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النشر الإلكتروني

slumbers sometimes, and you try to drown it in intemperance or company; but it is not dead-it is not dead-and ever and anon it dashes from your lips the untasted cup of pleasure, and appals you with the horrors of the life to come. I appeal to you, halfhearted and almost persuaded sinner-is it not true? You are halting between two opinions. You have too much religion to enjoy the world, and far too little to be happy in the church, and you are not happy; you know you are not happy. You have tried philosophy and pleasure, and taste and science, and even scepticism, and they are miserable comforters. Oh, I rejoice that I stand before you with the Gospel of Christ. Here is the balm the vital and all-healing balm. The atonement which satisfied justice, can satisfy conscience too-the blood that took away the sin, shall allay the anxieties of the soul. Come to the cross. Come at once -come now. So shall you be enabled from heartfelt and exulting experience of its blessings to swell the full-voiced tribute, which by and by the ransomed universe shall render. "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ."

XXII.

KINDNESS TO THE POOR.

"If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him."DEUT. XV. 7, 8. "For the poor shall never cease out of the land."-DEUT. xv. 11.

THERE

HERE is no need to remind you of the circumstances under which this command was given. It occurs in that grand valedictory service to which Moses, the great Jewish lawgiver, summoned the children of Israel, and in the course of which he repeated the commandments of the law, and urged upon them to be consistent and faithful in the land of promise which they were about to inherit. There was a pathos in his utterances-for he knew that he spoke his latest counsels to the people who had often tried him, who had often rebelled against him, but whom he loved with a love stronger than death. And there was also the deeper pathos of the remembrance that he, and the few elders who survived, had forfeited their own entrance into Canaan-and that by the decree of an unchangeable penalty each silver-haired ancient who had started from Egypt, and had been concerned in the condemning unbelief, must lay his

bones in the wilderness, while the speaker himself could but gaze in one brief trance of rapture upon the people's inheritance, and then lie down and die. In this farewell charge, which comprises the whole book of Deuteronomy, not only are motives to obedience pressed on them with overwhelming power, but circumstantial directions are given upon all matters connected with the establishment of their new life. There are denunciations of idolatry—the one crowning sin which Iwas the cause of their sacred isolation—and then follow regulations touching the four great principles of theocratical government: 1. Worship and sacrifice; 2. The institution of the family, and its concurrent obligations; 3. The consecration of time, with the Sabbath as God's especial portion; and 4. The consecration of the substance, and its apportionment to the requirements of personal and family need-of legitimate business—of the sanctuary-and the calls of charity. In the last of these comes the injunction of the text. As if, by provident foresight, God had ordained the existence of the poor on purpose to be the check upon the rich man's selfishness, and the outlet for the rich man's bounty, it is predicted that they shall "never cease out of the land;" and the duty of the more highly favoured in regard to them, and the specialty of the claim upon the ground of a common nationality, are both included in the words I have read.

And let no man suppose that the command is of any less obligation, or that it comes with sanction less divinely authenticated, because spoken from Hebrew lips, and addressed to one wayward people's needs. There is in many respects a close analogy

between our circumstances and theirs. We are not newly enlightened, the last trophies of some venturous missionary's toils, as were many of those to whom the apostles wrote; if there do linger about us any remnants of our Paganism, it is because we have cherished them for years, and habit has made us fond of the badges of our darkness and shame. We revel in the light which only dawned greyly on the former time; we dwell beneath institutions which will begin to cast forth shadows soon. To us it is fitting that the prophet's lips should speak; we may be aptly rebuked by the faithfulness of the seer's warning. The principles enunciated for the guidance of the Jewish people-so far, at any rate, as high religious ethics are concerned are principles which must govern us to-day. This is an interesting service which has gathered us, a time when in the far country we evoke the memories of home, those deep-lying and long-lasting instincts which years have no power to stifle, and which even hard usage and all the buffetings of a pitiless world cannot utterly destroy. Here we summon our patriotism to prompt our charity— haggard strangers loom through the sea-fret, ever coming near to us with their cry of distress and need -and as they approach us through the parting mists, we find that they are brethren, heirs with us of glorious history and traditions which make the blood leap the fleeter through the veins-children of the dear island mother from whom our own breath was drawn, and who sits in sceptred state, shaking her tresses of freedom to the winds, and girt about in loving embrace by the arms of the triumphant sea.

It is an occasion, therefore, in some sort, of national concern and sympathy, and those especially who have named the name of Jesus, and so march under more sacred banners than that of the old Cappadocian hero, are bound to be helpful in their measure, that our good may not be evil spoken of, and that our religion, in one of its comeliest developments, may stand before the observation of men. No great elaboration is necessary to impress upon you the principles which the text embodies and enforces. The claim is that of the poor man within your gates, who never ceases out of the land, and the claim becomes the stronger because of the peculiar circumstance that the poor man is one of your brethren. Let us illustrate these thoughts for a brief while.

"God has made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell upon the face of the whole earth." This is the announcement of a grand fact, which has never yet been successfully disproved. "One blood " there is the distinct, individual unity of the human race; one family, though sundered by climate and language; one deep underlying identity, however chequered by the varieties of external condition. This relates man to man everywhere, makes all the world a neighbourhood, and founds upon universal affinity a universal claim. The old Roman could say, with a far-sighted perception of this great truth, “I am a man; nothing, therefore, that is human can be foreign to me;" and Christianity has exalted this sentiment into a perpetual obligation, and stamped it with the royal seal of heaven. This general law, however, must be divided into minor modifications, or

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