letters SAVE include "the gift of God," which is "eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." This promise specially belongs to God's own people. Does not this furnish one of the strongest reasons why unconverted parents should seek religion? How sacred and solemn is the parental relationship! Every child is a fallen, though a redeemed, sinner; and each will be saved or lost for ever. Yet how few unsaved parents think of the eternal ruin that thus threatens their own children.-G. A. Page. (a) Let us picture to our minds a child very poor, dreadfully diseased, and miserably enslaved. Every right-hearted parent is distressed to see his child poor, clad in rags, bedded on straw, pale and pinched with hunger. Add to poverty, disease the rosy bloom has disappeared from the cheek. The little frame is wasting to a skeleton. Life is a burden, and the grave is opening to entomb your fondest hopes. Add to poverty and disease, slavery: your child the property of another, who claims him as his own and subjects him to all the degradation and misery of a galling servitude! What would be your feelings as a parent had you a child in such circumstances as these? Methinks it would be enough to make your life a burden. Have you a child unsaved? Then is he not poor? miserably poor? Has not sin robbed him of peace and purity? Does it not threaten to rob him of heaven and hope? Is not your unsaved child diseased? full of the leprosy of sin? sick unto death? Does not Satan bind his captive soul "fast in his slavish chains?" Is he not held in the most cruel bondage by the worst of tyrants? You know that all this is true, that it is no over-coloured picture. In fact, it is only part of the truth. Your un saved child is under sentence of death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." That sentence might be executed by Divine justice at any moment. What then is to become of your poor, diseased, enslaved, and doomed child?— Page. SINFUL ISRAEL SELF-RUINED. 1. 1-3. Thus saith the Lord, Where is the hill, &c. Those who have professed to be the people of God, and yet seem to be severely dealt with, are apt to complain. of God, and to lay the fault upon Him, as if He had severely dealt with them. But, in answer to their murmurings, we have here I. A CHALLENGE TO PRODUCE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THE QUARREL BEGAN ON GOD'S SIDE (ver. 1). They could not say that He had done them any wrong, or had acted arbitrarily. 1. He had been a Husband to them; and husbands were then allowed to put away their wives upon any little disgust (Deut. xxiv. 1; Matt. xix. 7). But they could not say that God had dealt so with them; true, they were now separated from Him, but whose fault was that? What evidence could they produce that He had dealt with them capriciously? 2. He had been a Father to them; and fathers had then a power to sell their children for slaves to their creditors; and they were then sold to the Babylonians, as they were afterwards to the Romans; but did God sell them for payment of His debts? When God chastens His children, it is neither for His pleasure nor His profit (Heb. xii. 10). II. A CHARGE THAT THEY WERE THEMSELVES THE AUTHORS OF THEIR RUIN. "Behold, for your iniquities," &c. III. A CONFIRMATION OF THIS CHALLENGE AND THIS CHARGE (vers. 2, 3). 1. It was plain that it was their own fault that they were cast off, for God came and offered them His helping hand, either to prevent their trouble, or to deliver them out of it, but they slighted Him and all the tenders of His grace (ver. 2; Matt. xxi. 34; Jer. XXXV. 15). He called to them to leave their sins, and so prevent their own ruin; but there was no man, or next to none, that complied with the messages He sent them and it was for this that they were sold and put away (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16, 17). Last of all, He sent unto them His Son, who would have gathered Jerusalem's children together, but they would not; and for that transgression it was that they were put away, and their house left desolate (Matt. xxi. 41, xxiii. 37, 38; Luke xix. 41, 42). When God calls men to happiness, and they will not answer, they are justly left to be miserable. 2. It was plain that it was not owing to any lack of power in God that they were led into the misery of captivity and remained in it, for He is almighty. They lacked faith in Him, and so that power was not exerted on their behalf. So it is with sinners still.-Matthew Henry; Commentary, in loco. I. A picture of the sinner's miserable condition! separated from God-sold under sin. II. The occasion of it: not the will of God-but his own love of sin-and his consequent disregard of God's offers of deliverance from sin and sorrow.-J. Lyth, D.D.: The Homi letical Treasury: Isaiah, p. 69. THE TEACHER OF THE WEARY. 1.2-4. Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, &c. For the young, this is fresh, beautiful, sunlit life; to the old, it is often what Talleyrand found it, who in the journal of his eighty-third year, wrote "Life is a long fatigue." The first cry of a soul when Divinely wakened to its true condition is after a Teacher, who in a way suited to its weakness will teach it secrets suited to its wants. Such a Teacher has been found for us all, and the "words in season that He speaks are the words of eternal life."" Listen to this Teacher, for He is speaking to us now. He speaks in the style of God. Beginning, "Thus saith the Lord " (ver. 1), He at once announces His Divinity. He then goes on to speak of Himself as a man (vers. 5, 6). These words, therefore, could have been spoken alone by the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. They place before our thoughts I. HIS DIVINE POWER AND GLORY. Power is naturally calm. Yet perhaps a storm will make a child think of power more than the sunshine will. Knowing our frame, our Teacher seeks to impress us with a sense of His power by bidding us think of Him as working by inexorable force certain awful changes and displacements in nature; "I dry up the sea," &c. One day, with a casual blow of his hammer, Hugh Miller laid open a block in a quarry, and there discovered a fossil fish, supposed to be the first of its own variety ever seen by mortal. There it lay, "dried up" (a), turned into a thing of stone. Whose work was this? Christ's name is traced in sacred cypher on the foundations of the lasting hills; He dried up the sea; He made the river a wilderness, &c. It is a joy to think that the power so mighty to destroy is now all mediatorial. II. HIS HUMAN LIFE AND EDUCATION. "He The Lord not only became a man, but assumed humanity in its humblest form; an apostle says, emptied Himself." Gradually, it seems (Luke ii. 40, 52), the Divine Spirit, like a mysterious Voice, woke up within Him the consciousness of what He was, and of what He had come on earth to fulfil; morning by morning (ver. 4) the Voice was ever wakening Him to a higher consciousness and more awful knowledge; nor was His equipment complete until He uttered His last cry from the cross (H. E. I. 858-863). III. THE MEDIATORIAL TEACHING FOR WHICH HE HAD BEEN THUS PREPARED. 1. It is personal. If His own personal teaching had not been in view, there would have been no need for all this personal preparation. "The Lord hath given Me the tongue of the learned," &c. The education of a human soul is not to be entrusted to any created being. A million messengers may bring us wisdom, but Christ is the Personal Agent who employs them all. "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man." When 2. It is suitable; "that I should know how to speak a word in season." Suitable to our weariness (1.) while we are yet in a state of unregeneracy. Christ knows how to speak to such so as to kindle sympathy and waken response; He knows how to speak a word that gives life, the only "word in season to men "dead in trespasses and sins." (2.) When we are sinking under the burden of guilt. The law of God demands a perfect obedience; you are unable to meet that demand. All the while Christ was on earth, He was learning how to take that burden from you (Heb. v. 8). (3.) When we are faint ing under the burden of care. you are ready to learn, Christ is ready to teach (Ps. lv. 22). To cast your burden upon the Lord is to cast yourself upon Him-yourself, with all you carry. (4.) When we are burdened under the intellectual mysteries of theology. Such difficulties form an essential part of the Christian discipline of many. Those who feel them are tempted, on the one hand, to rest in the authority of human reason, and, on the other, in the authority of the Church. But, who can teach us so surely the things that relate to Christ, as Christ Himself? Christ, wise in His speech, and wise in His silence, may not give us. all the knowledge we wish for, but He will give us all we need. (5.) When we are under the burden of mortal infirmity. "The faint old man sits down by the wayside a-weary." At first he thought within himself— 'I am a useless hull, 'tis time I sunk; But Christ has spoken to his soul, and dispersed those sad imaginations, by the power of thoughts that renew his inward strength (ch. xl. 29-31). There sits a man who was once an active thinker; but he has just tried to read one of his own books, and Solomon calls wisdom a "tree of life;" and the heavenly Teacher's wisdom is like the mystical tree of life, bearing "twelve manner of fruits, and yielding her fruit every month." You can never go to that tree out of season; you can never go to it seeking fruit and finding none; for as one has said, "you carry with you the season, and make it the season of the tree."-C. Stanford, D.D., Symbols of Christ, pp. 146-172. (a) For an, stinketh, read 'n, is dried up; so it stands in the Bodleian MS., and it is confirmed by the LXX, ξηρανθήσονται, -Lowth. He who speaks is the second person of the ever blessed Trinity; He speaks in that character of a Mediator which He had covenanted from all eternity to bear, and which required that in "the fulness of time" He should be made flesh, and dwell among men. This is the explanation of the mystery that He who in one verse speaks as God (verse 3), in the next describes Himself as a learner. How the man Christ Jesus became informed of the nature and obligations of the mediatorial office is a profound mystery; all that we are told is, that it was gradually (Luke ii. 52; H. E. I. 858-863), so that morning by morning something new was told, till at last the whole task of labour, ignominy, and death, lay spread before the view of the Surety of our race. But though we may not be able to penetrate the mystery of the process, the result was that our Lord entered upon His mission possessing "the tongue of the learned." Not according to any anticipation that the "learned" men of the world would have favoured, if this prediction had been made known to them. His was the profounder and more important knowledge of the human heart; and therefore He was able to do what all their wisdom and science would never have enabled them to accomplish, He knew how to speak words in season to the weary. He has been the great Comforter of Our race. Millions burdened by sin and sorrow have been helped and strengthened by Him. In this respect His ministers should strive to be like Him. Intellectual culture they are not to disregard, but their supreme ambition should be to attain to such a knowledge of the heart, in all its varying experiences, and of the adaptation of God's truth thereto, that they also may know how to speak words in season to the weary-right words at the right time.-Henry Melvill, B.D: Sermons Preached on Public Occasions, pp. 125-147. The text is a word for the weary from One in whose sympathy the human heart finds its refreshment and strength. In the work of cheering weary hearts, Christ excels immeasurably all others. God, who gave to Moses the tongue of terror, and to Isaiah the tongue of a fellow-sufferer with God's people, has given to Christ, in a singular and incomparable sense, the tongue of one who has drunk our cup, navigated all the seas of our experience, and become one with us in all that pertains to human suffering and conflict. Christ has the tongue of experience. Robertson strains language when he speaks of the "human heart of God." But we may speak of the human sympathy of "the man Christ Jesus". the "Son of God." His human heart has experienced human woes - toil, weariness, disappointment, sorrow, and curse. He was made in all things like His brethren, to assure us of God's sympathy. Not that God knows our suffering the more familiarly, or sympathises with us the more tenderly, because He has experienced them in our nature. His omniscience marks the quiver of each heart-pang. His sympathy is as abounding and deep as the ocean, for "God is love." But we cannot conceive adequately of the sympathy of an abstract First Cause. Roman Catholics are right when they tell us that we can only realise God's acquaintance and sympathy with human sorrow as we look at a human fellow-sufferer possessing the most susceptible of tender human hearts. Their error is in pointing us to the Virgin Mother instead of the Incarnate Son. Because Christ has the tongue of experience, therefore His sympathy is the more effective. Apply these thoughts to 1. Physical sufferings. Christ's experience of hunger, thirst, weariness, pain, &c. (vers. 5, 6). Christ has imparted a new meaning to all God's assurances in the Old Testament, and given existence and force to all the consolations of the New, since they all are God's, and God is Christ. Listen to the tongue of experience as it becomes the tongue of sympathy (Ps. ciii. 13; 2 Cor. iv. 17; Heb. ii. 10, 14). 2. Temptations. Some say that since Christ could not have yielded, therefore He had no true experience of conflict with evil. But can you say, that because the steadfast Christian is so full of Christ that he cannot allow himself to sin, therefore he has no true experience of -conflict? In point of fact, the victor knows the cost of withstanding temptation far more than he who is vanquished by it (Heb. iv. 15, ii. 18). Christ has fought His way to victory all along our path, and the way of holiness is crimson with His blood. Read the answers given by Christ (Matt. iv.), and remember that He learnt to speak them in a conflict severer far than yours, 3. The derision of the world. Many times was He reviled and scorned; while in John's Gospel we read of six most determined attempts on the part of His foes to do their worst. Realise all the sympathy which Christ conveys when He tells us that we suffer these things "for His name's sake." 4. The treachery of friends. Christ's experience of the desertion of His disciples, and the betrayal of Judas. Let all deceived hearts dwell restfully upon the assurance (Heb. xiii. 5). 5. The impenitence of sinners. The praying father or mother, weary of the son's or daughter's impenitence. Christ wept over Jerusalem, and then went down into the city to die for her. His heart still melts with tenderness. 6. Bereavement (John xi.) In weeping with them, He has wept with us. In raising Himself, He has shown all mourners that He will raise again the dead (John xi. 25, 26). A word in season for you. 7. Divine sovereignty. How many perplexed brains and weary hearts there are by reason of the mystery of God's dealings! It seems strange that God's Son should be called upon to experience this perplexity and weari ness, till we hear Him cry, "If it be possible," &c., and, "O my God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" But His experience only makes God's word the more assuring, that the Providence that upholds the sparrow, counts our hairs, and attends our every step, will order all things well (Rom. viii. 28). The value of the text is not so much that Christ suffered this or that, as that He suffered so deeply (Heb. v. 7, 8, ii. 18). The thoroughness of Christ's experience (Isa. 1. 5). No sun ever rose upon His daily path, but it revealed some fresh experience of human toil, conflict, trial, or sorrow. So it is with us. But every sun that rises on our daily path, lights it with a fadeless ray, revealing, parallel with our life, the experience of Him who has tabernacled in our flesh, and who speaks to our hearts in the fulfilment of a ministry of sympathy, in which He has no rival. CONCLUSION.-Those who go in the way which they light up for themselves can only have sorrow and darkness (ver. 11). But those whose way is lit up by His love, who obey and follow, trust and love Him, as sheep their shepherd, shall have no darkness, but their sorrow shall flee away and God Himself shall comfort and refresh them. -David Arundell Hay. GOD'S REBUKE OF UNBELIEF, AND CHALLENGE TO FAITH. 1. 2. Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem ? or have I no power to deliver? It was not because God was unable to deliver them, that His ancient people had been led away as captives, but solely on account of their sins (ver. 1, &c.) But He wished them to realise the fact that notwithstanding their sins, in virtue of His possession of unlimited power He could easily fulfil His promises of deliverance. We, too, need to realise more distinctly this fundamental truth-God's almighty and unchangeable power. Know it we do, but we often do not realise it. We often act as though we really believed that the Lord's power had diminished. Our text rebukes our unbelief, and challenges our faith. It may be used I. TO STIMULATE THE CHURCH IN THE PROSECUTION OF HER MISSION. Her mission is to save-instrumentally to save the world. But her success is small when compared with the multiplied agencies employed, &c. Is the Lord's hand shortened at all? No. His purpose and His power are unchanged. Early triumphs of Christianity-Pentecost, &c. His hand has |