up the grateful music of exulting thankfulness, like the psaltery and the tabret, the pipe and the harp, while the penitent feels he is another man. "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all them that be bowed down. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; and let all flesh bless His holy name for ever and ever" (Ps. cxlv. 14, 21). Saul having been chosen from the tribe of Benjamin, represented that man must become religious by truths which reach him through the intellect. He must be intelligently good, not stupidly good. One other incident in the installation of Saul we must not overlook. When the lot had indicated that he was to be king, he was not to be found. This hiding of himself was a sign of humility, the essence of every virtue. There is no religion without humility. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Saul felt at the time that he was least of all. So will every principle of true religion in a man feel when he is truly converted, and enabled to reign by the power of truth, in the little kingdom of his own soul. It was revealed that Saul had hid himself among the stuff. This circumstance readily reminds us, that our Lord Himself was born in a manger, and the truth represented is very much of the same character in both cases. The manger where horses are fed, is an emblem of the memory, in which truth is stored up, and which supplies the understanding with its food. The memory, as a storehouse, is the magazine where the stuff is laid up for future use, and among that stuff is the grand principle stored up from childhood, though yet hidden from view, that we were born for heaven, and should live for heaven. When this principle is brought out, animated with new life and placed to govern the soul, thenceforth it is indeed seen to be a noble thing. The edifice of the soul is crowned. This is worthier than aught of time, or talent, or science, or philosophy. "There is none like him among all the people." With religion everything is gain; without it, all is loss. If we have not chosen this principle for our guide, external though it may be at first, we are yet grovelling in the shades of night. We need a faith which, like Moses, or like Saul, shall be a leader for us, and then a king will reign in righteousness within us, and princes rule in judgment. "He shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" (Isa. xxxii. 2). SERMON VII. SAUL'S VICTORY OVER THE AMMONITES. "Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabesh-Gilead; and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee. "And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel."-1 SAM. xi. 1, 2. ONE of the general signs of the superiority of the present age over the barbarous periods of the past, is its horror at such cruelties as that proposed by the Ammonite in our text. Yet they were common in the gloomy days gone by, before our Lord's coming into the world. And when, after His coming, the overwhelming crowds of rude barbarians were baptized by command of their conquerors, and received into the Church with all their coarse passions, their dark and cruel minds unchanged, similar revolting crimes were commonly committed in the middle ages by so-called Christians. The proceedings of those ages of rude uproar were rather the conversion of the names, forms, and doctrines of the Church to the purposes of selfishness, greed, and wickedness, than (as was fondly dreamed) the conversion of savage nations to the faith of the Lord Jesus. The celebrated Emperor Constantine himself (whose conversion was the subject of endless exultation by the then leaders of the Church), even after he had presided at the famous Council of Nice, not only put his son to death in a wild fit of anger, but caused his wife to be burnt alive. The Christianity of the middle ages was chiefly heathenism in a Christian dress, and was quite as cruel as heathenism had previously been. What have been called religious wars, the crimes of the Inquisition, the pains and penalties inflicted for the sake of opinions, and the burning of so-called heretics in the name of the divinely merciful Prince of Peace, all arose from brutality being conjoined with superstition. "The dark places D of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty" (Psa. lxxiv. 20). Hence the effort of us all should be to diffuse by every means in our power the light that leads to a good life, the wisdom that comes from above, and which is so beautifully described by the Apostle James as "first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy" (James iii. 17). Again may we congratulate ourselves on the advance of the new age of love towards the Lord, and love to our neighbour, so far in the way of good, that anything so revolting as the horrid proposal of Nahash the king of the Ammonites in our text would be now impossible in civilized and Christian communities. But whether something mental, quite as cruel and quite as detrimental to human progress, is not even now too prevalent, let us proceed very patiently to inquire. The eyes correspond to the understanding in the mind. The bodily eyes are formed to perceive objects in earthly light; the eyes of the intellect are formed to see mental objects in heavenly light. Such is the constitution of things, and it is everywhere recognised in Scripture. Hence the apostle says, "The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Eph. i. 18). Light corresponds to truth; not so much to truth in statement as to interior truth, which shines in the mind, and enables it spiritually to see. This light shines from the Lord Jesus, the Heavenly Sun; and to receive it, and to comprehend all things important to our wellbeing, and to enrich us with mental beauty, He has given, and He sustains in us, THE EYES OF THE MIND. eyes, He teaches us to pray-" Open Thou mine that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law" (Psa. cxix. 18). Again we read: "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation" (Luke ii. 30). "I am the Light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John viii. 12). These, and other frequently recurring passages of Holy Writ, demonstrate the recognition in the Word of God of the correspondence of natural light and natural eyes with spiritual light and spiritual eyes. From common conversation, also, it is perfectly clear that the analogy between the body and the mind, in this respect, is universally perceived and understood. When a person is ignorant upon a certain subject, he is described as being in the dark; when true thoughts upon it are entering his mind, he is said to be getting a little light, and when he fully understands it, he is said to see clearly. This ordinary form of speech, familiar to every one, indicates that some portion of the analogy between the outward world of matter and the inner world of mind is generally seen, and taken for granted. But this consideration may well be pondered over; for if inner truth is like light, and the understanding eyes to the mind, how immensely important both must be to our real wellbeing, will be suggested by a few reflections on the value of light, and the inestimable blessings we realize from the use of our eyes. It is to LIGHT we owe all the fertility, as well as all the beauty, of the glorious universe of which we form a part. Without light no forest-trees would ever have waved their majestic heads or risen upwards to the sun; no fertile fields would have abounded with grateful harvests; not a flower, not a leaf, not a blade of grass would have grown. The earth without light would have been bare, hard, arid, bleak, and dead. No sun would have poured over the world his morning splendour or his evening glory. The myriad stars and starry systems, with all their varying shades and multiform magnificence, the silvery moon with her mild beauties, would, without light, all alike have been to us hidden and unperceived. Without light there is no colour. All the hues of nature, all the varied loveliness of flowers, all the varying aspects of the sky, nay, the very changes of the human face expressive of the shades of joy and grief, of human thought and feeling, are revealed to us by light. "Prime cheerer, Light! Of all ethereal beings first and last ! Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe ! In unessential gloom! and thou, O Sun! Soul of surrounding worlds, in whom, best seen, But grand beyond description as light is for the outer world, still grander is TRUTH, which is the light of eternity, of heaven, of angels, of sages, the light of the mind, the "true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world." It is the manifestation of Divine Love, the splendour of God. From truths flowing out of love, come all the blessings of life, all true joys, all progress, all victory, all purity, all glory, in time and in eternity. Truth is the Word of God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, adorned with many crowns. If the thought May I express thee unblamed? Since God is Light, Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate." Oh yes! light for the outer world, and light for the mental and spiritual worlds are divine gifts, for which all praise must ever fall far short so great are their excellences that our warmest thanksgivings must needs be inadequate, poor and weak! Yet, worthy as they are, they would have been as nothing to us, if we had not been furnished with eyes! Grandeur and loveliness would have been above and around us as at present; but without eyes we could not have perceived a single ray. Hence we perceive how accordant with the Divine Wisdom it is to have given us eyes so curiously and wonderfully formed, and so guarded that it is difficult to hurt them. Mark how they are placed in the front of the head, best for observation, best also for protection. They are placed in bony fortresses, projecting beyond them on every side. There are the eyelids ever nervously alive to cover and protect. There is then the thick outer coat of the eye, very difficult to injure. Within, there is the IRIS, ever opening and contracting, so that an injurious amount of light even may not destroy the delicate tissues which constitute the inner chambers of the eye. there are the three humours, the aqueous, the crystalline, and the vitreous, which attemper and refract the light, so that by the lens, and these delicate substances, in proper order, perfect vision is secured. Then And what an amazing marvel is that! The world around, countless objects with their shades and varied proportions, stars at incalculable distances, minute forms and diverse hues, all pass their images through a small aperture of about the eighth of an inch, and are reproduced on the exquisite membrane at the back of the eye, the retina, that finest of all network, and there inform the soul of the world around. By the same wondrous organ, the soul flashes out its intelligence, and utters in burning |