THE ANXIETY OF PENITENCE. Job vii. 20-" I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O Thou preserver of men?"

IN these words we have

I. A confession-"I have sinned." The expression is not specific. There are no details entered into. The speaker does not tell us how he sinned, when he sinned, or where he sinned.

There is a great deal of general confession in the world. Men are willing enough to say, "We are all sinners," but their object is but too often rather to bring others into the general condemnation than to condemn themselves. The universality of the transgression is owned in order to extenuate the individuality.

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This is not the case with the text. Although it is not specified, it is personal. The expression is, "I have sinned." And this will be the case with all true penitents. There need not be the particular detail if the general principle is felt. Romanists have a printed catalogue of sins which they ticket off if they are guilty. But they forget that whoso is guilty in one point is guilty in all. Therefore, whatever may be our faults, they are all included in "I have sinned.' But there must be personality. It must be I. There is no egotism which is so esteemed as this. There can be no forgiveness until we realize this big I. There can be no true consciousness of sin until the we becomes singular. Then there is some prospect of religion becoming a vital matter, and of realizing in truth and reality the individual connection there is between the Saviour and the sinner.

II. An inquiry-" What shall I do unto Thee, O Thou preserver of men?" These words do not at first seem very intelligible. They may be taken in two ways

1. What shall I do in reparation of the wrong I have done? I would avoid the wrath I have incurred. "Wherewith

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shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God," etc. reply to this it must be said we can do nothing, offer nothing. The very attempt would be adding insult to injury. For (a) we can only obey in God's strength and not our own, and (b) all the obedience we can render is at all times due to God; (c) all our obedience is and must be imperfect, and therefore, instead of taking away past guilt, only adds to the load. But the question may be asked

2.-In the spirit of thankfulness and duty. In this spirit the inquiry is not only allowable, bnt commendable. The pardoned and preserved sinner must feel some amount of gratitude. He cannot discharge these obligations, but he feels them, and therefore must ask, "What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits towards me? What services shall I render Him, not as a peace-offering, but as a thank-offering; not as a payment, but as a token of gratitude?"

To this man none of God's commands are grievous. They are a means of showing love. And all the days of his life he will love his Benefactor, fear to offend Him, and pray that the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart will be acceptable in His sight, and that his body may be presented as a living sacrifice to the great King.

T.

ORIGIN AND END OF SIN. Joshua vii. 21-"When I saw among the spoils, &c."

I.-His Fascination-"I saw." Man has eyes in his heart as well as in his head. In these two sets of eyes very much of human sin has its origin. The first human sin started in the eye of the sinner. "The woman saw the tree."

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II. His Feeling-"1 coveted." wanton, roving eye, always gives sin a foot-hold in the feelings. The tendency of sin is to fire and inflame with unhallowed desire.

III. His Folly "I took." Lust, if allowed to conceive, must bring forth sin. A bud must bloom if allowed to grow. Here is an epitome of all sin and crime. "I saw," ," "I coveted," "I took."

IV. His Fear-"I hid them." The wages of sin bring fear and trouble into the camp. Things must be "hid" in the ground, but they cannot stay buried. The sinner must confess, and father his own guilt-"I have sinned."

V. His Fate-"Israel stoned him." Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Achan should have confessed his

sin right away. Every day makes it

harder for the sinner to face a confession. The defeat of Ai, his slaughtered comrades, the demoralized host, the agony and tears of Joshua, all made it the more difficult for Achan to repent, until finally it was too late. THOMAS KELLY.

THE YOKE OF CHRIST. Matt. xi. 29, 30-"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." MEN naturally love to be independent, to have no master over them, and to live unshackled by superiors or restraint.

And the desire is father to the thought. They grow to think that they are and can be free. They think there is nothing unseen which influences them, and that they obey no law but that which their fancy imposes.

But men are not free; they are not their own masters. They must serve beings superior to themselves, they must have a yoke upon them-either that of Satan, who worketh in the children of disobedience, and of Christ, whose freemen they may become.

And since there is no alternative, no escaping from one or other of these conditions, let us contemplate the course we are urged to pursue in the text, and the consequences which would result from so doing. And

I.-Mark the character which Christ here gives of Himself. In a previous verse He had spoken of the power and authority which had been entrusted to Him- "All things are delivered to Me." As equal with the Father, He possessed all things by original right. Now, He was eternal and immortal God, we should have imagined Him asserting His Divine authority; we should have expected descriptions of the Almighty which should have awed men into submission, and have subdued the mind by terror and alarm. Observe

1.-The Saviour would rather allure than drive. He would manifest His greatness by humility, and He therefore, upon the greatness of His eternal glory, invites men unto Himself as meek and lowly.

2.-The Saviour would display Himself as a Teacher rather than a King. The method He adopted was a progressive

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development of knowledge. upon line, precept upon precept," was His constant counsel. He knew the ignorance of the human heart. He was aware that the acquisition of knowledge was a difficult and tedious matter. And with patient meekness He urges them and us 66 to learn."

3.-The Saviour would manifest Himself as an example rather than a taskmaster. He is the standard of excellence, the standard upon which our whole characters are to be based. Look to Me. It is not My words alone; it is My whole actions and character. Hence Christ differs from all other teachers. They can develop theories and expound doctrines, but their lives cannot be perfect, nor their lives models for others to follow. How great was the contrast between Christ and the Pharisees, and all other philosophers and teachers! They in the pride of their ideas; He in the simple humility of true wisdom and perfect knowledge.

II. The duty enjoined—“ Take My yoke upon you." The words are expressive, and imply more than they express. To take a yoke upon anyone was

1.-A badge of servitude. It was a wooden collar worn by slaves, and showed that they belonged to a master, or were captives of a foreign king. The yoke of Christ is a sign that the person who wears it is a servant of Christ, has given himself unreservedly to his Master.

2.-A mark of labour. It implies work. It was used for drawing, for lifting, for ploughing. Whoever wore it was under obligation to work. Noither horse, beast, or man was idle who wore the yoke. The Christian's life is not to be an idle life. It involves putting on the soldier's armour; it implies wearing the pilgrim's garb; and it includes the ardour of the fight, the weariness of the march, the exertion of the strength. Yea, even the delights of heaven will be work.

III. The injunction urged-"Take My yoke upon you." We have heard of the nature of this yoke, and the character of the Master. We know that His demands will only be for a time, and will get lighter day by day. Satan's yoke, on the contrary, is for ever, and will grow harder every moment. Christ's yoke will cease in eternity. The devil's will then begin. Which will you serve? Christ or Satan? Oh, how easy is the yoke of Christ, when the burden of sin is felt and realised! And He promises eternal, glorious rest; He invites all who are weary. Are there none to accept?

M,

SELF-ABNEGATION (Ps. cxv. 1).-It is narrated of the great sculptor, Michael Angelo, that when at work he wore over his forehead, fastened on his artist's cap, a lighted candle, in order that no shadow of himself might fall upon his work! It was a beautiful custom, and spoke a more eloquent custom than he knew, for the shadows that fall on our work, how often they fall from ourselves!

HUMAN FORGIVENESS (Rom. xii. 19).— A traveller in Burmah, fording a river, found his body covered all over with leeches, busy sucking his blood, He began to tear the tormentors from his flesh, but his servant told him that his wounds would be poisoned unless the leeches dropped off spontaneously. The servant prepared a bath with healing herbs, and directed his master to lie down in it. As soon as he bathed in the balsam, the leeches dropped off. You must bathe your whole being in God's pardoning mercy, and enemies-these venomous creatures-will let go their hold.

THE PRECISION WITH WHICH GOD FULFILS PROMISES (Exod. xii. 41, 42).—I was once crossing the Atlantic, and had come within three days' sail of the Irish coast. Fog and darkness shut out the sun by day and the stars at night. We had to trust to dead reckoning-that is, to the log, the compass, the chart. and other nice nautical computations. Standing by the captain, I heard him say on the last of these days, "We ought to see Fastnett Light in twelve minutes!" I took out my watch and waited. We saw the welcome light in just eleven! There, thought I, is a triumph of nautical skill and calculation, to push on so steadily and surely through the darkness day after day to the point aimed at. We justly confide in one who has proved himself trustworthy in human affairs, but the witness of God is greater. Why ever distrust Him? He has not only fixed the movements of the stars and the tides, but His promises of grace are unchangeable. "Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." If the wisdom of man elicits our admiring praise and commands our confidence, how much more should the grace of God, the infinitely Wise, secure at once our homage and our love.-R. S. Storrs, D.D.

THE HARVESTING ANT (Prov. vi. 8).— The truth of Solomon's reference to the ant, which has been questioned before now, is fully vindicated. Dr. Macmillan has found the food stored up in the nests of the ants, and he adds this interesting information-"Examining the seeds collected in the nests of the ants on the hill top at Nice more particularly with my magnifying glass, I found to my astonishment that each seed had its end carefully bitten off. And the reason of this

was perfectly plain. You know each seed contains two parts: the young plant or germ lying in its cradle, as it were, and the supply of food for its nourishment, when it begins to grow, wrapped around it. Now, the ants had bitten off the young plant-germ, and they left only the part which was full of nourishment. And they did this to prevent the seeds from growing and exhausting all the nourishment contained in them. If they did not do this, the seed stored under the ground when the rains came would shoot, and so they would lose all their trouble and be left to starve. I could not find in the heap a single seed that had not been treated in this way. Of course, none of the seeds that had their ends bitten off would grow; and you might as well sow grains of sand as the seeds found in ants' nests."

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL (John i. 17). -Contrast Sinai and Zion. These are the symbols of two great dispensations of God. Sinai, that of the law; that old mountain, standing with its bared brow lifted to storm and sunshine, scarred by the lightning, and shattered by earthquake and thunder. As Jehovah descended from His glory to deliver the law into the hands of Moses, Sinai shrank from His presence as a guilty thing, veiled in smoke and cloud, tremulous with thunder, and crowned with flaming lightning. Have you ever stood before Milan Cathedral as the sun was tipping its many marble minarets and spires, which lift its more than three thousand statues into the air, and looked upon the wonderful structure in which buttress and spire, roof and wall, blend into a beautiful harmony? But the temple on Mount Zion embodied more than music; it embodied worship, of which music is the mere handmaid, and became the most expressive figures of psalmist and prophet