God the Constant Friend of the Good.

"I WILL NEVER LEAVE THEE, NOR FORSAKE THEE."-Heb. xiii. 5.

"So the Lord spake once to Joshua (Josh. i. 5), when the latter approached an interesting turning point in his life, and trembled, not without reason, at the desperate conflict which the seizure of Canaan would necessitate. In good time Eternal Faithfulness had read in the boweddown heart of His servant the need for encouragement and

the passage of the Jordan, Joshua receives the promise of His continued nearness. Notice two things,

I. The sense in which these words will apply to ALL MEN, GOOD AND BAD. The Eternal says this to all His moral creatures; even to the vilest, basest, fiend He virtually says, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." My presence will always be with thee. Ever shall I be in contact with thee; from Me, no more than from thyself, canst thou escape. My eye shall be on thee, peering into the profoundest abysses of thy being and discerning the most hidden and secret thoughts, emotions, and resolves. My hand shall ever sustain thee. "I will beset thee behind and before."

Though My presence is abhorrent to thee, and thou wouldest give the universe, if thou hadst it, to escape from Me, "I will never leave thee." Though thou hatest Me, cursest Me, risest in fierce hostility against Me, I will be with thee, in all conditions, places, and times. The creature cannot detach himself from the Creator; the chains that link them together are unbreakable. "Whither shall I flee from Thy presence? etc. (See Psalm cxxxix.) If this be so,

First: How miserable must be the condition of those who are at enmity with Him. Can

there be greater torment than to be linked for ever to one you hate and loathe; than to feel that his eye watches you, his presence pursues you, his character flashes its purity upon your corruption? And all this for ever, no hope of separation, no hope that there will ever sound the jubilee of deliverance. If this be so,

Secondly: How urgent the necessity of cultivating a loving sympathy with Him. The more we love a being, the more we crave his presence, the more we dread and deplore his absence. Those who love God feel that in His "presence is fulness of joy." He is the "spring of all their joys, the life of their delights." Notice,

II. The sense in which these words will apply to the GOOD, AND THE GOOD ONLY. This is the sense in which the words are used here. It involves this: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee " as a FRIEND. All good for all times, all circumstances, all worlds, is involved in this promise. As a FRIEND, He has at once the disposition and the power to make us happy for ever. Let us lay emphasis on the I: “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Your health is leaving you, your property is leaving you, your earthly friends are leaving you; all around you is gradually, imperceptibly, but really vanishing from you, but I will never

leave you.

"The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from thee."

CONCLUSION.-With such a promise, with what sublime serenity should the good man move amidst all the roughest storms of life. How superior he should feel to all the changing scenes and fortunes of his mortal state; with what invincible heroism he should pursue the path of duty; with what fearlessness and magnanimity of soul he might well hail the last hour.

A noted American preacher says somewhere in the narrative of his life, when speaking of this passage, “When in a moment of distress I read these words, they seemed to contain a message from God to me, as though a bright angel had stood beside me.

Praising the Dead more

than the Living.

"WHEREFORE I PRAISED THE DEAD WHICH ARE ALREADY DEAD MORE THAN THE LIVING WHICH ARE YET ALIVE."-Eccles. iv. 2.

IN the preceding verse Solomon's thoughts were engaged in contemplating the most terrible subject, the oppressions and woes of society. "So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun." In every age and land, alas! such a subject as this presses heavily upon the minds of thoughtful men.

The best men in England today are bowed down at the sight of the oppressions and the woes that are rife in this highly favoured land.

This subject led the royal sage to "praise the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive." As if he had said, It is far better for men to be in their graves than for them to endure what I see them enduring all around me.

But although this is the primary meaning of the passage, it may be fairly used to represent a prevalent tendency amongst men, viz., the tendency to praise dead men rather than the living. Christ recognized this tendency in the Pharisees. "Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them ” (Luke xi. 47). We offer two remarks concerning this tendency.

I. It is COMMON. We see it in the political sphere. Great statesmen, while they live, are the objects of hostile criticism and heartless censure. All beyond their partisans, see nothing in them but the venal and the vile. They die, and their virtues are not only recognized but emblazoned in every journal. We see it in the ecclesiastical sphere. Talented, cultured, devout, faithful preachers, who are often disparaged, and perhaps denounced, by many

of their congregation during life, have their praises loudly sung when the sod is green on their dust. We see it in the domestic sphere. The husband, the wife, the parent, the child, in all this tendency is seen. So it has become a

proverb, that the best men must die ever to have their virtues recognized. Why is this?

First: The dead are по longer competitors. Living men, even the best, are in some way or other rivals to some men; and the passions of envy and jealousy are evoked, which hide from us their virtues. Not so with the dead. They are competitors and rivals no more.

Secondly: Social love buries their defects. In all, the great Father of Love has put a deep fountain of sympathy. Death unseals it, melts it, and causes it to flow forth in such copious streams as drown all the imperfections of the departed. Thus it turns out that survivors make the greatest sinners the greatest saints, after their death; and society is ever ready to canonize scoundrels. Another remark we offer concerning this tendency is,

II. It is IMMORAL. It is not right. Virtue should be recognised and honoured wherever seen; and more so in the duties and struggles of life than in the reminiscences of departed worth. It is not generous.

That husband is mean and despicable who ignores the virtues of a noble wife while living, etc., etc. Whilst flattery is the ministry of the mean in soul, the frank acknowledgment and the hearty praise of real virtue are at once the effects and evidences of magnanimous natures. is unreal. To praise virtues in a man when dead, which were ever unnoticed when living, is hypocritical. Hence memoirs and biographies are rife with hypocrisy, and steam with the false and the mawkish in sentiment.*

Honour the memory of the holy dead by all means; but prove the sincerity of that honour by a practical appreciation of living worth. Walk with a reverent step over the graves of the dead men who are gone; but deal generously and tenderly with the good men who are living

now.

Notes on the Apostles'

Creed.-8. "Dead."

"THEY SAW THAT HE WAS DEAD.". John xix. 33.

A THOUSAND rays converge on the Dead Christ. As we reverently look at Him, not now toiling or suffering, but actually lifeless, we may solemnly notice

* This idea is more fully wrought out in Homilist, Series II., vol. iv., p. 502.

I. How His death IDENTIFIES Him with men. Of all the millions who have lived, every man but two have died. It is the common ending of human biography. It was the lot of the Lord Jesus Christ. This shows us,

1. His actual manhood. He did not, as an early heresy taught, simply come in the appearance of a mortal; He was no phantom man, but there was a literal, actual, combination of human body and human soul in Him, as there is in us. There were the same elements, that underwent the same dissolution. We may emphatically say, as we see Him dead, "Behold the MAN!" for if He were God alone, He could not die.

2. His complete sharing of our lot. He so completely condescends to fellowship with us that He is born in weakness, develops by the law of gradual growth, is tempted, weeps, suffers, and dies. Thus He completely wraps round Him the garments of our weakness and mortality, the very shroud of our shame and death.

II. How His death DISTINGUISHES Him from men. The works of contrast between His death and that of men generally are,

1. The extraordinary phenomena that attended it. The stars do not grow dim when the astronomer dies, nor the fields wither when the farmer