A Goodly Heritage

 Be careful to distinguish between mercy and piety— [It is possible for persons to be of a merciful disposition, whilst they are utter strangers to real piety. Natural constitution has made some more tender than others; and education has formed some to better habits. But it often happens, that persons of benevolent minds imagine all religion to consist in acts of kindness to their fellow-creatures. They found this notion even on the word of God itself: but they sadly misinterpret that passage, and entirely overlook the duty of "walking humbly with God." But this is no less necessary than acts of justice and of mercy: yea, without it all our virtues will be no better than splendid sins d ] 2. Be careful at the same time to combine mercy with piety— [Piety cannot exist without mercy. "The wisdom that is from above is full of mercy and good fruits0." "The tree that bringer forth not good fruit is fit only to be hewn down and cast into the fire." It is by &quo

  We are in the infancy of our being; we have but just opened our eyes upon this wonderful universe, which in its structure demanded all the wisdom, and goodness, and power of an infinite God! Very few of us have lived through the period of seventy revolving suns; a majority of us not fifty; many not twenty. We have but just learned to speak, to handle things, to talk, to walk. But yesterday we were at our mother's breasts. We knew not anything. And now, forsooth, we wonder that we do not know all about God, and these worlds, and the moral government of the Most High. We sit in judgment on what our Maker has told us. We are sullen and silent; we repress our gratitude; we throw back His Bible in His face; we have no songs and no thanksgivings, because we are not told all about this earth, and these skies, about heaven and about hell, and about the God that made, and that rules over all! ( A. Battles, D. D. )

  There are five stages in the light of God. The first is simple leading — the guiding of a child. Then comes the height of ecstasy — the holy hill; I stand above the world and laugh at the cares of time. By and by comes a third stage; I descend from the hill to the tabernacles. Ecstasy subsides into peace; the height sinks into the home; love on the wing becomes love in the nest. After this comes the light of sacrifice — "Then shall I go unto the altar of God." "Then," not before. Peace alone can sacrifice for others. I cannot sacrifice when I am being led; I am thinking too much about my own steps. I cannot sacrifice when I am in ecstasy; I am too intent on my own joy. But when I get peace, I go out from myself altogether; I go to the altar. At last the climax comes. The altar itself becomes "my exceeding joy" — the rapture of forgetting self in the care of another. 2.  It is a spiral stair, but it is golden. Sometimes it seems to make no progress. There

  1.  All its attendant circumstances add weight to this remarkable utterance. It is the statement of the hidden reasons for Jewish wilfulness. There was a deep moral incapacity which made Christ's words and works powerless. 2.  That which made belief powerless in the Jews makes it powerless in us. 3.  In a very few touches He shows the real character of this evil — the allowing man's estimate to become the measure of what is to be honoured. I.  WHAT THIS DANGER IS THE EFFECT OF WHICH IS TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO SAVINGLY RECEIVE THE TRUTH. 1.  Pride. Take,  e.g. , a man of high intellectual power. Poor as it is held by God's standard, yet when judged according to the low measures many propose to themselves, the man has a right to be proud. Accordingly, he becomes a law unto himself and looks on others with a calm sense of superiority. By degrees he has a secret pleasure in going against the common forms of belief. His greater acuteness shows him errors in creeds, and

  E. J. Hardy, M. A. Neither in the Bible, nor in any other book, is there a more beautiful motto than this. There could not be a more honourable description, and it is one that is deserved by many warriors in the battle of life. That man hates the profession or business by which he earns his living. He has drifted into it or been forced into it by circumstances, but now he finds that it is uncongenial and unsuited to him. He is the round man in the square hole, and is therefore faint and weary with his life's work, but he deserves the "well done, good and faithful servant," because he does his best. A business is sometimes so laborious and monotonous that it is almost unbearable. That half of the world which does not know how the other half lives can scarcely realise the faintness and weariness of the dim millions who work themselves to death in order to live honestly. Why does that woman, who might earn three pounds a week by a life of sin, make shirts for six shillings

  "Faint, yet pursuing." Why are believers faint? They are so because of sin. Even the Christian is still considerably under its power. And often, through getting a clear view of his own corruption, he becomes desponding. He fears that the day of complete deliverance from sinning and from sin will never come. Then, springing from this great root of bitterness, many other things arise to produce faintness. Suffering is one of them. For religion does not free from suffering. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." And often, under his troubles, the believer gets sorely dispirited. His patience gives way; his fortitude fails; he loses heart. Another saddening thing is bereavement. Gideon's heart was sore because of the death of his brothers at Tabor, and many of his fellow Israelites were similarly distressed. The mourners we have always with us. Another cause of depression is worldly loss. The Israelites suffered much in this way. Man does not live by bread a

  The great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, "Who daily loadeth us with benefits," is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, "Who daily beareth our burdens," we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no force or addition in order to bring it out. I.  THE REMARKABLE AND ELOQUENT BLENDING OF MAJESTY AND CONDESCENSION. What a thought that is — a God that carries men's loads! People talk much rubbish about the "stern Old Testament Deity": is there anything sweeter, greater, more heart-compelling and heart-softening, than such a thought as this? How all the majesty bows itself and declares itself to be enlisted on our side when we think that "He that sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers," is the God that "daily beareth

  On the old Glasgow coat-of-arms were the words — "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word and the praising of His name." That has been shortened now into "Let Glasgow flourish" — but the original was as I have said. The fact that that could be taken as the motto of one of the prominent cities of Scotland is a sign of the deep and far-reaching influence which preaching exerted in past days. I.  WHAT PREACHING HAS DONE IN THE PAST. Both in our own and in other lands some of the mightiest triumphs that have ever been achieved were brought about by the preaching of the Word. Since the days of Elijah downward, it has played an important part in moulding the destinies of the world. Jonah, an old preacher of righteousness, turned a mighty city unto God by means of his summons to repentance. In the Christian Church we can mark the influence of preaching making itself directly felt in the early ages. We have the preaching of Jesus, so original, so full of beauty,

Psalm 84:5, 6 R. Tuck In these verses there is a blending of the real and the figurative; the  actual  journey towards Zion is represented as accompanied with ideal blessings of peace and refreshment. The poet has thought of the blessedness of those who dwell constantly in God's house. Now he thinks of the blessedness of those who are permitted to go there, and to tarry there for a while. And this leads him to recall what happy times he had known, even in the journeys to Jerusalem. Perowne says of the pilgrims to Zion, "Every spot of the familiar read, every station at which they have rested, lives in their heart. The path may be dry and dusty, through a lonely and sorrowful valley, but nevertheless they love it. The pilgrim band, rich in hope, forget the trials and difficulties of the way; hope changes the rugged and stony waste into living fountains." The valley of Baca was the valley which led up from Jordan toward Jerusalem, and whose famous balsam trees wept balms. T

  THE DESIRE OF HEART AND FLESH — THE LIVING GOD.  Sibbes  well observes that the desires of the heart are the best proofs of saintship; and if a man wishes to know whether he is really a saint or no, he can very soon find out by putting his finger upon the pulse of his desires, for those are things that never can be counterfeit. You may counterfeit words; you may counterfeit actions; but you cannot counterfeit desires. 1.  Every saint has within his breast that which is actually born of God, and therefore it cries out after its own Father. 2.  Every believer has the Spirit of God dwelling within him, and if he has the Spirit of God dwelling within him, it is only natural that he should desire God. 3.  The experience of earth often makes you long more for God. After you have discovered the hollowness, the disappointing nature of the world. II.  THE INTENSITY OF THIS DESIRE. 1.  It is an intensity that drowns all other desires "Crieth out for God." I passed a little child the

  The soul's want of God A. A. Livermore. The chief want of man is God. The soul is for God, and God for the soul. What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 1.  The first step in this answer to the deepest want of human nature is the conviction that God is — that God lives. Heart and flesh cry; where is the response? Joyful is the moment in the soul's experience when the reality of God's being comes over us with its full power. The first need of the soul is to feel that God is real — the great reality and essence of all things. And if sin had not shut up and darkened the windows of our being, this gracious light would flow in on every side. 2.  Then we are to feel that He is Present and Living. The belief of not a few seems to be in a past God, a deceased, departed Deity, and the world as a huge skeleton out of which all the soul has gone, not an abode for the indwelling Power, but the ruins of His former stately palace. But He has not made the world and then

  THE HEART OF RELIGION ALWAYS HAS BEEN, AND IS, TRUST IN GOD. The bond that underlies all the blessedness of human society, the thing that makes the sweetness of the sweetest ties that can knit men together, the secret of all the loves of husband and wife, friend and friend, parent and child, is simple confidence. And the more utter the confidence the more tranquilly blessed is the union and the life that flow from it. Transfer this, then — which is the bond of perfectness between man and man — to our relation to God, and you get to the very heart of the mystery. Not by externalisms of any kind, not by the clear dry light of the understanding, but by the outgoing of the heart's confidence to God, do we come within the clasp of His arms and become recipients of His grace. Trust knits to the unseen, and trust alone. And trust is blessed, because the very attitude of confident dependence takes the strain off a man. To feel that I am leaning hard upon a firm prop, to devolve responsib