dullest thinker; better be a man of stammering tongue, than be the most brilliant and gifted man who does not know what it is to be under the power of divine grace. Holiness, then, is the fundamental requirement in all persons who would interpret God and serve him in any department of the great ministry of his kingdom. Holiness is genius. Holiness hath keen, piercing eyes that see every filament of divine truth and holy communication to men. When the ministry is holy, when the Church is holy, when every man, high-priest and doorkeeper, is holy, then the world will begin to feel that there is something in it that is not of its own nature.

It is evident, also, in the second place, that all the covenants of God are founded upon a moral basis. "I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever." There is the bond, there is the covenant of God repeated by a servant. How, then, can Eli be overthrown? How can Hophni and Phinehas be dismissed from their office? "But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me." Is then the Lord fickle? Is he man that he should change, or is he the son of man that he should repent? "Be it far from me." Why? "For them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Where is God's unchangeableness in the shape of trees and plants, in the order of the stars and the worlds, in any outside appointments, arrangements, and adaptations? Where do we find the unchangeableness of God? Only along the line of righteousness. When he speaks, he speaks

upon a moral basis; all that he says is conditioned upon moral purposes. Hath he promised thee, O man, and art thou living upon that promise? Know thou, that the promise is always secondary; the character is primary-righteousness first. If the first archangel whom God summoned into his own solitude were to sin against him, he would dethrone him and banish him into outer darkness! Let us look at details, at outside arrangements, and see if this is fickleness on the part of Providence, or changeableness of disposition on the part of God. Go to the first line-the great line on which all true things are built, all lasting empires and monarchies are founded—and you will find that along the line of righteousness God never moves to the right hand

or to the left,-on from eternity to eternity, never a break or a deflection in the line of infinite righteousness!

In the third place, it is evident that some of the communications of God are at first very startling and terrible. Think of little Samuel making his acquaintance with the Lord through a speech like this! Understand that at the beginning Samuel did not know the Lord; that he received from Eli instruction as to his position; that having assumed that position, the introductory words of the divine communication are these:—

"And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle" (iii. 11).

It

It is a child upon whose ear this awful message breaks! would have driven some men mad! They could not have borne all that weight at the first! God adapts his communications to those to whom they are addressed. We do not all come upon God at the same point. God's first message to man is not the same in every case. Herein, then, there is scope for charity— the charity that is just and noble when we are estimating the religious experience of men. You are not to say that, because others did not hear exactly as you heard, therefore they are wrong and you are right. When you heard God first he came to you along the trembling pathways of the thunder, and your religion is a sublimity. When your neighbour first knew God he heard him with much and intense listening,-it was a still small voice that stole in upon the ear of his soul, and his religion has always been a tune in the minor key; he has been perhaps somewhat pensive, contemplative, and never quite lost the attitude of his first listening; he seems to be listening still, and to be afraid lest a footfall should break the continuity of the divine message. When another first met God he came to him through the process of argument: the man was broken down by sheer force of reasoning, so far as his intellectual positions were concerned; he saw his theories and speculations broken down, blown away, pulverised, and scattered on the flying winds; and his religion has been logical, argumentative, propositional; and whenever he has gone to hear a minister, he has stopped the minister at every sentence to say, "Prove it." So God comes to us in different

ways. We are not to judge one another by our own standard, but let every man show by the clearness and simplicity and nobleness of his life, whether or not he has had a communication from God.

We have spoken of holiness,—a word we can but dimly understand upon the earth. One day we shall recollect the sun as a poor pale beam that we could just see with, by using our eyes very sharply and putting our hands before us lest we should fall over something. One day we shall think of our professed sanctification as a poor morality. But as to holiness, the question is asked by many anxious hearts, How is this holiness to be had? In one way. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." There is "a fountain opened to the house of David for sin and for uncleanness." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thought, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will abundantly pardon." That is the only answer. Some ministers of Christ have been saying that for twenty-five years, for forty years, and they can find no better thing to say. It is the same in every ministry, to whatsoever part of the great universe of truth we may go. If any man asks how to get up there, we have to point to the old way,-the Cross of Christ; to Christ, who tasted death for every man; to the atonement made by the Lamb of God! We want no other way. We never feel the need of any other way. When we have tried any other path, we have only had to be brought into some deeper sorrow and more bitter agony to call out after the living God to help us back again to the old way of the cross. He who walks that road finds his way to heaven!

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, we have transgressed against thy covenant, and thy commandments have often been of none effect in our lives. We have forgotten God. We have lived in ourselves; we have been our own law; we have been our own gods. Truly, thou hast been angry with us. Thou hast scourged us until our life has become a daily pain. Thou hast impoverished us until we have seen the emptiness and vanity of our own resources. Now take us to thine heart again. Come through the dark cloud of thy judgment, and in answer to our penitence speak comfortably to our souls. We seek thee only through the covenant which thou didst make with thy dear Son. We stand behind him. Our hearts are safe in the infinite security of his righteousness and compassion. Give us joy in thy presence,-yea, fill us with the peace of God! Amen.

1 Samuel iii. 11-14.

"And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house when I begin, I will also make an end [completing it]. For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth ; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not [assuredly not] be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever" [a sentence made irrevocable by an oath].

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THE CAUSES OF ELI'S OVERTHROW.

UR last subject was the overthrow of the house of Eli. So great an event as the overthrow of a consecrated house ought not to be allowed to pass without careful inquiry into its causes. It is the more important because of a statement in the second chapter of the book that we are now studying: "I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me." If we once get the notion that God's covenants are not to be faithfully carried out on his part, our moral foundations are destroyed and our confidence is shaken. For this reason, let us pause at this great breach of a covenant supposed to have been eternal,

and ask how that breach came to be made. It must be noted that God himself annulled the covenant. Eli did not say that he wished for release from the bond. Eli did not complain of difficulty or incapacity. The word of rupture was spoken by God himself, thus: "But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me. Let the covenant which was made for ever between me and thee be far from me. I said the covenant was to be an everlasting covenant, and to-day I recall it. Thy house shall perish." We are shocked by such words. The conscience of man asserts a kind of right to have such words explained. Life would not be worth having but for profound and complete trust in God's honour. It were cruel on his part to lift us almost to heaven that he might dash us into the abyss of outer darkness! The covenant was made for ever, yet God annulled it! We pause, as earnest men having some regard for social honour, to know how an eternal covenant can be set aside. The case grows in difficulty, and, to the eye of the mere artist, it increases in dramatic interest as we call to memory the many points of excellence in the character of Eli. Can you find one vulgar sin in the venerable high-priest? He was a man of advanced life, and therefore he had had opportunities of displaying his real quality. He was ninety-and-eight years old; his eyes were dim, that he could not see; he had judged Israel forty years. What of his character? Why was he dispossessed of the priesthood? Was he a drunkard, an adulterer, a liar, a thief, a blasphemer? There is not a tittle of evidence to justify the faintest suspicion of the kind. Nay, more. We can give Eli still higher praise than this: for, after having carefully read his life, as it is detailed in this book, we see not why Eli might not stand most favourable comparison with many of the leading Christians of our day. We cannot see, looking at the page in the light of merely literary critics, where the great lapse We know not but that if Eli, as portrayed in the inspired book, were set up as the standard of determination, a great many would fall short of his lofty altitude. These considerations justify the interest of the question how Eli came to be dispossessed of the priesthood.

was.

Look at his noble treatment of the child Samuel. He knew that Samuel was called by the Lord to occupy an official position