these are not visions of actual events, but of transactions symbolizing actual events. It consists, for the most part, of visions of symbols. Some of the symbols, especially such as refer to the Roman Emperor, are for obvious prudential reasons ingeniously contrived to conceal the meaning from the heathen, while probably suggesting it to the Christians. As I understand it, the book was written in a time of persecution and great distress, probably when the destruction of Jerusalem was already imminent. It foretells the overthrow of the persecuting power and the time when the church, freed from oppression and persecution, was to dwell in peace and prevail through the world. These hallelujahs celebrate the great overthrow of the persecuting and oppressing powers and this triumph of the church. From this point of view, these praises of God express the natural and right exultation of all right-minded persons at the defeat of iniquity, the overthrow of injustice and oppression, and the triumph of truth and right. All will understand this and sympathize with it who have exulted in the defeat of intrigue and corruption and the overthrow of oppression and despotism on many occasions in modern times.

The same principles apply to the punishment of the wicked. in the other world. In this life we cannot always see the reasons of God's doings. In respect to the punishment of the finally incorrigible our vision is closely limited; much remains unrevealed and unexplained. We are perplexed and distressed. We find peace only in trusting the unerring wisdom and the never-failing righteousness and good-will of God. But it may reasonably be expected that the saints in heaven will see clearly revealed what God has done in his dealings with sinners, and why he did it. Then doubtless they will see that all God's action toward sinners has been glorious in perfect and adorable wisdom and love. What a relief it will be, what a fleeing away of clouds and darkness, of perplexity and distress, when all which had been dark in the fact of sin is made plain, and we see clearly, what here we have believed without seeing, the glorious perfection of God revealed in it all. Certainly in this discovery the glorified saints in heaven may properly exult and praise God. But we already know beyond all doubt, that, whatever shall actually be the final condition of any sinners for whom Christ died, no person through endless time will ever be blessed or realize any true good in a

life of selfishness, but only in a life of universal love, springing from a continuous loving trust in God.

Thought is made clearer and feeling more intense by contrast. Enjoyment of the warmth and comfort of the fireside is enhanced by the beating of the storm without. But if in the quiet and happy home we hear the shrieks of human beings under the hands of robbers and murderers, the enhancement of pleasure by contrast is overpowered and annulled by compassion for the sufferers and horror at the crime. Much less can this principle of contrast be applied to explain the recognition in heaven of God's glory manifested in his righteous judgments. A good minister, in his public prayer on Thanksgiving Day, said, it is to be presumed by an unwitting misplacement of words: "We thank thee, O Lord, that so many others are in want and misery, while we enjoy the bounties of thy providence." The sentiment which these words express seems to have been uttered sometimes by preachers and theologians in representing the blessedness of the inhabitants of heaven as enhanced by the sight of the sufferings of the wicked. Some of these representations are nothing less than horrible. It is incredible that the writers could have taken in the full significance of their words. These occasional and exceptional misrepresentations, picked out from the immense mass of Christian theology and literature through all the ages, have been made to do service in innumerable repetitions, as if they were the true representations of Christianity and the Christian church. But it is impossible to believe that Christ and his glorified saints will ever look on sinners persisting in sin with feelings other than those of Jesus when he wept over Jerusalem, yet did not revoke its doom. They will praise God because they see that in all his treatment of sinners he has acted in a manner worthy of God, revealing, not obscuring, his glorious perfections.

Here must be noticed the so-called imprecations in some of the Psalms. In the outset allowance must be made for the highly-colored imagery of Oriental poetry, which often seems extravagant to the Western mind. It must also be remembered that the Psalms were written in a rude and ferocious age. Therefore the forms of expression do not indicate the same moral feeling in the mind of the writer which the same expressions would indicate now. Underneath these forms of expression are a true principle and a right sentiment which are true and right

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everywhere and always. On the cruel persecution of the Waldenses in the Alps for their purer religion, Milton wrote an ode, which from the day it was published till now has roused the hearts of all readers to a healthy and honorable indignation against oppression and wrong-doing, and to admiration of fidelity to truth and right and God, even unto death.

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learned thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe."

This is an imprecatory psalm of modern times; and the noblest sentiments of the human heart are in sympathy with it. All our desires for the detection and punishment of crime, for the pure and effective administration of justice, for the deliverance of the oppressed and the overthrow of oppressors are of the same nature. He has lost half his manhood, half of the divinity that is in him in his likeness to God, who is no longer capable of indignation against wrong-doers, of desiring the overthrow of oppressors and the confusion and frustration of all schemes for fraud and corruption. If the writer of these psalms knew that God's kingdom existed in its germ within the rough bur of the Israelitish theocracy, and that its enemies were destroying the knowledge of the true God and opposing the progress of his kingdom which was to bring the Messiah into the world, the best impulses of his heart and the clearest judgment of his reason would prompt him to oppose these efforts, and to desire with all his soul the confusion of all their designs and their complete overthrow. And so in all ages the noblest sentiments of humanity prompt and the deepest moral principles approve the cry of human indignation and anguish in view of the suffering of the helpless under overpowering and defiant wrong

doing. For the sighing of the needy, for the oppression of the poor, arise, O Lord, and render into the bosom of the wicked the reproach wherewith they have reproached thee. And this is the sentiment uttered in heaven by the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar: "How long, O Lord, faithful and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Rev. vi. 10).

IV. MAN GLORIFYING GOD. God will glorify himself in all men, whether they intend it or not. Whatever men do, God will glorify himself in them. This has been thought to be a very objectionable doctrine. But it is now evident that it is not so. It means simply that, whatever men do, God's action toward them will be just right; it will be the expression of perfect wisdom and love, action worthy of God and in which he is worthy of universal approval and praise. God's glory is beyond the reach of any creature. No creature by his own action can bring any stain on it, or provoke God to act so as to dishonor himself. Necessarily, therefore, whatever the creature may do, it will be the occasion of God's acting just right, and so of displaying his glory.

Why, then, are men required to glorify God? This does not mean that they are to make him glorious, but only that they are to recognize and declare his glory. To this a knowledge of God's glory is necessary. One does not glorify God who worships him under the form of a crocodile or a cat; or who regards him as an arbitrary and capricious will, a mere almightiness unregulated by rational truth and law, or as a Spirit of vengeance, or of justice not included in love and vitalized by it. The more complete and true the knowledge of God, the more complete and full may be the recognition and declaration of his perfections, in which and in their wise and loving exercise his glory consists.

Men also recognize and declare God's glory by choosing him. as the supreme object of trust. All finite persons are creatures dependent on God. All right character and life in finite beings, whether men or angels, must begin and go on in faith or loving trust in God. Man as a sinner is also dependent on God for forgiveness and for the quickening of the indwelling Spirit. This continuous trust of finite persons in God is the recognition and declaration of their normal relation to God as dependent creatures

For

and of his goodness in creating them capable of knowing him and in graciously receiving them into communion with himself. a man to refuse thus to trust in God is to repudiate his condition as a creature and his need as a sinner, and to set up for himself in self-sufficiency, self-will, and self-seeking. It is not glorifying God, but glorifying self. But in the very act of trusting God the man recognizes and declares God's trustworthiness and his sufficiency for all the needs of his creatures. Thus he glorifies

God.

Men glorify God also by complacency in his perfections, and the adoration and praise in which they give it utterance. Paul represents God in conversion as shining into the heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, in conversion persons often see God's glory in his works of creation, providence, and redemption, and radiating on them like sunshine from the commonest objects and events, so that they are in a rapture of praise and adoration.

Men glorify God also by recognizing his hand in all the events of life, by submitting to his will as made known in his providence, his law, and his gospel, by doing all duty as duty to God, by loving and serving men in recognition of their relation to God and in Christ's name and for his sake, and by seeking first the kingdom of God. In all this men recognize and proclaim the glory of God. Paul says, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all for the glory of God." Thus he sanctifies and ennobles our most common and least spiritual acts by connecting them with the glory of God. He exhorts Christians to "walk worthy of God." As a father is honored by the good character and conduct of his children, so God's glory is proclaimed by the worthy character and acts of those whom he has made in his own likeness as rational personal beings, and who, though they had forsaken God, have returned to their father's house and been welcomed by him as his children with the love and joy of a father's heart; "this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." It is one of the instances of J. S. Mill's astonishing ignorance of the New Testament that he insists that Christian ethics lacks the virtues of nobleness. What ethical basis for all that is noble in character can be compared with this, that as children of God we are to walk worthy of him?

1 I Cor. x. 31.