beauty, may we not then well say this Word is worthy of God. Thy Word, O Lord, is glorious on earth, and is for ever settled in heaven. Help me to use it until I get there, and when in my everlasting home I shall rejoice in its divine beauty, while eternal ages roll on.

We see

Let us be ever patient and considerate, not hasty and rash. In the days of our darkness and our weakness our Heavenly Father mercifully permitted us to be aided by views and ideas, not the best in themselves, but the best for us. Some of these are very old. Habits and customs derived from Pagan times. Some are superstitions, having no real essence of truth in them. We have derived them from the nations round about. now they are slaves, not the Lord's free-men. And both they and the affections belonging to them, the men-servants and maidservants are now injurious to us, yet we must not hastily reject them or deprive them of life. We must take them to the judge. The Lord Himself will be our judge. Let us condemn what truth condemns fully, but no more: forty stripes. Let this be done carefully, considerately, let the dying slave live a day or two; and as the appearance dies away, spiritual wisdom enters in and will be yours in his stead. He will be your silver.

SERMON XXIV.

SEETHING THE KID IN THE MOTHER'S MILK.

"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk."-Exodus xxiii. 19.

We gave on a former occasion, a somewhat full consideration to the divine regulations in the preceding chapter, which constitute the laws concerning oxen. We endeavoured to acquire from them that divine wisdom in relation to the principle in the human mind, of plodding determination to go aright in the ways and walks of heavenly duty, of which the ox is the figure in the Word of God. In this respect we had an illustration of the divine declaration, "The words of the Lord are pure words," "The law of the Lord is everywhere perfect converting the soul." We propose to carry out a similar consideration with the text before us. As to its letter, a reader who has no idea of the sublime difference between the Word of God and the word of man, might ask, what can there be worthy of consideration in such a declaration as this, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk?" what can it be to me in my upward progress towards heaven; or, indeed, of what importance can it be to anybody, to know how the kid was to be seethed; or in what way this animal was to be boiled, or prepared either for ordinary food or for sacrifice? Yet we may rest assured that here, as everywhere, the true description of the Word of the Lord, is like that which was given of the incarnate Word, "Never man spake like this man. "Never book was, written like this Book." Let us here enquire what is to be understood in the Sacred Volume by the kid, the milk of the goat, and what by the duty declared here of not seething the kid in his mother's milk. That the divine word uses this

sacred symbol for the purpose of representing spiritual principles, any one who carefully reads the Sacred Volume will readily perceive. It is so in relation to sheep and oxen.

But that it is so in relation to other animals, we shall fully admit, if we bear in mind such a declaration as that, for instance, in Ezekiel xxxvi. 17, “I, even I, saith the Lord, judge between cattle and cattle, and between the rams and the he-goats," We cannot fail to observe that inasmuch as the Lord describes Himself as one who is taking care of His flock, and is about to descend upon earth and rescue His flock, that when He says, "I will judge between the rams and the he-goats," He is informing us that He will judge between those who are represented by those animals, and not concerning the beasts themselves. We have again in Matthew xxv., in the Lord's description of Himself sitting as on the throne in judgment, and all nations being before Him, the sheep on His right hand and the goats at His left, a similar description, but with this additional advantage, that He describes who the sheep are and who the goats, when He says, the sheep are those who have performed works of charity and kindness: "When I was hungry, ye fed me, thirsty, ye gave me drink, sick, and in prison, ye visited me," and in explaining how this could be with those who had never seen Him, He says, "Because ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me." Thus, the Saviour teaches precisely who they are that are represented by the sheep, and how it is that each person who possesses a little flock of gentle, kindly dispositions, has within him those very principles that will constitute him a minor shepherd with a spiritual flock. Such a one will be crowned and blessed by the Chief Shepherd when he meets him as the Divine Judge.

On the other hand, the goats are described as those, who, although they were right as far as their views, their doctrines, their principles of faith went, were still wanting in those principles of love and charity, which are always greeted with the divine blessing." It is precisely so you will find with other animals; they are descriptive also of other principles of the soul. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God."

There are in the divine sight, human beings whose varied affections are represented by all the animals which exist. There are some, who staid and plodding, are attentive to the various duties of daily christian life, but who aspire and yearn but little after the higher things of heaven. They are God's fat

cattle they like to browse in the pastures, but do not ascend in their perception of heavenly things. There are others who are like the gazelles of the Most High, that delight in going up to the hills of heaven. These have grand scenery. They love grand views. They rejoice in the sunlight of God's higher wisdom.

The goats are representative of such as are between these two. Goats enjoy rocky hill-sides. They delight in skipping from rock to rock on the mountain, but do not often go to the top. They represent those who delight sometimes in principles of duty. Sometimes on the contrary, they represent those who know the truth, but do not act up to it. In the latter case they represent the goats that are condemned; in the former, they represent the goats that may be used in sacrifices.

In the Paschal Supper, and on various occasions in the Israelitish ritual, you will find that the goat was used as an offering to the Lord, as well as the lamb. The goat represents faith the kid, the innocence of a new faith.

The goat, then, is a symbol in the Sacred Word, both from its hard, hairy coat, from its horns, and, especially, from its aptitude to play about the hill-sides, and leap from rock to rock, of the mind of one who endeavours to become familiar with and delight in the things of faith. The spiritual rocks are the grand principles of truth, each one is like a rock upon which the soul can build. The Lord himself being the grand quarry from which all the rocks of truth are hewn "Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn," the Lord says on one occasion, "to the hole of the rock where ye have been digged." "He is the Head Stone of the "The Rock of Israel." And, those, therefore, who delight in thinking about His divine nature, His divine works, His divine teachings, concerning Himself and heaven and eternal life, are precisely like the goats that dance, as it were, from one rock to another, and rejoice in spiritual freedom and strength.

corner."

When the kid is spoken of, it is representative of the same thing as the goat but in a more interior, pure and exalted state. The goat is the mother. The kid-a new birth from the mother, is representative of faith, as it is when we first feel religion to be vital with us. When we livingly know that we have an immortal soul, an immortal future, and an eternal home— that life is a sublime career to prepare us on earth for happiness in heaven :—when these things come home to us, and we have a strong, fixed, and living conviction that this new living faith is a divine thing, we possess one of the Lord's kids of the goats.

And this is no mean excellence. It is a divine virtue. If we join it to other virtues, we shall find it is blessed and rewarded by the Most High.

But religion ought to be with us a living and progressive thing. There is, unhappily, a great tendency in the human mind to rest after having made exertion—a tendency too much to repose upon past efforts. When we have once realized divine things, and have become Christians, and have felt a heavenly faith within our souls, there is a great tendency to suppose that all has been done that needs to be done; that now we have stepped over from the line of the enemies of God, and are on the right side, we may, therefore, rest upon our oars and be quiet. But, "Woe unto them," says the Prophet, "that are at ease in Zion, that have been settled upon their lees from their youth, and have not been emptied out from vessel to vessel." Such souls, like metals that are not used, become rusty. They fall back upon past things, and forget that this world is not a continuing city, is only a place in which we are to work out our salvation constantly from stage to stage. Our goats should be fruitful goats-they should have kids- -or in other words, in relation to our states of faith, as well as in relation to our states of heart and life, we should perpetually be going on to things newer, better, diviner, more exalted, "Ye must be born again," is true of the whole mind. If this is not the case we sink into a state of backwardness, after a while we do not even keep our footing, but descend lower and lower until all becomes flat, stale, unprofitable, and dead within us.

Our first condition as to faith is one necessarily of a very imperfect character; our first goat-our first state of intellectual advancement, our first creed, is necessarily mixed up with a variety of misunderstandings and mistakes which we ought to leave after a while behind. The Apostle says, "When I was a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things." Now, it is just so with everyone as to his state of faith. At first the secret thought of all is, that the Lord is much such a being as themselves-only all powerful; that he looks at men with the vengeance of a severe judge or executioner; and that he will punish if they will not repent; and from fear of this punishment, in a state of fear only, with but little pure love of what is good, with but little even of an interior sight of what is true, but with fear of punishment, and hope of reward, we are stirred at first out of sin.