read from the other point of view, and would then stand thus: Correct the oppressor. It is of little use to relieve the oppressed until you kill the tyrant. You are but offering temptations to the oppressor when you take under your patronage his victims. It is right that they should be cared for; in fact, unless they are cared for there is no Christianity in the case, but the real thing to do is this: whilst relieving the oppressed, correct the oppressor; put manacles on the hands of the tyrant, put fetters upon his feet, and chastise him with the rod of righteousness. "Judge the fatherless." Let the judge become an advocate; then the advocate will be a judge. This is what we have to be and to do in the great Church of Christ. The judge seated on the bench is to be the advocate to whom the fatherless can look, saying to him, You know my case; speak for me: you have words; I have none; you know how to state the reasons: take up my cause for me. And then the judge shall be advocate, and the advocate shall be no longer a paid hireling to prove that wrong is right, or make the worse appear the better cause. When called upon to plead for the fatherless, to judge the fatherless, the orphan, the homeless, then his eloquence will be touched. Hear how he halts, stumbles, hesitates when he expounds an old black-letter law for which he cares nothing: how poor he is when challenged by the spirit of pedantry! but let an orphan appeal to him, let a widow who cannot speak for herself commit her case to him; then see how he rises in stature, flames into sacred fire, and speaks as if he were pleading for his own life. That is the enthusiasm which the love of Christ enkindles! "Plead for the widow." The very word "widow" comes from an ancient term which signifies dumbness—a woman who cannot speak for herself; she is made silent by grief, or she is speechless because she has no status in the court. "Plead for the widow" be a mouth to her, an eloquent tongue to her silence she cannot speak, you must speak for her: accept her brief and relinquish her fee. Then will heaven clear away the clouds from its kind face, and there will come back again all summer, all beauty, all love.

PRAYER.

O THOU Christ of the living God, thou didst die for men; yea, whilst they were yet sinners thou wast crucified, buried, and raised again, that they might obtain through faith eternal salvation. This is the love of God; this is the appeal of heaven to the children of time. How gracious the invitation! how tender every tone of the Father's speech! how yearning the solicitude that broods over us! May we hear the gospel voice, and answer it with our love; may we know how much we need the Saviour; may all attempts at self-help and self-redemption be abandoned as falsehoods and impossibilities: with one consent may the nations turn to Christ and to his Cross, seeking cleansing only through the blood of his sacrifice, and finding peace only through him who is our reconciliation. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Jesus Christ has answered the law; he has filled up all that was needful, all that was lacking; he came to seek and to save that which was lost: he has found us, he has brought us home rejoicingly, and there has been joy in the presence of the angels of God over repentant and returned sinners. May none be left behind; may not one perish in the wilderness: may the last be brought in as the first, and may thy flock be thus completed, O Shepherd of Israel, O Pastor of the universe. We bless thee for a gospel which we need so much. We need it most when the night is darkest, when the temptation is severest, when the enemy is cruellest, when all sense of self-help abandons us, and when we are cast upon the mercy of the living God: then how great the gospel, how gracious the redeeming speech, how ample the provision made for sinners, how free-how infinite the forgiveness of God! May we all cease to do evil, learn to do well, betake ourselves to those Christian activities which are binding upon Christian souls; and having served our day and generation on this side the vale may we pass beyond the cloudy screen, and there look upon all that has been waiting for us with the patience of eternity, and with the confidence of love. Amen.

Chapter i. 16, 17.

EXHORTATIONS.

"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (vers. 16, 17).

OW easy to say "Cease to do evil"! Have we considered how much is meant by these words? Does evil get so slight a hold upon a man that he can detach the hand that

grasps him without effort or difficulty? By what image would we represent the hold which evil gets upon men? Is it the image of a chain, a manacle, a fetter? Has it in it anything of the nature of a heavy burden, a weight that drags the life down to the very ground? Is it a tyranny that defies the poor little strength of man, and laughs at the victim when he attempts his freedom? Is evil kind to those who practise it? Is it most gracious in its mastery? Or does it taunt, and mock, and threaten, and defy? Can it be truthfully represented as a spectre that terrifies men in the darkness, a goblin that looks at them frowningly when they attempt to pray? If there is any suggestion of truth in all these inquiries—and human experience alone can reply-how easy it is to say, "Cease to do evil"! The man who is exhorted might reply, I cannot : the master whom I serve is a tyrant: if I even sigh as an indication of my suffering he doubles my punishment. Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Who shall cut away from me this cold corpse that I am doomed to carry? Herein perhaps we have not been sufficiently kind to men who are in a negative period of education, men who are simply trying to abstain, to refrain from evil, to cut down evil little by little because they feel they cannot cut it off all at once. To such men we should ever reveal an aspect of the tenderest graciousness, and when we speak to them our voice should be musical with tones of encouragement. It is a long leap from hell to heaven. The devil is no easy taskmaster; if he allows us to go one inch from him it is that he may leap upon us with deadlier certainty of his hold. Still, the exhortation is needed, and all Biblical exhortations bring with them their own assurance of divine interposition and divine succour; they are not mere exhortations, vocal cries, efforts in words. Whenever a man is exhorted in the Bible to cease from evil and to attempt good, the meaning is that God is behind the exhortation to afford needful inspiration and grace, if the man will himself ask for help, and cast himself unreservedly upon it.

What is the evil which a man is called upon to cease to do? Every man must answer this question for himself. Almost every one can find some kind of virtue easy to practise, but every one

has his own special and all but ineradicable evil, following him, stamping him, sealing him, and defying him to throw it off. Is any one conscious of being engaged at this moment in denying a craving for some personal indulgence, be it the draught of poison, the draught of death? How far have you proceeded? If you have proceeded so far as to make up your mind that it would be well to cease that evil, take heart: that is the first good, solid, upward step; that resolution is itself a rock on which you may stand. Now can you conquer all at once? The answer is, Certainly not, in many cases at least. There have been stupendous and successful efforts which have had about them at the first all the characteristics and qualities of completeness; but let not those be discouraged who have to try again, to fight more desperately to-day than they had to fight yesterday. Is it a consciousness of being hardly able to speak without the utterance of profane language? Cease to do evil: there was less profanity in the speech to-day than there was the day before: be hopeful, be on your guard; say, Lord, keep thou the door of my lips, set a watch upon my mouth. So these are but indications. Whatever the evil is, know that it must be fought out, put in its right relation to your life, and that it is impossible for you to cease to do evil except with the co-operation, the inworking spiritual ministry of God the Holy Ghost. How is that to be obtained? Ask, and ye shall receive. Seek, and ye shall find.

"Learn to do well"-or, to do good. Then does not gooddoing come natively, as breathing does, or locomotion, or sight? Is this a trade to be learned? Do men serve an apprenticeship to good-doing? In a sense they do. All this is matter of education. And how wonderfully education spreads its necessities over the whole space of human life! You find it everywhere, on the very lowest levels, and on the very highest. We see what the author has produced, but we do not see what he has destroyed. The book comes out in fair copy, and we, looking upon the surface only, say, How well done! Who can tell what that "fair copy" cost? We see the picture hung upon the wall for exhibition, but we do not see how much canvas was thrown away, or how many outlines were discarded, or how many efforts were pronounced unworthy. We only see the last or best. So,

much is to be done in private with regard to learning to do well. We do not live our whole life in public. We make an effort in solitude it is a failure; we throw it away; we acknowledge its existence to no one: still, we are acquiring skill-practice makes perfect and when we do our first act of virtue in the public sight people may suppose that we are all but prodigies and miracles, so well was the deed done. Only God's eye saw the process which led up to it. This is a characteristic of divine grace, that it sets down every attempt as a success, it marks every failure honestly done as a victory already crowned. So we are losing nothing even on the road. The very learning is itself an education; the very attempt to do, though we fail of doing, itself gives strength, and encouragement, and confidence. In learning to do well we assist the negative work of ceasing to do evil.

Herein is a mystery of spiritual education. In learning to pray we by so much separate ourselves from doing that which is evil in speech: we cleanse the mouth; we set the mind upon a new level; we import into the whole music of life a new keynote. How hard it must be to rise from prayer and then give both hands to the devil! Surely that is a miracle which ought to lie beyond the compass of human power. So we are not to wait until the negative process is completed before we begin the positive process. First of all we have to do a great negative work; we have to get rid of all our provincialisms before we can speak the true language of the country: we have to rid ourselves of our mistakes before we can begin to build: we have to cleanse the constitution before we commence the construction which is associated with sound health. Yet at points the two processes coincide, and they help one another. To cease to do evil without learning to do well is to cleanse the house and leave it empty that the devil may return to an ampler and more inviting habitation.

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord" (ver. 18).

"Come now, and let us reason together," may be read, I present an ultimatum.* "Let us reason together," or, I have

*For another treatment of this verse see post, p. 215.

VOL. XIV.

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