the sea, and hear him saying to the cold night wind, roused into storms that affrighted the poor voyagers, "I have compassion on the storm-tossed disciples because they are alone and know not what to do." And hear him say on the cross, "I have compassion on the multitude."

READERS OF THE OUTSIDE.

Matthew xvi. 1-12.

1. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting him desired that he would show them a sign from heaven.

2. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

3. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

4. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall be no sign given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

5. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread.

6. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

7. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread.

8. Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves because ye have brought no bread?

9. Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?

10. Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?

II. How is it, that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you con. cerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?

12. Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

THE

HE Pharisees and the Sadducees had looked upon the whole demonstration of evidence applied by Jesus Christ in the course of his varied and exciting ministry, and were exactly in the same condition of unbelief and disguised or avowed hostility as before. No impression had been made upon them of a vital

kind. They had been dazed and stunned by a succession of miracles, but had not been convinced. Allowing that great and wonderful cures had been performed, they were piously anxious that now some sign should be shown to them from heaven. You can understand the unctuousness with which they pronounced that sacred word. They would now change the field of proof: a token from heaven would be exactly after the temper of their pious and noble mind. They had observed the wonderful deeds which had been done, which were of a material and sensational kind, and which were adapted in a kind of broad manner to a certain low type of mind-but they desired a sign from heaven. The earth had been enough, and now they, wrapping their religious cloaks closely around them, desired a sign from heaven. Pious, sweet-souled, godly men, who were alive on the heavenly side of their nature, and who would accept any hint or claim that came from the sky, in infinite preference to the cures of the leprous, the dumb, the deaf, the blind, and the maimed.

This is a common and holy trick in all corrupt Churches. Give them what you may, they always want miracles of another kind. Their hearts are determined in unbelief, therefore do their minds affect to find fault with the evidence, or if not to find direct fault with it, to suggest supplementary demonstration of a totally different kind, and the corrupt Church is never so near its total damnation as when it affects its most unctuous piety and wants a sign from heaven.

We want sermons of another kind, when the devil is twisting his fingers further and further round us. We admire the sermons that are delivered, but we would see a sermon from heaven. Such people grant the intellect but they affect to pine for the feeling. They do not deny the genius but they desire more spirituality. They do not doubt that good has been done in certain cases and to a certain class of minds, but they desire to see good of another kind done. This is a stock temptation of the old serpent. He says, "What you have to eat is all very good, but you ought to ask for something if not better, yet different. You cannot deny that notable miracles have been done, and that wonderful doctrine has been propounded. Admit all that: appear ever to be generous in your concessions, but ask for something different, play the pious trick." Old serpent, cunning-and

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DENOUNCING HYPOCRISY.

yet his cunning ought now to be so transparent that we should mock it and reject it with bitter scorn.

How did Jesus Christ treat this pious inquiry, this high spiritualism of desire? The answer which he returned was itself a sign from heaven had they who received it but have understood its scope and its purport. It was a two-edged sword—no other man in all human history could have made that reply. Observe its moral discernment. "O ye hypocrites." Unhappily we have only the cold ink to represent that word: we miss the atmosphere of its utterance, the emphasis which carried it straight into the guilty heart. "O ye hypocrites." Was not their pious speech about heaven, was not their question simple and direct, is there any one word in it that could give reasonable offence did they not belong to the spiritual section of the Church, the sighing, crying and sky-desiring section of the great family of human students and religious inquirers? "O ye hypocrites,"-that was a sign from heaven, to know them through their disguises, to accost the devil when he wore an angel's livery, to take him with mocking familiarity by the face and call him devil, notwithstanding his clothes-that was a sign from heaven.

In the case of Jesus Christ we must always judge the question by the answer which he returns. We do not say everything in words: the big lie is in the heart and not in the speech. Christ answers the question we want to ask, and not merely the inquiry which we actually put in words. Was not this penetration of character a sign from heaven? Was he ever much grander and nobler than when he faced the Pharisees and Sadducees and answered the question about heaven by a charge of personal and unmixed hypocrisy? Did this Man palter with his age, did this Man pay a high price for popularity? Was this the way to increase his fame and his comfort? Would it not have been better for him to have taken the Pharisees and Sadducees into some quiet and sacred place and shown them tricks from heaven? Mark the stern and invincible consistency of this Man: he will have no compromise with hypocrisy. He will not enter into partnership on forbidden terms and with forbidden people. This is the eternal miracle of truth it pierces us, being sharper than any two-edged sword. This is the proof of its inspiration which Do not find its inspiration in its literary

the Bible always gives.

conscientiousness, in its mechanical consistency, in its artistic finish-find whether it is inspired or not by its moral penetration, moral omniscience, moral authority. In any right reading of this Book we stand in a holy place, cut off from everything else, made solemn by an unspeakable quietness, so quiet that a whisper is as thunder, so holy that a sigh may pollute the awful sanctity. So come to the question of the inspiration of Christ, and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Understand what the Bible is in its moral tone and moral claim, and as it warns off all generations of vipers and broods of serpents, and will have nothing to do with hypocrites and masked men and visored faces, learn that it is the very judgment of God amongst men, no more to be trifled with than is fire.

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The moral discernment of Christ's answer justified the judicial tone by which he mocked the hypocritical inquirers. When it is evening, ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowering." They were weather-wise, and nothing more, they mistook the sky for heaven, and the weather for a revelation. This is the perpetual mistake of men who have no inward and spiritual life. The temptation of to-day is that men should study the barometer. Such study has attained almost the dignity of a science-the barometer is now a Bible. Jesus Christ does not condemn this study of the weather, he says it makes a man foolish if he can only do so much and do no more. A man's knowledge may itself be an argument against him if it stops short of wisdom; if the light that is in a man be darkness, how great is that darkness! Jesus allows that they who questioned him could read the face of the sky, but he charges them with inability to discern the signs of the times.

What would you say about a man who knew all the letters of the alphabet, but could not put them into words? How would you estimate the claim of any man to wisdom who knew every word in the English language, and yet never could arrange those words into sentences ? It looks as if a man were certainly learned when he knows instantly every letter of the alphabet-what more can any man know? He can repeat the alphabet backwards, forwards, onwards from any given letter-what more can be desired? Yet as there are those who know the letters but cannot shape