in antagonism, and under moral excitement the conflict is fierce and terrible. What the conscience approves the heart condemns, and the reverse. What pleases one part of the nature, so long as each part is in conflict, cannot please the other. Because the sinner is thus dissatisfied with himself, he is dissatisfied with everything else. The self-dissatisfied man must be a fault-finder; he cannot be otherwise. He is a cynic in the universe.

Secondly: Because of the self-gratifying impulse in the sinner's heart. The sinner is always bent on his own gratification. His own pleasure is everything to him. This is the centre point of his soul. A true ministry, whether severe or mild, strikes directly against this. It denounces selfishness in all its forms, and demands a crucifixion of "the old man, with all its corruptions and lusts." The ministry of John and the ministry of Christ agree in this. Sinai and Calvary blend their voices in the command to deny ourselves. The sinner, therefore, cannot be pleased with it.

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Thirdly Because of the sin-exonerating tendency in the sinner's heart. In order to reconcile conscience to the depraved likings and gratifications of the heart, the sinner's mind is ever disposed to seek excuses. The intellect is ever in search of palliations. It is always, therefore, ready to find fault with the dispensations of God, in order to justify to the conscience its wicked ways. What son in the family is most ready to find fault with the parent? It is the most undutiful; because fault in his father would help him to reconcile himself to his own disobedient life. What servant is most ready to find fault with his master? It is the most indolent and worthless. What pupil is most ready to find fault with his teacher? It is the most indocile. For this reason the most wicked spirits are the most disposed to find fault with God.

III. THAT WHILST THERE IS A CLASS WHO WILL THUS FIND FAULT WITH GOD'S TRUTH UNDER EVERY FORM IN WHICH IT IS PRESENTED, THERE ARE OTHERS WHO HEARTILY

APPROVE OF IT IN ALL ITS ASPECTS.

"But wisdom is justified of her children." This proposition will show its truthfulness in the light of the following facts, which are implied in the expression.

First That this varied manifestation of truth to man is ascribable to the highest WISDOM. It is that Wisdom which, in the natural world, has appointed darkness and light, cold and heat, attraction and repulsion; that in the spiritual has arrayed these varied phases and ministries of truth. The diversity is neither accident nor mistake, but the arrangement of wisdom ;-indeed, the "manifold wisdom of God" in the dispensations of biblical truth.

Secondly: That this WISDOM has a certain class of men on earth who are to be regarded as its offspring. "Her children." Who are the children of this heavenly Wisdom? They are evidently persons whom our Saviour regarded as being in contrast with those perverse and fault-finding persons who rejected truth under all its forms, and whom He likens to fastidious children playing in the market-place. The children of "wisdom" are those who have been regenerated by the doctrines which wisdom thus dispenses. They see things in the light in which wisdom points them out, and they pursue a course of life agreeable to that which wisdom directs. They are the children of wisdom,—having a spirit of reverence and obedience for that heavenly wisdom displayed everywhere in the Bible.

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Thirdly That these children of WISDOM thoroughly approve of the truth in whatever form it comes. "Wisdom is justified of her children." The dark and bright sides are both approved by the children. They have experienced the worth of both sides. When they were indifferent and ungodly even as others, it was the terrible aspects of truth that broke their guilty slumbers, and alarmed them with their danger. Afterwards, when through fear of hell they were about sinking into despair, it was the mild and loving displays of truth that came to their relief. And even subsequently the two sides are useful to keep their spirits

in a proper balance between extreme doubt and extreme confidence. They say, "Even so, Father," under all manifestations. Whether the Great One speaks to them in earthquakes or in the whispering breeze, from behind the cloud of adversity or in the sunshine of prosperity, from Sinai or Calvary, all is right. Wisdom is ever "justified of her children.”

Germs of Thought.

SUBJECT:-God's Way Unsearchable.

"Thy way, O Lord, is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known."-Psa. lxxvii. 19.

Analysis of Homily the Two Hundred and Thirty-eighth.

LIFE to all, more or less, is a conflict; and man's mission is to bear, as well as to act, well. This is especially true of those who, taught of God, connect every event in their history with that moral system which Heaven has established to educate man for eternity. To them God is alike in the sunshine and cloud. The same Hand, unseen, presents the bitter cup, and spreads the welcome repast. To-day is the seed time for to-morrow ;-the present is shaping the future ; and earth, with its many "brakes, which virtue must go through," is the scene of preparation for "the new earth, in which the just shall dwell.”

Faith, then, is indispensable; and even with it the good man is at times, from the dark clouds which hang over his head, led to exclaim, "Where is God my Maker?" Few men have more forcibly realized this state than the Psalmist did, who, musing on the mysteries of Divine Providence,

gave expression to the sublime language,-"Thy way, O Lord, is in the sea," &c.

"In

I. THE DOINGS OF GOD EMBRACE A WIDE RANGE. the sea." We are apt to regard things as we view them in our own individual and contracted world. Each one has his own world, in which he lives. It may be larger or smaller than that of his neighbour, as his mind may be larger or smaller, but it is, after all, a little world, and almost infinitely small compared with the world in which he dwells. What, however, is this dwelling-place of man compared with that moral universe which is under the government of God, and for the harmony and peace of which the smallest incidents are made subservient to His will, though they may appear to us as insignificant as the fall of a leaf or the drooping of a flower? "Thy way, O Lord, is in the sea." The sea is one, though the atoms which compose it are separate and distinct. One atom affects all atoms, though to the naked eye this is not discernible. We see now only "in part," and that, too, within a most limited range. Science, however, has established the fact, that you cannot disturb the smallest part of the watery or atmospheric world without disturbing the whole of it. So in the moral world all events, however small, have a bearing on events great and distant. God governs the life of one man in connexion with all men. What happens to-day is only one link in the chain, which stretches through ages, and is connected with events, it may be, of distant lands. God does not carry out his great plans in the present, disconnected from the past or future. The long chain of events cognizable by man has already extended through six thousand years, and may, for aught we know, extend through a duration as long in the future. To the Infinite Mind the past and the future are alike present; and in His government of the children of men, He embraces all who have lived, all who do live, and all who shall live; and in connexion, too, with unnumbered worlds, tenanted, doubtless,

by intelligent and happy beings. How vast, then, the multitude of souls over whom He holds dominion!

How can the finite grasp the plans of Him who is infinite in counsel ? As when standing on the lone beach, or on the high cliff, we cannot comprise in our view the outstretched ocean which rolls at our feet, so are we unable, whatever be our spiritual elevation, to encompass the range of God's doings in the sphere of man's probation.

II. THE TRACES OF GOD'S DOINGS ARE NOT CONSECUTIVELY SEEN. You have watched, it may be, a vessel with her unfurled sails leaving the harbour. As the breezes bore her onward, you have seen the waters cleaved by her gliding keel; but no sooner were they cleaved than they closed again. After a while no traces were left as to the course she took. The impulse which the outsailing vessel had imparted to the quiet waters, spreading many a rippling wave, was no longer present, and all was as unruffled again as a summer's lake. Mark the words of our text :-"His footsteps are not known." We see the finger-mark ofttimes of God. We can often say, respecting some unlooked-for event, This is the Lord's doings; God has been here; but we know not the way He has gone ;—we cannot discern the traces of his next doings. The waters of life's ocean have been suddenly cleft, but they have closed again.

We are prone to imagine that the Almighty occasionally comes forth to do a strange work in the earth, and that at other times He leaves events to occur according to the operation of natural laws. It is true that all things proceed on a system; that God works by laws which He has established, though many of these laws are never, and can never, be recognised by us. But what is system, what are laws, but the mere relation of one thing to another, or one thing following another, and which is merely nothing without the presence of his power, who worketh all according to the good pleasure of His will?

There is an uninterrupted connexion in all God's doings