II.ABOVE THE PEOPLE, according to spirit and character.

III.FOR THE PEOPLE, in word and in deed.

IV.AGAINST THE PEOPLE, where the law of God was concerned.

(K. Gerok.)

2. The fire in which He forges them.

3. The tests by which He proves them.

4. The deeds which He performs by them.

(K. Gerok.)

1. Profound knowledge and living experience of the heart.

2. Clear insight into the times.

3. Warm heart for the people.

4. Heroic courage in the face of the world.

5. Childlike humility before God and His Word.

(K. Gerok.)

2. By human instruction (ver. 22), and Divine illumination (ver. 30).

3. By the experience of the world (vers. 22-24), and quiet intercourse with our own heart (ver. 29).

4. By deep humiliations (vers. 27, 28), and high proofs of favours (vers. 32-34). Observe similar experiences in Joseph, David, Elijah, Paul, Luther, etc.

(K. Gerok.)

1. Both accredited by God —(1) By a wonderful deliverance in infancy (Pharaoh and Herod).(2) By their silent ripening for their great mission (Moses at court and in the wilderness; Christ in the cottage and the wilderness).(3) By their solemn call to office (Moses at Horeb, Christ at Jordan).(4) By the rich manifestation of the Spirit and of power (Moses "mighty in words and deeds," Jesus "mighty in deeds and words").(5) By the deliverances wrought out by them.(6) By the judgments inflicted on an ungrateful and disobedient people.

2. Both rejected by their nation.

(1)Their Divine mission was apprehended (ver. 27).

(2)Their pure intention calumniated (ver. 28).

(3)The freedom offered to the despised (ver. 39).

(4)Their memory blotted out by an ungrateful generation (ver. 40).

II. WHEREIN CHRIST IS SUPERIOR TO MOSES.

1. Moses redeems from bodily, Christ from spiritual bondage.

2. Moses redeems Israel, Christ mankind.

3. Moses effects a temporal, Christ an eternal salvation.

4. Moses acts as servant, Christ as Lord.

(K. Gerok.)

( Josephus.)

(Dr. Wogan.)

(Lord Greville.)

(K. Gerok.)

1. He was instructed by strangers. Pharaoh's daughter had him taught Egyptian learning at her own expense, as children have to be taught in schools by strangers. Instruction by parents not always possible, because of their ignorance, labour, etc.(1) God appointed a princess, as if to honour the teacher's office. People say any one will do; but if your watch-spring is broken, do you take it to a blacksmith? Can a common mind guide that delicate, ethereal thing, a child's soul? We want first-rate men. Miserable economy in parents! Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. You weigh your child's mind against copper.(2) Consider the influence of teachers. Three thousand five hundred years an Egyptian princess took a poor man's child and taught him. The result of that education is not over yet. Compare her influence with Pharaoh's. To rule in a single heart is greater than the proudest sway. The teacher is greater than the king. Here is a man perched on high, dressed in a little brief authority, with fingers pointing: That is he! And here is Christ with little children round Him.

2. He was under home influences. By a merciful arrangement Moses' early years were entirely superintended by Pharaoh's daughter. His mother nursed him. The princess gave him instruction, his mother education. People think education reading, writing, etc.; loading the memory with information and making preparation for a profession; but that is only the wisdom of Egypt. We must distinguish between education and instruction. The former is to unfold nature; to strengthen good and conquer evil; to give self-help; to make a man. The teacher cannot give this. You want influence bearing on the heart. Now influence is given at home. God gives the father to impart strength of will, and the mother tenderness of affection. Moses owed his lawgiving, politics, etc., to the princess; his religion to Jochebed. Jochebed that woman of poverty and toil, her hands black with brick-making; Jochebed that woman of faith, ennobled to defy the might of Egypt. Mothers, know your work! God has given you the destinies of the world. Our schools fail for the want of mothers and home influences.

3. He was disciplined by circumstances. Pharaoh's daughter had done something, and Moses' mother something, but there were other things needed beyond man's control.(1) He belonged to an oppressed nation: hence his patriotism — that deep, long devotion to one vast cause which only can be felt in such circumstances.(2) He was a banished man: hence his sympathy with the crushed.(3) He was a solitary man: hence his depth and solemnity of character.(4) He was a traveller: hence his knowledge of the world and man, and his enlarged views.

4. But he needed some sudden impulse. It came in the burning bush, and from thence the man of learning became the man of public action. Observe from all this —(1) That education goes on through life. After he left Egypt and home his development continued. The lot of many is poverty: hence their fondness of character. It is often the lot of the orphan: hence may spring self-help; or, if the disposition be. weak, bad habits. Riches may obstruct the child's moral growth, and produce, in spite of expensive education, only indolence of character. Again, we are disciplined by public circumstances. We live in time of war or peace, during a revolution, or in an age of trade, science, and philosophy — all this disciplines character. We talk of "finished education." Education only ends when a man is in his winding-sheet. Observe — education is useful to call forth power to grapple with and modify circumstances. Trees on the sea-coast or in stony soil are thwarted, yet they may be pushed by agriculture. The best agriculture is in Scotland, which has but a poor soil.(2) Education is God's work, for circumstances come from God. Teaching cannot do all; we must look for fruit from God. We must war for our best impulses, which come like a flash, unexpectedly. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc. Look back on our lives: what governed our most remarkable moments and alteration in character? Not systematic education; but some impression like that of Moses in the wilderness, that locked like chance — an impression from some great soul, or an old truth forcibly put.

II. ITS RESULTS.

1. On his own character.(1) Mentally, it gave him the habit of inquiry. He turns aside "to see why the bush is not burnt." Other men would have simply seen the bush on fire. The first thing in education is to encourage this habit. When your child asks, "What is the use of this?" etc., do not call it troublesome. But not in duty. "Why" in phenomena is the acknowledgment of ignorance, but in practical duties it is the boast of presumption.(2) Morally, it gave him boldness and tenderness. Many men are bold, yet tyrannical; many tender, yet weak. The perfect character joins both. Moses was ever the champion of the oppressed — his brethren, Jethro's daughters.(3) Religiously, it gave him —

(a)Reverence. He takes off his shoes.

(b)Obedience. God says, "Go before Pharaoh," and Moses braves the angry king.

(c)Meekness. He was humble as a child. This is what is meant by education — mental power, moral worth, religious character.

2. On his nation the chief result was the elevation of the labouring classes. The Egyptian policy was to keep Israel down, to refuse them educational and political advantages, to prevent their increase. The task of Moses was their emancipation. So is that of every Christian. To elevate the labouring classes, however, is not to exempt them from toil. Labour is a blessing; it brings out strength of character. Nor is it to break down classes, but by Christianity and education to level up. Thank God the time has passed when the English policy was the policy of Egypt. The insane cry once was, "The people must not be educated, because it will unfit them for their station." Now the mighty chasm between rich and poor is filling up.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

II. DEDUCE THE LAWFULNESS AND EXPLAIN THE ADVANTAGES OF HUMAN LEARNING, in opposition to those weak sophisms which some conceited novelists have imagined to the contrary. But there is little need of authority to recommend that which does so amply recommend itself. Such is the excellency of human learning, that it is impossible to conceive how anything so entertaining in the theory, so useful in the application, and withal so ornamental in the figure it makes, should be unlawful to be acquired, or should not, indeed, rather be highly worthy of the most laborious pursuits. The mind of man is capable of great improvements, not to be attained but by much pains and study: from whence we see every day the mighty difference between a liberal and sordid education. In the one, human nature seems only to resemble the rude lines of an unfinished piece, which may, indeed, discover the bulk that is designed, but without that beauty, order, and proportion which should recommend it. In the other it is, as it were, finished by the artist's hand, and seems to want nothing that should make it lovely and agreeable. I forbear to expatiate farther on the transporting pleasures which arise from learning; in regard its excellency is such that it serves not only to please, but profit, to improve the mind with useful lessons and instructions, as well as entertain it with delightful speculations. The necessity of virtue is more clearly discerned, and the measures of our duty are more easily prescribed, when men are able to perceive the consequences of their actions, and infer fit rules of life from their observation of the nature of things. They are likewise better able to gain advantage to themselves, and go the readiest way to work in any enterprise, when they know the connection between causes and effects, and have all the experience of former ages which learning can afford. Nor is its influence confined at home, but, diffusive of itself, extends to all that stand in any way related to us, The philosopher, studies not only for himself, but for the common benefit of human kind; and, by his useful discoveries, unfolds those secrets for the public good, which had been otherwise locked up in the profoundest silence. The power of medicine to heal diseases might have remained a secret, and mankind have been for ever destitute of wholesome remedies, were it not for such cultivation and improvement of the mind as human learning gives. I need not observe to you how the several arts of arithmetic, geometry, navigation, and the rest, conduce to the good order and government of the world, to the adjusting men's various rights and interests, to the symmetry, and thereby to the duration, of buildings, to the conjunction of countries far distant in situation, and thereby to the better carrying on of trade and commerce. Nor can you want to be reminded that an inquiry into the nature of moral good and evil must likewise be of general use, beneficial to the public as well as to the student, qualifying some for the information and tuition of others, to furnish them that have less leisure and abilities with true principles, and instruct them fully in the nature of their duty. And from the whole it will be obvious to collect what ought not to be omitted upon this occasion, that those first rudiments of literature we learn at school must needs be highly beneficial as laying the foundation for all the rest, and being, indeed, the proper groundwork upon which any part of human learning should be built. The enthusiast, in the first place, objects against it as deceitful or vexatious, or at best but useless. The deceitfulness of human learning he would build upon St. Paul's authority, who calls it philosophy and vain deceit, and warns his Colossians beware lest any man should spoil them by it. But they who make this objection would do well to distinguish between the different ends and uses to which learning is applied. The right end of it is to serve for the better illustration and discovery of truth; and when it is subservient to this purpose, the Holy Scripture is so far from condemning it, that it recommends it rather as highly beneficial. It is not then, you see, the thing itself, but the abuse or vain pretence of it the apostle blames. Nor are they less deceived in the argument they draw from the vexatiousness and uncertainty of human learning, which the wisest of men reckoned to be but "vanity and vexation of spirit," because that "in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." For here again there is a pertinent distinction to be made between the study of human learning, looked upon as being itself our supreme good and happiness, and as a means only which may be subservient and conducive to it. It was Solomon's business, in his book of Ecclesiastes, to show that nothing but religion or the fear of God can make us truly happy. To that end, he observes the vanity of all other schemes of happiness, and among them, how even learning itself, though it bids fairer than the rest, is yet very defective, and will leave the man far short of happiness who has no higher aims, especially if he be (as without religion men are too apt to be) over-curious to search deeper than human reason can fathom, and unwilling to resolve everything at last into unsearchable wisdom and omnipotence. But this is no real disparagement to that wisdom and knowledge which, being kept subordinate and made subservient to religious purposes, does humbly admire what it cannot comprehend, and therefore can be no just objection against that right use of human learning which I am at present desirous to recommend. I have but one objection more to examine, and that is the freethinker's, who reckons every man ought to judge in all matters for himself, and not suffer himself to be influenced by the skill and learning of another; but especially that it is most unreasonable, by arts of rhetoric and moving eloquence, to work on the affections of vulgar minds, and so prevail with them to do that to which they would otherwise be most averse. Let it be returned that no man's liberty of judging is taken from him by having reasons offered to direct his judgment; but he ever judges with the greatest freedom who judges most consistently with the appearance of reason and truth. If the matter be such as he is capable of examining himself, he ought seriously to weigh whatever is thus offered, and either to reject or admit it, as shall appear most reasonable upon mature deliberation. But if the matter be above his reach, it will be but equitable to believe the learned in their own profession, since he can have no other way of discovering the truth. He is not to follow them where he finds they are in error, any more than he would wittingly take a cup of poison if it were recommended to him by a skilful physician. But then neither may he neglect their direction, where his own judgment fails or wavers, any more than he would refuse the medicine prescribed by his physician, for no other reason but because he is not thoroughly acquainted with the quality and power of those ingredients of which it is compounded — always remembering to apply himself to God for His special blessing and favourable assistance. And then, as to the other part of the objection, although I shall allow the moving of men's passions, where there are no reasons, either directly offered, or at least presupposed, for the conviction of their judgment, to be an absurd and unjust way of proceeding, yet so many are the instances where people act against their judgment, and are backward to do that which they cannot but confess fittest to be done, that it deserves to be esteemed, not a lawful only, but a necessary art, to stir up the affections, even where the understanding is sufficiently informed before.

III. INFERENCES FROM ALL THAT HAS BEEN SAID.

1. Such being the manifold and great advantages of human learning, let us be thankful to Almighty God, who has made our nature capable of such improvements. It is sure a very easy return for the blessings we receive, to acknowledge the bounty of Him who gave them; and he must be most unworthy of the benefit bestowed who will not own it to be one.

2. Let those who are set apart to such studies be careful to improve the talents committed to their trust.

3. Let those who reap benefit from their labours of this kind value in return and esteem them for their works' sake. The advantages, we see, are great which redound to the public from the studies of the learned; and therefore gratitude requires that the public should make suitable acknowledgments to those persons by whose means such advantages are derived to them.

4. Let us all, therefore, in our several stations and capacities encourage the study and increase of useful learning, by our exhortation, our contribution, or our own industry.

(W. Berriman, D. D.)

1. Inspired by his mother. The precious time during which he was entrusted by the princess to the care of his nurse, Jochebed, would, we may be sure, be well employed, and subsequent opportunities would be utilised for reminding him of who he was, and of his possible destiny as the leader of his race. No throne in the universe is so potent as the mother's knee for good or evil.

2. Cherished among smothering influences.

(1)Gratitude to his deliverer.

(2)Egyptian learning and court training.

(3)Prospects of advancement, even to the throne of Egypt. It must have required a very deep-seated patriotic instinct to have resisted all this.

II. PREMATURELY EXHIBITED.

1. Without a Divine call. Moses acted on the spasmodic impulse of the moment. Here was a palpable opportunity — the first which presented itself — of showing his long-nursed patriotism, and the ill-usage of his brethren acted like a spark on a train of gunpowder. Many men call themselves to rectify certain evils, and mistake a seeming opportunity for the voice of God. Passion, however noble, is not inspiration. This is seen in its effects. That which leads to murder, however great the provocation, as in the case of Moses and the French Revolution, is manifestly not from heaven. When the hour comes the man will be inspired; let the man, then, wait for the hour.

2. Without the least .chance of success. What was one man, even suppose that he was sure of the loyalty of the unorganised slaves, against the disciplined might of Egypt? This has been the mistake of well-meaning but impulsive patriots all through history, and the results have ever been fatal to the interests of those whom they would have served.

III. EVENTUALLY RECTIFIED. Moses soon saw that force was no remedy, and that his people were hardly fit for immediate emancipation. What chance of liberation for a people divided amongst themselves? Union is strength; and Moses began to educate the people in the two great unifying principles —

1. Fraternity. "Sirs, ye are brethren." Moses saw that the only hope for Israel was the cultivation of brotherly feeling. Other ties without this are ropes of sand.

2. Justice. "Why do ye wrong?" The fetters of internal wrong-doing are far stronger than those imposed from without. Tyrants are safe when their subjects are depraved. If a community would successfully resist the iniquities of the powers that be, they must be law-abiding themselves. Agitators are at length recognising this principle, and passionately appeal to their followers not to break the law.

IV. UNGRATEFULLY REPUDIATED. When Moses smote the Egyptian no protest was raised; but on attempting to sow the seeds of self-deliverance he met with the fate of many reformers. Most people are willing to be helped; but when urged to help themselves, the whole situation is often changed. They had no objection to Moses being a ruler and a judge when he assailed the oppressor; but when he advised the oppressed to follow a more successful but prosaic and unromantic course, the worst feelings of jealousy were aroused. The public sentiment towards Cromwell was very different when he was driving out the Stuarts from that which was expressed when reducing the chaotic national elements to order.

V. SUDDENLY ABANDONED. "Then fled Moses."

1. Not, we may well believe, through sheer cowardice. Fear of Pharaoh had something to do with it, no doubt; but this was the fear of a man who felt that he would have to encounter the monarch alone. The cause was hopeless; he would have no following; it was useless to throw his life away.

2. Disgust, we may believe, had something to do with it. Why should he sacrifice himself for a people who would not even treat him with common gratitude. "Those who would be free must themselves strike the blow." Moses adopted the right course. He accepted the inevitable. The time was not ripe, nor was he — a lesson for all would-be patriots and reformers.

VI. DIVINELY REVIVED. That his patriotism died out in Midian is obvious from his reluctance to embark on the mission when the time had come. By minding other people's business he had lost everything; henceforth he would mind his own, And he did so for forty years. But all this time he was being Divinely qualified. His character matured, his old impulsiveness was gone. Cool reason took the place of spasmodic passion. He became familiar with habits and scenes which stood him in good stead for the next forty years. The time came, and when it came the fire of the bush laid hold of his soul, and the Divinely-inspired leader went to beard Pharaoh and to lead his brethren out of the house of bondage.

(J. W. Burn.)

I. THE TRUE LEADER'S INSTINCT. He went to see his brethren, and to look on their burdens. This is the instinct of a true leader. He does it from policy; for how can the general regulate the marches unless he knows how much the soldier has to carry? Or how can he prescribe methods of lightening burdens unless he knows of what they consist? But not only from policy; from piety and humanity. The true leader's nature comprises the true shepherd's nature — not the robber's or the mere hireling's.

II. THE TRUE LEADER'S MISTAKE. He supposed the people would understand. A superiorly-gifted mind often finds a peculiar difficulty in judging of average human nature, and its calculations may prove to be ill-founded.

III. THE TRUE LEADER'S AIM. It is to cause unity to be recognised; for what but unity can give the power which it is his nature and his function to wield? Here there was no absence of natural grounds of union. They had two of the strongest — oneness of race and a common oppressor.

IV. THE TRUE LEADER'S DISAPPOINTMENT. That his efforts to promote union were in vain. But in the case of the Israelites, blindness was combined with jealousy. They saw in Moses only a man of their own order. "His own received him not." Stephen might well recall these circumstances when he was standing before that tribunal of his countrymen, which was perpetrating a still greater refusal. The repulse was a personal one; but the disappointment was far from being merely personal.

(Homilist.)

I. OF ISRAEL. As in Egypt, it resembled a degenerate and wild thorn hedge, burning, but not consumed, in the glow of the brick-kiln, and in the heat of trial.

II. OF THE MESSIAH. According to His human lowliness — a thorn bush, and Divine glory — the flame in the bush, inseparable in one person — the bush not consumed.

III. OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, in its insignificant cross form, constant trial, and indistructible powers of life. This bush has now burned fez nearly two thousand years, and yet we have never seen its ashes.

(K. Gerok.)

1. It was not slavish fear.

2. But pious humility. How good is it for a teacher, who must so often stand upon holy ground, to experience this trembling, not only at the commencement, but during the continuance of his ministry.

II. ITS EFFECTS. This filial fear and reverence will be —

1. A barrier by which useless words, vain gestures, and other sinful things will be prevented.

2. An incentive to speak and act as before God, in God, and from God.

(Apostolic Pastor.)

Put off

thy shoes. — An exhortation to put off earthly stains and conceited pride in the presence of God.

1. For ministers, in the study and in the pulpit.

2. For hearers in their church-going and at worship.

(K. Gerok.)

2. He hears the sighs of believers.

3. He comes down at the proper time.

4. He sends out His servants.

(K. Gerok.)

1. Chosen by Him.

2. In covenant with Him.

II. WHERE THEY LIVE. "In Egypt."

1. A house of bondage.

2. A transient residence.

3. Among a strange people.

III. WHAT THEY SUFFER. "Affliction." In some shape or form this is the Christian's earthly lot.

1. Inflicted by man.

2. Permitted by God.

3. Working out spiritual ends.

IV. THE DIVINE NOTICE OF THEIR CASE.

1. God sees their affliction.

2. God. hears their groaning.

3. God works out their deliverance.

(J. W. Burn.)

(A. S. Patterson, M. A.)

I. AS A LEADER AND LAWGIVER.

1. The condition of the Jews in Egypt depicted that of the whole human race given up for their sins to be the captives of Satan. And it could hardly fail to follow that, if our natural condition were thus imaged, some resemblance might be traced between the deliverers. Both Moses and Christ proved their commission by miracles. They both came to an enslaved race, and claimed authority to set free prisoners; and, when proof of their authority was demanded, they both wrought wonders which were beyond human power. There was much the same kind of opposition ranged against the one and the other — the magicians contending with Moses, and evil spirits with Christ. And the deliverance effected by the two was singularly alike. Moses broke off the yoke from the neck of a captive people, and Christ from the neck of the whole human race. But when Moses had made a passage for Israel out of Egypt the former tyrant pursued the freed tribes and sought to regain the ascendancy he had lost. And though Christ has redeemed us from the power of Satan, who knows not that evil spirits, eager to regain their former dominion, pursue those that follow the Captain of salvation? When Moses led Israel out of Egypt he did indeed tell them of a goodly land, but he did not at once put them into possession; but conducted them into a dreary wilderness, where they were exposed to continued trials. And. we also hear of a beautiful Canaan, reserved for the followers of the Redeemer, but there is no immediate entrance; a wild desert has to be traversed, set thick with snares and peopled with enemies, and it is only through much tribulation that we can take possession of our heritage.

2. As a lawgiver Moses bore striking resemblance to Christ. It was a main part of his office to restore amongst the Jews the decayed knowledge of Jehovah, to re-institute a pure worship, and to establish laws which might mark them off as a peculiar people. But was not the condition of our race similar to that of Israel? There scarce remained any trace of truth in the popular theology; the whole Gentile race was given up to idolatry, and Christ had to instruct this world in the very first elements of spiritual truth. Moses led the children of Israel through the waters of the Red Sea, and then formed them into a church, with means and ordinances for producing and preserving acquaintance with God, obedience to His will, and hope in His promises. And Christ now conducts men through the waters of baptism into fellowship with His mystical body, that they may be taught in duty and trained for immortality. Moses restores the altars of God, delivers laws, institutes sacrifices; and Christ erects a visible Church, with ordinances and sacraments, that those who are in error may be taught, and those who know the truth may be confirmed.

II. Moses AS A MEDIATOR. The Israelites were assembled round Sinai to receive the commandments and the law of their God. There was nothing of the sublime and the terrible which did not attend the publication of the law. Appalled by what they saw and heard, the rulers of Israel said to Moses, "Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say, and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee"; and as soon as this petition was offered, God said to Moses, "They have well said all that they have spoken"; thus signifying His approval of the consciousness that fallen creatures cannot approach Him except through an intercessor, and in Deuteronomy 18, the prediction of the text is there made to follow immediately on these words of approval. As much as to say, "They have asked a mediator, and a Mediator will I give them, in the fulness of time, who shall resemble thee in standing, as thou now dost, between God and man." And is it not a resemblance most accurate? — for is it not the law by whose terrors we, as well as the Israelites, are affrighted? and was it not to shield us from the law — condemning every human being to everlasting death — that Christ Jesus arose, a Mediator between God and ourselves? In cases of conversion, there is ordinarily enacted much of that scene which is described as occurring when the Israelites stood around Sinai. The Spirit when He handles the moral law makes a man perceive that there has been no moment of his life in which he has not infringed its commands, and that there is no infraction so slight but it entails punishment. Then, for the first time in his life, a man knows rightly the awfulness of God; and then will he exclaim, with the Israelites at the foot of Sinai, "This great fire will consume me: if I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, then shall I die." Such a man will at once feel that he cannot stand in his own strength and his own merit face to face with his Maker. Therefore he has no alternative but that of leaving himself to be crushed beneath the weight of indignation, unless, indeed, he can find some being mighty enough and pure enough to rise up as an intercessor, and plead his cause with the Eternal One. Who will deny, then, that in respect of the mediatorial office, the prophecy quoted by Stephen had its fulfilment in Christ?

III. IN THE PARTICULARS OF HIS LIFE. Moses was wonderfully preserved when the male children of the Hebrews were destroyed; and thus also was Christ preserved when Herod slew all the children in Bethlehem. Moses fled from his country, and then there came a message, "Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life"; Christ fled, in like manner, and then there came a message in almost the same words. Moses contended with the magicians, and forced them to acknowledge his power — Christ contended with evil spirits, and obtained from them a similar confession. Immediately before emancipating Israel, Moses instituted the passover — immediately before redeeming mankind, Christ instituted the Lord's Supper. When Moses had to appoint elders, he appointed seventy — when Christ chose disciples, He chose seventy. Into the land that was to be conquered Moses sent twelve men as spies — when the world was to be subdued, Christ sent twelve men as apostles. How did Moses overcome Amalek? By extending both arms, and keeping them stretched out. How did Christ subdue all our enemies? By suffering that His hands should be nailed to the cross. As a prophet, it was specially of the desolations which should overtake the disobedient Jews that Moses made mention; and, as a prophet, it was of the destruction of Jerusalem that Christ chiefly spoke. Moses had to deal with a perverse generation, who were not to be won over to the obeying God, and who, consequently, with the exception of two, all perished in the wilderness. And was not Christ sent to an obdurate people, and who, therefore, within about the same space of forty years, were almost all consumed by the anger of the Lord? Moses had to endure injurious treatment from his own family — his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam rebelled against him; and we are told of Christ, "Neither did His brethren believe on Him." Moses fed the people miraculously in the wilderness; Christ fed thousands miraculously in the desert. And in lifting up the brazen serpent, did not Moses typify Christ? In making a covenant by blood between God and his people, did he not again represent the Saviour, who, by His own blood hath "brought nigh those who were sometime afar off"? It was not until Moses was dead that the people could enter the Promised Land; it was only by the death of Christ that the kingdom of heaven was opened to all believers. It was, in one sense, for the iniquities of the people, that Moses died. "The Lord was angry with me for your sakes." In the fulness of his strength, when "his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated," did Moses go up to die; and when Christ was yet in the flower of His age did not He go up to the summit of Calvary? Before he went up to die Moses comforted the disconsolate tribes with an assurance that God would raise them up another Prophet; before Christ went up to die He said to His desponding disciples, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter." Moses was buried, but no one knew where his body lay; Christ was buried, and yet was His body in vain sought for by the Jews. Surely, if ever there was a wonderful resemblance, it is that which we thus trace in minute particulars, between Moses and Christ.

(H. Melvill, B. D.)

I. LIFE INVOLVES GROWTH; growth is at once a characteristic and an evidence of life. We speak of life in a plant or tree, because it puts forth leaves and flowers and throws out fresh branches. We do not speak of a crystal as living. A crystal may be a very beautiful thing, but one thing it wants — Life. This figure fitly describes the Bible as contrasted with other sacred books. It did not come into being all at once; it was not the product of one mind or age; it is not a book, but a library; it is legislation, chronicles, poetry, philosophy, epistolography, allegory, romance, apocalyptic. It spreads over some thousands of years; it traverses the history of the race from the earliest dawn to the full noon-day of an elaborate civilisation. It was not written in any one place; Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, all contribute. Now we find ourselves wandering with nomadic tribes over lonely pastures beneath the starry sky; now we are dazzled by all the splendid surroundings of an Oriental despot's court; now we are lodged in some humble peasant household, and now we stand face to face with the majesty and the insignia of the imperial law. Sea and land, mountain, field and forest, crowded city and trackless desert, each in its turn furnishes a theme for this ever-shifting drama. All the vicissitudes of human life, poverty, and wealth, mourning and joy, the marriage and the funeral, the secret communings of the individual soul, and the tumultuous activity of public life — all contribute their quota to its incidents.

II. LIFE INVOLVES UNITY — a unity underlying the various devolopment. There must be some principle of life from which all the growth is evolved, which stamps its character on all the parts, which secures the harmony and coherence of the whole. We speak of the germ in the plant, of the soul in the man. So it is with the Bible. Amidst all these marvellous diversities of time, place, condition, form, subject-matter, there is a principle of unity which is also the principle of life. This unity is quite as real in the different parts of the Bible as in the different; parts of a plant, or in the different ages of man. The first chapter of Genesis finds its natural and appropriate climax in the last chapter of Revelation, while all the intermediate parts have their proper place in the sequence written though they were long centuries apart and gathered together we hardly know when and we cannot say how; the New Testament latent in the Old, the Old Testament patent in the New. Its fame can never grow old or out of date. And this principle of life, this animated soul — what is it but the Eternal Word speaking through lawgiver and captain and priest and prophet and king, speaking in the continuous history of a nation and in the chequered but unbroken light of the Church until at length He became incarnate in the man Christ Jesus. The many modes and the many parts of the Divine revelation were harmonised, explained, completed when in the last days God spoke through His Son. Contrast this infinite variety, these worldwide interests and associations with the monotony of other great books. The Koran is Arabian, the Vedas are Indian, the Zendavesta is Persian, the Bible alone is cosmopolitan. Other books for the most part have a oneness of treatment, of subject-matter, even of style. They are like the statue fused in a mould; it may have a beauty of its own, but it is rigid; it has no movement and no life, and the purpose served by all this is that life speaks to life. As a living thing the Bible appeals to the mind, affections, historical instincts, domestic sympathies, political aspirations. It arrests first that it may instruct afterwards. And here in this intimate union of intensely human sympathies and interests with intensely Divine teaching, this close alliance of heaven and earth, the Bible ever is a type, a reflection, a counterpart of the Incarnation itself. In the Bible God stoops to man, in the Incarnation God becomes man. Thus the Incarnation is the ultimate satisfaction of all religious craving and the final goal of all religious history, beyond which no other step is possible or conceivable.

III. LIFE INVOLVES STRUGGLE. The Scriptures have proved themselves as living oracles by the controversies which they excite and the antipathies which they provoke. Is it not an eloquent fact that in the early persecutions, pre-eminently in the last and fiercest of all, the main object of attack was the sacred writings; that the foes of the gospel were ready enough to spare the lives of men if only they might take the life of the Book; that those were branded by their fellow-Christians with the name of traitor, not who had surrendered a human being, whether leader or confederate or friend, but who had betrayed the Book into the hands of the destroyer? Aye, these heathen persecutors were wise in their generation; they felt instinctively that these Scriptures were living things; that they were active and aggressive; that, as Luther said of St. Paul's Epistles, "They have hands and feet — hands to grasp and feet to march; therefore they must be killed; they must be hurried out of sight." Was Milton so far wrong after all when he said that one who killed a good book is worse than a homicide; for, striking at the very breath of reason, he slays an immortality rather than a life? And as it was with the Greek Bible in the days of Diocletian, so was it also with the English Bible in the days of Henry. What a testimony to its living power is the record of its early days when that great man, who has won for himself an undying name, not only in English Christianity, but in English literature also, an outlaw and a wanderer in a foregin land, fled from city to city, carrying with him the half-translated texts, the half-printed sheets of his new version, the parent of our English Bible of to-day! Can we reflect without the deepest thanksgiving on this magnificent irony of the Divine goodness that within a stone's-throw of the place where the gentle, tender-hearted, reasonable Tunstall committed to the flames the first issue of Tyndale's New Testament as a thing to be abhorred and detested by all faithful Christian people, his latest successor in the see of Durham is able this day to congratulate a large, powerful, and wealthy society on its distributing within a single year no less than one million and a half copies of the English Bible, whole or in parts?

(Bp. Lightfoot.)

II. IN A STATE OF SIN it indeed at first proves itself as killing; it reveals spiritual death and threatens eternal; but even then it is not dead, but living, otherwise it could not as a fire burn in the hearts of sinners, and as a sword pierce them; and also it there operates to life, awakening the conscience and pointing to Him whose Word gives life.

III. IN A STATE OF GRACE it is not dead and abolished, but objectively in Christ, the Revealer and Fulfiller of the law, it has become living and embodied; and subjectively by the Holy Ghost it is employed as a motive of life, and as a power of sanctification in the heart and life of the believer.

(K. Gerok.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(A. Saphir, D. D.)

1. They are lively oracles so called —(1) In contradistinction to heathen oracles which proceeded from the pretended responses of senseless idols or departed spirits under the artful management of impostors. The Bible is the voice of the living and true God.(2) Because they instruct men in the way of life.(3) The Scriptures of both Testaments are called by this name because they are the means by which God communicates the knowledge of His will and of the way of salvation.

2. If we consider the sacred volume merely as history it is the most complete, entertaining, and instructive ever written. We have a view of the world from its creation to its final dissolution.

3. How grand, solemn, and interesting are its doctrines.

4. It exhibits the most correct view of human nature.

5. It prescribes the most excellent precepts and rules of life.

(1)It proposes the purest motives to virtue.

(2)It teaches the noblest virtues in the sublimest exercises.

(3)It furnishes the best defence against temptation, and the sweetest consolation in affliction.

(4)It has instituted the most excellent means of moral improvement in the order and discipline of the Church.

6. It gives us affecting illustrations of God's attributes and providence in His various dealings toward the children of men.

II. WE ARE BOUND TO CONVEY THE SCRIPTURES TO SUCCEEDING generations (Deuteronomy 4:5; Deuteronomy 6:7; Psalm 78:1).

1. If the Scriptures are of such importance to ourselves they are equally so to our children.

2. Their excellence demonstrates our obligation to transmit them.

3. If we regard the temporal much more ought we to regard the eternal happiness of posterity. The former is promoted, the latter essential depends on the knowledge of the Scriptures.

4. That we may transmit them

(1)We must make a pious use of them ourselves: family worship.

(2)Have them read in our schools.

(3)Take care never to treat them with disrespect.

(4)Never allow our children to read books which treat them with ridicule.

(5)Maintain the preaching of the Word.

(6)Show our belief in and reverence for the Bible by that holy and blameless life it requires.

(J. Lathrop, D. D.)

1. Disobedience (ver. 39). There is hardly a phase of Jewish history in which this sin does not appear. It was manifested in the murmurings against Moses, in the wholesale transgression of the law, and in the rejection of the prophets. This is a crime which provokes universal reprobation as against parents; how sad that it should be so universally prevalent, and so loudly extenuated as against God.

2. Ingratitude. They were free, yet they hankered after the poor emoluments of their servitude. They preferred the succulent products of Egypt with slavery to the hard fare of the wilderness and liberty. Nay, even after their instalment in the land flowing with milk and honey, the fascinations of Egypt proved well nigh-irresistible. This was a poor return to God who, in response to their groanings (ver. 34), granted them the deliverance for which they cried. And are there no similar hankerings after, and even conformity to, the present evil world from which Christians have been redeemed?

3. Idolatry. This was the crowning sin and had its marked stages. They worshipped(1) "The works of their own hands" (ver. 41), an imitation of Apis, perhaps, a god of the land from which they came.(2) The works of God's hands (ver. 42), the gods of the surrounding nations, honouring the creature instead of the Creator.(3) Devils (ver. 43). When men renounce the living and true God there is no knowing whom they may be prepared to honour. There are the same stages in the idolatry of modern Christian lands. Men worship

(a)Their own fabrications — wealth, social position, fashion, pleasure, etc.

(b)God's creatures — natural beauty, others, themselves.

(c)Devils. There is not a vice before which some men are not prostrate.

II. ITS AGGRAVATIONS. Israel sinned in spite of —

1. The presence and imperial influence of Moses, their mighty leader and God's appointed vicegerent. And so men sin to-day notwithstanding the presence and authority of Christ whom Moses typified (ver. 37), and the influence, strivings, and convictions of the Holy Spirit.

2. The theocracy, "the church in the wilderness" (ver. 38), and its visible centre and symbol "the tabernacle of witness" (ver. 44). They were, however faithless, the people with whom God had entered into solemn covenant, and their periodical services in the tout of meeting were a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that the covenant was still binding. So men sin to-day, notwithstanding the existence, great services, and wide-reaching influence of the Church of Christ, whose origin, nature, history, and destiny are a standing witness for God and against sin, and in spite of churches, visible symbols of the invisible Church.

3. The "lively oracles" which protested against iniquity in all its forms, and were meant to creates encourage, and guide in the life of righteousness. These oracles have since been multiplied and are now completed. They contain all that is needful to give and sustain life, and have the promise of both the life that now is and that which is to come. Yet men sin and doom themselves to death.

4. The most palpable manifestations of God's severity and goodness. Surely one would have thought that the plagues and the overthrow of Pharaoh were sufficient to deter from crime, and that their own precious deliverance and support would have encouraged obedience. Those who so argue forget that all history teems with the same manifestations, and yet men sin.

III. ITS PUNISHMENT.

1. Their sins. Their idolatry was at once their crime and their punishment (ver. 42), and as their crimes increased so they held them in the iron chain of sinful habit which grew in strength and intolerableness as the years passed by. "Be sure your sin will find you out," in the misery of a God-forsaken and degraded manhood.

2. The wilderness wandering. Those who murmur against God's dealings with them, and despise the grace which mitigates and blesses the rigour of those dealings, shall be condemned to endure them without alleviation. The Christian's way may be hard — but so is "the way of transgressors." The difference consists in God's presence with the one and His absence from the other. Surely this is enough to make the former a way of pleasantness and a path of peace.

3. The Babylonish Captivity (ver. 43). When the nation cast God off, God cast it off. Eventually Israel showed its preference for the great world powers to Himself, and He handed them over to one of them. A respite came which was unimproved, and the destruction of Jerusalem sealed the fate of Judaism. Of what sinner is that the type as indicated by our Lord? (Matthew 24.-25.).

(J. W. Burn.)

I. THE FASCINATION OF EGYPT.

1. This appears even before the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea. It was the fascination at once of terror and of admiration. As they passed out from the fertile lands into the desert, their thoughts reverted to the vast burial-ground above Memphis, along the ridge of the desert. "Is it," they cried, "because there were no graves in Egypt that thou hast taken us away to die in the wilderness?... It had been better for us to serve the Egyptians." "It was well with us," they cried at Taberah, "in Egypt." "Would to God," they exclaimed at the report of the spies, "that we had died in the land of Egypt," etc. This fascination appears later on. It is seen in Solomon's marriage; in the welcome which Jeroboam seeks of the Egyptian court: in the tendency, rebuked by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to "trust in the shadow of Egypt." Egypt became the home of a large colony of Greek-speaking Hebrews, and the descendants of the patriarchs counted for more in Alexandria of the Ptolemys than in Rameses of the Pharaohs.

2. This fascination is the more remarkable because the treatment which Israel experienced was frequently cruel, always unscrupulous. The patriarchs, indeed, had been welcomed by the usurping "Shepherd Kings," who welcomed all Asiatics as strengthening their position in a country which they ruled with difficulty. Of these, the Pharaoh Apepi, the friend of Joseph, was the last. He had scarcely passed away when the subject-rulers of Thebes, after a great struggle, expelled the Shepherd Kings. In the eyes of these new rulers the Israelites were not guests who had been invited to become subjects: they were the foreign dependents of a detested and expelled dynasty. Not one, but a long line of kings, "knew not Joseph." The eighteenth dynasty, including that greatest of Egyptian conquerors, Thothmes III., whose obelisk now stands on the Thames Embankment, reigned for two hundred years, and passed away, before the great heat of the oppression began with the third king of the nineteenth dynasty, Rameses

II. And as Egypt endeavoured to crush the children of the patriarchs, so in a later day Egypt shattered the work of David and Solomon. It was at the Egyptian court that Jeroboam matured his schemes. It was the Egyptian Shishak who plundered Jerusalem and then engraved the story of his triumph on the walls of Karnak, where, in confirmation of the Bible narrative, it may be seen and read at this very day. Not to mention the invasion of Judah by Zerah, who was defeated by Asa, it may here suffice to recall the defeat and death of Josiah at the hands of Pharaoh Necho. Certainly, for reasons of her own, which were apparent enough two generations later, Egypt was prepared to assist Hezekiah against Sennacherib; but, on the whole, her treatment of the chosen people was anything but friendly. Yet; for all that, again and again during the long course of their history, Israel's heart "turned back again into Egypt."

II. THE CAUSES OF THIS FASCINATION.

1. The productiveness of Egypt due to the Nile, which washes down a rich soil from the highlands of Abyssinia. and this may illustrate the cry of the Israelites at Taberah (Numbers 11:5, 6). True they were on their way to a land flowing with milk and honest; a land where every man should sit "under his vine and fig tree," etc.; but for all that, the land of the Nile had, in their eyes, no rival. The flesh-pots of Egypt were, beyond all doubt, one cause of its attractiveness for the Hebrews.

2. The character of Egyptian civilisation. In Egypt human life was embellished with beauty and comfort such as would naturally impress a comparatively rude people like the Hebrews. When they became settled, and built cities and the Temple, everything was on a smaller and less splendid scale than they had left behind. Our grandest .cathedrals are dwarfed by the Hall of Columns in the temple at Karnak, and we have never even attempted to rival such structures as the pyramids. Many centuries before the exodus, kings, like Amenemha III., of the twelfth dynasty, established a complete system of dykes, canals, lakes, and reservoirs by which .the inundations of the Nile were regulated; or excavated vast artificial lakes like Moeris in Fayum to receive the overflowing waters, and so to secure a supply during the dry season for a vast extent of adjacent country. Egypt, too, long before Israel's sojourn there, had its literature and seats of learning; and On, or Heliopolis, the great temple of the setting sun, before which, originally, our obelisk on the Embankment stood, and where the 'patriarch Joseph married his wife Asenath, was also an university where Moses learned, as in a later age Plato and Eudoxus learned, all the wisdom of the Egyptians. It is impossible to do more than touch the fringe of this vast subject. When an Indian chief was asked why he did not join in the mutiny, he said, "I have stood on London Bridge." And if an ancient Israelite could say, "I have stood on the ridge of the Libyan Desert, and have looked down on Memphis or on Thebes," it might explain the feeling with which the member of the less civilised race would have regarded that vast and elaborate civilisation.

3. Its antiquity. A veneration for antiquity is a natural and legitimate sentiment, and not to feel it is to lack some of the finer elements of a well.balanced mind. This veneration is felt not only by scholars, or poets, or historians, but by men of a very utilitarian turn of mind. Look at the Americans who come to visit us in increasing numbers every summer. What is it in England, or in Europe, that interests them most? Not our manufactures, shipping, or public works. In these they are always our rivals, and sometimes our superiors. That which attracts them is a possession which a people cannot buy with money, or compass by industry, since it is the gift of time. In their eyes, our older literature, our ancient towns, our castles, our parish churches, our cathedrals, have a charm which they sometimes lack in the eyes of Englishmen. It might almost seem that to know the value of an ancient past it were necessary to have no share in it. Israel, we may think, was sufficiently ancient, but as compared with Egypt, Israel was but of yesterday. Homer knew of no city in the world so great as the Egyptian Thebes with its hundred gates. Yet, when Homer wrote, Thebes had been declining for at least three centuries. And Thebes was modern when compared with Memphis, whoso pyramids were ancient structures in the time of Abraham, and inasmuch as such work implies a long course of preceding labour and training, there arises a vista of a yet higher antiquity, the limits of which it is impossible to conjecture.

4. Its religion. This had in it, like all pagan systems, some element of truth, and a large element of falsehood. The worship to which St. Paul refers when writing to the Romans, of "birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things," and which we still see in our museums, and on the walls of ruined temples, to us unintelligible and hideous, were but developments of a religious idea, which at first recognised the Deity everywhere in nature, and then identified Him with nature. In ancient Egypt a process went forward which may be observed in certain regions of modern thought: Theism sank to Pantheism, and Pantheism sank more and more nearly to the level of Fetichism. The Egyptians were always a naturally religious people. No people of the ancient world were so possessed with the idea of man's immortality. Their splendid tombs and pyramids were a perpetual profession of faith in a future after death. Israel felt the influence of this religion. We cannot mistake the influence of Egyptian models on the form of the temple, or the ark, or other details of the Levitical system. Here inspiration has selected what was good in heathendom, just as the first chapter of St. John's Gospel consecrates certain fragments of the language of the Platonic philosophy. Taken as a whole, the religion of Egypt was, with its many, and some of them debasing, errors, the religion of a great, serious people without a revelation; and as such it contributed one powerful element to the fascination which Egypt exerted over the mind of Israel. On two great occasions that power was apparent, with fatal effect. The first was when Aaron, in the absence of Moses on Mount Sinai, made a golden calf out of the earrings of the people. The second was when Jeroboam erected the two calves at Bethel and Dan, both doubtless suggested by the Egyptian worship of the sacred bulls, Apis and Mnevis. The influence of Egypt upon Israel might be traced in later ages, especially in Alexandria. Conclusion: Egypt as presented in Scripture is not mainly an historical study. When St. Stephen spoke, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had long forfeited independent existence. The Caesars who ruled it had but subjected its earlier conquerors. But the Egypt of spiritual experience which attracts souls by its manifold seductions to return to some mental or moral bondage — this Egypt always remains. The Psalmist couples Rahab with Babylon, and John with Sodom, as the mystic name of the great city of the ungodly world-power, "where also," he adds, "our Lord was crucified." Egypt is a standing type of this world-power, ever hostile to God; and from which, in all ages, elect souls must make their escape towards a land of promise, only, it may be, to reach that land after long wanderings in some intellectual or moral desert. Often to such will the past which they have renounced seem to them to be transfigured and idealised by memory. Often will they have misgivings whether the "better part" of Mary was not, for them at least, a Quixotic enterprise. Often will they be tempted, like Israel of old, in their hearts if not more decidedly still, "to turn back into Egypt"; for the Egypt from which the Israel of God escapes is, like its prototype, undeniably attractive. Perhaps it satisfies man's lower appetites; perhaps it addresses itself to his sense of beauty and refinement; and it has been in possession, more or less, ever since human society has existed at all. It even has a religion of its own, cleverly lowered down and adapted to the varied instincts of human nature. Referring to some who, under his own eyes, yielded to its seductive power, St. Peter speaks with peculiar plainness (2 Peter 2:20-22). How are we to escape its subtle power save by loyal devotion to Him who spoke to Israel by Moses, and who died for us upon the Cross? Surely no baits to the senses can compete with the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. Surely the richest embellishments of man's outward life must pale before Him who is the uncreated Beauty. The most remote antiquity is but a second of time when it is measured against the High and the Eternal. The most reassuring religion will fail us if it will not stand the judgment of that day, when "the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence." Let us learn to guard the issues of our hearts, convinced that He only has a right to our affections who has said not less solemnly of the redeemed in our age than of the Redeemer in another, "Out of Egypt have I called My Son."

(Canon Liddon.)

I. THE PECULIARITIES OF THIS SIN. Men abuse everything, even the divinest things. Idolatry is the corruption of religion — the substitution of the material for the spiritual, of the lie for the truth. It had irresistible attractions for the multitude; it appealed to their senses and was a system of solemn and splendid licentiousness. The Hebrews had become tainted with it in Egypt, and manifested a proneness to it on many occasions. This golden calf was the Apis of the mythology of Egypt, who was a representative god, not worshipped on its own account, but as a symbol of the chief and supreme divinity. This throws light on the conduct of the Israelites. Moses was the mediator of that economy. He had gone up to commune with God; but forty days and nights had passed away. The people were becoming uneasy and unbelieving; they felt that they were alone in the wilderness. They wanted some symbol of God; they would not have wanted this if they had had Moses; but having lost him, they made a calf. They did not renounce God — they introduced the unhallowed ideas and practices of Egyptian idolatry into the worship of Jehovah. Thus "they changed their glory" — that is, the invisible God — "into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." The result was most debasing — "They sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." They practised their lascivious rites at the very base of Sinai. The idolater will be like his god, he can never rise beyond his standard of perfection, and when men become worshippers of an animal, they become animal themselves. Idolatry is the substitution of the human for the Divine — the symbol for the reality. There may be no image, and yet idolatry. In after times men trusted in the temple, and not in God. Men now may trust in churches; in the forms of religion, and not in God or the gospel. Men may put baptism in the place of regeneration, and the Lord's Supper in the place of salvation by Christ, and thus overlook all the great verities and realities of a spiritual religion.

II. THE PALLIATIVES OF SIN. Aaron professed simply to have cast the gold into the fire, and the unexpected result was this calf. Men have always excuses or subterfuges. They charge their sins on the devil, or hereditary taint, or constitutional peculiarity, or the force of circumstances. We admit all this; but you can defy all in God's name and strength. There had been preparation and design, and great care in fashioning the mould for the idol. So it is, by a long, painful process, we form habits; but these determine character. Your character has been fashioned and graven by a sharp instrument, and all your feelings, thoughts, and deeds, like fused metal, are poured into this mould, and come out bearing its form. Many a worldly man has said, "I never thought I should be what I am."

III. THE PARTNERSHIP IN SIN. It was Aaron's making, but their instigation. They made the calf that Aaron made. When legislators, to gratify the people, enact laws that are opposed to the will of God — when a teacher of truth comes down from his high position and panders to the tastes and prejudices of his hearers — when fathers and mothers listen to the caprice and self-will of their children — in all these instances there is partnership. It is a fearful thing this. You may have moulded some character. Other men's sins may be yours. You originated them — helped them to the birth. When they were born, they grew into fearful forms without you. They are yours, however, you are partakers of other men's sins.

IV. THE REPRODUCTIVENESS OF SIN. Ages have rolled by. The people have entered the goodly land. There has been the reign of David, the golden age of Solomon. Once more the cry of the wilderness is heard, the echoes of which have slept for centuries — "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." There had been the division of the kingdom, and it was a master-stroke of policy on the part of Jeroboam to prevent the ten tribes going up to Jerusalem to worship. He felt that unity of worship would lead to unity of feeling. The people, however, must have a religion, and so he falls back on the calf worship. The people are taught that that worship cannot be wrong which had been devised and framed by the high priest in the wilderness. And so the sin lives again, and is reproduced. Sin is like some fearful taint which has been latent for generations, but suddenly manifests itself with new power. Conclusion: We are leaving far behind the forms of an old idolatry; getting beyond the worship of the laws and powers of nature, but the creature worship lives, and comes between Christianity and the world.

1. Men may make an idol of self. There is no form of idolatry more debasing and deadly.

2. Men may make an idol of their physical nature. How much time do many of you spend in dressing up life as if it were a god. And there are others who say, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink," as well as "wherewithal shall we be clothed." All their attention is concentrated on the physical. I have read of vines in Italy that cling to some strong tree and clasp it for support, but they suppress all its manifestations of life by the growth of their own. So the very strength and wondrous energy of our spiritual natures may give intense power to physical sins.

3. What is the idol men worship in this country? Is it not a golden one? "Keep yourselves from idols."

(H. J. Bevis.)

(W. Denton, M. A.)

1. Because of the ark which contained the tables of the law which were a perpetual witness between God and the people. A witness against them if they disobeyed, a witness for them if they obeyed — a standing evidence that they were entitled to its promises.

2. Because when Moses, or the high priest afterwards, would know the will of God, and went into the tabernacle, they there obtained an answer in their perplexity, and thus received perpetual witness of His truth who revealed Himself in the tabernacle: a witness that all who desired an answer to prayer should seek God in His house, and a pledge that there they should receive His guidance.

3. The tabernacle was in itself, as it stood before the eyes of the people, a witness to all His mercies whose tabernacle it was, a witness that He had delivered His people, and commanded them to serve Him.

(W. Denton, M. A.)

II. BUT IT WAS ALL A PARABLE — a Divine shadow of that great invisible and spiritual society, the yet more mysterious Ecclesia, "the Church throughout all ages," on its mighty march through Time, with all its attendant omens and prodigies — for such is the Church everywhere a witness in the wilderness; such are all its varieties of ordinance. "Ye are My witnesses, saith God, that I am the Lord." It is the perpetual remonstrance against the sufficiency of the seen and temporal; it is a perpetual witness for the unseen and the eternal; it is a perpetual testimony for the existence of a spiritual perpetuity and continuity; it is a mysterious procession; infinite aspirations are infused into the soul of man. A transcendent idea; it is embodied and takes its shape ix what is called the Church. The tabernacle of testimony is the story of the Church and the soul — a witness for faith. The invincible assurance that all contradictions have interpretations, and that in all disappointments there lies latent a Divine satisfaction waiting to be born. Thus it is that we do not make our faith — our faith makes us, not we it. "By their fruits you know them." A world with no tabernacle of Divine testimony has a philosophy which only sees the worst, which goes on declaring its dreary monologue that this is the worst of all possible worlds, that sleep is better than waking; and death is better than sleep; a creed full of negatives, whose disciples carry a perpetual note of interrogation on their features, and who write and read books to propose the question, "Is life worth living?" — in the presence of such thoughts, the sky shuts down upon us, there is no motive in life — as Emerson well says, "this low and hopeless spirit puts out the eyes, and such scepticism is slow suicide."

(E. Paxton Hood.)

I. THE FIRST CREATION OF NATURE. "Heaven is My throne; and earth is My footstool. Hath not My hand made these things?" Abraham reared altars and offered sacrifices in the open fields. He had the earth for a floor and the sky for a canopy. The universe is a temple. Many people, I am aware, convert it into a warehouse, or a den of thieves. Alas I where are the worshippers? Nature is exceedingly beautiful; but go where you will, the buyers and sellers and the exchangers of money are there before you. God is present in Nature. The ancients saw Him in everything and law in nothing; We moderns have swung to the other extreme. But the true Christian view is to perceive God in law and through law and above law. God still works in Nature, not capriciously but methodically. The roses of this year are the embodiment of His freshest ideas. The rose is not a part of God, but God is in it as the source of its vitality and the principle of its beauty; and as long as it is a living rose, God will be its God, "for God is not the God of the dead but of the living." "For God so clothes the grass of the field." The great heart of eternity may also be felt throbbing in the wild flowers along the hedgerows. This spring God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. The earth looks as new to-day as if she were born only yesterday. The curtain of heaven looks as blue and clean to day as if it came from the factory only this week. But however magnificent the ancient temple of nature, God expresses His dissatisfaction with it. "Where is the place of My rest'? Hath not My hand made these things?" The first creation does not afford rest to the Almighty — it is only a preparation for a better creation to follow. Nature hides more glory than it reveals, and God's noblest glory it cannot reveal at all. A second creation was needful.

II. THE SECOND CREATION OR JUDAISM.

1. The first creation divides itself into two parts — matter and laws, substance and truths. But in the second creation God created only laws. He did not add to the matter, but He did add to the laws of the universe. The laws of Judaism again divide themselves into laws which are necessary and therefore eternal, and laws which are contingent and therefore temporary. The Lord delivered the Ten Commandments, those commandments are in a certain sense necessary and eternal. God did not make them — He only spoke them. But as for laws touching civil and ecclesiastical government, God made them. The splendid fabric of ritual with its tabernacle and sacrifice and priesthood was the creation of God — not of His arm like matter, but of His mind.

2. The second creation is therefore of an order superior to the first. Inasmuch as spirit is nobler than matter. It is more difficult to preserve a spirit than a planet in its right orbit. It is harder to keep the peace in the commonwealth of men than in the commonwealth of stars. In the first creation God was legislating for dead, inert matter; in Judaism He was legislating for free, living spirits. In every soul there is a heaven and an earth; aye, and if we do not mind there will be a hell there too. But originally there is a heaven — formed of love, imagination, and pure reason. There is an earth there also — the propensities which qualify man for social intercourse and worldly avocations. And to make laws for the heaven and earth of the spirit such as you find in the religious and in the civil code demanded more care and wisdom than to establish the earth and garnish the heavens.

3. As Judaism is thus an advance upon the system of nature, so God became more visibly and palpably present in the former than in the latter. He was pleased to concentrate the symbol of His presence in one special locality. Stephen speaks of God as the "God of glory," referring probably to the Shekinah. God under the Old Testament was manifesting His presence in a cloud of dazzling light. The name therefore by which He was known was the Brilliant or Shining One. It was long supposed that God etymologically meant good. But further investigation seems to point out that the English God, the Latin Dens, the Greek Theos, the Welsh Duw — all come from an old Aryan root signifying to shine. Men thought of God, and to what could they compare Him? To nothing else than the shining splendour of the light. "God is light." A kind of natural correspondence, therefore, subsisted between the Shekinah and God — the shining cloud and the shining One. During the Patriarchal dispensation the glory-cloud wandered up and down without a fixed habitation. But on the establishment of Judaism it found a convenient abode in "Tabernacle of witness." But this tabernacle was small in size and mean in appearance; therefore David desired to build a temple, and what David conceived, Solomon was privileged to execute. So far progress marks the history of religion among the Jews. The Shekinah thenceforth dwelt in the Holy of Holies — a visible symbol of the invisible God.

4. In what then did the fault of the Jews consist? In supposing that the Divine presence was restricted to the temple, and that there could be no Divine worship unless connected with the Jewish ritual. The local and temporary character of Judaism they entirely overlooked, which character Stephen in his oration forcibly urges on their attention. As God was worshipped acceptably before the building of the temple, so will He be worshipped acceptably after its demolition. The temple, however spacious and costly, could not afford God a permanent and congenial rest. "The hour cometh when ye shall worship the Father neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem." God is a Spirit, and what satisfaction can He find in mountains of dust, and what rest can He find in bricks and mortar however skilfully put together? Not that we would disparage a material temple — the House of God demands our profoundest reverence. "Keep thy foot when thou goes to the House of God." So long as God is pleased to dwell in it, it deserves our reverence; we drift, however, into error the moment we exalt the temple and its ritual above God Himself. Stephen therefore was not guilty of blasphemy. The temple on Moriah was only a stage in the onward march of the Divine economies.

III. THE THIRD CREATION OR CHRISTIANITY. Evidently Stephen's argument does not properly conclude with ver. 49 — he is only paving his way to make a transition to Christianity. Neither do the prophet's words end there he points to a temple nobler and more spiritual and more pleasing unto God. "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word." In these creations a certain gradation is observable, and corresponding with them, we read of three creative words. The first is the word "Be" in Genesis, corresponding with the material creation. The second is "I am" in Exodus, corresponding with the Jewish creation. The third is "Immanuel," corresponding with the Christian creation. In the physical universe is seen the Word of His might; in the Jewish the Word of His oath; in the Christian the Word of His essence. "Therefore, even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth." Truths are of two kinds as we have seen necessary and eternal, contingent and temporary. That one is the first figure in numeration is necessary — God could not create a figure less than one. But that the earth revolves round the sun in twelve months is not necessary, it might be fourteen months quite as well. Christianity is a system of new truths, of truths which have been made. The Incarnation was not a truth always; it was not a truth in the days of Adam, of Abraham, or of Moses. But it is a truth to-day, a truth however which has been made. And the truths God has made are in a sense more wonderful than the truths He has not made. But what is it that principally differentiates the new creation of Christianity from the two preceding? The words of the text answer — "God dwelleth not in temples made with hands; hath not My hands made these things?" We have here come upon a very important phrase — "made with hands," which suggests to us its opposites "not made with hands." They are the Scripture synonyms for the terms, "natural" and "supernatural" in modern theology. The first heaven and earth, and Solomon's temple were made with hands; and therefore God declined to acknowledge them as the place of His rest. Christianity is described as a "stone cut out of the mountain without hands," and is thereby elevated to the realm of the supernatural.

1. The body or rather the human nature of Jesus Christ was not made with hands (Hebrews 9:11). The human nature of Adam was, and so was the human nature of his posterity. But the human nature of the Saviour was radically different. It was not as the apostle explains — "of this building," "of this creation." Christ is in it, but not of it. He was not produced by the intervention of the established laws of the world; He was the supernatural effect of the supernatural operation of God. "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee," etc. That is, therefore, the reason why He is in a pre-eminent sense the temple of God. "All the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in Him bodily." "It pleased the Father that in Him shall all fulness dwell." In Jesus Christ He finds a temple "not made with hands," a temple therefore more akin to His own eternal nature, and in Him He deigns to dwell for ever. "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

2. The regenerate heart is not made with hands (Colossians 2:11). That to regenerate a man does not belong to the old system of things. No forces in the first universe, whether of mind or matter, can effect the spiritual renewal of our nature. And therefore is the second birth designated "a new creation." The spiritual circumcision of the heart belongs emphatically to the realm of the supernatural. No amount of intellectual light or moral influence can effect it. The natural man is said not to understand the spiritual; and no wonder — they do not belong to the same universe. They may be living in the same house, attending the same church; but, after all, they are separated by the width of a whole creation. "Know ye not that ye are the temples of God," etc. "Will God of a truth dwell with man on the earth?" Yea, answers St. Paul, He will not only dwell with man, He will also dwell in man on the earth. It has now been made clear to us that God's proper temple is holy humanity, and under the Christian dispensation He has found the temple He so earnestly coveted. In the first creation we see me works of Nature; but God declares He cannot rest therein. In the temple of Solomon we see the works of art; but God again declares He cannot find in it the place of His rest. However magnificent, therefore, is the temple of Nature, God is not satisfied with it, for it is the work of His own hands. However splendid the temple of art, God is not satisfied with it, for it is the work of man's hands. But in Christianity — in Christ first, and in the Christian afterwards, He has a temple reared by His grace, a temple not made with hands, a temple in which He vouchsafes to dwell for ever. The temple of nature, the temple of art, the temple of grace, these three; but the greatest of these is the temple of grace.

(J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)

2. The invisible not to be forgotten (vers. 48-50).

(K. Gerok.)

I. GOLD AND SILVER, i.e., worldly might and splendour.

II. Wood AND STONE, i.e., external customs and dead works.

III. PARCHMENT OR PAPER, i.e., confessions of faith and forms of government.

IV. But of LIVING HEARTS.

1. Founded on Christ by faith.

2. United to one another in love.

3. Growing up to heavenly perfection in hope.

(K. Gerok.)

(G. T. Stokes, D. D.)

1. Agreeable to reason, although incomprehensible. The denial of it would be a contradiction. A limited God would be no God.

2. Essential to worship.(1) To its spirit. Worship implies mystery. Take away God's incomprehensibility and you take away the power to evoke in the soul all the awe and wonder which enter into the very essence of worship.(2) To its constancy. True worship is not an occasional service confined to times and places, but an abiding attitude of the soul. "God is a Spirit," etc.

3. Promotive of holiness. Let men realise the constant presence of God, and how strongly will they feel restraint from sin and stimulus to virtue.

4. Assurative of retribution. Who can hide himself from the Lord? No sin escapes His notice. There is no escaping therefore from punishment. "Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?"

5. Illustrative of heaven. There is nothing local or formal in heaven's worship. "I saw no temple therein." Then He is felt to be everywhere, and is worshipped everywhere.

II. A CREATIVE existence. "Hath not My hand made," etc. Because He made all, He owns all. Creatorship implies sovereignty, almightiness, and proprietorship.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

1. Heaven is God's throne. A star in the far depths attracted the attention of an observer. It seemed to be but a single star, but a powerful telescope resolved into two which were really distant from each other five hundred times the distant between our earth and the sun. Who can conceive of such sublime spaces. What must He be whose throne rises higher than these stars, whose canopy is gemmed by myriad suns.

2. Earth is God's footstool. Here the microscope comes to our assistance. This great earth, with its millionfold objects seen and unseen, is but a resting-place for God's foot.

II. GOD APPEALING TO MAN TO FIND HIM REST. We should never have dared to represent God as seeking rest. The marvel of His condescension is that He is independent of His creatures, and yet seeks rest in them. If God were only wisdom or power then His rest might be found in the works of His hands. But every being seeks rest according to his character. The infinitely pure One can only find rest in holiness; the infinitely loving in love; the eternal Father in His children.

III. MAN VAINLY OFFERING GOD REST IN THINGS. The first shrine for human worship was the open firmament of heaven. It was the only worthy one. The only befitting walls were the distant horizon and the everlasting hills; the only suitable roof was the illimitable sky. Yet from the first, through sin, this temple proved too vast and glorious for man to use. So he planted groves to circle God to a space; and consecrated mountain peaks to fix God to a point; and built temples and churches to narrow the infinite to human grasp. Too often man has offered his temples as a sacrifice in the vain hope that, satisfied with them, God would cease to ask for holier things. And even now men think to offer God rest in the beauty of our churches and the charm of our services, and give Him things instead of persons. And yet even we men cannot be satisfied with things; how, then, can we expect God to be. Our hearts cannot rest in the artistic fittings of our dwellings, the creations of genius, or the associations of culture. We want love; we must have persons. We are "the figures of the true." He, too, puts aside the things we offer Him, be they temple, or gold, or work, and pleads with us, "My son give Me thy heart." If we respond then He will accept our things, and things alive with holy love may find for Him the rest He seeks.

(R. Tuck, B. A.)

1. This was not the first Christian sermon that the Jews or the Sanhedrin had heard. Otherwise, possibly, such vehement and unsparing denunciations had been out of place. They had already heard of Christ twice from His inspired messengers, and he did not speak till the ecclesiastical rulers had shown a determined animus to put their foot on the gospel. It was to a council who had, and still were, resisting grace that Stephen spoke.

2. Stephen was addressing the authorities, and the tone of Peter towards them had been very different from his tone with the people (Acts 3:17; cf. 4:11; 6:30). There was deep reason and equity in this difference. It was the Sanhedrin which had all along fomented the hostility of the people to Christ. The common people heard Christ gladly, and shouted Hosannah; and in the closing scene it was only at the persuasion of the chief priests and elders that they were induced to "ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus." They had, no doubt, their full share of guilt, and Peter charges them with being accomplices; but, as at the Fall, God recognises a difference in degree of guilt between man and the serpent, so those who are of the same mind with God draw a distinction between those who sin through weakness, and those who sin of malice prepense. It is against the latter that Stephen hurls his indignant invective.

II. ACCOUNTED FOR.

1. There was the natural friction which his own argument produced in his mind. As he traced the history of his nation, view after view opened upon him of the perversity, bigotry, and wilful opposition to truth which had characterised them at every period. They had only been too consistent in rejecting Divine messengers, and now by their rejection of the love and Spirit of God they had put the finishing stroke upon their sin. This repeated defiance of God galls Him, and kindles His holy indignation.

2. In all probability his quotation from Isaiah, so palpably adverse to their view of the temple, and so impossible to be answered stung them to the quick. This is indicated in the narrative, "They while in the act of listening were cut to the heart and kept gnashing upon him with their teeth." It is not difficult to picture the scene. Audible murmurs are heard as Stephen says, "The Most High dwelleth not in temples," etc. They make menacing gestures as wild beasts would spring upon their prey. There two scribes, reaching across to one another, have got a scroll between them, in which they are pointing to passages which they think confute him. One finger is on the words, "I have hallowed this house," etc.; the fist of the other contracts and is raised towards the prisoner. The young man from the Cicilian synagogue glances to and fro from the accused to Gamaliel. The great doctor had in a previous council made a diversion in favour of the apostles. But on that occasion it appears that the high priest had been under the influence of the Sadducees. Stephen's speech brought out into full prominence the anti-Pharisaic element of the gospel. And as he did so the eyes of Saul are turned wistfully to his great authority mutely asking, "Will you plead for these Galileans now?" And Gamaliel's contracted brow answers "No." Then catching the symptoms of the storm long brewing, with that, quick apprehension which always characterises an earnest speaker, and seeing in a moment "the wicked husbandmen" before him, he bursts forth in the words of the text. In the early part of his speech he is cautious, and avoids giving offence; "He keeps his mouth, as it were, with a bridle, while the ungodly is in sight." But at last his heart grows hot within him, and while he is musing upon the circumstances he has recited, the fire kindles; and at the last he throws away his caution and speaks in accents of burning indignation. Conclusion: What has been said may read us a needful lesson on the subject of spurious charity. Charity is not uniform suavity under all circumstances; it has in it a stern element of moral indignation which is the salt that keeps it from corruption. Charity never flatters a man in wilful sin, but tells him plainly that continuance means death; just as a surgeon, who desires nothing but the health of his patient, does not hesitate to perform a painful operation. And because heresy is mischievous to souls charity pays it no compliments. If some safeguards are required with perfect righteousness of indignation —

1. Rid the mind of personal resentment.

2. Be sure that it is vital error, and do not confound it with your view of it.

(Dean Goulburn.)

1. Their leading feature is obduracy, which the Scriptures call hardness of heart. There may be a variety of dispositions, yet all merging in this spirit.(1) Stiff-neeked means nearly the same as stout-hearted; one who is unyielding and obstinate; who sets at nought the councils of God and follows his own.(2) Uncircumcised in heart and ears. Circumcision was a rite intended to point out the nature and necessity of spiritual renovation (Deuteronomy 10:16-18).

2. The obduracy of an ungodly man may be resolved into —

(1)Sensuality (Deuteronomy 21:18-20).

(2)Pride and prejudice (Jeremiah 6:10-13).

(3)Habitual negligence and the spirit of slumber (Isaiah 66:8, 4; Isaiah 29:9-13).

II. HOW UNGODLY MEN RESIST THE HOLY GHOST. That a creature should rise in rebellion against the great Creator might seem incredible, had we not demonstration of the fact. Gamaliel said, "If this council, or this work, be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest ye haply be found even to fight against God." There are many ways in which men do fight against God; but the most awful is in resisting the Holy Ghost. The Sovereign of the universe maintains a communication with our fallen world by the agency of His Spirit. Now this Divine Spirit is called —

1. The Spirit of Truth. He revealed the will of God to us. When any one opposes Divine truth, he resists the Holy Ghost. The grand doctrines of the gospel are confessedly clear and plain in the Word. How then is it that they are not received? (Isaiah 30:8-13; John 3:19.) To those who prefer agreeable things, which flatter the roving imagination, and the unrenewed heart, a full exhibition of Divine truth, will ever be unwelcome. Herein consists the guilt of obstinate unbelief and impenitence. Hence, too, arises the sophistry which contrives a thousand subtle devices to nullify the Word of God.

2. The spirit of purity. He is the sole source and efficient author of sanctity. He has given a hallowed and peculiar stamp to the various precepts, ordinances, and institutions of true religion. Now, the man who labours to stain this stamp of purity resists the Holy Ghost.

3. The Spirit of Grace. God engaged to pour out the spirit of grace and of supplication. The favour of Jehovah is eminently manifested through the agency of the Holy Ghost. Yet, alas I great numbers resist this Divine Agent of mercy, stifling those convictions which are produced by His power. The truth is heard, but not heeded and applied.

III. THE TREMENDOUS CONSEQUENCES OF RESISTING THE HOLY GHOST.

1. Those persons who have long and obstinately opposed truth, are usually given over to a reprobate mind. The light which they have laboured so hard to exclude is withdrawn, and they are enveloped in the thick darkness they love. Compunction of conscience gradually abates till they are past feeling. "My Spirit shall not always strive with man," etc. "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." "For it is impossible for those who were once enlighted," etc.

2. The future punishment of those who have resisted the Holy Ghost will be beyond expression dreadful. Though for a time they may be hardened, so as to have little or no fear, the justice of God is preparing their doom. He that despised Moses' law, died without mercy, under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, etc. "Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!"

(Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

1. Convincing.

2. Entreating.

3. Admonishing.

4. Threatening.

II. THE MEANS HE USES.

1. The Word.

2. Examples.

3. Conscience.

4. Providential dealings.

III. THE MODES OF RESISTING HIM.

1. Inattention.

2. Procrastination.

3. Contradiction.

(W. W. Wythe.)

1. Christians of the present day approach towards this "sin" several ways; and first whenever they despise or ridicule things belonging unto God. Should they persevere in these sinful habits, they may in the end lose all reverence for holy things; and then, if, with a soul indifferent to things spiritual, they die, have they a hope that their sin can be forgiven? Like the Pharisees of old, they seemed to have refused the very means by which they might have been brought to Christ.

2. There is another way by which Christians "resist the Holy Ghost"; and this, in the language of Scripture, is called grieving, or quenching, the Holy Spirit. In one sense every sin wilfully committed against God, every known Christian duty wilfully omitted, is grieving the Holy Spirit. But in a more especial manner Christians grieve the Holy Ghost when they refuse to receive those doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ which He hath Himself revealed; when the plain teachings of the Scriptures seem unto them "foolishness."

3. God's Holy Spirit is resisted also by every one who, in direct opposition to conscience, refusing the holy aid which alone could have preserved him, wilfully commits sin, knowingly violates the moral law of God. Such are some of the very awful considerations arising from the subject before us. Warned of the danger, let us watch and pray against it. Let us not resist the Holy Ghost in this our accepted time, and He will fit us for the full enjoyment of the salvation purchased by the blood and secured by the intercession of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(H. Marriott, M. A.)

1. The term, a national sin, wants a clear definition. It is used at present recklessly. Every party declares its opponents guilty of a national sin. But a national sin is not an evil done by any one party to the nation, but an evil done by the nation itself. I might mention courses of political action in which England has persisted for years, through all changes of party, which are of the character of national sins, but I will content myself with saying that one of the worst of national sins is the rejection or neglect of the great men whom God has sent to save or to teach the nation. It is a proof of the perfect culture of a people, when it recognises its great men, puts them forward at once and obeys them.

2. The man of noble genius, the prophet, or whatever else you call him, is the test of the nation. Those are lost who reject him — the whole nation is lost if the whole nation rejects him — for it is not he so much whom it rejects as the saving ideas of which he is the vehicle. The question whether Christ shall be accepted or rejected has again and again been placed before the nations. It was placed most completely before the Jews at the appearance of the perfect Man — is placed before each of us — since He was the representation of that which is noblest in humanity. This passive work was recognised by Simeon when he said, "This child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel." It was recognised by Christ Himself when He said, "For judgment," i.e. for division, for sifting of the chaff from the wheat, "am I come into the world." And so it was, wherever He went He was the touchstone of men. Those who were pure and true-hearted saw Him. and loved Him; those who were conscious of their need and sin believed in Him, drank deep of His Spirit, and found redemption and repose. Those who were base or false of heart naturally recoiled from Him, and, to get rid of Him, hanged Him on a tree. In doing so — and this was the deed of the mass of the people — they destroyed their nationality which was hidden in their reception of Christ. In a coincidence with this, the priesthood rejected Christ in words which repudiated their distinct existence as a nation — "We have no king but Caesar." He did nothing overt to produce this. He simply lived His life, and it acted on the Jewish world as an electric current upon the water; it separated its elements.

II. THE CAUSE OF THIS REJECTION WAS PRIMARILY DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL, which is practically identical with want of individuality, one of the most painful deficiencies in our present society.

1. Now the rectification of that evil lies at the root of Christianity. Christ came to ensure the distinct life, the originality of each man, to rescue men from being mingled up, indistinguishable atoms, with the mass of man.

2. The spirit of the world is in exact opposition to this. Its tendency is to reduce all men and women to one pattern. There must be nothing original in the world's language, eccentric, erratic. Custom is to be despot. We must all dress in the same way, read the same books, talk of the same things. We do not object to progress, but everybody must be levelled, and then collectively advance; no one must leave the ranks or step to the front.

3. This is the spirit which either cannot see, or, seeing, hates men of genius. They are in conflict with the known and the accredited modes of action. So it comes to pass that they are depreciated and neglected; or, if they are too great and persist, persecuted and killed. And, indeed, it is not difficult to get rid of them, for men of genius cannot breathe in this atmosphere, it kills them. The pitiable thing in English society now is, that it is in danger of becoming of so dreadful a uniformity that no original man can be developed in it at all. This, if anything, will become the ruin of England's greatness.

4. There is, it is true, a kind of re-action going on at present against this tyranny. Young men and women, weary of monotonous pleasures, are in rebellion, but the whole social condition has been so degraded that they rush into still more artificial and unnatural pleasures and excitements; in endeavouring to become free, they enslave themselves the more.

5. Those who might do much, do little. It is one of the advantages of wealth and high position that those who possess them may initiate the uncustomary without a cry being raised against them. But even with every opportunity, how little imagination do they ever display, how little invention, how little they do to relieve the melancholy uniformity of our pleasures, or the intense joylessness of our work!

6. Now this was precisely the spirit of the Jewish religious world at the time of Christ. Men were bound down to a multitude of fixed rules and maxims;. they were hedged in on all sides. It was the most finished conventionalism of religion, in spite of the different sects, which the world has ever seen. Then came Christ, entirely original, proclaiming new ideas, or, old truths in a new form, overthrowing worn-out ceremonies, denouncing things gray with the dust of ages, letting in the light of truth into the chambers where the priests and lawyers spun their webs of theology to ensnare the free souls of men, trampling down relentlessly the darling customs of the old conservatism, shocking and bewildering the religious society. He did not keep, they said, the Sabbath day. He ate and drank — abominable iniquity! — with publicans and sinners. He allowed a fallen woman to touch Him. Worse still, He did not wash His hands before He ate bread. He did not teach as the scribes did. He did not live the time-honoured and ascetic life of a prophet. He dared to speak against the priesthood and the aristocracy. He came from Nazareth, that was enough; no good could come from Nazareth. He was a carpenter's son, and illiterate, and no prophet was made, or could be made, out of such materials. And this man! He dares to disturb us, to contest our maxims, to set at nought our customs, to array Himself against our despotism. "Come, let us kill Him;" and so they crucified Him. They did not see, the wretched men, that in murdering Him they murdered their nation also.

III. TAKE THE QUESTION NOW OUT OF THE REALM OF THOUGHT AND HISTORY, AND APPLY IT PRACTICALLY. Ask yourselves two questions: —

1. What would be the fate of Christ if He were suddenly to appear as a teacher in the middle of London? How would our orthodox religious society and our conventional social world receive Him? Desiring to speak with all reverence, He would horrify the one by His heterodox opinions, the other by His absolute scorn of many of the very palladia of society. Supposing He were to denounce — as He would in no measured terms — our system of caste; attack our most cherished maxims about property and rights; live in opposition to certain social rules, contemn with scorn our accredited hypocrisies; live among us His free, bold, unconventional, outspoken life; how should we receive Him? It is a question which it is worth while that society should ask itself. I trust more would hail His advent than we think. I believe the time is come when men are sick of the tyranny of custom of living in unreality; that they are longing for a new life and a new order of things, for some fresh ideas to come and stir, like the angel, the stagnant pool. I believe there are thousands who would join themselves to Him, thousands of true men from all religious bodies, and from those who are now plentifully sprinkled with the epithets of rationalists, infidels, heretics, .and atheists; but there are thousands who call themselves by His name who would neglect or persecute Him, for He Would come among our old conservatisms of religion, our doctrinal systems, superstitions, priesthoods, and ritualisms, as He came of old. If we could accept the revolution He would make, our nation and religion Would be saved, if not it would be enervated by the blow and die. Realising these things, realising Christ speaking to us as He would speak now, we ought to feel our falseness. We may save our nation if we resolve, each one here for himself, to free ourselves from cant, and formalism, and superstition, to step into the clear air of freedom, individuality, truth, and holiness.

2. How far is the spirit of the world preventing you personally from receiving Christ?(1) Is your sole aim the endeavour to please your party, forfeiting your individuality? Then you cannot receive Christ, for He demands that you should be true to your own soul.(2) Are you permitting yourself to chime in with the low morality of the day, to accept the common standard, repudiating the desire to be better than your neighbours, and so coming at last to join in the light laugh with which the world treats immoralities of society or trade, or the more flagrant shame, dishonesty, and folly which adorn the turf — Letting evils take their course, till gradually the evils appear to you at first endurable, and then even beautiful, being protected by the deities of custom and fashion, which we enthrone instead of God? Are you drifting into such a state of heart? If so, you cannot expect to be able to receive Christ, for He demands that life should be Godlike; not the prudence of silence about evil, but the imprudence of bold separation from evil.

3. And to come home to the inner spiritual life, is your religion only the creature of custom, not of conviction? Have you received and adopted current opinions because they are current, orthodox because it is the fashion to be orthodox, or heterodox because it is the fashion to be heterodox? How can you receive Christ? — for where He comes He claims reality. Ye must be born again; born out of a dead, Pharisaic, conventional form of religion into a living individual union with the life of God. Two things, then, are laid before you this day — conventional religion, a whited sepulchre; personal religion, a fair temple, whose sure foundations are bound together by the twisted strength of the innermost fibres of the soul.

(Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)

II. ITS LESSON. In reading narratives like this, we are prompted to look for some principles on which to account for the bitterness and violence which usually characterises religious persecution. Men, we know, will get angry sometimes if people differ from them in politics, and will even forget their charities when contending on the most ordinary topics of dispute; but the fury, the gnashing with the teeth, and the showers of stones, are only met with when that which is to be put down is the pure truth of God; when the object of popular hatred can have no end of his own to compass. The fact is a standing, undeniable testimony to the doctrine, that the carnal mind is enmity against God. If the feeling of the natural heart, which supervened upon the fall, had been only the negation of a former love towards God, leaving man to settle down into a Gallio unconcerndness, we should never have heard anything of the blood of martyrs. Men would no more have risen up against an apostle than against a philosopher. But the case we know to be far otherwise. Press upon the consciences of men in any age the obligations of spiritual religion; carry the lamp of God's condemning truth into the heart's chambers of imagery; disturb that untempered mortar with which men daub over the walls of their refuge of lies, and in an instant you wake up the old feud of our nature; the embers begin to glow again of an ancient but long-slumbering fire; you have touched the man in the very quick of his cherished delusion, and at once he stands up in stout and rebellious front against God. Neither has advancing civilisation done more than restrain the outward expression of this feeling. It may have taught men, when convinced of the utter futility of their own religious principles, that they cannot now have recourse to the rude retributions of a rude age — but it has not dispossessed them of their malignity, or altered the original antagonism of the natural mind to the reception of Bible truth, or the practice of Bible requirements. If I tell a Socinian, that in the sight of God his moralities are no more than so many disguised and garnished sins; if I tell a man of right creed and pious activities, that if he has not something besides this, the publicans and harlots shall go into heaven before him; if I say to the proud, the worldly, the over-reaching, the slander-dealer, the uncharitable, the blasphemer, and the Sabbath-breaker, "Ye have not the Spirit of Christ, and therefore can be none of His" — yea, if I can so bring home these evidences of an unchanged heart to the individual conscience as that a man shall feel as if I were saying to him, Thou art the man whom, in your present state, the blood of Christ cannot reach; for whom the mansions of heaven can make no room; whose peace is a delusion, and whose hope is but a spider's web — spared though I may be from the gnashing teeth of unbridled rage, yet, while determined to stand out against conviction, the spirit of the persecutor is in that sinner's heart, and only to the age, and other accidents of social life, is it owing that men are not found to rush upon a faithful messenger with one accord, and to cast him out of the city, and to stone him. By nature men hate truth as the midnight robber hates the light.

(D. Moore, M. A.)

1. He was versed in the Scriptures. "When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart." Cranmer and Ridley learned the New Testament by heart. They also saw its truths in relation to present duties of life. This was the case of the first Christian martyr. He exposed the false view of the Jews toward the temple and the law. "They were cut to the heart," or, literally, they were sawn asunder in their hearts. It was not one staggering blow which did the work. The truth, laden with rebukes, was gradually making its way through their hearts, The personal application completed the work.

2. Stephen was spiritually enlightened. "But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven." We may not all have the privilege of Stephen to look into heaven in this life, but the Holy Spirit furnishes enlightening power. Spiritual breadth of vision follows. That creates confidence. Moses endured, seeing Him who is invisible; and the angel of God revealed himself unto Paul, saying, "Fear not." Here was the basis of Stephen's confidence. Facts of the visible world were newly impressed upon him. We see things here from a short range. Hence mystery and perplexity arise. He is sustained by a higher power, and looks with joy to the end.

3. He possessed a forgiving spirit. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." This prayer is without a parallel outside of Biblical history and its influence. , , Seneca, and other Gentile writers hinted at the golden rule in a partial or negative form. But praying for one's enemies has thus far been discovered only in the Bible and in the line of its influence. The Cross first brings it to view.

II. STEPHEN WITNESSING TO THE TRUTH.

1. He witnessed that God's presence and favour were not limited to any set place. Stephen taught that God's presence was not limited to a favoured few. This was one link in the chain which drew away Christians from Jewish rites. The disciples loved the temple. Who could blame them? Here Jesus gave some of His choicest revelations. But lingering amid the incense and smoking sacrifices too long they may bind these practices, only belonging to the past, on the new society, and fetter its future course. They were providentially thrust out into new fields, as we may be, by apparent disasters, to secure in the end the best results.

2. Stephen bore witness that Christ had been elevated to glory and power. "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Stephen was the first to bear witness to the fact of seeing Christ after His ascension. Paul and John were granted such visions later (Acts 9:3, 4; 1 Corinthians 9:1; Revelation 1:12-17). Perhaps such witnessing was needed to encourage the early Church. It made visible things appear as a positive reality. It also confirmed Stephen's teaching. Christ had taught that spiritual worship anywhere was pleasing to the Father. It would follow that a peculiar privilege had been granted to Stephen. Any rabbi might have coveted it. The glory of God had appeared to him as well as Abraham and to Moses. If his face had shone like that of an angel, his words now had a heavenly support.

3. Stephen bore witness that Jesus receives His people after death. He did not formally affirm this fact, but prayed to Jesus to receive his spirit; or, in bold literalness, "Take my spirit by the hand."

(J. H. Allen.)

I. STEPHEN WAS A MAN OF AFFAIRS. He was no dreaming enthusiast, however intense his spiritual life. He was equal to the demands of new enterprises where originality in planning and fertility of resource were requisite.

II. HE, ONLY A DEACON, A LAYMAN, WAS FULL OF FAITH AND POWER.

III. THIS TESTIMONY HE GIVES WHEN HE MUST SEAL HIS SINCERITY WITH HIS LIFE. He knew what extremes Jewish hate could reach.

IV. HE HAD GIVEN ABUNDANT PROOF OF MENTAL SOUNDNESS AND GRASP IN HIS RESUME OF JEWISH HISTORY AND GOD'S DEALINGS.

V. HIS SPIRITUAL ELEVATION AND FELLOWSHIP APPEAR, BEAUTIFULLY AND GLORIOUSLY, IN HIS AGREEMENT IN WORDS AND DISPOSITION WITH HIS DYING MASTER. Such a witness we can trust, however momentous the questions upon which he speaks. Points of Stephen's testimony —

1. Heaven's glory gladly and easily appreciable by redeemed souls. Infinite the necessary remove of heaven's life from earth's, but God's redeemed ones can enter it with delight. However stupendous the transition, it is easy and quick; no narrowed and doubtful reception; the finite easily joins the infinite; the imperfect is neither shamed nor crippled by the perfect; the lowliest estate does not shrink or tremble as the highest glory suddenly bursts upon it. Stephen looked steadfastly.

2. Heaven is heaven because fined with God's personal presence. God's glory apart from His presence is inconceivable. The soul is made for God, and reposes only in Him. There its satisfactions are supreme and complete. Is God's conscious presence welcome here now? If not, how can we meet Him face to face when this life shall open upon the next and His flooding glory appear on every side?

3. Jesus, in His glorified humanity, has the highest place in heaven's honour, and welcomes His disciples as they follow Him. We are strongly impressed with Jesus' manifold offices for His disciple band when with them in visible leadership. The story is dramatic in vividness and suggestive in teaching. But His personal relations now, His invisible leadership, mean much more every way. The glorified Jesus is the firstfruits of our redeemed humanity — in the fulness of time He will gather to Himself, to a full sharing of His glory, all who are washed in His blood and trained by His grace.

4. Dying saints are strengthened by foregleams, sometimes brilliant sight of heaven's inhabitants' bliss.

5. The spirit survives the body, its powers expanded and quickened. We reason about continued life, the body laid aside; but hear the proof in the experience of one qualified to speak. Stephen saw Jesus, and to Him committed his soul. We shudder at the thought of going into utter oblivion, life annihilated. From this fear the dying Stephen brings sure release.

6. The saved soul, redeemed by the blood of Christ and quickened by Divine grace, can thoroughly forgive. No test of Christian character is more trustworthy than this. No personal resentments embittered His dying hour. Will our pillow be free from such thorns? They are sharp and fatal to dying peace or eternal safety.

7. Divine Providence utilises all events to the forwarding of its world-embracing plans. A great apostle was needed for the Gentile world. Here that coming apostle had his first special training. As has said, "But for Stephen's prayers the Church would not have had its apostle Paul."

8. A significant fact that this detailed account of Stephen's martyrdom stands alone. We needed it, that we might have this one vivid illustration of dying grace in a crisis so remarkable.

9. A typical instance of an apparent triumph of hostility to Jesus in His followers turning into overwhelming defeat. We tremble before assaults upon the Word of God, the organised Church and all related institutions; but such assaults, however successful in appearance, are but for the moment. Converts to Christ are, in most cases, born through the travail of some one.

10. Lighter trials may avail themselves of the same supports as came to the dying martyr.

(S. Lewis B. Speare.)

I. HE LOOKED UP STEADFASTLY INTO HEAVEN, where his heart and treasure had long been. Where else could he look? Everything urged him to look away from earth and invited him to look up to heaven. He had no sympathy below, but there was all sympathy above. There were the redeemed who had gone before him, the angels, Jesus, his heavenly Father, all waiting to welcome him. So good is brought out of evil, and man's violence made to hasten the saint's blessedness. "As thy days so shall thy strength be." When earth casts us out, heaven waits to receive us.

II. As he looked HE SAW THE GLORY OF GOD.

1. In Isaiah 6. we may see the meaning of this glory, especially as interpreted by John. "These things, said Esaias, when he saw Christ's glory." The seraphim saw in Christ the glory of God — His mercy and His holiness, how He could be just and yet forgiving. So Stephen saw the Divine honour secured by that redemption for which he was called upon to die.

2. He saw Jesus standing, and the glory of God softened in the Person of his Saviour. He saw Jesus —(1) Glorious after His humiliation.(2) Accepted by the Father, and in that the proof that His work was accomplished.(3) "Standing," to import that He was interceding, giving the Spirit, and that human nature was indeed exalted in His Person.

III. In full harmony with these views he said, "LORD JESUS, RECEIVE MY SPIRIT."

1. He had a clear apprehension of the soul's independence of the body.

2. He knew that as soon as his enemies had despatched him his soul would be admitted into glory.

3. He realised the sufficiency of Christ for his salvation.

IV. How was he exercised towards his enemies? He prayed, LORD, LAY NOT THIS SIN TO THEIR CHARGE.

1. What just views of Christ these prayers discover.

2. What a view does his conduct give of the power of Christianity.

V. It was while he expressed such a spirit that HE FELL ASLEEP. Learn from the example of Stephen —

1. How to die in peace.

2. That the Spirit has brought great glory to Christ from the death of His people.

3. What shall be the glory of the martyr in heaven?

(J. Morgan, D. D.)

1. Negatively. It does not consist in —

(1)Mere external ceremony.

(2)The mere utterance of any prescribed forms of prayer.

(3)Any special attitudes of devotion.

(4)Mere devotional feeling.

2. Positively. The true conception of worship is realised only in the vision of Jesus.This view —

1. Respects His Divine-human character.

2. Is centred in Jesus as Mediator.

3. Is directed to Christ in His position of official dignity.

III. ITS CHARACTERISTICS. Stephen —

1. "Looked." This was —

(1)Personal.

(2)Present.

(3)Anxious.

(4)Intelligent.

(5)Glorious.

2. "Steadfastly." The soul was in the act. It was no mere " vacant stare"; no idle, curious glance.

3. "Into heaven." He entered within the veil and worshipped with the spirits before the throne. He was not content to look merely at its burnished gates.

4. "Saw the glory of God." The instrument of vision was the eye of the soul. He saw by faith not the outer, but the inner, glory, of the temple of God.

IV. ITS MORAL CONDITION. He was "full of the Holy Ghost." It is the power of the Holy Ghost that purifies the heart, spiritualises the conceptions, and develops the true worshipping faculty in man. Worship is a dead letter without such power.

(John Tesseyman.)

I. A RAVISHING GLIMPSE INTO HEAVENLY REALITIES. Divine manifestations usually fasten on something in the fortunes or thoughts of those who receive them. To Joshua, about to besiege Jericho, the angel of the Lord appears as a captain; to the wise men, whose study was astronomy, the revelation of Christ's birth was made by a star; to St. Peter and his fellow-fishermen, a sign of Christ's power is given in a miraculous draught of fishes. Stephen was now in the temple, and was familiar with the history of the shekinah of its holy place. He was before the high priest, with whose function on the day of atonement he was also familiar. With, then, this imagery in his mind he sees the shekinah of the heavenly sanctuary, and the great High Priest standing before God to intercede for the human race.

II. A CONFESSION OF CHRIST BEFORE THOSE WHO HAD CRUCIFIED HIM. Stephen's mind was full of his Master's words when placed in similar circumstances, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power," and his declaration is tantamount to "Lo, His words are fulfilled. I see your late Victim crowned with glory at the right hand of God."

III. A CONSOLATION AND SUPPORT TO HIMSELF. Our Lord had warned the Jews that they would see Him "sitting"; Stephen sees Him "standing." The difference is significant. To the Jews He will sit as Judge; to Stephen He stands —

1. As ready to assist him. A person who sits while contemplating the sufferings of another gives an impression of indifference. One who rises and advances towards us shows that he hears our cry and is willing to help.

2. As ready to plead for him. The earthly high priest sat before him as judge, fury on his countenance, and condemned him. The heavenly High Priest stands as his Advocate with the Father.

3. As ready to receive him in fulfilment of His own gracious words (John 14:2, 3).

IV. CONFORMING THE MARTYR TO THE IMAGE OF HIS LORD. At Christ's baptism "the heavens were opened," and in Gethsemane "there appeared an angel from heaven, strengthening Him." Thus was He prepared for the two great conflicts of the temptation and the passion. Now that the disciples might be made like Him it pleased God, in the first martyrdom, to vouchsafe the support of a heavenly vision, It was otherwise with James. He had no vision, but what had passed in Stephen's case must have given him support. "He who welcomed Stephen will welcome me." These different circumstances of the two martyrdoms open up the general plan of God's administration of His Church. "We walk by faith, not by sight." If every believer had such a vision there would he no longer any trial of character in faith, and the great object of our probation would be seriously interfered with. God's plan, therefore, is to give glimpses into the heavenly world only at the outset of a dispensation. But if our privileges are less high in this respect, we have the opportunity of exercising a nobler faith. "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed."

V. THROWING INTO RELIEF THE OBTUSENESS OF THE JEWS. Blinded by their malicious fury, they can no more see Christ than Balaam could the angel. In this there is something very awful. A transaction was going on in the spiritual world, which intimately concerned them, of which they were totally unconscious. So it may be with us; and there is but one thing which can make the spiritual world a reality to us, and that is the faculty which penetrates into the unseen — faith.

(Dean Goulburn.)

I. STEPHEN'S OUTLOOK.

1. Its expectancy. "He looked." He was now in search of help in his extremity; it was nowhere to be found in that neighbourhood. He looked off from everything earthly, sent his mind backward after some old promise, forward for some fresh revealing of hope, and upward beyond all pain and worry for himself or the young Church he loved. Our lesson is this: Give up all responsibility for the world's history into the hands of a faithful God. How some people distress themselves about the future of their children; forgetting that they lived somehow after their parents died. God lives always.

2. Its intelligence. "He looked up." He might have, in some way, sought help from the Roman government, or sympathy from his fellow-believers, but "up" was the only way in which to look, for one who had read the Old Testament as he had (Isaiah 31:1). So we must rest for living help, and for dying grace, upon Jesus Christ (Hebrews 12:2).

3. Its tranquillity. "He looked up steadfastly." There is here no quailing of the coward, no cringing of the captive, no weak sympathy for those who would mourn his death. Is it not strange that the one person in all the world who would fitly express his exact feelings was at the time standing? (Acts 20:24). And any sincere believer may depend upon his covenant-keeping God to give him perfect peace in dying, even under the most dreadful circumstances.

4. ITS TRIUMPH. "Into heaven." True faith, eminent and dauntless, has an eyesight of its own, which will prove gloriously serviceable at the final moment of life.

II. THE VISION. When Stephen looked up, what did he see? Two years afterwards, the "young man" Saul saw the same grand spectacle (chap. Acts 9:3-5). It made him an apostle (1 Corinthians 9:1).

1. "The glory of God." Moses and Elijah appeared in glory with Christ (Luke 9:31). When Moses and Aaron saw it, it was like a pavement of sapphires (Exodus 24:10). The dying martyr saw an unutterable splendour. He sprang towards it with an impulsive gesticulation of discovery. He forgot where he was, and even ceased to think how unsympathetic an audience he had.

2. "The Son of Man." Our Lord called Himself by that name often, but no one else till this martyr died. The Son of God is still the Son of Man. Conclusion: Heaven is —

1. The only real thing in the universe.

2. The only hope worth cherishing.

3. The only end worth striving for.

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

I. First of all, it is said, he was "full of grace and power." In the same chapter it is said he was "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." Practically it is the same thing. "Full of faith and of the Holy Ghost," and "full of grace and power": the one is the condition of the other. The one points to the inward fact, the thing which made him what he was; the other to the manifestation of that, the impression which he left upon those who came into contact with him.

1. He was "full of grace." The expression suggests a type of character with qualities of its own, which not only calls forth our admiration, but which leads our thoughts upwards to God. There are persons who, in a special way, make us think of the Lord Jesus Christ. We recognise the character I am pointing at when we meet with it, although we may feel that we can only very inadequately describe it. It is a character partly like that of Christ Himself, but also in some essential particulars unlike it; like it in the presence of simple trust in God, and purity of heart, and prompt faithfulness of loving obedience; like it in the pain and indignation caused by falsehood and cruelty and meanness; like it in the love that seeketh not her own, that is not easily provoked, that beareth all things and hopeth all things; but also unlike it, not only in the imperfection that belongs to human goodness at its best, but in the profound humility which accompanies deep consciousness of sin, and the grateful love which springs from sin forgiven. Yes, we know very well that there is a character which has in it something distinctive, something peculiarly its own, even when it is very imperfectly developed, something that we recognise, and we know whence it is and how it cometh. We know whence it is, for it is grace; and we know how it cometh, for it cometh by that faith which realises the unseen and lives as in the presence of Him who is unseen, which habitually looks up into heaven, which has learned to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and which, as the result of beholding the glory of the Lord, reflects it, and is changed into the same image.

2. And being "full of grace," he was "full of power." The power here indicated was not simply that of working miracles, nor was it even intellectual force — the wisdom with which he selected from a memory well-stored with Old Testament Scripture, and the cogency with which he drove home his arguments, though that was part of it; but it was above all moral force of character, the power which always goes along with grace, and suffers no life where that is to be resultless. For grace in itself is power. We -an understand that Stephen was "full of power" when he was pressing his antagonists in debate with arguments which they were unable to answer, and they retreated step by step, baffled and silenced, and at last slunk away abashed. We can understand it when we perceive how, while professedly dealing with the past, he was really holding up history before them as a mirror, in which they could see themselves, and observe that in one respect at least they were proving themselves to be the children of the fathers, by doing after their deeds; and we can understand it again, when his pent-up feeling at last finds vent in a burst of indignant denunciation, which must have made those men who held his life in their hands quail in his presence. We recognise that there was a power there; and perhaps it is not that in us which is most akin to the spirit of Christ, which is most quick to appreciate that kind of power; but how slow we are to realise that there was perhaps greater, wider, and more lasting power in the daily round of common duty, in the unnoticed ministries of charity, as he daily wended his way through the lanes and closes of the city among the poor committed to his charge, in his example of patience and self-mastery, in the help he gave by friendly counsel, in the silent influence of his ordinary life. It is good to covet earnestly the best gifts; but it is well to remember that there is something more excellent, for greater — greater in power — than all these is love, the love which is quickened and sustained by looking up steadfastly into heaven and beholding Jesus.

II. It is in harmony with what we are told of Stephen — "that he was full of grace" — that we read of that glory upon his face in the great crisis of his life. For grace is the inner beauty of the soul; this was the shining through of that inner beauty. Who cares to stop to discuss the question whether this was, in the commonly accepted sense of the word, miraculous? Does not that which is inward ever tend to find for itself outward expression? Do not the habitual emotions and cherished thoughts of the soul record themselves upon the countenance? And if the evil dispositions write themselves upon the face, do not the best feelings of the heart — does not grace — tend to do the same? Is there not something unmistakably its own in the eye of guilelessness and transparent openness? Does not the habitual trustfulness which rests on God come at last to reflect itself in serene placidity of expression? Does not love in its purest, intensest, self-sacrificing forms — the love of a mother, for instance — almost glorify?

III. The inward likeness to Christ, which comes by steadfastly looking to Him, which was manifest in the life of Stephen, making it full of grace and power, was also conspicuous in his death. He is like his Lord in faith and in love.

1. He is like Him in faith. There is similar confidence, yet with a significant difference. Our Lord in dying had said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." Stephen, in his last agony, commits his spirit not directly to the Father, but to Jesus, who has bought it with His blood, knowing in whom he has believed, and that He is able to keep that which is committed to Him against that day.

2. And, once more, in his dying hour, in showing himself strong in love, Stephen reveals how full his mind and heart are of the thought of his Saviour, and how deeply he has drunk of His Spirit. While the blinding volleys of stones are flying round him, crashing upon body and brain, the last effort of his yet clear consciousness is an act of prayer; and the prayer of Jesus for those who were nailing Him to the Cross is echoed in his expiring appeal — "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." We can scarcely help tninking of a wonderful contrast. In the days of King Joash, Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, the faithful friend and counsellor of the king, stood forth to rebuke the corruption of the popular worship. Like Stephen's, his warning provoked an outburst of popular fury; and like him, he received the earthly recompense of his faithfulness in being stoned to death, the king, with shameful ingratitude, being a party to it; and when he died, he said, "the Lord look upon it and require it." In what a different strain does the first Christian martyr plead. Since the old prophet's time a new revelation of Divine love had been given to men; a new example of human love had been set before them; a new motive of love had begun to work within them; a new spirit of love, the Spirit of Christ Himself, had been imparted to them; and of that Spirit Stephen was full — "full of the Holy Ghost."

IV. This is the only narrative with any fulness of detail of any death in the New Testament, save One. Is it wrong to infer from this that in the New Testament greater importance is attached to the manner of a man's life than to the manner of a man's death; that in his conquering temptation in living, even more than in his triumphing over fear in dying, is the power of the grace of Christ displayed? At any rate, for once we are asked to contemplate a Christian in the hour of his departure. His was a stormy passage to the heavenly rest; but this is what we have to remember — what was true in his case is true as to the main things in all who have obtained like precious faith. There may be no brightness like the reflection of the heavenly glory lighting up the face; there may be no telling of a -vision of the opened heavens; there may be only pain and weakness, dull unconscious stupor, or a clouded mind; but none the less it is true that as here, so over every dying believer the Lord Jesus Christ stands to succour and to receive the spirit he commits to Him then, or has committed long before. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of all His saints. Like Stephen they fall asleep, and awake to behold His face in righteousness, and shall be satisfied with His likeness.

(A. O. Johnston, M. A.)

I. THE GLORIOUS SCENE THAT EXISTS IN THE WORLD ABOVE — "the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." This Stephen saw; but it did not come into existence then; it was in existence before; it is in existence now. We find it difficult to give reality in our minds to distant and unseen things, My friend in some remote land is a really existing being, though I cannes realise his presence. None of us doubts the existence of countries on the other side of the globe. They are as real as though we beheld them. So of heavenly things.

II. THOSE DISTRESSING SCENES THAT OFTEN OCCUR IN OUR WORLD BELOW. Scenes like that are often acted in our world. They seem to be a part of our fallen world's sad inheritance. To some of us the injustice, cruelty, and evil tempers of those we live with, have embittered our lives. We must not murmur at this. It is to be endured patiently, just as sickness or any other calamity. Let us, as one fruit of it, long more for a world where we and all admitted shall be creatures of another mind — all happy one in another, as well as happy in our God.

III. THE CONDUCT OF THE FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN AMID THE DISTRESSING SCENES OF LIFE. "They gnashed on him with their teeth." They were becoming wild in their rage against him: yet what does he? Strive to mollify their rage? Appeal for protection to the judges? Look round to find some one less violent than the rest, to interpose in his behalf? No; great as his danger appears, he looks above his danger. "Full of the Holy Ghost, he looks up steadfastly into heaven." The expression implies that he felt sure that there was help for him there. Here is the secret of bearing trouble well — it is not to keep our eyes on our trouble, anxious for any and ready to catch at the first alleviation of it; it is to look above our troubles, to get our whole soul riveted on Christ in the heavens.

IV. THE MANIFESTATION WHICH THE LORD SOMETIMES MAKES OF HIMSELF TO HIS EXPECTING SERVANTS. Our Lord had promised His disciples that if they loved Him and kept His commandments, He will still manifest Himself to them. Now to draw our attention to this promise, and to assure us of the fulfilment of it, we may conceive to be the design of this wonderful vision. At this time most certainly he was loving his Lord, and proving his affection to Him by the danger in which he had placed himself for His sake. Here, then, was an opportunity for the Lord to show how precious to Him are the people that love Him, and how mindful He is of His own word.

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. We have here a notable instance of the way in which THE WHOLE OF OUR HOLY RELIGION RESTS ON FACTS. We see what it was amongst its first confessors in a time of crucial experiment. It was not a set of beneficent maxima which leavened, and raised the tone of, society; not a set of lofty ideas which, gradually, with the help of time and distance, formed a highly-coloured medium through which reverence and affection could look back to the form of their first promulger, and gaze upon it with a wonder which at last invested him with the fancied attribute of a god. No! from the very first it was faith in a Person, Divine and human, beside His follower, and able and willing to hold him up in every struggle. Stephen's spirit did not cast itself upon sublime abstractions. No! he looks up steadfastly into heaven with the earnest, longing, searching glance of undoubting expectation, following the ascended form to where the cloud had received Him out of their sight; and before such a gaze the cloud melted, and he "saw the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."

II. IF THUS THE WORD OF GOD WAS A SET OF FACTS, ANY ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE IT INTO A SET OF IDEAS SUBVERTS ITS VERY FOUNDATIONS, AND DESTROYS THE WHOLE EDIFICE. For —

1. This is to take a position altogether at variance with that occupied by the first believers, and thus to shake utterly their credit, inasmuch as, in this view, either they were so ignorant as to be misled, or so false as to mislead. Nor is this all; the great Teacher Himself appealed to these facts as the proofs of His commission (John 10:38; John 15:24). Either, therefore, the facts were real, or the Teacher was a deceiver.

2. It is not possible, consistently with any rules of reasoning, to make a selection from the facts, and yet seek to retain the ideas. A philosophy, being a speculation, may contain a multitude of great and true ideas, mixed with phantasies and fictions; and it is the office of higher intelligences to separate the precious from the vile. But in a system of alleged facts resting upon evidence, the presence of one falsehood shakes the truth of the whole fabric. This is the very issue to which St. Paul brings the whole question, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."

III. THE LIGHT THROWN HEREBY UPON DIFFICULTIES AS TO GOSPEL MIRACLES.

1. These difficulties rest mainly on the supposed existence of a contradiction between the universally observed law of causes and effects, and the interposition of any intervening power to suspend or to invert those laws. Such pretended interruptions, we are told, no evidence could establish, and that a miracle therefore is impossible. The same conclusion is more gently insinuated by those who would have us think that miraculous power was nothing more than a deeper acquaintance with nature, enabling the operator to work a trick and to call it a miracle; to do, as some have done by savages, when they called to their aid the secrets of science to astonish by pretended portents the ignorance of the uncivllised.

2. But cast upon all these difficulties the brightness of St. Stephen's vision, and they are scattered in a moment; for it lifts us at once out of the dull level of naturalism into the new lights and shadows of the mountain of God. If one of these recorded facts be true and real, it is of itself enough to prove that the Lord of nature has for His wise purposes resolved to manifest to us, through our sensible faculties, His peculiar presence and His direct working; and this once admitted, the probability is in favour of the truth of any other well-attested miracles. For just as one flash of lightning evinces the existence of such conditions of the atmosphere as may be expected to produce a second, and so makes the coming of that second as probable then as at another time it would be improbable; so does one such direct proof of the manifested working of the Master's hand make it even probable that according to His wise purpose it may be followed by another. One such fact, therefore, proves that, we are not under a dispensation of nature but of grace; that we are introduced into a new atmosphere, to which we cannot apply the laws which governed that from which we have been transported; that we can no more argue as to what can and cannot be from the data of mere naturalism, than we could measure the laws of light by knowledge gathered from the darkness.

3. Here, then, we are led to the real cause of such difficulties. It is to be found in a want of hearty belief of the spiritual world. To any one of such a habit of mind all difficulties multiply spontaneously after their kind. It is with such spirits as with the bodies of men who live beside open drains, or are encompassed in the malaria of a marsh; they imbibe unconsciously at every pore the lurking poison: you must lift them up to higher grounds and purer airs if you would give health to their fever-stricken limbs. To heal these troubled spirits you must place them with St. Stephen on the mountain of God. If that eye, so diseasedly minute in its small criticisms; if that apprehension, so ready but so shallow in its power; if that reason, so feverishly captious in its questions; if that bent, narrow, trembling soul could but be lifted to those heights — could but be led to look up steadfastly into heaven — its difficulties would pass even unconsciously from it, and its cure be certain.

4. Here, then, is the true mode of meeting these difficulties: not by shutting our eyes feebly to them, not by turning away from them as though we were afraid of them; but by looking at them, not in the purblind darkness of a carping petulance, but in the light of these spiritual verities. To live in this light is our Christian birthright. We need not be with St. Stephen in the agony of martyrdom to attain to it. God has so made us that common life gives us daily opportunities, if we will but use them, of gaining this insight. To every soul so seeking Him He reveals Himself; the cloud opens; the form of the Son of Man is seen; and then belief is comparatively easy, and the difficulties which must remain, whilst they keep our faith humble and watchful, cease to be perplexing to the soul.

5. If this be so, then what becomes of the supposed morality of encouraged doubts in any Christian man? Surely we can see the utter falsehood of representing them as the patient reachings forth of an inquiring spirit for the light for which he longs Rather, assuredly, are they the wilful turning, through some fault of the flesh or of the spirit, away from the light; and instead of bearing the noble titles of reasonable and faithful inquiry, they should by every true heart be degraded to the discreditable category of suspicions nourished in cankered hearts against a father's truthfulness or a mother's honour. Dark and sad is the history of such a course. Its steps lead surely down from the mountain of light. The one only Sun which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, sinks for him who treads it in the mists which gather ever thicker and thicker round his blackening horizon. Worship in its fervour, prayer in its reality, and then trust, and love, and peace one by one are all extinguished — peak after peak loses the last lingering ray of the daylight — until all is dark (Isaiah 59:9-11).

6. It is not on the difficulties of belief alone, but upon all the struggles through which the life of God is maintained within our souls, that this vision of St. Stephen casts its light. Never cap the impetuous tyranny of appetite be subdued, and the soul and body kept in purity, save by these powers of the world to come. When the flesh is strong within, what shall aid us in the strife like looking up steadfastly into heaven and seeing the Son of Man as our helper? Or, again, as years go on, and these impetuous temptations of earlier life being somewhat past, new ones of a soberer, heavier, and more stupefying worldliness have taken their place, what else can so guard us against sinking into the dull, respectable, commonplace conformity with evil which, like the white ashes after the conflagration, succeeds so naturally to the burst of youthful indulgence, as the ever-living sense of our nearness to the Lord and of His perpetual presence with us? What can arouse watchfulness, keep prayer alive, kindle love, deepen humility, renew contrition, quicken zeal, minister support in sorrow, or awaken praises in the soul which God is graciously keeping, like the perpetual realisation by the eye of faith of what is now going on within the veil?

(Bp. S. Wilberforce.)

II. As the sufferings of the Redeemer had been severe beyond example, so is His TRIUMPH over every enemy complete beyond the power of description. It commenced at that moment when He broke asunder the chains of death, and rose triumphant from the tomb; and it was still more conspicuously displayed at the hour of His ascension to heaven.

III. Consider the IMPROVEMENT TO BE MADE of this subject. The doctrines of the gospel either excite us to avoid the paths of sin by showing us the dangers with which they are beset, or they stimulate us to lives of faith on the Son of Man by displaying the rich rewards that await the righteous.

1. Of the latter description is the doctrine of our Lord's exaltation; and the first obvious inference that flows from it is, that it furnishes a theme of joy and exultation to the true Christian.

2. Another lesson to be learnt from this doctrine is a firm reliance on the promises of the gospel. Of the truth of these promises, the history of our Saviour's sufferings and triumph affords the most ample evidence.

3. This doctrine affords a noble and most powerful encouragement to a life of faith on the Son of Man. Our blessed Redeemer ascended to the bosom of His heavenly Father, not less to prepare a place for His faithful followers than to enter Himself into His glory.

4. Consider the exaltation of Christ as teaching us to set a just and proper value on the things that belong to our eternal salvation, and as conveying to us the important lesson of placing our affection on things above, and not on things below. For what are the honours, the riches, and the pleasures of this world, in comparison of that glory which is at the right hand of God?

(James Bryce.)