who thus calls you to walk with Him in that flame! No one would throw himself even from a burning house, except he knew that there was a strong arm of some reliable friend stretched underneath to receive him and to break the fall; so will you not venture into that furnace which awaits every straightforward, true-hearted, resolved servant of Christ, except your love to Him, if but feeble, is yet true and undoubting, and your trust in Him absolute and unhesitating.

That that furnace will never give you pain, keen, bitter pain, is more than we can say (are warranted to say), but there will be always mitigation of it, even from His presence, though unrealized; and there will be hours when the realized presence will not only deaden the sense of suffering, and make you forget it, but when you will "rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving (even now, in its earnests and its beginnings,) the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."*

* 1 Pet, i. 8, 9.

IV.

Just Estimate of God's Anger best formed by a Holy Fear.

PSALM XC. II, 12.

"Who knoweth the power of Thine anger? even according to Thy fear, so is Thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

AMONG the intercessors of the Bible the name of

Moses stands prominent, and among the recorded specimens of his intercession, that contained in this Psalm possesses peculiar interest and value. Besides the direct language of prayer, it contains some thoughtful and striking philosophic reflections, which had been suggested to him by the eventful period of Israel's desert wanderings. It is placed historically, by the best expositors, at the end of Numbers xiv.

He was tempted to be sick and downcast at heart, at the proofs that history had exhibited of the shortness, instability, and frailty of human life. It seemed to him a sad, melancholy, almost shocking spectacle, to see so many thousands swept away swiftly and remorselessly. It seemed to cast a tinge of gloom over his whole prospect; the first impression was as if he could not be comforted or reassured concerning it, for of what worth or what account could such a fragile and fickle thing be, subject to such vicissitudes and fluctuations come to-day and gone to-morrow: for a moment he was as one drifted from the anchorage of his faith and hope.

There was one thought which sustained him amid these racking and perplexing doubts, and allayed this mental suffering. It was a high and blessed thought, that to man, the restless, wandering outcast, there is a home, a dwelling-place in the bosom of his God. Not, indeed, as the Pantheist would say, that sooner or later every living thing finds its return, and is ingathered there; not the universal parent of all existences: but Thou art a refuge to us for all generations.

The true Israel of God have an ark of refuge in God. The same winds and floods and rains which descend on others, they must do battle with likewise: the difference is, while the rest are shaken and overthrown, they, being founded on the rock, abide. Accordingly the anguish and distress which he had felt has driven the psalmist to cling inwardly and firmly to God; who, as the Eternal and the Almighty, is the sole ground of hope for transitory and feeble creatures. The dove that has been beating about and found no rest returns to Noah into the ark. The eye that, while it looked downwards, saw only what was cheerless and changeful, looks up and fixes its happy gaze on the immoveable, unchangeable resting-place which God is to His faithful and redeemed ones.

But the transitory nature of man's existence furnishes to meditation another important view. It teaches us the depth of our corruption, and the greatness of the wrath of God against us. Death, to which our short existence is a prey, is the wages of sin. God's wrath is reflected to us, as in a mirror, in the transitory nature of our being, which also helps to reveal to us our sins in all their depths. And if this is the case, if our sin and God's wrath because of it, are brought to light and set in order before our

eyes in the ordinary passing away of entire generations of men; then are that sin and that wrath still more vividly and forcibly laid bare to us in more sweeping and sudden ravages when they occur; when God's call is louder, and His judgments more arresting and alarming.

So had it been with Israel in the wilderness. The thousands that fell under Sinai, every man by the sword of his brother, at the first guilty outbreak of the hidden idolatry of Israel's hearts; the multitudes that died of the plague at Kibroth Hattaavah; the graves of the people that fell lusting; the company of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, whom the earth opened its mouth and clave asunder to swallow up; and those many thousands that immediately afterwards perished by the fire which came forth from the Lord to cleanse the deep-seated plague-spot of rebellion; the much people that died of fiery serpents; and, again, the twenty-four thousand that fell down slain or died of pestilence in the matter of Beth-peor; these all, added to the men of war who were slain in unsuccessful and unauthorized expeditions all these as by successive visitations they left Israel's host frightfully decimated and diminished, and left fearful gaps in the ranks of the armies of the Lord,—all spoke in one mournful utterance, of which the echo never seemed to die from his ear and heart: Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee. It could not be true, as thoughtless and ungodly men said, that sin and holiness were of no account, were undistinguished in God's eyes. It could not be that sins committed were buried out of recollection instantly, nor cried for redress and vengeance. Those corpses that strewed the wilderness, what were they but old sins that seemed dead and buried come to life

again, ghastly reflections of former iniquities? Not that these perished ones were in all cases sinners above the rest of Israel, but the abruptness and appalling suddenness of those judgments made the thought of death as the wages of sin come with accumulated and more convincing force to every serious mind.

Such were the principal thoughts of the early part of this Psalm, and we are brought thus to our text, which introduces another thought which had brooded and pressed with heavy weight on his soul: But who regardeth the power of Thy wrath? "Who knoweth?" Struck and impressed as he himself was; overwhelmed, crushed with a sense of God's wrath against sin, as unalterable as those perfections which are His nature, he could not account for the singular levity and callousness of men's hearts. Why was it that their cheek never seemed to change colour, their pursuits as frivolous, their aims as capricious, their hearts as grovelling? Of the theory and speculation of it they might have some general conception, but of its truth and intensity, its actual power, who has any practical conviction? It appalled him to think of the dulled hearts and closed eyes of men living within sight of such wonders; so many knocks at their hearts' doors, so many knells of warning, calls of grace, forebodings of eternity, prickings of conscience, warnings by God's prophets !

And so asks the Christian of our days: the Christian pastor in particular, charged to feed the sheep, to feed the lambs of Christ. Who regardeth? he asks, as he looks around him, as he sees the young full of light-heartedness, loving dress and finery, often immoderately and extravagantly, taking thought for the body, what to put on; the poor perishing body and