The Bible continually makes use of the similitude of the harvest and its labours, but it is only by its qualifying words that we can know what kind of harvest is meant. Here we have the frequent metaphor, but it tells of no joy, of sorrow only. Similar language has been used of Israel as is here used of Babylon (cf. Isaiah 21:10; Isaiah 41:15). Israel's sins had been the seed of that harvest, and it was a terrible one. All the sorrows of the invasion and destruction of their beloved land and city, their holy city, Jerusalem, and all those which were associated with and sprang out of their bitter exile in Babylon, were but parts of that harvest and strokes of "the bruising flails of God's corrections." But here it is Babylon that is spoken of (cf. Isaiah 21. for a yet earlier prediction of Babylon's fall). She had sown the seed; the cup of her iniquity was full ere the harvests and threshings told of here came upon her. "Dissolute and luxurious in their habits, the Babylonians hid under their soft luxurious exterior a fierceness, an insatiable lust for blood, such as marked many Eastern tribes - such, for instance, as we ourselves have found in 'the mild Hindoo.' The Hebrew prophets describe them as 'a bitter and hasty,' a 'terrible and dreadful' people, 'fiercer than the evening wolves,' a people who 'made the earth tremble and did shake kingdoms.'" They conquered well nigh all the kingdoms of the then known world; they pillaged every country they conquered, and often went far to depopulate the countries they pillaged. In Judaea, for instance, the land became a mere haunt of wild beasts after the Babylonians had subdued it, and from Jerusalem they pillaged even the sacred vessels of the temple. Hence to Isaiah they appeared as "the spoiler spoiling, and the destroyer destroying." And besides all this, there seems to have been an inherent and ineradicable wickedness in the nation itself, or it could hardly have been selected, as it is, as the type of all that is abominable and hateful in the sight of God. For many a generation and century she had been spared. From the beginning to the end of the Bible we read of her. In her decayed greatness there was a little Christian Church there, of which St. Peter tells (1 Peter 5:19). But up to the time of the Exile, and during far the grater portion of it, Babylon seemed only to advance in splendour, in wealth, and power. But at length the time of her harvest - an awful time, indeed - came, and in the sorrows connected with her capture and overthrow, and in the hard and hated rule of her Persian lords, there was the "threshing" of which both Isaiah and Jeremiah tell The contemplation of it filled the Prophet Isaiah with an unspeakable horror: "My loins are filled with pain: pangs have taken hold on me" (Isaiah 21:3, 4). Jew as he was, he could not behold the dread vision of what was to come on Babylon without deep anguish. She "must have filled in his thoughts much the place which Rome held in the mind of a cultivated Spaniard or Carthnginian of the early Christian centuries. To him the Medes and Persians, plunging down from their unknown, mysterious mountain fastnesses upon the wealthy Babylonian plain, must have seemed much as the Goths and Vandals morned to the more civilized races of Europe, when they came pouring down the Alps, to carry sword and fire through the storied plains of Italy. The whole Christian world shuddered when Rome fell; and as her fall to the modern so was the fall of Babylon to the ancient world." Harvest and threshing: these images of the barn commonly suggest that which is peaceful and joyous; but here they tell of the reverse of that - of horror and woe unspeakable. Learn, therefore -

I. SINS ARE SEEDS WHICH MAY HAVE A LATE, BUT SHALL SURELY HAVE A LARGE AND TERRIBLE HARVEST.

II. RELUCTANT AS GOD MAY BE TO AFFLICT THE CHILDREN OF MEN, HE WILL NOT SPARE A SINGLE STROKE SO LONG AS THEY CLING TO THE EVILS WHICH DEGRADE AND DESTROY THEM.

III. THE JUDGMENTS AND PUNISHMENTS OF GOD ARE NOT VINDICTIVE AND FINAL, BUT THE "THRESHINGS OF THE CORN OF HIS FLOOR" (Isaiah 21:10). The separation, that is, of the evil from the good, the worthless from that which is precious and shall be preserved forevermore. - C.

"Set ye up a standard," plain, obvious to be seen; a standard, high, on a mountain top, so as to be a rallying-point for the people in the battle of the Lord. A message, this, to fire the hearts of men, to steep them to the full in the sense of life s solemnity. The appeal of the prophet had reference, in the first instance, to the assault of the Persian armies upon the fortress city of Babylon. Cyrus was employed (to use the language of the prophet elsewhere) as the very "battle-axe" of God; who was to .do God's work in delivering the Jews from their captivity, and rebuilding for their use His Temple at Jerusalem. It is the commission of the Lord God to His Church in every age; to lift up the ensign of the Cross, the banner of Christian conflict, the talisman of victory, the rallying-point of all true hearts in the battle of the Lord, against the power of evil that is abroad in our midst. If there is one lesson more emphatically taught than any other by the facts of our present-day experience, it is the lesson that in Christianity alone lies, after all, the true and ultimate hope of the world; that the standard of the Gospel is the only true measure of our social reforms and of our personal or political ideals.

1. There is a power in our midst to-day — a power so imperious that a man may well be excused for holding it to be well-nigh irresistible — the power of public opinion. Are we not apt to forget that this potent engine of our modern life is one whose motive force may, and should be, in a Christian country, spent always in the cause of God, and of His Christ? It is an engine which, if it be informed by hearts aglow with the Spirit of Christ, and guided by hands that are exercised in deeds of truth and love, may well work miracles before our eyes. Then, may not our Church expect of all her sons that each one of them should realise his personal responsibility in this respect?

2. What a motto is this for our national and imperial politics! What a "programme" is here set forth for any Government, under whatever accidents of political party! "Set ye up a standard in the land"; a standard of righteousness and of good faith in matters of international law, or the observance of international treaties.

3. May not this be taken, again, as a potent watchword at our parliamentary elections? Can we not, each one of us, deal at any rate with our own vote as with a serious trust? Can we not raise over our polling-booths a standard of principle rather than party? Can we not muster courage to demand fair play for all; to denounce the use of unworthy weapons in the process of electioneering — the weapons of declamation and mob-flattery, of slander and personal abuse, of mere brute. force, obstruction, and of secret bribery, boycotting, or cowardly intimidation? "Set up a standard in the land." What nobler principle for our legislation itself? A standard of mercy and unselfishness, of wise and intelligent sympathy. in dealing with the needs of the many; a standard of absolute impartiality, strict and entire justice, in legislating for the uneducated and the helpless classes of our population.

4. So, too, with respect to other matters of less distinctly political interest. There is room, surely, for a higher standard in questions of pressing social gravity, such as, for example, the subject of national education. Here, at any rate, the Church is pre-eminently bound to hold aloft the ideal of that which alone is worthy of the name of education. Or, turning again to such facts as are revealed by our criminal statistics, in view of the open sore of our national intemperance; or of the not less terrible though secret cancer of our national impurity, can we not, as carrying the Cross of our dear Lord's self-denial on our foreheads, can we not do something towards setting up a standard in our homes, in our streets, in our business, and in our amusements, — a standard of sobriety and of purity?

5. So, again, in our very amusements. It rests with you, of the English Church laity, to "set up a standard in the land." It is for you, who are the patrons of the English stage, to pronounce with no faltering accent that the drama — whether grave or gay — no more necessitates the stimulus of an immoral plot, or the adjuncts of a vicious art, than the pen of a Macaulay, a Tennyson, or a Browning, need defile itself with the innuendoes of a Wycherley or the coarseness of a Congreve.

6. And once again, in reference to those forum of sin to which as a great commercial people we arc especially prone. Have we not enough knowledge of a sound political economy to see that all the remedies which Parliament can propose will never touch the root of the evil we deplore? that what is wanted is not so much the mere readjustment of taxation, still less the forcible redistribution of our wealth, as the introduction of a higher standard into our commercial transactions; the standard of a fairer co-operation between the capitalist and the workman — of a more just and upright dealing between tradesman and customer — of a closer sympathy between master and servant, between producer and consumer: a standard of hard, but not slavish, honest, and conscientious work — a standard of fair working hours and fair working profits; a standard of just prices and honest weights and measures; a standard of thrift and temperance and industry, that will condemn idleness and dishonesty in the workman, the producer, but which will not excuse indolence and selfishness and unbridled luxury in the consumer; a standard which denounces all trade adulterations, all lying labels, all imitation brands, all false advertisements, and other similar forms of commercial ostentation and inequity; a standard, moreover, which declares such sins to be as sinful among the warehouses of the city as in the village shop, and pronounces the vices of the west to be at least as criminal as the crimes of the east. Lift up your hearts, then, comrades in the sacred battlefield of right and wrong! Look to that warrior Christ who leads us on.

(H. B. Ottley, M. A.)