hasty in impugning the action of the Deity, and in imputing cruelty or unconcern to God at any period of public or private calamity, it would be well for them to bethink them of their own ignorance-to consider that, for anything that they know to the contrary, the sword drawn apparently in wrath may be, like Solomon's sword, but an emblem of justice, potent in its action for good and not for evil. A piece of elaborate embroidery looked on from the wrong side, or complicated machinery, a portion of the works of which was alone visible, must look strange and disorderly to the uneducated eye. So to us, who see but here in part, through a glass darkly, the operations of God in grace and in nature must present many difficulties and apparent anomalies. For the creature on this account to arraign the Creator, is a sign, not of wisdom, but of arrogant conceit.

VI. THAT NOT BY OUTWARD PROFESSIONS, BUT BY THE SENTIMENTS OF THE HEART, MUST EACH OF US BE JUDGED.

Both these women professed equally to love the living child; but it was seen speedily in the hour of trial as to which of the two had real feelings of maternal affection in her heart. It is what we are, and not what we have pretended to be, that will avail us "in the hour of death and in the day of judgment."

VII. THAT OFTEN, WHEN GOD GIVES TO US A LIVING TALENT, AS A LIVING CHILD WAS GIVEN TO EACH OF THESE WOMEN, WE, LAZILY SLUMBERING AWAY OUR TIME, FAIL TO BE THANKFUL FOR IT, OR TO UTILISE IT AS WE OUGHT.

By negligence on our own part,-as in the case of the woman who overlaid her child, or by

the craftiness of other agencies, be it those of world, flesh, or devil, taking advantage of our own supineness, as in the case of the woman whose child was stolen while she slept,—we lose our gift from God, our living grace, and find, when we awake from our slumbers, only a dead image of a departed spiritual beauty, which no shedding of our heart's best blood can again quicken into life. How the bright aspirations of youth fade away into the dull monotony of middle age! How the efforts after holiness on the part of too many wax feebler and feebler day by day. How vainly men grieve after the things that might have been! And as hopes fade and prospects cloud, how prone humanity is to exclaim, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!” We receive, as from a fairy godmother, a golden treasure, to be used, as Bacon says, “For the glory of God and the relief of man's estate." We carelessly neglect or misuse the gift, we dross, until it rusts away; or, it to be stolen by an enemy. awake to a consciousness of its value, and with tears and bitter anguish we seek to recover our lost treasure. Alas! who can give us back the years that have flown? What royal sage can restore to us the vanished darling of our hearts, whose place, through our neglect, has been occupied by the dead changeling? What magician can give us back the bright gold of our youth, the priceless brilliancy of which has been transformed by our indolence into a heap of decaying yellow leaves ? "Nothing but leaves! The Spirit

overlay it with worldly lazily sleeping, permit Then, at the last, we

"Ah! who shall thus the Master

meet,

Bearing but withered leaves ? Ah! who shall at the Saviour's feet,

Before the awful judgment seat,
Lay down for golden sheaves,
Nothing but leaves, nothing but
leaves ?"

No. X.

9th Sunday after Trinity-The Queen of Sheba.
FIRST LESSON AT MORNING SERVICE.

"AND WHEN THE QUEEN OF SHEBA HEARD OF THE FAME OF SOLOMON CONCERNING THE NAME OF THE LORD, SHE CAME TO PROVE HIM WITH HARD QUESTIONS."-1 Kings x. 1.

INTRODUCTORY.

SOLOMON, having attained to the wisdom that he had desired, and having had added to it, by God's favour, riches and power, became famous even in distant countries. The Queen of Sheba heard of his skill in sacred things, and determined to pay him a visit, so as to enable her to gain fresh knowledge. The situation of Sheba cannot be certainly fixed. Josephus places it in Africa; but the best supported opinion is, that it lay in the southern part of Arabia Felix. This would entitle its queen to be called, as our Lord calls her, "the Queen of the South;" and, moreover, as Arabia Felix abounds in gold and gems and spices, it would explain the manner in which she became possessed of the "hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones," that she gave as a present to Solomon.

The Queen of Sheba, who, in Dr. Pollock's list of the kings of Yaman, is placed as the twenty-second in order, and who is said by the Arabs, without any authority, to have been named Balkis, with whom Solomon communicated by means of a lapwing, according to the Koran, was much impressed with the

F

magnificence of Solomon's court, with "the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cup-bearers, and his ascent by which he went up into the house of the Lord." All these exceeded in their splendour even the reports that had reached her in Sheba about them. His wisdom, especially about Divine matters, raised still more her admiration; and after declaring her conviction that the people governed by so wise, so just, and so pious a monarch as Solomon up to this period in his reign was, must be happy, she departed into her own country, to spread, possibly, amongst her subjects the information on Divine and human matters that she had acquired.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED.

THE

I. THAT WE SHOULD DILIGENTLY SEEK HIGHEST AND THE HOLIEST, AND NOT BE CONTENT WITH ANYTHING LOWER.

The Queen of Sheba heard of the wisdom of Solomon, more especially his wisdom in heavenly knowledge, and she came from the uttermost part of the earth to avail herself of this knowledge. So should we become "seekers after God," searching humbly and prayerfully, into the fulness of the riches of the Gospel of Christ; not satisfied with being hearers of the word only, but meditating with reverence and awe in many a solemn hour of thought on the wisdom and the power of God. as shown forth in the world of grace and of nature. "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."

II. THAT DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS SHOULD NOT KEEP US FROM THE RECEPTION OF TRUTH.

The Queen of Sheba undertook a long and toilsome

journey from "the uttermost parts" of the East to hear the wisdom of Solomon. How little toil, time, or money we are inclined to spend to see the wisdom of the "greater than Solomon," that the gospel makes known to us! The fear of a little ridicule, of a little loss, of a little danger, is too often enough to deter us from the pursuit of heavenly wisdom. If one-tenth of the energy and zeal that men display in seeking after worldly riches and worldly grandeur, in seeking the gold of Ophir and the spices of Sheba, were shown in leaving, like the Queen of the East, those arid and unsatisfying regions for that heavenly Jerusalem of which a Greater than Solomon is King, how much nobler, holier, happier, and really richer might men be!

III. THAT AS WE

SHOULD DILIGENTLY, AND IN SPITE OF ALL DIFFICULTIES, SEEK DIVINE TRUTH, SO SHOULD WE ADMIRE IT WHEN WE HAVE FOUND IT.

The Queen of Sheba does not attempt enviously to find fault with or or to depreciate any of the endowments of King Solomon. She admires heartily his wisdom, his knowledge, his power, his riches, his grandeur. She confesses, "It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words. until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard." She does not cavil, she does not envy, she does not depreciate. A useful example for the present age-an age especially given to criticise, rather than to admire; an age that laughs at romance, ignores mystery, and ridicules the idea of the supernatural. We know that romance and reality are one, that life is itself a mystery, and that