its stone walls and iron stanchions-his practical abilities rendered useless for want of a field wherein to exercise them—his worldly wisdom neutralized by the brutality of his barbarous gaoler; and this for eighteen months, a period long enough to test what it was he had trusted on. Well, what were his feelings? Let me give them almost in our author's words. "God had stopped me; I saw that at last. I found out that I had been trying for years which was the stronger, God or I. I found out that I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him; and there I found I could not-could not. I felt like a child who had marched out from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven, who had been looking after me, when I fancied I had been looking after myself. Self and self-conceit proved false to me, and I yearned for some one who should show me the God whom I had forsaken for those idols."

A picture like this, dear brethren, is indeed a very awful one, but you must not consider it overdrawn. Those who stand at deathbeds will assure you that it is not overdrawn. But if this be so, let us fly betimes from any, even the most distant, approach to so disastrous a state of mind; let us, while using and enjoying what we find within us and around us, our bodily and mental faculties, our friends and the charms of their society, our feelings of the heart and their exercise, the world of mind and of matter, our

means and external opportunities-beware of resting on them, beware of considering them to be good in themselves, ends in themselves—-i.e. beware of constituting them our idols. God, the Giver of all good, is alone the chief good; His support will never fail those who trust in Him, even when everything else fails. Friends, riches, children, everything that meets and cheers the outward eye, or embellishes the external existence, may be absent from the Christian's deathbed. A stranger may look at him and pity his forlorn estate, and perhaps condole with him on his desolateness; but he knows in whom he has trusted, and his last words are, Happy the man who has turned from idols to serve the living God;"

66

"Who hath the Father and Son,

May be left, but not alone.

1 St. John's Day.—KEBLE.

LECTURE VI.

UZZIAH; OR, PRESUMPTION THE SNARE OF PROSPERITY.

2 CHRON. XXVI. 16—21.(')

But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense.

And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men.

And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the Lord God.

Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense: and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy rose up in his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord, from beside the incense altar.

And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and behold he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea, he himself hasted to go out, because the Lord had smitten him.

1 With this Lecture the following chapters should be read2 Kings xiv. 21, 22; xv. I—7. 2 Chron. xxvi.

And Uzziah the king was a leper until the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house, being a leper; for he was cut off from the house of the Lord; and Jotham his son was over the king's house, judging the people of the land.

THAT presumption is the snare of the wicked man in prosperity, and that by it his prosperity is oftentimes brought to an end, is clear from the seventy-third Psalm. "They are in no peril of death, but are lusty and strong. They come in no misfortune like other folk, neither are they plagued like other men. And this is the cause that they are so holden with pride, and overwhelmed with cruelty. Lo, these are the ungodly, these prosper in the world, and these have riches in possession." Such is the observation made upon them by the Psalmist. Then, in a moment of faithlessness, he goes on to exclaim, "I said, Then have I cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency." At length, however, he discovers that "God doth set them in slippery places, that He casteth them down and destroyeth them. Yea, that like as a dream when one awaketh, so doth God make their image to vanish out of the city."

But it is not merely the wicked who are liable to presume while in prosperity, and to find in presumption their ruin, but even those who are comparatively righteous, and whose righteousness, such as it is, is encouraged by the Almighty by success in their lawful designs, are liable to be ensnared by that success. They are induced to consider it to be something which

they have themselves achieved, instead of, what it really is, a talent over and above their other talents, for which, as for the others, they are bound to give account. The phrase "fatal success is perfectly familiar to us, and is one which we unhesitatingly apply to the good as well as to the evil.

In illustration of these remarks, I desire to speak to you to-day of

"UZZIAH; OR, PRESUMPTION THE SNARE OF

PROSPERITY."

I shall have to tell you of one of the greatest of the kings of Judah-one who reigned the longest-and who perhaps for versatility of talent, for variety of accomplishments, and for extent of territory, came nearer to the far-famed Solomon than any of his ancestors; and I shall have to tell you also how he was unable to bear all this, and how for his presumptuous sin (in the midst of which he was stricken) he ended his days all sorrowfully as a man leprous and unclean.

Of the nature of this punishment, and of its supposed relation to sin under the Jewish theocracy, and on the general lessons to be derived from Uzziah's career, we shall speak presently. But we will first sketch the particulars of that career itself. It must be gathered principally from the Second Book of Chronicles; for though the Second Book of Kings presents us with a short biography of him,1 it fails to

1 Uzziah is called Azariah in the Book of Kings.