ful waiting, the trembling, half - breathed question, not yet translated into uttered speech: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"-of the life, the ordered conversation, the self-devotion, the example, the commanded household, the rippling influence, widening as it flows; the Beulah-spirit and the Beulah-dwelling, just on the other side the water from the city of God. God asks them from you, and your response is ready. Even now your hearts reply-"I will render praises unto thee."

It will be your desire also to "walk before God." The very vows which you are prepared to pay necessitate the perpetual recognition of God's presence, and the reference of all earth's conduct to the supremacy of Heaven's will. You were a sinner once, and then God was not in all your thoughts." You entered upon your transactions of business; but you did not take him into partnership. You invited your parties of pleasure; but you enrolled not his name among the guests. You were stimulated to diligence or enterprise; but your motive was-"My friends will be proud of me for this." You were deterred from some cherished purpose of sin; but "What will society say?" was your wholesome and stern reprover. You looked and lived no higher. To you, earth was the end; the sky shut out the heaven, and the planet was without a God. But it is not so with you now. Your aim is to glorify, and your life to exhibit, God. Behind your every action there is the thought-" How will this look to the Divine? When the glory shines upon it, will it be leprous or pure? How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?'" This

vestal fire, kept lighted within, will make the outer life radiant. This monarch-purpose, imperial in the inner man, will rule over a peaceful and united kingdom. Look at that son of genius, when the hour of his inspiration is upon him. See him as he pours upon the paper the regal imaginings of his soul.

how he blushes in his first audience of royalty

See

solitude-like a novice at his because a great thought has

struck upon the brain and reddened all the cheek; or reels and staggers, as if drunk with the fulness of his own sense of beauty. Think you he writes for self, or for the few who now and then enliven his loneliness? Not so. He has a world before himinvisible, and yet as palpable as if he saw their faces beam or darken, and heard their varying voices of rapture or of blame. That statesman on the hustings -calm and eloquent amid the heat of a contested election-rich and measured in his enunciation of lofty principles, or in his exposition of a far-sighted policy-think you that he addresses the beery enthusiasm of the crowd? Does he speak to those shoeless patriots, who are anxious to gain a ragged immortality by improving the chance to hoot and pelt at a great man? Nay; surely his audience is one which the multitude have no eyes to see. By the power of the press he sees his words already subjected to the admirer's rapturous study, and the rival's anxious criticism. The Bourses of Europe are controlled by his sentiments; crowned heads in their cabinets are pondering and profiting by his wisdom. And so the Christian endures, "as seeing him who is invisible." He yearns to find out the right, as God sees it.

His

effort is to "walk before God." Tell him that the world sneers at him; that slander is busy with his fame; that all the pundits and Rabbis of the world's various schools of scoffing have launched their imitation lightnings at his head. You hear his calm reply: "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord." Let the dark day come, and there be presented to him the alternatives of evil that the famine shall trample out his manhood, or the sword waste in his borders, or the pestilence consume his blood-his choice is easily made: "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man”. and his highest ambition will be gratified, if in the last throes of mortal agony he can bare his heart to the fulness of the Divine scrutiny, and gasp out the dying words: "Thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee."

XXXVII.

A PLEA FOR THE DISTRESSED.

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wicked

ness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?"-Isa. lviii. 6, 7.

IN

N the former verses of the chapter you discover the state of heart of the Jewish people in the course of their mysterious preparation for destruction. Already there had come upon them the first symptoms of that fatal blindness, by which "a deceived heart turned them so hopelessly aside." It is the voice of the Lord which speaks, and he enjoins the prophet to be loud and urgent in his warnings, if haply they might be roused to a sense of their guilt and peril. They were in that condition which is of all others the most appalling the condition of the self-deceived. They were ostentatious in their approaches to the sanctuary, and punctual in their many prayers. They fasted vigorously, and even thought themselves righteously angry because so little audience was given them, and because so little of benefit followed upon their affliction of soul. The Lord defines, therefore, in his own vindication, the nature of the humiliation which alone he will accept

and honour. He wills not an ascetic observance, but a cheerful self-denial; not a painful and lacerating torture, but a sacrifice willingly rendered of substantial gratitude and praise. "Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the

fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward."

There is no contradiction in the doctrine here taught of other passages in which the fast is divinely sanctified, and the solemn assembly ordered by divine command.

There are occasions which justify, and even which require, national prostration and sorrow; and there is no sublimer moral spectacle than the sight of a great people, as by one common impulse, moved to penitence and prayer. But in the case before us, there was both alloy in the motive and reserve in the consecration. There was self-righteous satisfaction in the act-the usual labour of dependants was exacted, so that the gain was hoarded even while the soul was scourged