faction. "Hiding Place!" "Covert !"

"Fountains of Water!" "The shadow of a great Rock!" And surely all these have their analogies and correspondences in our lives.

1. Wind. But how apt a symbol is here of our lives! Often when all seems fair, when the winds are confined in their chambers, when there is the hush of perfect calm in our lives, whilst we are confident and unsuspecting of alarm, all suddenly a wild storm envelops us in a furious mêlée. Ah, then we know bitterly the spiritual side of the words, "No small tempest lay upon us." 2. Storm. Storms sweep the floor of the desert of all its loose sand that may be lying there, and, gathering it together, hurl it against the traveller or the caravan, stinging, blinding, and threatenng to overwhelm. 3. A Dry Place. Our lot is sometimes cast, as David's was, in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. There may be few helps in our religious life. 4. A Weary Land. The whole expanse of desert lies beneath the glare of the noontide sun. Weary, weary, so weary! But all these many. sided needs may be met and satisfied in "The Man Christ Jesus." We can never forget our Lord's essential Deity; the Second Person in the ever-blessed Trinity; the Fellow of Jehovah; the only begotten Son of the Father. How manifold is the character of Christ. No one metaphor can set forth all His beauty. And this is the further thoughtthat He completes our incompleteness. We are but partial segments of the circumference. He makes up the perfect sweep of the circle. Are you driven by the wind, "tossed with the tempest, and not comforted"? Hide in Him. Get into Him, as the bark, strained and leaking, gets within the shelter of the mole, or harbour-bar. Look out on the fury of the storm from the protecting environment of His presence. Are you being blinded by the drift of the tempest, as it drives the sleet of the northern gale, or the dust of the southern sirocco, into your face? Jesus will be a covert from it. Are you in a dry place? The Lord Jesus knows what it is to be athirst. Are you in a weary land? Listen to Him who bids the weary come to Him for rest. Sit beneath His shadow with great delight. He will give rest from the consciousness of unforgiven sin; rest from the inward strife; rest from conflict with men and things around; rest from chafe and fret against the will of God.-REV. F. B. MEYER, B.A., in “The Christian Treasury.”

THE REVELATION IN THE WHIRLWIND.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.-JOB Xxxviii. 1.

WE are reminded by these words of the similar experience of Elijah when, in the midst of the grandest manifestations of nature, he was brought into direct contact with God. The Lord, we are told, was not in the mighty wind that passed before Elijah on Horeb. He did not choose the whirlwind as the symbol of Himself; because what Elijah required was not the display of God's power, but the revelation of His love-not the stormy, but the gentle side of God's nature. He himself was a tempestuous spirit, an incarnate whirlwind. To such a stormy nature a lesson came to teach him the secret of his failure, and to show him that there were greater powers than those which he had employed, and a better spirit than that which he had displayed. He believed that the most effective way of freeing the land from its idolatry was by threatening and judgment. There was nothing in these judgments to appeal to Israel's better nature -to convince them of their sin and to rouse them to a sense of duty; and the Baal-worship, which they were compelled by fear to renounce for a day, resumed its old spell over them when the storm subsided and the sky became once more serene. But not thus did God reveal Himself to Job. He revealed Himself in the still, small voice to Elijah, because there was too much of the whirlwind in his own character and in his work of reformation for Israel, and he needed to be taught the greater power of gentleness and love. He revealed Himself in the whirlwind to Job because there was too much of the still, small voice in his own disposition and in his circumstances, and he needed to be stirred up by trials and troubles. that would shake his life to the very centre. The lot of Job was at first extraordinarily prosperous. His nature became like his. circumstances; his soul was at ease; he lived upon the surface of his being; he was contented with himself and with the world.

Job's worship was practically a similar bargain of faith. He would offer sacrifice to God as a preventive of worldly evil and as the safeguard of his prosperity. We know what happens in Nature after a long continuance of sunshine and calm. It needs a storm to agitate the stagnant waters, and fill the foaming waves with vital air for the good of the creatures of the sea. And so the man whose

prosperous life settles down upon the lees of his nature and partakes of their sordidness requires the storm of trial to purify the atmosphere of his soul, to rouse him from his selfishness, to brace up his energies, and to make him a blessing to others and a grander and truer man in himself. It was for this reason that the overwhelming troubles that came upon Job were sent. "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." That Divine speech was entirely different from the arguments of Elihu and Zophar, Bildad and Eliphaz. There were no upbraidings in it; no replies to specious sophistries and shortsighted charges. It seemed to ignore altogether the questions at issue; it appealed not to the intellect, but to the heart. He grew wiser the more he suffered; and the storm that purified his soul gave him a deeper insight into the mysteries of Divine Providence, so that he could rise superior to the doubts of his own heart and vindicate the ways of God to man against all the dishonouring arguments of his false friends. As a candle within a transparency, so the fire of pain illumined the truth of God to him, and made plain what before had been dark. He had lost everything which men of the world value, but he had found what was more than a compensation. And so God deals with us still. He speaks to different persons in different ways: to one who is self-sufficient because of his prosperity, by the loud roar of the whirlwind; to another who is despondent and depressed because of failure and blighted hopes arising from wrong methods of doing good, He speaks in the still, small voice, and assures him that fury is not in Him.

The Divine method is ever by the still, small voice. God would prefer to deal with us in gentle, loving, quiet ways. Judgment is His strange work. God's continued goodness to us too often leaves us careless and godless. The still, small voice speaking to us in the blessings of life with which day after day our cup is filled, is unheeded, and God requires to send His whirlwind to speak to us in such a way that we shall be compelled to hear.-REV. H. MACMILLAN, D.D., in "The Quiver."

THE SIGN: A BABE.

And this is the sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.-LUKE ii. 12. (R. V.) THERE are in the Revised Version two very slight changes in this sentence which make a

was,

wonderful difference in the sense, greatly increasing the suggestiveness of words already full of suggestion. The former translation "This shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes," whereas it should be, "This shall be the sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe." Let us with some care note the difference. "This shall be a sign" suggests the idea that it was one out of many; whereas, when you read "This shall be the sign," it singles it out from all other circumstances, summons us, as it were, to dwell on it, to attach the very greatest importance to it.

This, we are well aware, puts the mystery of the Incarnation in the most offensive light to those whom the Saviour called "the wise and prudent." The mystery of "God manifest in the flesh" is offensive enough to them at the very best but when the flesh in which the Divine was manifest is reduced to the compass of a babe's, it is almost exasperating.

The truth is, if we analyse the notion of incongruity we have been speaking of, the offence of the manger, as we have called it, we shall find that it is due to a certain vulgarity of thought and feeling from which we are not yet civilized enough to be altogether free.

Let us illustrate what we mean in a very familiar way. Some time ago the wife of the Viceroy of India was opening an exhibition in Burmah. There were present very many Burmese ladies of rank, arrayed in finery and loaded with jewels. When the representative of our Queen entered, plainly attired, without any conspicuous pomp of barbaric pearl and gold, they were sadly disappointed, and thought it could not be "the great lady." Was it not perfectly natural from their point of view? They were not educated enough to look beneath the mere exterior; they had yet to learn that finery and jewels do not constitute a great lady: that true greatness is not such as can be exhibited to the vulgar eye. Besides, it is only to the shallowest mind that it occurs to suppose that there is any less distance between God and the largest man, than between God and the smallest child.

But, so far, we have been only meeting the objections of those with whom the offence of the manger has not yet ceased. It is time we were trying to see the real meaning and value of the sign. 1. Child-life is nearest heaven. Measured by bigness, physical and intellectual, it is farthest from the empyrean. But the measures of heaven, remember, are not

measures of bigness; and according to the measures of heaven, child-life is not at the bottom of the scale of humanity, but clear at the top. 2. The sign is most appropriate, because it makes it evident that the Saviour of the world meets us at the extremity of our weakness and helplessness. 3. One thought more. The swaddling clothes and the manger were the sign of our Lord's humiliation. They stood for the whole course of self-denial which marked that Holy Life throughout, until the cruel cross finished what the lowly manger had begun. Now, this self-abnegation was the special signature of heaven in the life of Jesus. Not His miracles. The great revealing was the revealing of the Father's love.-REV. J. M. GIBSON, D.D., in "The Sunday Magazine."

ENOCH'S WALK WITH GOD.

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.-GEN. v. 24. SOMETIMES, in the dry Old Testament catalogues of names and places, occur short astonishing sentences which lift up the soul to the Infinite, or thrill us as with celestial music, or flash upon our higher vision as when great diamonds suddenly flash upon the excavators in the subterranean galleries and gravels of Kimberley and Golconda-sentences which like spiritual diamonds shine upon you more brightly than the Kohinoor, or the great Orleans star now exhibited in the galleries of the Louvre at Paris, until you wonder that so much splendour can shine from an object comparatively so minute. Four points are to be noticed in this shortest story. 1. Enoch's earthly life was the shortest in the patriarchal series, 365 years; but he was the father of Methuselah, the longest-lived patriarch of them all. 2. Note, next, that Enoch "lived 365 years" in the very middle of the wicked antediluvian ages, and was faithful throughout that evil time. We think it a long life for a man to spend well-in one prolonged, deliberate choice of truth and righteousness-for one century. But Enoch "walked with God" for 365 years -that is, through a course of time equal to the years which have elapsed since the middle of the reign of King Henry VIII. until now. As if a man had lived purely, justly, courageously, beneficially, through three centuries and a half-through the reigns of all the Tudors (of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth), of all the Stuarts, James I.,

Charles I., the Commonwealth, Charles II., James II., William III., Anne, and then through the reigns of the four Georges, until now-all the while vigorously taking the right side, and suffering for it, in politics, in common life, and in religion and morals. What a trial of any man's character this would have been! Many of us succumb under the temptations of a single reign, and conform to triumphant iniquity, or religious formalism, or learn to be silent and prudent in testimony, even at the end of a tenth part of Enoch's lifetime. 3. This leads us to the third point in our short biography. Enoch walked with God.

Man, the lord of nature, is created and designed to live in three elements: First, in close relation with the dead material world; second, in close relation with the more or less intelligent animal and human world; and third, in close relation with the spiritual world-with God his Maker, with whom he is to walk-and through Him with the spiritual realms above Him.

But let us now come nearer home, and try to get at the meaning of these words, walking with God, as applied in this nineteenth century. As in every age of the world, the essential meaning of this phrase resolves itself into--(1) an effort of thought Godward, as the flower turns to the sun; (2) an effort of feeling after communion; (3) an effort of the will in active obedience.-REV. E. WHITE, in "The Christian World Pulpit."

THE BLIND SPOT.

Having no part dark.-LUKE xi. 36. MANY men are wholly blind concerning spiritual realities, and many believers see but imperfectly, intermittently, partially. Of these latter we now propose to speak. We notice:

I. THE FACT OF THIS PARTIAL APPRECIA TION OF DIVINE TRUTH. We all know how common it is for men to have a large appreciation of the truth of Christ, and yet to have dark parts in their understanding and heart. 1. We see this limitation of view in the system of doctrine held by various believers. At this very moment some weakness or fault of our nature may be making us blind to glorious aspects of the Christian creed. But, again: 2. We see this limitation of view in the conception of duty formed by various believers. We all know Christians who,

whilst unexceptionable in many respects, yet suffer from an unaccountable inadequacy of view in regard to specific morals and given branches of duty. Very defective is their conception of justice, of charity, of temperance, of honesty, of humanity.

II. THE CAUSES OF THIS PARTIAL ILLUMINATION. What is the reason that Christian men fail to see the whole truth, that they lapse into deplorable errors, that they overlook directions and duties as clear to others as the noon-day? Is the reason to be found in some necessary limitation of the moral sense? No man may comprehend the truth as a philosopher, but every man may discern the moral law in all its versatility of wide reaching and delicate applications. The question arises, then, How may we injure the eyes of our moral understanding? 1. It may be done by pride. It is difficult-nay, it is impossible, to see the fulness of the truth if we allow the warpings and discolourations of vanity, selfsufficiency, and prejudice. Pride easily blinds us to the truths which most deeply and immediately concern us. 2. It may be done by insincerity. "If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light." If we have no other desire than to know and to do God's will, the whole field of life and duty shall be illuminated, but any sympathy or aim which contradicts the glory of God injures our faculty of vision, and leads us into false ways. The love of money is a cause of blindness, creating strange refractions, distortions, and eclipses. 3. It may be done by disobedience. To be faithless to the truth we apprehend is to put out the eyes of our understanding.

III. THE EVIL SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS DEFECTIVE ENLIGHTENMENT. 1. It destroys peace. The perfect peace which is the privilege of God's children is made impossible by these dark places. 2. It maims character. Some little while ago I noticed a tree planted at the sunny end of a house, and there the blossoms were large and beautiful. It was a feast to the eyes, but some of the branches were trained round the corner, where they got so much less of the sun, and the difference was wonderful. The blossoms here were starved and sad, and there was the least promise of fruit; same root, same stem, but whilst one part of the tree was in the full glorious light, the other branches were in the shade. Ah! brethren, it is thus in character. 3. It implies peril. Here, where our mind is confused, our conscience hesitating, our

feeling morbid, our will inoperative, the great danger of life lies. The devil plays for the blind spot, and if there is such a defect in our spirit, sooner or later he brings us into trouble.

It is our privilege to walk in the full light, to have our whole soul instructed and luminous. There is in nature a mollusc with eleven thousand eyes, and as the shell grows the eyes will still multiply. Surely, men ought to be full of eyes, of inspirations, perceptions, sensibilities, so that they may realize truly and happily the vast bright universe of which they are the heirs.-Rev. W. L. WATKINSON, in "The Wesleya Church Record."

THE ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST.

We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens: a minister of the sanctuary.-HEB. viii. 1. 2.

A LITTLE consideration will show that we have in these words two strikingly different representations of our Lord's heavenly state. In the one He is regarded as seated "on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty." In the other He is regarded as being, notwithstanding that session, "a minister of the sanctuary"; performing priestly functions there. Reigning He serves; serving He reigns.

I. Note then, first, THE SEATED CHRIST. "We have a High Priest who "-to translate a little more closely-" has taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." "Majesty is a singular expression or paraphrasis for God. It is used once again in this letter, and seems probably to have been derived by the writer from the Rabbinical usage of his times, when, as we know, a certain misplaced, and yet most natural, reverential, or perhaps superstitious awe, made men unwilling to name the mighty Name, and inclined rather to fall back upon other forms of speech to express it. We have a High Priest who, in His Manhood, in which He is knit to us, hath taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.

Then, again, remember that whilst in such representations as this we have to do with realities set forth under the symbols of time and place, there is yet a profound sense in which that session of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God proclaims both the localization of

His present corporeal humanity and the ubiquity of His presence. For what is "the right hand of God"? What is it but the manifestation of His energies, the forthputting of His power? And where is that but everywhere, where He makes Himself known? Wheresoever Divine activity is manifested, there is Jesus Christ. And thus both the awful majestic idea of Omnipresence, and the no less majestic idea of the present localization in place of the glorified Christ, are taught us in the text.

And what is the deepest meaning of it all? What means that majestic session at "the right hand of the throne"? If we translate the symbol into colder words, it means that deep repose, which, like the Divine rest after creation, is not for recuperation of exhausted powers, but is the sign of an accomplished purpose and achieved task, a share in the sovereignty of heaven, and the wielding of the energies of Deity-rest, royalty, and power belong now to the Man sitting at the right hand of the throne of God.

II. Note, secondly, THE SERVANT CHRIST. "A minister of the sanctuary," says my text. Now the word employed here for " minister," and which I have ventured variously to translate servant, means one who discharges some public official act of service, either to God or man, and it is especially, though by no means exclusively, employed in reference to the service of a ministering priest.

The allusion in the second portion of my text is plainly enough to the ritual of the great Day of Atonement, on which the High Priest once a year went into the Holy Place; and there, in the presence of God throned between the cherubim, by the offering of the blood of the sacrifice, made atonement for the sins of the people. Thus, says our writer, that throned and sovereign Man who, in token of His accomplished work, and in the participation of Deity, sits hard by the throne of God, is yet ministering at one and the same time within the veil, and presenting the might of His own sacrifice. Our salvation is not so secured by the death upon the cross as to make needless the life beside the throne.

But beyond that, may I remind you that my text, though not in its direct bearing, yet in its implication, sugggests to us other ways in which the rest of Christ is full of activity. "I am among you as He that serveth," is true for the heavenly glory of the exalted Lord quite as much as for the lowly humiliation of

His life upon earth. The glorified Christ is a ministering Christ. In us, on us, for us He works, in all the activities of His exalted repose, as truly and more mightily than He did when here He helped the weaknesses and healed the sicknesses, and soothed the sorrows and supplied the wants, and washed the feet of a handful of poor men.

He has gone up on high, but in His rest He works. He is on the throne, but in His royalty He serves.

III. And now, in the last place, let me point to one or two of THE PRACTICAL LESSONS OF SUCH THOUGHTS AS THESE. They have a bearing on the three categories of past, present, future. 1. For the past a seal. For what can be greater, what can afford a firmer foundation for us sinful men to rest our confidence upon than the death of which the recompense was that the Man who died sits on the throne of the universe? Brethren, an ascended Christ forces us to believe in an atoning Christ. 2. Again, this double representation of my text is a strength for the present. I know of nothing that is mighty enough to draw men's desires and fix solid reasonable thought and love upon that awful future, except the belief that Christ is there. But with Christ in the heavens the heavens become the home of our hearts. See Christ, and He interprets, dwindles, and yet ennobles the world and life. 3. Lastly, such a vision gives us a prophecy for the future. There is the measure of the possibilities of human nature. Rev. A. MACLAREN, D.D. in "The Freeman."

THE OPEN WINDOWS.

His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem.-DAN. vi. 10.

THE open window assists our thoughts. As they take wing into the broad expanse, they gain freedom and enlargement; just as a bird imprisoned in a room flings itself with a thrill of song into the free air and sunshine. Sitting there, his mind could spurn the limitations of space and time. The favour or displeasure of the Persian king mattered but little to him The chamber of life with some of us may seem poor and straitened enough, but God has given us windows in it with a distant outlook upon brighter and fairer scenes. And these windows we must keep open, and sit at them, or kneel at them, forgetting the loneliness and weariness of Babylon's exile in