doctrines.

The carnal mind discerneth not the things of the spirit. This principle is capable of indefinite illustration, accounts for all errors in religion, and should act as a motive for us to endeavor to clear our minds from all material thoughts when we essay to study God's Holy Word.

Germs of Thought.

SUBJECT:-Sin Mirrored in Fire.

"For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briars and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forests, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke."-Isaiah ix. 18.

Analysis of Homily the Three Hundred and Ninetieth.

To the devout thinker material nature is a grand and significant parable. Spiritual facts and truths he sees everywhere reflected in its face as in a burnished mirror. He sees WISDOM, the Heavenly trainer of his being, pointing to the ten thousand objects that lie about him, and saying,-"The kingdom of heaven is like unto" this:-this sun, this sea, this field, this forest, this mountain, this valley, this flowing river, this breathing air, these lilies of the valley, and these golden ears of corn, &c.

Thus the inspired writers viewed material nature, and hence the Bible is full of the figurative and analogic. This makes this Old Book so exquisitely simple, so everlastingly fresh, so universally attractive. The text is an example of the truth of these remarks. Here, sin is spoken of under the image of "fire." It will be our purpose now, with the utmost brevity, to notice a few of such salient points of resemblance as will justify the comparison.

I. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN THE FORMS IN WHICH IT EXISTS. Fire is found to exist in two states,—the insensibly latent, and the sensibly active. In an insensible state, heat is everywhere.

It is in the dust beneath your feet, and in the air you breathe. It is in the sea, and in the sky. And even in solid masses o ice it is to be found. Sir Humphrey Davy, it is said, quickly melted pieces of ice by rubbing them together in a room cooled below the freezing point. It is so with sin. It is found in every part of the human world; it sleeps perhaps even in the most innocent of our kind. All it wants is the contact of some tempting circumstance to bring it out into an active flame. The virtue of some men is but vice sleeping. There are combustibles within, which have only to be brought out by some sparks of temptation in order to flame like Etna. As savages light their fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, so men stir up the latent fires of depravity by mutual contact. There is sufficient latent fire around us to burn up the globe, and there is sufficient latent sin in humanity to turn earth into hell. But fire is active as well as latent. In its active state you see it flaming on your hearths, illuminating your cities, working your manufactures, propelling your fleets, drawing your carriages, flashing in the lightning and thundering in the earthquake. Sin is terribly active in our world, active in every department of life:-in commerce, in politics, and religion. To use the language of the text, "It mounts up like the lifting up of smoke:-the smoke of this fire of sin pollutes and darkens every sphere of life.

II. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS TENDENCY TO SPREAD ITSELF. What a great fire a little spark will kindle; How it will leap from room to room, from house to house, from street to street, until it enwraps a whole city in flames. Fire is essentially diffusive: so is sin. so is sin. One unholy thought in an individual will set his whole soul on fire; one wrong action in a family will burn through all its members; one crime in a nation may set kingdoms in flames. The sin of one man away in the East, some sixty centuries ago, has fired the moral blood of all succeeding generations. How true it is that "One sinner destroyeth much good."

III. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS POWER OF CHANGING EVERYTHING TO ITS OWN NATURE. Whatever object fire takes hold of it turns into its own essence-Coal, wood, iron, silver, gold;-it makes fire of everything it touches. It is thus with sin: it turns everything into its own kind—even the choicest blessings: of heaven it perverts. The principles of alcohol, merchandize, government, aggression, are in themselves blessings, but sin has made them curses. It has turned alcohol into intemperance, merchandize into fraud, government into tyranny, aggression into the demon of war. When Archimedes, to gratify his vengeance on the Romans, brought down the genial rays of heaven by his magic glass to burn up their ships, he only dramatized the universal fact that sin ever strives to turn the greatest blessing to the greatest curse.

IV. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS REPELLING ENERGY. Philosophers tell us that fire is that principle in nature which counteracts attraction, and keeps the various particles of matter at their proper distance. It is that repulsive force which prevents atoms from coming into close contact, and sometimes drives them far apart. It turns the solid bodies into liquids and liquids into vapors. Apply fire to the compact tree, and it will break it into a million atoms, and send these atoms abroad on the wide fields of air. Were it not for heat all parts of the universe would rush together into one solid mass whose parts would press together in closer contact than the heaviest stone. Sin is a repulsive principle. It separates man from man, family from family, nation from nation-all from God!

V. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS DEVOURING CAPABILITY. The most gorgeous palaces, the most splendid temples, the finest collections of paintings, the most classic forms of sculpture, the flame can reduce to heaps of smouldering rubbish. It has often done so, and so it will again. Sin is a devouring element; it consumes something far more valuable than the most beautiful forms of material nature, or the most exquisite productions of human art-it consumes man. You cannot walk the

streets of this London, or of any other great city, without meeting men whose bodies are being consumed by sin. You meet walking temples in flames-human bodies blotched, scorched, dried up, by the fires of lusts that burn within. But this is not all-this is not the worst. Sin devours the soul. It dries up its fountain of divine feeling, it sears its conscience, it withers its intellect, it blasts its prospects and its hopes, It reduces the soul to a moral charcoal. "The wages of sin is death."

VI. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS POWER TO INFLICT PAIN. There is no element in nature capable of inflicting more suffering on the body than fire. The malignant natures of the bloody persecutors in past ages could not conceive any instrument of torture greater than this. But sin can inflict greater suffering the fires of remorse are a thousand times more painful than the flames that enwrapt the martyrs. "A wounded spirit who can bear?" The fire of sin in the soul will "burn to the lowest hell." Ask Cain, Belshazzar, Judas,

concerning the intensity of moral suffering. Each to your question will exclaim in agonizing tones,

"Me miserable! which way shall I fly,

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair,

Which way I fly is hell; myself am miserable!"

VII. SIN IS LIKE FIRE IN ITS SUSCEPTIBILITY OF BEING EXTINGUISHED. You have seen a raging fire go out from one or two causes; either because it has consumed the body on which it fed and reduced it to ashes, or because of the application of some quenching force. The fire of sin will never go out for the former reason-the object on which it feeds is indestructible: if it is ever to be destroyed, it must be extinguished by some outward force. Thank God! there is a moral element on earth to put out sin; the river of mediatorial influences that rolls from the throne of God has quenched the fire of sin in the case of millions, and is as efficacious to do so now as ever.

SUBJECT:-The Fiery Furnace ;

Exemplified.

or, True Principle

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up," &c.Dan. iii., 16, 17, 18-25.

Analysis of Homily the Three Hundred and Ninety-first.

MAN is a worshipper. If there were no God before whose shrine he could bend his knees, he would make himself an object of worship. We have a remarkable instance of this in the narrative before us. Though the gorgeous temples at Babylon were crowded with all kinds of images, Nebuchadnezzar caused another of immense size and splendor to be added to their number. Here we have an account of the inauguration of that costly idol; especially of an incident of great importance which occurred on that occasion—namely, the avowed nonconformity of three young and pious Hebrews.

What was the design of the Babylonian despot in the erection of this colossal image? Two different answers might be given to this question. It was intended either as an expression of his gratitude to the deity whom he imagined had so greatly prospered him on the battle-field, or as a representation of himself under the title of the long-expected "Divine Son," or universal sovereign of the world. We adopt the latter idea. The fact that he summoned all the great officers of the empire to be present at its inauguration is a clear proof that this was not an ordinary idol. It is not probable that he would thus have ordered all the officers from their labors and posts of duty merely to add to the magnificence and splendor of an ordinary scene. monarch had something of far greater importance in view;

The proud