barian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all in all. Little did he know of a dispensation in which the knowledge and worship of God was to be detached from the special national institutions of the Hebrew Commonwealth, and spread abroad through the world by the preaching of the Word, in the name of a Redeemer slain for all. But the Spirit of God that was in him knew all the glorious future, and therefore the glimpses which that Spirit gave him of the work of God, near or remote, and all the thoughts, emotions, and desires which that inspiration breathed into his soul, were in accordance with the grandeur and comprehension of God's work. Thus it is possible that to us to whom Christ has come, the light of the world-to us who have seen the work of God's new-creating grace expanding itself and breaking over the limits which hedged in the ancient dispensation-there may be in the prophet's words a reach of application, and, in that view, a depth and fulness of meaning far beyond what he could then comprehend or imagine. And this, if I read aright, is what the apostle Peter tells us, when he says that "the prophets who prophesied of the grace that should come to us, inquired and searched diligently concerning the great salvation, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that was to follow; to whom it was revealed, that not to themselves, but to us, they did minister the things which the angels desire to look into." Let us follow, then, the utterance of the prophet in our text, and see what lessons we may gather from his words, in the light of the completed gospel of Christ.

This third and last chapter of the writings of Habakkuk, though it takes the form of a distinct ode or psalm, and, as such, is complete in itself—the sublimest and most exquisite composition of its kind that can be found in any language under heaven-is nevertheless intimately connected with the two preceding chapters; and to the subject-matter of those chapters it continually refers. The two former chapters are prophetic, and are accordingly entitled "The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see." This last chapter is a sublime hymn, a song of adoration and devotion, and it is therefore entitled "A Prayer of Habakkuk the Prophet." In the first and second chapters, which are one continuous composition, the prophet sees God's judgments coming upon Israel, then upon Israel's oppressors. At the beginning, he complains that the land is full of violence and injustice. Then (i. 5) God replies, and shows that dreadful vengeance is about to be executed by the Chaldeans, who will sweep Israel into captivity, and will ascribe their victory to their idols. Then (11) the prophet deprecates God's wrath, and humbly, but earnestly, entreats him to restrain the proud destroyers. Again (ii. 2) God speaks, and bidding the prophet write the vision, he shows that the Chaldeans also, proud, insatiable, cruel, and idolatrous, when he had made their wrath to praise him, shall be themselves destroyed;

and thus the prophecy closes, proclaiming that "God is in his holy temple," and bidding "all the earth keep silence before him." In brief, the prophet, living not long before the Captivity, and bewailing the wickedness of the age, foresees the execution of God's wrath against that wickedness; and he puts his vision upon record, mingled with earnest pleadings for mercy, and with strong expressions of confidence in God; for the very vision of God's coming judgments assures him that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." All this is a sort of commentary on the "prayer" or psalm in the closing chapter. The psalm begins, with lyrical abruptness, "O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid." It recalls and celebrates God's wonderful interpositions of old for the salvation of his people; and it closes with the sublimest and most cheering utterance of trust and joy in God.

יי!

We see then what years those were of which the prophet speaks in the text. They were years of declension and prevailing wickedness, and years of God's displeasure. "O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid! O Lord, revive thy work; make thy work to live; keep thy work alive in the midst of the years The scroll of years to come had been unrolled before him; and as he saw, at one view, what lay around him and what God revealed to him of the future, he was filled with dismay. Israel, laden with iniquities, was to be overwhelmed with calamities. The chosen people were to be swept away from their own land; and then the proud and fierce barbarians, that led them captive, were to be crushed under God's displeasure. In such years, what would become of God's own work; his work of mercy, causing the just to live by faith, and filling the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord? And therefore he cries to God, "Oh, keep alive thy work as these years of terror roll away!" His first and foremost thought is that of the paramount importance of God's spiritual and saving work. That work of God is dear to all God's children; and as they look over the uncertainties of the future, their solicitude is that God's great work may live and prosper.

There is, in the text, another thought intimately blended with this. See how the mind of the prophet advances from one member of the text to another.

"O Lord, thy work in the midst of the years revive,
In the midst of the years make known!"

He knows the spirit of faith assures him-that God's great work will live, and will outlive every catastrophe. His prayer then is not merely that God will keep his work alive in the midst of the years. The prayer rises to a bolder strain, as it swells into importunity. It beseeches God not only that in the midst of the dark years to come he will make his work to live, but that in the midst of the years he will make it known. It is like the of Moses in Psalm xc. 16, 17: "Let thy work appear prayer

unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children; and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." Often God carries on his work out of the sight of men. It may seem to stand still-it may even seem to retrograde-while yet it is advancing, and its triumph is steadily approaching by processes beyond the reach of human knowledge. Often-nay, sometimes for a long series of years together, or even for successive ages-he is working out of sight, slowly maturing the arrangements, and accumulating the instrumentalities and influences by which, in the end, the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of his glory. "Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sovereign will."

Often he draws a veil of thick darkness over himself and his great work. His work does not appear to his servants, nor his glory to their children. The beauty of the Lord our God does not break forth upon the souls that watch for its appearing. The powers of darkness seem to triumph, as if the redeeming and new-creating God had abandoned his work. But even in the midst of those years, his work which he planned from eternitythat work of his for which, in the fulness of time, God himself was manifest in the flesh-lives on, and makes its progress unperceived. As in the night, he is silently preparing the day, and bringing the sun to its rising; as in the winter, when the mountains stand clad in snow, and the streams are locked in ice, and universal vegetation seems dead, he by a thousand unseen processes is working still, and is making the world ready for the sudden renovation of the spring; so in the midst even of those years when man sees nothing of the progress of God's redeeming work, he still keeps his work alive, and is preparing the arrangements and means by which, when his appointed season comes, light and life, beauty and joy, the beauty of holiness and the joy of his salvation shall break forth and fill the earth. Faith waits for that glad season, and as it waits, it prays with importunate desire :

There is yet another thought involved in the text, and involved also in any just conception of God's work in the recovery of the lost and the salvation of the world from sin. The prayer of the prophet is,

"O Lord, thy work in the midst of the years revive,

In the midst of the years make known;

In wrath remember mercy!"

The work of God in this world-that great work which was in the prophet's thoughts-is not a work of mere power, like that

which is continually producing changes in the world of nature. It is a work of intellectual, moral, and spiritual renovation, to be wrought in the minds of individual men, and to diffuse itself through all that complicated fabric of relations and mutual influences that constitute society. It is a work then in which God has to do with all the intellectual and moral powers of creatures whom he has made for responsibility, and whom he would recover from their apostasy and ruin by means and processes conformable to the nature which he has given them, and by virtue of which they are responsible. Thus, in carrying on his work, he has to contend with the wickedness and wilfulness of those whom he would save, and he must act accordingly Those whom he would save, those whom he calls, those to whom he manifests himself in loving-kindness, rebel and vex his Holy Spirit. Those whom he would lead by his goodness to repentance, often provoke him to a just and necessary indignation, and by their hardness and impenitence treasure up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath. Even his own children-his children by renovation and adoption-provoke him and dishonor him, and grieve that Holy Spirit by which they have been sealed. Thus it becomes necessary for God, from time to time, in the progress of his work, to manifest his wrath, and make his power known. Thus, in the progress of the ages, there are seasons, sometimes long, dark, dreadful seasons of wrath and destruction. Sometimes it becomes necessary, in the prosecution of God's plans, that old foundations be broken up; that nations be shaken from their seats; that races of men be swept from the earth; and that darkness and chaos seem to be returning. Such a season of God's righteous visitations, such a series of years filled up with vengeance and destruction, was before the mind of the prophet when his emotions found utterance in this prayer. His thoughts, piercing the future, had caught some terrific glimpses of what was soon to come. In prophetic vision he had seen the approaching manifestations of God's displeasure against sin. Those years, the scroll of which had been unrolled before him, were to be years of wrath. He sees God's wrath about to break forth upon Israel, and upon the heathen. God's wrath-oh, how dreadful is God's wrath! "I have heard," he cries, "O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid!" "O Lord, in wrath remember mercy!" As Abraham pleaded with God for the cities of the plain, as Moses pleaded with God for Israel in the wilderness, so the prophet intercedes with God in behalf of God's own work, and cause, and people. Such is the privilege, not of patriarchs and prophets only, but of all believing souls. They partake, as it were, in Christ's own office of intercession for the world. Who can tell how often their prayers prevail, to hold back or turn away the destroying wrath of God?

I will bring this discourse to a conclusion, by briefly recapitulating some of those general lessons which the text, as thus unfolded, affords us.

I. The prayer for the revival, or the keeping alive of God's work, is the spontaneous utterance of a heart touched by God's Spirit. Not more surely does the needle, touched with the magnetic power, move in sympathy with the magnetic currents that flash around the globe, invisibly to human eyes; not more surely does that needle, pointing with tremulous impulse toward the pole, betray the mysterious agency that has touched it, than the soul in which God's work of spiritual renovation is begun, becomes spontaneously conscious of a sympathy with that great work throughout the world-a sympathy that manifests itself in impulses of desire and hope and prayer. The Lord's Prayer, in its childlike simplicity, opening with these petitions, "Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," was framed for the very purpose of giving fit utterance to this spontaneous sympathy with the work of God. Wherever that prayer is breathed from the heart of faith and love, there is fulfilled that ancient prediction concerning the Redeemer, the King in the kingdom of God, "Prayer shall be made for him continually" for him, that is, for his cause, his interest, his kingdom. This inward, living sympathy with God's renewing and restoring work, the work for which Christ came into the world, is part of our union with Christ, by which we are his, and he is ours-our Lord, our life, our light, our joy. Thus, in the words of an apostle, "Our fellowship is with the Father, and with Jesus Christ his Son."

II. God's work is often going on in the world when it is not seen or made known, when even his own people are not permitted to discern its progress. You remember Elijah fleeing into the wilderness, and there crying from his cavern to his God, "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away." But what saith the answer of God to him? "I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal." Even then, when it seemed as if all Israel had apostatized; when persecution had silenced the voices of the prophets in death, and the last of them all was a fugitive; when darkness, like a funeral pall, was over all the land of promise; even then God was working.

So it ever has been; so it ever shall be, even to the glorious consummation. In the winter he is preparing the verdure and the bloom of spring. In the darkness he is working, carrying on his unknown processes-he with whom is no darkness at all; and when he is ready, there shall be light. Over the void and formless chaos, the Spirit of his love and power" sits brooding;" and, ere long, as the new world, shaped out of infinite disorder, emerges in its beauty, and takes its place in the vast harmony of the creation, the morning stars shall welcome it with songs, and all the sons of God shall shout for joy.

III. Sometimes it is necessary for God to carry on his work