recompense us.

Thus entertaining strangers with kindly words and kindly deeds, we may perchance find that we have "entertained angels unawares." "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days."

2. FAITH IN THE PROMISES OF GOD.

Abraham believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness. He accepted in firm trust the assurance that he should have a free-born son; and although, as the Apostle says, dead almost with the weight of years, Sarah his wife being dead also, he staggered not at the promises of God. So should we show faith, not a tacit assent, but an active faith, making our belief indeed our by-life, the rule by which we live.

3. THAT THERE IS A CONCATENATION BETWEEN OUR SINS.

One vice leads to another. When Sarah's inward laugh of incredulity was rebuked, she denied that she had laughed. Her want of trust necessarily leads to want of courage, and want of courage is the ready cause of want of truth. So covetuousness in Gehazi leads to falsehood, so adultery in David begets murder. Thus he who is guilty of the breach of one of the commandments is very likely to be guilty of the breach of all. The passions of the soul, like the thoughts of the mind, are found to be united by imperceptible but firm links. Let us avoid therefore the first steps to evil.

4. THE SIN OR INNOCENCE OF ANY ACTION DEPENDS UPON MOTIVES.

Abraham laughed with joy, as may be gathered from a former chapter, when God's promise was made to him. Sarah laughed from incredulity. An action. commendable in the one was sinful in the other.

Some acts are intrinsically good, others are intrinsically bad, and others are indifferent in themselves, and can only have their moral character assigned by a discovery of the causes from which they orginated. We should not then be hasty to condemn the conduct of another, as God alone, who knows the heart, can decide as to what the real motives of that other may be. For our own comfort it may be asserted that doubtful questions of casuistry rarely arise in practical life, and that when they do, conscience intuitively propounds for us the readiest and the best solution of the problem, whatever it may be.

5. THE LONG-SUFFERING AND CONDESCENSION OF GOD.

Before His vengeance is poured out, He will, as it is phrased, "go down" to Sodom, to see whether any excuse can be made for its people. He is not willing that any should perish; and if ignorance of His will or any other valid excuse can be pleaded, He will have mercy, as He had on the Ninevites. How oft we offend against the Divine Majesty, how oft God forgives! Observe, too, His condescension. Although the finite cannot grasp the infinite, although God's ways are past finding out in their fulness, by weak human intelligences, yet God often condescends to explain, in part at all events, the course of His dealings to men. He bestows on them power to trace out at least a succession of events, which is sometimes dignified with the name of cause and effect. He will not hide from Abraham the doom coming upon Sodom, He does not conceal from men that "the wages of sin is death," and that "the gift of God is eternal life." We are endowed with reason, and with God's law to direct our steps; and if we fall into physical

danger, intellectual error, or moral ruin, it is not because God has hidden His counsel from us.

6. THE WONDERFUL EFFICACY OF PRAYER.

By reiterated petitions Abraham obtained a promise that Sodom should be spared if ten righteous men were found therein. So "more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." The action of prayer man cannot say is contrary to the laws of nature, as he does not really know what that vague term, laws of nature, means, and, for anything he can tell, prayer may be one of those very laws, acting as naturally and as regularly as the law of gravitation. Pray, then, without ceasing. "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation."

7. THAT FOR THE ELECT'S SAKE THE DAYS OF EVIL ARE OFTEN SHORTENED OR POSTPONED.

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, whether the leaven be of good or evil; if evil communications corrupt good manners, so the influence of a good man extends far around him. The unbelieving husband is spared for the sake of the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife for the sake of the believing husband. Great leaders produce great causes, as much as great causes produce great leaders. Seeing, then, that we are our brother's keeper, we should take care lest by precept or example we cause a weak brother to offend.

8. Now SPIRITUALLY, AS FORMERLY ACTUALLY, GOD VISITS HIS PEOPLE.

He by His Spirit tabernacles amongst men. No longer indeed, as to Abraham, He speaks with them voice to voice; no longer, as in the patriarchal days, is He seen in some manner face to face; but none the less real is His advent. Seen by man, we know on our Lord's authority, God never was; He only at most

appeared in some veiled manifestation of the Logos, or Word. And in a far higher manifestation of that Word is He shown to Christians than to any favoured saint of the old dispensation. By the still small voice of conscience He still speaks to men. As they rest from the heat of life's labour, as they dwell in the tabernacle of the body during life's pilgrimage, He comes to them in times of thoughtful repose to counsel or to bless. Water is brought to Him as of old, and He sanctifies it in the sacrament of baptism. Bread is set before Him, on holy table under the shadow of the Crucified One, fitly emblematized by a tree, and He partakes of it with the faithful and true of heart. To the end of life He blesses them with His presence. Physical beauty decays when youth has passed, intellectual vigour disappears with advancing years, but spiritual strength grows more and more; humanity seeming to resemble, as a quaint old English poet says, some exquisite ruined fane, that lets in more beams of heavenly light through the rents that time has made! As Abraham in old age sits at the door of his tent, the celestial Visitor comes to him; as man stands as it were at the door of his earthly tabernacle, soon to cross the threshold into the unknown country beyond, glimpses come to him of that far-off land. Who can tell the happy visions with which God vouchsafes to bless the dying saint? The deceptive mocking shadows of this world, by the fitful play of which truth and falsehood were confusedly blended, then clear away perchance in part from the mind, and in the clear perspective of eternity men see things as they are. As God then dwells with us even while here on earth, let us strive to dwell with God hereafter. In God "we live, and move, and have our

being." "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Do we think a noble thought? do we do a noble deed? do we utter a noble word? Let us give God the glory; for all our capacities for thought, for speech, for action come from Him. Filled with this sentiment, no talents of ours will be permitted by us to lie idle, much less to be misused, for the temple of God is holy, which temple we are; and in the innermost sanctuary of that shrine there gleams a glory cloud, effulgent as any Shechinah of

old.

No. II.

1st Sunday after Trinity.-The Captain of the Lords'

Host.

FIRST LESSON AT EVENING SERVICE.

"AND IT CAME TO PASS, WHEN JOSHUA WAS BY JERICHO, THAT HE LIFTED UP HIS EYES AND LOOKED, AND, BEHOLD, THERE STOOD A MAN OVER AGAINST HIM WITH HIS SWORD DRAWN IN HIS HAND: AND JOSHUA WENT UNTO HIM, AND SAID UNTO HIM, ART THOU FOR US, OR FOR OUR ADVERSARIES? AND HE SAID, NAY; BUT AS CAPTAIN OF THE HOST OF THE LORD AM I NOW COME.". Josh. v. 13, 14.

INTRODUCTORY.

AFTER forty years' journeying in the wilderness, the children of Israel had at last reached the promised land. They had crossed the Jordan, the waters of which river had retired when touched by the feet of the twelve priests that bare the ark; and having brought twelve stones from the bed of the river to set