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I. THE TRIAL OF RIDICULE. There is hardly a trial that men feel more severely than they do the test of ridicule. Livingstone tells us that "the Africans cannot stand a sneer." They bear with wonderful fortitude the most appalling torments, but they cannot endure ridicule. Poor Africans! How much they resemble civilised men. A French writer speaks thus of his countrymen: "Says Ridicule: 'You are gay,' and the fear of appearing light-minded makes him heavy. 'You are sharp,' and the ambition to be strong makes him uncouth. 'You are delicate,' and he becomes a realist. 'You are honest,' and he becomes a wily politician. 'You are a believer,' and he plays the sceptic and remains credulous — thinks it beneath his reason to believe in God, whom he does not see, and makes and unmakes gods of men whom he does see....And outsiders and foreigners judge us on these noisy demonstrations of the few; for, after all, they are the few." But if a scoff drives the Frenchman to hide his good qualities, and to boast of his vices, it is not less true of the Englishman. We are most sensitive to ridicule; we cannot bear a laugh. And we are sensitive to scorn and humour when they are directed against our religious beliefs and hopes. The prophet felt this when he gave utterance to the text. Jeremiah lived in days of national disaster, and endured the pangs of exile, but amid all the tribulations of the period he seems to have felt nothing more bitterly than the mockings of the heathen. They turned his religious ideas and hopes into merriment. And the hardest thing that thousands have to bear today in consequence of their Christian character and habits is the derision of the ungodly. Sometimes this is encountered in the school. Youth is peculiarly sensitive to ridicule, and many a lad finds the flouts and jeers of his schoolfellows a veritable martyrdom. It is sometimes to be borne in the family. And in the great outside world those who live a truly devout life often excite sarcasm and raillery. The soldier in the barracks, the sailor in the forecastle, the collier in the pit, the labourer on the farm, the assistant in the shop, the clerk in the counting-house are liable to banter.

II. SEVERAL GROUNDS ON WHICH CHRISTIAN MEN ARE SUBJECTED TO RIDICULE AND HOW FALSE THESE GROUNDS ARE.

1. They are derided on the ground that religion is unmanly. We laugh at men who are wanting in manliness, and, perhaps, that is a legitimate use of laughter, but is it a fact that the Christian man is lacking in manliness? Is he wanting in sense, or courage, or force! "Oh!" it is said, "religion is childish." It is child-like, but not childish. "Oh!" it is said again, "religion is womanish." When are we to get rid of the puppyism that prates about religion being "fit only for women," and that taunts us with the assertion that "only women are left in the Church"? Women have sufficiently vindicated their intellectual eminence. It is folly to reproach the godly with unmanliness — no man is more manly. Who in the Old Testament is held forth as the ideal man? "The man of God." He is the manly man. Who is the ideal man of the New Testament? "The Son of Man." He is the manliest of men. The faith of Jesus Christ does not make craven, foolish, effeminate, impotent characters; it inspires wisdom, valour, chivalry, strong purpose, and noble adventure.

2. Christian men are sometimes derided on the ground that religion is irrational. They are supposed to be ignorant, credulous, superstitious, and are laughed at accordingly. The cultured men of the early ages of Christianity regarded it "not as a problem to be investigated, but an extravagance to be laughed at." We are told that no one abreast of the culture of the day will give it credence. Sometimes they scorn the doctrine of inspiration, or miracles, or atonement; they scoff at the morality of revelation, at its great names, at its glorious hope. Every sceptical scoffer is supposed to be a thinker of independent understanding; the believer is treated amusingly as a fossil of the geological age. But you have no need to be ashamed of revelation. The greatest and best men of all generations have been its champions, and the grandest deeds of successive ages have been wrought by its power.

3. Christian people are assailed on the ground that religion is hypocrisy. Many critics of our faith are cynics at heart; they disbelieve in goodness, and so they treat the profession of religion as so much canting hypocrisy. How they love to discover and proclaim a stumbling saint! Hypocrites prove nothing against religion. If you wished to give an enlightened opinion upon Minton's or Doulton's ware you would not stir up their refuse heaps and bring out the rejected shards that had been misshapen on the wheel, or been cracked in the oven, and parade these as specimens of the potter's unskilfulness and untrustworthiness. It is by the splendid vases, rich in material, exquisite in grace, brilliant in colour, which adorn palaces and galleries, and not by the wrecks of dust heaps, that you judge the artist.

III. A FEW WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO THOSE WHO ARE BEING TRIED BY THE FIERY TRIAL.

1. If you are called upon to bear ridicule, you bear it with the noblest of the race.

2. If you are assailed by ridicule for your Master's sake, remember that in these days we are not called upon to suffer much for His sake. How immense were the penalties in which the Christian name involved the primitive saints!

3. If the Philistine does make music of you, have you no music? Do not your faith and love and hope bring you discourse of sweet sounds? When the moments of reflection come is there no music? When the day is over, and you muse on your bed, is there no music? When the morning dawns, is there no music? When you vanquish temptation, is. there no music? The conscience is an austere organ, without painted or gilded pipes, but it yields delectable strains, and are not these yours? The heart is a living lute, a many-stringed lyre, a golden cymbal, and is not its magic melody yours?

4. He laughs best who laughs last, and your mouth shall be fined with laughter and song at the last. The future is yours. Your faith and righteousness flower in immortal blessedness

(W. L. Watkinson.).

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KJV: Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their musick.

WEB: You see their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their song.