us." The Lord stood by me, said Paul.

CONCLUSION.-Who amongst us are the true servants of God?

THE WORK OF THE EVANGEL.

"Blessed are they that sow beside all waters."-Isa. xxxii. 20. I. IT is a sOWING work. Of all mere human works, this is (1.) The most Divine. The seed, the soil, are all of God. (2.) The most righteous. Statesmen, merchants, warriors, may question the rectitude of their work, but the agriculturist has no reason to doubt. (3.) The most useful. The farmer feeds the world. Husbandry supplies the tables alike of beggars and of kings. (4.) The most believing. The man who commits the precious grain to the earth has strong faith in the laws of nature.

II. It is a BLESSED work. "Blessed is he." (1.) He is blessed by the gratitude of society. All are indebted to his services. (2.) He is blessed with the approval of his own conscience. He feels that in sowing he is doing his duty. He is blessed by the smiles of his God.

III. It is an UNRESTRICTED work. "All waters." The meaning is, all well-watered places. The word "besides" would be better translated "upon." Scatter seed upon all suitable spots. The evangel has unlimited scope for his

operations. His field of labour is the world, and he is commanded to be instant in season and out of season.

CONCLUSION.-We have in our hand the bread-seed of the world. Let us scatter it unsparingly, and constantly, trusting to Him to give it life and make it grow.

PLEASING GOD.

"Ye ought to walk and please God."-1 Thess. iv. 1.

It

I. THIS work is POSSIBLE to man. This is wonderful. is wonderful that a creature so small as man should be able to please the Infinite. Still more wonderful that a creature so sinful as man should be able to please the absolutely Holy One. Yet it is so. We learn this (1.) From the moral affinity of God. Moral beings are always pleased with those things that are agreeable with their own tendencies, sympathies, and aims. And God is pleased when He sees in His human creature the development of things in accord with His own pure nature. (2.) From the paternal relation of God. Parents are

always pleased with the love, the obedience, the good of their children. Much more so the Infinite Father. (3.) From the testimony of God. God has given His testimony that man has pleased Him. Enoch had this testimony; so had Noah, David, Daniel, &c. How great, though insignifi

man's animal appetite for food become, that he will devour with a kind of relish the most loathsome things; and so voracious is the heart for some object to love, that it will settle down upon the lowest and most contemptible creatures rather than not love at all.

Thirdly: Healone can dispose of it. No one can take it from him by force. If he had no power over his affections he would be at the mercy of circumstances. He would not be a free man in the universe, but a slave. He would be an engine driven by force, not a free agent, responsible to moral law. And although the Everlasting One has a right to his heart, requires his heart, and asks him to give it, He will not wrest it from him.

II. IT IS A PROPERTY THAT IS URGENTLY CLAIMED. There are many who claim it.* A thousand objects surround man, especially in his youthful stages, asking him for his heart. Alas! without experience, and without thought, he yields to the request, and is a ruined man.

There is only one object in the universe to whom it should be given that is the Supremely Good.

First He alone has a right to it. All souls are His. He endowed them with its fathomless susceptibilities and amazing powers. He who gives his heart to anyone else is guilty of the most astounding robbery. He robs his Maker.

Secondly: He alone can develop it. So constituted is the human soul, that there is no possibility of having all its

* For Illustration, see "Pulpit and its Handmaids," page 59.

powers quickened and unfolded without supreme love to God. What the sunbeam is to the earth, love to God is to the soul, that without which the earth would be barren and beautiless for ever.

Thirdly; He alone can satisfy it. "You might as soon," says an old writer, "fill a bag with wisdom and a chest with virtue, or a circle with a triangle, as the heart of man without God. A man may have enough of the world to sink in, but he can never have enough to satisfy him."

CONCLUSION. How rational, how morally befitting, how sublimely simple, is genuine religion! "My son, give me thine heart." Sir Walter Raleigh, who was atrociously sacrificed by the impious James the First, and condemned to be beheaded, on a false charge of treason, in reply to the executioner, who asked him which way he should lay his head, said, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies."

(No. CCXC.)

Subject: THE DRUNKARD'S

EFFIGY HUNG UP AS A BEACON.

"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seck mixed wine." Prov. xxiii. 29.

WE have already dealt with a passage treating the same revolting subject as this. (Prov. xx. 1.)* All that we shall do here will be to present the rough outlines of the drunkard's picture. There are several things to be observed.

*See Homilist in loco.

I. HIS SENSUAL INDULGENCE. He is one of those that "tarry long at the wine, that go to seek mixed wine." It is clear from this and other passages that the wines used in Judea in ancient times were intoxicating, although, perhaps, by no means to the extent of modern wines, which are brandied and drugged. What are called foreign wines in the English markets are, to a great extent, we are told, home manufactures. The drunkard is not one who sips the juice of the grape as God gives it, for his refreshment, and then passes on to his work, but he is one who "tarries long at the wine." He seeks pleasure out of it. He pursues it as a source of enjoyment. He has "mixed" and flavoured it, that it may become more exciting to his brain, more delicious to his taste. What a picture of thousands in this so-called Christian country, who periodically assemble every day in these taverns, hotels, and clubs, in order to tarry long at the intoxicating beverages!

II. HIS OFFENSIVE GARRULOUSNESS. "Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling?" When alcohol excites the brain, that member of the body which James describes as "setting on fire the whole course of nature," is allowed to give full utterance to all the filthy, incoherent, illnatured and ridiculous things that spring from the drunkard's heart. In these babblings there may sometimes be some genial and humorous expressions, but often the ill-natured and irritating "contentions." What quarrels, fightings, and murders have grown out of the drunkard's babblings! These

babblings supply our police with labour, our judges with occupation, our workhouses with paupers, our jails with prisoners, our gallows with victims.

III. HIS BLOODSHOT FACE. "Who hath redness of eyes? The habits of the man come to be marked by their effects upon his looks. The inflamed and turgid eye, and the blotched and fiery and disfigured countenance, indicate that the deleterious poison has gone through his frame, and has incorporated with, and tainted, and set on fire the entire mass of circulating blood. His very looks become the index of his character, and give warning to all who look at him to have nothing to do with him.

Is

IV. HIS WRETCHED CONDITION. "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow ?" It seems implied the drunkard gets into a wretchedness for which no equal can be found. "At the last," the text also says of this drunkard, "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." there any woe worse than the drunkard's woe? He has the woe of ill health. Drunkenness poisons the blood, saps the constitution, and generates disease. There is the woe of secular poverty. Drunkenness indisposes and unfits a man for those duties by which a subsistence for himself and family can be obtained. The pauperism of England has its chief fountain in drunkenness. There is the woe of social disrespect. Who can respect the drunkard? Not his neighbours-not even his wife and children. They soon get to loathe and shun him. There is the woe of remorse. In his sober moments, if his con

science is not seared, remorse creeps into him like a serpent, bites and stings him into anguish. Truly a wretched creature is the drunkard.

V. HIS EASY TEMPTABILITY. "Thine eyes shall behold strange women." The idea suggested is, that a man under the influence of inebriating drinks is easily tempted. For the crimes of adultery or blasphemy he is ready. The judgment is clouded. All sense of propriety is gone; the passions are inflamed. The breath of temptation will bear him away into sin. The drunken man stands, or rather reels, ready for any crime. There is a fable of a man, no doubt, familiar to many of you-but though a fable it involves an important truth and an important warning-of the man to whom the devil is said to have offered the alternative of a choice between three sins, one or other of which, as the means of averting some evil or obtaining some good, he was bound to commit. The three sins were murder, incest, and drunkenness. The man made choice of the last, as, in his estimation, incomparably the least. This was the devil's device; for, when he was under the influence of it, he was easily beguiled into both the other two. It is needless to say how insensible the drunkard becomes to all feelings of delicacy and decorum; how he is ready to commit the most shameless indecencies and glory in his shame; and how rapidly, in such a state, he becomes the prey-the wretched and dishonourable prey-of every vile seducer.

VI. HIS RECKLESS STUPIDITY. "Thou shalt be as he

that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast." Exhausted by excitement, and blinded by the fumes of his disordered stomach and intoxicated brain, he falls to sleep. He is unconscious of the spot on which he lies down. It may be near a raging fire or on the margin of a terrible precipice; it may be as dangerous as if he laid himself down in the midst of the raging sea, or on the top of a mast tossed by the wild winds of heaven. He is utterly dead to all the surroundings of his terrible position. When his nature has overcome the power of the poison within him, and the mists roll from his brain and his senses return, and he opens his eyes, he is startled at the terribleness of his position, and it appears to him as awful as if he had been in the midst of the sea, or on the mast-head of a storm-tossed bark. What condition for a rational being to be in! and yet it is the condition into which the drunkard sinks

a

in his miserable debauch! When he has awoke he knows nothing of what has occurred during the period of his intoxication. He knows not how he had come to that terrible spot. He finds himself stricken, but he knows not by whom— beaten, he knows not the hand. He has wounds "without a cause"-that is, he knows not the cause. Struggling into consciousness, yawning with an intolerable depression, he is unable to account for the injuries that have been inflicted upon his person.

VII. HIS UNCONQUERABLE THIRST. "When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again." How