4943-4948, 4955-4966).

2. Let us

73.

The history of nations is pre-eminently the history of God's providential government of the world. The special charge laid at the door of Israel in our text is that of hypocrisy: a malady from which many a modern templeworshipper is suffering. Indeed there is the tendency of it to be found lurking in the nature of us all. Consider

I. The false professions with which the Israelites are charged. 1. An apparent diligence in the search after truth and justice. 2. They appeared to be regular and punctual in their observance of the ordinances of religion. Often secondary motives prompt to a religious profession and to attendance at the house of God. It is considered fashionable and respectable to keep the Sabbath and to be present at the sanctuary at least once on the Lord's Day. Besides, it is pleasing to our friends, &c. If these are your only motives to a religious profession, they are unworthy, and will not stand the lightning glance of Him who is the searcher of all hearts. This will help us to account for the apparent lapses and so-called backslidings of professing Christians. Learn the vital difference between a spurious and a genuine piety. 3. Look also at the spirit in which their sacrifices were made. 4. Evidently some of them were possessed of a strong desire to maintain the

standard of orthodoxy (ver. 4; 1 Cor. i.). To-day the olden spirit of strife and sectarian jealousy still stalks through Christendom, and there is the same smiting at any rate with the mental fist that we find in the dark days of old. How is it with ourselves? What is the great object of all our self-sacrifice and labour? Is it merely to bolster up our own little sect or Church, &c. 5. The spirit of mock humility in which the Israelites indulged (ver. 5). Custom of the East; the humiliation was feigned (Job. viii. 12). Such are some of the false professions with which the Israelites are here charged.

II. The vehement rebuke with which, because of their false professions, they are visited (ver. 1; Ezek. xxxiii. 3). It is possible for God's people even to harbour in their midst the accursed thing which God hateth. And although we are sometimes slow to detect and confess the lurking evil, which like a worm is gnawing the root of our piety, and sapping the very fount of our spiritual life; yet God detects it, and it must be put away if we would still be accepted of Him. CONCLUSION. If your character answers at all to that of Israel, suffer the word of honest rebuke. Of all hateful things in God's sight, hypocrisy is the chief.-J. W. Atkinson: The Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 882.

Faithful dealing always objected to: called fault-finding, indulging in personalities, &c. The old cry is still heard, "Prophesy unto us smooth things." O for the prayer (Ps. cxxxix. 23).

1. ISRAEL'S SINFULNESS. A whole catalogue of sins (ch. lvi. 10-12; lvii. 5; lix.). In the face of these ap

palling sins and fiendish cruelties and wrongs, they profess themselves saints (ver. 2). The sham and hypocrisy of all this is emphasised by the word "yet," which strikes a contrast between their religiousness and their sins, and declares their religiousness a sham (ver. 5; lvii. 12).

What a striking parallel between the

state of Israel then and of England

now.

1. We pose as a righteous nation! Yet look at our national sins. (1.) Social wrongs, greed of place and wealth, so that the state to which the needy has been reduced has been declared to be one in which "we sit on a volcano." (2.) Social impurity, with its abounding immorality and fiendish crime. (3.) Murder as a trade. It may be slow, but sure; and, as in Israel's case, it is the slaying of children! (4.) Intemperance. It is computed that we have 800,000 drunkards, and that for every £1 we spend on Christian missions, we spend £130 in drink! (5.) Idolatry. Everything being sacrificed to worldliness, fashion, custom, public opinion, &c. No nation sins with more determined step, or with more brazen face!

2. Not only is our national religiousness deceptive, but there is also very much that is sham in the Churches of our land. Formalism, cant, rant, self-delusion. Many seem to be righteous, and think they delight in religious duties, &c. What wilful blinking of the truth! What religiousness without religion! No wonder that to many religion is a synonym for sham-keenly noticed by the worldly, and a grievous hindrance to those who would join God's people, &c.

II. ISRAEL REPROVED.-Israel's sins must be reproved plainly, earnestly, faithfully, fearlessly, and publicly. So with us to-day.

1. Sin must be reproved plainly. Show transgressions and sins-point them out, show how they abound, &c. Some say "No," you only make it worse; you emphasise sins, quicken the imaginations, and fire the heart with it. So in the Church. Some harm, but much good. Must reprove

2.

with Bible-plainness-call by right names; with Bible-clearness — speak of awful consequences. Examples: Elijah, John the Baptist, Christ, Luther, John Knox, Wesley, &c. Faithfully. Spare not. Some object that we hurt the feelings, offend, frighten, &c. But we must not spare high or low, &c.; we must probe deep, wound, fill with anguish, &c. 3. Earnestly. "Cry aloud." Let men feel that every Christian feels it his commission to reprove sin, &c. Fearlessly. Regard no consequences. Be not timid, hesitating, daunted, for such reprovers never give conviction. 5. Publicly. Like a trumpet of proclamation, loud and authoritative, that the sound of the reproof may be deep and stirring; go far and wide, and create and sustain public opinion in reference to these sins. There is much apparent boldness around us, but alas! how much shirking of the solemn duty. 6. In the true prophetic spirit. Under the burden of souls as David (Ps. cxix. 53, 136); Jeremiah; Christ weeping over Jerusalem; Paul, &c. In the spirit of wisdom and power (Micah iii. 8). We must catch the mantle of Elijah! We must possess the tongue of the Baptist! In the spirit of saving grace (Isa. lxi. 3). Not only all preachers of the Word, but Sunday-school teachers, tract distributors, fathers and mothers -all must " cry aloud," &c.

The gracious conclusion God makes to this matter (ch. lviii. 6–12; lxix. 1, 55). Spoken to the same people, and by the same God. Spoken to us as well. The painfulness of the probing of Divine truth is only to prepare for the removal of sin, and the pouring in of healing balm. "Let us search our ways," &c. Return to the Lord," &c. (Lam. iii. 40).-D. A. Hay.

a cumber." Such notions are from beneath; they smell of the pit; for if there is anything about which the Scripture speaks expressly, it is the sin and uselessness of mere formalism.

The Jews were especially liable to this evil. They so rested in the outward observances of the law as to lose its spirit. They were indifferent to the practical forms of godliness, without which religion is but a name and a form. In this chapter we read that they sought God, &c.; and all the time. there were grievous sins which they were living in the daily practice of, and of which they were content to be ignorant. As a consequence, they were without the special manifestation of the Divine favour, and were ever ready to upbraid God for unfaithfulness. But God requires "truth in the inward parts." The passage suggests—

I. THE RATIONALE OF FORMALISM.
A form of religion includes-

1. Theoretical religious knowledge. Attach high importance to a welldigested system of truth, but remember you may subscribe to every article of the Christian faith with a sincere and hearty ascent, and yet be destitute of spiritual religion, &c. A creed how ever scriptural is not vital religion.

2. The practice of moral duties. These are not to be disparaged, but morality is not the love of God.

3. Frequent attendance on religious ordinances. Very devout and regular, earnest in self-sacrifices, fastings, and self-mortifications (vers. 1-7). It is the very essence of formalism to set the outward institution above the inward truths, to be punctilious in going the round of ceremonial observances while neglectful of those spiritual sacrifices with which God is well pleasedto substitute means in the room of ends (a). It is much easier to observe the forms of religion, than it is to bring the heart under its all-controlling influence (ch. i. 10-15; Ezek. xxxiii. 30-33; Matt. xv. 8).

4. Membership in the Church. In the Church, but not "in Christ." The day is coming when union with the Church will not be worth the paper on which it is written, if there is no real spiritual union with Christ.

5. Party zeal and external philan thropy. The piety of Israel at this time seems to have been anything but

it would seem that they were divided into religious parties or factions, some professing to be more orthodox than others. There was a rivalry, therefore, in their devotion; one tried to excel the other, and the competition ran so high that they began to "smite each other with the fist." Formalism is ever full of denominational zeal. Much is said, and done, and given for man in this age of philanthropy, in the spirit of partisanship.

But

6. Sanctimonious solemnity (ver. 5). If men are in deep sorrow it is natural for them to droop their heads. In the east men wore sackcloth, as we do crape, to indicate their grief. with the formalist all this is pretence -theatrical sadness and gloom. True religion is joy inspiring, and ever manifests itself in cheerfulness and sunshine. But the mere formalist cannot be happy, hence he robes himself in garbs of sadness, and produces the impression that religion is characteristically grave, &c. Such sanctimoniousness has done untold damage.

What is the character of your religion? Is it formal or spiritual, conventional or Christly form or heart?

II. THE DEFICIENCIES MALISM.

OF FOR

2. It fails to yield the solid happiness found in spiritual religion. It is impossible in the nature of things. True religion is an inward principle (1 Sam. xvi. 7; Rom. ii. 28; 1 Cor. vii. 19; Gal. v. 6; vi. 15). A painted fire cannot warm, a painted banquet cannot satisfy hunger, and a formal religion cannot bring peace to the soul.

3. It is directly opposed to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel.

4. It is injurious to its possessor and to others (ver. 1). It warps the judg ment, it deadens the conscience, it

hardens the heart, it awakens false hopes, and it will put to shame at the last day. Its influence upon others is most pernicious and destructive. It misrepresents religion, &c. Let every minister cry aloud, spare not, lift up his voice like a "trumpet" against this common foe, this bane of Christendom.

5. It is an insult to Almighty God. If this formalism were so odious to God under the law-a religion full of ceremonies, certainly it will be much more odious under the Gospel-a religion of much more simplicity, and requiring so much the greater sincerity (Ezek. xxxiii. 21; Matt. xv. 8, and others). He peers into the heart, He sees the sham, and abhors the sacrifice, where the heart is not found.-A. Tucker.

(a) The tendency to turn Christianity into a religion of ceremonial is running with an unusually powerful current to-day. We are all more interested in art, and think that we know more about it than our fathers did. The eye and the ear are more educated than they used to be, and a society as "æsthetic" and "musical," as much English society is becoming, will like an ornate ritual. So, apart altogether from doctrinal grounds, much in the condition of to-day works towards ritual and religion. Nonconformist services are less plain; some go from their ranks because they dislike the "bald" worship in the chapel, and prefer the more elaborate forms of the Angli. can Church, which in its turn is for the same reason left by others who find their tastes gratified by the complete thing, as it is to be

enjoyed full-blown in the Roman Catholic communion. We freely admit that the Puritan reaction was possibly too severe, and that a little more colour and form might with advantage have been retained. But enlisting the senses as the allies of the spirit in worship is risky work. They are very apt to fight for their own hand when they once begin, and the history of all symbolic and ceremonial worship shows that the experiment is much more likely to end in sensualising religion than in spiritualising sense. The theory that such aids make a ladder by which the soul may ascend to God is perilously apt to be confuted by experience, which finds that the soul never gets above the steps of the ladder. The gratification of taste, and the excitation of aesthetic sensibility, which is the result of such aids to worship, is not worship, however it may be mistaken as such. All ceremonial is in danger of becoming opaque instead of becoming transparent, as it was meant to be, and of detaining mind and eye instead of letting them pass on and up to God. Stained glass is lovely, and white windows are "barn-like," and "starved," and "bare;" but perhaps, if the object is to get light and to see the sun, these solemn purples and glowing yellows are rather in the way. I, for my part, believe that of the two extremes a Quakers' meeting is nearer the ideal of Christian worship than High Mass; and so far as my feeble voice can reach, I would urge as eminently a lesson for the day Paul's great principle, that a Christianity making much of forms and ceremonies is a distinct retrogression and a distinct descent. You are men in Christ; do not go back to the picture-book A B C of symbol and ceremony, which was fit for babes. You have been brought into the inner sanctuary of worship in spirit; do not decline to the beggarly elements of outward forms.-Dr. Maclaren, in "Expositor."

ance of His creatures. It implies that blessings which He has lavishly scattered around us are given rather as tests of our faith and self-denial; that they are here, not for us to rejoice in the works of His hands, but by renouncing them to show our love and loyalty to Him. How is such a view at all reconcilable with the love of the Divine Father? Is it thus that we should deal with our children! Is it credible that any parent, of true and loving heart, would take a studious son into a library of books, every one of which were calling to him to come and enrich himself on its trea