A Sermon for Times of General Sickness. When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.-Isa. xxvi. 9.

GOD reigns. His kingdom ruleth over all. Human history is the unfolding of His plan, and even the dark side of it illustrates His rule. Men confronting the evil that exists in the world -calamity, disaster, disease, death-attempt a solution. Some tell us we are the victims of chance, and must submit ; others, that there are two opposing powers at work, one evil, the other good, as the Persians believed in a duality, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Scriptures teach us that behind all things God sits and rules supreme.

All human language and figurative description is exhausted to represent the Divine majesty. Isaiah and the Psalms are particularly rich in this imagery. Heaven is God's throne, earth His footstool, the sky His pavilion, light His mantle, the clouds His chariot, thunder His voice, lightning the flash of His eye, etc.

All nature is represented as absolutely obedient. Winds are His messengers, flames of fire His ministers. The ten plagues of Egypt early in history illustrated His control over inanimate forces -winds, waters, hail, lightning; animate nature-fish, frogs, flies, lice, cattle; and over the subtle malignant influences that generate disease-murrain, boils and blains, death of firstborn. He declared that He would send hornets to drive out Canaanites from before Israel. In Jonah He is represented as preparing" the great fish, the gourd, the worm, and the east wind, thus covering the various departments of nature. In the Psalms He I calls for famine," as though it were a servant summoned to His presence. In Isa. liv. He declares that He has "created the waster to destroy." In Joel the destroying palmer

worm, etc., represent His "great army" in four detachments. How well the locusts may deserve this name will be seen when we remember how they come in such clouds as to darken the whole sky and cover leagues of soil.

These are God's scourges, which He uses as a judge to correct and punish human crimes and sins. It is an august fact that the influenza bacillus is the smallest microbe ever yet discovered, yet God is using it as a scourge. The smallest microscopic creature He uses to do His will.

These scourges are God's judgments on sin.

1. On the sin of dirt-physical uncleanness and habits of filth-hence they commonly originate where the worst sanitary conditions prevail. The term Asiatic cholera shows whence this scourge came, from the great unwashed millions of Asia; other scourges originate in the slums of our cities.

2. On the sin of moral dirt, how often His judgments singularly follow in track of lust and other violations of His laws.

3. On the sin of greed and selfishness, as when He punished our own land for the sin of slavery, etc.

4. On the sin of social wrong-oppres sion of the poor, withholding wages from labor, etc.

The design of these judgments is to teach the inhabitants of the world righteousness. There are two sorts of judg ments, temporal and preventive; eternal and retributive. The former are here referred to. They are in the earth, and are meant to correct and prevent evil and wrong. They should lead us, 1. To obey law, sanitary, moral, and social, to create wholesome conditions individually and socially, to remember how we are all bound up together, highest and lowest, and if one member of society suffers, all suffer.

2. To repent of sin and put it away.

3. To pray directly for removal of such judgments. There is a latent instinct of prayer awakened in times of general peril. In Minnesota the grasshopper scourge led to public fasting and prayer, and God sent a parasite which attached itself to the grasshopper, prevented its doing damage, and, better still, its reproduction, and from that time the scourge has disappeared in the Western granary.

Well for us to learn righteousness now, for when God's eternal judgment goes forth it will be too late, retribution will take the place of mere correction and prevention.

A Lesson on a Serviceable Life. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.-Prov. xi. 30.

THE great thought of this cluster of Proverbs is that any true life terminates on others (compare verses 17-26). Here all that is wise in this group of sage sayings finds its climax.

The righteous and fruitful soul is a sacramental tree of life like that in Eden. It is not only beautiful, but useful; its fruit is perennial and life-imparting. And the truly wise man is he that becomes a captor of men, a fisher for souls, making every effort to draw souls into his net.

The

The lesson is plain and emphasized by its twofold form of figure; the first reminds us that we can impart nothing that is not already in us. If we are not living we cannot be life-giving. tree must be rooted in the soil, and capable of extracting from the soil its nutriment, or it can pour no vitalizing sap into the branches and put forth no bloom or fruit, nor can the tree yield anything not after its own kind. Here we are taught,

1. That usefulness depends on regenerate and sanctified character.

2. That we can expect no results from our work higher than we ourselves represent in attainment. The other member

of this proverb emphasizes two words, "wise" and "winneth." Usefulness to souls demands wisdom, and wisdom after a godly sort. Our study of our Lord's superb character reveals more and more of His spiritual tact and Divine discretion. His conversation at the well with the woman of Sychar is perhaps the most perfect specimen of such wisdom ever put into words. There is a lesson for all workers for all time to come. And the wise man wins souls. There are attractive and there are repellent ways of approaching others. We must study to draw souls, in a good sense to entice them. Here, then, we have again a twofold lesson.

1. Service to men demands the highest wisdom, and it can be best learned by studying the Master and His methods.

2. Winsomeness is the great secret. We are to be what we desire others to be, and our manners have much to do with our power. The Latin mind employed one word, mores, for both manners and morals. Who shall deny the link between them?

Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambray, was so winning that an unbeliever fled from his presence, declaring that two hours in such company would compel him to be a Christian.

Two Great Themes from Hebrews X.

FROM the tenth verse on to the end the chapter is divided into two equal parts, one ending at verse 25, and these two are in as marked contrast as is possible, and they must be studied in the light and shadow of that awful contrast. The chapter sets before us the tabernacle, with its gradual approach by the altar of atonement, laver, golden candlestick, table of shew-bread, altar of incense, and veil to the ark and mercy-seat and shekinah glory. The former half of this passage presents the believer boldly entering into the holiest by the blood of Jesus; the latter half presents the unbeliever boldly venturing into the awful Presence without

blood of sprinkling. The believer is made glorious by the Divine glory, the unbeliever is devoured by it, as by a consuming fire.

Not only is there a general contrast suggested, but it extends to minute particulars. Christ is here presented as the completion of all things typically suggested by the tabernacle. The tenth verse tells us plainly that the offering of Christ's body once only answered all ends, both of justification and sanctification. He is in Himself all five offerings together-sin-offering, trespass-offering, food-offering, peace-offering, and whole burnt-offering. The believer comes to the altar of atonement, and there finds his sin and trespass expiated, peace with God secured, perfect completeness and consecration made possi ble. He boldly advances and comes to the laver; there the Word of God and Spirit of God unitedly in Christ sanctify him. He is now prepared as a priest of God to advance to the holy place, and there finds in Christ the hallowing of his time and substance, and the altar of intercession, giving boldness to enter into the holiest of all.

Nay the veil itself is Christ (see verse 20), and its rending in His passion opens the new and living way to the mercy

seat.

We are told in Ex. xxvi. 31 that the veil was of blue, scarlet, purple, and fine-twined linen and wrought with cherubic figures. All this must have been typical. The blue of celestial truth, the scarlet of atoning blood, the purple of royalty, the white linen of purity, and the cherubim of the Divine image inwrought even into Christ's humanity. It is by such identity with the sacrifice, intercession, and Divine humanity of Christ that the believer gets boldness to enter into the holiest with full assurance of faith.

Now if we turn to the unbeliever who dares to reject this mediation of the blood, he advances with an unholy boldness into the presence of God, not to his own transformation into the Divine likeness, but to his own destruction.

He passes by the altar of sacrifice, and tramples the blood underfoot.

He passes by the laver of regeneration by the Word and Spirit, and treats both with a contemptuous neglect and indifference.

Having no right as God's priest, he advances into the holy place; perhaps he attempts the forms of communion when as yet he has refused submission to the terms of communion; he mingles with saints in formal worship with a heart far from God, gives alms like a Pharisee for the praise of men, makes many prayers, but not through the one Intercessor. There is an increasingly bold and even blasphemous audacity in defying God's warnings and daring God's wrath, until the fire leaps from the cloud and devours him as it did those sinners against their own souls in Korah's day. We have no further space to carry out this instructive parallel, but to our minds it has clothed this chapter with a new and awful meaning.

Light-Seed.

Light is sown for the righteous.-Psalm xcvii. 11.

Is the thought suggested here that to a true saint the light that comes from God is like a seed-germ planted in the soul, which takes root downward and bears fruit upward, and so yields a harvest? Is it not true? Does not every promise of God that is received by our faith root itself in our experience and yield a crop of blessings for us and others? Does not an experimental piety multiply every ray of Divine light and every word of Divine comfort until we gather sheaves where only seed was sown?

Funeral Sermon.

Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day? -2 Kings ii. 5.

THIS is especially appropriate when a conspicuously useful man like Mr. Spur

geon is taken away from his headship of affairs; but this passage suggests marvellous consolations :

1. It is the work of the Lord, who is the Master of masters, Supreme Head over all to the Church.

2. He can prepare successors, and even endue and imbue with a double portion of the same spirit.

3. The Lord God of Elijah still liveth. The workmen die, but the work goes on, and the Supreme Head never ceases to exert His Headship.

Witnessing in connection with Christian life. Salvation-is used in Scripture in two senses: first, of a deliverance from penalty immediate, and second, of a deliverance from the power and presence of sin, and a complete fulfilment of will of God, ultimate (compare 1 Pet. i. and also 2 Pet. ii). That ye may grow thereby unto a full salvation. "Work out your own salvation," etc. (compare Rom. x. 10). There is a difference between justification and salvation. God ordains a grand succession. Faith, testimony, hearing, faith. "Testimony, hearing.' Now if you do not with your mouth confess Him you destroy the succession as far as you are concerned. By this simple law of witnessing to faith the whole world might speedily be evangelized

Grand Qualities of Character. Earnestness, apostolic zeal, prompt obedience, conscience void of offence, heroism of self-denial, separation in order to insulation and being surcharged with

Balzac's" Peau de Chagrin" is founded on the myth of the magic skin. A young man becomes possessor of a magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that, while it gratifies every wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time a wish is

gratified. He makes every effort to find the cause of its shrinking, invokes the aid of the physicist, chemist, students of natural history, all in vain. He draws a red line around it. That same day he indulges a longing for a certain object. The next morning there is a little interval between the red line and the skin close to which it was traced.

So always inevitably, as he lives on, satisfying one desire or passion after another, the shrinking process continues. A mortal disease sets in which keeps pace with the shrinking skin, and his life and its talisman come to an end together. What a fable to illustrate the moral atrophy of self-indulgence!

APRIL 3-9.-THE YOKE OF CHRIST. -Matt. xi. 29, 30.

This figure of the yoke may primarily refer to that cumbrous affair they lay

upon the necks of cattle in that Eastern country; or this figure may have reference to what the conquering Romans called a yoke. The ancient Romans

used to place two spears upright, a little distance apart; then across these upright spears they used to lay another spear. And then the representatives of the vanquished nation must pass between these upright spears and under the horizontal one. To do this they were compelled to stoop; and the passing under such a yoke was the symbol of surrender and subjection to the Roman rule.

In either case the significance of the yoke is similar and evident. The yoke means surrender and subjection.

Consider, first, a fact, that life is simply a choice of yokes. Every man must bear some yoke, either this or that. Life is simply a choice of them. Mr. Shortreed, an intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott in his earlier years, and going with him on his excursions into the wild Liddesdale part of Scotland, where the young Sir Walter was making all sorts of investigations into the minstrelsy of the Scottish border, and into the curious folk-lore of the wild people, did not know, as no one else did, how soon Walter Scott conceived the definite purpose of turning all this curious knowledge into the use of poetry and romance, as subsequently the great Scotchman did, with such result of fame to himself and of delight and instruction to others; but Mr. Shortreed, in his Scotch way, says of Walter Scott at this time, "He was makin' himsel' a' the time; but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed; at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun."

Yes, it is plain enough, Walter Scott was" makin' himsel' a' the time;" was fashioning for himself the yoke of service in literature which he wore subsequently with such shining honor.

That is what I mean when I say it is a fact in life that every man must wear some yoke, either this or that. Every man is "makin' himsel' a' the time;" no man can dodge the restraining, moulding effects of his own actions.

Very yokeless, doubtless, the prodigal thought himself when, in such free

and airy way, he demanded of his father the portion of goods falling to him, and set himself to scattering it in a fashion so spendthrift; but what a yoke of friendlessness and poverty he came under !

So it is everywhere in life. Every man must come under a yoke of some sort. Sort of yoke is determined by sort of deed.

Consider, second, an invitation. Now to men under all sorts of yokes--yokes of sin, of sorrow, and pain, as the result of sin, yokes of the sad and miserable limitations on all sides, which yokes of sin inevitably fold out of themselves, Jesus Christ calls, saying, "Take My yoke upon you; by a free volition, by a noble choice come under personal allegiance to Me." 'My yoke." Christ does not call primarily to the yoke of church or creed or sacrament. He does call primarily to the yoke of supreme allegiance to Himself.

Consider, third, a reason. We are reasonable beings, and Christ appeals to reason. "Take My yoke upon you, for My yoke is easy."

(a) It is easy because right. Christ is the sinless one. His yoke is the right yoke therefore. It is the way of transgressors that is hard. The truest ease for any man comes from glad submission to righteousness.

(b) It is easy because it is the yoke of a person. The rabbis burdened men by a vast reticulation of petty rules about journeyings and washings, and cutting nails, etc., endlessly. It was a hard yoke they laid on men's shoulders, that of an endless attention to tangling rules. Christ says, Devote yourselves to Me, a person, simply follow Me. How straight and simple and easy life at once becomes.

(c) It is easy because it is a yoke of love. "Entire affection hateth nicer hands." Love and all service is at once easy.

(d) it is easy because it conduces to one's best good. The best thing for both worlds is subjection to the pure, loving, helping Christ.