with the Samaritans at this moment, so, brethren, is it with us. It is now the time of hope for us! Over our heads beams the Divine light of promise. In every point of our heaven there is set a star of promise, and celestial music continually heralds to us the hour of succour, a greeting from the Lord, a visit from above. Were we but properly conscious of our true position, we should always resemble in courage the besieged Samaritans, and be joyful in expectation, as before the eve of a festival. Then we should pass on through life as if on a high ascending road, in the enjoyment of divine prospects, with buoyant spirits, and everywhere exalted, eagle-like, above the low and vulgar.

But let us leave Samaria for a few moments, and following the history, direct our view beyond the gates. There a new scene is presented before us, but only to fill us with shuddering and terror. Projecting from the city walls, wretchedly miserable and formed of old boards, is a gloomy hovel; within which, crouching together ghost-like, enveloped in rags and uttering forth hollow groans, four shuddering forms meet our gaze. These are lepers, in whom scarcely a human feature is any longer to be recognised, and who, according to a Divine ordinance, have been cast out of the city, to remain proscribed until the signs of approaching recovery become visible. Apostate Samaria, it is consequently shown, had not quite forgotten the ordinances of Jehovah to be sure, it appears only to have acted as so many among us act, who venture in wicked arbitrariness, to make a selection from the divine laws, and only recognise the divine validity of those commands which either do not oppose their personal inclinations, or may serve their own selfish interests.

We are very

willing to be pleased with laws such as-"Use hospitality one to another without grudging;"1 we are so by nature; or as, "Owe no man anything!" we have more to receive than to pay; or as the "Do right and fear no one!" it agrees, indeed, with-it is intended for -the pharisaical conceit and proud feeling of self, with which we are puffed up. Thus the Samaritans were well satisfied with that portion of the divine commandments, by the observance of which they were enabled to get rid of those hideous sick with their infectious presence; but commandments, such as these: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself! "Love your enemies:" "Crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts:" Such commandments they scattered before them in the air, and heeded not. Abominable audacity, thus to mutilate and abridge the law of the All-holy God. But thousands are guilty of this offence against the Divine Majesty, and many even among those who wish to pass for churchgoers, nay, for pious men, and yet might rather be termed the Pharisees of the New Testament. If they do not pay tithe of mint and cummin, they act as if the entire law depended upon this one point, that in outward withdrawment from the world, we should only avoid those of its stains which are reckoned the darker and deeper ones in the law: mercy, faith and judgment they disregard, and do not consider what dreadful punishment is denounced against those who act thus. Our duty is to do these, and not to omit those. What blindness is theirs who strain at gnats and swallow camels!

Four lepers before the gate, four starved men, stricken by God. A gloomy scutcheon and emblem for the city!

11 Pet. iv. 9.

2 Rom. xiii. 8.

Nay, do they not appear as if really stationed there by God, that they should announce, with their cry of " Un clean! Unclean!" the state of the whole place; point out, by their visible plague, the character also of that distress which has overwhelmed the city, as an immediate decree of God's righteous judgment? For, likewise, by means of living characters and forms, God not seldom paints his thoughts and warnings upon the pillars of the world, and that we may venture to speak of a holy irony of the Lord, none will dispute, who has read the Holy Scriptures. Meantime, however, another office was intended, no doubt, to be performed by these afflicted men, than that of constituting shame-striking emblems. As it appears, God has actually selected these black ravens as heralds of His approaching powers of rescue. If it be so, then the truth is only the more palpable, that the succour that arrived was a pure gift of grace, in which a regard to the worth or non-worth of persons was in no respect taken into consideration.

The wretched beings yonder, outside the walls, stand midway between Samaria, in the city of Israel, and the camp of the heathens, and denote emblematically in this their position, that of many of our people, who have received too powerful impressions of the divine truth to be able from their whole heart to side with the enemy, the world; but again, are too susceptible to the lusts of the world and its favour, to be capable of determining upon a decided placing of themselves under the banner of the army of the kingdom of God. O, that unhappy suspense, in which as little of peace or consolation blooms for us, as of salvation and life! a doubt which, nevertheless, the eternal destiny of those people neither shares nor knows; and has for its fruit and consequence

To him

damnation, and not, as we might suppose, a medium between blessedness and misery. If we wish to obtain the crown, we must regard every thing as lost, in order that we win Christ; renounce every thing and follow Him; become wrecked with all we have, and cling round Jesus' cross as the only plank of rescue. who gives himself not wholly up to Christ, as his, Christ is entirely lost. Many among us do we behold placed similarly to these four in another respect. They belong to Israel, only they are leprous. Our patience with their infirmities, corruption, and weakness is exhausted; and thus they are banished from our circle, and, as we think, beyond the gates of Zion. But who knows, meantime, whether they may not once again bring us the message that the camp of the enemy is

abandoned? Who knows but that from out of their mouths tones of that great song of God's free grace, and of the power of the blood of Christ, may be sounded more forcibly, more beautifully, and more copiously, than we have ever heard them? How unclean did Peter stand before the gates, after the lamentable scene in the high pontifical palace, and how did he through that strengthen the brethren! Where is there a comforter, an evangelist, a herald of victory, like Paul! And behold he became such with the thorn in the flesh. Under the blows of the angel of Satan he learnt that in Christ no longer space remained for any sort of care. It is assuredly terrible, when the corruption which is seated in the marrow of our existence comes forth outwardly; but the glory of the redemption increases with our necessity for it.

But we weave these spiritual threads of thought out of a very heterogeneous material. Our excommunicated

sufferers, leprous from within as well as without, do not rank among the holy of the Lord. The evil that has befallen them, produced in them none of the fruits of repentance and faith; as indeed misfortune never calls into existence much fruits of spirit, but only heartregenerating grace, which, to be sure, is often connected therewith. It is true, the people are highly to be pitied. Beyond measure miserable, they find themselves, for several days, deprived of any further supply of nourishment from the city. Starvation already gnaws on their bones, despair rages in their heart, "What shall we do?" they groan forth the one to the other, "Why sit we here until we die ?" They then hold a council together, as to what is to be done. "If we say, we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also. Now, therefore come, and let us fall into the host of the Syrians if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die." That is the desperate resolution, with which the wicked consultation ends. Alas, not even a distant thought of a refuge in Him, who feeds even the ravens! Not even a sign of a repentant humbling under the mighty hand of Jehovah! Not even a slight inclination for a believing reception of any one divine promise! No; "Help thyself, that Heaven may help thee!" is their principle. "If human aid is at an end, then all is lost!" Dreadful obscurity of the senses! Curse-meriting ungodliness and God-estrangement! But were this feeling confined to those four! How often do we meet with the same atheism in the huts of our indigent and oppressed. Instead of a faithful looking up to the heights of heaven, we behold only an unbelieving fixed gaze upon human