the angels. Is it because the universe moves on with such unbroken harmony from age to age, that men are not startled into a consciousness of His presence? No. For to the eyes of the holy ones who see God, the creation is equally harmonious to them. Why then? It is because men do not like to "retain God in all their thoughts." Their depraved hearts are out of sympathy with Him: they dread Him and turn their eyes from Him. What a terrible evil is this, and. how prevalent, alas! Our country teems with practical atheists. To thousands of those who say every Sunday, "I believe in God the Father," God is a word, nothing more. Oh, when will the time come when men shall seek the Lord with all their hearts? For they that "seek Him shall find Him." The other evil we have in these verses is, RELIGIONISTS. V. THE UNCHARITABLENESS OF SPECULATIVE "Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain: he multiplieth words without knowledge." "He hath opened his mouth without understanding, he hath multiplied words without knowledge." This is untrue and ungenerous. Job's words were often real and full of intelligence. A speculative religionist is ever uncharitable he has seldom any heart, his sympathies are gone off into cold abstractions, he is severe and intolerant to his opponents. : CONCLUSION. Such are some of the evils suggested by these verses: evils, these, that abound everywhere, and that are rotting out the moral heart of humanity. They are a mildew and a blight. GOD HELPS THE WORLD BY MEN.-Erect schools, found colleges, establish universities, promote the means of education to the utmost of your ability if you will; but unless you get men of the right stamp, you have done little to help the world. You have merely furnished tocls, but you have no workmen to use them efficiently, One true man, fitted with the right faculties, and baptized with the true spirit of the stamp of Elijah, or Paul, or Luther, would do more to help on the world than all your religious libraries, schools, and colleges. God's plan is, to improve, elevate, and save man by man. The want of the world is not so much better books, higher institutions, schools, churches, chapels, as better men, men of a higher and diviner type. SERMONIC GLANCES AT THE GOSPEL OF As our purpose in the treatment of this Gospel is purely the development, in the briefest and most suggestive form, of Sermonic Outlines, we must refer our readers to the following works for all critical inquiries into the author and authorship of the book, and also for any minute criticisms on difficult clauses. The works we shall especially consult are:-"Introduction to New Testament," by Bleek; "Commentary on John," by Tholuck; troduction to the Study of the Gospels," by Westcott; "The Gospel History," by "Commentary on John," by Hengstenberg; "InEbrard; "Our Lord's Divinity," by Liddon; "St. John's Gospel," by Oosterzee; "Doctrine of the Person of Christ," by Dorner; Lange; Sears; Farrar; etc., etc. No. LXXIV. The Transcendent Element in Moral Character. "THEREFORE DOTH MY FATHER LOVE ME, BECAUSE I LAY DOWN MY LIFE, THAT I MIGHT TAKE IT AGAIN. No MAN TAKETH IT FROM ME, BUT I LAY IT DOWN OF MYSELF. I HAVE POWER TO LAY IT DOWN, AND I HAVE POWER TO TAKE IT AGAIN. THIS COMMANDMENT HAVE I RECEIVED OF MY FATHER.”— John x. 17, 18. EXPOSITION: Ver. 17.-" Therefore "I [for this cause] doth my Father Ver. 18.-" No man taketh it from I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Here He announces absolute power over His own existence, and His voluntary sacrifice of that existence. He did not die by necessity. He died because He willed it; He rose because He willed it. "This commandment have I received of My Father." His self-sacrifice and His resurrection from the dead were by the will of His Father. "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel by the foreknowledge of God," etc. HOMILETICS.-In these words we find Christ declaring four of the most significant and important facts that can possibly engage our attention. I. THAT HE HAD AN ABSOLUTE POWER OVER HIS OWN EXISTENCE. "I have power to lay down My life and power to take it again." Of all the millions of men that ever appeared on this earth, Jesus of Nazareth was the only man that could justly claim His own existence. He was His own Proprietor. other men are bound to say, We" are not our own." Not a particle of the body, not a faculty of the mind can we claim All as our own all belongs to another; all souls are His. But whilst men are the mere trustees of their existence, Christ was the owner of His. Being thus His own, He had a right to do with Himself whatever accorded with His desires. He could lay down this self-ownership and take it up whenever, however, and wherever He pleased. Wonderful property, His life, a far greater thing than to own a world. He declares, II. THAT THE LAYING DOWN OF HIS OWN EXISTENCE WAS ENTIRELY HIS OWN VOLUNTARY ACT. "No man taketh it from Me." His whole biography shows, in the mighty miracles that He performed, that no amount of human power could take His life from Him if He had willed otherwise. He did not die because of disease or age or human violence, but because He willed to die. Indeed, in laying down His life, there was something more than willingness on His part. We have read of good men,—ay, we have known them,—who have been willing to die. They have said with Paul, "I desire to depart." But all these men knew right well that death in their case was unavoidable, that they could not live here for ever. All that their willingness meant, therefore, was, that they would as soon die then and there as somewhere else and at some other time. It was not so with Christ. There was no necessity for His dying. He might have lived here or anywhere else for ever. He died simply because He willed it; He willed His life away. "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." It is this voluntariness that gives infinite moral might and merit to His death. It invests His cross with a force sublimely unique and ever growing-a force that has already wrought mighty revolutions in the world, and that will one day work out the spiritual reformation of humanity. He declares, III. THAT ON ACCOUNT OF THIS VOLUNTARY SELF-SACRIFICE HIS FATHER LOVED HIM. The relation of the Father to the Son is an impenetrable mystery. We can only think of them as distinct from each other and one holding a position in some way subordinate to the other. The Father loves. He is not sheer intellect or heartless force, but has sensibility, and His sensi He loves His Son. bility is instinct with love. He is love. His great heart seems to centre in Him. Why does He love Him? Because there is something morally lovable in Him. What is that? Here we are told what that is-His selfsacrificing spirit. This spirit is the very essence of all virtue and the fountain of all goodness and beneficence. It is the very inspiration of God Himself, as is demonstrated in the works of nature. No moral intelligence in the universe can be loved by Him who has it not. Christ had it in an immeasurable degree. Hence His unbounded love for Him. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." Would we win the love of the Infinite? Let us free ourselves from all selfishness and come under the dominion of that " charity which seeketh not her own." He declares, IV. THAT HIS SELF-SACRIFICING SPIRIT WAS ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF THE ETERNAL. "This commandment have I received of My Father." It was God's will that Christ should be so actuated by this spirit as to give His life for the moral redemption of mankind. And the commandment that Christ received of the Father is binding on every living man. Conscience and the Bible tell us this. Every man should be "conformed to His death," should have that same spirit that led Him to the cross. Unless we have in us His self-sacrificing spirit, His sacrifice on the cross will be no service to us. "Bear each other's burdens, and so fulfil the law "If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is of Christ." : none of His." “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again." "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Such passages as these assure us that "this commandment" we too have received of the Father, and should act in all things with self-sacrificing love. CONCLUSION.-Where are the Churches, where are the ministers, who are ruled by "this commandment "? When this "commandment" governs the Churches, the world will be. converted, not before. The Preacher's Germs of Thought. Studies from the Book of Esther.-2. The Divorced Wife. HEN the wine is in, the wit is out." Ahasuerus, the Persian monarch, yielded to the allurements of the cup, and so acted foolishly. Under its influence he gave way to the desire to exhibit the beauty of his wife and queen to a miscellaneous crowd. He had shown all that he possessed. Anything and everything that could call forth further admiration from his numerous guests had been laid under tribute. At length the king has to ask himself what more he has that can yet again constrain, by its exhibition, approval and praise. The festivities are closing, and he must not linger if he would extort more flattery and adulation. The king remembers one most precious possession, on which the eyes of his eunuchs and himself only had rested—his Sultana. He is proud of her in somewhat the same sense as that in which a man might, at this day, be proud of having on his wall the finest painting, in his cabinet the rarest jewel, or in his stables the best horse in the country. Had there been, in him, any deep affection for Vashti, he never could have treated her after the fashion recorded. She was to him but a toy, a harem ornament- -a slave for whom a goodly price had been paid from out his coffers; and shall he not, if he chooses, exhibit her? He wishes to send his guests away in the best humour, and therefore resolves to do them the greatest honour -they shall look upon his queen. Accustomed to have his slightest wish immediately gratified, |