There is something very remarkable in this simple history. Originally aliens in race (1 Chronicles 2:55), they gained a place in the land of Israel (Judges 1:16). Jonadab the son of Rechab, the ancestor of the race, was the true founder of the family. His character was so high that Jehu affected his company in order to gain esteem from the people (2 Kings 10:15, 16). From him their ascetic rule of life was received, and they had continued to observe it with unswerving strictness. We have here an illustration of -

I. AN EXAGGERATED VIRTUE.

1. Their asceticism was a real virtue. In its various elements of temperance, simplicity, and hardihood, it presents a most exemplary and attractive aspect. It must have tended to holiness and happiness. It would be well for the men of our own day were they to imitate this race in these respects. Most of our social evils are easily traceable to the influence of intemperance, luxury, etc. It was a noble ideal nobly realized; yet:

2. It was exaggerated beyond natural limits. This is the penalty of those who rigidly observe one mode of life. Excellent as that may be at the first, and, as a whole, may still continue to be, it gets out of joint with the advancing customs of the age, isolates its votaries from the general current of the national life, and stereotypes the degree of civilization or barbarism which gave it birth. In its rigid observance it leads to anachronisms, inconveniences, etc. Its accidental features become more noticeable than its essential ones. Unless grounded on sufficient reasons and continually referred to these, unless adapted in its accidental features to the changing circumstances of the world, - it tends to become unreal, and to produce unreal moral distinctions. There is something of weakness to be detected in the explanation of their presence in Jerusalem (ver. 11). They were out of place.

3. The secret of this was float it was founded upon an exaggerated sentiment. Asceticism is in itself neither good nor bad. It receives its real moral importance from the motives and aims that underlie it. In this instance the motive was excellent so far as it was legitimate, but it was clothed with a factitious sacredness and obligation. Consistently carried out, such a principle would stay all progress and sanction the most horrible crimes. That their ancestor had enjoined their mode of life was hardly a sufficient reason for it, and the motive of policy with which he had commanded it was not an exalted one. The true justification for a peculiar mode of life, especially when of this trying description, must be found in the great human and spiritual aims which religion - especially in its later evangelical phase - presents for our achievement. To guard the weakness of a brother, to further the moral and religious welfare of men, and to glorify God by holiness and unselfishness of conduct, are aims that may be ours if we will

II. A MAGNIFIED PERSONAL INFLUENCE. The hold this man obtained over the conduct of his descendants through so many generations was most remarkable. A man or marked character, great reputation for sanctity, wisdom, and power of impressing others with his peculiar views, forms a conception of what life ought to be, especially for those who, like his own family, are strangers living on sufferance in the midst of another people. The Eastern feeling of respect for parents and reverence for ancestors and of the sacredness of tradition and custom associates itself with his teaching and example, and soon his rule of life becomes a fixed, ineradicable principle amongst his descendants far more potent than any law of the statute-book. This shows:

1. The power of personal influence. "Influence is the best kind of power." It belongs more or less to all of us; and we shall be held responsible for its legitimate increase and direction. The influence of any one of us is probably both greater and less than he suspects. It is a natural and proper instinct for man to seek this moral power, and the relations of life afford many opportunities for acquiring and exercising it. Parents.

2. The importance of securing that our influence shall be of the right kind. Ultimate results and effects must be left to God; but we have to do with our own character and aims, and with the known tendency of the means at our disposal. We should seek that our influence should be of the very highest kind. It is better to discover moral principles and' communicate spiritual inspirations than merely to initiate a custom. Jonadab's influence was on the whole very salutary, but it was not of the highest kind, because he did not famish his imitators with a morally sufficient motive. So fixed and mechanical, indeed, had their obedience become that they appeared to have more regard to his precept than for the direct command of God (ver. 5). In this respect Jesus Christ is immeasurably his superior. His precepts are self-evident, and commended by his own personal example. He did not appeal to mere self-preservation, but to the noblest moral instincts and principles of our nature. We are not coerced by the personality of Jesus, but persuaded by the sweet reasonableness of his doctrine and Spirit. Influence like this may be slower in making its way, but in the end it is sure to be more lasting and universal. - M.

How did the obedience of the Rechabites prove inexcusable, and therefore worthy of the severest punishment, the disobedience of the Jews? Their obedience was the obedience of children to their father, and sufficiently showed that even in a matter which crossed their natural inclinations men were capable of acting on a parental command and practising self-denial. The Jews then could not plead that they had no power of hearkening unto God. The Rechabites were witnesses against them. If Jonadab were obeyed because he was a father, had not Jehovah a right to expect to be obeyed, seeing that He was a father unto Israel? If the Rechabites could obey, obey as children, the Israelites might have obeyed, obeyed as children. Thus the instance or example of the Rechabites rose up in the sternest condemnation of the Jews, and in the clearest vindication of the judgments with which God was about to visit their transgressions. Now let us extend the argument, and exhibit it in such shape as may make it applicable to ourselves. It is a very hard doctrine which we have to enforce, when we press on your attention the utter worthlessness, so far as our procuring favour with God is concerned, of those virtues and excellences which are so much admired in society. There is something so graceful, and beautiful, and beneficial around a man of unblemished morals, of high rectitude, of large generosity — the dutiful son, the affectionate husband and parent, the loyal subject, the staunch friend — that you seem to shrink instinctively from statements which go to the bringing him to a level with those whom you abhor as the hardened and the injurious, and to the declaring him possibly as far off from the kingdom of heaven as though he lived a dissolute life, or were dishonourable in his dealings. But the statements are not the less true because they may jar with your feelings; and the minister cannot,, without the worst dishonesty, soften down facts on which Scripture is most explicit, and which even experience sufficiently establishes — the facts that there may be as thorough enmity to God beneath the aspect which is most attractive, as beneath that which is most repulsive, and that the virtues which shed a blandness over domestic life, and a dignity over commercial transactions, and a strength over political relations, may as well coexist with complete want of the religion of the heart, as those vices which break up the peace of families, and outrage all the decencies of a neighbourhood. But the principle involved in the text requires us to go even further than this, and to maintain, not only that there is no justifying power in these virtues, hut that there is even a condemning power — that they may be brought up as witnesses against their possessors, and used as proofs of their being without excuse in their neglect of God and disobedience to His Gospel. The man of great native kindliness of heart has evidently even less excuse than one of worse nature for withholding from God the offerings of thankfulness. Where there is a fine generosity, a gushing sensibility, a quick appreciation of what is noble and disinterested, what shall extenuate indifference to the Gospel, with all its holy story of love and condescension and conquest? We have thus engaged you with the general argument, rather than with the particular case presented by our text. You will, probably, however, understand the argument better, if we now confine ourselves to the relation which subsists between parent and child; for it is on this that God grounds His complaint against the Jews. Now there is no more beautiful and graceful affection of our nature than that which subsists between parents and children. We cannot but admire this affection, even as exhibited amongst inferior animals; and no passage in natural history is so attractive as that which tells how tenderly the wild beast of the forest will watch over her young, or with what assiduousness the fowls of the air will tend their helpless brood. But with the inferior animals the affection is but an instinct which lasts for a time, just long enough to ensure attention to the offspring whilst yet unable to provide for themselves; when this time is past, the tie is for the most part altogether broken; there is no keeping up of the relationship; however exquisitely the beast of the field and the fowl of the air may have nourished their young during their weeks of helplessness, they become afterwards as strangers to them, and seem not to distinguish them from others of their tribe. There is for a time a great exhibition of parental affection, but comparatively little of filial; there is apparently no reciprocity, for when the offspring has reached an age at which the kindness might be returned, the connection seems at an end, and the offspring goes away from the parent, though, becoming a parent itself, it displays the very instinct of which it has been the object. But in the human race the connection goes beyond this; if not so very intense at the first, it is abiding and reciprocal; the love of a parent for a child does not terminate when the child has grown into strength and asks no further help — it continues through life, increasing, for the most part, rather than diminishing, so that though the child may have been long absent from his home, wandering in foreign lands, or domesticated among strangers, yet can he always reckon that the hearts of his father and mother are beating kindly towards him, and that he has only again to present himself at their door, to unlock a tide of rich sensibilities, and be folded in an ardent embrace, and welcomed with deep gratulations. But whilst parents are thus abidingly and profitably actuated by affection for their children, children entertain an affection towards their parents which is scarcely less graceful and scarcely less advantageous. Of course there are exceptions, but they provoke unmingled reprobation, as though all the feelings of a community rose up against that unnatural being, a thankless child, and prompted the fitness of ejecting him from its circles. It is comparatively but seldom that children show themselves void of affection towards a father and a mother, when that father and that mother have done their part as parents; on the contrary, whether it be in the highest or the lowest families of the land, there is generally a frank yielding to its heads of that respect and that gratitude which they have a right to look for from their offspring. And from this fact, illustrated in the particular case of the Rechabites, God proceeds in our text to justify His complaint against the Jews. We stay not to demonstrate to you the paternal character of God; it is the character which pervades the whole of revelation, and is outlined by the whole of providence. The question is not as to whether God acts towards us as a father — it is only whether we act towards God as children; and here comes the melancholy contrast between men as members of particular families, and men as members of the universal family. The very beings who can recognise most cordially the claims of earthly parents, who can manifest themselves a reverence and a homage which give to the domestic picture an exquisite moral beauty, and who would show themselves monstrously indignant at any tale of filial disobedience or unthankfulness, have only to be viewed as children of God, and presently they would be convicted of all that unnaturalness, all that ingratitude, and all that baseness, on which they are so ready to pour unmingled reprobation. You cannot for a moment profess to deny, that in the heart which is all alive to filial emotions, and which beats with so true an affection towards a father and a mother, that the whole strength is gathered in the showing them respect and ministering to their comfort, there may be an utter indifference towards the heavenly Parent — ay, no more practical remembrance of Him "in whom we live, and move, and have our being," than if it were the heart of one of those blots upon our race, in which all the family charities appear to have been extinguished, or never to have grown. Then do ye not further perceive how thoroughly self-condemned must all of us stand, if we act faithfully the part of a child toward an earthly parent, but utterly fail to act that part towards a heavenly? It will be demonstrable from our own actions that we were quite without excuse, as members of the universal family; we shall be put to shame by our very excellence as members of individual families.

(H. Melvill, B. D.)