We are spiritual hirelings. For a considerable time our religion is the religion of fear, that is, the religion of a moderated selfishness. The Apostle John when describing this state and its consequences says "In fear there is torment; but perfect love casteth out fear." These first religious impressions, which are those of this mistaken external character, and but a moderated selfishness, are much blended with self-complacency, and even self-righteousness. We look with a somewhat condemnatory feeling upon the state of others. We not only wish others to become better, but we often are very strong for having them improved in our particular way, or not at all. This state is represented by the milk of the mother. It is an impure state, a state of low, narrow and tormenting religion. It is a disposition to look back. It is a great care for creed and little for christianity. THIS IS TO SEETHE THE KID IN ITS MOTHER'S

MILK.

When from meditation, love, and prayer, we have a tenderer and purer faith, it is more genial and comprehensive. We begin to find that God is not only the God of past ages, but the living God-our God. We have states of love, of innocence and faith. We are convinced indeed, that the Lord not only watched over the Israelites, and took care of them through the wilderness, providing for all their necessities, but that he has provided also for ours, and for those of all men and all ages. We are sure that

the Lord redeemed Israel, and we are not the less sure that He has redeemed us. He guided Israel, and He guides us. He spoke to Israel, and He speaks to us with a living voice in His Word, and in our souls. The pillar of cloud led His ancient servants by day, and the pillar of fire by night, and His Word and His love as surely guide us in our brightest and darkest hours. He is a living God, and our Saviour, as certainly as he was the Saviour of any beings or nations that ever lived. When our faith has acquired this living vital character, our goat has then a kid, or in other words, we have a state of inward faith, purer, higher, truer, diviner than before. The Lord intends in our text to teach us, that we should follow in this course, and not turn back. We must not have this kid seethed in its mother's milk. We must advance, not looking to old forms, creeds, or facts, but look to our own states and the Lord's goodness to us-feel that religion is a real thing, and its divine history is being re-enacted in us. We have spiritual enemies to battle with and to overcome, the Lord must be a Divine Conqueror in us. He is the Sun of the soul to-day, to

warm us with His love. To-day He defends us with His truth, and gives us power to fight against our everyday evils and to heal our present sorrows. Thus He brings us into the image and likeness of Himself. When this is the case we are not preparing our kid in its mother's milk, that is, not with old, partly true and partly false impressions, but with the living states of holy faith, which spring up fresh and warm, in humble, but loving hearts and minds.

In such case this divine lesson comes home to us with power, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk."

Allow me further to call your attention to the apparent disconnectedness of this divine declaration, and to draw your attention to one of the perfections, though a seeming imperfection of the Holy Word.

Observe how little of coherency appears between this law and those which precede and follow it. It is in immediate connection with the precepts, "Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning." "The first-fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.' It is scarcely possible, looking at the matter from the outside, to conceive anything apparently less connected than these precepts.

One might ask, what has the kid or its mother to do with bringing the first fruits of the land into the house of the Lord! and what has this to do with not suffering the fat of the sacrifice or "Feast," as it would be better rendered, "to remain until the morning," or "from the night until the morning?" Yet disconnected as these regulations appear to be, looking only at the letter, if we regard them as they are beneath the letter, we shall find they are all in the closest connection, and have the truest and most divine coherence. They form an illustration in this respect of the same truth as was exhibited in the Lord's garments. The outer garments of the Word made flesh were separate, and the soldiers divided them amongst them; but the inner robe was woven all of a piece from the top downwards, representative of this very fact, that the outer part or letter of the word is varied in its style, and the soldiers of religion, like the Roman soldiers, take the piece that suits them. They divide its outer garments, but the spiritual sense, the inner divine lesson is woven all of a piece. It glows from the first to to the last with admirable divine order throughout the Sacred Volume of Revelation. Viewing the subject in this light you

will easily see that each one of these particulars, apparently without coherency or connection, is precisely a declaration of smaller portions of the same great truth. It is what we have said before, namely, that the Lord's will is continual progression in the regenerate life. Not that our future states should be merely a renewal, as it were, of our former onessimply reclining upon what has happened to us in days gone by, but that the Lord should be our living God and Saviour every day. Hence, it is said, "Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread." Leaven being a bitter substance derived from previous fermentation, would represent the falsehood of a decayed system. "Neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning," that is, we should worship the Lord from celestial love now, and earnestly; not wait for another opportunity. Neither look behind or before, but do your duty now is the spirit of the Divine Law.

We

When we come to worship the Lord,-when, for instance, on Sabbath morning, or each day we offer up the sacrifice or our hearts and feelings, we should not do so from habit or custom, or command; not from old creeds or councils, nor because it has been the practice of the church in past ages, and so must be right, but, because we feel that we are the children of the living God, and have enjoyed His daily mercies. We live in His glorious world below; we are to live in His more glorious world above. The Lord seeks to conjoin us with Himself, that He may impart to us purity, and peace, and joy now. have a sacrifice to offer, we have the hopes and joys and desires of our soul; we have need of His strength and blessing today, and, therefore, we will offer up to him our worship and seek from Him, the living God, to have His blessing now. In the same way, when it is said, "The fat of my feast shall not be kept from the night until the morning," it is to teach us that the inward joy, the real delight, which is represented by the richness of the fat, (as we have it spoken of in Isaiah lv., when the Lord says, "Come unto me and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness") is not to be deferred. Come with holy joy now; do not draw near with the conviction of old states; do not endeavour to be, as it were, heedless and helpless during the course of the week, and then, on the Sunday, think how happy you once felt, but come now. A whole universe of bliss is around you, waiting the opening of grateful hearts and minds to pour in and bless you. Think that you are going to meet the living God. Feel that

you are drawing near to have a holy feast, and desire to realize then and there the sacred state that is described in Psalm xxiii., "Thou hast spread a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thou hast annointed my head with oil: my cup runneth over." When the heart is in that state of loving, warm affection which seeks to know the Lord now, which yearns to eat of His flesh, and drink of His blood now, that burns to be in communion with him and his angels now,—when this is the case, the fat of His sacrifice is not kept from the night until the morning; but there is a beautiful and holy fire in our hearts, and the incense of a sweet savour arises to heaven. We eat that which is good, and our souls delight themselves in fatness. It is the same thing that is taught in the next precept. Thy first fruits shall be brought into the house of the Lord." That is to say, each new state, each new generation of what is true and good, each holy thought, each dawn of a new harvest, should be regarded as from the Lord of heaven and earth, as completely as the several parts of the Bible were in days gone by. It is the Lord helping us to have "First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." In this way you perceive all these precepts have some truth to teach, some lesson to give.

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Put off old states, do not be for ever looking behind; but go forward to those things that are before. Seek to have opened up new flesh of inward purity, and get new thoughts of clear and holy faith, new experiences of states of inward joy and delight, and in this way you will be able to take up the Divine language of Psalm ciii., "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his Holy Name. He reneweth thy youth like the eagle's. His mercies are fresh every morning." Each new state is a new gift. He is not the God of the past only, but the God of the present. He blesses us, saves us, enlightens us, gives us the victory in all our daily efforts, over whatever would depress, whatever would deprave, what ever would sensualize; and enables us to become ever more and more angel-like, God-like,-never seething the kid in its mother's milk, but always getting fresh milk, of that kind of which the apostle Peter speaks, when he says, "I have fed you with the sincere milk of the Word that ye might grow thereby."

SERMON XXV.

DRIVING OUT OUR ENEMIES LITTLE BY LITTLE.

"I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land."-Exodus xxiii. 28, 29, 30.

There are fallacies of a most dangerous character that tend seriously to interfere with our preparation for heaven. The first to which we would refer is the fallacy of the worldly man; the second is the fallacy of the religious man; the third is the fallacy of the heedless man ;-of him who neglects the solemn and constant teaching of the Word of the Lord to all of us.

The first fallacy, the fallacy of the worldly man, results from his short-sighted notion that this world is his all; that he has been born here, that he lives here as the animals do, and then he dies. His short life of vexation and of joy, of triumph and of toil being over, he goes to sleep. We should find that almost every person if he was taxed with this notion in those precise terms, would say,-that is not a true description of my views of things. And yet in the perpetual run of daily life, you will find that the thoughts of pretty nearly ninety-nine men out of every hundred are very accurately measured by that description. How few there are who act from the living conviction that every day is given us on earth to prepare for a happy condition in the eternal world. The young man is too often of the earth, earthy. It is not so with children. Children are honest, ingenuous, truth-loving, and disposed to heavenly things. Speak to a child of the blessed arrangements of the kingdom of heaven, of its being made to live for ever, of the way in which it should act in order to be happy, and because the child has had a little stock of heavenly excellencies sown in it by the Lord to begin with, it sits and listens, and it loves to hear of all the blessed things that occur in heaven without any disbelief or doubt. "Their angels do always behold the face of my father

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