make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places."

We see here that the religion of JEHOVAH, Christianity, is self-existent, self-sustaining. I am speaking now, as being of the nature of Christ. It rises triumphant over the wreck of nature; kingdoms may crumble, nature decay, afflictions arise, changes come, eras wane; but it is still the same, triumphing over every obstacle and every foe. The justified believer shall live by his faith; the justified body of believers shall live by its faith. The prophet had been told this, and he found it to be so. Death is but a birth to immortality. Some one has said, life is death, and death is life. I do not say so, because Christ did not say so. "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." It is a privilege to stand around the bed of the dying; then it is particularly that we are surrounded with spiritual beings; then it is that we see the unseen; then it is our faith triumphs over the dissolution of nature, and the consolations of revelation are not small with us. The prophet triumphed over national ruin; but what is national ruin to the loss of the soul? Who can fathom the inexorable attribute of justice? It demanded an atonement for sin, and it damns the soul when that atonement is rejected. Oh, inexplicable possibility! Souls lost! souls lost! Nor is the problem less difficult to solve, why we should be saved-why any should be saved.

With these two problems at issue, with this subject for reflection, I close this chapter, only asking how it is we can be beguiled by principalities, powers, titles, regality, and the glory of the kingdoms of this

world, controversies and dissensions, while JEHOVAH, Christ, is ever standing at the door of this poor lost world, ready to reign, and to triumph in moral glory and in life everlasting.

Reader, behold Him, as we have seen Him, supreme over princes, kings, people, nations, and the whole world, and ask, why are we yet rebels? why still in darkness and ignorance of Him? The time will come when His Church will go forth with the title, "Faithful and True," when her banner will be KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS; and why not now?

"Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven" (Luke x. 20). Oh, amazing mystery, tremendous obligation! I leave it for your contemplation.

CHAPTER XXVI.

GOD IN CHRIST, IN THE NAME JEHOVAH.

"Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The JEHOVAH hath taken away thy judgments, He hath cast out thine enemy: the King of Israel, even the JEHOVAH, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more."—ZEPH. iii. 14, 15.

HE Prophet Zephaniah wrote in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned thirty-one years. There were only four kings of Judah after this; two who only reigned three months, and two who reigned eleven years, making twenty-two years and six months to the time of the total destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. But the king of Egypt dethroned the first of those four kings, and brought the land under tribute. The king of Babylon bound the second in fetters, and took him to Babylon, also the third and the fourth, with all the vessels of the house of the JEHOVAH, and put them in his temple at Babylon. The melancholy history of those four reigns, of the destruction of the holy city, of the captivity, "until the reign of the kingdom of Persia," of the deliverance from Babylon, may all be found in one short chapter (2 Chron. xxxvi.), although more

detail may be found in Jer. lii. But the question that strikes us here is, why all the good works of the good king Josiah, the regeneration of his kingdom, the reformation of the Church, the purity of Divine service, the zeal of the king and of those who worked with him, could all do nothing to mitigate the sentence of heaven that had gone forth? We are told, the king held a Passover in Jerusalem, such as had not been holden since the time of the judges.

"Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the JEHOVAH.

"And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the JEHOVAH with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.

"Notwithstanding the JEHOVAH turned not from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked Him withal.

"And the JEHOVAH said, I will remove Judah also out of My sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there" (2 Kings xxiii. 24-27).

Thirty-one years of such a reign could do nothing to mitigate the stern decree that had gone forth; and

what does this teach us? We read of the three sons of Josiah: "They did evil in the sight of the JEHOVAH, according to all that their fathers had done " (2 Kings xxiii. 32; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5–12).

And what does this teach us? Does it tell us that Josiah must have been a wicked man, or a hypocrite, because his sons, and the masses of his people, were still very wicked? Shall we be told that Hezekiah was a wicked man and a deceiver, because his son Manasseh "did evil in the sight of the JEHOVAH, like unto the abominations of the heathen?" Shall we be told that David, as a believer, was not perfectly justified and absolutely forgiven, because his son Absolom was a rebel and a usurper? or shall we say that Absolom was damned, because he coveted his father's throne? Oh, I begin to think we judge too harshly. As he hung in the oak, the Eternal Spirit may have done His work, revealed to him JEHOVAH the GOD of his father, and he may have been saved, as the thief upon the cross was saved (2 Sam. xviii. 9, 10, 15). There was space for repentance, even there. A few more rising suns must witness from the bereaved sire the sacred creed: "Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire" (2 Sam. xxiii. 5). And of Manasseh we read: "When he was in affliction"-in fetters in Babylon besought the JEHOVAH his GOD, and humbled himself greatly before the GOD of his fathers, and prayed unto Him and He was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem

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