as king, has ever done. Every | man may and ought to become a spiritual father. The Responsibility of Man for the Inevitable. "THEN SAID HE UNTO THE DISCIPLES, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE BUT THAT OFFENCES WILL COME: BUT WOE UNTO HIM, THROUGH WHOM THEY COME !" -Luke xvii. 1. THE subject of these words is the responsibility of man for the inevitable. It seems at first an outrage on justice for a moral creature to be held responsible for that which is inevitable. A few remarks however may illustrate this. " I. It is impossible" for certain PHYSICAL conduct not to produce certain PHYSICAL misery. From the unalterable laws of nature, physical sufferings must follow habits of intemperance, indolence, and sensual indulgences. But woe to them by whom these things come. They are responsible for the conduct, the consequences are inevitable. II. It is "impossible" for certain PARENTAL conduct not to produce certain PARENTAL distress. "Train up a child in the way he should go" when he is young; "and when he is old he will not depart from it." The great philosopher Locke says, we meet with are what they are, useful or not, good or bad, according to their edu cation." If parents give, by their conversation and ex that all the men ample, to their children ideas of life that lead to self-indulgence, falsehood and fraud, worldliness and infidelity, the conduct of their children, should they live, will torture their hearts and bring down their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. This will be all but inevitable, but woe unto the parents on account of their conduct; they might and ought to have acted otherwise. III. It is "impossible" for a certain SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT not to produce certain NATIONAL misery. Unequal laws, unjust taxation, heartless despotism, official insolence in rulers must inevitably bring suffering and anarchy amongst a people. From such conduct in rulers have always come ruin in thunder and with blood. Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Turkey at the present moment, are examples. But woe unto the rulers by whom the offences come; they should have acted otherwise. IV. It is "impossible" for certain MORAL conduct not to produce IN ITS AUTHORS certain misery. "The wages of sin is death." Every wrong volition and act must bring with it death in some form or other, must deaden the moral sensibilities, enfeeble the moral powers, weaken selfrespect. It is inevitable that moral woes should tread on the heel of sin. Woe unto the man who sins. CONCLUSION: Though you cannot avoid the inevitable, you can avoid the causes. In this respect you may be masters of your destiny. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able." The Esteemed of Man and Abhorred of God. "THAT WHICH IS HIGHLY ESTEEMED AMONG MEN IS ABOMINATION IN THE SIGHT OF GOD."-Luke xvi. 15. THIS language applies to many things on earth. I. To WORLDLY SUCCESS. The merchant who amasses the largest fortune, the journalist who obtains the largest circulation, the king who wins the largest empire, the preacher who gets the largest congregation, all are highly esteemed amongst men. Men worship success, by whatever means it is obtained. Your Hudsons, your Grants, your Disraelis-they won success. But the Great Judge is often indignant with the most brilliant achievements and successes of men. He looks to the heart. The language applies, II. TO DAZZLING PAGEANTRY. Men highly esteem the gorgeous and the grand, the glitter and the glare. Royal processions, civic banquets, ecclesiastical parades, these are highly esteemed amongst men; the people, even the | starving crowds, stand in rapt admiration in the presence of those glittering bubbles. But what are they to the Great One ? The language applies, III. TO CONVENTIONAL RELIGION. What is conventional religion? It is a corruption of Christianity; it is Christianity accommodated to the vulgar ideas and sentiments of mankind. It appeals to the sentiment of revenge; hence it preaches literal substitution. It appeals to selfishness; hence the burden of its teaching is heaven and hell. It appeals to its sensuousness; hence most of its popular sermons, hymns, and ceremonies are addressed to the senses. All this is highly esteemed amongst Spiritual Christianity, which "knows no man after the flesh," not even Christ, is unpopular. But the conventional is in high favour, its followers crowd our largest cathedrals and conventicles; but to the Great One it must be an abomination. He says, "to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices ?" etc., etc. (Isa. i. 11-15). men. Notes on the Apostles' Creed.-6. "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." "GOD SENT FORTH HIS SON, MADE OF A WOMAN."-Gal. iv. 4. THIS sentence of the Creed, and these words of Paul, contain the double truth, each half of which is fully taught in many separate Scriptures. That it is a profound mystery, is no reason against its holding the foremost place in a true religion. It is the mystery in nature's rose and lily that marks their Divine origin, in contrast with the easily understood wax flowers of man's making. Mystery is the signature of Divinity. This mystery of the Union of the Divine and Human Nature of Jesus Christ : I. MEETS, BUT TRANSCENDS HUMAN EXPECTATION. hopes of the world for a Divinely human Deliverer were strong and multiform, though confused. (1) Such as the Hindus looked for-incarnations of God. But their in carnations meant the degradation to human lusts and cruelties; so that the lives of such gods were "mingled murder and prostitution." (2) Such as the Greeks looked for an apotheosis of man. Heroes grew up into gods, and were lost in the maze of divinity. (3) The Christian truth reveals God as manifesting Himself in a human nature that perfectly preserves its humanness through all. II. FULFILS OLD TESTAMENT PREDICTION. In Him is the child born, and the Everlasting Father, Isaiah predicts; the Son of Man and Ancient of Days of Ezekiel, the Emanuel, etc. III. RECORDED IN THE ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH. The angel's message to Joseph and to Mary bears this burden. So does Elizabeth's song, for she calls Mary the mother of "my Lord." And John's philosophic record tells of "the Word made flesh." IV. HARMONIZES WITH HIS SUBSEQUENT BIOGRAPHY. (1) His own declarations. His favourite name, "Son of Man;" His acceptance, even though He died for it, of "Son of God." (2) The acts recorded of Him. On every page the Divine and human elements lie side by side, are interwoven and intertwined. There is weariness and almightiness in the Galilean storm; weeping and omnipotence at the grave at Bethany; dying, and yet power to save and to raise others, at Calvary. V. TAUGHT IN NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES GENERALLY. (See earlier notes on "Only begotten Son.") Belief in this means,First: Belief in the love of God. It all means the love of God that identifies itself with us, and shrinks from no humiliation or sacrifice for us. 66 'Herein is love." Adam, it was crowned again in Christ. His life was the transfiguration of human nature. Beware of dishonouring it. Third: The ideal of human life. The Incarnation is both an illustration of that ideal, and is the means of attaining it. It tells of the descent of God to man, and the ascent of man to God. It proclaims and illustrates and renders possible reconciliation, com was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." Second: The sanctity of munion, sonship. For "God human nature, Not the mind only, but the body has been the shrine of the Divine. Whatever humanity lost in Bristol. URIJAH R. THOMAS. SENSUALITY. Very strongly does the world's legislation express the point which true philosophy and all experience confirm, viz., that sensuality is necessarily injurious to the soul. It is a fire that cauterizes the conscience, a hell-blast that scathes the moral powers. I read everywhere, in every law and faculty of the soul, on every page of history, as well as in every part of Christ's teaching, that if ye live after the flesh ye shall die. THE POSSESSORS OF THE EARTH.-Who is the man that most truly inherits the earth? Not the man of an ambitious and restless spirit, though he may call a million acres his own. Such a man has no spirit home his soul roams through his estates, like the unclean spirit in the desert, seeking rest, but finding none It is the man of holy meekness that inherits the earth. Though on legal grounds he has no claim to a foot of soil, he feels a vital interest and a spiritual property in all, He is the master of himself. He can sit upon the throne of his own being, can bid his intellect turn the phenomena of the universe into joyous realms of thought; his heart, the wide earth into a temple of devotion; and his faith, the fiercest roar of the elements into music. He inherits the earth, feels at home in all, appropriates all, makes all serve the high end of his being. Seeds of Sermons from the Minor Prophets. If the Bible as a whole is inspired, it is of vast importance that all its Divine ideas should be brought to bear upon the living world of men. Though the pulpit is the organ Divinely intended for this work, it has been doing it hitherto in a miserably partial and restricted method. It selects isolated passages, and leaves whole chapters and books for the most part untouched. Its conduct to the Minor Prophets may be taken as a case in point. How seldom are they resorted to for texts! and yet they abound with splendid passages throbbing with Divine ideas. It is our purpose to go through this section of the Holy Word; selecting, however, only such verses in each chapter and book as seem the most suggestive of truths of the most vital interest and universal application. Micah calls himself a Morasthite because he was a native of Morshethgath, a small town of Judea. He prophesied in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah, and his prophetic mission commenced soon after that of Isaiah. He was contemporary with him as well as with Hosea and Amos. His prophecies were directed to Samaria, the capital city of Israel, also to Jerusalem. Hence we find denunciations against Samaria mingled with prophecies concerning Judah and Jerusalem. One of his predictions, it seems, saved the life of Jeremiah, who would have been put to death for foretelling the destruction of the Temple, had not Micah foretold the same thing one hundred years before. The book is commonly distributed into three sections: chaps. i. and ii., chaps. iii. to v., chaps. vi. and vii. Each of these opens with a summons to hear God's message, and then proceeds with expostulations and threatenings, which are succeeded by glorious promises. His style is bold, fiery, and abrupt, and has not a little of the poetic grandeur of Isaiah. His sudden transitions from one subject to another often make his writings difficult to decipher. No. CCLI. MICAH. Man's Ruin the Fruit of his own Conduct. "NOTWITHSTANDING THE LAND SHALL BE DESOLATE BECAUSE OF THEM THAT DWELL THEREIN, FOR THE FRUIT OF THEIR DOINGS."Micah vii. 13. HERE is a prediction of what would take place before the advent of those glorious events pointed out in the preceding verses. There will be a dark night before the morning, a great storm before the calm. The subject here is, man's ruin the fruit of his own conduct. The reason why the land should be "desolate" before the coming of the glorious times is here stated, "for the fruit of their doings." That man's ruin springs from his conduct is demonstrated by universal experience as well as by the word of God, 66 O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity," It is the man who heareth the sayings of Christ and doeth them not that will be ruined at last. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Assuming it to be a fact that man's ruin is evermore the fruit of his own conduct, three things must follow: I. That HIS MISERY WILL BE IDENTIFIED WITH REMORSE. Morally it is impossible for a man to ascribe his ruin to his organization, to circumstances, or to any force over which he has no control. He must feel that |