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Job ix. 30, 31; about the Snow:-"If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." You remember that Job was a man that feared God and eschewed or avoided evil (i. 8); there was none like him on the earth. This God said of him (i. 8), but when Job thought of himself as standing before God, he said, How shall a man be just with God; if He will enter into judgment with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand (ix. 1–3): see also ver. 15, and then added the words I have quoted,-"though I wash me with snow-water." Now there is no water so cleansing, so purifying, as the snow-water, and the Patriarch Job alludes to this property. Though, he said, I were cleansed and cleansed again from every visible defilement, and not one single blemish could be detected on me BY MAN, yet when He looks on me, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, searching to the inmost thought, not only shall there be specks here and there, but like one plunged in the ditch, "mine own clothes shall abhor me." So my beloved children, man in his own righteousness cannot stand before God; for in His sight can no man living be justified: see especially Zech. iii. 3, and compare Ps. xxiv. 3, 4, with Ps. xviii. 20. In each you will see the Lord Jesus as the One, and the only one, who had clean hands and a pure heart, and who, in the VIRTUE THEREOF, having not only obeyed the law, but magnified it and made it honourable, claimed the right of entrance into the holy place; and as the obedient man who was God, sat down at the welcome of the Father, at his right hand, (Ps. cx. 1,) angels, principalities, and powers, being made subject unto him. (1 Pet. iii. 22.) The Scriptures afford abundant illustrations on this subject, but I will not fatigue you. You will find it a profitable exercise, if, during the next week at breakfast, each one brings some passage from the word of God, in which the rain and dew and snow are used in illustration. Some months ago, if you remember, you did so, and we were all much interested.

Ever your affectionate Father.

LETTER V.

And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind, and God saw that it was good, and the evening and the morning were the third day.Genesis i. 10-13.

MY DEAR CHILDREN,

Two days of the history of our globe had now run out, and the third came full of blessing. The character of this day's creation was two-fold, as the account in Genesis i. fully manifests. The first part was a call for the dry land (which evidently had been already created in the beginning) to appear; the second was the creation of the three great orders of vegetation-trees, herbs, and grass. I know of no part of Scripture that brings out the character of this day's creation so strikingly as the 104th Psalm. The inspired Psalmist looks back three thousand years, and brings the whole subject most blessedly before our minds, from 1st verse to the 6th of this Psalm :—“ WHо laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains." The mountains were there, but the waters covered them.— "At Thy rebuke-that is, at Thy word commanding themthey fled; at the noise of Thy thunder they hasted away," and the dry land appeared. And then how striking the description of the rivers and fountains of water, and the great sea :"They go up by the mountains, they go down by the valleys, unto the place which Thou hast founded for them-(evidently

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