may understand or a logician carry out, but an announcement of a living truth, upon the authority, not of the messenger that brings it, but of that God who inspired the message. In seasons of deep despondency and grief, in that dark hour when an unexpected shadow has fallen upon your threshold and death has visited your home-when the heart is stricken with grief, and sorrowful, and will not be comforted-an argument is irritation, discussion is no comfort; but a "Thus saith the Lord" is like a leaf from the tree of life; and you can hear music and feel balm in the blessed words, “Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Thus the simplicity of the Gospel, the fact that its truths are not discussions, not arguments, not intricate logic, but simple truths announced on the authority of the God that inspired them, gives it as an instrument of comfort, an edge, an acceptance, and a success that renders the Gospel, as a ministry to the poor, the most beneficent, and the most powerful, and, as history attests, the most successful.

You have thus seen what the Gospel is, and the rich may gather a lesson from it; and you have seen, in the second place, how fitted it is, as asserted by our Lord, to convey to the poor that inner light, that true joy, that cordial peace, which enables them to count their light afflictions, which are but for a moment, not worthy to be compared with the earnest that they have within, or the expectation that they can indulge without. Now we see, from the whole of this, first, riches are not, after all, so great a blessing as people are sometimes disposed to think. Every

page of the Bible warns us that, instead of coveting riches, we should be deeply solemnized when God in his providence is pleased to give them. I do not say that poverty has no trials-it has many-but I do say, that if poverty has many trials, riches have many perils. What does the Scripture say of them. that trust in uncertain riches? What an awful state: "How hardly shall they that are rich enter into the kingdom of God!" And if I speak to any of those that are rich in this world, if instead of looking at your wealth, your coffers, your bank-books, in the light of the world that now is, you could just let fall upon all the sheen of that world into which the aged must soon enter, and the youngest may soon enter, you would see into what little bulk the largest wealth would be crowded, and how little ground there is for trusting in uncertain riches. And when you know in these times, when shock follows the vibration of shock, and men's hearts are literally failing for fear, and there is distress and perplexity of nations, and even the wisest statesmen are at their wits' end and know not what to do next; and all seems rocked, agitated, convulsed; oh, how important that whilst you are rich you should not trust in it! how fervent should be your prayer that the element of power that you have should be consecrated by grace, and that your wealth, instead of being a dead weight that obstructs your ascension to glory, should, in the beautiful language of the parable, go before you into heaven, and welcome you through the lips of them that have been blessed by your liberality into everlasting habitations! But let me add that poverty has also its dangers, and its

perils, and its trials. How often the poor are disposed to envy the rich! how often are they disposed to repine, to complain! And if one had the choice of one's estate-we thank God that we have not— but if one had the choice of one's social position, it would be that old, obsolete maxim, as the wise men on the Exchange would call it, but that inspired truth, as all eternity will attest it, "O Lord, give me not riches, lest I be proud and forget thee. Give me not poverty, lest I steal." It has its perils, too: "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with food convenient for me." Where have you any such maxim, except in that blessed Book which is the source of all that cheers us upon earth, and the treasury of all that will refresh us in everlasting glory?

Let them that preach, more and more realize what it is that can do a poor man good, and give the humble and the lowly Christian comfort. It is not a system of morals for moral direction that will seize the hearts and sustain the hopes of mankind; nor is it eloquent and refined disquisitions upon virtue that will lighten the heavy load that lies like an avalanche upon the hearts of the poor and the needy; nor is it discussions about ecclesiastical pretensions and pedigrees, husks for swine, not living bread for God's children. The poor need consolation; weary, wasted, and worn out with the toils of the week, poorly housed and meagrely fed, yearning for something that will not indeed remove their physical depression, but give them what will cheer their hearts to bear it, to triumph in it and over it. We must preach to them that Gospel which makes happy.

505

THE FORMER CHURCH.

ISAIAH LXII.

WHEN we turn to our authorized translation of the Bible we find this and similar chapters spoken of as delineations of the future glory of the church of Christ. So far this is perfectly correct; but it is impossible to escape the conviction, as we peruse the chapter, that it is the delineation of the future glory of one of the great divisions of the church of Christ. There are two great portions of that church: there is the ancient church, divorced for a season, cast out, and forsaken; there is the modern or the Gentile church, graffed in, because the other was cast out through unbelief. This church is at this moment in possession of the privileges, the hopes, the joys, the promises of the Gospel. Literally I believe in the fulfilment of the words, "The gospel of the kingdom shall be taken from you Jews," said the Saviour, addressing them previous to the fall of Jerusalem," and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." The Jew has lost the church, and is desolate; England is possessed of the church, privileged and blessed. This chapter is a promise, or, if you like, a prophecy, relating not to us Gentiles, except by indirect application; but delineating what shall be the destiny, the splendour, and the glory of that ancient people, now scattered,

U

and peeled, and oppressed, when they shall be restored to their own land; and the Gentiles shall feel their restoration, in the language of Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, as if it were life from the dead. Hence this chapter ought to be taken in its strict and its literal significance. It is not

fair to make the word of God a piece of wax, to be shaped after the fantasies and the fancies of men. Wherever the literal translation involves no absurdity, and is in harmony with the rest of the Bible, the literal interpretation should be adopted. If you interpret this chapter of the church universal, it is very difficult to explain it consistently. For instance, if Jerusalem means the church universal, and if its righteousness going forth like brightness be the glory of that church, what is meant by the words in the second verse, “The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness?" The Gentiles are a part of the church universal; but speaking of the Gentiles as the second section, seeing "thy righteousness," as that of the first section, implies that a nation or a people distinct from the Gentiles is here referred to, and that the names Zion and Jerusalem are to be accepted in their strict and literal significance. Take it in this light, and we hear the prophet, or rather the Christian people saying, "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth;" language exquisitely beautiful, depicting the future prosperity of Palestine and its people; and the Gentile, instead of being vexed at the brilliant prospect, rejoicing that in any way he has aided its accomplish