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nothing could stand but a house upon a rock. So here the foolish virgins had their lamps, and their lamps were burning merrily enough. But they forgot to reckon with a tardy bridegroom, and it was just that want of forethought that spoiled all. Now none of us is to be anxious for to-morrow. The speaker of this parable taught that. But we have a strange and difficult life to live, and we have a death to die and a God to meet, and it is high time to make provision for all that. Have you done it? You know perfectly what the provision is. 'Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart.'

AND the second lesson of the story is this: in the great

hours we cannot help each other. I have no doubt the ten were all good friends; they had done many a kindly turn one to another. But now, that friendship was of no avail; there was no oil to borrow or to spare. It was not because the wise disdained the foolish, or were eager to see them ousted from the marriage, that they were deaf to this request for oil. They refused it for a far better reason-they needed every drop of oil they had. That means, that in every hour of judgment, there is no shining with a borrowed light. The help of others is priceless in many things, but in the hours of spiritual crisis it is vain. Another's faith can never aid us then, even though that other be a friend or father. It is our own faith and holiness and love that will determine matters when the Bridegroom comes.

THEN, lastly, and this is the great lesson of the parable, it is the highest wisdom to be watchful. The bridegroom came when no one looked for him, and Jesus will come in an hour we think not of. The one day has been hidden, said Augustine, that every day might be regarded. How little did Pompeii think, in the bright morning, of the desolation the evening was to bring!

With what awful suddenness, in 1666, did the great fire devastate London! And like a bridegroom in the night, Jesus will come. God grant He find us vigilant !

'Watch! 'tis your Lord's command,

And while we speak, He's near;
Mark the first signal of His hand,
And ready all appear.'

THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY

Morning

THE FAMINE

Passage to be read: 1 Kings xvii. 1-24.

HEN a prophet is brought on to the scene of

WH Scripture, we generally hear something of his

ancestry; but Elijah stands before us without a word of preface: like Melchisedec he is 'without father, without mother' (Heb. vii. 3). So unusual is this sudden introduction, that some of the Jews fancied he was an angel, and James may have been thinking of that when he wrote that Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves (James v. 17). The name Elijah means 'Jehovah is my God,' and the name rings true to his mission and his character. His life was one long struggle against idolatry, and Jehovah-nissi-God was his banner. Here then he steps out under that banner, in a chapter that we all have by heart. What lessons does Elijah's God wish us to gather from the story of Cherith and Sarepta ?

FIRST then there is the need of quiet retirement before

service. Moses before he was called to lead the Israelites, spent forty years in retirement in the desert. When Paul was converted and chosen to be God's messenger, he was led away into the quiet distance of Arabia. Our Lord Himself, after his baptism, was driven of the Spirit into the wilderness, where He was tempted of the

devil forty days. Just so Elijah, beginning his life's work, and with all the bitterness and stress of it before him, was bidden by God to go and hide himself—his life must first be hid with Christ in God. Where Cherith is, no traveller can tell. It is enough to remember that the name means separated. The burn would babble and whisper to the prophet ceaselessly, and all its whispering would be separation. Here, then, Elijah was prepared in solitude. His trust in a God who could provide, was deepened. It was at Cherith that

'he learned to feel

What he could ne'er express, yet could not all conceal.'

MARK next that ordinary things are sometimes given in extraordinary ways. What food sustained the prophet at the brook? It was bread and flesh, morning and evening. It was not angels' food by any means; it was the wholesome fare of any working Israelite. There was not a mother in Israel but could have baked the bread, there was not a market but supplied such meat. The strange thing was not the food Elijah got; the strange thing was the way in which he got it. There was something intensely repugnant to a Jew in the thought of a raven being his caterer. Had it been a clean bird, it might have been less offensive; but the raven was unclean, and abhorred (Lev. xi. 13; Isa. xxxiv. II). Yet by these offensive channels the food was brought; the prophet was sustained by what he loathed. Do we not often get our common blessings thus? Does not God bring them by offensive messengers? Did you never know any one winning strength and sweetness from providences as dark as any raven's wing? There are some who would change these ravens into Arabians, and others will have it that they were kindly merchants; but when I think of the dark plumage of sorrow (and how we loathe the beating of its wings), and then remember what daily strength and beauty is conveyed to

the children of God by that sad messenger, it is better to leave the Arabians their liberty, and (with Christ) consider the fowls of the air.

'HEN note that there are stores that increase in the

THEN

using of them. When Elijah met with the woman of Zarephath she was trembling on the verge of destitution. She had nothing left but a little meal in the barrel, and a little oil in the bottom of her cruse. When that was done, there was nothing between her and death no wonder that her little boy fell sick! Now had she refused to use that morsel, when the prophet, in the name of the Eternal, asked for it, it had been farewell to the sunlight for them both. But she believed with a very noble faith, she cast herself upon the promise, wholly; no doubt there was an indefinable air about the prophet that made her feel he was asking with authority. Then morning by morning, in the barrel, there was enough meal to give her her daily bread; and in the cruse always sufficient oil to give her daily the oil of joy for mourning; until at last, when she reviewed the months, and remembered all she had taken from the barrel, she would learn the lesson we all need to learn that there is he that scattereth and yet increaseth. Have you no talents and powers and faculties and senses that are like the barrel in Sarepta, and the cruse? Is there nothing in your house (the house of brain and character) that will fail, unless you trust God and use it? There is a terrible epitaph on an old Roman tomb, 'Quod edi et bibi, mecum habeo '-what I ate and drank I have with me. But I am certain that the widow of Sarepta would never write that upon her headstone. She had learned the truth of these words of John Wesley, 'What I gave away, I have still.' Are any of us beginning to find that?

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