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OF THE WORLD.

"Whose voice then shook the earth," etc. There are two classes of things referred to here.

First: The mutable, things that can be shaken. All systems, institutions, enterprises, avocations, founded on error and wrong, are mutable, and must be shaken.

Secondly: The immutable, things that cannot be shaken. Truth, right, moral obligations, God, cannot be shaken. It is said,

III. THAT THE VOICE OF GOD, BY THUS CREATING CHANGES, TENDS TO BRING MAN INTO COMMUNION WITH THE IMMUTABLE. "We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved." The man who feels the vessel going down will struggle for the rocks. The great God will not allow any man or nation to settle itself on the temporary and the mutable. He shakes the ground beneath them, that they may seek a firmer foothold. It is said,—

IV. THAT THE GRAND DESIGN OF GOD IN ALL IS TO PROMOTE IN MAN TRUE WOR

SHIP. "Let us have grace whereby we may serve God." What is worship? Reality and reverence. There is a con nection between these two things. There is no reverence without reality, and where there is reality there is sure to be reverence; and there is no worship without these. And these should be

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Subject: THE PATH OF DUTY

THE PATH OF TRIAL.

"And didst see the affliction of your fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red Sea."NEHEMIAH ix. 9.

The reference is here to the conduct of the Children of Israel, not only perhaps when in Egypt, but as they marched through the wilderness, and stood on the shores of the Red Sea. It was their duty to leave Egypt, to move through the wilderness, and make their way towards the Promised Land. All this the Almighty required of them; but great trials and difficulties they met every day on their way. Observe

I. That the path of human duty here RUNS THROUGH GREAT We say here, not in heaven, there the path is straight, upward, pleasant,

TRIALS.

sunny.

Here-(1)

Some-raging host behind, he said,

times it involves the sacrifice "Stand still and see the sal

Lot

of endeared friendship. had to separate from Abraham, Barnabas from Paul, | Paul from Mark. (2) Sometimes it involves the sacrifice of worldly prospects. Paul said, what things were gain to him he had to count loss. He had to give up all. (3) Sometimes it involves the endangering of life itself. Fronting the Red Sea with Pharaoh and his host behind them, the Israelites felt themselves in imminent peril. Paul was in "perils oft." (4) Sometimes it involves an outrage on our tender sentiments. In the case of Abraham offering up his son Isaac.

II. That great trials, through which the path of duty here

runs, serve TO TEST THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PILGRIMS. First: It reveals the bad principles of the heart. The Jews by the Red Sea revealed their

ingratitude, their meanness,
their apostasy, their coward-
ice. Secondly: It reveals the
good principles of the heart.
Moses and the true men re-
vealed their patience, their
Trials
faith, their heroism.
test character.

III. THAT UNBOUNDED FAITH IN GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO CARRY US SAFELY through the path of duty with all its great trials. This Moses had. "He endured, as seeing Him who was invisible." With the roaring billows before him and the

vation of the Lord." Abraham, Noah, the Hebrew youths, Daniel, the reformers, all have got safely through this path.

Subject:-THE ELDER SON; OR, A TYPE OF GOOD MEN WHO ARE SOMETIMES DISSATISFIED WITH THE PROCEDURE OF GOD IN RELATION TO SINNERS.

"Now his elder son was in the field and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many gressed I at any time thy comyears do I serve thee, neither transmandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." -LUKE XV. 25-32.

FROM the whole parable we may infer three general truths.

First: That the great Father has an infinite delight in the reception of lost sinners.

Secondly: That in this delight He desires all His intelligent family to participate. Thirdly: That there are members of His family who have no sympathy with the universal joy-these are represented by the elder son. Whom does the elder son typify? Some say, angels; some say, the Jew; some say, the Christian. F. W. Robertson adopts the last idea.

In his sermon

on the "Prodigal Son," he looks upon the younger son as God's treatment of the penitent; and the elder son, as indicating God's expostulation with a saint. He seems to infer that the elder son "represents a true, though a very imperfect, saint; and his ground for this view is this, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Who then is the elder

son? "The question was once asked," says Stier, "in an assembly of ministers at Elberfeldt. Daniel Krummacher made answer: "I know him very well: I met him yesterday." "Who is he?" they asked eagerly. And he replied solemnly, "Myself!" He then explained that, on the previous day, hearing that a very ill-conditioned person had received a very gracious visitation of God's goodness, he had felt not a little envy and irritation." I think he may be regarded as representing good men who are sometimes dissatisfied with the pro

cedure of God in relation to sinners. There are those who have not only been moral, but generally religious from early childhood. They have, for the most part, kept the commandments; have never committed any flagrant crime or swerved from the path of strict rectitude; and more, they have always been with the Father, addressed Him from the dawn of consciousness as their "Father in heaven," and through subsequent years sought to live as in His presence. Such men, when they see those who have lived for years in flagrant profligacy and wickedness converted by redemptive grace and filled with "joy unspeakable and full of glory," are tempted to dissatisfaction. They are disposed to ask, Why should such men be made so happy, when they who have endeavoured to live a virtuous and religious life have seldom any thrill of heavenly enjoyment? They are inclined to say to the Almighty, "Lo, these many years have we served Thee, and yet Thou hast never given us this delight."

I offer two remarks on this dissatisfaction :

:

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my parents, myself, and family; he has not only disgraced our name, but broken the peace and harmony of the household. When I have heard from time to time the deep-drawn sighs of my loved father, and witnessed the bitter tears of my mother, my heart has turned in indignation against him. I wished his death, and sought to banish him from my mind. No amount of suffering will be too great to inflict upon such a heartless profligate. I am grieved to know that he has come home. I am distressed beyond measure to know that my father has so far lost the sense of justice as to allow him even to cross the threshold of our home." (2) He might have pleaded common justice. He might have said, "deep is my anguish, to learn that such a wretch is received with such rejoicing. I will not enter; I will not lend my countenance to such an enormity. My sense of justice is outraged; I am indignant; I will not go in. I have always been faithful to my father; I have kept his commandments; I have toiled in his fields to improve his estate and to administer to his comforts; and he has never shown such rapturous love for me. Where is the justice of all this ? "

The other remark I offer on this dissatisfaction is

II. It is REALLY WRONG.

Why was it wrong?

First: It involved an ignorement of a father's right and affection. The father did not go beyond his prerogative. The home was his; the young

er son was as near to him as

he was; the repast he provided, and all the merrymakers he gathered together, were at his own cost. He had an undoubted right to do all this.

Then, too, he overlooked a father's affection. In the heart of every true parent there is a fountain of love for each child. That fountain had been sealed, in the case of this prodigal, for some time, but had not been dried up; it now broke forth into floods of sympathy. Had the elder son remembered this, his dissatisfaction would scarcely have sprung up. He would have said, "My father has a right to do it a right to entertain him. I am delighted that it has gratified him to do so: what pleases him inspires me with joy."

Secondly: It involved an ignorement of the privilege he had always enjoyed himself. "Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine," said the father. Granted that he had always been a loyal son, always dutiful, affectionate, and industrious, he had always had the advantage of living in his father's house, the free use of his father's property, and had close fellowship with his father's lov

ing heart. What was the joy of an hour or two over this returned prodigal, compared with the calm happiness of all these years? Virtue is its own reward. He who lives the most noble life, will have the largest amount of spiritual enjoyment. Who is the better off-that broken-hearted profligate, with his conscience all flame, with his body shattered and emaciated by voluptuousness and starvation, or the elder son who had lived a moral and healthful life? Certainly, he had no good. reason for his dissatisfaction. Thirdly: It involved ignorement of the natural appropriateness of all this jubila

an

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tion. "It was meet," said the father, “that we should make merry and be glad for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found." The reclamation of a lost soul is worthy of the highest joy. It is the opening of a new spring in the desert, the creating of a new angel to bless the universe, the planting of a new star in the moral heavens. "It was meet." No harm is done to any one, but good to all: the father gratified, and all his children advantaged.*

*For another view of this subject, see Homilist, Series I., vol. ii., page 342.

AVARICE fattens on the miseries of the poor.

TYRANNY and flunkeyism generally go together.

FLUNKEYISM is eating out the true manhood of England.

MALICE is mental murder; you may kill a man and never touch him. LET us cultivate humility, that low, sweet root from which all heavenly virtues shoot.

THE husk is not the germ, the body is not the man. It is his house, that must crumble; it is his garment, that must wear out.

WHERE benevolence is not rooted, selfishness grows; and from its roots spring all the branches of evil that curse the universe.

THE Gospel is a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. I must raise myself from the dust, step on its first golden rundle, and thence on gradually to the top. God has made the ladder, and God says, "Come up hither."

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