another. This world they confess to be full of beauty, and full of good, and their households are often abodes of greater comfort, courtesy, and satisfaction, than the homes of some of the bitterly good, or the sourly religious. These are the spiritual Hittites, they serve in the armies of David, and are faithful and true to the side of goodness. The Lord is with them, though obscurely. Then comes a time of deeper awakening if all goes well. Some earthly sorrow, or perhaps some book adapted to their state, brings the truth home to them in a suitable way, and they rise as to a new heaven and earth. They exclaim with Jacob, "Surely the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not. This is none other than the house of God: this is the gate of heaven.” When Abraham addressed the children of Heth, he said, “I am a stranger and sojourner with you" (Gen. xxiii. 4), which in the spiritual sense means that the Lord is with them, though they do not fully know, and fully acknowledge Him. Blessed be His Holy name, how wonderful is His mercy; how vast, how unspeakably tender His loving-kindness! A mother may forget her child; but He never forgets a soul that He has made. They may not know Him, but He is with them, and in due course will reveal Himself and say, as He said to Philip, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip. He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me" (John xiv. 9). "O blest be His name: who in sorrow's stern hour, Bless, bless His name." The children of Heth said to Abraham, "Thou art a mighty prince among us," which signifies that the well-disposed moral people represented by the children of Heth, acknowledge religion to be a great power in the world, and have a respectful feeling towards it. They will in due season receive it. In the meantime, none should hurt the Hittites. They are fighting on David's side against the Ammonites, and it is a grievous evil to leave Uriah to be killed, or in other words to be anathematized and their feelings outraged in the name of a false religion. The Ammonites, against whom the armies of Israel were warring at this time, were the offspring of deplorable impurity on the part of Lot. Ammon and Moab, the twin brothers, were born in a cave. Spiritually, they represent an adulterated religion, born in obscurity of mind. A religion of ceremonies, rituals, and worship, without any regard to purity of heart, to heavenly wisdom, or to regeneration, is Moabite. Hence the prophet said, Hence the prophet said, "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed" (Jer. xlviii. 11). Ammon was his brother, and the Ammonites represented those in the Christian Church who support and sustain a religion of mere rituals. The Ammonites are great for creeds, ceremonies, apostolic successions, dogmas, although charity, that soul of religion, is never thought of, and a whole people are sweltering in ignorance, superstition, vice, and misery. Such men want nothing to be changed. They are dumb dogs that never bark. They may, like swine disturbed in their mud, make now and then an unpleasant noise, but leave them to batten on their gains, and they soon go to sleep again. Such are the Ammonites of the present day. The armies of David, or all the spiritually-minded, fight against a hollow, meaningless, impure and unjust religion, and Uriah the Hittite is amongst them. The morally good assist in all the progressive changes, that remove from the earth superstitions that cumber the ground, and do evil, in the name of the Prince of Peace. David's crime of looking upon Bathsheba, and taking her to himself, and contriving Uriah's death while he was fighting in the field, represents the wrong done often by those who are spiritually-minded in persecuting such as are in moral good, and joining the bitterly religious in condemning them. It was evening-time when David did this, representing an obscure state of mind. There will sometimes come into the thoughts of Christians, otherwise truly earnest and good, a spirit of intolerance, a subtle lust of dominion. They become for the time readier to condemn than to help. They become filled with the persuasion that outside of a profession of religion there cannot possibly be any moral good, and they regard such as avoid Christian profession, however amiable and excellent they may appear to be, as utterly dead and worthless. They admire morality, they see she is a beautiful woman: but they desire to appropriate her for themselves. In good time, this will come to pass, for all true morality will eventually unite itself to true religion. But such a happy realization comes with time and maturity, and cannot be forced by despotism and persecution. A persecuting spirit is always wrong. A tree cannot be hurried in its growth, nor can the soul. We ought ever to have patience and wait, until Divine Providence brings His purposes to pass in an orderly manner, when all will be well. Bathsheba was to be the wife of David, for she was to be the mother of Solomon, the future king of Israel in its most glorious state; but not by the murder of Uriah. When we desire things to be done, before they can be ac-, complished in an orderly manner, we are actuated by lust, not by principle. The spirit of lust is represented by the traveller who came to the rich man mentioned in the parable. Lust is a wandering vague desire, yearning after what is lawless and wrong. It hastes to be rich, and ruins the heart that yields to it. It pants like a bear for its prey, and can never have enough. Lust must have a thing just now, and must have it right or wrong. It is sad when it is allowed to seduce the rational faculty, for thus it carries out its schemes, but it ruins the soul, and entails the most grievous misery. We should always beware of these greedy spiritual travellers, who are thieves and murderers, and seek only to make us their accomplices, that like David we may sin, and like him only be recovered by severest sorrow and repentance. We have said the rich man represents the spiritually-minded members of the Church, and surely they are divinely rich, and can always afford to be gentle and merciful. They are like the king who had exceeding many flocks and herds. They are possessors of the Word, which is a vast treasury of heavenly wealth—of gold, silver, and precious stones in never ceasing abundance. They possess the wealth of all the kind sentiments of innocence, charity, devotion, and heavenly affection that have placed them in relation with heaven itself. How strange that having these riches at their command, they should forget themselves, and instead of cultivating their own heavenly-mindedness, they should descend to straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Yet so it often is. The Lord is constantly giving us the divine advice—“ I counsel thee to buy of me gold, tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed" (Rev. iii. 18). "In every age the Lord was kind, Are Thine, blest Lord! Thou wilt bestow And yet, instead of enjoying these heavenly treasures, which the Lord imparts in such abundance, we often allow ourselves to be drawn aside by vague feelings of an unkind character, by desires to find fault and blame others, and in various ways we increase anxiety, care, and sorrow, both for ourselves and others. Instead of having a heaven upon earth, we dwell in the wilderness, and often the divine rebuke is true of us, "Thou sayest thou art rich, and hast need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art poor and miserable, and blind and naked." How true was this of David, when he was confronted by the prophet. How small, how poor, how blind, how abject he seemed when the tremendous words fell upon him, "Thou art the man." Will it be less true with us? Do we carefully guard against all the instigations of the lust of domineering over, and condemning others. Let us live up to the sacred gifts which divine mercy has given us in such abundance, and so shall we never hear in judgment the startling announcement of divine truth, "Thou art the man.” The sin of David in relation to Bathsheba had relation no doubt to his typical character in reference to the Lord Jesus; for David in the Word throughout represented the Lord; but we must remember that the transaction of David only represented states in the Lord, and the evil acts of David represent the evils suggested by the iniquities of our hereditary nature which the Lord deigned to take upon Him, for He was made in all points like unto His brethren, "yet without sin." No actual guilt of any kind took place with the Lord, although He was tempted that He might be able to succour them that are tempted. To His holy spotless inner nature the shade of temptation would be immeasurably more painful and vivid than it can ever be to us. This should add to our dread of everything that is contrary to His divine purity, and our care against every sin, that we may escape the denunciation "Thou art the man," and trust hopefully to receive instead, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." SERMON XXIII. THE DEATH OF DAVID'S CHILD. "And he said, While the child was alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious unto me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."-2 SAM. xii. 22, 23. OUR CHILDREN WHO HAVE PASSED FROM EARTH CERTAINLY GO TO HEAVEN. This great truth throws a gleam of hope and comfort over the bleeding heart, when a little darling which had been the light and the joy of home is removed. Children bring so much of heaven with them, are so endearing, so interesting, and entwine themselves so completely with our best affections and our liveliest sympathies, that it is indeed a dreary blank when the place is empty, where so much love has been. The little garments are laid tenderly aside. Every endearing recollection is cherished with loving care. There is a yearning towards the future better world, that raises the soul almost unvaryingly towards heaven, even if there has been but little of heavenly thought before. The death of a child seldom occurs without to some extent spiritualizing those with whom its short life has been passed, and inducing somewhat of the feeling expressed in the beautiful lines "Do you moan when another star Shines out from the glittering sky? Do you weep when the raging voice of war Then, why should your tears run down, And your hearts be sorely riven, For another gem in the Saviour's crown For another soul in heaven?" The sadness of having the gem of our fireside removed, is often greatly lessened by our having a clear view of what Scripture teaches respecting the nearness of the spiritual world, and M |