Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee "This is the first recorded instance of the formation of a canonical book, and of the special purpose of its formation." No doubt other prophets had committed to writing more or less of their teachings - the quotations of one prophet from another, the later from the earlier, prove this; but here is the first record of any such act, and hence it has especial interest. It is the forerunner of all those several Scriptures which together form now the depository of our religion, and justify the well known saying of Chillingworth, "The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants." For note -

I. OUR RELIGION DEPENDS ON THE WRITTEN WORD. Great contempt has been poured on the idea of a "book revelation." As if there were something even ridiculous in the idea of God revealing himself by means of a book. A recent missionary traveller (Gilmour) among the Mongols states that they feel the force of this objection very strongly, and that when the missionary holds up his little Bible as the revelation of God, it seems to them very absurd. But these people can claim distinguished companionship amongst our own countrymen. And in addition to the rejection of a book revelation at all, this particular book, the Bible, is objected to exceedingly. All manner of ridicule is poured on it, and there is scarce a single ground on which fault could be found with it which some one has not occupied. But in reply note -

II. THE WRITTEN WORD IS, HOWEVER, NOT THE REVELATION BUT ONLY THE RECORD OF IT. It is not claimed for it to be more than this. God did not give to mankind a book, but he revealed himself to "holy men of old," and especially through the Lord Jesus Christ. And this book is the record of that revelation. Hence the only question that concerns us is - Is it a faithful record?

III. BUT SUCH A RECORD WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. For if the existence of God be allowed, and that it is his desire to reclaim men from their sin and to bring them back to himself, it may be asked:

1. How could this be done except by his revealing himself to men? They must be enabled to know him, and to know him in such manner as would be likely to move them in the direction desired.

2. But if it be granted that a revelation was a necessity, how could that revelation be of use to mankind at large unless it were put on record? For all events are related to time and space; they must have happened - God's revelation of himself amongst others - somewhen and somewhere. But how, except by a record, could those who dwelt in other generations and in other parts of the world know of this revelation? But for that it may as well not have been.

3. And so long as the Divine ideas are conveyed to our mind, what does it matter about the means employed? All the magnificence of nature - the Alpine heights, the starry universe, etc. - serve us only as they convey true and worthy ideas, as they wake up in us fit and appropriate thoughts. If they fail in this, they might as well not be so far as we are concerned. But there are many who never have opportunities of beholding the magnificence of nature - their lives are one long round of sordid toil in scenes dark and squalid; and others who have such opportunities are too little educated to learn from them what they assuredly have to tell. The road that leads from nature up to nature's God is a thinly travelled one; few go that way. But now, if by the written Word, which can be carried everywhere, perpetuated, multiplied, and is everywhere and at all times accessible - if by this there can be conveyed to the mind fit, true, and heart moving ideas about God, what an advantage this is! Instead of being a cause of scorn, it should awaken our gratitude.

4. And those features in this record which seem to some unworthy of its great mission, these really are of great service. No doubt there is much of homeliness and of trivial and seemingly insignificant detail in this record. It is a very plain, prosaic book in many parts. But is not this a great boon? Had God's revelation of himself to us been accompanied by a blaze of splendour, with such manifestations of Divine power to the senses or to the intellect as some seem to desire, the revelation would have been lost in the record; no one would look at the picture, their attention being so much occupied with the setting. Hence it is good for us that we live so long after the times of the Bible. It is expedient for us that Christ has gone away. For in proportion to men's nearness to those times "events having God in them took a more forcible hold upon their mind than God in the events." The atmosphere of time is needed in order to our right viewing of the marvellous facts of the Bible.

IV. OUR ONE QUESTION IS - IS THE RECORD FAITHFUL?.

1. As to the facts themselves - in their main substance and meaning. This question is quite apart from inspiration. Nothing but honesty and intelligence are asked for here. Of course, if any start with the assumption that the supernatural is not, and hence miracles are by their very nature impossible, and the belief of them absurd, such a one will refuse all credence to this record. But first let his assumption be proved ere doubt be thrown on either the honesty or the intelligence of the writers of the Bible.

2. As to the interpretation and meaning of the facts they record. "Just as on gazing at a picture of Raphael's we should rejoice to have at hand a companion who had familiarized himself with the spirit of the great artist and acquired an insight into his genius, to furnish us with such brief notices as might assist us to a comprehension of the profounder ideas expressed by the painting, for want of which it would lose very much of its intellectual meaning; so with the memoirs of Christ before us, as the spiritual revelation of God to our religious sense, we require, in order to adequate instruction and profit, the comments of... those who shall be qualified to point it out to our duller vision. What poets are to the natural exhibition of God in his works, these men will be to the moral exhibition of God in his Son." Now, that the sacred writers answer to this need is shown by the fact that they "commend the truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God." In this commendation to our conscience is the evidence that they have read aright the facts they record. And to this we may fearlessly appeal. We do not assert this of men's theologies and divinity schemes - too many of them outrage the conscience and trouble the moral sense; but we do assert it of the great verities of the faith, as taught in the Scriptures, and of the doctrines which the Bible as a whole plainly teaches.

"Within this ample volume lies
The mystery of mysteries.
Happiest they of human race
To whom their God has given grace

To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way;
And better had they ne'er been born
Than read to doubt or read to scorn." Cf. on this whole subject Miall's 'Bases of Belief.' - C.

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.)