of the power of peace. No war, no national disaster, interrupted the even flow of the current of his days. No loss of a child, like David's, pouring cold desolation into his soulno pestilences nor famines. Prosperity and riches, and the internal development of the nation's life, that was the reign. of Solomon. And yet, brethren, with all this, was Solomon happy? Has God no arrows winged in heaven for the heart, except those which come in the shape of outward calamity? Is there no way that God has of making the heart gray and old before its time, without sending bereavement, or loss, or sickness? Has the Eternal Justice no mode of withering and drying up the inner springs of happiness, while all is green, and wild, and fresh outwardly? We look to the history of Solomon for the answer.

The first way in which his aberration from God treasured up for him chastisement, was by that weariness of existence which breathes through the whole book of Ecclesiastes. That book bears internal evidence of having been written after repentance and victory. It is the experience of a career of pleasure; and the tone which vibrates through the whole is disgust with the world, and mankind, and life, and self. I hold that book to be inspired. God put it into the heart of Solomon to make that experience public. But, my brethren, by "inspired," I do not mean that all the feelings to which that book gives utterance are right or holy feelings. St. John could not have written that book. St. John, who had lived in the atmosphere of love, looking on this world as God looks on it-calmly, with the deep peace of heaven in his soul, at peace with himself, and at peace with man-could never have penned the book of Ecclesiastes. To have written the book of Ecclesiastes a man must have been qualified in a peculiar way. He must have been a man of intense feeling--large in heart, as the Bible calls it. He must have been a man who had drunk deep of unlawful pleasure. He must have been a man in the upper ranks of society, with plenty of leisure and plenty of time to brood on self. Therefore, in saying it is an inspired book, I mean the inspired account of the workings of a guilty, erring, and yet, at last, conquering spirit. It is not written as a wise and calm Christian would write, but as a heart would write which was fevered with disappointment, jaded with passionate attempts in the pursuit of blessedness, and forced to God as the last resource.

My younger brethren, that saddest book in all the Bible stands before you as the beacon and the warning from a God who loves you, and would spare you bitterness if He could.

Follow inclination now, put no restraint on feeling-say that there is time enough to be religious by-and-by-forget that now is the time to take Christ's yoke upon you, and learn gradually and peacefully that serene control of heart which must be learnt at last by a painful wrench-forget all that, and say that you trust in God's love and mercy to bring all right, and then that book of Ecclesiastes is your history. The penalty that you pay for a youth of pleasure is, if you have any thing good in you, an old age of weariness and remorseful dissatisfaction.

In

Another part of Solomon's chastisement was doubt. Once more turn to the book of Ecclesiastes. "All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean n; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not." this, brethren, you will observe the querulous complaint of a man who has ceased to feel that God is the Ruler of this world. A blind chance, or a dark destiny, seems to rule all earthly things. And that is the penalty of leaving God's narrow path for sin's wider and more flowery one. You lose your way; you get perplexed; doubt takes possession of your soul. And, my Christian brethren, if I speak to any such, you know that there is no suffering more severe than doubt. There is a loss of aim, and you know not what you have to live for. Life has lost its meaning and its infinite significance. There is a hollowness at the heart of your existence. There is a feeling of weakness, and a discontented loss of self-respect. God has hidden His face from you because you have been trying to do without Him or to serve Him with a divided heart.

man."

But now, lastly, we have to remark, that the love of God brought Solomon through all this to spiritual manhood. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of In this, brethren, we have the evidence of his victory. Doubt, and imprisonment, and worldliness have passed away, and clear activity, belief, freedom, have taken their place. It was a terrible discipline, but God had made that discipline successful. Solomon struggled manfully to the end. The details of his life were dark, but the life itself was earnest; and after many a fall, repentance, with unconquerable purpose, began afresh. And so he struggled on, often baffled, often down, but never finally subdued; and still with tears and indomitable trust, returning to the conflict again. And so when we come to the end of his last earthly work, we find the sour smoke, which had so long been smouldering in his

heart and choking his existence, changed into bright, clear flame. He has found the secret out at last, and it has filled his whole soul with blessedness. God is man's happiness. "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."

And now, brethren, let us come to the meaning and the personal application of all this. There is a way-let us not shrink from saying it-there is a way in which sin may be made to minister to holiness. "To whomsoever much is forgiven the same loveth much." There was an everlasting truth in what our Messiah said to the moral Pharisees: "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." Now these are Christ's words; and we will not fear to boldly state the same truth, though it be liable to much misinterpretation. Past sin, brethren, may be made the stepping-stone to heaven. Let a man abuse that if he will by saying, "Then it is best to sin." A man may make the doctrine absurd, even shocking, by that inference, but it is true for all that. "All things work together for good to them that love God." All things, even sin. God can take even your sin, and make it work to your soul's sanctification. He can let you down into such an abyss of self-loathing and disgust, such life-weariness, and doubt, and misery, and disappointment, that if He ever raises you again by the invigorating experience of the love of Christ, you will rise stronger from your very fall, and in a manner secured against apostasy again. Solomon, king of Israel, sinned, and, by the strange power of the cross of Christ, that sin gave him deeper knowledge of himself, deeper insight into the mystery of human life, more marvellous power of touching the souls of his brother-men, than if he had not sinned. But forget not this, if ever a great sinner becomes a great saint, it will be through agonies which none but those who have sinned know.

Brethren, I speak to those among you who know something about what the world is worth, who have tasted its fruits, and found them like the Dead Sea apples-hollowness and ashes. By those foretastes of coming misery which God has already given you, those lonely feelings of utter wretchedness and disappointment when you have returned home palled and satiated from the gaudy entertainment, and the truth has pressed itself icy cold upon your heart, "Vanity of vanities"-is this worth living for? By all that, be warned. Be true to your convictions. Be honest with yourselves. Be manly in working out your doubts, as Solomon was. Greatness, goodness, blessedness, lie not in

the life that you are leading now. They lie in quite a different path: they lie in a life hid with Christ in God. Before God is compelled to write that upon your heart in disgust and disappointment, learn "what is that good for the sons of men which they should do" all the days of their life under the heaven. Learn from the very greatness of your souls, which have a capacity for infinite agony, that you are in this world for a grander destiny than that of frittering away life in uselessness.

Lastly, let us learn from this subject the covenant love of God. There is such a thing as love which rebellion can not weary, which ingratitude can not cool. It is the love

of God to those whom He has redeemed in Christ. "Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin? and yet there was no king like him who was beloved of his God." Let that, my Christian brethren, be to us a truth not to teach carelessness, but thankfulness. Oh! trembling believer in Christ, are you looking into the dark future and fearing, not knowing what God will be to you at the last? Remember, Christ "having loved His own who are in the world loved them to to the end." Your salvation is in the hands of Christ; the

everlasting arms are beneath you. The rock on which your salvation is built is love, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against you.

XVII.

JOSEPH'S FORGIVENESS OF HIS BRETHREN.

"And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now, therefore, fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them."-Gen. 1. 15-21.

CHRISTIANITY is a revelation of the love of God—a demand of our love by God based thereon. Christianity is a revelation of Divine forgiveness-a requirement thereupon that we should forgive each other.

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love one

"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John xiii. 34); "Ye call me Master and Lord and ye say well, for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you" (John xiii. 13-15); "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. vi. 12); "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (1 John iv. 11); "Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephes. iv. 32).

The

Now these duties of love, forgiveness, service, are called 66 new commandments.” But we should greatly mistake if we suppose that they are new in this sense, that they were created by the Gospel, and did not exist before. The Gospel did not make God love us; it only revealed His love. Gospel did not make it our duty to forgive and love; it only revealed the eternal order of things, to transgress which is our misery. These belong to the eternal order and idea of our humanity. We are not planted by Christ in a new ar bitrary state of human relationships, but redeemed into the state to which we were created.

So St. John says, "I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth "-old, because of the eternal order of love; new, because shown in the light of the love of Christ. Christianity is the true life-the right humanity.

Now the proof of this is, that ages before Christ appeared, they who gave themselves up to God to be led instead of to their own hearts, did actually reduce to practice, and manifested in their lives, those very principles which, as principles, were only revealed by Christ.

Here, for instance, three thousand years before Christ, Joseph, a Hebrew slave, taught by life's vicissitudes, educated by God, acts out practical Christianity-one of its deepest and most difficult lessons. There is nothing in the New Testament more childlike than this forgiveness of his brethren. Some perhaps may be shocked at dwelling on this thought: it seems to them to derogate from Christ. This is as if they thought that they honored Christ by believing that until He came no truth was known-that He created truth. These persons tremble at every instance of a noble or pure life