1. In rearing children, the first step should be in securing health; and for this sake the requirement is healthy parents. Children that bear the sins of their fathers are not few, and miserable are they; but taking it for granted that children are born with fair chances of life, sound in every part, and well-tempered together, the very first parental duty is to secure for them, from year to year, air, exercise, and wholesome food, that they may grow up healthily. Under this general head of health parents need instruction against the early forcing of their children. See that your children are kept down to animal conditions, so that the brain shall not destroy them.

2. Next to health in importance in the family, as well as in order, is obedience. The child is born into a world of infinite subordinations, where the business of life itself is to suppress one's self, and to give way here and there to strength, to social arrangements, to law. There can, therefore, be nothing less wise in the parent, and nothing less beneficial to the child, than that questioning, hesitating obedience which finally dragged into an unwilling submission, the child at last yields; but that is family government, as it is seen in many households; and wherever you see this — especially if you see it in your own house — understand that you are bringing up your children to disobey God, and the magistrate, and their fellow men, by teaching them to disobey you, or to give only a grudging instead of a cheerful and prompt obedience. It may be said that this is to break the will of the child, and that he needs all the will he is possessed of with which to fight his way through life. Now it is no more breaking the will of the child to teach him to obey his father and mother, than it is the breaking of the bones of my arms to teach me exactly how to use them, or exactly how to hold my hand to the keyboard of a piano. It is merely teaching the child how to use his will; and without teaching of that kind we are all brutes and barbarians.

3. We are next to consider that our children are not given to us for our accommodation and our pleasure. They are not, in one sense, our own children; they are lent to us; and no trust was ever reposed by king, by noble, by any human being upon another, so august, and of which the responsibilities are so tremendous, as the trust of a child placed in the hands of fallible, feeble, erring men, to be brought up for his destiny in this life, and in the life which is to come. These considerations reach backward. The laws of taking care of our children ought to go back further than the birth of the child, to antecedent conditions. I do not think that civilisation will ever take its last flight, or that religion will ever universally prevail, until physiological laws are observed to the letter.

4. Let me say that I regard a happy Christian family, consisting of wise parents and dutiful children, dwelling together in love as Eden restored. I regard the development of love in the family, its impartiality, its pitifulness to the weak, its watch and care, its patience, its suffering, its power to suffer, its stern requisition, its discrimination between right and wrong, its endurance of pain for the objects of its discipline, as the grandest, and as the only perfect revelation of Divine moral government.

(H. W. Beecher.)

(C. A. Berry, D. D.)

(C. A. Berry, D. D.)

(W. Arnot.)

(Mrs. Child.)

1. Genuine religion engenders and fosters states of mind highly conducive to physical health.

2. Genuine religion stimulates a practical regard to the laws of human health.

II. That experimental godliness has a tendency TO ADD HEAVEN TO A MAN'S LIFE.

1. It gives him the spirit of heaven.

2. It engages in the service of heaven.

3. It introduces into the fellowship of heaven.

(Homilist.)

I. WHAT ARE THE DAYS OF HEAVEN? "No night there."

1. In heaven they see the face of God. Manifestations of the excellence and glory of the Divine perfections: satisfying, felicitous, transforming.

2. In heaven they glorify Christ and celebrate His praise.

3. In heaven they are full of knowledge.

4. Full of love.

5. Prompt and perfect in obedience.Their delight is in doing God's will; they dwell together in perfect unity. And from this state of mind and nature unmingled satisfaction flows, like waters from a fountain. Deep and ineffable happiness is realised. The pulsations of their joy produce no exhaustion, but forever increase in pleasantness and power.

II. THE POSSIBILITY OF THIS, AND THE DUTY OF ATTEMPTING TO MAKE OUR DAYS LIKE THE DAYS OF HEAVEN, WHILST WE ARE UPON EARTH.

1. And, first, I would refer to the elements of happiness which have been already specified. Respecting the spiritual sight of the Deity, our Lord affirms, "Blessed are the pure in heart," etc. "The world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me." "I will manifest Myself to you, as I do not unto the world." If you delight in the complacency of God, be sure that His favour will be opened upon you as the sun shining in his strength. Then, as to glorifying and praising Christ; do we not now say, "Unto Him that loved us," etc.? And have we not love in exercise? Are we not ready to do the will of God? Do we not dwell in peace? When the light and fire of the Holy Ghost is given; when our best passions are kindled, when we are filled with the celestial communications and communion, there is a near resemblance of heaven upon the earth.

2. Let me appeal to some passages of Scripture which convey the same truth. The Gospel dispensation is the reign of heaven. It is the ascendency of holiness in the heart and mind. The kingdom of God is within you, and it consists of righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

3. Let us advert to some of the recorded experiences of good men on the subject. It has been said, "Grace is glory in the bud, and religion in the soul is the glory of the soul." "A timorous faith will bring a man safely to heaven, but a strong and vigorous faith will bring heaven to us now." And I was startled by this sentiment: "It is better to be here than in heaven." Yes, so long as it shall please God it is so, and to think the contrary shows insubmissiveness to His will and discontent with His providential arrangements.

III. HOW MAY THEY BE SECURED TO US?

1. Receive the Gospel. Christ is our life; if He and the Father come and abide in our souls, heaven is begun.

2. Settle the possibility of it in your own mind.

3. Observe the ordinances of Christ.

4. Avoid all known causes of disquietude.

5. Maintain your self-possession. Cultivate tranquility of spirit.

6. Take care of your thoughts.

7. Take care of your tongue.

8. Take care of your conscience.

9. Do not harass yourself concerning the future.

10. Study to be quiet, and to attend to your own business.

11. Do good every day to someone, either by example, instruction, or generosity.

(James Stratten.)

1. We know something of the "days...upon the earth." If we told our story, each would be different from the other; yet there would be a wonderful sameness. It would be a story of light and shade, beauty and barrenness, laughter and tears, success and failure.

2. We have dreamed, most of us, of "the days of heaven"; when the sun, no longer battling with the mists, should shine in the glory of his brightness; when fleecy clouds, like angel chariots, should fleck the blue expanse; when all the bustle and riot should be exchanged for unbroken peace and perpetual quiet; when vision should be no longer blurred by the uprising vapours of evil.

3. The text speaks to us of realisation, enjoyment, benediction, contentment. It contains the ideas of continuity and felicity, duration and fulness, or a blending of these ideas.

I. THE TEXT FINDS A PLEASING ILLUSTRATION IN HAPPY CHILDHOOD UNDER KINDLY PARENTAL CONTROL.

1. Given all the healthful influences of a home where judicious training is linked with affectionate yearning; where example is set like a jewel in a circlet of gold, and the parents are recognised as priest and priestess of the home sphere: I know no words more fittingly appropriate to describe that period of life than these, "As the days of heaven upon the earth."

2. The child's best interests are secured by obedience and subjection, and his heaven is found in harmony with the parental will. Then shall his course be crowded with sunny memories, for his way shall be illumined by the father's smile; voices shall cheer him in the darkness; while from day to day shall be added mercies new and many, the true value of which shall only be discovered upon review.

II. THE TEXT IS SUGGESTIVE OF THE NEW EPOCH INAUGURATED AT CONVERSION. One summer morning a lady I knew well went into her garden. She looked up at the blue sky, she gazed at the trees, she bent over the flowers, she examined everything as though she had not seen anything of the kind before. Her sister inquired, "Why are you looking at everything thus?" She replied with a smile, "Well, it is all so very lovely, and seems so new." She had been converted the previous evening, and that was the explanation of her awakened interest and evident admiration.

III. VIEW THE TEXT AS THE EPITOME OF THE GRATEFUL SOUL'S ESTIMATE OF A LIFE THAT OFTEN SEEMS ANYTHING BUT HEAVENLY. The point of view makes all the difference in the estimate of the life of faith on the earth. I read somewhere of one who had moved into a new flat, which could hardly be described as cheerful in its surroundings. The outlook was not very pleasant, and the building had not what the Frenchman called "a sunny exposition." The ordinary woman would have regarded it but as a dismal shelter from the frosts of winter or the rains of summer. A friend called one day, and was asked by the cheerful housewife to notice the pleasant view from the window. "Yes," said the friend, "I see a remarkably fine lot of chimney pots." "Chimney pots," said her hostess in astonishment, — "why, I never saw any chimney pots before. I looked over the chimneys, and saw only those trees which form the line on the horizon. I thought only of the trees and the sunsets." Happy are they who look beyond all which tends to depress and distress!

IV. THE TEXT SINGLES OUT THE RED-LETTER DAYS IN THE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHOSE FACES ARE HEAVENWARD SET. Cannot we recall seasons of elevation, times of transport, periods of exceptional delight? When thoughtfully reading, when quietly meditating, when kneeling in prayer, when gathered for worship, when observing the ordinances with our fellow believers, have we not often been lifted out of and above ourselves? Such experiences are not to be forgotten. The record of them must be deeply engraven.

(Isaac O. Stalberg.)

I. THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION were, in the highest and most absolute sense, days of heaven upon earth. A light began to shine amid the dark shadows of that time, and a Divine life to give forth sparks and gleams of a better world. God was manifest. He dwelt with men. He trod the common paths of life. Brief though the days were, all the great days of human history which preceded them had led up to them; and they were themselves, while they lasted, a vision of heaven for all time, an actual dawn of the possibilities to which Christ is conducting His Church, a demonstration of the power of that life of Christ in His people which, today as then, may be an opener of blind eyes, and a raiser of the dead, and may still go forth, as in the first apostles, to conquer the world. Those days were sent to us to create new days in our daily lives, and enable us, even amid the shadows and imperfections of our earthly life, to live lives of heaven upon earth. And these days still return to us. Times of revival are simply repetitions on a smaller scale of the first days of the Church. The light that shines upon human life at such times is light from heaven. Christ once more walks among men, and His presence seems to encompass them wherever they go.

II. THE TIMES WHEN THE SOUL IS OPEN TO THE REVELATIONS AND OFFERS OF DIVINE LIFE are days of heaven upon earth. The dawns and sunsets of these days are in the soul itself. These are the blessed times when the heart is still impressible, when the eyes of the soul are undimmed, when the conscience is still tender. The soul is face to face with the claims of God. It has new views of its responsibilities, of its aims, and of its destiny. Christ's word and the Spirit of God and our own conscience work together to range us on the side of God. New visions of the Divine mercy and goodness are opened up to us, and we are placed under the argument of the love that died for us, to admit that love into our hearts.

III. THE COMING OF CHRIST INTO A LIFE is the beginning of days of heaven for that life. We are not our true selves until the blood of the Divine life has been mingled with ours. In the midst of natural occasions for joy we are not glad. Christ enters and joy begins. The long absent Friend has come — the life is heightened. The thoughts flow forth, the nature expands, the eyes kindle, and the whole wide world of circumstance and relationship takes on our joy.

IV. TIMES OF SERVICE UNDER CHRIST are days of heaven upon earth. The soul has now entered into loving relations with the Lord. It is no longer its own, but His. Its joy is to live in Him. Its life is a daily consecration to His service. Sacrifice, gifts, labours, worship: Christ is the object of them all.

V. THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF EARTH are types and sometimes actual realisations of such days. On such days every river becomes an emblem of the river of life; every tree, of the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations; and the glory of the sky when the dawn burns into the perfect day, of the glory which is to lighten the streets of the New Jerusalem, and clothe the nations of the saved who shall walk in its light. I recall at this moment such a day of heaven upon earth. Here and there, all up the sides of a Highland mountain, patches of corn were yellowing for the sickle. These literally peeped out, so small they were, from amid great breadths of purple heather. Little hollows of meadow grass shot up over their edges the richest green; and, at irregular intervals, the bare rock displayed itself like protruding bones. The sun was setting. His rays came level and struck all that breast of colour at once, and seemed to touch it into active life. It expanded, it swelled, it rose upwards until clouds of colour floated about all the mountainside. The whole scene glowed with coloured light — yellow and green and purple. It flamed upwards, outwards, downwards, casting back upon the naked granite an ethereal brightness, and down upon the spectator a glory as if the gates of heaven had been opened to his view. It was one among ten thousand glimpses of the glory of God in the face of harvest. To them who were present it was a day of heaven upon earth.

VI. CHRIST IS THE LIGHT WHICH MAKES DAYS OF HEAVEN POSSIBLE. And such days fail of their purpose if they fail to increase our joy in Him. Man in his ordinary state can neither see nor enjoy such days. He is blinded and oppressed by his burdens — the well known, the universally felt burdens, which only Christ can remove — of guilt and care and sorrow.

(A. Macleod, D. D.)

1. We enjoy much of a sense of the Divine presence, and live in the contemplation of the glorious perfections of God.

2. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.

3. We enjoy a spirit of gratitude and praise.

4. We possess brotherly love and enjoy the happiness of fellowship with the saints.

5. We obtain great victories over sin and have intense rove of purity.

6. We cheerfully obey God's commands.

7. We frequently meditate on the heavenly state.

II. WHAT COURSE SHOULD WE TAKE IN ORDER THAT OUR DAYS MAY BE AS SUCH? We must —

1. Be partakers of vital faith in Christ, and be renewed in the spirit of our minds.

2. Make the glory of God our highest aim.

3. Wean our hearts from earthly things.

4. Watch against grieving the Holy Spirit.

5. Be perpetually employed for God, and resign our wills to His.

(J. Ryland.)

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

     8208   commitment, to God

The God of the Rain
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.) DEUT. xi. 11, 12. The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year. I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people the Jews, by putting them into a country where they …
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch

Gilgal, in Deuteronomy 11:30 what the Place Was.
That which is said by Moses, that "Gerizim and Ebal were over-against Gilgal," Deuteronomy 11:30, is so obscure, that it is rendered into contrary significations by interpreters. Some take it in that sense, as if it were near to Gilgal: some far off from Gilgal: the Targumists read, "before Gilgal": while, as I think, they do not touch the difficulty; which lies not so much in the signification of the word Mul, as in the ambiguity of the word Gilgal. These do all seem to understand that Gilgal which …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant.
"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place."--2 Kings …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. )
Ver. 20. "And Noah began and became an husbandman, and planted vineyards."--This does not imply that Noah was the first who began to till the ground, and, more especially, to cultivate the vine; for Cain, too, was a tiller of the ground, Gen. iv. 2. The sense rather is, that Noah, after the flood, again took up this calling. Moreover, the remark has not an independent import; it serves only to prepare the way for the communication of the subsequent account of Noah's drunkenness. By this remark, …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

In the Fifteenth Year of Tiberius Cæsar and under the Pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas - a Voice in the Wilderness
THERE is something grand, even awful, in the almost absolute silence which lies upon the thirty years between the Birth and the first Messianic Manifestation of Jesus. In a narrative like that of the Gospels, this must have been designed; and, if so, affords presumptive evidence of the authenticity of what follows, and is intended to teach, that what had preceded concerned only the inner History of Jesus, and the preparation of the Christ. At last that solemn silence was broken by an appearance, …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

The Worship of the Synagogue
One of the most difficult questions in Jewish history is that connected with the existence of a synagogue within the Temple. That such a "synagogue" existed, and that its meeting-place was in "the hall of hewn stones," at the south-eastern angle of the court of the priest, cannot be called in question, in face of the clear testimony of contemporary witnesses. Considering that "the hall of hew stones" was also the meeting-place for the great Sanhedrim, and that not only legal decisions, but lectures …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Covenanting Confers Obligation.
As it has been shown that all duty, and that alone, ought to be vowed to God in covenant, it is manifest that what is lawfully engaged to in swearing by the name of God is enjoined in the moral law, and, because of the authority of that law, ought to be performed as a duty. But it is now to be proved that what is promised to God by vow or oath, ought to be performed also because of the act of Covenanting. The performance of that exercise is commanded, and the same law which enjoins that the duties …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close.
The first important part of the Old Testament put together as a whole was the Pentateuch, or rather, the five books of Moses and Joshua. This was preceded by smaller documents, which one or more redactors embodied in it. The earliest things committed to writing were probably the ten words proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards enlarged into the ten commandments which exist at present in two recensions (Exod. xx., Deut. v.) It is true that we have the oldest form of the decalogue from the Jehovist …
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible

Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf. …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament