work done at our doors, the schools, and the visiting societies, and the other ministries of help which do their work quietly and calmly, these are the agencies by which we can do for the souls of our brethren, whom Christ has quickened with His wonder-working power, that which He has thus commanded.

You see then, brethren, that these words have a very close connexion with our inner life. That which most startled us in them is that without which the work of spiritual discipline,piritual education, would have been incomplete. They have beyond this a lesson for Christian men and women in all ages, which none of us can disregard with impunity. But they have also, I believe, a special bearing on that work in which I have to call on you to join to-day. I have not thought it right to make that work the chief subject of what I had to say. It is better that the preacher should aim at setting forth some truth of God, and trust to its power to work upon the hearts of men, rather than at dilating, however skilfully and eloquently, upon the merits of this or that work, this or that scheme and organization. Where the work is new, where the organization is unknown, where the duty is unrecognised, where the subject is little understood, it may be well to adopt a different course; but here there seemed to me no need, no justifica

tion for it. The work is close at hand, even at your doors. The duty forces itself even now, as you listen to me, on your conscience; the organization is the old established one, which has been in this land of ours so fruitful for good throughout many generations. You are called on to take part in that work, to provide the means of the continuous, regular sustenance of the Christian life. It ought to add some force to all the other grounds on which those who labour faithfully among you may urge their appeal, to remember that, in supplying to the souls whom Christ hath quickened the daily nurture which they need, you are obeying, in its full width and depth of meaning, that law of life which He disclosed when He turned to the wondering parents of the maiden into whose cheeks the hue of life was once more returning, and commanded that 'something should be given her to eat.'

1 The maintenance of additional services in a parish church.

XVI.

THE DANGERS OF THE RELIGIOUS

TEMPERAMENT.

'And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.'-GEN. XXXII. 28.

N the life and character of Jacob, as in those

IN

The

of Abraham, we find in close union elements of feeling which elsewhere are met with, for the most part, separately and in contrast. great father of the faithful-the friend of God-the man in whom, as in the great pattern instance of the world, was set forth the truth that man is justified by faith, was also the chieftain of a tribe, the first conspicuous example of that nomadic, patriarchal life which has been perpetuated among one portion at least of his descendants. Abraham stands at the fountainhead of the great Jewish and Arab races; and the features of both are distinctly traceable in him. With Jacob the case is different. He is the father of the Jews only. No other race than that of Israel bears

On

his name, or traces its descent from him. But, for this very reason, the strange combination of seemingly incompatible characteristics which we recognise in him, is all the more remarkable. It is precisely in this that he too has a prophetic, representative character. For it is that very combination which saddens and perplexes us in looking at the history and character of the Jews as a people, which made them so great a mystery and wonder to the other nations of the world. the one side, they have all along been the priestnation, the prophet-nation of the world, chosen as special witnesses of the oneness and the eternity of God. They have felt the power of the Divine presence with a more intense consciousness than others; have risen above the degradations of idolworship; have had hopes stretching out far and wide on to the remote future, to the establishment of a divine kingdom. If historians of the human race, who generalize widely, give to the Greeks the glory of being chief in wisdom and in art, and to the Romans that of being the great rulers and legislators of the ancient world, they no less distinctly recognise as with one voice, that the Jews were the religious people of the world, that without them, as those who were intrusted with a divine truth, there would have been throughout the world, in things pertaining unto God, an

almost total darkness. But on the other hand, it is no less plain, that all along there have been harsher and more repulsive features. Not in the period of their exile or dispersion only; not merely as the consequence of long centuries of oppression, but from the first the spirit of covetousness and greed has been dominant in them. They have been givers of usury, and takers of usury, drivers of hard bargains, full of extortion and excess, wanting in truthfulness and honour. Thus they have become a byword among the heathen; and the name of God has been blasphemed for their sake; and they have been looked on as hated by the human race. The whole history of Israel is the record of the conflict of one of these tendencies with the other. Prophets and righteous men live and die in the struggle against the selfishness, pride, and avarice which surround them.

Now notice, brethren, how wonderfully both these aspects of character are found in the history of the one man of whom we are now speaking. That very twofold name of Jacob and of Israel is but the symbol of this blending of contradictions in him. Like those tissues of the loom, which, seen from one point of view, are all bright with colours and radiant with gold, while, if you change your position, they appear dark and sombre,