and how Saul's heart is moved, even to tears-all that forms the unequalled close of an unequalled chapter.

NOW there are three great lessons for us here, and the first is the unexpectedness of temptation. I am certain that when David rose that morning he little thought what midday had in store for him. If you had told him that before the sun had westered, the life of Saul would be lying at his mercy, he would have held it as an idle tale. Swiftly and unexpectedly, without a hint or warning of any kind, he was face to face with terrible temptation; and it is one of the great devices of the tempter still, that he tries to take us captive by surprise. Drummond tells how once he was present at a students' duel in Germany, and he observed that one of the two combatants had only a single form of stroke-downwards from the head. But suddenly, at the thirteenth round, his eye flashed, and with a rapid movement he changed his stroke, and brought his sword upwards, cleaving the chin of his opponent. How did it happen? It was the sudden change of direction; and temptation veers unexpectedly like that.

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'HE next lesson is that near cuts are not God's. David had been anointed by Samuel and had received the promise of the kingdom. You can understand then what a short and certain road to sovereignty offered itself to him as he stooped down over the sleeping king. But David felt (and I think he was the only one in the cave who felt it) that that road was not a highway of Jehovah. Such near cuts to his destiny were not of God. Do you not think that our Lord felt that too? It was a short and easy way to universal kingship that Satan offered Him, when he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. But Jesus, whose glorious destiny was to be universal king, scorned, as a temptation, that near road, and took the long and sorrowful way to it by Calvary.

And we are tempted in the same way still. When we think we can attain to Christian character without the steady growth and progress of the years; or when in place of dogged and patient work we fancy there is some easy way to knowledge; or when we begin to dream of growing quickly rich, or very famous-then let us think of David and of Jesus, and remember that such near cuts are not God's.

THEN lastly, let us find in this chapter one of the noblest instances in history of the return of good for evil. Let us recall how Saul had treated David, and contrast it with David's conduct in the cave, and we shall feel that if ever the spirit of Jesus was at work in the old world, it was in the cave of En-gedi that hour. Is there no such hour for us?

'When deep within our swelling hearts

The thoughts of pride and anger rise,
When bitter words are on our tongues
And tears of passion in our eyes,

Then we may stay the angry blow,
Then we may check the hasty word,

Give gentle answers back again,

And fight a battle for our Lord.'

TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY

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Evening

THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS

Passage to be read: Luke xvi. 19-31.

UR Lord had been speaking against the sin of covetousness, when the Pharisees, who were themselves lovers of money (v. 14), began to ridicule Him. In these circumstances the parable was spoken; it

was meant to enforce the warnings against mammon (v. 13). And there is something highly significant in the unexpected turn that the enforcing takes. Between the typical Pharisee and this rich man there was little outward resemblance. The bitterest enemy could not accuse the Pharisees of faring sumptuously every day. Whatever their faults were, they were austere and rigid. They honestly despised luxurious living. Yet in drawing this picture of a luxurious liver, there is no doubt that Jesus was thinking first of them. Now, where lay the point of contact, do you think? It lay in a common love of money. The Pharisee loved it, and he secretly hoarded it. The rich man loved it for the pleasure it bought. Each showed his passion for wealth in his own way, but the same passion was supreme in both. Learn, then, how one deep-seated vice may trick itself out in the most diverse garbs. A hundred miles may separate two rivers, but for all that, they flow from the one loch. Our eyes might fail to discover kinship between the secret hoarding of the Pharisee and the prodigal squandering of this rich man; but in the eyes of Christ, both ran down to a common selfishness, and to a common heart-neglect of God.

FIRST note the strange contrasts of the world. Here

are two men, and day after day there is not the space of twenty yards between them, yet a distance like the sea divides the two. The one is rich, the other is a beggar. The one has every dainty on his table, the other gathers the crumbs to stay his hunger. The one is clothed in the fine linen of Egypt, a robe of which was worth twice its weight in gold; the other on the doorstep is in rags. The one has servants to do his smallest bidding, they are fanning him in the long hot afternoon to drive away the flies; the other has no one to drive away the dogs when they gather round him and lick his sores with their unclean tongues. It were impossible to

conceive a greater contrast-and there is only a porch and a door between the two! Yet with such contrasts all the world is teeming. Do you live in a roomy terrace in a great city? There is want and misery within a stone's-throw. Is your home a little villa in some quiet town? Learn something of that lane that you pass on Sundays going to the church. Are you a farmer's daughter? Who was that tramp that the dog barked off to-day? 'The poor ye have always with you,' said the Lord; wherever you are, there is a Lazarus near.

AGAIN observe, and do it seriously and often-observe

the changed conditions of eternity. A great philosopher has written in his books that we should view all things sub specie æternitatis. The boys who are learning Latin will tell us what that means: it means that we ought to consider things under the light, so to speak, of eternity. Now, I feel that it was under that eternal light that Jesus was moving when He spoke this parable. And why? Because we are told the beggar's name, but we are not told the name of the rich man. When a great man gives a public banquet, the newspapers tell us all about it. We get the names of the host and of all his guests, and we hear, too, how the ladies were dressed; but we never dream of finding in the newspaper the names and addresses of the poor around the gates. But when Jesus tells the story of this feasting, and tells it as it is written in the books of God, the beggar is namedand a noble name he had—and the host is only 'a certain rich man.' Here the one man is great and he is known; the other is a beggar and a nuisance. Here the one man has everything he wants; the other lives and dies in want of everything. But yonder, in the world beyond the grave, where the wrong is righted, and God's strange ways are justified, Lazarus lies upon the bosom of peace, and the rich man bitterly reaps what he has sown. Do you see the contrast between the now and then? Do you

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mark the complete reversal of the lots? It is by such unveilings of eternity, that Christ has eased the problems of the world.

NEXT mark that the sin of the rich man was selfishness. There was nothing sinful in his being rich-Abraham himself had been a wealthy man. It is not hinted that the rich man of the story had made his money in unlawful ways. He is not charged with oppression of the poor, nor with enriching himself by others' ruin. Had you asked his boon-companions what they thought of him, they would have called him the finest fellow in the town. It was neglected Lazarus that was his sin. His crime was the unrelieved beggar at his gate. And he could not plead that he was ignorant of Lazarus, for he recognised him at once in Abraham's bosom. It was not want of knowledge, then, but want of thought that was the innermost secret of his tragedy. He was so engrossed in his own life of pleasure, that his heart was dulled to the suffering at his door; and every day he lived he grew more selfish till at last he went to his own place. Let the children learn how needful it is to begin doing kindly deeds when they are young. We grow so accustomed to misery by and by, that our hearts turn callous before we are aware. It is a priceless blessing when the sympathies of childhood are turned into the channel of activity. Caught in their freshness, and expressed in deeds, they form those habits of help and brotherly kindness that were utterly wanting in this rich man's heart.

MARK, lastly, in a word, it will never be easier to

believe than now (vs. 27-31). Did you ever read of a boy who stood on a muddy road, and who promised God that he would be a Christian if there and then God would dry up the puddles? He wanted a miracle to make him a believer; he thought he would become Christ's if