The two things most needed at such a time are t friendly aid of a thoroughly honest and manly pie and, if possible, the social rallying-point of Christi club or home life. It is a question which religio households in great cities should discuss, whether is not their bounden duty to open their doors fre to this crowd of young strangers who surround the for to be cut off from the society of good women the early stage of manhood is an unspeakable m fortune. It is a yet more urgent question wheth the Churches should not provide in every city so centres for young manhood. I do not mean one two huge institutions such as we now possess. mean numerous homes and clubs, where young m coming up in search of situations could find he welcome, and accommodation, and where after busin hours they could gather in genial social intercour Some social stimulant the young nature craves, a must have. If the Churches do not provide it, music-hall will.

I make no apology for the nature of these address They retain the form of spoken counsels and appe Except by the occasional alteration of a phrase I h not attempted to recast them into a more liter mould. I simply seek by their publication a larger congregation than any I have talked with f to face.

GLASGOW, 1889.

W. J. DAWSON

I.

DECISION.

"How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word."-I KINGS Xviii. 21.

HIS scene is one of the most memorable and

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striking in history. It represents one of those great culminating points when life suddenly becomes dramatic, when, as it were, the confused groups of men and women on the stage of life suddenly shift themselves into place and position, and the curtain rises on the acts of great tragedy. Such culminations occur also in the individual life, when the still river of our days deepens, and rushes on in loud thunder, and all our scattered energies become concentrated in one vast struggle. In such moments life is felt to be infinitely significant, and we know that it fulfils itself in the open eye of the angel-crowded heavens. In such moments the character of coming centuries is determined, and individual destiny is sealed and fixed.

What, then, are the elements which constitute this great scene? First of all, you look upon the vision of a whole nation gone astray, blinded by sensuality, swept into the swift hells of a privileged licentiousness.

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The doctrine of philosophic historians to-day is th certain nations have been raised up to perform certa missions, and perhaps on no other hypothesis can t mystery of the dispersal of the human family so w find solution. The mission of the Jewish nation w to enforce belief in the one spiritual and invisi Jehovah, King of kings and Lord of lords. Amid t vile and endless degradations of universal idolat they kept the light of a pure theocracy burning; a the Jew has done more for the world by his pie than the Greek by his culture, or the Roman by 1 civilisation. But ever and again in Jewish histo there came times when a black mist of all but univer apostasy fell upon the land, and quenched the lig upon its altars, and filled the temples with a desolati gloom. Such a time had now come. A corrupt co had produced a corrupt people; and every bond morality, of patriotism, of spirituality, was strained broken. One man only, and he a wild man of t desert, remained faithful, and set himself with mag ficent valour against king, and court, and people. E away from the false and fevered life of cities, he w shipped where the stars shone like the altar-lights heaven, where the free air blew, and the healing siler taught serenity. He knew that Jehovah was God, His voice had reached him in the thunder, and whirlwind, and the fire. He knew that, gild an i how you will, it is an idol still, and has eyes t cannot see and mouth that is a carven dumbne He knew another thing: that this invisible Jehov