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ainly war with the Almighty as the greatest. It contemplates the attering-down, the annihilation of the "great white throne." Only s we eschew all computation about magnitude, shall we "abstain rom all appearances of evil," shall we "abhor that which is evil."

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3. We are to abhor evil, howsoever it declares itself. The "deceitfulness of sin "is great. It is profoundly subtle. Its wiles are marvellous. When David prays, "Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sin," he doubtless refers to evil action. But evil is not confined to mere deed. One was told, "thine own mouth condemneth thee; and again, we are assured" every man's word shall be his burden ;"+ while CHRIST solemnly declares "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." But the expression of the human face may harbour "that which is evil." "A high look will I not suffer "+"A high look is sin."§ In the deepest solitude of one's spirit, "evil" may lurk: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he;" "the thought of foolishness is sin."T Here, too, the affections are often crimsoned with guilt. They were so in the earliest ages of the world: man's desires were only evil and that continually."** Evil, therefore, be the sphere and variety of its manifestations what they may, is by us to be abhorred."

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4. We are to abhor evil, however it may be accounted for. To give the history of "evil" done may be quite right; to justify, or even seem to excuse it, is quite wrong. Apologies before God are contemptible things. They may bewilder others, or even ourselves, but cannot blind the Eye that is " as a flame of fire." That which is evil, they cannot strip of its odiousness. Were a wolf to bleat as a lambkin, it would be a wolf still. Robes, however radiant, can never render the Prince of Darkness morally luminous; only a miserable caricature of spiritual beauty. Ingenuity's sublimest effort to make by plausible details the history of an evil a passport for it, or on any consideration to "make the worse appear the better cause," we dare not allow to chill our abhorrence of "that which is evil."

Thirdly. STUDY THE COMMAND IN ITS IMPERATIVENESS. Obedience is loudly called for. Why?

It is

1. We are to abhor that which is evil, for it is treason against Heaven. "There is none good but One, that is GOD." Evil, being as we have defined it opposition to His will, is an insult to His every perfection, a libel on His every law, and a barricade to His every purpose. daring, proud, and defiant, being nothing less than mockery of God. Such mockery indicates not only bravado, the enormity of which no words can describe, but moral derangement on the part of man, allied to very madness. Only FOOLS make a mock at sin." Surely the "terrible MAJESTY that is with God" demands we shall "abhor that which is evil."

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2. We are to abhor that which is evil, for it is black ingratitude to God. He made us to be happy. Our rich endowments of "body, * Job xv. 6. † Jer. xxiii. 36. Psal. ci. 5. § Prov. xxi. 4. || Prov. xxiii. 7.

Prov. xxiv. 9. ** Gen. vi. 5.

soul, and spirit" would have issued in the completion of His benevo lent design, but for sin. To do "that which is evil," therefore, is to fly in the face of a beneficent Deity. It is more; it is, with the CROSS full in view, to strive against Incarnate Love, "wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities," seeking to rescue us from calamities which only Omniscience can estimate. It is to drive additional nails into the Redeemer's hands and feet, to strike Him on "the crown of thorns," and again to pierce His heart, and to do all this in circumstances of peerless personal guilt, virtually resolving that He shall be disappointed of our salvation. Here" sin doth like itself" appear," and if "ingratitude is the essence of all vice," surely our feelings and language should be those of Job,* and we should “abhor that which is evil!"

3. We should abhor it, since it inflicts dire injury on the doer of it. ። "He that sinneth against Me, wrongeth his own soul," is the declaration of Him who loves us best. He knows that sin ". wars against the soul" which He has planted within us,-blinding the intellect, pervert. ing the will, searing the conscience, blighting the heart, destroying the man. Oh, if we would not commit spiritual suicide, let us " abhor that which is evil"!

4. Doing that which is evil should be matter of abhorrence, for such doing is a certain mode of alluring others into sin. Are we not our

"brother's keeper"? Are we not warned that " a man perisheth not alone in his iniquity"? Do not men gladly wrap themselves in a cloak for their sin, if this cloak is found "ready-made" in the evil example of others? And shall we deliberately lead fellow-immortals, alert to follow us, to the brink of a precipice, falling whence they are lost for ever? As we listen to David's cry, "Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God," shall we not "abhor that which is evil"?

Fourthly. STUDY THE COMMAND IN ITS COGENCY. Our space enacts greater brevity than the motives to obedience deserve. They abound; for not to abhor evil is virtually to become the apologist of evil-doers, both in earth and hell-it is to prove ourselves utterly void of sympathy with all holy beings, with angels, and with God. Is not being shut out of their fellowship and friendship to be "shut up in hell"? Moreover, is it not fatally to darken our own "title to mansions in the skies"? Heaven is more than escape from hell: it is abhorrence of that which created it. The burning seraph were no longer what he is but for such abhorrence. Ask we for motive? Let the poet tell us memorably, as he does truthfully :

"Man-like is it to fall into sin,
Fiend-like is it to dwell therein,
Christ-like is it for sin to grieve,
God-like is it all sin to leave."

How must we be distinguished if we would do homage to the intense, absolute, imperative, cogent command of the text? By constant *Job xlii. 5, 6.

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elf-vigilance, readiness to welcome kind reproof,† fervent and freuent prayer, and hourly recollection of the fact that our conflict rith sin will soon be over, and "the days of our mourning be ended." "I am weary of straying: I'd fain be at rest

In the far distant land of the pure and the blest,
Where sin can no longer its blandishments spread,
And tears and temptations for ever are fled.

"I am weary, my Saviour, of grieving Thy love

I long to repose in Thy bosom above;

I am weary, but oh! let me never repine,

Since Thy word, and Thy love, and Thy presence are mine."

THE BLIND GIRL OF DIJON.

MANY years ago, when a student of the University of Geneva, I was accustomed to spend the long summer vacations travelling from village to village in my native France, preaching in the open squares the kingdom of God, and distributing the Bible to such as would accept it

rom me.

On such an excursion, in the summer of 183-,I entered a little vine-hung cabin in the environs of Dijon. In its low, wide kitchen, I saw a middle-aged woman ironing, boy yet too young for labour, and a girl of some seventeen or eighteen, of a sweet, serious aspect, plaiting straw. She did not raise her eyes as I entered, and on a nearer approach I perceived that she was blind. Poor sightless Marie! how she was affected when I told her of Him who opened the eyes of the blind, and read to her how blind Bartimeus sat by the wayside begging, when he cried unto Jesus of

Nazareth passing by, and received his sight. Then an irrepressible longing, such as she had never known before-a longing for God's blessed gift of vision-seized upon the poor blind girl; not that she sighed to see the blue heavens, or the golden light, or to look upon her mother's sweet smile, or gaze in her young brother's laughing eyes;

no, not these, but she longed to read the blessed word of Jesus.

There lived at Dijon a man of God, who had gathered around him a few blind, whom he had taught to read and work. I sought him out, told him of Marie, interested him in her, and soon made arrangements that she should come every morning and receive an hour's instruction. I also procured for her a Bible with raised letters for the blind. You should have seen her delight as she started off next morning, a warm, bright August morning, one hand locked in her little brother's, and the other fondly grasping the precious Bible, to take her first lesson. Alas, poor Marie! it requires a delicate touch to distinguish the slightly raised surface and nice outline of the letters, and her fingers were hard and callous with the constant plaiting of straw. Again and again was the effort made, but to no purpose.

One day, as she sat alone, sorrowfully chipping with her little knife the rough edge of the straw, a happy thought occurred to her. Could she not cut away the thick hard skin from her fingers, and then it would grow anew, smooth and soft, like the rosy fingers of a child? And so she pared the hard skin from her.

fingers, heeding not the pain.

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When the reading lesson was tried again, warm drops trickled from the bleeding fingers along the sacred line.

It would not do. After the first bitterness of her disappointment, Marie strove hard to be cheerful. "God had opened the eyes of her soul," she said, "and ought she not to praise Him?"

heart, dear Jesus, and Thou knowes that I love Thee and love Thy book; and she touched the open Bible wit her lips. Oh, joy! To the soft lip the slight indentations of the raise surface are clearly perceptibl With a low cry of joy she pass line after line across her eager li She turns the leaf; the lips lose nes their power. It is all cleareasy now; the lips can do what th toilhardened fingers could not; sh can now learn to read God's hol Word!

And then the new Bible! ah, surely she must carry that back; some happier blind girl might be able to pluck the fruit from this tree of life, and find healing in its blessed leaves. And holding the dear volume near to her beating heart, she knelt by her white cot to pray: "Dear and blessed Jesus, who lovest the poor, and openest the eyes of the blind, I thank Thee that Thou hast not hidden Thyself from a poor blind girl. And since I cannot read Thy heavenly words, I pray that Thou wilt whisper them into my soul, that my spirit may not be dark like my poor eyes. I can see with my

A twelvemonth after, I visit Dijon. The old kitchen bore its e look, but what a beaming hape face was Marie's, as she sat in rude chair, her basket of straw her feet, reading her beloved Bibl Oh, it was full of light to he “N'est-il pas doux de baiser ainsi douces paroles pendant que je liste -"Is it not blessed to kiss H sweet words as I read ?"

A MEDITATION ON THE LORD'S SUPPER.*

(Luke xxii. 15-30).

BY THE REV. W. H. KING.

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We have not been left in any doubt as to the mental and spirit attitude most becoming and profitable to us in the service of the Lord col Supper. We do not meet together at the Lord's table to study Scriptures, nor merely to unite in the communion of prayer, or fellowship of praise. It is our privilege, when we gather around th board, to meditate wholly upon the brotherly sympathy, the tenderith compassion, the self-sacrificing love of our Divine Lord. Our one air deat -the aim that most clearly accords with the purpose and spirit this ordinance-should be to excite reverent adoration and gratef thanksgiving by a loving remembrance of Christ. He is the centre around whom our affections gather, the one object toward who our faith looks. That this is in harmony with the purpose Lord, we can have no doubt, for His command to the disciples wh He had broken the bread was, "This do in remembrance of me (Luke xxii. 19).

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"In remembrance of me." Was there then in the mind of Jesus

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*Notes of an address delivered at a united communion of the Liverpool Bapti Churches at Pembroke Chapel, Liverpool.

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fear that they might forget Him? Forget Him! No; it was impossible. However strange and unexpected those sorrowful incidents of the closing hours of that-as they might think-prematurely blighted life, their grief would have no power to blot out the remembrance of their Lord. They might for a while be disappointed at the abrupt and painful termination of His mission, but they could never forget HIM. The facts of His life, even on the most superficial estimate of them, were so unexampled; His sympathy had been so broad; His life had been so pure; His words were so weighty and true; His power was so vast; His authority over nature, over sickness, disease, and death, over the very spirits of darkness, had been so complete, and 80 unparalleled, that to forget Him would be a natural impossibility. Those three years' fellowship with Jesus had impressed upon their hearts an image that neither present disappointment nor future trial could ever efface.

Why then this special command to remember Jesus in eating the bread and drinking the wine? It was clearly the earnest wish of the Saviour, not only that He should be remembered by His disciples, and by those who would believe on Him through their word, but that they should unite to remember Him in especial connection with the closing facts of His ministry and His life. He desired to dwell in their remembrance in constant association with the agony of the garden and he shame of the cross.

Is there any reason why the only service established by the special command of Jesus should be so closely identified with Gethsemane and Calvary? Was it not the purpose of our Redeemer to counteract the strange natural tendency of our hearts to get away from the cross? There is nothing flattering to human pride to be learnt at Calvary. Forgiveness of sin through an atoning sacrifice is not very soothing to Our self-esteem. When the fervour of Christian love is becoming chilled into a cold intellectual acknowledgment of Christ, or a worldly spirit creeps over the soul like a moral blight, one of the very first dications of declining spirituality is a repugnance to the truths that are especially taught by the Crucified One. We cease to desire fellowship with His sufferings, we do not want to be made conformable to His death. The Cross becomes an offence. One of the most insidious forms of unbelief is that, which, with the pretence of honouring Christ, suggests that it would be as well to think less of the atonement and the bloodshedding, and more of the lofty teaching and pure morality of Jesus; which hints that instead of lingering in prayerful contemplation at Calvary, we should meditate on the sermon on the mount. The insinuation that there is any incompatibility between the words and passion of Jesus, is both false and mischievous. We should indeed sit at the feet of our Great Teacher. His truth is Divine; His words have the accent of heaven; but the Divinest truth, the most heavenly teaching, is that of the Cross whereon the Incarnate Son poured out his soul unto death. flatter our pride, it is a fountain of life to

While the Cross does not our souls. We learn the

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