sublimest power is often simple patience; and for just that reason we need sometimes to see its greatness alone, that we may embrace the solitary, single idea of such greatness, and bring it into our hearts unconfused with all other kinds of power. Whoever gives to the Church of God such a contribution—the invalid, the cripple, the neglected and forlorn woman, -every such person yields a testimony for the cross that is second in value to no other.

Let this be remembered, and let it be your joy, in every trial, and grief, and pain, and wrong you suffer, that to suffer well is to be a true advocate, and apostle, and pillar of the faith

"They also serve who only stand and wait.”

And here, let me add, is pre-eminently the office and power of woman. Her power is to be the power most especially of gentleness and patient endurance. An office so divine let her joyfully accept and faithfully bear-adding sweetness to life in all its exasperating and bitter experiences, causing poverty to smile, cheering the hard lot of adversity, teaching pain the way of peace, abating hostilities and disarming injuries by the patience of her love. All the manifold conditions of human suffering and sorrow are so many occasions given to woman to prove the sublimity of true submission and reveal the celestial power of passive goodness.

Finally, there is reason to suspect that men not religious are commonly averted from the Christian life, more by their dislike of the submissive and gentle virtues, than by any distaste of sacrifice and active duty. They could enter as companions into His kingdom, if only they could be excused from the patience. Their life of sin is a life of will or self-will, therefore a life centred in themselves. They have undertaken to hew their own way; therefore to thrust, and push, and fret themselves against obstructions, and resent oppositions, to envy, and hate, and revenge themselves on enemies, is the luxury, in great part, of their sin. They can admire and praise benevolence, truth, disinterestedness of conduct, but to bear evil, and love enemies, and be patient-that is wholly distant from the temper they are in. They are not without admiration for these gentle kinds of excellence when displayed by God himself; they will even be affected by what they perceive to be the sublimity of

His greatness in them; but they cannot think of such in themselves without distaste or a feeling of disesteem. There is a want of spirit, something tame and weak in such ways, something too hard upon human pride to be endurable.

And yet how plain it is, my friends, that for the want of just these passive virtues your character is all disorder and confusion. There can be nothing, as you have seen, of the highest, truest greatness in you without the virtues of patience; you are not called to descend to these, but, if possible, to ascend. Christ commands you to take up His cross and follow Him, not that He may humble you, or lay some penance upon you, but that you may surrender the low self-will and the feeble pride of your sin, and ascend into the sublime patience of heavenly charity. You begin to reign the moment you begin to suffer well. You are only degraded when you suffer and groan, writhing under pains God lays upon you, in the manner of a slave. Renounce what is real degradation, and the pride that now detains you will not be left. Choose what will most exalt you, and these gentle virtues of the cross will be accepted first. And then it will not be left us to exhort you; for you will even claim it as your joy to be brother and companion in the kingdom and patience of Jesus.

U

XXL

SPIRITUAL DISLODGMENTS.

JEREMIAH xlviii. 11-" Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed.”

THERE is a reference here, it will be seen, to wine, or to the process by which it is prepared and finished. It is first expressed from the grape when it is a thick, discoloured fluid or juice. It is then fermented, passing through a process that separates the impurities, and settles them as lees at the bottom. Standing thus upon its lees or dregs, in some large tun or vat, it is not further improved. A gross and coarse flavour remains, and the scent of the feculent matter stays by and becomes fastened, as it were, in the body of the wine itself. To separate this, and so to soften or refine the quality, it is, now decanted or drawn off into separate jars or skins. After a while it is done again, and then again; and so, being emptied from vessel to vessel, the last remains of the lees or sediment are finally cleared, the crude flavours are reduced, the scent itself is refined by ventilation, and the perfect character is finished.

So it has not been, the prophet says, with Moab. He hath been at ease from the first, shaken by no great overturnings or defeats, humbled and broken by no captivities, ventilated by no surprising changes or adversities. He has lived on, from age to age, in comparative security, settled on his lees: and therefore he has made no improvement. What he was, he still is; his taste remains in him, and the scent of his old idolatries and barbarities of custom is not changed. Accordingly, the prophet goes on to declare, in the verses that follow, that God will now deal with him in a manner better adapted to his want; that He will cause him to wander, empty his vessels, break his bottles, give him all the agitation he needs, and so will make him to be

ashamed of the idolatries of Chemosh, even as Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence.

There has all along been a kind of mental reference, It will be seen, in his language, to the singular contrast between Moab and Israel, which here in these last words comes out. Israel, the covenanted people, have had no such easy and quiet sort of history. They have been wanderers, in a sense, all the while; shaken loose or unsettled every few years by some great change or adversity—by a state of slavery in Egypt, by a fifty years' roving and fighting in the wilderness, by a time of dreadful anarchy under the judges, by overthrows and judgments under the kings, by a revolt and separation of the kingdom, then by a captivity, then by another; and so, while Moab, heaved and loosened by no such changes, has retained the scent of its old customs and abominations, Israel has become quite another people. The calves of Bethel were long ago renounced; the low superstitions, the coarse and sensual habit, all the idolatrous fashions and affinities which corrupted their religion have been gradually fined away.

Similar contrasts might be instanced among the states and nations of our own time; in China, for example, and England; one standing motionless for long ages, and becoming an effete civilisation, absolutely hopeless as regards the promise of a regenerated future; the other emptied from vessel to vessel, four times conquered, three times deluged with civil war, converted, reformed and reformed in religion, and finally emerging, after more than one change of dynasty, into a state of law, liberty, intelligence, and genuinely Christian manhood, to be one of the foremost and mightiest nations of the world.

But my object is personal, not political or social, and the principle that underlies the text is one that may be universalised in its applications. It is this:

That we require to be unsettled in life by many changes and interruptions of adversity, in order to be most effectually loosened from our own evils, and prepared to the will and work of God.

We need, in other words, to be shaken out of our places and plans, agitated, emptied from vessel to vessel, else the flavours of our grossness and impurity remain. We cannot be refined on our lees, or in any course of life that is uniformly prosperous

and secure. My object will be to exhibit this truth, and bring it into a just application to our own personal experience. Observe, then

1. How God manages, on a large scale, in the common matters of life, to keep us in a process of change, and prevent our lapsing into a state of security such as we desire. No sooner do we begin to settle, as we fancy, and become fixed, than some new turn arrives by which we are shaken loose and sorely tossed. When the prophet declares that He will overturn, overturn, overturn, he gives in that single word a general account of God's polity in all human affairs. The world is scarcely turned on its axle more certainly than it is overturned by the revolutions of Providence. It seems even to be a law, in every sort of business or trade, that nothing shall stand on its lees. Credit is a bubble bursting every hour at some gust of change. What we call securities are as well called insecurities. Titles themselves give way, and even real estate becomes unreal under our feet. Nor is it only we ourselves that unsettle the security of things. Nature herself conspires to loosen all our calculations, meeting us with her frosts, her blastings, her droughts, her storms, her fevers, and forbidding us ever to be sure of that for which we labour. Markets and market prices faithfully represent the unsteadiness of our objects. We look upon them as we might upon the sea, and it even makes one's head swim, only to note the fluctuations of all human goods and values represented there. Nothing in the world of business is allowed to have a base of calculable certainty. Unforeseen disasters wait on our plans, in so many forms and combinations, that we are sure of nothing, and commonly bring out nothing exactly as we expected to do.

The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand decanting process, where change follows change, and all are emptied from vessel to vessel. Here and there a man, like Moab, stands upon his lees, and commonly with the same effect. Fire, flood, famine, sickness in all forms and guises, wait upon us, seen or unseen, and we run the gauntlet through them, calling it life. And the design appears to be to turn us hither and thither, allowing us no chance to stagnate in any sort of benefit or security. Even the most successful, who seem, in one view, to go straight on to their mark, get on after all, rather by a dexterous and continual