and just life, but of the principles of our lives being true. "Serve Him in TRUTH." A want of truth is not so fatal to our spiritual wellbeing as a want of good; because with good, if we persevere, the Lord will sooner or later bring us to the truth. Granting this, however, it must yet be acknowledged that the want of truth entails immense detriment, multiplied fears and sorrows. Life without truth is life in a fog. Life without truth is taking the wrong way home. It is attempting to work out the problems of human conduct with erroneous rules. The soul without truth is a ship without a compass or a guiding star. The world without truth is a wild sea without a lighthouse. Multitudes walk in superstitious fears and glooms for years, for want of the divine truth which assures us our Heavenly Father is the Father of lights, the Father of love, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.

For want of truth, the religion of many is not the loving service of cheerfully doing right in all the relations of life; but pilgrimages, superstitious observances, and protracted and often repeated joyless prayers. They think to be heard for their much speaking; and when they uselessly afflict themselves, they imagine they are doing what is highly pleasing in the sight of God. This life often sours man and severs him from the Lord, whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light. On the contrary, the life of religion is a service in the cheerful performance of duty. It is doing everything in the truest and best manner. It is, from love to our neighbour, to do right to him in all the relations of life. It is a life of justice and judgment in all our works, like the Divine life of the Lord Himself. We must serve the Lord in truth; and for that object we must learn and understand the truth, rejoice in finding the truth, distinguish the truth from error in all things with which we have to do; certain that truth is one of our best friends, both for time and eternity. "Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie :

A fault which needs it most grows two thereby."

The joy of exercising our faculties to acquire the truth is an exalted felicity. It is called in Scripture "seeking for goodly pearls," "coming to the light," "the truth setting us free." Let us then joyfully yield the Lord a willing service; but let us never forget that the Lord's will and our wellbeing incessantly require the bright service of an intelligent performance of real useful duties, performed in accordance with TRUTH.

Lastly, the prophet Samuel urges that we should serve the Lord with all the heart. The heart means the will. The

voluntary faculty, or will, is to the soul what the heart is to the body, THE CENTRE OF ENERGY AND ACTIVE life. THE MAN IS WHAT HIS HEART IS. The heart is a little house of four chambers, brim-full of vigour; and, by the blood it sends down the arteries, it is present in every portion of the body, and sustains the uses and gives a character to the activities of every part. As the blood returns from the various parts of the body, the heart sends it into the lungs to be purified; and only when it has been brightened and returned is it sent round the body again. THE WILL, in true order, has similar functions to perform for the soul. A firm will, with a virtuous ruling love, sends its sentiments out with power throughout the mind. It infuses life into everything. But it is also ever watchful to purify its aims and purposes by the understanding, THE LUNGS OF THE SOUL, rejecting from them whatever is not in accordance with the spirit— the atmosphere—of heaven. Let us do our duty, then, in the sight of the Lord with all the heart; and pray that our hearts may ever be made newer and purer, so that our heart and mind and all our powers may be consecrated to His glory, whose service is perfect freedom, perfect happiness, and a real heaven.

For, as the prophet Samuel said, "Consider what great things the Lord hath done for you." These latter words were indeed especially applicable to the Israelites. Samuel had just reminded them of their marvellous history. And when they remembered the wonders of Egypt, of the Red Sea, and of the desert, to say nothing of the astonishing deliverances from Philistia in Samuel's own time, well might the adoring exclamation arise from every heart, "What hath God wrought!" "Consider what good things the Lord hath done for you."

And in concluding our meditation of to-day on this important charge of Samuel, let us each glance at the no less wonderful mercies of the Divine Goodness in our individual cases. In the amazing gift of life and health, in the marvellous construction of our bodies, so fearfully and wonderfully made, in the formation and support of this beautiful world redolent with variety, loveliness, abundance, and blessing, alike calculated to support and embellish our being while we live here, and to prepare us for our higher being in our everlasting home, well may these words sink into our tenderest affections, and inspire us with the deepest gratitude to that Father, Saviour, and King, the Lord. Jesus Christ," who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." "Consider what great things the Lord hath done for you.' "Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men !"

SERMON IX.

SAUL SPARING AGAG.

"Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Agag the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. "And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal."

I SAM. XV. 32, 33.

THE Amalekites are represented in Scripture as a powerful, deceitful, treacherous, and cruel people. They dwelt in the habitable part of Arabia extending from the Red Sea to the Salt or Dead Sea, a district probably three hundred miles in length. They were dreaded alike for their malice and their subtlety. They appeared in battle array against the Israelites, in the early part of that people's march into the wilderness; and by a most obstinate conflict with them, while they were yet poorly armed and unaccustomed to self-dependence, sought to extinguish them altogether. Having failed in that, they hung round them on their march; and like deadly but wily savages, they slew any who from weakness or weariness fell behind the main body. They never spared where they were able to destroy (Deut. xxv. 17-19). Sometimes the Amalekites joined with other nations in invading and destroying Israel (Num. xiv. 43-45). They never seem to have missed an opportunity of infesting the Israelites, and doing them all the harm they could. They had a bitter aversion to the sons of Israel; and while with other nations there was sometimes peace and sometimes war, with Amalek there was a constant life-and-death struggle. Hence it is written, "Because his hand is against the throne of the Lord, the Lord shall have war with Amalek from generation to generation" (for such is the true rendering of the words in Ex. xvii. 16).

The name Amalek, He who licks up, or He who takes away all, is very expressive of the malignant character of this people,

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and of the utter destruction they sought to inflict upon the objects of their ferocious hatred. Agag signifies the roof, and was probably the title of all their rulers, as we find an Agag in the time of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 7), as well as at the period referred to in our text. It probably imported the crown, the head, and was used as "Pharaoh" by the Egyptians, and "Abimelech" by the Philistines, and as cæsar or "czar," "king," "emperor," and "sultan" are at the present day. The Amalekites were very powerful in the time of Balaam. He calls them "the head of the nations" (Num. xxiv. 20); although he announces at the same time that their final lot will be "that they will perish for ever."

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The long, bitter, and powerful enmity of Amalek afforded a sufficient reason for the command to Saul to go and extirpate this terrible foe. The power of Israel was now placed in one firm hand; and if it were wielded faithfully, vigorously, and prudently, this old and fearful foe would cease to harass or to destroy. Saul's want of perfect obedience in carrying out the direction of Samuel, lost his family the kingdom, and himself at last his life; for while he lay sorely wounded, the finishing stroke which dealt death to him was inflicted by a man of Amalek (2 Sam. i. 8, 13).

But it is not as a record of outward broil and battle that the conflicts narrated in the Bible have their chief interest; it is as a mirror of the conflicts in the soul. There are enemies in the kingdom within each man far more terrible than any outward foe; and it is with their destruction, and with spiritual victory, that the Word has really to do in all those narratives which outwardly relate to the military exploits of Israel. The spiritually-minded man says with the Apostle Paul, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood; but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high (that is, interior) places" (Eph. vi. 12).

The evils which are the enemies of the soul are as numerous and as varied as the enemies of Israel were. Some are more deadly, some are less so. Some are external, some are internal. Some are palpable, and disdain covering; some are subtle, and hidden under smooth pretences and pious professions. Some are the results of light-hearted heedlessness; some, of inward aversion to everything pure, holy, and true. Some evils are from ignorance, from false teaching, and from the circumstances in which a person has lived and been trained; others are from

malice, and in spite of the clearest instructions. Some people grope in the dark because they cannot yet help it; some love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. There are, as the Apostle John says, sins unto death, and there are sins not unto death. All unrighteousness is sin (1 John v. 16, 17). The differences between crime and crime in the sight of men, are chiefly estimated by the damage they cause; and in this point of view, it is quite right to regard more sternly the plunderer of thousands of pounds than the pilferer who filches sixpence. But the leading difference in the sight of God between sin and sin is the ground from which they flow. The untruthful exaggeration which is uttered to raise a laugh, though always to be avoided, is a very different thing from the falsehood which is intended to take away virtue, or character, or life; and still more from the deep malignant falseness which makes the whole life a lie, however fair or however smooth. This inner malignity which constitutes the essence of evil, which is ready to rush in whenever the soul is weary, or weak, or lagging, to betray it to despair or goad it to sin, is Amalek.

Amalek is aversion to heaven. It has no misgivings. It says, with Milton's Satan, " Evil, be thou my good." It hates truth, because truth leads to good. It will, however, sometimes cover itself with forms of piety and religion, will enter into religious functions and seek the highest places, conforming itself to sanctimoniousness for the greater part of a life; like Gobet, archbishop of Paris, who, though he had passed most of his lifetime in apparent devotion, renounced and caricatured religion at the time of the French Revolution; or like many a vile pope in the middle ages: and yet have underneath neither gratitude, love, nor reverence to the Lord; neither respect nor regard for anything tending to the virtue or the good of mankind. Such is Amalek; it takes away all: and such an Amalek lies hidden in every unregenerate heart. The work of every one is to beware of it, and have war with it, from stage to stage, until it is destroyed.

This hidden evil is so covered over by the courtesies of society and the discipline of social life, that few suspect anything so malignant to be really contained under the fair appearances of youthful and polite life. Like Hazael, when the aged prophet told him what enormities he would commit, we are ready to say, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?" (2 Kings viii. 13.) But alas, when the changes of time have taken the gloss from men, and the wear and tear