seldom it is remorse) for an unkind word, how quickly we forget all about it! It was a hasty word; or, we did not mean all that we now see it meant; and so we blunt the edge of the knife that might otherwise have cut down to the root, and cured us of the disease. Ministers do well to take The whole matter is a personal one. "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body." The application of this passage is for all it is specially for the preacher of the Word. Most of his work is done in and through the Word; well, he may stumble in doctrine, or in the manner of expounding doctrine; in rebuke, or in the manner of giving rebuke; he may speak when silence would have been the most salutary teaching; he may argue when example would have been the most persuasive. heed. On the other hand, with its manifold liabilities to err, what a glorious opportunity is his as ambassador of Christ, to beseech his fellow-men to be reconciled to God. He has but to seek and obtain the aids of His Spirit, whose voice was not heard in the streets, and he will be taught to speak His speech will distil as kindness will be in his While they rejoice. a word in season to him that is weary. PETER RUTHERFORD. THE SECRET OF IMMORTALITY. "There is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is once given to God; and no part of him which is not mortal by the second death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God. For to what shall we trust for our distinction from the brutes which perish? To our higher intellect? Yet are we not bidden to be as wise as the serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant? Or our affections ? Nay, these are much more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence: Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it; a dog had stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason nor in love; not in the body nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts stirring in the brain of it; but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day."-RUSKIN. SEEDS OF SERMONS ON THE SECOND BOOK OF THE KINGS. A Striking Reformation, a Ruthless Despotism, and an Unprincipled Diplomacy. "NOW IT CAME TO PASS," &c.-2 Kings xviii. 1–37. AMONGST the incidents recorded and the characters mentioned in this chapter, there stand out in great prominence three subjects for practical contemplation :-a striking reformation, a ruth less despotism, and an unprincipled diplomacy. The many strange and somewhat revolting historic events that make up the bulk of this chapter will come out in the discussion of these three subjects. I.—A STRIKING REFORMATION. Hezekiah, who was now king of Judah, and continued such for about twenty-nine years, was a (verses 3-8.) All this is high testimony, and his history shows that on the whole it was well-deserved. Compared with most of his predecessors and contemporaries he appears to have been a man of much excellence. He lived in a period of great national trial and moral corruption. Israel, Judah's sister kingdom, was in its death throes, and its own people had fallen into idolatry of the grossest kind. In the very dawn of his reign he sets himself to the work of reformation. We find in 2 Chron. xxix. 2-36, a description of the desire for a thorough reformation which displayed itself. But the point of his reformative work, on which we would now fasten our attention, is that mentioned in verse 4,"He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan." His method for extirpating idolatry from his country is detailed with minuteness in 2 Chron. xxix. 3; xxx. 1-9. In this destruction of the brasen serpent we are struck with two things :— First: The perverting tendency of sin. The brasen serpent (we learn from Num. xxi. 9) was a beneficent ordinance of God to heal those in the wilderness who had been bitten by the fiery serpent. But this Divine ordinance, designed for a good purpose, and which had accomplished good, was now, through the forces of human depravity, become a great evil. The Jews turned what was a special display of Divine goodness into a great evil. I am disposed to honour them for preserving it for upwards of seven hundred years, and thus handing it down from sire to son as a memorial of heavenly mercy; but their conduct in establishing it as an object for worship must be denounced without hesitancy or qualification. But is not this the great law of depravity? Has it not always perverted the good things of God, and thus converted blessings into curses? It has ever done so! It is doing so now! See how this perverting power acts in relation to such Divine blessings, as (1) health; (2) riches; (3) genius; (4) knowledge; (5) governments; and (6) religious institutions. It turns temples into shops, the Gospel into creeds, sacraments and Sabbaths into superstitions.* Another thing which strikes us in connection with the destruction of this brasen serpent is Secondly: The true attributes of a reformer. Here we observe (1) Spiritual insight. Hezekiah saw in this serpent which appeared like a God to the people, nothing but a piece of brass"Nehustan." What is grand to the vulgar is contemptible to the spiritually thoughtful. The true reformer peers into the heart of things, and finds * See Homilist, Vol. II., Page 193. that the gods of the people are but of common brass. Here we observe (2) Invincible honesty. He not only saw that it was brass, but said so, -thundered it into the ears of the people. How many there are who have eyes to see the vile and contemptible in the objects which popular feeling admires and adores, but who lack the honesty to express their convictions! A true man not only sees the wrong but exposes it. Here we observe (3) (3) Practical courage. This reformer not only had the insight to see, and the honesty to expose the worthlessness of the people's gods, but he had the courage to strike them from their pedestal. "He brake in pieces the brasen serpent." I have no hope of any man doing any real spiritual good who has not these three instincts. must not only have an eye to penetrate the seeming and to descry the real, nor merely be honest enough to speak out his views, but he must have, also the manly hand to "break in pieces" the false, in order to do the Divine work of reform. The man that has the three combined is the reformer. He Almighty Love! multiply amongst us men of this threefold instinct-men which the age, the world demands! Another thing which strikes us in connection with the destruction of this brasen serpent is Thirdly: The true soul of a reformer. What is that which gave him the true insight and attributes of a reformer, which in truth was the soul of the whole? (1) Entire consecration to the right. "He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses." "He trusted in and clave to the One true and living God, and kept His commandments." And this is right, and there is no right but this. (2) Invincible antagonism to the wrong. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not." "The yearly tribute his father had stipulated to pay, he withheld. Pursuing the policy of a truly theocratic sovereign, he was, through the Divine blessing which rested on his government, raised to a position of great public and national strength. Shalmaneser had withdrawn from Palestine, being engaged in a war with Tyre, or, perhaps, was dead; and assuming, consequently, that full independent sovereignty which God had settled on the house of David, he both shook off the Assyrian yoke, and, by an energetic movement against the Philistines, recovered from that people the territory which they had taken from his father, Ahaz" (2 Chron. xxviii. 18). Here we have II.-A RUTHLESS DESPOTISM. There are two despots mentioned in this chapter-Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, both kings of Assyria. A brief description of the former we have in verses 9, 10, 12. What is stated in these verses is but a brief repetition of what we have in the preceding chapter, and the remarks made on it in our last article preclude the necessity of any observations here. This Shalmaneser was a tyrant of the worst kind. He invaded and ravaged the land of Israel, threw Hoshea into prison, laid siege to Samaria, carried the Israelites into Assyria, and located in their own homes strangers from various parts of the Assyrian dominions. Thus he utterly destroyed the kingdom of Israel. The other despot is Sennacherib. (Read verses 1316.) Shalmaneser is gone, and this Sennacherib takes his place. The ruthlessness of this man's despotism appears in the following facts, recorded in the chapter : First: He had already invaded a country in which he had no right. "Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them." "The names of the principal of these cities are enumerated by Micah (i. 11-16), viz:Saphir, lying between Ashdod and Eleutheropolis (Eusebius and Jerome, Onomast, Saphir; cf. Robinson, Biblical Researches,' ii., p. 370); Zaanan or Zenan (Josh. xv. 37), (Septuagint Eevvaap); Beth-ezel or Azel (Zech. xiv. 5), near Saphir and Zaanan; Maroth or Maarath (Josh. xv. 59), be |