CONCLUSION.

"The discourse of our Saviour presents some of the highest subjects for human thought, and some of the most impressive reasons why we, as well as the Jews, should believe in Him as the Messiah, the Son of God. The testimony of John the Baptist, the sublime miracles which Christ performed, the witness which God repeatedly gave Him, and the prophetic declarations of the Mosaic dispensation, still speak to us through the living page of the book of inspiration; and can any man innocently reject such various and overwhelming evidence? Or, if any one is too hardened to be convinced by these arguments, though strong and conclusive, oh, let him not resist the pleadings of compassion and the merciful intercessions which broke forth from the quivering lips of the Divine Sufferer on the Cross. Let love persuade where reason cannot convince.”

Germ of Thought.

SERMONIC NOTES ON THE VISIONS OF EZEKIEL. No. XI.

Subject: Sin the Worst Sorrow.*

"Also the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou morn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. So I spake unto the people in the morning; and at even my wife died: and I did in the morning as I was commanded. And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so? Then I answered them, The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Speak unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength,

Another aspect of this passage will be found on page 299.

men.

the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul pitieth; and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left shall fall by the sword. And ye shall do as I have done : ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon your feet ye shall not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away for your iniquities, and mourn one toward another. Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign according to all that he hath done shall ye do; and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord God."-Ezekiel xxiv. 15-24.

HIS vision, seen by the prophet on the same occasion and with reference to the same event as the preceding one, was most immediately connected with himself, although mainly designed as a revelation to the people. His experience and his behaviour in it were well fitted to strike both himself and others, and to compel attention to the great lessons that were being taught. For ordinarily in such an affliction as the death of his wife, an ancient Oriental would have uttered vehement expressions of grief, and surrounded himself with all the paraphernalia of woe. Whereas here, whilst we have intense emotion, we have the self-restraint of the Stoic. Whether this bereavement was only in a vision, or in fact as a fulfilment of a vision, the lessons taught are the same. The perfect restraint in great sorrow, because of the presence of a yet greater woe, is the idea of what we deem to have been first Ezekiel's vision, then his actual experience, and then the actual experience of the Jewish people. We notice, then, The temporary and local significance of the vision, and of its twofold fulfilment. Here is a man losing by death a wife. The greatness of his affliction is to be seen in the fact that she was (1) eminently beloved-" the desire of his eyes;" she was (2) suddenly taken away-"with a stroke." In this bitter affliction he was to "forbear to cry or to make mourning," but to appear in the discharge of his duties amongst the people as though nothing had happened to him. Evidently the more terrible sorrow, before which this was to be hushed, was the guilt and impending doom of the city. Here also is a city losing its glory, its sanctuary, "the desire of its eyes," and its sons and daughters suffering destruction. But amid

all that the people are to restrain their lamentations, because this woe is dwarfed, and paled, and eclipsed in the presence of the greater woe, the sins that had incurred this doom. We gather, then, clearly, the universal and eternal teaching of all this. Thrice proclaimed-first in vision, then in the prophet's bereavement, then in the destruction of the city, and in the calmness that is to be maintained in each of these three cases, because there is a greater calamity in the background-is this great lesson, Sin the worst sorrow. This is so because

I. OTHER SORROWS MAY HAVE NO EVIL, BUT EVEN GOOD IN THEM; THIS IS ESSENTIALLY AND ETERNALLY EVIL. In a bereavement, in a national calamity, as also in bodily sufferings and many social griefs, it is manifest there may be no moral wrong. There may indeed be the highest moral good. Some such may have been the result of noble self-sacrifice; and if the first it may be bravely and resignedly borne, its lessons humbly and reverently learned; such an affliction may often be a means of highest spiritual good, proving the familiar truth that

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the world where sorrow is unknown."

But sin is in its essence, in its indulgence, in its outcome, utterly evil, an object of nothing else than commiseration, loathing, and hatred. So infinitely more is sin to be bewailed than the heaviest of other sorrows, that the Holy Saviour on the way to the Cross turned to those who wept for the agonies He, the sinless, was enduring, and about to endure, and said, "Weep not for Me; weep for yourselves and for your children." Sin is the worst sorrow, because

II. OTHER SORROWS ARE REMEDIABLE, THIS LEADS TO DESTRUCTION. Time heals many, if not most wounds. Ezekiel might see "the desire of his eyes" again in the heavenly world; there sundered ties and friendship may be eternally knit together. There love may "clasp inseparable hands." And as to the temple in Jerusalem, it could be rebuilt again, as indeed it was. But the sin of the city that the prophet mourned, and for which the people were to pine away, could

know no amelioration. A cancerous and pestilential thing, it could know no end but burning. Sin is the worst sorrow, because

III. OTHER SORROWS MAY COME DIRECT FROM GOD, THIS IS EVER IN DIRECT ANTAGONISM TO HIM. Ezekiel traced his sudden bereavement direct to God, and in this found a solace. Afflictions argue not God's anger; they often prove His care: "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten." But in view of every sin we have to learn, "Let no man when he is tempted say, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man." Sin is the worst sorrow, because

IV. OTHER SORROWS HAVE TO DO WITH MEN IN THEIR RELATION TO OTHERS, THIS WITH HIS OWN INNER BEING AND HIS RELATION TO GOD. Outward circumstances may be disturbed by the first, but the inmost consciousness is outraged by the second. The entire nature of man is involved in the sorrow of sin and his relationship to God, which touches him at every point, and will for ever, is revolutionised. Whilst in prospect of all other woes, a soul may sing in subdued tones of submission

"With emptied arms and treasures lost,

I'll praise Thee while my days go on."

Be

CONCLUSION. First: Rightly weigh your own sorrows. more sad for failure of your own high purposes, for the fickleness of will, for fitful feverishness of desire, than for disease of body or perplexity of circumstance. Be more sad for the selfishness of others than for any harm they can inflict on you.

Second: Rightly deal with the world's sorrows. Pity their poverty, heal their sickness, but most of all grieve for and contend with their sin.

Third: Rightly value the Saviour's mission. to the root of the deadly tree of sorrows. away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Bristol.

The axe is laid

He came to put

URIJAH R. THOMAS.

The Chief Founders of the Chief
Faiths.

Around no men, amongst all the millions of mankind, does so much interest gather as around the Founders of the Chief Religious Faiths of the world. Such men are sometimes almost lost in the obscurity of remote ages, or of the mystery with which they surrounded themselves, or their early followers invested them. But whenever they can be discerned, their characters analysed, and their deeper experiences understood, they are found to be not only leaders and masters of the multitudes who have adopted more or less of their creed and ritual, but also interpreters (more or less partial) of the universal yearnings of the soul of man. Such men may have seemed to sit at the fountains of human thought and feeling, and to have directed or have coloured the mysterious streams, but they have quite as often indicated in their doctrines and in their deeds the strong courses of the thoughts and feeling which are more permanent and deeper than any one man or even any one age could completely discover. The aim of these papers will be, with necessary brevity, to review the chief of such men, noting suggestively rather than exhaustively, their biography, their circumstances, their theology, and their ethics. And in concluding the series it is purposed to compare and to contrast each and all of them with the One Man whom in the long roll of ages we can love without disappointment, and worship without idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus."

PRINCIPAL BOoks of REFERENCE.-Max Müller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," "The Science of Language," "Chips from a German Workshop;" Rev. F. D. Maurice's "Religions of the World;" Archdeacon Hardwick's "Christ and other Masters;" Rev. J. W. Gardner's "Faiths of the World;" Miss Mary Carpenter's "Last Days of Rammohun Roy;" Rev. F. W. Farrar's "Witness of History to Christ;" Rev. A. W. Williamson's "Journey in North China;" Canon Liddon's Bampton Lecture on "Our Lord's Divinity;" Cousin's "History of Modern Philosophy;" S. Clarke's "Ten Great Religions;" Father Huc's "Christianity in China."

No. VII.

ZOROASTER.

(Continued from page 296.)

ETHICS.

T has been well said that the religions in which the moral element is depressed, as those of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, are also without personal founders. But moral religions are the religions of persons, and so we have the systems of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed,— and so also of Zoroaster, who is now before us. He is the central figure of the whole religion of the Avesta. In the