spirits; besides, on the banks of this river, on either side, were green trees, that bore all manner of fruit; and the leaves of the trees were good for medicine; with the fruit of these trees they were also much delighted; and the leaves they ate to prevent the diseases that are incident to travelers. On either side of the river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies, and it was green all the year long. In this meadow they lay down and slept, for here they might lie down safely. And for several days they rejoiced in this beautiful experience.

But life is ever pushing us on, and though beside the river and in the meadows of lilies it did not seem possible that trouble could ever again come to Christian and Hopeful, it was not very long before Doubting Castle loomed up before their eyes. Even spiritual joys cannot last always, and would no doubt be hurtful to us without the seasoning spice of trial. Bunyan's travelers did not know the way out of the meadow of lilies. They took the wrong path, and were soon in the dark dungeon of the Castle of Despair, where they lay in great sorrow for many days and nights. But they escaped at last, and then there burst on their view the beauty and the glory of the Delectable Mountains. There they met the benevolent shepherds who approached them with loving gentleness and said: "Welcome to the Delectable Mountains." Their days of singing birds had come again.

That which silences the songs in the hearts of men and women is not that life is so full of winter, but that their hearts are so empty of faith. If we believe God we shall sing; we cannot help singing. But is it not true that oftentimes our faith is crippled, and so our songs are held back because of the consciousness that we are not living as the sons and daughters of the Highest should live? What folly to silence our songs because of our own sins, and the uneasiness and restlessness and sorrow that follow in their wake, and then allow bitterness and hardness to rankle in our hearts toward God, as though he were to blame because our hearts did not respond to the awakening touch of praise. Let us rather with humility of spirit and contrition of soul throw ourselves on God's mercy, and enter again into the consciousness that we are in deed and in truth the children of God. Then the black wings of doubt will fly away like an evil bat, and the sunshine of perfect confidence will arouse us to song.

During some great fete in Paris, it is related that the Empress Eugenie and Queen Victoria were both present. A newspaper man noticed that when the royal personages came to sit down Eugenie looked behind her before doing so, to see that the chair was really there; but Victoria seated herself without a backward glance, knowing there must be a seat ready for her; there always had been and there always would be. The correspondent inferred that the incident showed the difference between born royalty and one who was not accustomed to it. Is there not the same difference in our attitude toward life, just in proportion as we feel that our position as a child of God is sure and certain or that the gloom of our sins has fallen about us and we fear that God is angry with us? We can dare anything when we are certain that we are on God's side. If the God of the winter and the spring is our God, then we shall have the robin's confidence, and out of the gray of the vanishing winter we shall sing the songs of victorious summer.

The story is told that a distinguished prince once visited Lyon Playfair, the great scientist. As they were passing through the laboratory they came near a caldron containing lead, which was boiling at white heat.

"Has your Royal Highness any faith in science?" said Playfair.

"Certainly," replied the Prince.

Playfair then washed the Prince's hand with ammonia to get rid of any grease that might be on it.

"Will you now place your hand in this boiling metal and ladle out a portion of it?" he said to his distinguished pupil.

"Do you tell me to do this?" asked the Prince.

"I do," replied Playfair.

The Prince instantly put his hand into the caldron and ladled out some of the boiling lead without sustaining any injury.

Some of you who hear me stand in some critical place of trial, facing a future that is like that boiling caldron of white-heated lead, and God is saying to you in your call to duty, "Thrust your hand into that caldron, and do the right, and I will guide you!" Whether you will do that, or whether you will deny God and shirk your duty, depends on your faith in him. But you may be sure that there will be no songs for you now, or ever, until you are ready to face any boiling caldron of duty in God's name.

I remember a friend who had come into a very serious entanglement, that threatened to wreck his whole life. Little by little he had been drawn on, until ruin stared him in the face, and yet to withdraw was infinitely painful. For a year he went with lines of pain in his face, with a heart that was unhappy, with a conscience that was full of rebuke, and with dread and foreboding at his soul. Life was a weary burden; if he could have been rid of it without suicide. the relief would have been very precious. Finally he was led by God's grace and mercy to say from the depths of his soul, "I will do the right, the plain, simple, honest right, and leave all the results to God." The next time I met him his face had a peace that I had not seen in it before, and on it was a light that only communion with Heaven can give, and he said, "My heart has been singing since the very hour I determined to cut every cord, and do the simple, honest right."

The saddest blunder we ever make is when we imagine that it is things, and not character and fellowship, that can give us songs of happiness. God's world is beautiful, but it is a dungeon to the man who is not at peace with God. Men fondly imagine that if they had more money, or more applause, or a better education, more freedom from care or responsibility, or stronger health, life would be one endless song. But there are multitudes of men and women who have all these things, and yet they do not sing; and there are multitudes of others without money, with greater cares, with sadder lack of health and friendship, who sing all day long and awaken the midnight with their songs of thanksgiving. Ah, it is not things, but God, that we need to awaken the music in our souls. C. B. Macready sings the. prayer that ought to be in our hearts and on our lips.

My life shall seem a trance, a dream, And all I feel or see

Illusive, visionary-thou

The one reality!

"Show me thy face!

I shall forget

The weary days of yore;

The fretting ghosts of vain regret Shall haunt my soul no more;

All doubts and fears for future years

In quiet trust subside,

And naught but blest content and calm Within my breast reside.

"Show me thy face!

I shall forget

The weary days of yore;

The fretting ghosts of vain regret

Shall haunt my soul no more;

All doubts and fears for future years

In quite trust subside,

And naught but blest content and calm Within my breast reside.

"Show me thy face!

The heaviest cross

Will then seem light to bear;

There will be gain in every loss

And peace with every care;

With such light feet the years will fleet,

Life seem as brief as blest

Till I have laid my burden down And entered into rest.

"Show me thy face

And I shall be

In heart and mind renewed,

With wisdom, grace and energy

To work thy work endued.

Shine clear, though pale, behind the vail

Until, the vail removed,

In perfect glory I behold The face that I have loved."

123

"Her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow."-Zephaniah 3:3.

A city is in a hard plight when it has wolves for judges-men who, instead of standing for justice, and the righteous enforcement of law, thus protecting the innocent and the oppressed, standing between the oppressor and his threatened victim, become themselves snarling beasts of prey, lurking in the night that they may ambush and destroy the defenseless; judges who become evening wolves, who dare not betray themselves to the sunshine or let their deeds be seen in the light of day, but go forth to hunt at night, and gnaw the bones in their dens on the morrow.

But unfortunate as is a city under such conditions, it is not in a harder case than the individual men or women who have come through their own sins to have within their breasts a conscience that has ceased to be God's voice to guide and direct and judge for them between right and wrong, but is like a ravening wolf, biting with cruel fangs of remorse, gnawing over and over again the bones of sins long since committed whose guilt still haunts the recesses of the heart; a great, wolf-like conscience which under the lash of memory comes snarling into the court room of the soul.

Our text is a portion of the graphic description which the Prophet Zephaniah gives of Jerusalem in the time of its depravity and wickedness. But the guilt of a city is made up of the guilt of the individual citizens, and that which causes a city's sinfulness and brings about its punishment is the same in the individual. Hence I am sure we do not do violence to the Scripture when we seize hold of these characteristic sins which brought Jerusalem into this hard plight to find a graphic, and I pray God a helpful, warning for every one who is tempted to sin in the same way to-day.

Let us see what it was that brought Jerusalem to this condition. First it is said of her that "Her prophets are light and treacherous persons." A city or a nation is ever in danger of ruin when the prophets, the leaders of thought and public opinion, are lightminded, frivolous, and treacherous to the best interests of the public. But the individual soul is in the same danger when the mind, the prophet element of the soul, looks at life with a light and frivolous attitude. How many there are who look at all the great problems of