it; when we are gone, others perform another part; when they are gone, still others perform another part; and so that which we undertake is by others carriei along to its bright consummation.-H. W. Beecher.

(c) I ask you to remember that every chind whose heart is touched by the love of Christ, every worker for God who is ready to sacrifice his time, his comfort, his luxury, his life, for Christ, whose sympathy with the advance of God's kingdom is produced by an intelligent understanding of the magnitude of the interests that are at stake; every bedridden, poverty-stricken Christian, who is daily wrestling with God in prayer; every Sunday-school teacher who identifies himself with this great enterprise, not simply by giving money (that is sometimes an easy way of putting aside a pressing claim), but by earnest thought, honest speech, and loyal feeling; every one of us who, appreciating the magnitude, sublimity, and consecration of Christian missions, does devote himself to this work, rises up for God against the evil-doers, enlists in the great battle which can only terminate when death and hell, the beast and the false prophet, are cast into the lake of fire.-H. R. Reynolds, D.D.

(d) I would stir you all up to help in this work-old men, young men, and you, my sisters, and all of you, according to your gifts and experience, help. I want to make you feel, "I cannot do much, but I can help; I cannot preach, but I can help; I cannot pray in public, but I can help; I cannot give much away, but I can help; I cannot officiate as an elder or a deacon, but I can help; I cannot shine as a bright particular star,' but I can help; I cannot stand alone to serve my Master, but I can help." There is a text from which an old Puritan once preached a very singular sermon. There were only two words in the text, and they were, "And Bartholomew." The reason he took the text was, that Bartholomew's name is never mentioned alone, but he is always spoken of as doing some good thing with somebody else. He is never the principal actor, but always second. Well, let this be your feeling, that if you cannot do all yourself, you will help to do what you can.C. H. Spurgeon.

(e) There are those in the Church who believe that God's express aim in Judaism was

Notice:

to keep the Jewish people as separate from the world as possible; to keep them, like Noah, in an ark, while He plagued and punished the world at His will. But I maintain, on the contrary, that Judaism was always genial and benignant to the stranger who would adopt its belief and accept its blessings. From the evil which was in the world God was minded to keep the Jewish people free at any cost. From idolatry and its attendant pollutions He sought to deliver them, inasmuch as idolatry in the long run inevitably leads to national decline and death. To the stranger, the foreign person or nation, who would dishonour its beliefs and trample on its blessings, Judaism was stern as fate and pitiless as death. The nations which had filled up the measure of their iniquity, whose influence must be corrupting, were ruthlessly exterminated. The Jews

were simply God's executioners here, and the same doom, they are plainly warned, awaited them if they suffered themselves to be tempted into the same sins. The nations, of whose pollutions the very land was weary, were swept off as the stubble before the flame. But this was the accident and not the essential character of the dispensation. The law here in England is merciful, though it has often to deal out terrible judgments on flagrant sins. And I am persuaded that the more carefully the spirit of the dispensation is studied, the more plainly will it appear that from Moses to Zechariah, it is a cry to the nations not to rot in their own corruption, "Come with us and we will do you good." How benignantly, in the closing verses of the eighth chapter of the book of Joshua, the "strangers which were conversant among them" are included in the benediction! How earnestly Daniel and his coadjutors sought to diffuse the blessings of Judaism among the nations which had enslaved them, and to make the Oriental despots sharers in the knowledge of the living God, which by revelation they had gained! How emphatically the prophets take up and echo the invitation with growing clearness and earnestness through the ages, until it breaks out into full utterance in the great Successor of Moses, the great Fulfiller of the Law, the Son of David, the King of Zion, “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." Judaism in all ages was a witness for God to the nations, and a means of drawing all that would be drawn unto Himself.-J. B. Brown, B.A.

I. The work already done. 1. Something was already accomplished. Several months had passed away since the arrangements mentioned in verse 7 were made; and during those

months the masons and carpenters, and the Tyrian and the Sidonian workmen, had not been idle. Considerable labour must have been expended on the site of the Temple before it was ready for laying the foundation thereof.

2. Arrangements were made for carrying on the work. "Now in the second year of their coming into the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel," &c. (vers. 8, 9). And in these arrangements there was a unanimity which augured well for the success of the enterprise. "Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of the brethren, the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem," were united in their arrangements and efforts for prosecuting the work to a successful issue.

II The worship offered. "And when the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets," &c. (vers. 10, 11). Notice:

1. The manner of their worship. "They set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord." Their worship was orderly and seemly in manner. It was conducted by those who were qualified for the work and called to it by the command of God, and in accordance with the arrangements made by king David (1 Chron. vi. 31, xvi. 4-6, 42, xxv. 1; Neh. xii. 24).

2. The character of their worship. "Praising and giving thanks unto the Lord," &c. Their worship consisted of grateful and joyful praise; because of— (1.) The goodness of God. "Praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; because He is good." (2.) The perpetuity of His goodness. "For His mercy endureth for ever." (3.) Their perpetual interest in His goodness. "His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel." Reverent and grateful praise is the highest form of worship which we present to the Father of spirits. (a).

3. The occasion of their worship. "When the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the Lord." We call attention to the occasion in this place, because it illustrated and stimulated

their thankful praise. God had vouchsafed to them unmistakable manifesta tions of His goodness and mercy, in pre serving and blessing them in Babylon, in granting them so favourable a return to their own land, and in helping them thus far with their work of restoration and renewal. Their own experiences would give force and fervour to their worship-song.

4. The spirit of their worship. This was hearty and enthusiastic. "And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid." Worship which is not hearty, or which is cold or lukewarm, does not meet with Divine acceptance. "And

III. The emotions excited. all the people shouted with a great shout," &c.

1. Great joy. "And many shouted aloud for joy." This joy probably arose from-(1.) The consideration of what was accomplished. "Those that only knew the misery of having no temple at all," says M. Henry, "praised the Lord with shouts of joy when they saw but the foundation of one laid. To them even this foundation seemed great, and was as life from the dead; to their hungry souls even this was sweet. They shouted so that the noise was heard afar off.' Note.-We ought to be thankful for the beginnings of mercy, though we have not yet come to the perfection of it; and the foundations of a temple, after long desolations, cannot but be fountains of joy to every faithful Israelite." Every step in the progress of our communion with God should be a matter of great joy to us. (2.) The anticipation of what would yet be accomplished. They looked forward with confident and exultant hope to the completion of the sacred edifice.

2. Great sorrow. "But many of the priests and Levites, and chief of the fathers, ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice." Their grief arose chiefly from memories of the past, with which the present contrasted unfavourably. (1.) Recollections of the former

Temple. They "had seen the first house," and they knew well that they could not hope to build one which would be at all comparable with it in magnificence and splendour. "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?" (Hag. ii. 3). Moreover, they might have wept because of the sins which had led to the destruction of the former Temple, and the manifold miseries which had resulted from those sins. (2.) Recollections of their own lives. The joyful acclamations of the young generation probably recalled to these "ancient men" the brightness and hopefulness and enthusiasm of their own youth, and the recollection awakened sad thoughts. The contrast between the purpose of early life and the performance of after days, and the sad disparity between the hopes of youth and the attainments of manhood, are generally sufficient to subdue and sadden the hearts of the aged. The difference between the ideal entertained at twenty years of age and the actual realised at fifty or sixty is often a mournful thing. And even if a man is able to carry out his purposes, and achieves what is commonly called "success in life," how different the objects gained appear in possession from what they appeared in anticipation, and how disappointing! Much, very much, after which men aspire and for which they labour, cannot satisfy them; and having obtained their chief aims, they may cry mournfully"Years have gone by! and life's lowlands are past,

And I stand on the hill which I sighed for, at last :

But I turn from the summit that once was my star,

To the vale of my childhood, seen dimly and

far;

Each blight on its beauty seems softened and gone,

Like a land that we love, in the light of the morn."-T. K. Hervey. (b).

3. Great joy and great sorrow mingled. "The people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people." We may regard this scene as-(1.) An illustration of our

personal experiences in this world. All our joys are tinged with sadness; all our sorrows have their mitigations, and if they do not yield rich compensations the blame will be our own. (c). (2.) An illustration of the experiences of mankind in this world. The shouts of those who rejoice and the cries of those who mourn are ever mingled in this world. The exultations of the victors and the lamentations of the vanquished rise together from earth to heaven. (3.) A feature which distinguishes the present from the future state. These mingled experiences belong only to this present life and world. hell no one "shouts aloud for joy." And in heaven "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no` more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (d).

ILLUSTRATIONS.

In

(a) Praise is the very highest mood and exercise of the religious soul; it is the expression towards God of the holiest emotions of which we are capable-reverence, obligation, gratitude, love, adoration. Whenever these are uplifted to God in admiration and homage, there is the worship of praise-the highest and most perfect expression of all that is purest and noblest in our religious nature. As contrasted with the worship of prayer, the worship of praise is manifestly transcendent. Prayer is the pleading of our human indigence and helplessness; praise is the laudation of Divine excellency and sufficiency. Prayer supplicates the good that God may have to bestow; praise is the adoration of the good that there is in God Himself. When we pray we are urged by necessities, fears, and sorrows,-it is the cry of our troubled helplessness, often of our pain or our terror; we are impelled by feelings of unworthiness, memories of sin, yearnings for forgiveness and renewal. Praise brings, not a cry, but a song,-it does not ask, it proffers,it lifts, not its hands, but its heart,-it is the voice, not of our woe, but of our love, not of beseeching, but of blessing. It comes before God not clothed in sackcloth, but with its "singing robes" about it, not wailing litanies, but shouting hosannas. Prayer expresses only our lower religious moods of necessity and sorrow; praise expresses our higher religious moods of satisfaction and joy. Prayer asks God to come down to us; praise assays to go up to God. The soul that prays falls prostrate with its face to the ground, often being in an agony; the soul that praises stands with uplifted brow and transfigured countenance ready to soar away to heaven. Moreover, the instinct

of praise is deeper in the religious heart than that of prayer; song in the human soul is earlier, and will be later, than supplication. Prayer is the accident of our present sinful necessity; praise is the essence of all religious life and joy. The birthplace and home of prayer is on earth. The birthplace and home of praise is in heaven."-H. Allon, D.D.

(b) I used to think a slight illness was a luxurious thing; . . it is different in the latter stages; the old postchaise gets more shattered at every turn, windows will not pull up, doors refuse to open, or, being open, will not shut again. There is some new subject of complaint every moment; your sickness comes thicker and thicker, your sympathising friends fewer and fewer. The recollection of youth, health, and uninterrupted powers of activity, neither improved nor enjoyed, is a poor strain of comfort. Death has closed the long dark avenue upon loves and friendships; and I look at them as through the grated doors of a burial place filled with monuments of those who were once dear to me, with no insincere wish that it may open for me at no distant period, provided such be the will of God. I shall never see the threescore and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount; no help for it, and no matter either.-Sir Walter Scott.

(c)

There is no joy unmixed with grief

Each garden has more weeds than flowers-
Care rides upon the winged hours,
And doubt for ever haunts belief.

We stop to pluck some beauteous flower,
And cold precaution idly scorn,

To find some sharp and hidden thorn
Exacts a forfeit for the dower.

There have been tears of wormwood shed,
For every pleasure life can bring;

The joys of earth are flowers that spring From out the ashes of the dead-E. H. Dewart.

In the bitterest grief, in the sharpest period of agony, in the dullest, most hopeless prospect, there is a source of joy which none but the spirit of Jesus can find or use. St. Paul calls it rejoicing in the Lord. Then we go

out of ourselves, as it were, and leave the last trial like a cloak that is thrown off. We pass from the sharpest and most disappointing trouble into the presence of the Spirit of the Lord. We move in by a mental flash, as it were, and there see the source of life unshaken, undimmed, steady, like the shining of the moon above a battlefield; calm and quiet, as the sunlight amid the shrieks and tumult of a pillaged town.-Harry Jones, M.A.

There is great joy of prosperity, of love, of victory, but there is a joy that belongs to the experience of suffering and sorrow which is more divine and exquisite than any joy the heart ever knows outside of trouble. When a soul is afflicted till it is driven into the very pavilion of God, till Christ, as it were, wraps His arms about it and says, "Rest here till the storm be overpast," that soul experiences an exquisiteness of joy which only those who have felt it can understand.-H. W. Beecher.

Then happy those, since each must drain
His share of pleasure, share of pain;
Then happy those, beloved of Heaven,
To whom the mingled cup is given,
Whose lenient sorrows find relief,
Whose joys are chastened by their grief.
-Sir W. Scott.

(d) This is a world of weeping-a vale of tears. Who is there that has not wept over the grave of a friend; over his own losses and cares; over his disappointments, over the treatment he has received from others; over his sins; over the follies, vices, and woes of his fellow-men? And what a change would it make in our world if it could be said that henceforward not another tear would be shed; not a head would ever be bowed again in grief Yet this is to be the condition of heaven. In that world there is to be no pain, no disappointment, no bereavement. No friend is to lie in dreadful agony on a sick-bed, no grave is to be opened to receive a parent, a wife, a child; no gloomy prospect of death is to draw tears of sorrow from the eyes. To that blessed world, when our eyes run down with tears, are we permitted to look forward; and the prospect of such a world should contribute to wipe away our tears here for all our sorrows will soon be over.-A. Barnes, D.D.

That an exuberance of joy and of sorrow should be excited at once by the same event, is undoubtedly a curious fact; and it will be profitable to show you

I. What there was at that time to call forth such strong and widely-different emotions. The Jews, after their return from Babylon, had just laid the

foundation of the second Temple, and this was

1. To some an occasion of exalted joy. It was not the mere circumstance that a magnificent building was about to be raised, but the thought of the use to which that building was to be appropriated, that proved to them a source of joy. The erection of it was

justly regarded by them as a restoration of God's favour to them after the heavy judgments which He had inflicted on them during their captivity in Babylon. This event opened to them a prospect of again worshipping Jehovah according to all the forms prescribed to them by the Mosaic ritual. Nor could they fail to view it as tending to advance the honour of their God; in which view pre-eminently it must of necessity fill them with most exalted joy. With such views of the event before them the people could not but shout for joy; and "if they had been silent, the very stones would have cried out against them."

2. To others an occasion of the deepest sorrow. The persons who manifested such pungent grief were "the priests, and Levites, and the chief of the fathers who were ancient men, that had seen the former Temple." They wept because they well knew how infinitely this structure must fall below the former in point of magnificence. Of necessity it must want many things which constituted the glory of that edifice, and could never be replaced. The Shechinah, the bright cloud, the emblem of the Deity Himself, was for ever removed. The ark was lost, and the copy of the law which had been preserved in it. The Urim and Thummim too, by which God had been wont to communicate to His people the knowledge of His will, was irrecoverably gone; and the fire which had descended from heaven was extinct, so that they must henceforth use in all their sacrifices nothing but common fire. And what but their sins had brought upon them all these calamities? Would it have been right, then, in these persons to lose all recollection of their former mercies, and of the sins through which they had been bereaved of them; and to be so transported with their present blessings as not to bewail their former iniquities? No! I think that the mixture of feeling was precisely such as the occasion called for.

the whole nation is engaged in endea vours to erect a spiritual temple to Him throughout the world. Never was there a period since the apostolic age, when the exertions were so general, so diversified, so diffusive. And is this no ground of joy? Is there no reason to rejoice in what, we trust, is going on amongst us? If the Gospel be "glad tidings of great joy unto all people," is it no cause for joy that it is brought to our ears; and that it is effectual amongst us to convert men to God? Are there not amongst you some at least who have been "turned from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God"? Surely we have reason to rejoice.

2. Yet is there amongst us abundant occasion for grief also. If we suppose the Apostle Paul, who witnessed the state of God's Church in its primitive and purest age, to come down in the midst of us, what would be his feelings at the present hour? Would his joy be unmixed with sorrow? Would he be satisfied with what he saw? It was with "weeping" that St. Paul contemplated many of the Philippian converts; and for many of the Galatian Church he "agonised as in the pangs of childbirth till Christ should be more perfectly formed in them." And was this from a want of charity, or from a contempt of piety in its lower stages of existence? No; but from love, and from a desire that God should be honoured to the uttermost wherever His Gospel came, and wherever its blessings were experienced in the soul.

1. There is at this time great occasion for joy. We are not, indeed, constructing a material temple for the Lord; but

much an unqualified effusion of joy that is pleasing to the Most High, as that which is moderated with shame, and tempered with contrition.-Charles Simeon, M.A.