we have found cistern upon cistern, that we have laboriously dug, to be empty, we look for other cisterns still? How is it, that often as we find flower after flower to fade and wither the instant that we touch it, yet we seek after other flowers still? How is it, that after joy on joy has been pursued, and has perished the instant that we grasped it, we yet still seek after joys that bloom not upon the tree of time, but only upon the tree that is in the midst of the paradise of God? It is because we do not like to be indebted to another. Man would like to save himself, justify himself, regenerate himself, glorify himself, and sing songs of praise throughout eternity "to me that loved myself, and washed myself, and redeemed myself, and glorified myself; unto me be glory and honour, and blessing and praise!" What is all the gospel but just God humbling the heart? What is justification? God laying your glory in the dust, and placing the greatest philanthropist and the greatest criminal on the same dead level of sin and condemnation; that when they have learned where sin has laid them, they may be clothed with and exalted by the righteousness of Christ, and glory in his name all the day long, and realize this blessed experience, that when we begin to exalt God, God will begin to exalt us. What is regeneration, but God's Holy Spirit revealing to man what is in his own real nature, and that his flowers are weeds, his gold is dim-nay, worse than dim, worthless; that his sins are his own, and they should humble him; that his graces are not his own, and they should humble him also; and that he can no more change his own heart than he can, by any concentration of his physical powers, or combined action of his muscles, lift himself from the earth a single foot? When God has thus humbled man, and convinced him that he has no holiness and no grace of himself, then he will exalt him. The man whose heart has been renewed only by baptism, will praise the priest; but the man whose heart has been renewed and regenerated by the Spirit of God, will magnify and praise the Lord alone, and from the first bud to the next blossom, and the last fruit of a holy life, he will give all the glory unto God.

Do I speak to any here that are proud? all it is human nature; it is the secret of

This passion is in us many of our miscar

ryings it is the cause of most of our failures. You say you do

not like to be humble: nobody does like to be humble. Man does not like to be humbled before a brother, but he likes much less to be humbled before himself; the instinctive pride that is in him rebelling against the humility that sweeps his foundation of self-sufficiency from beneath him. But if this pride be not abased in mercy, it will be abased in judgment. Think of the goodness, the mercy, the forgiveness of God, that, so thinking, you may be humble. Think of what human nature is; that the greatest criminal who commits the most enormous crime, and perishes on the scaffold on account of it, is an alter ego, another self, actuated by the same passions, only in their full burst, flow, and development; and that, except for the grace of God, that criminal might have been myself. Think of this, that you may be humble before God. But if you wish to be humbled in the very dust, read those thrilling words, "God so loved me, that he gave his onlybegotten Son to die for me!" See what my redemption cost! See what a penalty my sin demanded! See what my ruin is, by the height from which the Saviour came, and the depth to which the Saviour sank! and when you have looked at that cross, and listened to that suffering ery, and beheld that completed sacrifice, and that unbounded love, oh! then such grace-such love—such mercy, will expel pride from the stubborn heart of man; and it will do what judgment, what affliction, what preaching, what experience has failed to do-it will cause you to abase yourself in the sight of the Lord, that he may lift you up, and so you may be exalted in due time.

Pray for that Holy Spirit which alone can melt the proud heart; and when it has changed and regenerated that heart, then, in lowliness upon earth, you will bless him, and on a throne of glory in heaven, you will magnify him; and thank God throughout all eternity that you have learned in mercy, the truth which so many have learned in judgment-"Them that walk in pride, God is able to abase."

151

LECTURE XI.

THE SCEPTRE OF GOD.

"Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule."-Daniel iv. 26.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR "learned that the heavens do rule," as we see in this acknowledgment, made after he was restored to his mind. The prediction was that the tree, the symbol of his majesty, should be cut down; and he who was symbolized by that tree should be driven forth to herd with the beasts of the field, and there to suffer degradation and shame till he learned the lesson that he had forgotten, that "God reigns," or, to use the language of the text, "that the heavens do rule." And you will perceive that after he was restored he says, in verse 3, "How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders!" and then here is what he had learned: "His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation." He learned the lesson, and he expressed it after he was restored to his mind, that it was not his sceptre that controlled the worlds, but the sceptre of Him whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and whose dominion endureth from generation to generation. The proposition I should wish to illustrate is, that "God reigns," "that the heavens do rule ;" and in endeavouring to do so, I will look first at some of the difficulties that lie in the way of our acknowledgment of this fact. There is nothing that man is more prone to dispute than the living, ever-present, ever-active supremacy of God. There is an universal belief that God was, there is a very faint belief that God is: there is an impression among some that God made the world, and then left the machinery to go on after he had wound it up; and that since he made it he has retired from the world, and left it to the dominion of what philosophers call second causes-what infidels call accidents.

Now then, let us look at some of the difficulties that lie in our way, and I will try as I am able very briefly to explain them. First, how can we reconcile the entrance of sin with the existence, the supremacy, and the rule of God? If you ask men, Does God govern the world? they answer, "Yes." But how is it compatible with the government of a wise, a merciful, an omnipotent God, that such an intruder, such a foul disturber of the harmony of the world as sin, should have been allowed to interpolate itself, and occasion apostasy, rebellion, and discord in his suffering, wide dominions? The entrance of sin is not the disclosure of revelation, but the disclosure of history, of experience, and of fact. It is not the Christian alone who is called upon to explain why sin is come into the world, but the skeptic himself. He admits the existence and the reign of a God: he must admit the fact of the presence, and the disturbing power of sin. If there be a difficulty, it is a difficulty also at the door of the skeptic, as broad and as palpable as that which lies at the door of the Bible Christian. But we may look at it in a light in which it may appear at least not to have been God's fault, if I may reverently use the expression, that sin has entered the world. He made man perfectly free and unfettered, with every bias to good, and with no bias to evil; with every inducement to retain his allegiance, with every possible dissuasive against the violation of that allegiance. He gave him genius to originate-a heart to love-a conscience, the realm of right and of wrong; and, of necessity, placed him under a law, because, if there be no law, there can be no lawgiver, there can be no subject; and, if no subject, of course no supreme governor. By the very nature of the creature's constitution, the creature must be placed under law. Now when he placed Adam under law, God might by his omnipotence have prevented him from stretching forth his hand to touch the forbidden fruit. But it does not follow that because he might have prevented him, therefore he ought to have prevented him. It may be-nay, we are sure it must be-that more grand and magnificent results will yet be evolved from the wrecks of Paradise than ever could have been reflected from it, if it had retained its glory undismantled and unshorn, even to the age in which we now live. And to show how fallacious is the argument, that be

cause God could have prevented man, therefore he ought to have done so, I may observe, man has it in his power to destroy himself; he may throw himself over a precipice, or cast himself into the sea: God might, by the exercise of omnipotence, have rendered this impossible: but then the very impossibility of it would have reflected deeper discredit on the creature; for the creature would not have been a free and unshackled being, in which he glories as his dignity, but an automaton-a piece of machinery, moved by extraneous impulses, without a will to determine, a conscience to feel, or a judgment to reflect. Or, to use another illustration, if a man goes to put his hand into the fire, God tells that man, by the experience of others, and by the exercise of his reason, "If you put your hand into the fire you will burn it and suffer pain." That is the plan he has adopted: he might have taken the plan you propose, and by the fiat of omnipotence have rendered it a physical impossibility for the man to burn his hand. But he has not done so he has shown man that if he puts his hand in the fire it is sure to be burned; and man, knowing what the effect of the act will be, is thus deterred from the commission of it. Such was the case with Adam in Paradise. God did not draw back his arm by a physical restraint from touching the forbidden fruit; but he told man, "If you touch that fruit you bring death into the world and all your wo; it rests with you, as a free and responsible being, to touch it and perish, or to abstain and live for ever." Do we not then thus "vindicate the ways of God to man," and show that by permitting sin, not sending it, he treated man as a rational and responsible being, and that man could not have been placed, as far as we can see, in circumstances more favourable to obedience, compatibly with the dignity of his own nature, or in circumstances more calculated to set forth the wisdom, the beneficence, the love, the holiness, and the justice of him who rules in the heavens, and constituted man once his vicegerent upon earth?

Another difficulty in recognising the truth contained in my text, that God lives and reigns, consists in the fact that the present generation is often found to suffer for the sins of the past, and that the children of to-day inherit the consequences of the sins of their fathers of yesterday, and of former generations. If