himself the task of carrying away the waters of the ocean in his tiny pail. You laugh at the barbarian who fancies, when he first comes upon the sea, that he has reached the end of the world. You would laugh at a man who proposed to build himself a house, but was so pleased with the foundation that he thought it unnecessary to proceed with the building. You would laugh if an athlete, who was going to run a race, became enamoured of the arrangements at the first end of the course, and while others were pressing on towards the goal, contented himself with going round and round the starting-post. But there is something more laughable still. There is no conceivable object in the universe of God half so ludicrous or absurd as the man who thinks that as soon as he could repeat his creed. like a parrot he had mastered truth; who imagines that truth-illimitable, infinite, everunfolding truth-is deposited in a corner of his own finite mind,—a mind that is not only finite but small, shrivelled into almost nothing for the want of use. Did I say such a man was a fit object for laughter? I was wrong. I should

have said for tears.

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? Why, this. Truth has heights and

depths, and lengths and breadths, which eternity itself will be too short to traverse and explore. Truth is high as heaven, deep as hell, broad as the universe, infinite as God, everlasting as eternity. The answer to the question, "What is truth?" is one which will be ever telling, yet never completely told. In our present state we are at a disadvantage. We are painfully conscious that there is

"A deep below the deep,

And a height beyond the height.
Our hearing is not hearing,

And our seeing is not sight.”

But, behold, you who are sincere, earnest men and women-behold your glorious destiny! Throughout the never-ending cycles of eternity you will be unceasingly rising, by means of the truths you have already apprehended, as upon stepping-stones, to truth still higher, still nobler, still more sublime.

87

Manliness.

I.

"Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.”—JEREMIAH V. 1.

IN Hebrew, just as in Latin and Greek and

other languages, there are two words for man, the one applicable to the whole human species, as distinguished from the lower animals, the other applicable only to those who possess the noblest characteristics of manhood-to those whom, in English, we should call manly men, or heroes. It is, of course, the latter of these words. that is used in our text. There were thousands of beings in Jerusalem who had the outward semblance of men; but the question was, whether any one of them had a manly character. Alas! the expression, a manly man, is by no

means a tautological expression. The noun refers to the body, the adjective to the soul.

It

is quite possible to have the body of a man and the soul of a baby; or worse, to have the body of a man and the soul of a beast; or worst of all, to have the body of a man and the soul of a fiend.

Executing judgment means, in modern English, doing right. Jeremiah's conception of a true man, a man in the highest signification of the term, is, that he is one who does right and seeks truth. We shall only be able in this sermon to notice the first of these characteristics. We must leave the second for future consideration, as well as the value of manhood, implied in the words, "I will pardon it."

The first test, then, of genuine manlinessthe first criterion whether or not a human being deserves to be called a man-is this, Does he or does he not do right? It is a matter for serious reflection whether men real, genuine men- -are not as rare in the towns and villages of England to-day as they would seem to have been in Jerusalem in the time of Jeremiah.

Just think, in the first instance, of the frauds

daily perpetrated in trade. You have all heard the phrase "commercial morality," and you all know that it is but a euphonious expression for the immoralities of commerce-immoralities which men try to persuade themselves must have been rendered moral by force of custom. I need not remind you how many thousands of times whitened water has been sold for milk, sweetened sand for sugar, or a mixture of sloeleaves and iron filings for tea. I need not remind you how frequently your children's sweets have been composed of sulphuric acid and red-lead, or your beer flavoured with copperas, Cocculus indicus, or strychnine. Your port wine, as it is called by way of courtesy, is commonly made in London. Your Stilton cheese grows green not with age, but by the aid of copper nails.

"Chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life."

Poisons are, unhappily, much cheaper than food. It pays, therefore, to sell poison and to charge for food; and whatever pays is right, according to the gospel of commercial morality. You buy a horse. You see, as you think, that he is so many years old; but, poor man! you are taken