infinite space. O that you may not neglect the privilege, that you may cultivate the habit, of ejaculatory prayer! and that you may, meditate on the example of Nehemiah. If I would incite you to habits of private devotion, I might show you Daniel in his chamber, kneeling upon his knees three times a day." If I would commend to you the public gatherings of the church, I might remind you of what David has said, "A day in thy courts is better than a thousand." If I would inculcate the duty of family prayer, I might turn attention to Philemon, and "the church in his house." But, wishing to make you carry, as it were, the altar about with you-the fire ever burning, the censer ever ready,-wishing that you may resolve nothing, at tempt nothing, face nothing, without prayer to God for his ever-mighty grace, I give you for a pattern Nehemiah-who, asked by Artaxerxes for what he made request, tells you, "So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said unto the king, Send me unto Judah, the city of the sepulchres of my fathers." There is nothing that we need add in the way of concluding exhortation. The latter part, at least, of our subject has been so eminently practical, that we should fear to weaken the impression by repetition. Only, if there be any thing sacred and touching in the sepulchres of our fathers; if the spot, where those dear to us sleep, seem haunted by their memory, so that it were like forgetting or insulting them to suffer it to be defiled, let us remem ber that the best monument we can rear to the righteous is our copy of their excellence-not the record of their virtues graven on the marble or on the brass, but their example repeated in our actions and habits. If with Nehemiah we would show respect to the dead, with Nehemiah let us strive to be useful to the living. Then, when sepulchres shall crumble, not through human neglect, but because the Almighty bids them give back their prey, we may hope to meet our fathers in the triumph and the gloriousness of immortality. Our countenances shall not be sad, though "the place of their sepulchres lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire," even with the last tremendous conflagration; we shall exult in knowing that they and we "have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." SERMON XIV. JA BEZ.* "And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren, and his mother called his name Jabez, say. ing, Because I bare him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested."-1 Chron. 4:9, 10. If we had to fix on a portion of Scripture which might be removed from our This Sermon was preached on New Year's day, and a collection was afterwards made in aid of a District Visiting Society. Bibles without being much missed, we should probably select the first nine cles. A mere record of names, a catachapters of this first Book of Chronilogue of genealogies; the eye glances. rapidly over them, and we are inclined to hasten on to parts which may present something more interesting and instructive. Yet what a startling, what an impressive thing, should be a record of names, a catalogue of genealogies! the chapters deserve the closest attention, even if you keep out of sight their bearing on the descent and parentage of the Christ. It is a New Year's day sermon, this long list of fathers and their children. What are all these names which fill page after page? The names of beings who were once as warm with life as ourselves; who moved upon the earth as we move now; who had their joys, their sorrows, their hopes, their fears, their projects; who thought, perhaps, as little of death as many of us, but who were sooner or later cut down, even as all now present shall be. They are the names of those who once lived; nay, they are names of those who still live; and this is perhaps even the harder to realize of the two. The dead are not dead; they have but changed their place of sojourn. The mighty catalogue, which it wearies us to look at, is not a mere register of those who have been, of trees of the forest which, having flourished their appointed time, have withered or been cut down; it is a register of existing, intelligent, sentient creatures; not one who has been inscribed on the scroll which, headed by Adam, looks like a leaf from the volume of eternity, has ever passed into nothingness: written amongst the living, he was written amongst the immortal; earth might receive his dust, but his spirit, which is more nearly himself, has never known even a suspension of being: thousands of years ago the man was; at this moment the man is; thousands of years to come the man shall be. We repeat it-there is something very hard to realize in this fact, that all who have ever lived are still alive.* We talk of an over-peopled country, even of an over-peopled globe where and what, then, is the territory into which generation after generation has been swept, the home of the un * This fact is excellently treated in a striking sermon by Mr. Newinan, on " the Individuality of the Soul." told myriads, the rich, the poor, the mighty, the mean, the old, the young, the righteous, the wicked, who, having once been reckoned amongst men, must everlastingly remain inscribed in the chronicles of the race; inscribed in them, not as beings which have been, but as beings which are? We have all heard of the dissolute man, said to have been converted through hearing the fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis, in which mention is made of the long lives of Adam, Seth, Enos, Methuselah, and others, and each notice is concluded with the words, "and he died." It came appallingly home to the dissolute man, that the most protracted life must end at last in death; he could not get rid of the fact that life had to terminate, and he found no peace till he had provided that it might terminate well. But suppose that each notice had been concluded, as it might have been, with the words, and he lives," would there not have been as much, would there not have been more to startle and seize upon the dissolute man? "He died," does not necessarily involve a state of retribution; "he lives," crowds the future with images of judgment and recompense. hear men often say, in regard of something which has happened, something which they have lost, something which they have done, or something which they have suffered, "Oh, it will be all the same a hundred years hence!" All the same a hundred years hence! far enough from that. They speak as if they should certainly be dead a hundred years hence, and as if, therefore, it would then necessarily have become unimportant what turn or course events may have taken. Whereas, they will be as truly alive a hundred years hence as they are now; and it will not be the same a hundred years hence whether this thing happened or that, this action were performed or that. For there is nothing so trivial but that it may affect man's future being: in the moral world, as in the physical, "no motion impressed by natural causes, or by human agency, is ever obliterated ;"* of what, You * Babbage, the ninth Bridgewater Treatise."What a strange chaos is this wide atmosphere we breathe! Every atom, impressed with good and with ill, retains at once the motions which then, dare we affirm, that, let it be as it may, it will be all the same a hundred, or a thousand, or a million years hence? We recur, then, to what gave rise to these remarks; the long lists of names which occupy the first nine chapters of this First Book of Chronicles. We affirm of these lists, that, without any comment, they furnish a most appropriate sermon for New Year's day. Names of the dead, and yet names of the living, how should their mere enumeration suggest the thought of our days upon earth being as a shadow, and yet of those days being days of probation for an everlasting existence! And what thought is so fitted to New Year's day, when, as we commence one of the great divisions of time, the very season might seem to speak of the rapid flight of life, and of the consequent duty of attempting forthwith preparation for the future? To read these chapters of the Chronicles, is like entering a vast cemetery where sleep the dead of many generations. But a cemetery is the place for a New Year's day meditation, seeing that we have just consigned the old year to the grave, with its joys, its sorrows, its plans, its events, its mercies, its sins. And are they dead, the multitudes whose names are inscribed on the gloomy walls and crowded stones of the cemetery, Gomer, and Javan, and Tubal, and Nahor? Nay, not so: their dust indeed is beneath our feet, but philosophers and sages have imparted to it, inixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all that is worthless and base. The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said, or ever whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever re corded, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating, in the united movements of each particle, the testimony of man's changeful will. "If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the earliest murderer the indelible and visible mark of his guilt, he has also established laws by which every succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes its severed particles may migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through every combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated."Chapter ix. "On the Permanent Impression of our Words and Actions on the Globe we inhabit." even that dust shall live again; and all the while their spirits, conscious still, sentient still, occupy some unknown region, miserable or happy beyond what they ever were upon earth, though reserved for yet more of wretchedness or gladness at an approaching resurrection and general judgment. Neither is the past year dead: not a moment of it but lives and breathes, not one of its buried occurrences that has not a present existence, exercising some measure of influence over our actual condition, and reserved to exercise a yet stronger, when it shall come forth as a witness at the last dread assize, bearing testimony which must help to determine whether we are to be for ever with the Lord, or banished for ever from the light of his presence. Thus these registered names might themselves serve as an appropriate sermon. God is witness that it is in perfect sincerity, and with every sentiment of christian affection, that, adopting the customary language, I wish you all a happy new year. But I must give a voice to the old year. It must speak to you from its sepulchre. No burying of the past as though it were never to revive. No reading of names in the Chronicles as though they were names of those who have altogether ceased to be. Oh, I wish you a happy new year; but happy it shall not, cannot be, in any such sense as befits beings of such origin, such capacity, such destiny as yourselves, unless you bear diligently in mind that you are mortal, yet cannot die; that things may be past, yet cannot perish; that days may be forbut never can forget. gotten, We should receive, however, a wrong impression in regard of these chapters of the First Book of Chronicles, were we to suppose them valuable only on such accounts as have already been indicated. They are not a mere record of names, though, on a cursory glance, we might conclude that they contained nothing else, and that therefore, after one or two general reflections, we might safely proceed to more instructive portions of Scripture. Interspersed with the names, there occur, here and there, brief, but pregnant, notices of persons and things, as though inserted to reward the diligent student, who, in place of taking for granted that a catalogue of names could not be worth reading, should go through it with all care, fearing to miss some word of information or admonition. Our text is a remarkable case in point. Here is a chapter which seems made up of genealogies and names. Let me skip it, might be the feeling of the reader; what good can I get from learning that Penuel was the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah?" But if he were to skip it he would miss one of the most beautiful and interesting passages in the Bible, for such, we think to show you, is a just description of our text. We know nothing whatsoever of the Jabez here commemorated beyond what we find in these two verses. But this is enough to mark him out as worthy, in no ordinary degree, of being admired and imitated. There is a depth, and a comprehensiveness, in the registered prayer of this unknown individual-unknown except from that prayer-which should suffice to make him a teacher of the righteous in every generation. And if we wanted a prayer especially suited to New Year's day, where could we find more appropriate utterances? If we would begin, as we ought to begin, the year with petitions that such portion of it as God may appoint us to spend upon earth may be spent in greater spiritual enlargement, in deeper purity of heart and of life, and in more abundant experience of the goodness of the Lord, than may have marked the past year, what more copious, more adequate, expressions could any one of us use than these, "Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil that it may not grieve me?" Happy, happy man, happy woman, happy child, who should pray this prayer in faith, and thus insure that it shall have to be said, as of Jabez, And God granted him that which he requested." But this is anticipating our subject. Let us now take the several parts of the text in succession, commenting upon each, and searching out the lessons which may be useful to ourselves. The first verse contains a short account of Jabez; the second is occupied by his prayer. Come, and let us see whether there be not something to instruct us even in the brief narrative of his life, and whether, as strangers and pilgrims upon earth," with a battle to fight, a race to run, an inheritance to possess, we can find more appropriate supplications than those in which this Jabez called on the Lord God of Israel. His Now there is no denying-for it is forced on us by every day's experience-that we are short-sighted beings, so little able to look into the future that we constantly miscalculate as to what would be for our good, anticipating evil from what is working for benefit, and reckoning upon benefit from that which may prove fraught with nothing but evil. How frequently does that which we have baptized with our tears make the countenance sunny with smiles! how frequently, again, does that which we have welcomed with smiles wring from us tears! That which has raised anxious thoughts proves often a rich source of joy; and, as often, that which hardly cost us a care, so bright was its promise, wounds to the quick, and burdens us with grief. We do not know the particular reasons which influenced the mother of Jabez to call him by that name, a name which means "Sorrowful." We are merely told, mother called his name Jabez, saying, because I bare him with sorrow." Whether it were that she brought forth this son with more than common anguish, or whether, as it may have been, the time of his birth were the time of her widowhood, so that the child came and found no father to welcome him-the mother evidently felt but little of a mother's joy, and looked on her infant with forebodings and fears. Perhaps it could hardly have been her own bodily suffering which made her fasten on the boy a dark and gloomy appellation, for, the danger past, she would rather have given a name commemorative of deliverance, remembering no more her anguish for joy that a man was born into the world." Indeed, when Rachel bare Benjamin, she called his name Benoni, that is, the son of my sorrow; but then it was as her soul was in departing, for she died." And when there pressed upon a woman in her travail १९ heavier things than her bodily painsas with the wife of Phinehas, to whom were brought sad "tidings that the ark of God was taken, and that her fatherin-law and her husband were dead" the mind could fix on the more fatal facts, and perpetuate their remembrance through the name of the child; she called-and it was with her last breath, for she too, like Rachel, diedshe called the child Ichabod," saying, The glory is departed from Israel, for the ark of God is taken." We may well, therefore, suppose that the mother of Jabez had deeper and more lasting sorrows to register in the name of her boy than those of the giving him birth. And whatsoever may have been the cause, whether domestic affliction or public calamity, we may consider the woman as having bent in bitterness over her new-born child, having only tears to give him as his welcome to the world, and feeling it impossible to associate with him even a hope of happiness. She had probably looked with different sentiments on her other children. She had clasped them to her breast with all a mother's gladness, and gazed upon them in the fond anticipation of their proving the supports and comforts of her own declining years. But with Jabez it was all gloom; the mother felt as if she could never be happy again this boy brought nothing but an accession of care, anxiety, and grief; and if she must give him a name, let it be one which may always remind himself and others of the dark heritage to which he had been born. And yet the history of the family is gathered into the brief sentence, "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." The child of sorrow outstripped all the others in those things which are "acceptable to God, and approved of men." Nothing is told us of his brethren, except that they were less honorable than himself; they too may have been excellent, and perhaps as much is implied, but Jabez took the lead, and whether or not the youngest in years, surpassed every other in piety and renown. Oh, if the mother lived to see the manhood of her sons, how strangely must the name Jabez, a name probably given in a moment of despondency and faithlessness, have fallen on her ear, as it was woven into message after message, each announcing that the child of sorrow was all that the most affectionate parent could wish, and more than the most aspiring could have hoped. She may then have regretted the gloomy and ominous name, feeling as though it reproached her for having yielded to her grief, and allowed herself to give way to dreary forebodings. It may have seemed to her as a standing memorial of her want of confidence in God, and of the falseness of human calculations; and as she embraced Jabez, whose every action endeared, as it ennobled him the more, she may have felt that the sorrow had to be transferred from the name to her own heart; she herself had to grieve, but only that, through mistrust of the Lord, she had recorded her fear where she should have exhi bited her faith. And is not this brief notice of the mother of Jabez full of warning and admonition to ourselves? How ready are we to give the name Jabez to persons or things, which, could we but look into God's purpose, or repose on his promise, we might regard as designed to minister permanently to our security and happiness. "All these things," said the patriarch Jacob, "are against me," as one trial after another fell to his lot: if he had been asked to name each event, the loss of Joseph, the binding of Simeon, the sending away of Benjamin, he would have written Jabez upon each-so dark did it seem to him, so sure to work only wo. And yet, as you all know, it was by and through these gloomy dealings that a merciful God was providing for the sustenance of the patriarch and his household, for their support and aggrandizement in a season of extraordinary pressure. As Joseph said to his brethren, "God did send me before you to preserve life"-what man would have named Jabez was God's minister for good. Thus it continually happens in regard of ourselves. We give the sorrowful title to that which is designed for the beneficent end. Judging only by present appearances, allowing our fears and feelings, rather than our faith, to take the estimate or fix the character of occurrences, we look with gloom on our friends, and with melan |