very heavy it can be beaten out until it is lighter than air. It is so ductile that it is said a comparatively small portion could be drawn out as wire to compass the whole world. It will enter into and cover, embellish, and improve objects of all shapes and sinuosities. All patterns can be gilded, and brightened, and however old, or however often used, the gold retains its intrinsic value. Gold never corrupts or grows old.

All this can be truly said of genuine Christian love. It is the most solid and the most sacred substance the human soul can have, but how wonderfully it can be stretched out. Its sympathies flow forth in all directions. There is no sorrow to which it will not bend, there is no grandeur which it I will not adorn. Love will clothe the house of prayer with devotion, and it will wipe away the orphan's tear. Colour and distance of country make no difference to love; it will gild and glorify them all. It will penetrate the prison and the forest, to liberate the captive and to elevate the savage. Love will circumnavigate the globe to carry out its mission of raising the down-trodden, and replacing the manacles of misery by the golden links of mutual affection. Love is the grand miracleworker. It turns a barren waste into stores of blessing. It transforms the wilderness into an Eden, and the desert into a garden of God. Love never dies. Like the soul, in its inmost being it is blest with perpetual youth. Talents become feeble, and knowledge grows dim, but love, the true vestal and perpetual fire, burns on with undiminished flame even among the mists of this lower world, until it is transplanted to the warm mountains of the better land, where it will glow and bless for ever.

Gold is superior to the action of acids. Inferior metals are fretted and agitated by the bitter action of acrid fluids, but gold remains uninjured. Let the acid be keen and biting as it may, true pure gold remains with its substance unhurt, and its lustre undimmed. It is exactly the same with true heavenly gold. The acids of bitter temper, the provocations of satire, and the jeers of malice, make disturbance enough in the affairs of the world, but where genuine Christian love exist they assail in vain. Love never faileth. "Love suffereth long and is kind. Love is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil: rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth: beareth up all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things; endureth all things."

One of the amazing things in the world is the enormous production there is of mental acid. Every little thing that is

unusual will excite some people. Charity suffereth long, but they will suffer nothing. A word, a look, will be enough for a sulk, or enough for an open quarrel. They don't believe they ought to bear anything; and if the whole world does not give way to their humour, the gall of bitterness comes from them in streams of malicious words. Many of these are professing Christians, pretended servants of Him who is the Divine Lamb. Instead of forgiving their brother seventy times seven, their spite and venom are often more withering and enduring than will be found among many who make no profession of following Him who said, "Love one another, as I have loved you."

These often excuse themselves, and lay the fault upon their temper, as if temper were something distinct from themselves. Self-love is always bad tempered to those who thwart it. If our religion does not soften and sweeten our tempers, we may be assured that it has very little heavenly gold in it. If we are ready to say sharp words at every little excitement, if we retaliate bitter word for bitter word, scorn for scorn, fretfulness, impatience, and vexation for every little inconvenience, mishap and disadvantage, we may depend upon it, there is much alloy mixed up with our gold, or what we take to be gold is only some baser metal. If true heavenly love be in us, we shall have heavenly patience. The more heavenly love we have, the more gentleness we shall have, the more self-conquest, and the more true gold.

It is said all the drinking vessels of king Solomon were of pure gold. The streams of intelligence and wisdom are represented in Scripture by things which can be drunk. For these,

66

the soul can be thirsty. Hence we read, Ho, every one that thirsteth come ye to the waters. Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price" (Isa. lv. 1). There is wine from our Father's kingdom, the sincere milk of the Word, and living water, to which every one is invited to come.

These can feed, cheer, purify, and satisfy us at every stage of our spiritual pilgrimage. But, when we have arrived at the celestial state, we shall always get our supply with golden drinking vessels, or in other words we shall seek by every draught of wisdom we take to become more loving, more innocent, more pure, and more kind. We shall desire the truth from love, as well as speak the truth from love. From love we shall read, from love we shall study, from love we shall learn, from love we shall meditate, from love we shall act, or from love refrain from acting. This glorious principle will be the ground

of all our activities, and of all our peace. On the two commandments of love, our Lord said, all the law and the prophets hang, and from the spirit of love to the Lord, and to our neighbour, all the efforts and the acts of the Christian who has become more than conqueror through Him that loved Him will be derived. All the drinking cups, and all the vessels of the house of the king, the house of the forest of Lebanon will be of pure gold.

The phrase house of the forest of Lebanon was given to the house of the king, because of the abundance of cedar-wood used in its construction. That grand tree the cedar of Lebanon is the symbol in nature and in the Word of God of the rational faculty, especially in its expansive and protective power. The rational faculty, with its great lines of thoughtful reasoning, is like the cedar with its branches, which are so many arms and hands covering and defending all who shelter under it from danger. The cedar-wood represents the results of reasoning, or reasons, when the reasoning has ceased. The cedar-wood was present under the gold, but was not seen. The cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers, all was cedar: there was no stone seen. The knops were eggshaped fruit, opening and disclosing somewhat its interior, the flowers were unfolding their graces to the observer.

When the regenerated Christian acts from the high and pure principle which animates him, it includes the truest reason, but without reasoning. He does what is right from love. His communication is yea, yea, or nay, nay. The law is written on his heart. He feels rather than reasons, but if the most perfect reasoning be applied to it, it will confirm all that has been done.

These carved ornaments would indicate that in every rational conception of the regenerate mind there is a tendency to goodness and truth. There is no barren reason—all flows forth into genuine piety and genuine righteous works. There are open

ing flowers. Sweet conceptions of heavenly things delight and edify the mind. All things tend heavenward. In the whole frame of thought there is the divine stamp upon it. It fructifies and it adorns. There are knops and opening flowers.

The gold of the New Jerusalem is said to be transparent gold. "The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." On earth, certainly, we have no transparent gold. But, in the spiritual world, into which John's spirit was enabled to see, there are many forms of substances unknown in this outer material sphere of things, and we doubt not

among these will be transparent gold. It would seem to imply that the objects were full of love, and at the same time clearly wise-golden and transparent. The lesson is very nearly the same as that taught by all Solomon's drinking cups, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon being of gold.

Oh, what a grand state of man is that, when all he receives, as well as all he does, is from the golden spirit of love. Now, alas! too many spend their whole lives in empty nothings--in grovelling in the dust. It is said there is a nation of dirt-eaters in central America, who eat voraciously, but are gaunt, unsatisfied, and ever-hungry, because they are aiming to extract nourishment from that which is not bread. A sad picture it is, but a true illustration of the aims of those who are seeking angelic nourishment from sordid pleasure and earthly gain.

O, let us live for the golden age again! Let us seek from our Saviour the gold He invites us to receive-the love from Him, to Him and to all that are His. Let us seek His purity, though we may be tried in the fire of many a temptation and many a trouble. He will preside over the process by which we are rendered loving and good; and when the fires shall have done their work, we shall enjoy truly Christian love, and a calm and blessed peace. All our drinking vessels will be of gold all the vessels of the king's house of pure gold.

Silver, it is said, was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon. Silver represents the spirit of the Holy Word, as distinguished from the letter, which is represented in Scripture by iron. The spiritual sense of the Word glitters before the eyes of the understanding more than the letter, as silver shines with a richer radiance than iron. Silver is of great value in purifying gold, but after that work is done, would be little accounted of where gold was vastly abundant. So, likewise, when a soul has gone through its spiritual states in which the intelligence of inward truth, spiritual silver, leads it, and has entered into the celestial state in which love is all in all, then it will be truly said, silver is nothing accounted of. All our vessels, all our faculties will be formed of purified gold. The spirit of love, of holy celestial charity, has transfused itself from the Lord into our entire being. The Lord has been to such celestial Christians as a refiner and purifier of silver first, and He has purified them as the sons of Levi (Mal. iii. 3), He has then purged them as gold, that they may render to Him offerings of righteousness, and live in His golden city for ever and ever.

SERMON XXXIII.

SOLOMON'S WIVES AND CONCUBINES.

"But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites: of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto them in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart."-1 KINGS Xi. 1-3.

AFTER the glorious things which made Solomon's reign for a considerable time so illustrious, it is sad to record its strange decline and miserable termination. It was a magnificent morning and noon, followed by a dark evening and a stormy night. The subject of polygamy, or the marriage of several wives by one man, has been excused by some and approved by others, because it was not distinctly condemned and forbidden to the Israelites. It was practised by Abraham, Jacob, Saul, David, and here declared to have existed to an enormous extent with Solomon.

Had the Jewish Church been a real church, and its distinguished men examples for us, the difficulty of revering them as being patterns for us, and yet repudiating this very important part of their conduct, would have been great indeed. But such is not the case. They were none of them examples for Christians. They were not a church, but only a type of a church which was to exist in the world's dark midnight, until its darkest hour had come, and a new morning could be introduced by the Lord Jesus, the Divine Sun, who would arise with healing in His wings.

Polygamy was a permission to men whose nature had become so depraved that it was needful, in order to keep them in any association with religion, that their habits in this respect should be, as the Apostle terms it, winked at. "And the times of this

ignorance God winked at, but now He commandeth men everywhere to repent" (Acts xvii. 30). True marriage is the holiest institution among men, and can only exist between two who, in

R