nature must be silent; it is human nature in its totality that is impeached. Where shall a mediator be found? Is there no daysman that may lay his hand upon both, and make a speech that shall represent the actuality of the case and issue in reconciliation and peace, pardon and heaven? Out of such necessities there arises a cry that if it could explain itself would mean the Cross.

The impeachment does not end here: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." This representation is cold; it is not the representation which the prophet made; there is a word omitted which gives accent and force to this impeachment. We should read, literally, "My people are destroyed for lack of the knowledge." There is only one knowledge worth acquiring. Away with information if it be made to take the place of inspiration. Information is useful within very narrow limits, for information is a changeable quantity-changing by the very fact of enlargement and self-correction; but inspiration is the spirit, the genius that unites all things, interprets all things, and in a sense governs and directs all things. "My people are destroyed for lack of the knowledge," the one knowledge, the only knowledge worth having, the knowledge of God. The Bible is consistent in its claim; never does it lower its spiritual tone; not in one instance will it modify the claims and challenges of God. If God be not first, then there can be no settlement of the contention. With God at the right place, all other considerations and ministries and interactions assume their right relation and process. Who has not heard of the man who sold all his possessions that he might buy one with it, called a pearl of great price? Not that all the others represented in their totality the value of the one; when the one was obtained it was not merely a transference of value, it was an added treasure, a treasure beyond all price or arithmetical expression of superiority.

So with the knowledge of God. What a fool is he who knows everything but God! There are men who are so involved in getting scraps and fragments and little pieces of things together that they do not realise the totality of things. A man has a whole sack filled with little pieces of he does not know what, and he does not know what to make of it; he would be a comparatively happy man if he could part with that sack that is filled

with little bits of things; he calls them phenomena, and does not get much comfort out of the word. It is possible so to use a microscope as to become its victim. There is a telescope as well as a microscope; there are stars as well as invisible insects. He who knows God knows the totality of the universe. He may be to a large extent ignorant of details; he may not have a microscope, he may not have a telescope, but he has that peculiar spiritual faculty which grasps the whole, and hears a solemn music in the march of the whole which is not heard by persons who take the organ to pieces that they may find where the music came from. Who would not give all he has for one sight of the invisible? Who would not consider all possessions worthless as compared with one face-to-face interview with God? Compared with that conference how small the debates of men, the collisions of human intellect, the uproar of social conflict and contention. We may belittle the very conception of knowing God. We are called upon to enter into a large conception of that fact, and the larger our conception of what is meant by knowing God, the more important will that knowledge become in actual reality. We do not know God who can only spell his name; we know nothing of God who have only heard of him; he only knows God who has lived with him; we live and move and have our being in God. Even this is insufficient, for there is needed one who can reveal God, in all the fulness of his character and being; the only Begotten of the Father, who dwelleth in the Father's bosom, he hath revealed him. Only Jesus Christ can tell us what God is. The Hebrew piled its epithets that it might scale the height of the divine abode, but Jesus operated in the other direction; instead of scaling his way to the unscalable infinite, he proceeded forth and came from God, and when he arrived, we called him God with us, God Incarnate, God the Son, God the Saviour. We need both the actions: we need a Hebrew in its sublimity that can only get to the clouds, and we need that universal language which comes down and speaks to old men and little children, wisest philosopher and unlettered peasant, in a mystery of simplicity that can be understood, but not explained, felt, but not accounted for, so that it shall be true that a man shall know God by his heart when he cannot comprehend him by his intellect.

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, thine eye is upon us continually; there is not a word on our tongue, there is not a thought in our heart, but, lo! O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Oftentimes dost thou cause us to exclaim in wonder, sometimes in terror, sometimes in joy. All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole earth; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee: how then shall we stand before thy judgment seat, in what guise shall we there appear? Thou dost tear away the clothing of the hypocrite; thou dost send a fire upon the simulations of men. Enable us always to remember

ness.

that thine eye is upon us for good, and not for judgment only; thou shalt guide us with thine eye. The opening of thine eye upon our life shall be as the dawning of the day upon the earth that has long been hidden in darkThe Lord grant unto us the assurance that his criticism is gracious, and that in judgment he seeks a way for his mercy. The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. We live in the Christian light; we assemble within the shadow of the Cross; we meet at the altar of propitiation. Jesus Christ loved us and gave himself for us-the just for the unjust, and now thou art able to grant unto us justification through faith and the peace which comes of being right with God. Show us that we are still under law, but under the larger law of love, under the wider judgment of regulated liberty; and thus may we walk with dignity, steadfastness, patience, humbleness of mind, and all trust of heart, and at the last may we see that thou hast led us by a right way. The mountain was right and the valley, the cold wintry day and the bright summer flowery path, all was right; it was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Amen.

Chapters iv., V.

FORSAKING GOD.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children" (iv. 6).

THE

HE Lord must in some way find our life that he may either reward it or chastise it. In this case he will get at

the parents through the children.

He would not have done

this if there had been any other way into their rebellious and

obdurate hearts. We must leave him to explain himself in reference to the children; he will do that which is right and merciful; we need not plague ourselves about that aspect of mystery; rather let us fasten attention upon the fact that God means for our good to get at our souls somehow. He will try all the gates, and even if he has to break down the child-gate he will come in. That is the point upon which we are to fix our devout attention. We can of course be tempted in another direction: why attack the children, why conduct himself towards the innocent as if they were guilty? Why punish the innocent for those who have transgressed? So we metaphysically fritter away God's noblest meaning; we endeavour to solve the insoluble, when we might be accepting with grace and gratitude the inevitable, the disciplinary, and the high administration of divine righteousness.

Then he will proceed with his punishment, and "change their glory into shame." He shall make the noblest horse as a mean and stumbling ass; he will cause the genius that set itself against him to do menial work, to sing unworthy songs, to paint pictures for the walls of hell; he will turn their eloquence into a new method of lying; that which was once their crown shall be their disgrace; that which was once their chief glory shall be a cloud upon their lives. God will turn things upside down; he will have night at midday, if thereby he can do good to the sons of men. The lesson is that somehow, at some point, divine judgment will lay hold upon us, that it may prepare the way for divine mercy. Judgment will not come alone if he can help it; judgment is God's strange work. When the fire comes it is only to burn the stubble; when God strikes it is that he may awaken attention; when God takes away the little child it is that we may look up the look that stirs heaven, the look that means, There must be something beyond; the inexplicable look, the attitude religious, even when the tongue is dumb as to praise. So we recur again and again to the deep sweet true lesson that whatever happens in the way of divine discipline, or in the administration of divine law, is meant not only to rebuke us for sin and judge us with tremendous judgment, but to invite us to thought and prayer, to penitence, and through contrition to pardon.

How vividly the sin of the people represented itself to God. We ought to ask, How do other people view our actions? For we are not judges at all times of our own behaviour. But the question should not end there; that inquiry is itself but a hint of broader criticism. We should ask, How does this life appeal to God? God has a right to be heard upon this subject. It is not for man to say that he is judge, and he knows all, and can settle everything, and that his opinion is final. Even art appeals to criticism; even music seems to say in all its undulation, in all its wizardry of sound: Do you feel this? Does it touch you, heal you, inspire you, have some effect upon you? And man must submit his life to divine criticism; his question should be, Lord, this looks well to me, but I can only see it from one point of view; how does it look from heaven? Things are in reality as God sees them, for God sees them in their reality.

"They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity." They live upon it, they pander to people rather than expose their sins, and so long as those sins are profitable the priests seize the produce, and spend it on their own lust, vanity, and ambition. Think of anointed men living on the produce of sin and shame! The people go out and do the sin, and those who are in the sanctuary say, Bring your gains; we will not ask how you got them; only plentifully dispense them to us, and we will ask nothing concerning processes. So the priest was made fat by the iniquity of the people, and the Lord was moved in heaven in the direction of controversy and judgment, and he shook the heaven in his wrath, and condemned those whom he called by the endearing name My people." It is something to have a righteous God, whoever invented him. Say these prophets were inventors of a God, it was a noble God they dreamed. His moral character disposes of the theory of invention; it does not lie within the scope of iniquity to dream holiness; it is not within the power of diseased corrupt humanity to invent a spotless God, walking in righteousness, and judging the earth in equity. The Lord inquires about our gains and our produce and our enjoyments, and he will not have upon his altar the result of sin. We are willing to receive it because we are imperfect. A man who has made money by evil practices may