sweetens his whole thought and life. Thus God, the eternal Jehovah, in all His wondrous fulness, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, works in and for him. Why, then, should we carry our faults to the grave, and only put off our selfishness and hardness with our flesh? Why do we retain our deformities and weaknesses through all our circling years? Why are the signs of power so few and those so unintelligible? When Paul met with some professing Christians without marks of the heavenly indwelling, he exclaimed, "Why, how is this! What are you? Christians, and not even heard of the Holy Ghost?" A Christian without power, without abundant life is no less a contradiction than a scholar without learning, or a soldier without discipline and courage.

Robert Murray McCheyne resolved that he would seek every morning to see the face of God before he saw the face of man. That is what we have to do. That is all we have to do. We cannot lack force if our days are filled with the vision of God. We shall not be dull and tame and mechanical if we dwell in the presence

of the Invisible, and let the powers of the world to come play freely on our hearts and minds. Constant communication with the Blessed Source will fill us with a beating, throbbing life, full of power for men and God. We are conduitpipes let them be clear and connected with the exhaustless reservoir, and living waters will surely flow through.

Much of our preaching, I sometimes fear, leaves the people inside the leaves of scripture busy with its letter, or what is worse than that, inside themselves looking to their changing feelings. It does not lift them to heaven as in a chariot of fire, and give them the beatific vision of God. We are lecturers, not prophets; expositors only and not also messengers of the Highest, speaking by the breath of God.

The Bible is not itself a fountain of life. Nay it may, like a dusty old manuscript, get into the pipe which connects us with the fountain and stop the flow. Readers may put it in the place of religion instead of using it to quicken spiritual life; and those very leaves that once throbbed and glowed with the Holy Ghost, may choke up the trumpet along which God Himself would speak to us. He is the living preacher who makes his hearers feel that no being is so real as God, no help so real, no love so warm, and no holiness so spotless as His and he is the wise reader of the Book of God, who reads every word as a direct message from the Father to His needy child.

It is the same with prayer. Its value is in the measure in which it brings us to, or itself is, actual fellowship with God. Prayer is not a question of words, but of hearts; not of lips, but of the soul; not of external gifts, but of communion of spirit. It is not thanks merely, not confession, not supplication, but first of all and mainly the realizing of God, getting near to Him, and looking into His face as into the face of a friend. Such prayer is relief from trouble, food for courage, guidance in difficulty, victory over enemies, abundant life.

In much poverty of spirit, with a keen sense of our utter need, stripped of pride and self, let us seek His face and fulness, and never rest satisfied with Scripture or Sanctuary, Sermon or Song, Work or Worship, that does not lead us to Him. God's greatest and best servants have all had a marked feeling of helplessness. "We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves." "We

know not what to do; our eyes are up unto thee" has been their language. Emptied of covetousness, unreality, self-confidence, and vain glory, let us cast ourselves on God's pity, and of His fulness shall we receive, and grace for grace.

JOHN CLIFFORD.

THIS, surely, is a very singular passage; and the more we study it the more singular it grows. It is charged with contradictions, or apparent contradictions. It is full of the paradoxes which exact attention and stimulate thought. It is not true, for instance; and yet it is quite true. It is utterly alien to the spirit of the Hebrew Revelation; and yet it is in entire harmony with that spirit. It makes forms of no religious value whatever; and yet it also makes them of the very greatest value. Here, surely, are paradoxesparadoxes which compel thought and will repay it. Let us consider them as briefly as we may.

I. Our first paradox is: that these words are not true, and yet that they are quite true. Well, now, are they true? God, by His prophet, distinctly affirms that, when He brought the Hebrews out of Egypt, He said nothing to them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But if you turn to the Sacred History, you will hear God Himself saying a good deal about sacrifices and offerings. It was God who put this demand into the mouth of the Hebrew captives: "Let us go that we may sacrifice unto the Lord our God." The whole contention between Moses and Pharaoh turned on this very point; Moses demanding permission for his brethren to go three days journey into the wilderness for the express purpose of offering sacrifices to God, and Pharaoh refusing the permission or conceding only to revoke it. Nay, on the very day on which the Hebrew fathers came up out of Egypt, God commanded them to slay a lamb, to eat part of it, and

to burn the rest with fire; and this offering was afterwards formulated into the Paschal Feast, the greatest sacrificial festival of the Hebrew year. Of course it is quite open to us to argue, if we care to argue it, that this slaying and eating and burning of a lamb, though it looks like a sacrifice and became a sacrifice, was not at first a sacrifice in the technical sense, since it was not offered by a priest in a temple. But God is not a pedant that He should palter with words in a double sense, and evade their plain meaning by an appeal to technicalities. Were we thus to "respect His person," and to vindicate His ways by betaking ourselves to the shifts and evasions of the Schools-that would be to insult, not to honour, Him. Let any plain man read the history of the Exodus, taking words in their obvious sense, and he will feel quite sure that God did speak to the fathers and command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, in the day that He brought them out of the land of Egypt. And men must not lie for God.

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But God says that He did not speak to them about sacrifices and burnt offerings! If we must not lie for God, will He lie to us? Nay, let God be true, though every man were a liar. And God is true. shall know Him to be true if we only consider what He means when He says that He did not speak to the Hebrew fathers of the sacrifices of which we know that He did speak to them. What He means is simply this: That the elaborate ritual of the Jewish tabernacle, its orderly and interminable series of sacrifices and offerings was not

established then, and that they got on perfectly well without it.

Remember what the Jews were to whom Jeremiah prophecied. They were immoral formalists, whose worship was an organized hypocrisy. They scrupulously observed rites and ceremonies; and went from the Temple to oppress the stranger, to rob the widow and the orphan. Nay, they turned the House of God into a robbers' den, and shed innocent blood even within the sacred precints (see verses 6, 9, 11). Yet because they entered the gates of worship, because they stood before the altar, because they offered sacrifices and tithed even the herbs of their gardens, because, in short, they scrupulously observed certain ritua listic forms, they accounted themthemselves the special favourites of Heaven. They substituted ritualism for morality. They did not, they would not, understand that ritualism, save as a part of morality, was an offence to God. The elaborate ceremonies of the Temple were their pride; apart from these there was no salvation.

How were such men to be reached? It was of no use to argue with them on the general principles of the Divine Government, for they held themselves to be an exception to the general rule. It was of no use to draw warning and rebuke from the history of other races; they were a peculiar people. The one thing that could be done for them was to bring them argument and rebuke from the history of their fathers, from the history of the very men from whom they had received the rites in which they put their trust. And this God did for them by His prophet. In effect Jeremiah said to them: "You hold that your ceremonialism atones your immorality; that only by observing authentic forms of worship can men win the favour of Heaven. And yet the special boast of your history is the mighty wonders by which your

fathers were redeemed from the bondage of Egypt. Then, if ever, God came out of His place to bestow the most signal favours on man. Yet these men, the most favoured of your favoured race, had no temple, no tabernacle: they were not allowed to worship Jehovah, or why should they ask leave to go a three days journey into the wilderness that they might worship Him? They were destitute of the very forms on the observance of which you conceive the Divine favour to depend. Yet God favoured them as He has never favoured you. By the most stupendous miracles He delivered them from their captivity, led them dryshod through the paths of the sea, gave them bread from heaven, slaked their thirst with water from a rock. Without a sanctuary, without a priesthood, without a ritual, they enjoyed the extraordinary favour of Heaven. How, then, can the Divine favour depend on what they had not, on ceremonies, on priestly ministrations, on liturgical forms? They, your own fathers, had none of these until they reached the Mount that burned with fire yet before they reached the Mount the most signal and splendid proofs of the Divine complacency were lavished upon them! All that time God spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them concerning the burnt offerings and sacrifices in which exclusively you now trust. All He said to them was, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk in all the ways I have commanded you, and it shall be well with you."

These words then, although, if taken literally and by themselves, they are not true, are nevertheless strictly true both in their substance and in their spirit.

II. Our second paradox is: that these words are alien to the spirit of the Hebrew Revelation, and yet are in complete harmony with that spirit.

We do not expect great breadth or liberality of thought in a Jew, even in an inspired Jew. There was much in the Hebrew Revelation to foster the exclusive temper which marked this singular race throughout its history. They were taught to regard themselves as a chosen race, a peculiar people. They were set apart from, by being set above, all other nations. Descendants of God's friend, God talked with them, as He had talked with him, face to face. And because they were ignorant and immature, God spake to them in pictorial symbols, in scenic representations, in expressive ceremonies. He dwelt among them as a king among his subjects, the miraculous Shekinah being the visible sign of His presence. He must have His palace (the tabernacle), His train of ministers (the priests), His table with its constant bountiful supply (the altar and its sacrifices), and a daily service in His honour. All the energies and resources of the Jews gathered to this sacred centre: the outward and visible service of an outward and visible Presence grew to be the sum and substance of their religion. To do the will of their Lord and King in the home, in the market, in distant villages and towns-what was that as compared with standing in His very presence, contributing to the splendour of His retinue, observing the etiquette of His court, taking part in the honours of His service?

Nor can we deny that the Hebrew Scriptures lay great stress both on the national exclusive privileges of the chosen race, and on the necessity of a strict and minute attention to the forms by which their King was served. Look at the elaborate details of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; at the importance attached to the building of the Tabernacle and the Temple in the Historical Books; at the ecstasies of the Psalmists as they walk about

Zion or spend a day in its courts; at the rebukes of the Prophets so so often as the Temple is suffered to fall into disrepair, or the magnificent ritual is shorn of its glory. The whole Hebrew Bible seems to be occupied with the House of God and the service of its courts. And at first it comes upon us as a profound surprise, that a prophet should speak in tones of contempt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices,

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that he should rate them as of little worth when compared with the morality of obedience to a spiritual law. This," we say, "is not the spirit of the Hebrew Bible: from whom, or what, could any Hebrew have learned such catholicity of thought?"

But when we look at the Hebrew Bible more carefully, we find that that which seemed altogether alien to its spirit perfectly accords with

it. Everywhere, beneath the surface, we come on traces of a deeper, broader, purpose than any the Jews cared to find in it. Under all that is national and exclusive in it, we discover an universal law; under all that is ceremonial, the purest spirituality. It is not only that whole books, such as Job and Ecclesiastes, have a place in the Hebrew Canon, although they deal with questions which touch the general human heart, and are free from any savour of ritualism. It is not only that through the superficial Hebrew strata there perpetually crop up passages which, like my text, speak to us of the foundations of the world, rather than of the character of a country or a province. Besides all this, there is throughout the Hebrew Bible a constant recognition of the God of the Jews as the God of the whole earth h; there is a constant affirmation that, if "salvation is of the Jews," it is for all men. Everywhere we find, or may find, it either stated or implied that in the seed of Abraham there is a blessing for all the families of man; that they are

chosen, not for their own sakes simply, but that in them God may set forth a pattern of His long-suffering patience, and of the grace which is to all and upon all. The supreme end of His various dealings with the stiffnecked Jewish race is kept stedfastly before us; and the end is, that all flesh may see the salvation of God and rejoice together. As we study the Old Testament and acquaint ourselves with its real meaning, it grows like a river on whose surface slight currents, raised by passing gusts, sweep to and fro, and sometimes even seem to mount toward its source, but whose main tide nevertheless flows on toward the wide sea which washes all shores. Through all the play of a superficial nationalism and exclusiveness and ceremonialism, we see the broad mighty current of the Divine Love, which bears all men and all nations in its bosom, sweeping on to its rest and though for a time the stream reflects the shadows of temple, and priest, and sacrifice, we feel that, should these pass away, its volume will not be lessened, that the life-giving waters will but flow more purely when they are no longer vexed by shadows and polluted with blood.

My text, therefore, though it seem at variance with the very spirit of the Hebrew Revelation, is in perfect accord with it.

III. Our third paradox is: that these words make religious forms of no value whatever, and yet they make them of the very greatest value.

Jeremiah introduces Jehovah as speaking of burnt offerings and sacrifices with a certain large contempt. Men did very well without them once, and may do very well without them again. The Divine favour does not depend on them; they are not indispensable to salvation. Now this would be very surprising doctrine to a Jew; and I think we should feel some sympathy with him were he to turn upon the

Prophet with the reply: "Well, really, this is too bad. Here have you and your like been teaching us for a thousand years to put the House of God and its ordinances first. Our national life, through all its habits, has been shaped in deference to your message. The Temple and its services have absorbed a whole tribe, much of our wealth, our flocks and herds, our very thoughts and affections. And now you coolly inform us that we might as well have kept all that we have expended on them, that God does not care a jot for all the sacrifices we have made !"

It would be natural, I say, for a Jew to turn upon the Prophet thus, to put this construction upon his words, and to resent them. But did Jeremiah mean what such a Jew would take him to mean? Are his words fairly open to such a construction as this? Surely not. He does not say that forms are of no worth; but that forms are of no worth as compared with obedience. His thesis is, that forms without obedience will not save a man, while obedience without forms will save a man. What he means is that "to obey is better than to sacrifice, and to hearken to the divine law better than to offer the fat of rams." Ritualism is not religion, but only one of the many forms which religion assumes. Temple, and priest, and sacrifice may pass away, but obedience remains; and obedience to the Divine commands is the very substance and life of religion.

This is Jeremiah's doctrine. And, of course, it is a very comfortable doctrine to those of you, my brethren, who have not as yet observed the Christian ordinances to do them. Pray take the full comfort of it—if you can. When you say, as some of you do "After all the great thing is to do God's will in our daily life; outward forms are of no value as compared with obedience:" when

say: