God, or immediately under his inspiration. There is a book of names. Men are often asked to inscribe their names in books that there may be some remembrance of them in the family when they are no longer present. The idea is pathetic: why not lift up the thought to its best religious applications, and think of God writing our name? He seems to take a delight in names; saith he, I have known thee by name, I have called thee by name. "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you," said Christ take no pleasure in mere miracles and wonders and signs, "but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven."

Then comes the holy consequence :

"And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him" (ver. 17).

"That day." What does the Bible mean by this constant reference to another or special kind of day? Always in the Bible there has been a coming day, and always there has been a promised prophet; everywhere there has been the sound of One who was coming. This is the largeness of the Book, its sensitiveness to the whole action of evolution. Poor soul, to have thy name written everywhere but in God's Book! Is that fame? Reject it, resent it, avoid it! When the day does come, it "shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Here, on the one side, you have what mistaken people said, namely, "It is vain to serve God: the proud are happy, yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered." That is our complaint against Providence. On the other hand, we have (iv. 1) :—

"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."

He comes slowly, but he comes surely. The proud man has a short day to work in. The candle of the wicked shall be blown out the memory of the wicked shall rot. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay

tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." Who will fight against God? "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace." Here is providence brought before us focally. We see somewhat of it in its intense unity: man's complaint, God's judgment; man not understanding the mystery of human education, and God explaining it. God will not heat this fire so long as he can help it; mercy prevails against judgment. An opportunity is given for the very last offender to lay down his arms and return to his Lord: but if there be aught left of wickedness it shall be burned in the When God has consumed a man, who can find him?

oven.

We might exegetically end here, but evangelically we cannot. There is a call to men to return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon them; to confess their sins, and he will forgive them; to meet God at the Cross, that eternal reconciliation may be effected there. Blind are they who do not see God in providence; lost are they who take the world as meaning nothing but dust. Jesus Christ came to give us a new view, to set us in a right relation to God and to himself and to the coming eternity. He found himself thirsting, and he said, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." He shall have trial, tribulation, difficulty; but all these are part of a process, the Lord will lead through all this disintegration and temporary ruin into reconstruction and ineffable blessedness.

This is the Christian doctrine which we have espoused. We love it. It covers the whole space and the whole necessity of life. There be some curiously-headed men who want to be God themselves. We cannot explain them; that they can be explained we will not doubt; but they are men fruitful in the suggestion of difficulty, skilful in the barren process of cross-examination; they are difficult to satisfy, because they want with a blind eye to see God's glory, and it cannot be done. Be modest, be calm, be trustful. Try the Christian Cross, the Christian truth, in daily life; see how it goes with a man in all the action of life's tragedy; listen how it talks; observe how it soothes; note how it inspires; behold how it makes man a new creature.

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, we bless thee for boys and girls; they are thy children; of such is the kingdom of heaven. Thou wilt not rest until Jerusalem is filled with boys and girls; this is in thy counsels, this is written in thy Book, this thou wilt surely do, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. There are no orphans; thou art our Father in heaven; thou dost never change, thy love never cools, thine eye is never withdrawn from any of us: thou dost guide us by thine eye. If we could trust in thee more we should have no fear; if we could live in God we should live for ever: they are immortal who are in God. Now and again we feel the cold wind, and we say, The hill we travel is very high, and the darkness comes down upon us suddenly; but if we had faith in the living Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the wind would be a summer air, the hills would be a slope up towards heaven, and the darkness would be the background of the stars. Lord, increase our faith. Look upon us in all the relations of life; look upon us in the house, and make the house a home, and the home a church, because the living Christ is there; look in upon the wedding feast, and grace it with thy presence, thou Son of man, Maker of the only wine that can make glad the heart of man; be present in the death-chamber, and Death shall see thee and flee away, for thou art the Resurrection and the Life; be with all thy servants in business, and help them to understand that there is no business worth doing compared with the business of the Father's house; be with us in all straits, difficulties, afflictions, and burden-bearings, and at last, through the Cross, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, bring us fully home. Bless all the lands, far-away countries in the east and in the west, in the north and in the south; may the whole earth rejoice in the impartial glory of the Sun of Righteousness. Amen.

Chapter iv.

CLOSING PROPHECIES.

HIS is a prophecy; a prophecy of a day, a burning day;

TH

a prophecy of a coming Sun, called "the Sun of righteousness"; a prophecy of victory over the wicked; a prophecy of a prophet. Men cannot help prophesying. Prophecy is true; the thing prophesied may be false. For want of distinguishing between these two things, so simple that a child might comprehend them, the whole Christian Church is thrown into confusion, and a hostile world is fighting ignorant and futile battles. If we

can establish this distinction we ought to bring about a totally new conception of the kingdom of God upon the earth. We must approach this subject in its highest aspect by beginning where we can amid the most infantile illustrations of the principle.

Walking is right; but you may be walking in the wrong direction. What is the good therefore of finding fault with walking? Why not confine your remonstrance or expostulation to the mere matter of destiny? You cannot alter the fact that man was made to walk. Speaking is right; speaking is of God: but you may be speaking the wrong thing, you may be speaking profanely, you may be speaking falsely. But why should there be any battle about speaking? Why not confine your attention to its misuse or abuse? It is easy to pass from these initial illustrations to higher ground. On that higher ground the argument is just as vivid and just as strong. Thinking is right, thinking is inevitable; but the thought may be all wrong. And yet men have confounded the thought and the thinking, as if they were one and the same thing, and hence we have battles of words, and great noises of contradiction, simply because we do not confine attention to the point that is right and the point that is wrong. You would not forbid speaking; you would rather cultivate the act and the art of utterance. When you deal with speaking you deal with something you have nothing to do with; what you have to do with is the use to which you put your speaking power: the one is God's gift, the other is men's use of that gift. On the latter fight as many battles as you please, but do not imagine that you can alter the infinite law of the divine decree and purpose in the creation of man. You cannot hinder speaking, you have no power in that direction; your power begins with the things that are spoken. Watch that point, be most critical and careful there; but for the sake of high reason do not interfere with the ordinance of heaven, which has made man a speaking creature.

Thus we come nearer to the purely and distinctively religious ground. We come, for example, first of all to faith. Faith cannot be destroyed by anything that man can say. Faith is one thing; creed is another. Faith is to creed as is walking to the point

walked towards, or speaking in relation to the thing that is spoken. You may fight the creed, but you cannot touch faith; it does not come within the sphere of words: there is nothing you can lay hold of. You may as well fight life itself; faith is life's life. Your instruments, how long and keen soever, cannot get at that ghostly, divinely-human power. Men must believe. The world would fall to pieces without faith. At the same time, you may be believing the wrong thing; you may be putting your faith into false incarnations. There battle as much as you please you are called to fight; insist upon holy, ineffable, divine faith embodying itself in the purest expression. Here it is that men can never destroy religion. The forms change, blessed be God, but the essential principle abides. Life always takes upon itself new expressions and new embodiments; but the life itself is everlasting, unchangeable, the very gift of God, and the very crown of humanity. Yet men suppose that when a creed is being attacked faith is being assaulted. Such men can never be taught to see the distinction between faith-the inward element, the spiritual principle, the highest characteristic of man -and the creed into which that faith is translated for the time being. The creed is not of equal value with the faith. Why do we not therefore confine our attention to essentials?

What applies to faith applies to prayer. You cannot help praying. It is altogether useless to ask whether prayer is ever answered; whether it is answered or not, you cannot give over; because you cannot give over, the presumption is that prayer is answered. Here we come upon a law, a decree, an ordinance, a holy church in the wilderness of life; here is something that we must do perforce. The prayer uttered may be all wrong, it may be unwise, it may be positively ignorant, it may indeed encroach upon the province of real wickedness, it may be selfish, thoughtless, narrow, shallow; that has nothing to do with the question; prayer is not the thing prayed for; it is a spirit, holding converse with faith and thought, and is not to be brought into the court of human criticism. When we say in broad terms that you cannot give over praying, the answer is not to be found in individual instances in which men have avowedly renounced all that belongs to prayer. First of all, they have not renounced it,