own," the Apostle says, "for ye are bought with a price," and this price the most costly one that even God could give. The Scriptures, in speaking of the preciousness of the Blood of Christ, speak of the most incorruptible of earthly things, silver and gold, as corruptible compared with it.

God then represents Himself as having paid down the most precious of all ransoms for all of us, for you and me, in order that He might be able to have mercy upon us, and not only to have mercy upon us, but to do to us through eternity according to His exuberant loving-kindness; so that all men are His, in order that being His they may be eternally rescued from all evil, and be good, holy, and happy.

It remains for us to consider whether we are acknowledging the property of God in us. We cannot help God's having this property in us, for we have been born in His universe, and in a part of it which He has redeemed. It is so. But though we cannot hinder God's having this right in us, we can deprive ourselves of all the blessings of having such a God as our Owner and Proprietor, by persisting in withholding ourselves, our hearts, our service, our fear from God.

God's we are, and God's we must ever be. Only it depends upon ourselves whether we are God's as His prisoners or God's as His friends; so that as a man treasures up his most precious

things, so God should treasure us up, not as the lifeless jewels of an earthly diadem, but as the wondrous words of the Book of Wisdom hath it: "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of the Lord, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction. But they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men yet is their hope full of immortality. And having been a little chastised they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them and found them worthy for Himself. As gold in the furnace hath He tried them, and received them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people, and their Lord shall reign for ever. They that put their trust in Him shall understand the truth, and such as be faithful in love shall abide with Him: for grace and mercy is to His saints, and He hath care for His elect."

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VIII.

THE TRIAL OF FAITH,

DANIEL iii. 16-18.

"O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."

THE circumstances which led the three Holy Children to return this noble answer to the King of Babylon are so familiar to us all that I need not now recount them. The practical question for us to-day is, What enabled these three saints of God to return such an answer, and to stand to it, so that they willingly submitted to be bound, and to be cast into the fire without recanting? They saw the rage and fury of the monarch, who had but a little before exalted them to the chief places in his kingdom. They heard his commandment to heat the furnace seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated; they witnessed the preparations made for casting themselves alive into it. One single word doubtless would have delivered them. The engagement to make one short act of obeisance or adoration, which would not have

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taken a moment, would have purchased their lives. And what lives? The lives of the three friends of the greatest minister of the greatest monarch in the world. No lives so influential for good, so precious to the Church and the people of God. Daniel had requested the king for his three friends, and in answer he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. See, then, what valuable lives the lives of these three men were: worshippers of the one true God, having all or almost all power in the great heathen empire; professors of the only true religion, with the eyes of the people of the greatest heathen empire in the world upon them; above all, members of the true Church, having all authority to order and control the affairs of the kingdom, so that, even if the time of the captivity of the Jews might not be shortened, its rigours might still be alleviated.

Such were the lives of these three young men; humanly speaking, of priceless value to the world, to the Church, to the cause of God. And for one single prostration before an imagean image which they knew to be nothing, and to represent a being who had no existence,they might have saved their lives from a cruel death. But it could not be. They were called by God, not only to govern on the behalf of their oppressed brethren, but to witness for Him before the eyes of a great idolatrous

empire. Their high place and station were given to them so that all men should see their testimony to the existence of one living and true God, to whom alone Divine honour was due; and they hesitated not for a moment to face a cruel death, when their duty to God in the way of bearing testimony to His alone. Godhead demanded it. They did not hesitate, I said: "We are not careful, O Nebuchadnezzar," they rejoined, "to answer thee in this matter. Other matters concerning which thou inquirest of us, the ordering of thy kingdom, or the interpretation of thy dreams and visions, require, it may be, anxious thought and prayer for illumination and guidance; but this is a matter about which any anxious thought, betraying any secret doubt as to our duty, would be treason to our God." Such, of course, is the true reading of their rejoinder. What enabled them to answer so promptly and so boldly? You will say, "Their faith;" and indeed their faith, and the miraculous issue which it brought about, are specially mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews along with other instances of faith displayed by the greatest worthies of their Church and nation. "What shall I say more?" the apostolic writer asks; "for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and Sampson, and Barak, and Jephtha, of David also, and the prophets; who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,