Truly He knows all things, and can do all things; He understands, as we do not, the difficulties which we would fain relieve; and He knows us, too, as we do not know ourselves, our tendencies, in this or that point, to "the falsehood of extremes," our clumsiness in handling so fine an instrument as His word, and the manifold sins which make us so unfit to teach any one in His Name. Let us beg Him to lead all wanderers to Himself, by "a straight way wherein they shall not stumble;" and for ourselves, and for all whom he has made spokesmen of His truth, let us implore the power to respond to His intentions, to speak that truth alike faithfully and in love.

SERMON XXVIII.

PERSEVERANCE.

"Whose spirit was not steadfast with God."-Ps. lxxviii. 8.

THIS is the longest of the three great Historical Psalms. Like the 105th and 106th, it takes a large survey of a large portion of Israelitish history; it has a special affinity to the 106th, in that it dwells with unsparing plainness on the national sins exhibited in that history but its ethical purpose is more distinctly indicated, it does not begin with "O give thanks,” but with "Give ear, O my people, to my law." The psalmist is a preacher of righteousness, who draws lessons from the past as safeguards for the future: his theme is the perversity of the forefathers, considered as a warning to their descendants. "Do not," he urges, "reproduce the sins which are recorded for your admonition. Our fathers were repeatedly stubborn and disobedient, insensible to the true import of a Divine presence, unresponsive to the touch of a Divine training. They were always

falling back from the ground which they had been strengthened to occupy: when fully armed, they turned aside from the appointed struggle: they forgot what God had done for them, they doubted as to what He could do." Their murmurings are thrice described by the old significant phrase which had given the name of Massah to the place where the rock was smitten: "They tempted God;" as in the Venite, "Your fathers tempted Me,. put Me to the proof," by faithlessly demanding a sign. The Psalmist recalls especially the scenes of "the place of burning," and "the graves of those who lusted : he goes on to the wild times which followed the entrance into Canaan, to the abandonment of the Shiloh-sanctuary, to the rejection of self-willed Ephraim. And one particular point in the sad chronicle is at least twice emphasized : even when Israel had seemed to promise amendment, to inquire after God," to "remember that He was their rock," still these professions of repentant loyalty had no stuff in them: because the people were "not steadfast in His covenant," and this because "they set not their heart aright, their spirit was not steadfast with Him."

Here is the root of the evil-a habitual instability in regard to good resolutions. It is a topic on which

prophets and psalmists, and sacred historians too, are constantly enlarging; their language might seem to be but an expansion of the mournful judgment pronounced by the dying patriarch on that firstborn son who had more than once given proof of a generous and sympathetic nature: "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,"1 shalt not have the first place. All along the line of Jewish history, this fatal tendency to moral incoherence, this hankering after fleshpots and idols, this want of fibre in the piety of the moment, illustrates the text before us, and helps us to understand the difficulties of those who strove in God's behalf to keep Israel up to the standard of religious loyalty. But if we would learn from those faithful records, we must not waste our "loathing on dead men's crimes." 2 Rather let us take home the evidence borne by these ancient books to the permanence in human nature of certain weak points, of certain types of moral evil. a living teacher on this subject, who tells us so much about hypocritical inconsistency, about a craving for sinful excitements, about the unreality of a religion of mere emotions, has given us in a few words a vivid picture of this want of steadfastness as attaching

1 Gen. xlix. 4.

Hosea, who is such

2 Christian Year, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

both to Ephraim and to Judah: their "goodness is but a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away." Yes,-but what of ours?

It is simply a truism to say that, quite apart from the authority of Revelation, this one great flaw must be deemed fatal to true manhood. Our own popular language assumes the truth of such a judgment. We hear persons saying, "So-and-so is in many respects attractive: one cannot help liking him, one must needs appreciate his good points: but he is not steady, he has no fixedness of purpose, he is this or that as the mood takes him, as A or B has the last word with him: what is best in him depends on impulse rather than on principle." Lives are oftener shipwrecked by mere facility of acquiescence in evil than by a deliberate high-handed choice of it. In a famous story, the so-called hero, whose name is meant to suggest a wavering character, exclaims in sad self-reproach, "O, indolence and indecision of mind if not in yourselves vices, to how much exquisite misery do you frequently prepare the way!" But are they not vices when a moral issue is at stake? What do we think of the king of Judah who did well enough while carefully tutored by the priest who had crowned him in his childhood,

3 Hos. vi. 4.