prophet." Luke informs us that they said, "all the people will stone us." They were as cowardly as they were disingenuous. What then were they to do, thus shut up between shame and fear? After they had "reasoned with themselves" they took the only other course, and told a deliberate falsehood. "We cannot tell." What a wretched spectacle you have here! Corrupt souls taken in their own craftiness. So we think it must ever be with the wicked. They will be confounded. Their mouth will be stopped. A wicked policy, however fair and specious for a time, will inevitably conduct to wretched confusion and contempt.

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Thirdly Their confusion was left without the hope of remedy. "Neither tell I you." They had become incorrigible. All truthful words would only be wasted upon

them.

"Neither tell I you." It is useless, it is madness, to argue with some people. Their opinions are fossilized, their minds are incorrigible. That spirit of the soul which alone can receive the truth has left them. The soil of their nature for growing truth is worn out, has been thoroughly exhausted, by the thorns, and thistles, and noxious weeds of corrupt opinions and undivine emotions. You may as well seek to grow the sweet flowers of tropic climes upon the frosty heights of Labrador, as to plant by argument a divine truth in untruthful natures. Christ knew this and would not argue with those men. He would not "cast pearls before swine." Terrible state this for the soul to get into! "Neither tell I you." Your question will be left unanswered. This will assuredly be the condition of the intellect under the reign of wickedness for ever. Beaten by the tempests of a guilty conscience, it will flutter for ever in the dark wilderness of confounding clouds. "Neither tell I you."

Germs of Thought.

SUBJECT:-Christ, the Lamb of God; A Fragment on "God's Response to the World's Cry."

"The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, (i apwy) who taketh away, by having borne,' the sin of the world."-John i. 29.

Analysis of Homily the Five Hundred and Tenth.

THE brief sentence before us tells the story of John's life; reads off the culmination of his mission. They are words that cement two systems, Judaism and Christianity ; bind two worlds, heaven and earth. Grasp the plenitude of their meaning and the sum-total of Revelation has been reached.

I. THE SPECTACLE.

"Behold the Lamb of God," &c. God's energy is

First Time is the revealer of deity. an infinite development. Energy is thought in motion. God communes from everlasting, and claims this progressive development in all His works. Men live in the divine thought. That thought grasped and embodied in the earthly career is perfecting now and perfection yonder; missed or shunned, it is maiming now and utter destruction hereafter. Objectified as the cross of Christ, it is the centre of the universe. Wittingly, or unwittingly, all men have been, and ever shall be, hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the expression of its grandeur. How marvellous this endless growth! It stamps with the signet of the same lawgiver, the Old and New Revelations. Beneath the moulding of this law there can be no abruptness. In the closing leaves of inspiration there is nothing vital that is absolutely new; nothing without some preparation in the Olden portions. Christ is the end and meaning of all revelation; He is fulfilled prophecy. "In the fulness of

the time He came." "The testimony of Jesus was the spirit of prophecy;" the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.

Secondly: Here is an exhibition of perfect humanity. Elsewhere He is styled "the second man." Second man! What of all the million millions before and after too? They were and are but portions of men. There have only been two perfect, original and originating, men, Christ and Adam. All the rest of us are but twoes and threes; parts in a series only.

In the midst of the ages Christ starts out a grand unique -a startling exception. What meaneth this? All high action embodies principle. It was so in the highest actions. Christ's incarnation vindicated the sinlessness of matter. A demonstration imperious demanded that redemption might be proved co-extensive with body as well as soul. Humanity cries for a perfect, total, redemption from this present world. As an historical fact we affirm that no other system of religion ever cared for man's body. Christianity, and Christianity alone, works renovation;-not by degrading, but elevating the whole nature. Down, deep, had that poor battered humanity fallen, but the moaning amid its ruins ever tells of a forgotten splendor. The mystery of ungodliness runs parallel with the "mystery of godliness." Christ's perfect humanity was the pledge of a restoration.

There are two halves to the whole truth as to the atonement. The violated law was two-faced; it looked towards God, it also looked towards man. Christ's life paid that debt of sin which man owed to his fellow-man. Christ's death paid that great debt which man owed to the justice of his God. "Behold then the Lamb of God." He dwelt in flesh, the wreck of humanity, that He, as a Divine architect, might build a living temple out of the living stones evoked by the Holy Ghost.

Thirdly The world is a sphere for the manifestation of deity. One aspect of this thought springs from our last. Turn the little globe of truth round and we may see ano

ther. The world is no mere spectacle of a brown ball, spinning in the deep azure, and freighted with beings who rise and disappear like

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"Flakes of snow upon the river;

A moment seen, then gone for ever."

No, as Christ is the priest of heaven and eternity; man is to be the priest of time and earth. Creation is a revelation of God. Four thousand years it awaited a revealer. Christ came, touched the rope, and creation's bell pealed out the 'very good" of ancient time. Henceforth they only see aright who see Christ in everything and everywhere. Christ's humanity enabled Him to teach and train us thus. "Bread" and "wine," things common, are teachers. Signs of the power in all God's handiworks to flash light upon us.

All sacri

II. THE TRAGEDY. A God in sacrifice. First: There is a vindication of self-sacrifice. fice pointed out, foretold, Christ, and had its ultimate accomplishment on Calvary. Christ's work belts the universe. Overturned then, is the oft-raised quibble, as to what specific Lamb the Baptist had in immediate view. At last the quiet breathings of hope and trust in Abraham on the lone Moriah were fulfilled, and God had provided "himself a lamb." Twice John rendered this testimony; at the second description he was certainly understood by some, and probably the Evangelist and Andrew were they "who heard him speak and followed Jesus." The drawing power of Christ had begun! Already the weaker one declines; the greater one augments. It is the history of the world in a sentence.

The Baptist had done much; but much more remained to be done. Human reformations at the best are fragmentary; reformers need to be reformed. The reformed is sinstricken still. There is felt a want of some underlying reality upon which to lean, on which to put their works. Superior to everything internal must be something external. The cry is," Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." That rock is Christ; to it John pointed in the text. Word

which proclaim two eternal verities of the Church and believer, Christ's work and its glorious issue. We loiter on the path to meet a cardinal objection, although persuaded as a rule that the best way to overthrow error is to lift up the positive truth. State the case. God never left Himself without a witness.

Contemporaneous with man's fall, conscience began to play; it works still as an inward revealer. All other revelations are an after-work. Does the Christian revelation contradict this anterior one, or does it accord therewith? The Christian Church affirms a God-like harmony. There are those who as flatly deny it. One or other is true; acceptance of one is rejection of the other. Now, once destroy the vicarious and expiatory character of Christ's sufferings, and you sunder the two hemispheres of truth— the Old and New Testament. Vicarious sacrifice is in the Old; if it be not in the person of Christ, it is not in the New. If Christ be simply Lamb-like in purity and innocence, and an expiator of sin, in that His life presents a bold appeal and an illustrious pattern, then all the sacrificial pomp and parade of the old economy are a waste, and because of Divine appointment, a divine farce; a huge inconsistency: for the working of a national machinery ends in-nothing; worse than nothing—a vaunting mockery. The world has ever been filled with sacrifice. Anything lovely in it? It is horrible, revolting, ghastly, in itself. as an express foretelling of, and in violent cravings of the soul for, a noble, perfect, Divine sacrifice, have been illumed with beamings from Calvary's unutterable glory. Sacrifice has ascended from every region of the earth, and wound its way into the Empyrean as a cry, more or less distinctly understood, "Come Lord

But in Jewish annals all heathen lands the

Jesus, come quickly." Abrogate the vicariousness of Christ's sufferings, and you give the lie to the very innate revelation which is at issue, and misrepresent the Almighty. We gather up the matter into a simple saying. The doctrine of Christ being a vicarious and satisfactory atonement, is not contrary to, but in sure harmony

VOL. X.

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