solar system, inequalities there are none, velocity smooths them all out, and the higher relations settle into unity and beauty and music, things that were aberrant, eccentric, and unmanageable. Blessed God, so it shall be in the winding up of all this little scheme of things. We talk of Chaldeans, invasions, wars, troubles, commotions, earthquakes, pestilences,-forgive the babble of thy nursery children. When we are men, and clothed with light, we shall look down upon this elementary criticism as almost bordering upon profanity; but we shall recover ourselves, and say, In the days of our ignorance God winked at our folly, but now in the days of our manhood we will say, He hath done all things well.

PRAYER.

HOLY, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Who is holy as the Lord? The heavens are not clean in thy sight, nor are the angels guiltless of folly. Yet hast thou said unto us by thy Son, Be ye holy, as your Father in heaven is holy. Who can attain? who can apprehend? We are dust and ashes; we are a wind that cometh for a little time and passeth away: how can we be perfect with the perfectness of God? But thou hast sent unto us thy Holy Spirit that he may take of the things of Christ and show them unto us, that he may dwell in us, that he may sanctify us wholly, body, soul, and spirit, and make us beautiful as a palace built for God. The blood of Jesus Christ thy Son cleanseth from all sin: by that blood we become a holy Church, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; glorious Church. Help us daily in this upward direction; strengthen every good resolve; help us to resist every temptation; may we know the enemy, his wiles, his persistence, his strength. Comfort us with the assurance that he that is with us is more than all that can be against us: thus may our courage be sustained, thus may we be saved from despair. Teach us that growth is imperceptible, assure us that we may be growing in grace without ourselves fully knowing it; may we cling the more closely to Christ because of our weakness, may we tarry within the shadow of the Cross. Save us from ourselves, from trust in our own power, which is as a cloud driven by the wind; lead us to repose completest faith upon God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Encourage us; let some beam of sunshine fall upon the loneliest path; let some word or tone of music come to the addest heart. May the weakest soul say, in the power of the Holy Ghost, hat from this moment he will be better. The Lord hear the oath, and seal it in heaven. Amen.

Chapter ii.

ON THE LOOK OUT.

"I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch" (ver. 1).

HIS was the conclusion of asking questions of the most painful and distressing kind. Here then is a lesson for all time. A strong-headed man like Habakkuk, whose very name suggests, etymologically, "strong embrace of God," has his questions; he is puzzled and perplexed by the whole play of things: the tragedy seems to have no beginning, no key, no end. Habakkuk therefore puts his questions-" Art thou not from everlasting?" Then why this contention, collision, confusion? Why this universal misery? Art thou not of purer eyes than to behold iniquity? Why then dost thou look on when the wicked man eats up, devours-that is the word-swiftly and cruelly shuts his jaws upon the man that is more righteous than himself? Why dost thou make us, as if in mockery, like the fishes of the sea, yea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them—a wild and furious democracy of disorder? Other questions he puts. Thus he tortures himself, until he says, Away with you! I will stand, I will watch, I will wait. Etymologically, Habakkuk says he will stand as a servant stands. Everything depends upon the spirit of our standing. There be fine critics who stand, and the Lord takes no notice of their posture; he allows them to stand until they drop down dead: he has nothing to say to the merely intellectual vanity of criticism. Habakkuk will stand as a servant. The attitude is indicative of reverence, expectancy, willingness to respond. What a stoop there is in the attitude, even though it be upright to the eye; There is a line of inclination which God sees even in the upright attitude, and in that line he sees condescension, homage, obedience. They who stand so are refreshed by their standing

the exercise gives them further strength; it is not a position of exhaustion, but a self-recruiting position, and whilst it is being exhibited and realised, time is nothing. Philosophy has tried to humiliate time; philosophy has laughed at both time and space; in some of its most audacious moods philosophy has denied both, Philosophy has always been struggling to be almost religious. It is difficult for a metaphysician to be flippant. He deals with shadows, symbols, ghostly typologies, and beginnings of things. He lives where he wants great silence, or the line of his thought will be broken, and he shall have his many pains for nothing. But this is a religious emotion which destroys time and space and labour, and seizes but one grand thought-Immortality. Philosophy is vexatious; religion is calm, and is, being calm, tranquillising in its effect upon the soul.

"I will stand and watch": literally, I will spy out. There is a microscopic gaze as well as a telescopic survey. The telescope is proud; it admits nothing but planets and solar systems into its sanctum of vision. Right proud lenses are they that are in the telescope: suns may look at themselves in such mirrors, but little things, tiny specks, animalcular life, such cannot come within the dignity of the telescope. But they have their mediums, instruments; they have their microscope, and to the microscope they all come forth at once, saying, with the thunders and the lightnings, Here are we also, part of thy household, thou great Father of every life. Habakkuk says, Not the telescope now, but the microscope. I will spy out little things; or, I will have an instrument made that can see the very least things at a distance. Great religious enthusiasms are not tramelled by your mechanical limitations, or pestered by your little metaphorical consistencies. Great religious emotion says, I will combine the telescope and the microscope; I will have a binary instrument of some sort, and it shall show me not the great only but the little, not the little only but the great; I will sweep horizons, and read the story of the grass blade.

Habakkuk will stand therefore on what the mariner calls the look-out. When you have been to sea you have observed men at the front of the vessel who were apparently doing nothing but

walking across the ship backward and forward; looking now and then furtively; but they were doing a special and necessary business, namely, looking out. When the layman looked out he saw nothing; the skilled mariner, the trained eye looked, and rang a bell. We have looked after the ringing of that bell to see what the ringing meant, and the horizon was all grey, dull, without one broken line upon it; but presently after a few more throbbings of the engine there was a tuft of steam in the far distance, or a sail; it was that the man on the look-out saw, and when he saw it he announced the event to those who were in charge of the vessel. Habakkuk says, I will be on the look out to-night; I will sit up all through the darkness and I will watch, because at any moment there may be a vision. God's stars sometimes come forth suddenly, and I cannot tell when they may appear; I will therefore look out. The world sleeps-the prophet is spying, peering, watching, searching the horizon for signs of coming devastation or dawning light. Bless God for the prophets. They have a hard time of it; it must have been agonising to have been taken up and made a prophet. It is better within given limits to be commonplace, to buy and sell and get gain, and live by the hands. All this fancy life, this discipline that comes through a fiery imagination, this horrible power of seeing the unseen, and this maniac madness of telling men that there are things in front of them which it is impossible for them to discern, this should be the preacher's life. He should always be ten years ahead of everybody; so far ahead as to be called foolish, mad, eccentric, absurd, raving; and yet he should have such patience, the very quietness of God, that when he hears men say seven years after that he was right, he should simply smile at their tardiness. He knows that he is right. But for this consciousness the prophets could not have lived: it could not have been an easy thing to have been called a madman seven times a day.

When the Lord did speak to Habakkuk he delivered a brief discourse which ought to constitute the first lesson, the middle and the last lesson of every Christian preacher. We need no book of lectures so long as we have these words :

"And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet

for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him but the just shall live by his faith" (vers. 2-4).

Writing has a function. Fasten this thing down in words; the words will be very poor to him who reads words only, but they will be full of intellectual stimulus, suggestion, wealth, to him who sees in every letter a thought, in every shadow a variety of high colour. We must have a book. No one man can write it all. It must be a book of letters in our mother tongue, and if there be in it no contradictions, swift, sharp collisions, suspect it-suspect it! Any man can make a smooth surface; the very poorest mechanic that ever shouldered a bag of tools can make a fair show on the outside. A kitchen table looks much more respectable than a forest: there is an evident respectability about the one, there is a ruggedness about the other; there are caverns and dark places that might house lions and tigers about the other. God's Bible is full of cavernous recesses, tangled jungles, and cataracts of names we cannot remember two moments together; and yet, reading it all, and reading it all at once, it falls into harmony and music, as the world becomes quite beauteous when swung with astronomic force around the central fire. The earth is geographically about as rough as it can be, there is hardly space upon it to sit down on with any comfort; but caught astronomically, swung round the sun, they say it is beautiful even to shining. You can deal with the Bible geographically or astronomically; fool is he who never rises to the astronomic use and vision of revelation. "Make it plain upon tables." There must be some very plain words in revelation; the presence of these plain words will make the presence of other words almost contradictory and offensive; for we say now and again, as we read the vision, "That is plain; why is not all as plain as that?" Through and through the Bible there are short sentences, definite lines, as to the scope and meaning of which there can be no mistake, and then on the next page there is nothing but cloud, sometimes breaking a little as if in calculated mockery, and then closing so suddenly as to constitute a frown. It is to be written so plainly that he may run that readeth it, or he may read it that runneth. Make your statements to suit the people to whom you make