man says, "Look at the minister," we say, "Look at the Master!" When a man says, "What do you call this?" we say, "We call it a copy: yonder is the original-look at that!" When we are told that Christian professors are very unstable and inconsistent, we say, "True; but they are not bad because of their Christianity, but because of their want of it." Find in Jesus Christ one instance of selfishness; find in him one moment's wandering from the right way; point out in his speech one unhallowed word or one ungenerous dishonourable expression. His life is before you! Be just and true and manly and right! Find in Christ's life one thing upon which you can lay your finger and say, "This is unholy," then you may pray God's lightnings to strike his Church and consume that which bears his name. When will men look at Christ, and not at Christians; at the sun, and not at the little taper? When will they look at the Redeemer, and not at the half-educated, incomplete, struggling, and oft-blundering Church?

Then, thirdly, such a theory is never urged but by men who are in search of excuses for their own corruptness. Who will undertake to repeat that on 'Change, and in the warehouse? That is a sermon in a sentence. Such a theory is never urged but by men who are in search of excuses for their own corruptness. A man says, "When that one who professed so much Christianity failed in business, I was on the point of giving up churches and chapels altogether." Doubtless that would be virtuous on his part. O fool, and slow of heart to believe the truth of God! When a man who is all skin and bone, who never felt volcanic fire in his heart,-never was led away by any dominating tyrannic passion,-hears of another kind of man straying from the right way, he instantly almost makes up his mindwhat he is pleased to call his mind-to leave the Church. fool, and slow of heart! Didst thou profess the name of the servant or the name of the Master? Didst thou enter the Church because of the high and illustrious example of the members of the Christian community, or because, convicted of sin, thou didst crawl to the cross and feel the healing effect of that falling blood? Where is reasoning-where is commonsense-when men say they have given up their Christian pro

fession because some Christian professors are fickle, untrue, and inconsistent? We never yet knew a man who made much ado about Christian people's inconsistency who was not-more` or less subtly, it might be, with more or less of self-concealment of purpose in the matter-seeking excuses for his own deficiencies, or seeking from his criticism of other people's vice to make his own virtue the more conspicuous.

It were nothing to kill a man,-stab him right through his heart and let him die. But when he is struggling towards light, towards God, and has to fight with all these demoniacal passions and influences round about, over which he seems to have little or no control,-when he just stumbles on the road and they point at him and say, "Ha, ha! that is your Christianity, is it?" that is thrice dying, that is intolerable pain! We know we are inconsistent, we know we are selfish, we cannot boast of ourselves. Yet it hath pleased God to be more merciful to us than men are. It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. When he smites it is that he may recover; when he puts his sword through a man it is that he may slay, not the man, but the disease that is in him; when he is sharpest with us there are tears in his eyes; when he punishes us most terribly, when he takes away the one ewe lamb, and barks the fig tree, and sends a blight on the wheat-field, and turns our purposes upside down, -it is that he may save the man. When men criticise us and are harsh with us, by reason of their incompleteness, their criticism often degenerates into malice. When they point a finger at us, it does not always indicate a fault, but oftentimes a triumph over an inconsistency.

We are not to be followers of Hophni and Phinehas. The priest is not God; the minister is not Jesus Christ; the professor is not the Redeemer of the world. We must, therefore, insist upon the honest investigation of great principles on the one hand, and specially insist upon the calm, severe scrutiny and study of our Saviour's own personal life and ministry. We have a written revelation. To that revelation our appeal must be made; to the law and to the testimony must be our challenge. As for those whose satire is so keen, and whose wit is so fluent when it is employed in

criticism upon Christian character, wherein they do it and are able to point out something in us that is wrong, let us receive the lesson with all meekness; they may be right, and we may learn something from an enemy. It is lawful, according to an ancient maxim, to learn even from a foe. Wherein their criticism is the result of malice, or brief acquaintance with our character-seeing only edges and glints of us and not the whole nature-let us remember that our sufferings are not to be compared with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. When he was reviled he reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not; he gave his back to the smiters and his cheek to them that plucked off the hair. "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." "If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf." "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." What have we suffered ? Who can show one blemish for Christ? We may think a great deal of our little sufferings when we view them in themselves; but when we write them out and put them in parallel columns with the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be glad to draw them back again and put them away, and look upon ourselves as spoiled children. We may try them again in another parallel column with the sufferings of the apostle Paul, and the same feeling will return, and we shall desire to change the subject.

Blessed are they that are reviled for the sake of their goodness. Not many have attained that high nobility. We say the age of persecution is now gone. Alas, all ages seem to have gone ; there is nothing left but insipidity. The age of miraclesgone: the age of persecution-gone: the age of speaking with unknown tongues-gone: the age of the devil-gone! It seems that we ought to be going too. Presently we shall be dying of weariness, we shall be overcome by this intolerable insipidity. The age of persecution has gone, has it? Why? Perhaps because the age of godliness has gone!

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, it is a fearful thing to fall into thy hands! Thy throne is established in righteousness and judgment. The liar and the evil person shall not live in thy sight; thou art angry with the wicked every day; thou givest no peace unto them; thou withholdest all enduring blessings from those whose hearts go astray from righteousness. Thou dost drive the priest from priesthood, the minister from his pulpit, the head of the house from his family circle. Thou drivest out the evil-minded man, thou scourgest those who know not thy purity and thy love, thou vindicatest the righteousness of thy name by terrible judgments in the earth. We come to thee as the God of mercy as well as of judgment. We are now on praying ground; we may now plead mightily with thee for the exercise of thy pardoning mercy, lest we too be condemned and carried in the whirlwind of thy just anger; God be merciful unto us, sinners! save us in the hour of temptation; deliver us when the enemy would carry us away captive at his will; and when the great enemy of souls would come in as a flood, do thou lift up thy Spirit as a standard against him. If thou dost hold us up we shall be safe; if thou dost loose thine hand from ours, behold, we cannot stand! Have us in thy holy keeping; establish our hearts in the precepts and statutes of all thy will, and grant that, having served our day and generation with all simplicity, trust, meekness, and strength, we may be called to enter into the rest eternal as thine own being! Amen.

1 Samuel ii. 33; iii. 18.

"And all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age." "And Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him."

W

THE HOUSE OF ELI OVERTHROWN.

E have seen that Hophni and Phinehas were corrupt men, and that as a consequence the people abhorred the offering of the Lord. We have discoursed upon the doctrine that bad priests make bad people. We now come to the divine visitation of priestly unfaithfulness. Once and again we are permitted to see with startling vividness the Hand which rules, and in which is the rod of power. Now and again God puts aside all ministries and mediations, and shows us all the glory of his

personal presence and all the wonderfulness of his irresistible power. We are glad when he retires, for no man can see God and live. Better to have the ministry of the most inexorable, faithful prophet, who never spares the word of judgment or the stroke of the rod, then stand in the unclouded and blinding blaze of the divine glory. Men prefer sunshine to lightning. They are both, indeed, rays of the divine glory; yet we feel safer under the ordinary daylight than under bolts of electric fire. Let us be thankful, then, that God comes to us through Eli, through human priests, and through man's ministry, being tempered, as it must be, by human limitations, rather than by bringing us face to face with himself, and pronouncing the word to us without minister or medium. At the same time we are made stronger, we are made tremblingly glad by occasional glimpses of his personality. Yet we are thankful that he puts a veil over his face, and communes with us by voices with which we are familiar. Hophni and Phinehas were evil-minded men; Eli was afflicted with weakness which dipped down sharply towards wickedness; and therefore God came out of his hiding-place to vindicate righteousness, to sweep the floor of his Church, and to use his great winnowing-fan.

Eli might have excited pity but for the misdirection of his amiability. There is nothing wrong in amiability, in paternal kindness, in fatherly forbearance and gentleness, within the limits of the household. Contrariwise, there is much that is beautiful and impressive and educational about such paternal administration. But no man may be amiable towards wickedness. The whole doctrine is found in that one sentence. Be amiable, kind, forbearing towards infirmity, natural defect, towards things that are of little or no consequence when compared with the verities of the eternal God. But when a man winks at an evil deed, he deserves the condemnation and wrath of God. When a man is tolerant of evil he himself becomes wicked. This is a doctrine which sometimes has severe application, and exposes a man to terrible reprisals; because people who look at comparative virtue, and not at holiness itself, always have the tu quoque ready for any faithful prophet, for any light-speaking and rod-using minister of God. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord! If we can keep our garments unspotted from the world we shall have