hardly set with the dogs, God sets with the children of His family. His sin is pardoned. His soul is accepted. His prayer, like incense, goes up to heaven, a sacrifice of a sweet savour; whilst the prayer of the other is blown back like smoke for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.' The one went down from the temple with the same cold dead heart, with which he had gone there: the other with a sweet sense of forgiveness shed abroad in his soul. Thus does God fill the hungry soul with good things, and the rich he sendeth away empty.'

Learn then that God abhors a proud, self-righteous spirit; but He loves to listen to the humble. The Saviour, who has shed His blood for us, is ready to apply that blood to our souls, and to wash out every stain, if only we will acknowledge our guilt, and cling to His cross. He is ready to say to the trembling penitent, 'I will be thou clean.' 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.'

Learn too from this Parable that God does not measure our prayers by the length of them, or by the fineness of the words. Here was a very short prayer, and a very poor one in point of language; but it was an accepted prayer. And if the Lord accepted such a prayer from the humble Publican, why not from you or me? Are the words which he poured forth unsuited to our lips? Have we no sins? Have we kept the whole law? If our outward actions have been correct, have our thoughts been always pure? When we look back, far back, into the past, has there been nothing done which ought to have been left undone, and nothing undone, which God has commanded to be done? Like the Pharisee, have we no guilt to acknowledge? Is there nothing to be said— nothing but the boastful expression, 'God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are ?' Shall we stand, like him, as guilty creatures before our Judge, and yet boast of our innocence? Shall we stand sick and diseased before our Physician, and boast of our health? Shall we stand before our merciful Father, ready to forgive, and not ask forgiveness?

Have we no sins? Oh, let us look into our Have we no need of mercy?

own hearts.

Yes, the greatest need.

Oh for more of the spirit of this Publican! We want more of this in our congregations, more of this deep feeling of sin, this heartfelt conviction of our guilt, this smiting on our breasts with godly sorrow, this earnest cry for mercy. And we want more of it in our own souls. Then we shall be, each one of us, hastening to the cross; feeling that only the blood of Christ, only His atonement, can give us relief. And we shall long to hear those words of mercy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; go in peace.'

6

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

ST. MARK, VII. 31-37.

Jesus, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, came unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

WE find from the twenty-fourth verse that our Lord had been in the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon, a district to the north-west of Canaan. He had there had that remarkable interview with a Syro-Phenician woman, which always seems to interest us

afresh every time we turn to it

an interview which brings out the nature of true faith, and its sure success.

Having left those parts, our Lord bends His steps towards the cities which lay along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and which were almost as familiar to Him as His own favoured city of Nazareth. And here another opportunity soon occurs of displaying His Almighty love and power.

A man is brought to Him, heavily afflicted, being deaf and almost dumb. His friends bring him, having probably heard of the many miracles of mercy, which Jesus had wrought in that particular dis

trict.

We know the feelings with which a friend, a mother for instance, brings her child to some celebrated physician; with what intense anxiety she awaits her turn; and how she trembles lest the disease should be pronounced by him to be incurable. Such may have been the feelings of those, who had the charge of this afflicted sufferer. They had heard of our Lord's wondrous skill, and of His amazing tenderness. But they must have had serious