposits the sentence of condemnation there, a sentence that follows actual evil through all its diverging paths. A spring of poisonous water may in one part of its course run over a rough rocky bed, and in another glide silent and smooth through a ver- dant meadow; but, alike when chafed into foam by obstructing rocks, and when reflecting the flowers from its glassy breast, it is the same lethal stream. So from greed of gain from covetous- ness which is idolatry, the issue is evil, whether it run riot in murder and rapine in Solomon's days, or crawl sleek and slimy through cunning tricks of trade in our own. God seeth not as man seeth. He judges by the character of the life stream that flows from the fountain of thought, and not by the form of the channel which accident may have hollowed out to receive it. When this greed of gain is generated, like a thirst in the soul, FILTHY LUCRE. 45 it imperiously demands satisfaction : and it takes satisfaction where- ever it can be most readily found. In some countries of the world still it retains the old-fashioned form of iniquity which Solomon has described : it turns freebooter, and leagues with a band of kindred spirits, for the prosecution of the business on a larger scale. In our country, though the same passion domineer in a man's heart, it will not adopt the same method, because it has cunning enough to know that by this method it could not succeed. Dishonesty is diluted, and coloured, and moulded into shapes of respectability, to suit the taste of the times. We are not hazard- ing an estimate whether there be as much of dishonesty under all our privileges as prevailed in a darker day : we affirm only that wherever dishonesty is, its nature remains the same, although its form may be more refined. He who will judge both mean men and merchant princes requires truth in the inward parts. There is no respect of persons with Him. Fashions do not change about the throne of the Eternal. With Him a thousand years are as one day. The ancient and modern evil doers are reckoned brethren in iniquity, despite the difference in the costume of their crimes. Two men are alike greedy of gain. One of them being expert in accounts, defrauds his creditors, and thereafter drives his carriage ; the other, being robust of limb, robs a traveller on the highway, and then holds midnight revel on the spoil. Found fellow-sinners, they will be left fellow-sufferers. Refined dis- honesty is as displeasing to God, as hurtful to society, and as unfit for heaven, as the coarsest crime. This greed, when full grown, is coarse and cruel. It is not restrained by any delicate sense of what is right or seemly. It has no bowels. It marches right to its mark, treading on every- thing that lies in the way. If necessary in order to clutch the coveted gain, " it taketh away the life of the owners thereof." Covetousness is idolatry. The idol delights in blood. He de- mands and gets a hecatomb of human sacrifices. Among the labourers employed in a certain district to construct a railway, was one thick-necked, bushy, sensual, ignorant, bruta- lized man, who lodged in the cottage of a lone old woman. This woman was in the habit of laying up her weekly earnings in a certain chest, of which she carefully kept the key. The lodger observed where the money lay. After the works were completed 46 FILTHY LUCRE. and the workmen dispersed, this man was seen in the gray dawn of a Sabbath morning stealthily approaching the cottage. That day, for a wonder among the neighbours, the dame did not appear at church. They went to her house, and learned the cause. Her dead body lay on the cottage floor: the treasure- chest was robbed of its few pounds and odd shillings, and the murderer had fled. Afterwards they caught and hanged him. Shocking crime ! to murder a helpless woman in her own house in order to reach and rifle her little hoard, laid up against the winter and the rent ! The criminal is of a low, gross, bestial nature. Be it so. He was a pest to society, and society flung the troubler off the earth. But what of those who are far above him in education and social position, and as far beyond him in the measure of their guilt 1 How many human lives is the greed of gain even now taking away in the various processes of slavery 1 Men who hold a high place, and bear a good name in the world, have in this form taken away the life of thousands for filthy lucre's sake. Murder on a large scale has been and is done upon the African tribes by civilized men for money. The opium traffic, forced upon China by the military power of Britain, and maintained by our merchants in India, is murder done for money on a mighty scale. Opium spreads immorality, imbecility, and death through the teeming ranks of the Chinese populations. The quantity of opium cultivated on their own soil is comparatively small. The government prohibited the introduc- tion of the deadly drug until we compelled them to legalize the traffic. Our merchants brought it to their shores in ship-loads notwithstanding, and the thunder of our cannon opened a way for its entrance through the feeble ranks that lined the shore. Every law of political economy, and every sentiment of Christian charity, cries aloud against nurturing on our soil, and letting loose among our neighbours, that grim angel of death. The greed of gain alone suggests, commands, compels it. How can we expect the Chinese to accept the Bible from us while we bring opium to them in return 1 ? British Christians might bear to China that life for which the Chinese seem to be thirsting, were it not that British merchants are bearing to China that death which the best of her people loathe. A bloated, filthy, half-naked labourer, hanging on at the liar* FILTHY LUCRE, 47 boar, has gotten a shilling for a stray job. As soon as he lias wiped his brow, and fingered the coin, he walks into a shop and asks for whisky. The shopkeeper knows the man knows that his mind and body are damaged by strong drink knows that his family are starved by the father's drunkenness. The shopkeeper eyes the squalid wretch. The shilling tinkles on the counter. With one hand the dealer supplies the glass, and with the other mechani- cally rakes the shilling into the till among the rest. It is the price of blood. Life is taken there for money. The gain is filthy. Feel- ing its stain eating like rust into his conscience, the man who takes it reasons eagerly with himself thus : " He was determined to have it; and if I won't, another will." So he settles the case that occurred in the market-place on earth, but he has not done with it yet. How will that argument sound as an answer to the question, " Where is thy brother?" when it comes in thunder from the judg- ment-seat of God? Oh that men's eyes were opened to know this sin beneath all its coverings, and loathe it in all its disguises ! Other people may do the same, and we may never have thought seriously of the matter; but these reasons, and a thousand others, will not cover sin. All men should think of the character and conse- quences of their actions. God will weigh our deeds ; we should ourselves weigh them beforehand in his balances. It is not what that man has said, or this man has done; but what Christ is, and his members should be. The question for every man through life is, not what is the practice of earth, but what is preparation fur heaven. There would not be much difficulty in judging what gain is right and what is wrong if we would take Christ into our counsels. If people look unto Jesus when they think of being saved, and look hard away from him when they are planning how to make money, they will miss their mark for both worlds. When a man gives his heart to gain, he is an idolater. Money has be- come his god. He would rather that the Omniscient should not be the witness of his worship. While he is sacrificing in this idol's temple, he would prefer that Christ should reside high in heaven, out of sight and out of mind. He would like Christ to be in heaven, ready to open its gates to him, when death at last drives him off the earth ; but he will not open for Christ now that other dwelling-place which he loves a humble and contrite 48 FILTHY LUCRE. heart. " Christ in you, the hope of glory ; " there is the cure of covetousness ! That blessed Indweller, when he enters, will drive out with a scourge, if need be such buyers and sellers as defiled his temple. His still small voice within would flow forth, and print itself on all your traffic, " Love one another, as I have loved you." On this point the Christian Church is very low. The living child has lain so close to the world's bosom that she has overlaid it in the night, and stifled its troublesome cry. After all our fami- liarity with the Catechism, we need yet to learn " what is the chiej end of man," and what should be compelled to stand aside as a secondary thing. We need from all who fear the Lord, a long, loud testimony against the practice of heartlessly subordinating human bodies and souls to the accumulation of material wealth. VIII. lf* Crg 01 Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chW place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scoruers delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge ?" i. 20-22. [HE evil doers are not left without a warning. The warn- ing is loud, public, authoritative. But who is this monitor that claims the submissive regard of men] WISDOM. Wisdom from above is the teacher : the lesson that follows is not after the manner of men. We recognise already the style of that Prophet who came in the fulness of time, speaking as never man spake. It was in this manner that Jesus, in the days of his flesh, stood and cried to the multitude to the simple who loved simplicity, and the scorners who loved scorning " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." Before He was manifested to Israel, His delights were with the sons of men. In the provisions of the well-ordered covenant, He had the means of sounding an alarm in human ears before He became incarnate. He found and used a willing messenger to preach righteousness to rebellious spirits in Noah's days. Neither did He leave Him- self without a witness in the time of Solomon. The eternal Son of God is not only wisdom in himself, He is " made unto us wis- dom." He who was seen by Abraham afar off was heard by Abraham's seed in later days. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. The Word and Wisdom of God made Himself known to men at sundry times, and in divers manners, before He took flesh and dwelt among us. In the Scriptures, Wisdom cried to men. " They testify of me," said Jesus. The prophets all spake of his coming, and prepared his way. The sacrifices offered year by year and day by day con- tinually, proclaimed aloud to each generation the guilt of men, and the way of mercy. The history of Israel, all the days of old, (7) 60 THE CRY OF WISDOM. was itself Wisdom's perennial articulate cry of warning to the rebellious. The plains of Egypt and the Red Sea, Sinai and the Jordan, each had a voice, and all proclaimed in concert the righteousness and mercy that kissed each other in the counsels of God. The things that happened to them happened for ensamples and the things were not done in a corner. In the opening of the gates, in the city's busiest haunts, the proclamation was made to unwilling listeners. The cry of Wisdom in those days of old, if it did not turn the impenitent, was sufficient to condemn them. It was so manifestly from God, and so intelligible to men, that it must have either led them out of condemnation, or left them under it without excuse. But the wisdom of God is a manifold wisdom. While it centres bodily in Christ, and thence issues as from its source, it is reflected and re-echoed from every object and every event. There is a challenge in the prophets, " Oh, earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord ! " The receptive earth has taken in that word, and obediently repeats it from age to age. The stars of heaven and the flowers of earth, facing each other like the opposite ranks of a choral band, hymn, alternate and responsive, the wisdom of God. He hath made all things for Himself. He serves himself of criminals arid their crimes. From many a ruined fortune Wisdom cries, " Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy." From many an outcast in his agonies, as when the eagles of the valley are picking out his eyes, Wisdom cries, " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long." From many a gloomy scaffold Wisdom cries, " Thou shalt not kill." Every law of nature, and every event in history, has a tongue by which Wisdom proclaims God's holiness, and rebukes man's sin. But is there any prophet of the Lord besides these? Is there any other organ by which Wisdom cries to men? There is one. Giving force to all other intimations, there is a prophet of the Lord within every man his own conscience. We are fearfully made. That witness within us is often feared and shunned more than armed men, more than gates and bars, more sometimes than the dungeon, the scaffold, and the drop. It is the case of the ancient king over again; he is a prophet of the Lord, "but I Late him, because he never prophesies good concerning me." Bur conscience proclaiming God's anger against the man's evil, THE CRY OF WISDOM. 51 has not power to make the man good. All the instincts of the transgressor's nature are leagued in an effort to smother the dis- turber, and they generally succeed. It is the conscience sprinkled with the blood of Christ that at once speaks peace and works purity. Three classes of persons seem to be singled out here, and to each is administered an appropriate reproof: 1. The simple who love simplicity; 2. The scorners who delight in scorning; 3. The fools who hate knowledge. 1. The simple who love simplicity. Probably we would not be far from the truth if we should accept this term in the Proverbs as intended to indicate that class of sinners whose leading charac- teristic is the absence of good rather than positive activity in evil. The root of bitterness has not shot forth in any form of outrage- ous vice, but it remains destitute of righteousness. They do not blaspheme God, indeed, but they neglect his salvation, and they cannot escape. Their hearts by a law of inherent evil depart from Him ; He in judgment lets them go, and gives them over. The simple for time are always a numerous class. They cannot be intrusted with money, for it will all go into the hands of the first sharper whom they meet. They will let the day pass, with no provision for the night, and never think it needful until the darkness has fallen down. They will let the summer come and go without laying up a store for the time to come; and when the winter arrives they have neither house nor clothing, neither money nor food. Somehow they did not think of these things ; the sunshine was pleasant while it lasted ; they basked in its rays ; and it did not occur to them that a cloud might soon darken the face of the sky. But the simple for eternity are more numerous stilL While they have food and raiment they pass the time pleasantly, and never think of sin. As for righteousness, they do not feel the want of it, and form no high estimate of its worth. As to the judgment-seat of God, they have lived a long time, and have never seen it yet ; they don't trouble themselves with anticipations of evil. The great white throne has always kept out of their sight, and they keep out of its sight. How many simple ones are going fast forward to death, with no life to triumph over it ! How many are drawing near the border in utter listlessness, as if there were no sin, and no judgment no God, no Heaven, no Hell ! 52 THE CRY OF WISDOM. 2. Tlie scorners who love scorning. This is another feature of the fallen another phase of the great rebellion. This class meet the threatening realities of eternity not by an easy indifference, but by a hardy resistance. They have a bold word ever ready to ward solemn thought away, a sneer at the silliness of a saint, an oath to manifest courage, or a witty allusion to Scripture which will make the circle ring again with laughter. There have been scorners in every age. There are not a few amongst us at the present day. They may be found on both the edges of society : poverty and riches become by turns a temptation to the same sin. It is not only the shop of the artisan that resounds with frequent scoffs : the same sound is familiar in the halls of the rich. Many of the young men who have been edu- cated in affluence belong to this class. They have large posses- sions, and larger prospects ; they wish to enjoy what they have. The triumph of grace in their hearts would dethrone the god of this world, and spoil his goods. The running fire of profane jests proceeds from advanced earth-works which Satan has thrown up around his citadel, in his earnestness not only to keep his goods in safety from the overthrowing power of conversion, but in peace from the troublesome assaults of conviction. Scorners love scorning. The habit grows by indulgence : it becomes a second nature : it becomes the element in which they live. And what gives them confidence 1 Have they by searching found out that there is no God 1 or have they ascertained that He has no punishment in store for the wicked ? No ! they have not settled these questions at all, either to the satisfaction of mankind, or their own. These scoffs are generally parrying strokes to keep convictions away. These smart sayings are the fence to turn aside certain arrows which might otherwise fix their tormenting barbs in the conscience. The scorner is generally not so bold a man as he appears to be. He keeps the truth at arm's length : he strikes at it vehemently before it gets near him. All this betrays a secret sense of weakness : he cannot afford to come into close contact with the sword of the Spirit. These violent gestic- ulations against the truth indicate the unerring instinct of the old man resisting that which advances to destroy him. " What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus; art thou come to torment us before the time?" THE CRY OF WISPOM. 53 3. The fools who hate knowledge. By a comparison of various scriptures in which the term occurs, it appears that fools are those who have reached the very highest degrees of evil. Here it is intimated that they hate knowledge ; and knowledge has its beginning in the fear of God. All the branches springing from that root, and all the sweet fruit they bear, are hateful to fools. The knowledge has cme to men, in as far as to be presented to their minds, and pressed on their acceptance. Some, the simple, never think of it at all ; and others, the scorners, bar its faintest approaches ; but these fools, after it has made its way into the conscience, exclude it from their hearts. They have not been able to keep Truth's heavenly form out of their minds, but they hate it when it comes in. Others only live without Christ, keep- ing Him at a distance ; but these are against Him, after He has been revealed in majesty divine. The emphatic " No God " of the fourteenth psalm indicates, not the despair of a seeker who is unable to find truth, but the anger of an enemy who does not like to retain it. It is not a judgment formed in the fool's under- standing, but a passion rankling in his heart. How long shall all this last ? " How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ? " God is weary of your indifference ; how long will it cleave to you ? How long will a man continue to be regardless of his soul? Till death ? It will certainly be no longer. He who would not cry in hope for mercy to pardon his sin, did cry without hope for a drop of water to cool his tongue. " How long will the scorners delight in their scorning 1 " Will they not cease from blaspheming God, until God, ceasing to be gracious, stop their breath, and take them away 1 If you continue this scorning till your dying day, do you expect to continue it- longer ? Will you make merry with the judgment-seat 1 Will you be able to argue against the wrath of the Lamb 1 " Depart from me, ye cursed" that word will crush the scorning out of the boldest blasphemer. Would that the profane might make the discovery now ; for it will be too late to make it when the day is epent. . " How long shall fools hate knowledge ? " Unless they learn to love it soon, they will hate it for ever. They might learn to love it now; for the same word that rebukes sin reveals mercy. 54 THE CRY OF WISDOM. Well might the fool learn to love the knowledge which presents Christ crucified as the way of a sinner's return ; but if a man do not love knowledge revealing mercy, how shall he love it denounc- ing wrath 1 The only knowledge that can reach the lost is the knowledge that the door is shut. How long will they hate that knowledge ] Evermore. IX. & gebtbal. 'Turn you. afc my reproof: behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you." i. 23. jTJRN you at my reproof : behold, I will pour out my Spirit;" the command and the promise joined, and constituting one harmonious whole. How strictly in concord are the several intimations of the Scriptures ! " Work out your own salva- tion ; for it is God that worketh in you " (Phil, ii 1 2). To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. It is to those who turn that the promise of the Spirit is addressed. These two reciprocate. The Spirit poured out arrests a sinner, and turns him ; then, as he turns, he gets more of the Spirit poured out. The sovereignty of God and the duty of men are both alike real ; and each has its own place in the well-ordered covenant. It is true, that unless a man turn, he will not get God's Spirit poured out; and it is also true, that unless he get God's Spirit poured out, he will not turn. When the dead is recalled to life, the blood, sent circling through the system, sets the valves of the heart a-beating; and the valves of the heart, by their beating, send the life-blood circling throughout the frame. It would be in vain to inquire what was the point in the reciprocating series to which the life-giving impulse was first applied. The mysteries of the human spirit are deeper still than those of the body. The way of God, in the regeneration of man, is past finding out. One {art of it he keeps near himself, concealed by the clouds and darkness that surround his throne ; another part of it he has clearly revealed to our understandings, and pressed on our hearts. His immediate part is to pour out the Spirit ; our immediate part is to turn at his reproof. If, instead of simply doing our part, we presumptuously intrude into his, we shall attain neither. If we reverently regard the promise, and diligently obey the com- 6 A REVIVAL. mand, we shall get and do we shall do and get. We shall get the Spirit, enabling us to turn ; and turn, in order to get more of the Spirit. The command is given, not to make the promise unnecessary, but to send us to it for help. The promise is given, not to supersede the command, but to encourage us in the effort to obey. Turn at his reproof, and hope in his promise j hope in his promise, and turn at his reproof. Religion, when it is real, is altogether a practical thing. It disappoints Satan ; it crucifies the flesh ; it sanctifies the charac- ter ; it glorifies God. It is a thing that acts, and acts mightily. It is a thing, not of words, but of deeds. There is an enormous amount of mere imitation religion amongst us. If there were as great a proportion of counterfeit coin circulating in the kingdom, we would be all on the alert to detect and destroy it. We would feel the danger of being ourselves deceived, and losing the riches for which we care. There ought to be greater jealousy of a spiritless form, a gilded word religion, passing current in the Church ; for he who is taken in by this " name to live," though he should gain the whole world, will lose his own souL A valorous hand to hand struggle with inherent corruptions is distressingly rare in the wide-spread religious profession of the day. You read and pray, and worship in the assembly, and com- plain that, notwithstanding, your souls do not prosper ; you have not comfort ; you are not sensible of growth in grace. But all this is mere hypocrisy, if you be not "turning " tearing yourself asunder from besetting sins, as from a right arm or a right eye. The evil speaking, watch it, catch it on your lips, crush it as it swells and germinates in the seed-bed of your thoughts within. The equivocations, the half-untruths, down with them. Out with the very truth, although it should break off the nearly completed bargain although it should freeze the friendship that seems necessary to your success. Anger, malice, envy, seize theso vipers, that twist and hiss in your bosom ; strangle them outright there. Your religion is nothing better than a cheat, if you are not busy with the work of ceasing to do evil. " Herein do I exercise myself," said Paul, " that I may have a conscience void of offence." How can the feeblest learners of the truth attain, by an idle wish, that actual progressive purification which its greatest human teacher only strove after by incessant exercise ] A REVIVAL. 57 In the manifold diversities of sin there is such a thing as the pride of self-righteousness : you fall into this error when you pretend to turn from evil without trusting in God. You fall into the opposite snare of hypocrisy, when you pretend to trust in God, and do not turn at his command. Getting freely and doing faithfully, together constitute true religion. Get and do, do and get. Nor is it a partitioning of salvation between God and man, as if a part of it were his gift, and a part of it man's act. The turning which constitutes salvation is, supremely, all God's gift, and, subordinately, all the doing of the man. From the spring-head in the heart, to the outermost streams of life, he makes all things new ; and yet the man himself must, at God's bidding, turn from all iniquity. We speak of a revival ; we pray for it : perhaps we long for it. But ah 1 this, and an hundredfold more in the same direction, will not bring it about. God's arm is not shortened : his ear is not heavy. Our iniquities separate between us and him. The way to invite his presence is to put away the evil of our doings ; for he cannot dwell with sin. And if any one, conscious of his knowledge and jealous of orthodoxy, should say in opposition, it is God's presence, sovereignly vouchsafed, that makes the visited man put away his evil ; we answer, that is a glorious truth, but is not an argument against our injunction. That is the upper end of a revealed truth which reaches from earth to heaven : it is too high for us : if you put forth your hand to touch it at the top, it will consume you. That high thing is for God to handle, and not man. The end that leans on earth and lies to your hand is " Turn you at my reproof" The only safe way of moving the heaven-high extreme of the divine sovereignty for revival is, by throwing ourselves with our whole weight on this which is the visible, tangible, lower end of that incomprehensible mystery this timing from our own evil in obedience to the command of God. The grand hinderance to a revival by the Spirit poured out is the general conformity of Christians to the fashion of the world. The short road to a revival is to turn from the error of our ways. If there were more of the doing which religion demands, there would be more of the getting which it promises. Turn at my reproof. God looketh on the heart : he measures the motive as well as the deed. There is such a thing as a proud, 58 A REVIVAL. atheistic morality, which is as offensive to God as more vulgar vice. To abstain from common and gross transgressions, is not holiness : it is a partial process : it is to diminish the bulk of wickedness on one side, by directing all the stream of internal corruption to the other side. When a man turns from wickedness because God hates it, he will turn alike from every sin. If we reform ourselves, we will select despised and shameful lusts of the flesh to be sacrificed, but retain and cherish certain favourite lusts of the mind. If we permit God's word to search, and God's authority to rule, idols alike of high and low degree will be driven forth of the temple. If the turning be at his reproof, it will be a turning both complete in its comprehension and true iu its character a turning without partiality and without hypocrisy. When we turn at his reproof, he wih 1 pour out his Spirit : when he pours out his Spirit we will turn at his reproof; blessed circle for saints to reason in. He formed the channel wherein grace and duty chase each other round. He supplied the material alike of the getting and the doing. He set the stream in motion, and he will keep it going, until every good work begun shall be perfect in the day of Christ Jesus. Hear that voice from heaven, " I will pour out." Yea, Lord ; tli en, we must draw away. We are placed at the open orifice in the lowest extremity of the outbranching channel : the fountain head is with God on high. When he pours out, we draw forth ; when we draw forth, he pours out. It is because there is a pressure constant and strong from that upper spring of grace, that we can draw any here below for the exercises of obedience \ but the covenant is ordered so, that if we do not draw for the supply of actual effort, none will gravitate toward us from the fountain head. It is the still, stagnant, dead mass of inert profession, sticking in the lower lips of the channel, that checks the flow of grace, and practically seals for us its unfathomable fountain. If there were a turning, a movement, an effort, an expenditure, a need, a vacancy, at our extremity below, there would be a flow of the divine compassion to make up the want, and charge every vessel anew with fresh and full supply. Prove him now herewith ; exert and expend in his service, and see whether he will not open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing, greater than tha room made vacant to receive it, X. Sotohtg gTisobtbieritt, Reaping Jfutrgtwnt. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man re- yarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but 1 will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me." i. 24-28. ]T sundry times and in divers manners, the Omniscient Witness of men's wickedness has invited the evil doers to draw near, ere yet the judgment should be set and the books opened, that he may "reason together" with them on their state and prospects. One of those marvellous reasonings of the Judge with the criminal is recorded here. I. God in mercy visits a rebellious generation. Four terms are employed to describe this visit, and although they are arranged to suit the exigencies of Hebrew poetry, they follow each other in natural order, and issue in a climax. He calls, stretches out his hands, gives counsel, and administers reproof. 1. The call. Men with one consent were departing from the living God. They had turned the back on him, and not the face. He does not leave himself without a witness, and he has many ways of uttering his voice. It is in the earthquake and in the storm : day unto day proclaims it, and night unto night : there is no speech nor language where it is not heard. Even where it3 only effect is to drive the scared culprit to superstitious observ- ances, it has been heard, and the superstitious are accountable. The call has come with more distinct articulation from the lips of prophets and apostles. It sounds with authority in a human conscience. Whether men obey the call or disobey it, they are secretly conscious that the call has reached them, and are left without excuse. 60 SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT. 2. The hands stretched out. When the call has come and startled the prodigal ; when the prodigal, aroused, looks toward the quarter whence the voice proceeds, lo, a Father whom he has offended is opening his arms wide to clasp the outcast in the embrace of an everlasting love (Isa. Ixv. 1, 2). When busy men lift up their heads from the dust to which their souls are cleaving, and listen to the voice of God, they find out that He is not yet against them a consuming fire. His hands are outstretched : there is a way, and the way is open unto the Father. There is no obstruc- tion : there is no forbidding : there is no upbraiding. Chief sinners are even now entering in. Behold, they are arising and going to the Father. They are converging frequent and swift, as doves to their windows. They are neither kept back nor thrust down among hired servants ; they are welcomed as sons and daughters ; they are made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ; their sins are remembered no more. 3. The counsel. Some who have heard the call and lifted up their heads and looked, and seen the door of mercy open, are glad, and take encouragement to continue a little longer far from God and righteousness. They see the arms of mercy stretched out all day long, although a people continue disobedient. Seeing this, they secretly feel, if they do not venture to say, that there is no cause for alarm. The door will remain open to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day : we shall run in before it be shut. What does God do for these deceivers 1 He does not let them alone : He counsels them : " Flee to the stronghold, prisoners of hope ; " " Wherefore spend ye your money for that which is not bread ] " " Come unto me, ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." If they resist still, will He shut the door now, and shut them out 1 No, not yet : He will administer, 4. Reproof. Mercy interposes with the plea, Let them alone yet this once. There is One yearning over the callous, who have no mercy on their own souls. " How can I give thee up 1 " He remembers mercy, and makes judgment stand back. He makes judgment his strange work, not permitting it to appear early or often to strike the decisive blow. He has yet another resource : when counsel is despised, He will bring forward reproof : if they will not be enticed by the promise of heaven, He will threatoo them with the fear of hell. " The wicked shall be turned into SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT. 61 heil, and all the nations that forget God." " Except ye repent, ye shall perish." " Except a man be born again, he canuot see the kingdom of God." Inconceivably great is the weight of that wrath which is treasured up against the day of wrath, to be poured all on the impenitent then ; but that reserved wrath is not left meantime lying useless in its treasure-house. Everlasting love needs a strong hard instrument wherewith to work out her blessed purposes on an unpliant race ; and mercy, in this the day of her reign, sovereignly seizing judgment before its time, works that mighty lever to move mankind. The terrors of the Lord are not permitted to sleep unnoticed and unknown, till the day when they shall overflow and overwhelm all his enemies : they are sum- moned forth in the interval, and numbered among the all things that work together for good. Though kept like a reserve in the rear, their grim hosts are exposed to view, in order that they may co-operate with kindlier agencies in persuading men to yield, and fight against God no more. " Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." Kindly plies the sweet promise next to a wounded heart : but the gentle promise is backed by a terrible reproof : Cast out there it is ; judgment looming in reserve ; serving meantime by its blackness to make the invitation more winning; but there, unchangeable, omnipotent, to receive on its awful edge the crowds that rush reckless over the intervening day of grace, and fall into the hands of the living God. He suffers long, and pleads : but even in Him compassions will not, cannot further flow. He calls, stretches out his hands, counsels, and, when men still refuse, He makes the threat of wrath mercy's instrument to compass them about, and compel them to come in : but He stops there. God will not put forth a band to lift a man to heaven in his sleep ; or drag him in against his will When counsel and reproof are rejected, then " there re- maineth nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversary." Those who with- stand all these means and messages, will be left like Esau without the blessing. " He cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, oh, my father : " but the time was past, and the door was shut. IL A rebellions generation neglect or resist the gracious visitation 62 SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT. of God. " I have called, and ye refused : I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded: ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof." This is an appalling indictment uttered by the God of truth. Who are the guilty ? " Lord, is it I ? Lord, is it 1 1 " " He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith." Men have ears and stop them. The Lord made the ear of man, and a wonderful work it is ; strange that it should be open to every voice but the entreaty of its Maker. In times when vile men held the high places of this land, a roll of drums was employed to drown the martyr's voice, lest the testimony of truth from the scaffold should reach the people. Thus they closed the ears of the multitude against the voice of the servants : not by a roll of drums at a single tyrant's bidding, but by a strong deep hum of business, kept up through common consent, is the ear closed now against the Master's own word. So constant is the noise of Mammon, humming day and night, that the partial silence of the Sabbath is felt an unwelcome pause. As arts advance, and more is crammed into the six days, so much the more eager are Mammon's worshippers to fill the Sabbath with the same confused noise. The word says, " Be still, and know that I am God : " those who don't want this knowledge are afraid to be still, lest it should steal in and disturb their peace. God's mighty hand sometimes interferes to quiet this hubbub in a heart, or a house. It is when the inmates are compelled to go about the house with whispers, that his voice is best heard. I know of nothing more fitted to touch a conscience than this tender complaint from our Judge. He stretched out his hands : no man regarded. What then 1 He complains of the neglect, and addresses his complaint to the neglecters. Here is mercy full, pressed down, and running over. He whom men reject, pleads with men for rejecting him. When he so stretched out himself to us, how shall we answer if we turn our back on Him ? III. They shall eat the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with tkdr own devices. This life is the spring time of our immortal being ; the harvest is eternity. Harvest is not the time for sow- ing ; we shall reap then what we sow now. This law is of God \ and it is like the laws by which He regulates all nature. If a SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT. G3 man sow tares or thistles in his field in spring, it is probable that a bitter regret will seize upon him in the harvest day. He will loathe the worthless crop that he gets to fill his bosom ; but he cannot, by a sudden and energetic wish, change all the laws of nature, and make his field wave with ripened grain. Aa certainly as a husbandman in harvest reaps only what he sowed in spring, shall they who in life sow sin, reap wrath in the judg- ment. The provisions of his covenant are steadfast as the laws of his world. His promises are sure as the ordinances of heaven, and his threatenings too. It is true that God destroys his enemies : but it is also true that they destroy themselves. They throw themselves into the fire, and by his laws they are burned. He has laws that are everlasting and unchangeable; and He has not hidden them from men : He has plainly declared them. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Those who cast themselves on revealed wrath are their own destroyers. These outstretched hands of his are clear of a sinners blood. Judgment will be an exact answer to disobedience, as fruit answers the seed, or an echo the sound. The strictness of retri- bution at last will correspond to the freeness of mercy now. There would be no glory in God's present compassion, if it had not the full terror of immutable justice behind it to lean upon. Even the divine longsuffering would lose its loveliness if it did not stand in front of divine wrath. You cannot paint an angel upon light : so mercy could not be represented mercy could not be, unless there were judgment without mercy, a ground of deep darkness lying beneath, to sustain and reveal it. That there may be a day of grace pushed forward within the reach of men on earth, there must be a'throne of judgment as its base in eternity. When the day of grace is past, the throne of judgment stands alone, and the impenitent must meet it. The anguish comes first within the conscience of the ungodly, when the life course is drawing near its close. Desolation comes like a whirlwind. The body is drooping : the grave is opening : the judgment is preparing. He has no righteousness, and no hope. Behold now the prospect before the immortal, when death, like a rising wave, has blotted out the beams of mercy that lingered to the last. It is now the blackness of darkness. Hope, 64 SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPING JUDGMENT. that flickered long, has gone out at length. And how rigidly strict must the retribution be ! They would not hear God in the day of mercy : in the day of vengeance God will not hear them. They laughed at His threatenings : He will mock their cry. This reciprocity is the law of his kingdom : it cannot be changed. Let those who live without God in the world mark what it is that He counts the heaviest retribution upon sin : it is this " They shall call upon me, but I will not answer." When, groping darkling on the shore of eternity, they cry in terror, " God, where art Thou ] " only their own voice, mocking, will return from the abyss, " Where art thou ?" A man's life has a language which the Judge understands. The life utterance of the carnal, when divested of all its pretences, and gathered into one, is, " No God ! " That concentrated, intensified expression, issuing forth from time, has generated an echo in the receptive expanse of eternity. That echo meets the entrant on the border ; and con- science, not clouded now, is constrained to acknowledge it a truth- ful answer to the essence of his life. It is a fruit exactly after the kind of the seed which he had sown. " No God ! " was the meaning of his course in time : " No God ! " rebounding from the judgment-seat, at once fixes his place for eternity, and proclaims that it is the fruit of his own doing. Consider this, ye who live for your own pleasure, and leave the long-suffering Saviour stretch- ing out his hands to you all day in vain : your life, thrown up, a sullen, bold, defiant no, from you to God in the day of his mercy, will rebound from the throne a no unchangeable, eternal, from God to you in the day of your need. Reciprocity runs through. When mercy was sovereign, mercy used judgment for carrying out mercy's ends : when mercy's reign is over, and judgment's reign begins, then judgment will sovereignly take mercy past and wield it to give weight to the vengeance stroke. This terror of the Lord in eternity is clearly set forth in time, with the gracious design of persuading men to flee to the hope set before them. At the close of this line of terrors there is a sweet and gentle word. It is a Father's voice, this still small voice that speaks when the storm and the thunders have passed by : " Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from the fear of evil." A safe dwelling-place ! There is now no condemna- SOWING DISOBEDIENCE, REAPIXG JUDGMENT. 65 tion to them that are in Christ Jesus. No plague shall come nigh them there. One would think this is enough. Himself our everlasting portion, if now we yield unto Him ; and a rest re- maineth for the people of God. Enough, indeed : sinners saved could not of themselves expect more : but He provides and pro- mises more. He will give them not only deliverance from death at last, but freedom from fear now ; safety from evil to come, and safety from the apprehension of its coming; justification at the throne of God, and peace within the conscience. When Christ came to work deliverance for all his own, he expressly provided both these blessings. It is not only to deliver them from death by receiving himself its sting but also to deliver them from that fear of death, which otherwise would have held them all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. ii. 15). " Godliness is profitable unto all things." Eternal life secure in the world to come casts a beam of bright hope across, sufficient to quiet the anxieties of a fainting, fluttering heart, in all the dangers of the journey through. For his Redeemed Israel, who have already passed over the divided sea, he has provided a safe dwelling-place beyond the Jordan ; and under the shade of the Almighty, the pilgrims, even iii the wilderness, will be quiet from the fear of evil. XL , anb ju sfmll Jmtr* ' If thou seekest her as silver ____ thou shall find the knowledge of God." ii. 4, 5. continues still to cry unto men with the affec- tionate authority of a parent. The incarnation of the Son is God's grand utterance to mankind. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. He came to make known the Father. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of tne Father, He hath declared him." Such is the speaker, and such the theme. Wisdom cries, " In- cline thine ear unto wisdom." Christ calls on men to come unto Christ. It was He who opened the Scriptures; and He taught from them the things concerning himself. He is Prophet and Priest. He gives the invitation ; and the invitation is, " Come unto me." It is Christ offering Christ to sinners ; the teacher and the lesson alike divine. The preacher and the sermon are tho same. He is the beginning and the ending. He is all in all. The matter of the whole passage, ii. 1-9, consists in a command to seek, and a promise to bestow. The same speaker, at a later day, condensed his own discourse into the few emphatic words, " Seek, and ye shall find ; " in this passage there is a needful ex - pansion and profitable repetition of these two great pillar thoughts. The seeking is in verses 1-4; the finding in verses 5-9. A Father speaks, and He speaks as unto children : He demands a reasonable service, and promises a rich reward. In the fourfold repetition of the command there seems an order of succession ; and the order, when observed, is both comely and instructive. It combines the beauty of the blossom and the pro- fit of the fruit, SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND. C7 1. Receive my words, and hide my commandments. '2. Incline thine ear, and apply thine heart. 3. Cry after knowledge: lift up thy voice for under- standing. 4. Seek her as silver : search for her as for hid treasure. 1. "Receive my words." This is the first thing; practical instruction must ever begin here. The basis of all religion and morality is the word of the Lord, taken into the understanding and heart. When the sower went forth to sow, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured it. This is the first danger to which the published truth is exposed ; it does not enter the ground at all ; it tinkles on the surface of the mind, like seed on a beaten path, and next moment it is off, no one knows whither ; it never penetrated the soil ; it was never received. Corresponding to that first danger is the first counsel, " My son, receive my words ;" and if there should be any doubt about the meaning of the precept, the clause which balances it on the other side supplies the comment, " hide my commandments with thee." Our adversary the devil goeth about like a roaring lion, or raven- ing bird, seeking whom he may devour. He carries off the word from the surface of listless minds as birds carry away the seed that lies on the surface of unbroken ground. The word of God is a vital seed, but it will not germinate unless it be hidden in a softened receptive heart. It is here that providence so often strikes in with effect as an instrument in the work of the Spirit. Especially, at this point, bereaving providences work together for good. Even these, however, precious though they have been in the experience of all the saved, are only secondary and subordinate agencies. Sorrow is not seed. A field that is thoroughly and deeply broken may be as barren in the harvest as the beaten pathway. The place and use of providential visitation in the divine administration of Christ's kingdom, is to break up the way of the word through the incrustations of worldliness and vanity that incase a human heart and keep the word lying hard and dry upon the surface. Every one is capable of perceiving the difference between merely hearing the word and receiving it. It is a blessed thing to have 63 SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND. tbat word dwelling richly within you ; felt in all its freshness touching your conscience and enlightening your mind, during the busy day and in the silent night, giving tone to your spirit within, and direction to your course through life. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. Behold, He stands at the door and knocks ; if any man open, He will come in. To as many as receive Him, He gives power to become tho sons of God. 2. "Incline thine ear." The entrance of the word has an im- mediate effect on the attitude of the mind and the course of the life. The incoming of the word makes the ear incline to wisdom ; and the inclining of the ear to wisdom lets in and lays up greater treasures of the word. In practice it will be found that those who hide the word within them, feeding on it as daily bread, acquire a habitual bent of mind towards things spiritual On the other hand, when the truth touches, and glances off again, like sunlight from polar snows, it is both a symptom and a cause of an inclination of the mind away from God and goodness. The great obstacle to the power and spread of the gospel lies in the averted attitude of human hearts. The mind is turned in another direction, and the faculties occupied in other pursuits. How hopeful the work of preaching becomes when the lie and the liking of the listener's soul is towards saving truth ! When the heart is applied to it, some portion of the word goes in, and that which has obtained an entrance prepares the way for more. To him that hath that little will be given much, and he shall have abundance. A man inclines his ear to those sounds which already his heart desires ; again to turn the ear, by an exercise of will at God's high command, to the word of wisdom, is the very way to inoculate the heart with a love to that word passing the love of earthly things. The lean of the disciples' hearts in the days of old drew them to Jesus ; and Jesus near, made their hearts burn with a keener glow. The ear and the heart I precious gifts ! He that hath an ear to hear, let him liear what the Spirit saith ; he that hath a heart to love, let him love with it the altogether Lovely. The ear inclined to divine wisdom will draw the heart ; the heart drawn will incline the ear. Behold one of the circles in which God, for his own glory, makes Ms unnumbered worlds go round. SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND. 69 3. " Cry after knowledge." The preceding verse expressed the bent heavenward of the heart within and the senses without : this verse represents the same process at a more advanced stage. The longing for God's salvation already begotten in the heart, bursts forth now into an irrepressible cry. It is not any longer a Nico- demus inclined toward Jesus, he cannot tell how, and silently stealing into his presence under cloud of night ; it is the jailer of Philippi springing in, and crying with a loud voice, " What must I do to be saved ? " While the man was musing, the fire burned : now it no longer smoulders within ; it bursts forth into a flame, lie who gave Himself for his people loves to feel them kindling thus in his hands. Men may be oiFended with the fervour of an earnest soul God never. " Hold thy peace," the prudent will still say to the enthusiastic follower of Jesus : but he feels his want, and hopes for help ; he heeds them not : he cries out all the more, " Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me." Even disciples, apparently more alarmed by what seern irregularities in the action of the living than they were by the silence of the stiffened dead, may interpose with a frown and a rebuke ; but com- pression will only increase the strength of the emotion struggling within. That word hidden in the heart will swell and burst and break forth in strong crying and tears, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever " (Ps. Ixxiii. 25, 26). 4. " Seek her as silvei." Another and a higher step. The last was the earnest cry ; this is the persevering endeavour. The strong cry is not enough : it is a step in the process, but the end is not yet. It might be Balaam's cry, " Let me die the death of the righteous," while in life he loved and laboured for the wages of iniquity. Fervent prayer must be tested by persevering pains. Seek wisdom. Not only be inclined to spiritual things, and earnestly desire salvation, but set about it. Strive to enter in ; lay hold on eternal life. Work out the salvation. " The kingdom of heaven sufTereth violence, and the violent take it by force." The Christian life is a battle to be fought : the reward at last is a crown to be won. More particularly, the search for wisdom is compared to anotlur search with which we are more familiar. Seek her as silver. 70 SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND. Those who seek the treasures that are at God's right hand are referred to their neighbours who are seeking treasures that perish in the using, and told to go and do likewise. The zeal of Mam- mon's worshippers rebukes the servants of the living God. We are invited to take a leaf from the book of the fortune-seeker. Besides the pursuit of money in the various walks of merchandise, there is, in our day, much of a direct and literal search for trea- sures hid in the earth. A prominent part of our daily public news, for years past, has been the stream of emigration from the settled countries of Europe to the western shores of America, and the great Australian Continent in search of hid treasure. The details are most instructive. Multitudes of young and old, from every occupation, and every rank, have left their homes, and traversed stormy seas, and desert continents, to the place where the treasure lies. Not a few have perished on the way; others sink under privations on the spot. The scorching sun by day, and the chill dews at night; labouring all day among water, and sleeping under the imperfect shelter of a tent; the danger of attack by uncivilized natives on the one hand, and by desperately wicked Europeans on the other, all these, and a countless multitude more, are unable to deter from the enterprise, or drive off those who are already engaged. To these regions men flock in thou- sands, and tens of thousands. Those shores lately desolate are in motion now with a teeming population. Search for her as for hid treasure ! He knows what is in man. He who made the human heart, and feels every desire that throbs within it, takes the measure of men's earnestness in their search for silver, and pronounces it sufficient for the object which he has at heart, the salvation of sinners. He points to it as a fit measure of the zeal with which a being, destitute by sin, should set out in the search for the salvation by grace : He intimates this will do this earnestness, if directed upon the right object. How all this puts to shame the languid efforts of those who do seek the true riches ! There may be an inclination on the whole rather to the imperishable riches a wish to be with Christ rather than left with a passing world for a portion. There may be the desire in that direction, but another question comes in, what is the strength of that desire 1 That blessed portion in Christ is what you desire ; well, but how much do you desire it 1 Will not SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND. 71 the far-reaching plans, and heroic sacrifices, and long-enduring toil of Calif ornian and Australian gold diggers rise up and condemn us who have tasted and known the grace of God 1 Their zeal is the standard by which the Lord stimulates us now, and will measure us yet. Two things are required in our search, the right direction, and the sufficient impulse. The Scriptures point out the right way ; the avarice of mankind marks the quantum of forcefulness wherewith the seeker must press on. But the search for hid treasure, which reads a lesson to the Church, is not confined to the gold regions, and the gold diggers. They dig as hard at home. It cannot be told how much of plan and effort, of head and hand, are expended in making money. It is no business of ours here to draw the nice distinctions between the rightful industry of a Christian merchant, and the passage through the fire of Mammon's child; this is not our present theme at all. What we want is to get our slackness in seeking a Saviour rebuked and quickened by the parallel movement of a more ener- getic search. Our question here is not how much is gold worth] but is gold worth as much as the grace of God in Christ to a sinner 1 You answer, No. This is our unanimous reply. It is true in its own nature; and sincerely it is uttered by our lips. Out of our own mouths then will we be condemned, if He who corn- passeth us about like air in all our ways, feels us striving with our might for the less, and but languidly wishing for the greater. Seek first the kingdom. Those who seek thus shah 1 not seek in vain ; we have the word of the true God for it in many promises. Among the gathered multitudes in the great day, it will not be possible to find one who has sought in the right place for the right thing, as other men seek money, and who has nevertheless been disappointed. No doubt there are some who seek after a fashion, and gain nothing by it ; who vent a wish to die the death of the righteous, and never attain to the object of their desire : but none fail who seek according to the prescription of the word, and after the example of the world. Many people proceed upon a principle the very reverse of that which the word inculcates : they search for money as if it were saving truth, instead of searching for saving truth as if it were money. These must be turned upside down ere they begin to prosper. XII. m % To deliver thee from the way of the evil [man], from the man that speaketh froward thing? ; who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked ; whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths : to deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forget- teth the covenant of her God: for her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life." ii. 12-19. ||HE wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest." Here an arm of that sea is spread out before us, and we are led to an eminence whence we may behold its raging. We must one by one go down into these great waters. We see many of our comrades sinking beneath the surge. It is good to count the number and measure the height of these ranks of raging waves, that we may be induced to hold faster by the anchor of the soul, which is sure and steadfast. The dangers are delineated here in exact order, continuous suc- cession, and increasing power. They come as the waves come when the tide is flowing ; they gradually gain in strength until they reach their height; then, when Satan has done his worst, he retires sullenly, leaving all who have not been overwhelmed, high, and safe, and triumphing. 1. " The way of the evil." Whether they be persons or prin- ciples, whether they be men or devils, the word does not expressly say. The announcement, in the first place, is couched in terms the most general; the particulars are enumerated in the verses fol- lowing. The way of the evil is the way which Satan trod, and by which all his servants follow. It is the way whereon all the wicked travel to their doom. 2. But more specifically, the first item of the evil is " the man that speaketh froward things." "The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison/' This little fire kindly PERILS IN THE DEEP. 73 a flame which spreads and licks up all that is lovely and of good report in a wide circle of companionship. The man who speaks froward things is one of the foremost dangers to which the young are exposed at their first start in life. In a workshop, or ware- house, or circle of private friendship, there is one who has a foul tongue. It is difficult to conceive how quickly and how deeply it contaminates all around. There may be much specific variety in the forms of frowardness. In one case, the pollution assumes the shape of profane swearing : in another, it is the frequent injec- tion of obscenities amidst the conversation of the day, feathered with wit to make them fly : in a third, it is infidel insinuation : in a fourth, it is one huge mass of silliness, a shapeless conglo- merate of idle words, injuring not so much by the infliction of positive evil, as by occupying a man's heart and his day with vanity, to the exclusion of all that is substantial either for this world or the next. It is hardly possible that one who is much in contact with these froward words should come off unscathed. Even when a person does not sympathize with the evil, and imitate it, his conscience gets a wound. Only One has ever appeared on earth who was entirely safe under the fiery darts of the wicked : " The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (John xiv. 30). If there were perfect purity within, these onsets from without would leave no stain ; but upon our impure hearts, even when the tempta- tion in the main is resisted, and the tempter put to flight, the marks are left behind : some of the filth sticks, and will not off, to the dying day. For us, even in our best estate, it is not good, in that experimental way, to know evil The foul tongue of the froward is one grand cause of dread to godly parents in sending their youths to a business, and even in sending their children to school. How good are pure words ! Set a watch upon your mouth. " Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt." Bad as it is to hear froward words, it is inconceivably worse to speak them. It is more cursed to give temptation than to re- ceive it. 3. " Who leave the paths of righteousness." When the imagi- nation is polluted, and the tongue let loose, the feet cannot keep on the path of righteousness. Thinking, and hearing, and speak- 74 PERILS IN THE DEEP. iiig evil, will soon be followed by doing it. The world is startled from time to time by the report of some daring crime ; but if the history of the criminal were known, however much grief there might be, there would be no surprise at the culmination of his wickedness. When you see a mighty tree in the forest, you assume that it did not leap into maturity in a day, although you saw not its gradual growth : you may as confidently count that full-sized crime did not attain its stature in a day. In all of us are the seeds of it, and in many the seedlings are growing apace. The ways follow the thoughts and words, as trees spring from seeds. He who would be kept from the path of the destroyer must crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, and soon after murders and adulteries follow. In the matter of watching for one's soul, as in all other matters, the true wisdom is to take care of the beginnings. 4. "To walk in the ways of darkness." There is a strictly causal and reciprocal relation between unrighteous deeds and moral darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness pro- duces the evil-doing. Indulged lusts put out the eye-sight of the conscience ; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked. " From him that hath not, shall be taken away." 5. " Who rejoice to do evil." This is a more advanced step in guilt. At first the backslider is ashamed of his fall. He palliates, alleges the strength of the temptation, and promises amendment. As the hardening process goes on, however, he begins to feel more easy : he ceases to make excuses, and at last he glories in his shame. " Were they ashamed when they had committed abomi- nation 1 Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" (Jer. vi. 15). This is a measure of evil which should make even the wicked tremble. A man has become the very essence of antichrist, when it is his meat and his drink to oppose the will of our Father who is in heaven. 6. Profligacy can yet one step further go. They who " delight in the frowardness of the wicked" are more abandoned than the wicked themselves. To take pleasure in sin is a characteristic of fallen humanity ; to delight in seeing others sinning is altogether devilish. Some monsters in human form have presided over the process of torture, and drunk in delight from a brother's pain; but it is a still clearer evidence that a man is of his father the PERILS IN THE DEEP. 75 Devil, when he lays snares for a brother's soul, and laughs at hia own success. There are not a few amongst us who have reached this stage of depravity, and, yet have no suspicion that they are in any way more guilty than others. They have so drunk into the spirit, and been changed into the image of the first tempter, that they relish as dainty food the pollution of a neighbour, and yet never perceive that there is anything out of the way. " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled:" cursed are they that hunger and thirst after wicked- ness, for they shall be filled too; they shall be filled with food con- venient for them. It is the Lord's way both in mercy and judg- ment to provide for every creature in abundance that which it loves and longs for. This principle is announced with terrific dis- tinctness in the prophet Habakkuk (ii. 15, 16). Those who have a relish for the sin of others, will be filled with the food they have chosen; and although the horrid sweet pall upon the taste by reason of its abundance, there is no variety, and no diluting of sin by fragments of good in the place of the lost. The same the same that they loved on earth, the lost must abide for ever ; sin nothing but sin, within and around them. To complete the picture of the danger, one other peril of the world's deep is marked on the chart which is mercifully placed in the voyager's hands it is " the strange woman." Thanks be to God for his tender care in kindling these beacon-lights on the rock to scare the coming passenger away from the quicksands of doom. The deceiver is called a "strange" woman. Whoredom is dis- tinguished from marriage, which God appointed and approves. When man and woman are given to each other, as helps meet from the Lord, they become " one flesh:" they are not only known to each other, but, in an important sense, they lose their individual personality, and are merged into one. " A man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife." To follow the " strange woman" is the Satanic reversal of this divine ordinance. There is no love, no holy union, no mutual helpfulness ; but wild, selfish passions, followed by visible marks of God's vengeance. For it is not his word only ; with equal clearness his providence frowns on licentiousness. That vice eats like a festering sore into the body of society. If all should act as libertines do, the race would dwindle away. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; we are 1 70 PERILS IS THE DEEP. fearfully and wonderfully governed. It is in vain that the pot- sherds of the earth strive with their Maker : his anger will track lust through all its secret doublings : he makes sin generate its own punishment. Vengeance against that evil thing circulates through the veins, and dries up the marrow in the heart of the bones. Verily, there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Of the strange woman it is said, " Her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead." Mark well this description, ye simple ones who are enticed to follow her. There is an " incline on the path;" it goes down. She leads the way, you follow. It is easy to go down down a slippery, slimy path ; but its issue is death. What death 1 The death of the soul, and the body too. It leads to " the dead." It brings you to the society of libertines ; and they are dead while they live. This lust is a cankerworm that quickly withers the greenness of spring in the soul of youth. We have no trust in the patriotism, the truth, the honesty, the friend- ship of licentious men. When you get down into their company, you are among the dead : they move about like men in outward appearance ; but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared the best affections of nature have been drained away from thrii hearts. XIII. atttr " When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy wul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee." ii. 10, 11. My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments." ill 1. jHRIST'S prayer for his disciples was not that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be pre- served from the evil that is in it. Life is a voyage on the deep :. there are perils which we must pass ; how shall we pass them safely 1 The grand specific is the entrance of wisdom into the heart. As already explained, you may understand by Wisdom either the Salvation or the Saviour. The entrance of the word gives light, and chases away the darkness. If the truth as it is in Jesus come in through the understanding, and -make its home in the heart, it will be a purifier and preserver. " Sanctify them through the truth." The word of God and the way of the wicked are like fire and water; they cannot be together in the same place. Either the flood of wickedness will extinguish the word, or the word will burn and dry up the wickedness. If we understand the Word personally of Christ, the same holds good. Where He dwells the lusts of the flesh cannot reign. Evil cannot dwell with Him. When the Light of the world gets entrance into the heart, the foul spirits that swarmed in the darkness dis- appear. His coming shall be like the morning. The other strand of the two-fold cord which keeps a voyager in safety amid all these perils is, " when knowledge is pleasant to thy soul." The pleasantness of the knowledge that comes in, is a feature of essential importance. Even the truth entering the mind, and fastening on the conscience, has no effect in delivering from the power of evil, while it comes only as a terror : what the law could not do by all its fears, God did by sending his Son. The love of Christ constraineth us, when all other appliances WISDOM RECEIVED AND RETAINED. have been tried in vain. The Spirit employs terror in his pre- paratory work ; but it is only when the redemption of Christ begins to be felt sweeter than the pleasures of sin that the soul is allured, and yields, and follows on to know the Lord. It is pleasure that can compete with pleasure ; it is "joy and peace in believing" that can overcome the pleasure of sin. Felix trembled under Paul's preaching, yet offered to sell justice for money ; and, to curry favour with the multitude, kept the innocent in bonds. Although the word of God ran through him like a sword in his bones, it left him wholly in the power of his lusts. A human soul, by its very constitution, cannot be frightened into holiness. It is made for being won ; and won it will be, by the drawing on this side, or the drawing on that. The power on God's side is greater than all on the side of sin. As long as that power is felt to be repelling, the sinner creeps still further and further from the con- suming fire ; but whenever the love of God in the face of Jesus becomes " pleasant " to his soul, that love keeps and carries him, as the central sun holds up a tributary world. But after Wisdom has been received, it is also necessary that it should be retained. Wisdom accordingly continues to cry ; and the cry now is, " My son, forget not." Such pity as a father hath, like pity shows the Lord. Throughout his dispensations, the Eternal wears the aspect of a Father to his creature man. In the Bible, the parental regard is seen glancing through at every opening. When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, Father was the foremost word of the inspired liturgy. With this tender name is the arrow pointed that is expected to penetrate the heavens. Those who have skill to read the hieroglyphs of nature, will find many a parallel text in earth and sea. The world is full of his goodness : the fatherliness of the Creator is graven on all his works. The matter thus tenderly commended to the pupil's regard, is nothing less than "my law." He who made us knows what is good for us. Submission to his will is the best condition for humanity. What shall be the guide of our life our own de- praved liking, or the holy will of God 1 Our own will leads to sin and misery : the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, and making wise the simple. The two rival rules are set before us : choose ye whom ye shall serve. His servants ye are WISDOM RECEIVED AND RETAINED. 79 tvhom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. "Forget not my law;" another evidence that the Inspirer of the word knows what is in man. Silently to forget God's law is amongst us a much more common thing than blasphemously to reject it. To renounce God's law because your reason condemns it, is the infidelity that slays its thousands : to forget God's law because your heart does not like it, is the ungodliness that slays its ten thousands. The deceitfulness of the heart is a form of sin's disease much more widely spread and much more fatal than the hostility of the understanding. "Let thine heart keep my commandments;" another step in the same direction another stage in the process of dissecting the spirit, in order to reach the seat of sin. What the heart cleaves to is not readily forgotten. As a general rule it may be safely laid down, that what you habitually forget you do not care for : so true is it that love is the fulfilling of the law. If you do not love it, so far from obeying it, you will not even remember that there is such a thing. It is often given as an excuse for evil doing, that it was done without thought that the evil of it was not present to the mind ; if you had observed at the time the real character of your action, you would have done otherwise. What is this but to tell that your heart does not keep God's command- ment ? If that law had been at hand, in God's name forbidding the word or the deed, you would have refrained. No thanks to you ; that is as much as to say you would not of set purpose oppose the Almighty to his face. But you did what He com- plains of; you forgot Him and his law. You had extruded these from your heart as unwelcome visitors, and now you say, if they had been within, the mischief would not have happened. But why were they not within 1 Why was the word not dwelling richly in you ? Why was your heart not its hidden home 1 The house was full of the company that you liked. The law of the Lord, weary waiting on outside, had slipt away unnoticed. It was not there it was not in sight, with its holy frown, when the temptation pressed suddenly, and prevailed. If it had been there, the enemy would not have gained an advantage over you ; end this is an excuse or palliation ! What you put forward as an excuse, God marks as the very essence of the sin. The heart 80 WISDOM RECEIVED AND RETAINED. keeps what it loves ; what it dislikes it lets go. The very soul of sin is here; "an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." One ever-ready excuse of those who live without God in the world is " a bad memory." Where there is real imbecility in the nature, the excuse is good ; but then it is never pleaded as an excuse. The skill which can plead a treacherous memory as an excuse for not knowing the truth, would have charged the memory with the truth if it had been so applied. Those who intend to plead a short memory at the judgment-seat of God, would need to see to it that other things should slip as quickly and as cleanly off from the mind as the word of Christ. When Saul averred to Samuel, " I have performed the commandment of the Lord, I have destroyed all that belonged to Amalek," Samuel replied, " What meaneth, then, this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and this lowing of the oxen which I hear 1 " The king was confounded when his pretence was laid bare. What confusion must cover those who pass through life with scarcely a conception of how a sinner may be saved, when they put in the plea, " We had a treacherous memory," and are met by the question, " What mean, then, all those rules, and numbers, and events concerning the world, that crowded your memory through life, and clung there undefaced in your old age ] " Let us not deceive ourselves. When there is a hungering for the truth, the mind takes it in ; when the heart loves divine truth, the memory retains it. Turn the excuse into an aggravation, while yet there is time. Plead no more a feeble memory ; begin to grieve over an evil heart. XIV. CIj* Qri 0f iprinthtg, ' Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart" ill 3. |HE matter to be recorded is "mercy and truth:" the tablet for receiving it is the human heart; and here we have some instructions on the art of printing it. Look first to the legend itself "mercy and truth." These two, meeting and kissing in the Mediator, constitute the revealed character of God himself; and He desires to see, as it were, a miniature of his own likeness impressed upon his children. As we cannot have any printing without a type, we cannot have mercy and truth in holy union raised on the life of a human being, unless we get the exemplar brought from above, and trans- ferred to man. What God desires to see in man, he showed to man. He who dwelleth between the cherubim, merciful and true, shone forth upon his creatures, that those who look might be transformed into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord. It is only in Christ that we can know God. As manifested there, He is just and forgiving : mercy and truth meet in the person and sacrifice of the Son. Without the Saviour, we can conceive of mercy or truth being displayed by God to the re- bellious. We could at least conceive of mercy without truth ; but then it would admit the unclean into heaven : we could also conceive of truth without mercy ; but then it would cast mankind without exception into hell. In order that there might be mercy and truth from the Judge to the sinful, Christ obeyed, and died, and rose again. " God so loved the world, that He gave his only- begotten Son ; " but God so hated sin, that He gave Him up to die as an expiation to justice. Mercy reigns, not over righteous- ness, but through righteousness. V) 6 82 THE ART OF PRINTING. " Be ye followers [imitators] of God as dear children " (Eph. v. 1). If we receive grace reigning through righteousness, a corre- sponding result will appear in our life. The reception of these into the heart is, as it were, the sowing of the seed; and that seed will bring forth fruit after its kind. If, conscious of guilt and con- demnation, you accept and rejoice in free grace from God, this doctrine will not lie barren within you. It will burst forth in meekness, gentleness, pity, love, to all the needy. If you mark, as you get pardon, how it comes pardon through Christ crucified ; if you take it as it comes, bought by His blood ; you will never make light of sin, either in yourselves or others. In all religions, true and false, there are an original and a copy. Either God manifested leaves the impress of his own character on the recep- tive heart of a believing man, or man unbelieving transfers his own likeness to the gods whom he makes in his imagination or by his hands. " Mercy and truth " there is the type let down from God out of heaven ; are our hearts open, soft, receptive, to take the impression on ? " Let them not forsake thee : bind them about thy neck." These injunctions indicate that there is a fickleness which makes the printing difficult, and the impression indistinct at the best. This command to bind them about the neck (Deut. vi. 8) v\as adopted by the Jews in the letter, and neglected in spirit. It degenerated into a superstition; and hence the phylacteries, the amulets worn by the Pharisees. The command here is more specific " Write them upon the table of thine heart : " the reference obviously is to the writing of the law on tables of stone. These tables were intended to be not a book only, but also a type. From them we may read the law, indeed ; but by them also an impression should be made on our own hearts, that we may always have the will of God hidden within us. This idea is with mar- vellous fulness expressed by Paul : " The epistle of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God : not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart" (2 Cor. iii. 3). Men can easily read the word from the old table of stone ; but they are slow to learn " the art of printing " it on their own nature, so that it may be legible in all their life. This impression can be effectually taken only in the melting down of the regeneration, as Paul expresses it, Kom. vi. 17 : "Ye have THE ART OF PRINTING. 83 obeyed from the heart that mould of doctrine into which ye were delivered." This fleshly table of the heart lies open, and it is continually receiving impressions of some kind. It seems to harden after youth has passed, so that what it has previously received it tenaciously keeps; what is afterwards applied, it does not so readily take on. Of great moment it is, therefore, that right im- pressions should go deeply in, while the mind is still in a recep- tive state. But in this promiscuous life, the table of a young man's heart lies open for all comers ; it is often seen indented deeply and crowded all over with " divers lusts and pleasures," so that no room is left whereon the things of God may mark them- selves. At places of public resort, such as the summit of a lofty moun- tain, or the site of some famous monument, you may see tables of wood or stone or level turf. All over them inscriptions have been chiselled so thickly, that you could not now find an unoccupied spot to plant a letter on. The characters are various : some old, some new, some well formed, some irregular scrawls, some mere scratches on the surface, which a winter's storm will wash out, some so deep that they will be legible for ages. As to matter, some are records of personal ambition, others a spurt of thought- less jollity, others the date of some great event; some are profane, and some political. The table lies there, the helpless recipient of ideas, good or bad, that stray comers may choose to impress on it. I have thought, as I looked on the Babel-like confusion, that the heart of a man, which the Bible calls a " table," is like one of these common public receptacles. In youth it is peculiarly soft, and aifords an inviting material for every adventurous sculptor to try his hand upon. It often lies exposed, and receives the acci- dental impressions of ever passer by. Many legends of mere emptiness have been written on it, and were thought innocent ; but there they are, at life's latest day, taking up room, and doing no good. Some impure lines have been early carved in, and now they will not out, even where the possessor has been renewed, and learned to loathe them. Parents, set a fence round your children ; youth, set a fence round yourselves. Perhaps you may have seen one of these monumental tablets suddenly enclosed, and a notice exhibited over the gateway, doing all men to wit, that ''whereas 84 THE ART OF PRINTING. some evil disposed persons have imprinted vain and wicked words on this table, it has been surrounded by a strong fence, and henceforth no person shall be admitted to write thereon except the owner and his friends." Go thou and do likewise. Warn, ward the intruders off. Reserve that precious tablet for the use of the King its owner, and those who will help to occupy it with His character and laws. Take these three in the form of practical observations. 1. The duty of parents is clear, and their encouragements great. Watch the young. Stand beside that soft receptive tablet. Keep trespassers away more zealously than ever hereditary magnate kept the vulgar from his pleasure-grounds. Insert many truths. Busily fill the space with good, and that too in attractive forms. This is the work laid to your hand. Work in your own subor- dinate place, and the Lord from above will send the blessing down. 2. Afflictive providences generally have a bearing on this print- ing process. God sends what will break the heart : nay, sometimes a fire to melt it like water within you ; and this, in wise mercy, to make it take on the truth. When the pilgrims compare notes in Zion at length, it will be found that most of them learned this art of printing in the furnace of affliction. " Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy word" (Ps. cxix. 67). The heart, in contact with a busy world, was rubbed smooth and slippery ; the type, when it touched, glided off the surface, and left no mark behind ; this bruising and breaking opened the crust, and let the lesson in. 3. Whether in youth or in age, whether in sickness or in health, it is not an effort from within or a providence from without that will make the heart new and the life holy. It is the type, by the Spirit's ministry impressed on the prepared page ; it is the mercy and truth united in Christ crucified for sin, embodied love let down from heaven and touching the earth ; it is Christ clasped to a softened heart, that will re imprint the image of God upon a sin- ful man. XV. ' Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." iiL 5. |AITH is not fear, and fear is not faith. The terrors of the Lord beaming in upon the conscience, using guilt as fuel for the flame of a premature torment, do not constitute conversion. Christianity is not a dark ground, with here and there a quivering streak of light thrown in; blessed hope is the basis of it all. Many dark spots deface it, at the best; but the ground is a bright ground. It is a positive, and not a negative thing. It has many diseases and pains, but it is in its nature a life, and not a death. It flies to God, not from him. It is not a slave's struggle to escape from divine vengeance : it is a dear child's confidence in a Father's love. Christ is the way ; but it is unto the Father that the prodigal returns. The only method of reconciliation is the looking unto Jesus, and looking on until confiding faith spring up ; but the religious act of a soul saved is a trust in God. This is an unseen thing, and it is misunderstood by those who look toward it from without The reason why those who are wedded to their pleasures count religion to be dull and painful seems to be this : they see religious people really renouncing the pleasures of sin and sense : they know, they feel what that re- nunciation would be to themselves ; but they do not know, they cannot conceive the consolation which the peace of God gives even now to a human heart. They see what a religious man lets go; but they do not see in that other region the worth of the equiva- lent which a religious man gets ; for it is spiritually discerned, and they are not spiritual. In their conception Religion is a grim tyrant, who snatches every delight from the grasp of a youth, and gives him nothing in return. The servant of the man of God sees 86 TRD3T. on the one side an host of enemies pressing round, and on the other side no help at hand. " Alas, my master ! " he cried, " how shall we do?" (2 Kings vi. 16, 17). "Fear not," saidElisha; but it was not until the young man's eyes were opened to see the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elishu that he could be confident, or even composed. We need the same re-creating Spirit to open the blind eyes of the carnal, ere they can see that the joys which God in grace gives are more than the pleasures of sin, which his presence drives away. The green apple does not like to be twisted and torn from the tree; but the ripened fruit, that has no more need for the root's sap, drops easily off. Trust in the Lord, when a soul attains it, loosens every other bond, and makes it easy to let go all which the world gives. When you feel your footing firm in the peace of God, you will not be afraid though the earth should sink away from beneath you. Trust is natural to the creature, although trust in the Lord be against the grain to the guilty. It is our nature to be dependent : it is our instinct to lean. In regard to the unseen, man has an innate consciousness of his own frailty, and in general it is not difficult to persuade him to lean on something beyond himself. Ever since sin began, gods many and lords many have invited men's confidence, and offered them aid. It is easy to persuade Papists to lean on priests and saints, on old rags and painted pictures on any idol; but it is hard to get a Protestant really to trust in the living God. It is a common remark that Papists have more devotion in their way than we have in ours. The fact is obvious : the reason of it is not always seen. Popery sails with the stream when it bids men trust, for this falls in with a tend- ency of nature ; but it puts forward to receive the confiding soul a dead idol, whose presence is no rebuke to indulged sin. Among Papists you will find real devotion in all who are conscious of nature's weakness, and willing to trust; but among Protestants you can find real devotion only in those who are prepared to crucify the flesh who, at enmity with their own sins, bound for- ward to meet the offered embrace of " our God," and so plunge their bosom lusts into " a consuming fire." " With all thine heart." God complains as much of a divided allegiance as of none. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. In cleaving to Christ the effort to reserve a little spoils TRUST. 87 all. It endangers ultimate safety, and destroys present peace. The soul should grow into Christ, as grows the branch on the vine ; but the reserved part is dead matter lying between the two lives, preventing them from coalescing into one. The somewhat which the soul refuses to surrender sticks in between, so that you cannot have your life hid in Christ ; Christ cannot live in you. Your hope cannot find way into his heart, his peace cannot flow into yours. " Except ye be converted and become as a little child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom." "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Observe the universality of the command. There is no hardship in this; the commandment is holy and just and good. If we keep back any of the conditions, we lose all the promised return. This injunction is aimed, not at the speculative atheism which denies that there is a God, but at the much more common practical ungodliness which keeps Him at a distance from human affairs. Few will refuse to acknowledge a superintending Provi- dence at certain times, and in certain operations that are counted great. If the commandment had been, " Acknowledge God in the uncertain and difficult ways of life," it would have met with a more ready compliance. To uphold the world and direct its movements, to appoint the birth and the death of men, to provide redemption from sin, and open the way into glory in these grand and all-comprehensive operations men would be content to ac- knowledge God, provided they were allowed to retain all minor matters under their own management. They will treat God as subjects treat a king, but not as a wife treats her husband. The large, and the formal, and the public, they will submit to his decision; but the little, and close, and kindly, they will keep to themselves. Let him compass you about, as the atmosphere em- braces the earth, going into every interstice, and taking the mea- sure of every movement. " Trust in the Lord at all times; pour ye out your hearts before him." The command is encouraging as well as reproving. It is not merely the promise that is encouraging, but also the command which precedes it. Does God claim to be acknowledged in all my ways ] May I trouble the Master about everything, great or small, that troubles me 1 May I lay before the Almighty Ruler every care of my heart, every step of rny path 1 Yes, everything. The B8 TRUST. great and glorious sun shines down from heaven upon the daisy ; and the feeble daisy sweetly opens its breast, and looks up from earth upon the sun. God is the maker of them both ; both equally enjoy His care, and equally speak His praise. The genuine spirit of adoption may be best observed in little things. The distant and unconfiding will come on occasion of state for- malities to the sovereign; but the dear child will leap forward with everything. The Queen of England is the mother of a family. At one time her ministers of state come gravely into her presence to converse on the policy of nations : at another her in- fant runs into her arms for protection, frightened at the buzzing of a fly. Will she love less this last appeal, because it is a little thing ^ We have had fathers of our flesh to whom we came con- fidingly with our minutest ailments : How much more should we bring all our ways to the Father of our spirits, and live by simple faith on Him? XVI. e Jpmltjr 0f ' Fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones." iii. 7, 8. ||Y a striking and strongly figurative expression, which can be perfectly comprehended by readers of any age or clime, it is intimated that a religious rectitude preserves mental and physical health, and gives fullest play to all the human faculties. All God's laws come from one source, and con- spire for one end. They favour righteousness and frown on sin. The law set in nature runs parallel, as far as it goes, to the law written in the word. It is glory to God in the highest, as governor of the world. Vice saps the health both of body and mind. Every one of us has seen monuments of this awful law, almost as deeply blighted as the warning pillar on the plain of Sodom, only they stalk about, and so publish their lesson more widely. When the brain has been dried, and the eye dimmed, and the countenance bleared, and the limbs palsied, and the tongue thickened by drunkenness, and other vices that march in its com- pany or follow in its train, what remains of the man should be to us as dread a warning against his course, as if he had been turned into a salt statue, and stood upon the wayside to scare the soli- tary passenger. It behoves us to walk circumspectly, and not as fools. All around us, sin is withering the bloom of youth, and wasting manhood's strength is shrivelling the skin upon the surface, and drying up the marrow in the heart of the bones. Verily we are in the hands of the living God : in Him we live, and move, and have our being : we cannot elude His observation, or break from his grasp. Dreadful though its results be, I rejoice in these providential arrangements. The law by which disease and imbecility closely track the path of lust, is of God's own making, and, behold, it is 90 THE HEALTH OF HOLINESS. very good. It is righteous, and merciful too. The link which connects the suffering with the sin, I would not break though I could : even so, Father ! for so it seemed good in thy sight. These wastings of the marrow are the terrors of the Lord set in array against evil ; if they were wanting, human governments could not withstand the tide of universal anarchy. These provi- dential arrangements clog the wheels of evil, and so secure for the world a course of probation. If the Creator had not fixed in nature these make-weights on the side of good, the tide of evil that set in with sin would have soon wrought the extinction of the race. It is especially those sins that human governments cannot or will not touch, that God takes into his own hands, and checks by the stroke of his judgment. He has bowed his heavens and come down. He concerns Himself with the details of human history. He who does the great things, neglects not the less. He who makes holiness happy in heaven, makes holiness health- ful on earth. Gather up the fragments of his goodness, that none of them be lost : set them all in the song of praise. XVII. Capital antr |)r0fit 'Honoui the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase." iii. 9. two terms, "substance" and "increase," exist, and are understood in all nations and all times. They corre- spond to capital and profit in a commercial community, or land and crop in an agricultural district. Although the direct and chief lesson of this verse be another thing, we take occasion, from the occurrence of these terms, first of all, to indicate and estimate a grievous malady that infests mercantile life in the pre- sent day. It manifests itself in these two kindred features : 1. A morbid forwardness to commence business without capital; that is an effort to reap an increase while you have no substance to reap it from ; and, 2. A morbid forwardness to prosecute business to an enormous extent, upon a very limited capital; that is an effort to reap more increase than your substance can fairly bear. In former, and, commercially speaking, healthier times, those who had no money were content to work for wages until they had saved some, and then they laid out to the best advantage the money which they had. That method was honourable to the indi- vidual, and safe to society ; but in our day an unfair and unsafe standard of estimating men has been surreptitiously foisted upon the community. Practically by all classes, the chief honour should be given, not to the great merchant, but to the honest man. A man who has only five pounds in the world, and carries all his mer- chandise in a pack on his shoulder, is more worthy of honour than the man who, having as little money of his own, drives his carriage, and drinks champagne at the risk of other people. A full discussion of mercantile morality under this text would be unsuitable and therefore we now refrain ; but a note of warning 92 CAPITAL AND PROFIT. was demanded here on the one point which has been brought up We must have truth and righteousness at the bottom as a founda- tion, if we would have a permanently successful commerce. Let men exert all their ingenuity in extracting the largest possible increase from their substance ; but let them beware of galvanic efforts to extract annual returns at other people's risk, from shadows which have no body of substance behind. This is the epidemic disease of commerce : this is the chief cause of its disastrous fluctuations : this is the foul humour in its veins that bursts out periodically in wide-spread bankruptcy. If all mer- chants would conscientiously, as in God's sight, confine their gains to a legitimate increase of their realized substance, the com- merce of the nation would circulate in perennial health. When the increase is honestly obtained, honour the Lord with its first fruits. To devote a portion of our substance directly to the worship of God, and the good of men, is a duty strictly bind- ing, and plainly enjoined in the Scriptures : it is not a thing that a man may do or not do as he pleases. There is this difference, however, between it and the common relative duties of life, that whereas for these we are under law to man, for that we are accountable to God only. For the neglect of it no infliction comes from a human hand. God will not have the dregs that are .squeezed out by pressure poured into his treasury. He depends not, like earthly rulers, on the magnitude of the tribute. He loveth a cheerful giver ; he can work without our wealth, but He does not work without our willing service. The silver and the gold are His already ; what He claims and cares for is the cheer- fulness of the giver's heart. XVIII l Comdxmr. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord ; neither be weary of his correction : for whom the Lord loveth he correcteth ; even as a father the son in whom he de- lighteth." iii. 11, 12. [HIS passage is taken entire out of the Old Testament, and inserted in the New (Heb. xii 5, 6). I have seen the crown of our present Sovereign. It is studded all over with jewels, bright jewels of various hue. The eye can scarcely rest upon it for radiance. Some of these jewels have been found and fashioned in our own day ; others have been taken from the crowns which English monarchs wore in ancient times ; but the gems that have been taken from an ancient crown, and inserted in the newest, are as bright and as precious as those that were never used before. Jewels are neither dimmed by time, nor superseded by fashion. A prince will wear an old one as proudly as a new. Such are these words, these tried and pure words, spoken of old by the Spirit in Solomon, and recalled for use by the same Spirit in Paul. This word of God liveth and abideth for ever. The king who uttered it at first has passed away with all his glory like the grass. The kingdom which he swayed is blotted out from the map of the nations. The temple where they may have been read to the great congregation has been cast down. Jerusalem became a heap. But these words of Solomon remain at this day bright and pure like the jewels on the crown he wore. The very gems that sparkled in the diadem of David's son, appeal- again reset in a circlet of glory round the head of David's Lord. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but none of these precious words shall fail. In quoting the words from the Old Testament, Paul perceived, and pointed out a tender meaning in the form of the expression, ,04 A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION. " my son." That formula occurs often in the Proverbs, and a careless reader would pass it as a thing of course. Not so this inspired student of the Scripture : he gathers a meaning from the form of the word before he begins to deal with its substance; the exhortation, he says, " speaketh unto you as unto children." Inci- dentally we obtain here a lesson on the interpretation of Scripture. Some would confine themselves to the leading facts and principles, setting aside, as unimportant, whatever pertains merely to the manner of the communication. By this method much is lost. It is not a thrifty way of managing the bread that cometh down from heaven. Gather up the fragments, that none of them be lost. We give no license to the practice of building precious doctrines upon conceits and fancies, while there are solid founda- tions at hand laid there for the purpose of bearing them. We do not want any of your word ; but we must have all that is the Lord's, great and small alike. We need every word that pro- ceedeth out of the mouth of God to live upon. Take and use all that is in the word, but nothing more. " My son." The Spirit in Paul recognised this as a mark of God's paternal tenderness, and used it as a ground of glad encour- agement to desponding believers. Of design, and not by accident, was the word thrown into that form, as it issued at first from the lips of Solomon. God intended thereby to reveal Himself as a Father, and to grave that view of his character in the Scripture as with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond, that the most distant nations and the latest times might know that as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. Some men raise a debate about inspiration, whether every word be inspired, or only some ; but there was no such idea in Paul's mind. Not only the main propositions, but the incidental tone and cast of the language is understood to express the mind of God. We should not allow one jot or tittle of this word to pass away through our hands as we are using it. Turning now to the matter of this text, understand by chasten- ing, in the meantime, any affliction, whatever its form or measure may be. The stroke may fall upon your own person, your body, your spirit, or your good name ; it may fall on those who are dearest to you, and so wound you in the tenderest spot ; it may fall upon your substance to sweep it away, or on your country to A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION. 95 waste it. Whatever the providence may be that turns your joy into grief, it is a chastening from the Lord. Taking, in the first place, this more general view of chastening or rebuke, we observe that the command regarding it is twofold : 1. Do not despise it; 2. Do not faint under it. There are two opposite extremes of error in this thing, as in most others ; and these two commands are set like hedges, one on the right hand, and another on the left, to keep the traveller from wandering out of the way. The Lord from heaven beholds all the children of men. He sees that some, when afflicted, err on this side, and some on that ; the stroke affects those too little, and these too much. 1. " Despise not." It means to make light of anything ; to cast it aside as if it had no meaning and no power. The affliction comes on, and the sufferer looks to the immediate cause only. He re- fuses to look up to the higher links of the chain ; he refuses to make it the occasion of communion with God. The disease comes upon him : it is a cold or a bruise ; it has been neglected, and so aggravated ; but the doctor has prescribed such a remedy, and he expects it will soon give way. The loss in business comes : he feels the uneasiness it may be, the affront. He has grief for his own loss, and indignation against others ; but he was in a fair way, and might have succeeded, if such an article had not suddenly fallen in price, or such a man had not become bankrupt. The bereavement comes : nature sheds bitter tears a while, and nature by degrees grows easy again. All this, what is it, and what is the degree of its guilt 1 It is specifically atheism : it is to be " with- out God in the world." The Father of our spirits touches us by certain instruments which are at his command; and we refuse to look up and learn from the signs on his countenance. We forbid not the consideration of instruments and secondary causes. Let them be observed, and the remedies which they sug- gest applied ; but do not stop there. Do not finish off with these dumb messengers whom the Lord sends ; they are sent for the very purpose of inviting you to a conference, secret and personal, with himself. When you smart under the chastening, acknowledge the Lord. He is not far from every one of us. He speaks to us as to children. He means thereby to represent himself as a Father. In that character he alternately visits us with mercy and judgment. He gives us life, and breath, and all things ; he also at other times 96 A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION. rebukes and bereaves. He takes it ill to be overlooked in eithei capacity. He is a jealous God. He will not allow idols to inter- cept the homage of his creatures; so also he is jealous, and his jealousy will burn like fire, if you give to his servants, whether diseases, or stormy winds, or mercantile convulsions, the regard which is due to himself your regard when success makes you happy, or when grief weighs you down. Do not meet sorrow by a mere hardihood of nature. Let your heart flow down under trouble, for this is human : let it rise up also to God, for this is divine. 2. " Faint not." This is the opposite extreme. Do not be dis- solved, as it were taken down and taken to pieces by the stroke. Do not sink into despondency and despair. You should retain presence of mind, and exercise all your faculties. Both extremes, when traced to their fountain-head, spring from the same cause a want of looking to God in the time of trouble. If the bold would see God in his afflictions, he would not despise ; if the timid would see God in them, he would not faint. As in other cases, the two opposite errors branch off" originally from the same path, and con- verge upon it again. Truth goes straight over the hill Difficulty between. Godliness is profitable unto all things : it humbles the proud, and lifts up the lowly : it softens the hard, and gives firm- ness to the feeble. The middle way is the path of safety. Be impressed by the stroke of the Lord's hand, but not crushed under it. Let your own confidence go, but lay hold on the arm of the Lord, that you may be kept from falling. Let the affliction shut you out from other helps, and up to the help that is laid on the Mighty One. " Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." We must not sup- pose from this that the trouble which a man endures on earth is the mark and measure of God's love. It is not a law of the king- dom of heaven that those who suffer most from God's hand are furthest advanced in his favour. Hitherto we have considered the afflictive stroke simply as a suffering; but it is specifically in " chastening " that the love lies, and all suffering is not chastening. It means fatherly correction for the child's good; the word indeed signifies " education." God, the ruler of the universe, permits suffering to fall on all men indiscriminately : but the God of mercy stands by to make A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION. 97 the suffering love's instrument in training every dear child The same stroke may fall on two men, and be in one case judgment, in the other love. " In vain have I smitten your children : they re- ceived no correction " (Jer. ii. 30). All were " smitten," but they only obtained paternal correction who in the spirit of adoption " received " it as such. You may prune branches lying withered on the ground, and also branches living in the vine. In the two cases the operation and instrument are precisely alike; but the operation on this branch has no result, and the operation on that branch produces fruitfulness, because of a difference in the place and condition of the branches on which the operation was performed- In his comment on this text, Paul charges the Hebrew Chris- tians with having " forgotten " it. He lays it expressly at their door as a fault, that this word of God was not hidden in their hearts, and ready in their memories. It is expected of Christians, in New Testament times, that they know, and remember, and apply the lesson of the Old Testament. When they forgot it, He who spoke it at first, repeated it again, accompanied with a complaint that their forge tfulness made the repetition necessary. The warning has often been given, and it is needed yet, that terror in time of trouble may be no true repentance. The profli- gate, the vain, or the worldly has been laid low on a sick-bed. So near has death come, that the very shadow of the judgment-seat fell cold and dark over his heart, and took all the light out of his former joys. He grieves now that he has sinned so much. He resolves that if he recover he will fear God, and seek a Saviour. After quivering for a time between death and life, he gets the turn toward the side of time, and enters on another lease of life. The breezes of summer, and the exercise of returning strength, refresh again his pallid cheek, and rekindle his sunken eye. The affliction is over. The fear of death departs, and with it the repentance which it had brought. He returns to his pleasures again. He brings disgrace upon the holy name of Jesus, and provokes God to give him over. He deals by the Almighty as little children do by ghosts cower down in breathless terror of them at night, and laugh at them when the daylight returns. He " will mock when their fear cometh !" But unspeakably precious to dear children are the corrections of a Father's love, all these abuses notwithstanding. It is one of (7) 7 08 A FATHERLY WORD ON FATHERLY CORRECTION. the finest triumphs of faith, when, in time of affliction, a Christian gets fresh confidence in a Saviour's love. How sweet it is to lay 3'our besetting sins and characteristic shortcomings beneath the descending stroke, and count it so much gain when they are crushed ! It may well encourage a believer to be patient in the furnace, to see that some of the dross is separating, and coming away. Not a drop too much will fall into the cup of the redeemed, and it will all be over soon. Lord, pity our weakness ! Lord, increase our faith ! XIX. ittij a: Jtirfutw. 'Slippy is the man that fin deth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding, for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst de- sire are not to be compared unto her." iii. 13-15. [SDOM and understanding should be received here in the same sense as that in which they occurred and were ex- pounded in the second chapter. It is wisdom in its highest view ; wisdom in regard to all the parts of man's being, and all the periods of his destiny. This wisdom is embodied in the person of Christ, as light is treasured in the sun, but thence it streams forth in all directions, and glances back from every ob- ject on which it falls. He is the wisdom of God, and by the Spirit in the Scriptures, he is made unto us wisdom. In him the glory that excelleth is ; and when our eyes are opened we shall be- hold it there, as the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Saving wisdom is a thing to be "found" and "gotten:" it is not required of us that we create it. We could not plan, we could not execute a way of righteous redemption for sinners. We could not bring God's favour down to compass men about, and yet leave his holiness untainted as it is in heaven. This is all his own doing ; and it is all done. All things are now ready. When we are saved, it is by "finding" a salvation, already complete, and being our- selves " complete in him." But while we are not required to make a salvation, we are expected to seek the salvation which has been provided and brought near. The command of God is attached to his promise, and together they constitute his blessed invitation, "Seek, and ye shall find." It will be a fearful thing to come short of eternal life, thus completed and offered, from sheer want of will- ingness to seek. " How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation 1 " 100 MAKING A FORTUNE. Understanding is a thing to be gotten. It comes not in sparks from our own intellect in collision with other human minds. It is a light from heaven, above the brightness of this world's sun. The gift is free, and an unspeakable gift it is. Bear in mind that religion is not all and only an anxious fearful seeking : it is a get- ting too, and a glad enjoying. It is blessed even to hunger for righteousness ; but a greater blessing awaits the hungerer, he shall be filled. The seeker may be anxious, but the finder is glad. " Happy is the man that findeth." It is a great glory to God, and a great benefit to a careless world, when a follower of Christ so finds salvation, as to rejoice in the treasure. When the new song comes from the mouth of the delighted possessor, many shall ob- serve the change, and shall fear, and trust in the Lord (Psalm xl. 3). The joy of the Lord becomes a disciple's strength, both to resist evil and to do good. Those who, by finding a Saviour, have been themselves admitted into peace and joy, have the firmest foothold, and the strongest arm, to " save with fear " when it be- comes needful to pull a neighbour out of the fire (Jude 23). Wisdom is compared and contrasted with other possessions ; it is "merchandise." There is a most pleasant excitement in the prosecu- tion of mercantile enterprise ; it gives full play to ah 1 the faculties. Those who prosecute it as a class have their wits more sharpened than other sections of the community. The plans are contrived, and the calculations made; the goods are selected, purchased, loaded, and dispatched ; and then there is a watching for favourable winds. After all is clear at the custom-house, and the ship beyond his view, the owner left on shore may be seen to turn frequently round as he walks leisurely in the evening from his counting-house to his dwelling. He is looking at the vane on the steeple, or the smoke from the chimneys, or any object that will indicate the direction of the wind. His mind is fixed on the probable position of the ship, and his imagination vividly pictures its progress down the channel. He strains mentally after it, as if he could thereby aid its speed. If a photograph of his soul could be taken at the mo- ment, it would be found that his spirit bent towards the distant ship, as the keen curler seems by his attitude to direct the course of the stone that he has launched until it reach the mark. Next day he scans the newspapers to learn whether similar exports are flow- ing to the same market. Every succeeding day some new aspect MAKING A FORTUNE. 101 of the object presents itself, until the result of the adventure ia known. He makes much of it, and so he should ; whatever a man does, he should do well. But meantime, what of the merchandise for a more distant country than that to which his goods are going what of the traffic for eternity 1 Are there no careful calculations, no instinctive longings, no vivid imaginings, as to its condition and progress 1 Are your minds never filled with glad anticipations of its success, or anxious fear of its miscarriage ! Do you watch those symp- toms which indicate its prosperity or decay 1 ? This merchandise is better and more gainful than any other. The world contains not any such promising field for speculation. It opens up a richer and surer market than any port of time. In that region there is never any glut. He to whom you make consignment is ever faithful. What you commit to him he will keep until that day. He is wise that winneth souls ; his own first, and then others. There is no gain to be compared with this : it is a treasure that cannot be taken away. Thieves cannot penetrate its storehouse ; moth and rust do not corrupt the goods of those who are rich to- wards God. It often happens that a merchant amasses a large fortune by the labour of many years, and then loses all by a single unfortunate speculation. Some dark tales hang on these catastrophes too dark for telling here. When such a crash comes, the wonder of the neighbourhood, passing from mouth to mouth, is, why did he not lay up his fortune, when it was realized, in some place of safety 1 But, alas, where is that place 1 It lies not within the horizon of time. All the riches that can be laid up here will soon take wings and fly away. If we do not invest in heaven, we shall soon be poor; for the earth, and the things therein, will be burnt up. The prosperous merchant must soon put on " the robe which is made without pockets;" and he is destitute indeed, if he have not the true riches in eternity before him, for all other possessions he must leave behind. By our own lips, and our own deeds shall we be condemned ; if, being all energy for time, we be all indolence for eternity if we fill our memory with mammon, and forget God. XX. & f jengi&wttir gag, antr a fkasani f aty. Length of daja is in her right hand Her ways are ways of pleasantness, *nd all her paths are peace." iii. 16, 17. |T is certainly not a uniform experience, that a man lives long in proportion as he lives well. Such a rule would obviously not be suitable to the present dispensation. It is true that all wickedness acts as a shortener of life, and all goodness as its lengthener ; but other elements enter, and com- plicate the result, and slightly veil the interior law. If the law Avere according to a simple calculation in arithmetic, " the holiest liver the longest liver," and conversely, " the more wicked the life the earlier its close ;" if this, unmixed, unmodified, were the law, the moral government of God would be greatly impeded, if not altogether subverted. Wickedness shortens life; but God's government is moral it is not a lump of mere materialism. He will have men to choose goodness for his sake and its own ; there- fore a slight veil is cast over its present profitableness. Some apparent anomalies are permitted to try them that are upon the earth. Here is an example that often occurs. A stray drunkard lives to a great age : all the neighbourhood know it : it is trumpeted at every carousal : the hoary debauchee, who has survived all the saints of a parish, is triumphantly pointed to by younger bacchanals as evidence that a merry life will keep death long at bay. On the supposition that a certain measure of power were conceded to Satan, he could not lay it out in any way that would secure a greater revenue to his kingdom, than to give a long term of life to one profligate in every county. By means of that one decoy, he might lure a hundred youths to an early grave and a lost eternity. Individual cases of long life in wickedness are observed, and fastened on, and exaggerated by the vicious, to prove to them- ^elves that their course is not a shorter road to the grave ; and A LENGTHENED DAY, AND A PLEASANT PATH. 103 yet it is a law a law of God in constant operation, that every violation of moral law saps, so far, the foundations of the natural life. It is most interesting, and at the same time unspeakably sad, to observe how much more easily satisfied men are with evidence when they are about to risk their souls, than when they propose to risk their money. Investigations have been made of late years into the effect of intemperate habits on the length of life, not with a view to moral lessons at all, but simply in search of a basis for pecuniary transactions. It is expressly intimated that occa- sional drinkers are included in the calculations as well as habitual drunkards, and the tables exhibit among them a frightfully high rate of mortality. Out of a given number of persons, and in a given number of years, where 110 of the general population would have died, there died of the drinkers 357. Of persons between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, the mortality among drinkers was five times greater than that of the general community.* Life Assurance Societies proceed upon these facts and laws. A young man will risk his life and his soul on the lie that his fast life is consistent with a long life ; but let him try to effect a life assur- ance on himself, and he will find that the capitalist will not intrust his money on such a frail security. Drunkenness is selected by the agents of assurance societies for their calculations, and mentioned here for illustration, not that it is more sinful before God, or more hurtful to life than other vices, but simply because it is of such a palpable character that it can be more easily observed and accurately estimated. Others, if human eyes could trace them, would give the same result ; but they are trackless, like a serpent on the rock, or an eagle in the air. We are accustomed to the idea that the end of a good man's course is happy. We are well aware that w r hen the pilgrim gets home he will have no more sorrow ; but does not the journey lie through a wilderness from the moment when the captive bursts his bonds till he reach the overflowing Jordan, and, in the track of the High Priest, passing through the parted flood, plant his foot firmly on the promised land 1 It does ; it traverses the desert all its length, and yet the path is pleasant notwithstanding. To the honour of the Lord be it spoken, and for the comfort of 'Taper by Mr. Xeison, in " Athenaeum." 104 A LENGTHENED DAY, AND A PLEASANT PATH. his people, not the home only, but also the way thither, is pleasantness and peace. Those who have not trod it count it dreary. Those who see what it wants, and have not tasted what it is, naturally think that however safe the home to which it leads the traveller at last, it must make him in the meantime of all men most miserable. Those who abide in Egypt, by its flesh-pots and its river, may pity the host of Israel marching through a land not sown ; but Israel, in the desert though they be, get their bread and their water sure from day to day ; all the more sweet to their taste that the water leaps in their sight at the Father's bidding from a barren rock, and the bread is rained from heaven around their tents. The pilgrim who flees from Egypt at God's com- mand, and closely follows then the guiding pillar, will go safe and sweetly over. The young lion may suffer hunger, but they who wait upon the Lord shall not lack any good. In the keeping of his commandments there is great reward. The path is peace, although storms rage all around it, if there be peace in the heart of the traveller. The peace of God keeping the heart within will beam out on the untrodden way, and gild its jagged sides with gladness. The path of the justified is like the shining light : from the first struggling twilight it grows in beauty until it culminate in day. The path is peace : eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, what the home will be. XXL Mrsbnm leaking anb ^anagmg Worlbs. 'The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by understanding hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew."-iii. 19, 20. [ESE are specimens of Wisdom's mighty work on worlds, these are the well-known tracks of God's goings in creation. There is a closer connection be- tween creation and redemption than human philosophy is able to discover, or unbelieving philosophy is willing to own. The breach that sin has made in the moral hemisphere of the duplicate universe hides from our view the grand unity of the Creator's work. It is one plan from the beginning. The physical and the moral departments are the constituent parts of the completed whole. Throughout the present week (a thousand years is with the Lord as. one day) creation labours painfully, by reason of a rent that runs through its spiritual side : provision has been made for healing it; and even now the process is going on. These labour days sprung from a preceding holy rest, and they will issue in another Sabbath soon. Creation is groaning now for its pro- mised rest : when it comes, the material world will again be a perfect platform for the display of its Maker's goodness. When the earth is made new, it will be the dwelling-place of righteous- ness. The material and the spiritual, like body and soul, each fearfully made, and together wonderfully united, will be the per- fect manifestation of divine wisdom and love. A glance is gotten here into the circulation of the world. "The depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down dew !" He has instituted laws whereby the deep is divided. One portion rises to the sky, and thence drops down again to refresh the earth. " How wonderful, Lord, are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all !" 106 WISDOM MAKING AND MANAGING WORLDS. By his knowledge, too, another depth is broken up. The wicked, a whole worldful, lie outspread beneath his eye, " like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest " (Isa. Ivii. 20). What wis- dom can separate the pure from the impure, and draw from that unholy mass a multitude, whom no man can number, to be fit inhabitants of heaven ? God's wisdom has done this. Christ, set in the firmament of revelation, pours his beams of love upon the lost, and thereby wins them out from their impurity, and upward unto himself. There is a double upbreaking of these depths, and a double separation of the pure from the vile ; the one is personal, the other public. In an individual there is a great sea of sin. When the love of Christ comes in power, it dissolves the terrible cementing by which the soul and sin were run into one. Forthwith there is a breaking up and a separation. The man throws off himself ; the new man puts off the old, and the old man puts on the new. The ransomed soul is severed from what seemed its very being, sin, and tends upward toward the Head. Sins trouble him still, and keep him low, but he is delivered from the law of sin. In the whole community of the fallen there is a breaking up. The wisdom of God is rending asunder things that sin had pressed into one. The word of invitation is, "Come out of her, my people ;" and there is power with the word. A separating pro- cess is going on over all the surface of sin's sea. This kingdom cometh not with observation. It is now an unseen thing within the separated ; but a time is coming when the separation shall be as manifest, and the distance as wide, as that which now divides these raging waves of the sea from the white sunlit clouds of glory that have been lifted up, and now congregate and culminate in majestic beauty, as if around the throne of God. The white-robed multi- tude that do in very deed stand round it, were drawn from a sea of sorrow and sin ; for they came out of great tribulation, and their robes were not white until they were washed in the blood of the Lamb. XXII. 0nfibmte in <0b % Crue Safeguard fr0m 'The Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken." iii. 26. 1EWAKE of mistakes here. Let us not deceive ourselves by words without meaning. Do not say God is your confidence, if he be only your dread. An appalling amount of hypocrisy exists in Christendom, and passes current for devotion. He who is in Himself most worthy, and has done most for us, is often more disliked than any other being ; and, as if this ingratitude were not enough, men double the sin by pro- fessing that they have their confidence in Him. I have observed that seagoing ships do not trust to themselves in the windings of a river. Where they are hemmed in between rock and quicksand, grazing now the one and now the other, they take care to have a steam-tug, both to bear them forward and guide them aright. They hang implicitly upon its power ; they make no 'attempt at independent action. But I have also ob- served, that as soon as they get clear of the narrows as soon as they have attained a good offing and an open sea, they heave off, and hoist their own sails. They never want a steamer until they come to narrow waters again. Such is the trust in God which the unreconciled experience. In distress they are fain to lean on the Almighty. While they are in the narrows, death seeming, near on every side, conscious that they have no power and no skill, they would hang on the help of a Deliverer. " My God, we know thee " (Hos. viii. 2), is then their cry. Most devout they are, and most earnest. At every hour of their day and night they are exercised in spirit about pleasing God, and gaining his help in their need. The line of their dependence seems ever tight by their constant leaning. But 108 CONFIDENCE IN GOD THE TRUE SAFEGUARD. when they begin to creep out of these shoals of life when the path opens up wide and clear and safe again, they heave off, and throw themselves on their own resources. They become a God unto themselves, whenever dangers are out of sight. Forthwith and henceforth they live without God in the world, until they are driven into straits again. Then they remember God and pray, as a distressed ship makes signals for help when she is entering a tortuous channel (Isa. xxvi. 16; Ps. Ixxviii. 34-37). This is not to have confidence in God ; this is to provoke Him to anger. He deserves a soul's confidence, and desires it. Confidence in God is not to be attained by a wish whenever you please. You may, when you like, say, " Lord, I trust in Thee," but to make the just Judge his confidence, does not lie in the power of a sinner's will. There is a way of reaching it ; and the way is open, and all are welcome, but no man can reach it except by that way. Coming through Christ, and being accepted in the beloved, you will indeed confide in God ; but this is to be turned from darkness to light, to pass from death unto life. When any man enters by this way into favour, he will be ready to confess that it is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in his eyes. It is this confidence that has power for good on the life. It is not terror, but trust, that becomes a safeguard from the dominion of sin. It is a peculiar and touching promise that God, when He becomes your confidence, "will keep your foot from being taken." Here incidentally the terrible truth glances out, that snares are laid for the traveller's feet in all the paths of life, in all the haunts of men. Our adversary, like a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Alas, multitudes are entrapped, like birds in the fowler's snare. Many who set forth hopefully in the morning of life are caught ere they have gone far in some of these pit-falls, and bound over unto the second death. It is a fearful thing to pass by and hear their screaming, and have no power to help. In my childhood, I sometimes saw rabbits that damaged the corn-fields, caught in snares. My first experience of the process melted me, and the scene is not effaced from my memory yet. The creature was caught by the foot. It was a captive, but living. Oh the agonized look it cast on us when we approached it ! The scared, helpless, despairing look of that living creature CONFIDENCE IN GOD THE TRUE SAFEGUARD. 109 sank deep in the sensitive powers of my nature. As a child, I could not conceive of any more touching thrilling appeal than the soft rolling eyes of that dumb captive ; but " when I became a man," and entered both on the experience of the world and the ministry of the word, I met with scenes that cast these earlier emotions down into the place of " childish things." Soon after I began to go my rounds as a watchman on my aUotted field, I fell upon a youth (and the same experience has been several times repeated since) who but lately was bounding hopefully along, bidding fair for the better land, and seeming to lead others on, caught by the foot in a snare. I went up to him, surprised to find him halting so ; but, ah, the look, the glare from his eyes, soon told that the immortal was fast in the devil's toils. He lived ; but he was held. All his companions passed on, and soon were out of sight, while he lay beating himself on the ground. He lives ; but it is in chains. The chains have sunk into his flesh. They ran through the marrow of his bones, and are wrapped around his soul, filthy as firm, firm as filthly. . Oh, wretched man, who shall deliver him ? Not I ; not any man. We must pass on, and leave him. The same voice that wrenched from Death his prisoner is needed to give liberty to this captive. Only one word can we utter in presence of such a case : " Nothing is impossible with God." Having uttered it, we pass on with a sigh. Cure in such a case is difficult is all but impossible ; is there any method of prevention 1 Yes : the Lord thy confidence will keep thy foot from being taken ; the Lord your dread will not do it, almighty though He be. Many who have an agonizing fear of a just God in their conscience, plunge deeper even than others into abominable sins. It is the peace of God in the heart that has power to keep the feet out of evil in the path of life. lt He that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even as He is pure." " Sin shall not have dominion over you ;" and the reason is added " for ye are not under the law, but under grace " (Rom. vi. 14). A son has wantonly offended an affectionate father, and fled from his face. After many days of sullen distance, the prodigal returns, and at nightfall approaches his father's dwelling. He is standing outside, shivering in the blast, yet afraid to enter, and meet the frown of an injured parent. Some abandoned 110 CONFIDENCE IN GOD THE TRUE SAFEGUARD. youths, companions of his guilt, pass by, and hail him. By a little coaxing, they break kis resolution of repentance, and carry him off to their haunts of vice. It was easy to sweep him off when they found him trembling in terror outside. He was like chaff; and iniquities, like the wind, carried him away. But if the youth had entered before the tempters came up, and the father, instead of frowning or upbraiding, had fallen on his neck and kissed him, setting him in the circle of brothers and sisters, and showering on him the manifold affections of a united family and a happy home and if the same godless band had been pass- ing then, and had beckoned him to join their revelry, they would not have succeeded so easily. The soul of this youth is like a ship at anchor now, and the current does not carry him away. Speci- fically, it is "the God of peace" who will bruise Satan under our feet (Rom. xvi. 20). Those who stand outside, with just as much religion as makes them afraid, are easily taken in the tempter's snare : the reconciled whom the Father has welcomed back with weeping, has now another joy, and that joy becomes his strength : " his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord " (Ps. czii. 7). XXIII. So at % ig{jt Cimc. Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by tliee.' - iii. 27, 28. |,T is in general the law of righteousness between man and man; do justly to all, and do so now; pay your debts, and pay them to-day, lest you should lack the means to-morrow. But it is probable that the precept has special reference to the law of love. Every possessor of the good things, either of this life or the next, is bound by the command of the giver to distri- bute a portion to those who have none. To withhold from any one that which is due to him, is plainly dishonest. But here an interesting inquiry occurs ; how far and* in what sense the poor have a right to maintenance out of the labour and wealth of the community 1 The answer is, the really poor have a right to sup- port by the law of God, and the debt is binding on the conscience of all who have the means ; but it is not, and ought not to be, a right which the poor as such can make good at a human tribunal against the rich. The possessors of this world's good are not at liberty to withhold the portion of the poor : it is riot left to their choice : it is a matter settled by law : disobedience is a direct offence against the great Law-giver. But the poor have not a right which they can plead and enforce at a human tribunal. The acknowledgment of such a right would tend to anarchy. The poor are placed in the power of the rich, and the rich are under law to God. It is true that in heathen and other degraded countries the poor perish, but it does not follow that any other principle would place them in a better condition. Whatever may be the law, the possessors in every country must administer it ; and so there cannot, in the nature of things, be any other law 112 THE RIGHT THING DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME. laid upon them than the law of love. They are made answerable to God in their own conscience for their conduct to the poor ; and if that do not prevail to secure kindness, nothing else will. If they make light of a duty that may be pleaded at the judgment- seat of God, much more will they make light of it as against the poor who cannot enforce their own demands. The assessment for the poor, in a highly artificial state of society, is not the conces- sion of their right to maintenance exigible against the rich by the laws of men : it is a mere expedient by those who give to equalize and systematize the disbursement of charity. It seems to be the purpose of God in the present dispensation to do good to his creatures, by the inequality of their condition. The design of the providential arrangement is to produce gentle, humble, contented thankfulness on the one side, and open-hearted, open-handed liberality on the other. If God had not intended to exercise these graces, he probably would have made and kept men, as to external comforts, all in a state of equality. But this would not have been the best condition for human beings, or for any portion of them. Absolute equality of condition may do for cattle, but not for men. It appears that the same all -wise Disposer has arranged that there shall be great and manifold diversities of elevation in the surface of the material earth, and in the condition of its intelligent inhabitants. For similar purposes of wisdom and goodness have both classes of in- e^ualities been introduced and maintained. Levellers, who should propose to improve upon this globe, by bringing down every high place and exalting every low, so that no spot of all its surface should remain higher than another, would certainly destroy it as a habitation for man ; the waters would cover it. In attempting to make a level earth, they would make a universal sea. But the mischief cannot be done; the mountains are too firmly rooted to be removed by any power but that of the world's Maker. We suspect that the other class of levellers aim at a change as perilous ; and our consolation is, that it is equally impossible. We believe that for the present dispensation, the inequalities in the condition of individuals and families is as needful to the general prosperity of the whole, as the diversity of hill and valley in the surface of the globe; and we believe, also, that the arrange- ment is as firmly fixed. It would be as easy to level the world THE RIGHT THING DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME. 113 as its inhabitants. What may be in store for the earth and man in the future we know not ; there may be a time when the globe shall be smooth like an ivory ball, but then there must be no more sea : and if ever there come a time when all men shall be and abide equal, it must be that time when there shall be no more sea of sin to overflow them. If ever there come a time when there shall be no more masters and servants, it must be the time when all shall serve one Lord. In many ways society is consolidated and strengthened by inequalities. He who made man, male and female, receptive weakness on one side and protecting strength on the other, welding both by the glow of love into a completer one, has thereby made the mass of humanity hold more firmly together. He has also provided diagonal girders running in a different direction the relations of rich and poor, master and servant, in order to interlace the several portions of humanity more firmly into each other, and so make society as a whole strong enough to ride out the hurri- canes of a tempestuous time. " When it is in the power of thine hand to do it ;" a touching memorial this. Many who have cherished sound principles, and desired to do good, have permitted the time irrevocably to pass. When they had it in their power to do good they procrastinated, and now the means have fled. This is a bitter reflection in old age. There is only one way by which any man may make sure that such a bitterness shall not be his, and that is by doing now what his hand finds to do. If it is in the power of your hand this year to do good, it may not be so next year. The abundance may be taken from you, or you taken from your abundance. The secret of a happy life is to set the house in order, and keep it in order. Above all, keep as few good intentions hovering about as possible. They are like ghosts haunting a dwelling. The way to lay them is to find bodies for them. When they are embodied in substantial deeds they are no longer dangerous. But there is yet another way in which it may be oeyond the power of thine hand to do a duty to-morrow which has been deferred to-day. The hand has much power and skill, but it cannot move except at the command of the will. If the willingness of the heart were conclusively frozen up within, the hand, which is merely the heart's servant, can do nothing. When the rich refuse (7) 8 114 THE RIGHT THING DONE AT THE EIGHT TIME. to do the duties of the day with their means, they are in danger of falling into the miser's madness. When you have contracted a diseased love of money which you do not use, it is not in the power of the hand to do the plainest duty. The man who loves money cannot part with it : he has let his opportunity pass. On the one side, there may be lavislmess without generosity the mere habit of letting money run out like water : on the other hand, there may be close carefulness without the virtue of frugality the mere habit of holding the grip. Both conditions are most dismal. There is a tendency to fall into the one snare or the other. The way in the midst is a strait way : it is not easy to walk in it. If we begin early, and keep going, the work will be- come easy at length. Observe how remarkably specific is the command not to post- pone a gift. We ought to make up our minds, and act. Those who have the means of doing good in the community at the present day, are much tried, and should look well to their path. There are many good objects pressing, and as in all such cases, the very multitude of the good notes suggests and makes room for the circulation of bad ones, caution and discrimination are not only permitted, they are peremptorily required. The injunction of the text is a most useful rule in one department of this difficulty. If we have not the means, or if the object be unworthy, there ought to be a distinct declinature. A clear, unambiguous negative is, in many transactions, of incalculable worth. It is no man's duty to give to every one who asks, or to any all that he asks. There is such a thing as giving when you should not, from lack of courage to say No. Further, when the object is not worthy, and your mind is clear, and you determine to do nothing, it would be profitable both to yourself and others to say so at once. It is not altogether straightforward to another, or safe for yourself, to an- nounce a postponement if you have resolved on a refusal. Soft- ness may lead to sin. But the worst of all is when the cause is good, when you are convinced of its goodness, when the means are in your power, and yet you put the pleader off. Even though you should afterwards give, you have lost the blessing. God loves a cheerful giver; and though you have given, you gave with a grudge. When the fruit needs a violent pulling to wrench it from the tree, the tree itself is torn in the process. XXIV. % Cum anb % posing tip0n "The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just" iiL 33. |E have often, in the course of these expositions, had oc- casion to point out the effects of sin upon the person who sins. Here is yet another of its bitter fruits : it brings a curse on the house. Our interests are mor<* closely con- nected with each other than we are able to observe, or willing to allow. The welfare of one is largely dependent on the well-doing of another. Let every wicked man learn here, that over and above the ruin of his own soul, his sins bring a curse on his wife and children, his neighbours and friends. Such is God's government, that you cannot live in sin, any more than in smallpox or the plague, without involving others in the danger. For wise pur- poses, it has been so ordained. This law is calculated to lay an additional restraint upon a wayward spirit. A man, reckless of his own character and fate, might be ready to act out the daring maxim, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." When pity for himself did not arrest him, he might be arrested w T hen he saw that his own abandoned life would curse his dwelling. Doubt- less this law of the Lord has been bit and bridle to hold in a man, who would have burst through all other restraints. In blind, despairing rage, he might pull down the pillars upon his own unhappy head : yet when he feels his little ones clinging to his knees, and his wife leaning on his breast, he may stand in awe, and turn and live. "Fear and sin not:" the providence of God gives terrible momentum to that sharp word. In addition to the weight of divine authority upon the conscience, all the force of nature's instincts is applied to drive it home. When the fear of perdition to himself has not power enough, the laws of Providence throw in all his house as a make-weight to increase the motive. 116 THE CURSE AND THE BLESSING UPON THE HOUSE. He is held back from evil by all that he ever felt of tenderness in his youth, or feels of compassion still : and if, in the last resort, these weights avail not to keep him from sinning, they will be effectual in adding to his punishment. This dark curse hanging over the dwelling of the wicked, is balanced by the blessing that falls on the habitation of the just. Here is pleasant work, and plenty of wages. Trust in Christ, and serve Him ; besides the saving of your own soul, you will be a blessing to your habitation. How sweet the privilege of being the parents of your children both for this life and the life to come ! And not only the parents every one in the house may become the channel of blessing from on high. If God has a child in a family, he will have many an errand there. You who are fathers know how frequently you find occasion to visit the house where your own dear child is boarded out for education. Our Father in heaven so visits his own, in whatever habitation their education is going on; and all the house will get the benefit. The disciples of Jesus are a preserving salt, even when the mass preserved by their presence are unconscious of the boon. To be good is the shortest and surest way to do good. Jonathan in his lifetime was dear to David ; and therefore Jonathan's son, an orphan and a cripple, sat daily at the royal table. If you be the King's friend, your children will get the benefit in some hour of need. It is a noble position, and should encourage one to bear trials with patience, to be the channel between a house and heaven, bearing them up to God, and getting down from him the blessing. XXV. mitr ( " Hear, my son, and receive my sayings. .... I have taught thee in the way of wisdom : I have led thee in right paths." iv. 10, 11. JT is a great matter for a parent, if he is able to say to hia grown son, u I have taught thee in the way of wisdom ; I have led thee in right paths." Teaching and leading are closely allied, but not identical It is possible, and common, to have the first in large measure, where the second is wanting. They are two elements which together make up a whole. With both, education in a family will go prosperously on : where one is wanting, it will be halting and ineffectual Many a parent who acquits himself well in the department of teaching his children, fails miserably in the department of leading them in the right path. It is easier to tell another the right way, than to walk in it yourself. To lead your child in right paths implies that you go in them before him. Here lies the reason why so many parents practically fail to give their children a good education. Only a godly man can bring up his child for God. It is not uncommon to find men who are themselves vicious, desiring to have their children educated in virtue. Infidels sometimes take measures to have Christianity taught to their children. Many will do evil ; few dare to teach it to their own offspring. This is the unwilling homage which the evil are constrained to pay to goodness. Great is the effect when parents consistently and steadfastly go before their children, giving them a daily example of their daily precepts ; but to teach the family spiritual things, while the life of the teacher is carnal, is both painful and fruitless. A man can- not walk with one leg, although the limb be in robust health ; more especially if the other limb, instead of being altogether wanting, is hanging on him, and trailing after him dead. In this case it is impossible to get quit of the impediment ; it will not off The 118 PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE. only way of getting relief from its weight is to get it made alive An example of some kind, parents must exhibit in their families : if it be not such as to help, it will certainly hinder the education of the young. God, in the providential laws, permits no neutra- lity in the family : there, you must either be for or against him. One of the broadest and best defined experiences that passed under my observation, and was imprinted on my memory in early youth, was that of a family whose father stood high above all his neighbours in religious profession and gifts, and yet returned from market drunk as often as he had the means. The sons of that family all turned out ill. Nothing is impossible with God ; but it would have been indeed a miracle of mercy if these young men, who were accustomed from childhood to see in their own father a lofty spiritual profession wedded to the vilest vice, had themselves, as they grew up, lived soberly, and righteously, and godly in the world. XXVI. "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy life." iv. 13. JFTEN a ship's crew at sea are obliged suddenly to betake themselves to their boats and abandon the sinking ship. The case of an American whale ship in the South Seas, lately reported, will serve as the basis of our parable. The huge leviathan of the deep, wounded by the art of man, ran out the dis- tance of a mile by way of getting a run-race, and thence came on with incredible velocity against the devoted ship. Such was the shock that she instantly began to fill, and was gradually settling down. The sea was calm : there was opportunity for effort, but not time for delay. They were not only far from land, but far from the usual track of ships on the sea. In the dreary region of the antarctic circle, they might wander a whole year, and see no sail on the desolate horizon. There was little probability of rescue until they should regain those latitudes through which the tho- roughfare of nations runs. The word was given : all hands went to work, and soon all the sea-worth}' boats were loaded to the gun- wale with the prime necessaries of life. The deck was now nearly level with the water, and the boats shoved off for safety. After they had pulled a hundred yards away, two resolute men leaped from the boats into the sea, and made towards the ship. They reach it while still afloat, and disappear down a hatchway. In a minute they emerge again, bearing something in their hands. As they leap into the water the ship goes down ; the men are sepa- rated from each other and their burden, in the whirlpool that gathers over the sinking hull. They do not seem to consult their own safety. They remain in that dangerous eddy, until they grasp again the object which they had carried over the ship's side. Holding it fast, they are seen at length bearing away to their com- vades in the boat. What do these strong swimmers carry, for they 120 HOLD FAST. seem to value it more than life 1 It is thejcompass ! It had been left behind, and was remembered almost too late. Now they have taken fast hold of it, and will not let it go. Whatever they lose, they will at all hazards keep it, for " it is their life." When shall we see souls, shipwrecked on the sea of time, take and keep such hold of the truth as it is in Jesus, because it is their life ? When will men learn to count that the soul's danger in the flood of wrath is as real, as the body's danger on a material ocean 1 When will men begin to make real effort for the eternal life, such as they make to preserve the present life when it is in danger ? There is not an atom of hypocrisy about a man when he is in instant danger of drowning or starvation. He lays about him with an energy and a reality that brook no delay, and regard no appearances. If we could truly believe that the life of our souls is forfeited by sin, that they must be saved now or lost for ever, and that there is none other name given under heaven among men to save them, than the name of Jesus ; then there would be a cor- responding reality in our cleaving to the Saviour. Although, in a sense, we seek the right things, all may be lost by reversing the order in which, by divine prescription, they should be sought. The rule is, Seek first the kingdom of God, and then it is inti- mated that other things may be innocently " added." Those who seek first these other things as their heart's portion, may also strive earnestly to attain the kingdom ; but their labour is lost, because they do not " strive lawfully." " Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do," and how wouldst thou have me to do it ] " Send out thy light and thy truth : let them lead me." XXVIL $K$ ai % 3M- The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfed day. The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble." iv. 18, 19. | HE essentials of a just man's character have been in all ages the same. The just in every dispensation have lived by faith, and walked with God : they have hoped for his salvation, and done his commandments (Psalm cxix. 166) : they believe, and obey ; they are bought with a price, and glorify God. The path, the life course of such a man, is like the shining light. I do not think that the path of the justified is compared to the course of the sun, from the period of his appearance in the morn- ing to the time of his meridian height. The sun is an emblem, not of the justified, but of the Justifier. I have always felt uneasy in hearing the life of a believer likened to the sun's course from horizon to zenith. The comparison does not fit. An effort to ad- just the analogy either spoils its beauty, or gives a glory to man which is not his due. That grandest object in the visible creation is used as an emblem of the Highest One, and for his service it should be reserved. Christ alone is the source of Light : Chris- tians are only its reflectors. The just are those whom the Sun of Righteousness shines upon. When they come beneath his healing beams, their darkness flies away. They who once were darkness are light now, but it is " in the Lord." The new life of the converted is like the morning light. At first it seems an uncertain struggle between the darkness and the dawn. It quivers long in the balance. At one moment the watcher thinks, surely yonder is a streak of light : the next, he says with a sigh, it was an illusion : night yet reigns over all When the contest begins, however, the result is not doubtful, although it may for a time appear so. The first and feeblest streaks of light that come 122 THE PATH OF THE JUST. mingling with the darkness, have issued from the sun ; and the sun that sent these harbingers, though distant yet, is steadily ad- vancing. Ere long the doubt will vanish, and morning will be unequivocally declared. Once begun, it shineth more and more unto the perfect day ; and it is perfect day when the sun has risen, as compared with the sweet but feeble tints of earliest dawning. Sometimes there are irregularities and backgoings. Clouds deep and dark creep in between the sun and the world's surface. After the morning has so far advanced, the darkness may increase again ; but, even in this case, the source of light is coming near without any faltering. The impediment which has partially intercepted his rays, is moveable, and will soon be taken out of the way. There are similar irregularities in the progress of a just man's course. Sometimes he halts, or even recedes. After experiencing the light of life, and exulting in a blessed hope, he again comes under a cloud, and complains of darkness. But the source of his light and life will not fail. He changeth not ; and therefore that seed of Jacob, though distressed, will not be consumed (Mai. iii. 6). The breath of his Spirit will drive the intercepting clouds away, and the law of the kingdom, relieved from hindering exceptions, will yet have free course : the path of the just will be like the morning; it will increase until dawn break into day. If a thou- sand years may in the Lord's sight be accounted one day, much more may the life course of a disciple from the first throes of the new birth, to the moment when faith is lost in sight. That day is an high day in the eternal life of the saved. It is a day much to be remembered in the circle of victors that surround the throne. Now that the Lord God and the Lamb are their light, they will think of the time when the earliest dawn began to struggle faintly in their breasts. The remembrance of its mysterious birth out of primeval darkness, and its gradual growth into perfect light, will make them say and sing of that day, in adoring wonder, What hath the Lord wrought ! The analogy holds good more exactly still, if we take into view the actually ascertained motions of the planetary system. When any portion of the earth's surface begins to experience a dawn diminishing its darkness, it is because that portion is gradually turning round toward the sun, the centre of light fixed in the heavens. While any part of the earth lies away from the sun, and THE PATH OF THE JUST. 123 in proportion to the measure of its aversion, it is dark and cold : in proportion as it turns to him again, its atmosphere grows clearer, until, in its gradual progress, it comes in sight of the sun, and its day is perfect then. The path of the just is precisely like this. Arrested in his darkness by a love in Christ, which he does not understand as yet, he is secretly drawn toward Him in whom that love in infinite measure is treasured up. As he is drawn nearer, his light increases until at last he finds himself in the presence of the Lord. Day is not perfect here in a believer's heart, and yet the light of the knowledge of God from the face of Jesus shines into a believer's heart while he sojourns here. The dark get light, the dead get life from the Lord in the Lord before his glorious ap- pearing. They who thus get light from a Saviour unseen, shall, at his appearing, be like Him, and see Him as He is. The ma- chinery of the everlasting covenant is meantime going, softly and silently, as the motion of the spheres ; and they that are Christ's here, whatever clouds may dim their present prospect, are wearing every moment further from the night and nearer to the day. There follows a counterpart intimation fitted to overawe the boldest heart. " The way of the wicked is as darkness ; they know not at what they stumble" (iv. 19). "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness]" (Matt. vi. 23). Its greatness consists chiefly in this, that it is " in you." A dark place on the path might be got over; but darkness in his own heart, the traveller carries with him wherever he goes. To the blind, every place and every time is alike dark. It is an evil .heart of unbelief. Because of this they stumble upon that very Rock which has been laid in Zion to sustain a sinner's hope. He who is a sanctuary to others, is a rock of offence to them. " He shall be for a sanctuary ; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel" (Isa. viii. 14). Even when they fall they know not at what they stumble. Dreadful thought ! to be crushed against Him, who has been given as a Re- fuge and a Rest to weary souls escaping from a sea of sin. The way to get light is to turn from evil. " The pure in heart shall see God." XXVIII. Cjje Jfmmiam arttr its Streams. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thea a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil." iv. 23-27. JIRST the fountain, then the streams : first the heart, and then the life-course. The issues of life are manifold ; three of their main channels are mapped out here the " lips," the " eyes," and the " feet." The corruption of the heart, the pollution of the spring-head, where all life's currents rise, is a very frequent topic in the Scrip- tures. It occurs in many places, and in many forms. In pro- portion to the opposition which it is fitted to excite, is the doctrine reiterated and enforced. The imaginations of man's heart are only evil, and that continually. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. As a fountain casteth out her waters, Jerusalem casteth out her wickedness. God foreknew that a deceitful heart would be unwilling to own its deceitfulness, and therefore the truth is fortified beyond most others in the word. " Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the issues of life." This precept of the Proverbs sounds very like some of the sayings of Jesus. The king's ear caught prophetically before the time, what we have heard historically after it, as if the word had echoed either way. You may stand in the morning on a height so great that you see the sun's disc emerging from the eastern horizon some time before he has risen upon the plain. Solomon, as a teacher of righteousness, was elevated far above the common level of humanity. By special gift, and by the Spirit's interven- tion, he was exalted much above other men in all knowledge, and especially the knowledge of divine truth. So high was the moun- tain-top he stood upon, that, like Abraham, he saw Christ's day THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STREAMS. 125 afar off, and felt a beam from the Sun of Righteousness long before he had personally arisen upon the world. A greater than Solomon has said, " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries." Keep therefore according to Solomon's precept, keep with all diligence that prolific spring. Here, as in all other cases, prayer and pains must go together. We cry to God in the words of David, Create in me a clean heart ; and He answers back by the mouth of David's son, Keep thy heart. We must keep it, otherwise it will run wild. The Al- mighty Lord will bruise Satan; but it is "under your feet:" yourselves must tread on his writhing folds. " Keep it with all keepings" is the word. Leave no means un- tried. Out of our own conduct will we be condemned if we do not effectually keep our own hearts. We keep other things with success as often as we set about it in earnest good things from getting, and bad things from doing, harm. One who loves his garden, keeps it so well that travellers pause as they pass and look admiring on. You keep your family, your house, your money, and you keep them well. Even your clothes are kept, so that no stain shall be seen upon them. On the other side, dangerous creatures are kept with a firm hand and a watchful eye from doing evil. We keep in the horse or mule with bit and bridle. Even the raging sea is kept back by the skill of men, and ripening fields bask safely in the autumn sun below the level of its waters, and within hearing of its roar. In other keepings man is skilful and powerful too; but in keeping his own heart, unstable as water, he does not excel. Keep it with all keepings. Keep it from getting evil, as a garden is kept ; keep it from doing evil, as the sea is kept at bay from reclaimed netherlands. Keep it with the keeping of heaven above, and of the earth beneath God's keeping bespoken in prayer, and man's keeping applied in watchful effort. Keep it with all keepings, for out of it are the issues of life. The true prin ciple on which an effectual restraint can be put upon the issues of the heart is indicated in the 21st verse "Keep" my words " in the midst of thine heart." The same prescription for the same disease occurs in that great hymn of the Hebrews (Psalm cxix. 11) " Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." The word of life is the salt that must be cast 126 THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STREAMS. into these bitter springs of Jericho, to save the surrounding land from barrenness. 1. The first of the three streams marked on this map as issuing from an ill-kept heart is " a froward mouth/' The form of the precept, put it away, reveals a secret of our birth. The evil is there at the first in every one : he who is free of it was not born free. We have not a clear ground to begin upon. When a man would erect a temple to God within his own body, the first effort of the builder is to clear the rubbish away. Of the things from the heart that need to be put away, the first in the order of nature is the froward mouth. Words offer the first and readiest egress for evil. The power of speech is one of the grand peculiarities which dis- tinguish man. It is a wonderful and precious gift; wanting it, and all that depends on it, man would scarcely be man. While we use the gift, we should remember the Giver, and the purpose for which he bestowed it. While we speak, we should never for- get that God is one of the listeners. Men sin in comfort when they forget God, and forget God that they may sin in comfort. If the Queen were present, hearing every word, on a given day, in a given company, a restraint would be put upon every tongue ; gravity and gentleness would breathe in every sentence : yet that same company is not refined and sobered by the presence of the King Eternal. Like Israel, in a backsliding time (Mai. i. 8), we bring unto God the blind and the lame, sacrifices that we would not offer to our sovereign ; and that she would not accept at our hands. He who has a tongue to speak should remember that the bestower of the gift is listening, and keep back whatever would displease Him. Take the principle of Hagar's simple and sub- lime confession, accommodated in form to the case in hand, " Thou God, hearest me." If our words were all poured through that strainer, how much fewer and purer they would be ! If all the words of our week were gathered and set before us at its close, the boldest head would hang down at the sight. When all the words this tongue has uttered are written and opened in His sight on that day, how shall I appear, if the dark record remains still mine 1 While for that reckoning we must trust all and only in the blood of Christ, that taketh sin away, we should diligently set about the business of watching and restraining the perverseness of THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STKBAMS. 127 our own lips. The work is hopeful. They who try it in the right way will be encouraged by seen progress. A vain, a biting, an untruthful, a polluted, a profane tongue cannot be in the family of God, when the family are at home in the Father's pre- sence. The evil must be put away ; the tongue must be cleansed ; and now is the day for such exercises : that which reinaineth for the people of God is a Sabhath on which no such work is done, in a heaven where no such work is needed. 2. The next outlet from the fountain is by the " eyes." The precept is quaint in its cast "let thine eyes look right on;" and yet its meaning is not difficult. Let the heart's aim be simple and righteous. No secret longings and side glances after forbidden things : no crooked bye-ends and hypocritical pretences. Both in appearance and reality let your path be a straightforward one. In a mercantile community especially this is the quality that should be chiefly in request. Much mischief is done when men begin to look aside instead of straight before them. A manufac- turer glances to the side one day, and sees a neighbour making as much by a lucky speculation in an hour as he has won by the re- gular prosecution of his business in a twelvemonth. He throws for a prize, and draws a blank. In the speculation the capital which sustained his business has disappeared: his legitimate creditors are defrauded, and his family ruined. Deviations from the straight line have become so many and so great, that the deviators, keeping each other in countenance, begin to defend their own course, and whisper a desire to establish a new code of laws which may coincide with their practice. We have here and there met with an appalling measure of obtuseness in comprehending the first principles of justice, which should regulate all commercial transactions. Men may be found amongst us holding their heads high, and conducting business on a large scale, who have not gotten the alphabet of honesty yet. It is ground of thankfulness, indeed, that these are the exceptions. The body politic of commerce is in a much sounder state than it appears to a superficial observer, judging from instances whose abnormal criminality has thrust them more prominently into view. If the life were not on the whole robust, it could not bear diseased tumours so many and so great; but the body whose beauty they mar, and whose strength they waste, should, for its own health's 128 THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STREAMS. sake, be ashamed of the deformities, and intolerant of their growth. With this view, let every man, besides joining in the general crtn- demnation of full-grown detected dishonesties in other people's transactions, search for and crush incipient secret abberrations in his own. When the eye is single, the whole body will be full of light. Straightforwardness is the fairest jewel of our commercial crown. Those who spend their life in traffic should be jealous of them- selves, and lean hard over from the side on which sly, sinister selfishness lies. Anything on the right side; uprightness, even downrightness, if you will ; but let us keep far away from every form and shade of duplicity. It is true that mercantile pursuits tend to develop some noble qualities of humanity; but let it not be forgotten that some noxious weeds can thrive in the riches of its soil. Love and cultivate, by all means, the generous plants; but carefully watch the weeds, and resolutely cast them away. 3. The last of these issues is by the "feet." Ponder, therefore, their path. The best time to ponder any path, is not at the end, not even at the middle, but at the beginning of it. The right place for weighing the worth of any course, is on this side of its begin- ning. Those who ponder after they have entered it, are not in a position either to obtain the truth or to profit by it. Those who rush headlong into a path of conduct because they like it, and then begin to consider whether it is a right one, will probably either induce themselves to believe a lie, or refuse to follow discovered truth. The injunction applies to every step in life, great and small. Ponder well what family you will be a servant in, what trade you will learn, what business you will engage in, what colony you will emigrate to. Every step is great, because it affects the destiny of an immortal soul. More particularly, by way of example, ponder your path at that great step which binds you for life to another human being as one flesh. God has made marriage a weighty matter let not man make it a light one. Weigh well itself and all its accessories. Those who take this leap in the dark, may expect to find themselves in a miry pit. Those who weigh it in thought, until they find the burden all too heavy for their strength, and cast it therefore on the Lord, will be led out of their tempta- tions, and through their difficulties. Most true it is that " marriages THE FOUNTAIN AND ITS STREAMS. 129 are made in heaven;" for the dear children refer the matter im- plicitly to their Father there, and he undertakes for them. But the value of weighing anything depends all on the justness of the balance arid the weights. Many shamefully false balances are in use and in vogue for weighing paths and actions. " Fashion," and " use and wont," are the scales into which most people throw their intentions, before carrying them into fact. These are the instruments which quacks supply, and fools employ. They are mean and contemptible cheats ; and yet the multitude trust them. If nothing valuable were risked, one might be content to smile at their silliness, and pass on; but the path which these false balances induce their dupes to take, leads to perdition. Although the acts be transparent folly, we cannot afford to turn them into mirth. We dare not laugh at the stupidity of the entrance whose issue is in woe. These false balances are ruin to men, and abomination to the Lord! Cast them away. Here is a standard weight stamped as true by the imperial seal of heaven. By the word of God paths and actions will be weighed in the judgment : by the word of God, therefore, let paths and actions, great and small, be pondered now. XXIX. * Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well." v. 16. PAINTER lays down a dark ground to lean his picture on, and thereby bring its beauty out. Such is the method adopted in this portion of the word. The pure delights of the family are about to be represented in the sweetest colours that nature yields, wedded love mirrored in running waters, and in order to relieve more boldly these "apples of gold" the Spirit, in the preceding portion of the chapter, has stained the canvas deep with Satan's dark antithesis to the holy appoint- ment of God. An instance of the Bame Ligh art you may see in the work of another master ; Paul sets forth, in Eph. v. 2, his favourite theme, the love of Christ, in terms of even more than his usual winsomeness j and you may see, in the verse that follows, how dark a ground he filled in behind it. Such fearful contrasts, under the immediate direction of the Spirit, make the beauty of holiness come more visibly out. But it is only at a great distance, and with extremest caution, that we dare to imitate this style in our expositions. The danger would be great, if the attempt were rashly made, of staining the pure by an unskilful handling of the impure. A reverent look towards the depths of Satan, as they are unveiled in the word of God, may alarm the observer, and cause him to keep further from the pit's mouth ; but we fear to touch them in detail, lest our well-meant effort should be snatched, and used as another fiery dart by the wicked one. All round, this region seems infected. We have known some who, in venturing near to rescue others, fell themselves ; as miners, descending the pit to bring out a suffocated neighbour, have been known to perish with him. It is meet that even those who, from fear of God and love to men, run to the rescue, should hold in their breath, and pull hastily out FAMILY JOYS. 131 of the fire whatever brand they can lay their hands on, and come back with all speed from the opening mouth of those descending " steps that take hold on hell." Indeed this is the substance of all these warnings which occur in the fifth chapter, and are re- peated in the seventh ; the key note of the whole is, " remove far from her." The word assumes that men are weak, and warns them off from the edge of the whirling stream that sucks the un- wary in. It is the same lesson that Jesus himself gave, when he taught that in this matter a look is already sin. In wise tender- ness, He would keep the fluttering bird clear beyond the reach of the vile charmer's fascinating eye. " Hear ye Him," young men, as you love your life, and value your souls. We protest that we are clear from the blood of those that perish there, although we stand no longer near the deadly spot to warn them back. The Lord condescends to bring his own Institute forward in rivalry with the deceitful pleasures of sin. The pure joys of a happy home are depicted in the fifteenth and subsequent verses. The saying of Cowper, " God made the country, man made the town," although it contains no poetic brilliance, has obtained a wide currency for its pithy expression of a great and obvious truth. We may be permitted to use the poet's mould in giving form to our own conceptions, which we believe to be equally true, and more urgent; " God made the family, man made the casino, the theatre, the dramshop, the ball-room." The list might be largely extended, of Satan-suggested, man-made things, which compete with God's institute, the family, and drain off its support. How beautiful and how true the imagery in which our lesson is infolded ! Pleasures such as God gives to his creatures, and such as his creatures, with advantage to all their interests, can enjoy pleasures that are consistent with holiness and heaven, are com- pared to a stream of pure running water; and specifically the joys of the family are " running waters out of thine own well." This well is not exposed to every passenger : it springs within, and has a fence around it. We should make much of the family, and all that belongs to it. All its accessories are the Father's gift, and He expects us to observe and value them. It is no trifling to apply the microscope to the petals of a flower, in order to magnify and so multiply its beauties : in like manner, it is worthy employ- ment for the greatest to scan the minutest objects that are the 132 FAMILY JOYS. genuine parts of the household apparatus, for, as the Lord's works, they are all very good. But remember, although the stream is very pure nay, because it is very pure, a small bulk of foreign matter will sensibly tinge it. You may have observed that if a drop of coloured matter be poured into pure water, it makes its polluting presence very widely felt. Had the water been discoloured from the first, the effect of another drop would not have been discernible. Thus the very purity of the family joys in themselves magnifies the effect of any infringement. Perhaps the drop that discolours for days the waters of his own well, may fall in an unguarded moment from the lips of the husband and father himself. A biting word, re- flecting on the wife and mother in presence of the children, when something in her department is found out of order, will stir the mud at the bottom, and make the stream run turbid for many days. His absence, frequent or unnecessary, in the evening, till the chil- dren have gone to bed, and the wife feels that much of her labour in making everything neat has been thrown away, without an eye to see, or a tongue to applaud it this will soon change " your own well " into the appearance of a river in flood. From the other side also the disturbing element may come. Even little neglects on the wife's part will damp the joys of the house, as a very small cloud may suffice to take all the sunlight out of the landscape. A slovenly dress for the husband's home-coming, made tidy only when strangers are expected, may be sufficient to tinge the whole current of conjugal intercourse. Something is felt to be wrong, and yet neither may know what the ailment is, or where it lies. Sharp, discontented words, a continual dropping from a woman's lips, whether with or without cause, will be a poisonous acid in the well, and all joy will die around its borders. The children, too, have much in their power both for good and evil. Heavy cares are strong temptations to the parents. Their spirits are burdened, and the burdened spirit is apt to give way. If the children, by ready obedience, and mutual love, would con- trive to sit light as a burden on their parents' shoulders, the light- ened parents might rejoice together, and the beams of glad con- tentment on the faces of father and mother would radiate through all the house. Children are sometimes little peacemakers, bless- ing their parents, and blessed by God. FAMILY JOYS. 133 But careful abstinence from evil is only one, and that tlie lower side of the case. There must be spontaneous outgoing activity in this matter, like the springing of flowers, and the leaping of a stream from the fountain. The command is peremptory, v. 18, " Kejoice with the wife of thy youth." It is not only feed and clothe her, and refrain from injuring her by word or deed. All this will not discharge a man's duty, nor satisfy a woman's heart. All the allusions to this relation in Scripture imply an ardent, joy- ful love. To it, though it lie far beneath heaven yet to it, as the highest earthly thing, is compared the union of Christ and his redeemed Church. Beware where you go for comfort in distress, and sympathy in happiness. The Lord himself is the source of all consolation to a soul that seeks Him; yet nature is His, as well as redemption. He has constructed nether springs on earth and supplied them from his own high treasuries ; and to these he bids a broken or a joyful spirit go for either sympathy. " Drink waters out of thine own cistern," is the express command. " Rejoice with the wife of thy youth " this is not to put a creature in the place of God. He will take care of His own honour. He has hewn that cistern, and given it to you, and filled it ; and when you draw out of it what He has put in, you get from Himself, and give Him the glory. Husband and wife, if they are skilful to take advantage of their privileges, may, by dividing, somewhat diminish their cares, and fully double their joys. They twain shall be one flesh, and when the two are one, it will be a robuster life, as two streams joined become a broader river. But we must take care lest the enjoyments of home become a snare. God is not pleased with indolence or selfishness. When He gives that fountain, He expects it will " be dispersed abroad." To keep all to yourself will defeat your own end : to hold it in will make it stagnate. The only way of keeping it sweet for ourselves is to let it run over for the good of others. If the family is well ordered, our- selves will get the chief benefit ; but we should let others share it. Those especially who are in providence deprived of this inestimable blessing, a home those who have no parents, or whose parents are far away, should be admitted to taste of these pleasures. This is a charity which God-fearing families might distribute without cost to a class who need no material alms, and are therefore liable to be neglected in schemes of ordinary benevolence. XXX. for 'The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goinpn. Ilk own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall bo holden with the cords of his sins." v. 21, '22. * >D announces Himself the witness and the judge of man. The evil-doer can neither elude the all-seeing eye, nor escape from the Almighty hand. Secrecy is the study and the hope of the wicked. This word booms forth like thunder out of heaven into every human heart where evil thoughts are germinating into wickedness, proclaiming that the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord. A sinner's chief labour is to hide his sin : and his labour is all lost. Darkness hideth not from God. The Maker of the night is not blinded by its covering. He who knows evil in its secret source is able to limit the range of its operation ; and there is a special method by which this is done. It is a principle of the divine government that sin becomes the instrument of punishing sinners. Both for restraint in this life, and final judgment at last, this is the method employed. It is not only true in general that the wicked shall not escape, but also in particular that his own sin is the snare that takes the transgressor, and the scourge that lashes him. The Maker and Ruler of all things has set in the system of the universe a seli ? - acting apparatus, which is constantly going for the encouragement of good and the repression of evil. The providential laws do not, indeed, supply a sufficient remedy for sin and its fruits ; another physician undertakes the cure ; but these laws, notwithstanding, exert a constant force in opposition to moral evil. The wind may be blowing steadily up the river, and yet a ship on the river's bosom, though her sails are spread and filled, may not be moving up, but actually dropping down the stream. Why? Because the stream flows so rapidly down, that the breeze in the sails, thougli a THE METHOD OF PROVIDENCE FOR RESTRAINING EVIL. 135 force in the opposite direction, cannot overcome it. The wind does not, in spite of the current, give the ship momentum upward, but it makes the ship's progress downward much more slow. That force does not make the ship move upward, but it prevents the ship from rushing down with such a headlong velocity as to dash itself in pieces. The providential laws are directed against the current of man's sinful propensities, and tell in force thereon. They do not, however, overcome, and neutralize, and reverse these pro- pensities. They were not so intended. They impede the stream's velocity, and restrain its fury. The providential laws prevent the present system from dashing itself into chaos, but they do not supersede the redemption by Christ, and the renewing by the Spirit. " His own iniquities shall take the wicked." This is an evident and awful truth. Retribution in the system of nature, set in motion by the act of sin, is like the " Virgin's kiss" in the Eomish Inquisition. The step of him who goes forward to kiss the image touches a secret spring, and the statue's marble arms enclose him in a deadly embrace, piercing his body through with a hundred hidden knives. Verily a man under law to God would need to " ponder his path," for the ground he stands on is mined beneath his feet, and the first step from virtue's firm footing aside into the yielding slough of vice, set; unseen swords in motion which will tear his flesh, and enter the marrow of his bones. " The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice." Praise Him for his righteousness ; his judgments will go into a song as well as his mercy. XXXI. afefal Clings. 1 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proml look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness thht speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren." vi. 16-19. [OME of these hateful things are characteristics of par- ticular members in the body, and some are character- istics generally of the man. I do not perceive the principle of arrangement in the nature of the things; perhaps the order is modified by the exigencies of Hebrew poetry. It is a claim which the Lord puts forth as the Maker and Giver of all our faculties. These are some of the marks by which his wisdom is visibly manifested in creation. He is displeased when they are plunged into lusts, and employed as tools in the service of Satan. These eyes, this tongue, these hands and feet, are in- struments of surpassing skill and beauty. They declare God's glory as articulately as the stars of heaven or the flowers of earth. Who shall dare to corrupt the allegiance of these tributaries, and enrol them rebels against the King of kings? The Maker cares for all his works. To pervert any part of them provokes Him ,to anger. Every purpose to which the members of our body are put is noticed by the All-seeing. If we are in spirit his dear children, we have opportunity to please God as often as we exercise any faculty of our mind, or member of our frame. There is one parallel well worthy of notice between the seven cursed things here, and the seven blessed things in the fifth chapter of Matthew. In the Old Testament the things are set down in the sterner form of what the Lord hates, like the " thou shalt not" of the Decalogue. In the New Testament the form is in accordance with the gentleness of Christ. There we learn the good things that are blessed, and are left to gather thence the opposite evils that are cursed. But, making allowance for the SEVEN HATEFUL THINGS. 137 difference in form, the first and the last of the seven are identical in the two lists. " The Lord hates a proud look," is precisely equivalent to " blessed are the poor in spirit ;" and " he that soweth discord among brethren," is the exact converse of the " peace- maker." This coincidence must be designed. When Jesus was teaching his disciples on the Mount, he seems to have had in view the similar instructions that Solomon had formerly delivered, and while the teaching is substantially new, there is as much of allusion to the ancient Scripture as to make it manifest that the Great Teacher kept his eye upon the prophets, and sanctioned all their testimony. XXXII. 'My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thce; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lump ; and the law is light ; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life: To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman." vi. 20-24. FATHER'S commandment is the generic form, and is usually employed to signify parental authority ; but here, in addition to the general formula, " the law of a mother " is specifically singled out. The first feature that arrests attention in this picture is, that effects are attributed to the law of a mother which only God's law can produce. The inference is obvious and sure; it is assumed that the law which a mother instills is the word of God dwelling richly in her own heart, and that she acts as a channel to convey that word to the hearts of her children. To assume it as actually done, is the most impres- sive method of enjoining it. Parents are, by the constitution of things, in an important sense mediators between God and their children for a time. What you give them they receive; what you tell them they believe. This is their nature. You should weigh well what law, and what practice you impress first upon their tender hearts. First ideas and habits are to them most im- portant, for they give direction to their course, and tone to their character through life. Your children are by nature let into you, so as to drink in what you contain ; the only safety is that you be by grace let into Christ, so that what they get from you, shall be, not what springs within you, but what flows into you from the Spring-head of holiness. To the children, it is the law of their mother, and therefore they receive it ; but in substance it is the truth from Jesus, and to receive it is life. It is the law which converts the soul and makes wise the simple, poured through a mother's lips into an infant's ears. MOTHER'S LAW. 139 It is a sweet employment, and an honourable place, to be mediators for our own children, bearing up'to God their need, and bringing down to them God's will. This is a kind of mediation not derogatory to Christ. It is not a presumptuous priesthood ; it is a humble ministry, appointed and accepted by himself. It belongs to the structure, both of the kingdom of nature, and of the covenant of grace. There is in the spiritual department some- thing corresponding to the birth, when the parent travails again until the child be born to the Lord; and there is here also some- thing corresponding to the nursing. Great must be the delight of a mother, herself renewed, when she becomes the channel through which the "milk of the word" flows into her child (1 Peter ii. 2); more especially when she feels the child desiring that milk, and with appetite drawing it for the sustenance of a new life. The injunction is in form addressed to a grown son, that he forsake not in manhood his mother's law. It has often been repeated that mothers have much in their power, in virtue of their position beside the nascent streams of life, where they are easily touched and turned. The observation is both true and important. It is this weight, cast into woman's otherwise lighter scale, that turns the balance, and brings her to equality with man, as to influence on the world. In spite of man's tyranny on one side, and her own weakness on the other, woman has thus in all countries, and even in the most adverse circumstances, vindicated her right to a place by her husband's side, and silently leaves her own impress as deeply stamped as his upon the character of the coining generation. In the pliant time of childhood, the character is moulded chiefly by the mother. Many melting stories are told on earth, and, I suppose, many more in heaven, about the struggle carried on through youth and manhood, between present temptations and the memory of a mother's law. Almighty grace delights to manifest itself in weakness ; and oft the echo of a woman's voice, rising up in the deep recesses of memory, has put a whole legion of devils to flight. Oh, woman, if it cannot be said, great is thy faith, even although it should be small as a grain of mustard seed, yet great is thy opportunity ! The spring season and the soft ground are thine ; in with the precious seed ; sow and hope, 140 MOTHER'S LAW. even though it be also sometimes in tears; a glad harvest will come, here or yonder ; now or many days hence. If parents give to their children a law which they get not from God, their influence will be great for evil. As to form, the law of evil, like the law of good, distills chiefly in small dew-drops through the temper and tone. Few parents have the hardihood directly to teach wickedness to their offspring. The mother should be much with the children herself. Where- ever that is impracticable, it is either a calamity through the visitation of Providence, or a great fault on the part of the parents. The difficulties, the mistakes, and the transgressions of mothers are different according to their position in society, and the character of their employment. Working-men should take care not to lay too much on their wives. The mother, as a general rule in this country, undergoes not the out-door labour whereby the bread is won ; but her hours are longer, and her task equally outwearing. Let the husband and father do his utmost by every contrivance to lighten her labour, and cheer her heart. The wounded spirit of a neglected wife cannot bear its own weight, far less sustain with buoyant, smiling countenance, the continual tension of several children hanging about her, with all their wants and all their quarrels, from morning till night. A father, what- ever the effort might cost him, would not permit his infant child to suck a fevered nurse ; he should beware, as far as it lies with him, lest the child's spirit should sustain a greater damage, by drawing its mental nourishment from a mother fretting, desponding, despairing. In the case of mothers who live in affluence, perhaps trifling is the most pressing danger. Don't cram your children with unreal forms, like blown bladders, which occupy all the room, and collapse at the first rude rub on real life. In pity to your children, put something into them that will last and wear. Don't expend all your energies in tying ornaments on them, to attract the gaze of the curious on the street; get into them, if you can, some of that ornament which is in the sight of God of great price (1 Peter iii. 4). Mothers, if your hearts have been quickened by the Spirit, take your fashions from the word of God. Occupy yourselves mainly in moulding the heart and life of your children, after the pattern which Jesus showed and taught. This will give you most enjoyment at the time, and most honour afterward MOTHER'S LAW. 141 Hitherto we have been sketching from the reflection a parent's duty, but the command of this passage is directly addressed to the child. Very graphic and memorable is the advice here tendered to a son ; bind a mother's laws continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. The idea no doubt refers to the Mosaic precept about binding the law of the Lord on the person, which in practice degenerated into the phylacteries of the Pharisees. From this strong figure the moral meaning stands out in bold relief. If a piece of dress or a bag of money hangs loosely upon you, in the jolting of the journey it may drop off and be lost. Life is a rough journey. The traveller must crush through many a thicket, and bear many a shake. If that law of truth, which you get in childhood through a mother's lips, be loosely held, it may slip away. " Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip " (Heb. ii. 1). It is intimated in the 22nd verse that this law will be a close and kind companion to you all your days, if you treat it aright. It will be with you when you lie down to rest, and when you awake it will be there still, ready to talk with you. It is beyond expression valuable to have this law, impressed with all the authority of God who gave it, and all the tenderness of a mother who taught it, adhering to the memory through all the changes of life. A friend in need, it is a friend indeed. Although it be neglected for flatterers at night, when you awake it meets you at the moment, and talks over its saving truth again. Several kind offices of that true friend are enumerated here, and a crowning one is recorded at the close. Bound and kept in the heart as a friend, that law will prevail to keep the youth " from the strange woman." Observing a great swelling wave rolling forward to devour him, this faithful teacher imparts to the young voyager on life's troubled sea, a principle which will bear him buoyant over it. A slender vessel floats alone upon the ocean, contending with the storm. A huge wave approaches, towering high above her hull. All depends on how the ship shall take it. If she go under it, she will never rise again : if she is so trimmed that her bows rise with its first approaches, she springs lightly over it, and gets no harm. The threatening billow passes beneath her, and breaks with a growl behind, but the ship is safe. The law and love of the Lord, taught 142 MOTHER'S LA.W. by his mother in childhood, and maintaining its place yet as the friend of his bosom and the ruler of his conscience, will give the youth a spring upward proportionate to the magnitude of the temptation coming on. Saved as by fire, with reference to the greatness of the danger, yet surely saved, the victor, as he leaps over the last wave and enters into rest, will cry out to the welcomers who line the shore, " I am more than conqueror through Him that loved me." There must be many joyful meetings in the better land; but when a son, saved by the truth his mother taught him, enters into rest, and meets his mother there, the joy oh, one would think that ministering angels must reverently stand back from it, as one too deep for them to intermeddle with ! XXXIII. anb % Jtar flf % 1 Receive my instruction, and not silver: and knowledge rather than choice gold." "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." viii. 10, 13. is not necessary to inquire whether the wisdom that cries here be an attribute of God, or the person of Em- manuel. We may safely take it for both, or either. The wisdom of God is manifested in Christ, and Christ is the wisdom of God manifested. The cry, concentrated in the Scrip- tures, and issuing forth through manifold providential ministries, is public, "She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city;" im- partial, " Unto you, men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men;" perspicuous, "They are plain to him that understandeth." The very first warning uttered by this wisdom from above is the repetition of a former word, " Receive my instruction, and not silver ; and knowledge rather than choice gold." The repetition is not vain. Another stroke so soon on the same place indicates that He who strikes feels a peculiar hardness there. The love of money is a root of evil against which the Bible mercifully deals many a blow. There lies one of our deepest sores : thanks be to God for touching it with " line upon line " of his healing word. When a man is pursuing a favourite object with his whole heart, it is irk- some to hear a warner's word continually dropping on his unwilling ear, telling that the choice is foolish. A father who is merely fond will discontinue the warning, that he may not displease his wilful child. Not so our Father in heaven. He is wisdom as well as love. He wields the same sharp word until it pierce the conscience and turn the course. It is only while you kick against this warning that it pricks you : when you obey it, you will find it very good. A ship bearing a hundred emigrants has been driven from her course, and wrecked on a desert island far from the tracks of mea 144 THE WORTH OF WISDOM, AND THE FEAR OF THE LORD. The passengers get safe ashore with all their stores. They know not a way of escape; but they possess the means of subsistence. An ocean unvisited by ordinary voyagers circles round their prison, but they have seed, with a rich soil to receive, and a genial climate to ripen it. Ere any plan has been laid, or any operation begun, an exploring party returns to head-quarters reporting the discovery of a gold mine ; thither instantly the whole company resort to dig. They labour successfully day by day, and month after month ; they acquire and accumulate heaps of gold. The people are quickly becoming rich ; but the spring is past, and not a field has been cleared, not a grain of seed committed to the ground. The summer comes, and their wealth increases, but the store of food is small. In harvest they begin to discover that their heaps of gold are worthless. A cart-load of it cannot satisfy a hungry child. When famine stares them in the face, a suspicion shoots across their fainting hearts that the gold has cheated them ; and they begin to loathe the bright betrayer. They rush to the woods, fell the trees, dig out the roots, till the ground, and sow the seed. Alas, it is too late ! Winter has come, and their seed rots in the soil They die of want in the midst of their treasures. This earth is the little isle, and eternity the ocean round it. On this shore we have been cast, like shipwrecked sailors. There is a living seed ; there is an auspicious spring-time : the sower may eat and live. But gold mines attract us : we spend our spring there our summer there: winter overtakes us toiling there, with heaps of hoarded dust, but destitute of the bread of life. Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end ! Seek first the kingdom of God, and let wealth come or go in its wake. He who, in the market of a busy world, gains' money and loses his soul, will rue his bargain where he cannot cast it. He formally defines here the fear of the Lord. The definition is needful, for the subject is often grievously misunderstood. I know not an emotion more general among men than terror of future retribution under a present sense of guilt. To vast multitudes of men, this life is embittered by the fear of wrath in the next. To dread the punishment of sin seems to be the main feature in that religion which under many forms springs native in the human heart. This is the mainspring which sets and keeps all the THE WORTH OF WISDOM, AND THE FEAR OF THE LORD. 145 machinery of superstition agoing. It was a maxim of heathen antiquity that " Fear made God." It is chiefly by the dread of punishment that an alienated human heart is compelled in any measure to realize the existence of the Divine Being. In propor- tion as that terror is diminished by a process of spiritual indura- tion, the very idea of God fades away from the mind. To fear retribution is not to hate sin ; in most cases it is to love it with the whole heart. It is a solemn suggestion that even the religion of dark, unrenewed men is in its essence a love of their own sins. Instead of hating sin themselves, their grand regret is that God hates it. If they could be convinced that the Judge would regard it as lightly as the culprit, the fear would collapse like steam under cold water, and all the religious machinery which it drove would stand still. All the false religions that have ever desolated the earth are sparks from the collision of these two hard opposites God's hate of sin. and man's love of it. As they strike in the varied evolu- tions of life, strange fires flash from the point of contact fires that consume costly and cruel sacrifices. In Christ only may this sore derangement be healed. It is when sin is forgiven that a sinner can hate it. Then is he on God's side. The two are agreed, and " He is our peace" who hath taken away sin by one sacrifice. Instead of hating God for his holiness, the forgiven man instinct- ively loathes the evil of his own heart, and looks with longing for the day when all things in it shall be made new. Such is the blessed fruit of pardon when it comes to a sinner through the blood of Christ. (7) 10 XXXIV. "Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness That, I may cause those that love me to inherit substance : and I will fill their treasures." viii. 18, 21. SDOM from above cries in the gate, and enters into coin- petition with the world's most powerful attractions. In the matters of rank and riches, the two strong cords by which the ambitious are led, the two reciprocally supporting rails on which the train of ambition ever runs, even in these matters that seem the peculiar province of an earthly crown, the Prince of Peace comes forth with loud challenge and conspicuous rivalry. Titles of honour ! their real glory depends on the height and purity of the fountain whence they flow. They have often been the gift of profligate princes, and the rewards of successful crime. At the best the fountain is low and muddy : the streams, if looked at in the light of day, are tinged and sluggish. Thus saith the Lord, " Honour is with me;" and He who saith it is the King of glory. To be adopted into the family of God, to be the son or daughter of the Lord Almighty, this is honour. High born ! we are all low born, until we are born again, and then we are the children of a King. The riches which this King gives to support the dignity of his nobles are expressly called " durable riches." This is spoken to place them in specific contrast with those riches that make them- selves wings and fly away. They are also said to be coupled with righteousness for company. Surely the Spirit who dictates this word knows what is in man, and the wealth which man toils for. Its two grand defects the two worms that gnaw its yet living body are the unrighteousness that tinges a part of it, and the uncertainty that cleaves to it all. The riches which the King of saints imparts along with the patent of nobility to support its RANK AND RICHES. . 147 dignity withal, are linked to righteousness, and last for ever. Anointed by the Spirit, they are secure from both the rust spots that eat into the heart of the world's wealth; pure and imperish- able, they have been by a double metaphor called " the silvef springs of grace, and the golden springs of glory." The Lord will cause those that love him to " inherit substance." Here is a withering glance from the countenance of the Truth himself at the cheat which the world practises upon its dupes. Those who are rich in grace inherit substance ; this is obliquely to say that those who give themselves to the pursuit of wealth are chasing a shadow. They are ever grasping at it ; and it is ever gliding from their grasp. Such is the dance through which Mammon leads his misers. It is kept up throughout all life's vain show, until the dancers drop into the grave, and disappear in its darkness. They who seek the substance shall find it; and as to the amount of their gain, the promise is precise " I will fill their treasures." This is a great promise : it is made in a kingly style : there is no limit. It will take much to fill these treasures ; for the capacity of the human spirit is very large. God moulded man after his own image, and when the creature is empty, nothing short of his Maker will fill him again. Although a man should gain the whole world, his appetite would not be perceptibly diminished : the void would be as great and the craving as keen as ever. Handfuls are gotten on the ground, but a soulful is not to be had except in Christ. " In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete (that is, full) in him." Hear ye him : " I will fill their treasures." " Even so, come, Lord Jesus." XXXV. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set tip from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth ; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth : while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth : when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him : and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him ; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth ; and my delights were with the sons of men." viii. 22-31. [ITHERTO, in this chapter, we have found it possible to speak of wisdom alternately as a property and a person ; but henceforth the terms compel us to keep by the per- sonal view. At the beginning something may be understood as applying to divine wisdom in general ; but toward the close, the wisdom incarnate, in the person of Emmanuel, stands singly and boldly out. If the terms are not applied to Christ, they must be strained at every turn. On this subject, we who enjoy the fuller revelation, should remember that the Old Testament institutes were necessarily shadows. Before Christ came in the flesh, He could not be so clearly declared as now. Of design He was pre- sented to faith under a vail. More could not have been done in consistency with the purpose of God, and the nature of things. In the book of Proverbs by Solomon, it could not be written that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and died upon the cross. One might profitably put the question to himself, if the Spirit designed to make known something of the personal history of Christ before His coming, how could He have done so in plainer terms than this chapter contains? Regarding this divine person, we learn here, that being with God before creation, He looked with special interest upon the prepara- THE REDEEMER ANTICIPATING REDEMPTION. 149 tion of this world as the habitation of men, and the scene of redemption. This gives us a sketch of cosmogony, with the Eternal Word as spectator, and for view-point the throne of God. Here is the genesis of the world, as it. appeared to Him, who even then longed to redeem it from sin. Out of previous indefinite water- depths the mountains were lifted up and settled. Out of a moving chaos the solid earth arose, one grand step in the process of provid- ing a domicile for man. The heavens were prepared as a circle, by setting a compass on the face of the deep. The clouds were established above, and the home of the sea beneath was strength- ened to keep its raging inmate. By the same law He established the clouds in the upper air, and fixed the ocean in the nether caverns of the earth. If a heap of solid water were poised on pillars over our heads, how dangerous would our position be, and how uneasy our life ! But no such precarious propping is needed, when the Omniscient would construct a habitation for man. By heat, portions of the water are made lighter than air, and forth- with the same law which keeps one part beneath the atmosphere raises another into its higher strata. During this process of crea- tion, the Son was with the Father, and already taking his place as Mediator between God and man. In verses 30th and 31st, these three things are set in the order of the everlasting covenant (1.) The Father well pleased with His Beloved, " I was daily His de- light." (2.) The Son delighting in the Father's presence, "re- joicing always before him." (3.) That same Son also looking with prospective delight to the scene and subjects of his Kedemption work, " rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." On that early morning of time, you see on the one side the High and Holy One, and on the other the sons of men, with Jesus already in the midst laying his hand upon both. It is a touching view of the Saviour's love. When He saw the earth undergoing the process whereby it was furnished as a habitation for man the mountains upheaving, the valleys sub- siding, the vapour arising, and the clouds moving in the sky He rejoiced in the prospect of being man, for behoof of the fallen, on that emerging world, and never flagged in his regard until He had borne back many sons and daughters into glory. The exhortation which follows could not come from any other 150 THE REDEEMER ANTICIPATING REDEMPTION. lips than His own. None but Christ is able to say, "Whoso findeth me findeth life." From the New Testament we know that He only is the Light, and that the Light is the life of men. The counterpart, terror, is equally His own : " he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; and all they that hate me love death." There is no salvation in any other, and they who refuse or neglect Him cast themselves away. The perdition of the lost is their own doing, for redemption is nigh. " Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger," said the prophet (Jer. xvii. 4), " which shall burn for ever." A child or an idiot may kindle a fire which all the city cannot quench. In spite of their utmost efforts, it might destroy the homes of the poor and the palaces of majesty. So a sinner, though he cannot do the least good, can do the greatest evil. The Almighty only can save him, but he can destroy himself. XXXVI. Starring* Suppw for % Ring's