eyes. THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN. speaks. There are blind people that have "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." So there is such a thing as heart blindness, as well as blindness of the bodily eye. Unconverted men often say, "If these things are so, if they are so clear and great, why can not we see them?" And there is no answer to be given but this, Ye are blind. "But we want to see them. If they are real, they are our concern as well as yours. Oh that some preacher would come who had power to make us see them!" Poor souls, there is no such preacher, and you need not wait for him. Let him gather God's light as he will, he can but pour it on blind eyes. A burning-glass will condense sunbeams into a focus of brightness; and if a blind eye be put there, not a whit will it see, though it be consumed. Light is the remedy for darkness, not blindness. Neither will strong powers of understanding on your part serve. The great Earl of Chatham once went with a pious friend to hear Mr Cecil. The sermon was on the Spirit's agency in the hearts of believers. As they were coming from church, the mighty statesman confessed that he could not understand it at all, and asked his friend if he supposed that any one in the house could? "Why yes," said he, "there were many plain, unlettered women and some children there who understood every word of it, and heard it with joy." Ah, hapless souls, ye complain against the gospel, that it is hidden from you, as if that were its fault. And now I must bring forth a dreadful scripture which will open the mystery of your inability to understand it. Oh, it is a fearful word, which ought to make your ears tingle and your heart freeze with terror as you hear it! "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." The gospel is real and glorious, and is all the while shining on in its own divine splendour; but you are blind. Satan, the old liar and murderer, has blinded you lest you should see this blessed gospel and be saved. And you are lost, lost already. There your dreadful condition, and therefore you cannot see the gospel! is 123 you as star-gazers, would the midnight heavens be less glorious to you? When these men had thus satisfactorily demonstrated their blindness, would not the mighty works of God still prove their bright reality to your rejoicing vision? Would they not still declare His glory and shew His handywork? And shall the spiritually blind be more trusted? Shall they be spiritual guides? No, the weakest believer who has seen that the Lord is gracious, seen any preciousness in the promises, any beauty in Christ, any glory in the Scriptures, may cling to his faith, despite the testimony and pretentious sophistries and wit of ten thousand infidels. God has opened your eyes. Satan has blinded theirs. Your testimony is positive. Theirs is negative, and necessarily worthless. A lawyer told his client that two men would swear that they had seen him commit the murder. "Ah, but," said he, "I can bring fifty men who will swear that they didn't see me commit it!" And that poor villain, guilty, but merry with his own stupid conceit, is a fair type of infidelity. It can bring men, in great numbers, it must be owned, who will swear right lustily, and with no little cursing, that they never saw any beauty or glory in Christ or His gospel. And when they have wrapped this, their whole testimony, in the mists of an unintelligible philosophy, and played off the machinery of an historical criticism, which can prove with equal ease, and by the same process, that neither Jesus nor Bonaparte ever lived, so that man has had no Redemption and the French no Revolution, and have then joined in a loud laugh at the deluded "saints" who still prefer Paul to Mr Hume, John to Mr Newman, and Jesus Christ to Dr Strauss, then infidelity has but one thing more which it can do-change its voice, put on a new disguise, and begin again. If these men be followed, they will be found to be blind leaders of the blind, and both will fall into the ditch. (To be continued.) THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN, AS PORTRAYING CHRIST HIMSELF. BEAUTIFUL as is this parable when taken simply according to the letter, and full of incentives to active mercy and love, bidding us Let the people of God no more wonder then to "put on bowels of mercies," to be kind and at the clamours of infidels against the Scrip- tender-hearted, yet how much lovelier still, tures. Would you heed a blind man criticis-provoking how much more strongly still to ing pictures, or raving against your summer skies? If he denies that the sun has brightness, or the mountains grandeur, will you believe him? And if a hundred blind men should all declare that they cannot see the stars, and argue learnedly that there can be no stars, and then grow witty and laugh at fove and good works, when, with most of the Fathers of the Church, with many too of the Reformers, we trace in it a deeper meaning still, and see the work of Christ, of the merciful Son of man Himself, portrayed to us here. It has been objected to this interpretation, but unjustly, that it makes the parable to be by a heavenly breath might again be fanned into flame; no truth which, though detained in unrighteousness, might yet be delivered and extricated from it. When the angels fell, as it was by a free self-determining act of their own will, with no solicitation from without, from that moment they were not as one "half, dead," but altogether so, and no redemption was possible for them. But man is "halfdead;" he has still a conscience witnessing for God: evil is not his good, however little he may be able to resist its temptations; he has still the sense that he has lost something, and at times a longing for the restoration of the lost. His case is desperate as concerns himself and his own power to restore himself, but not desperate, if taken in hand by an almighty and all-merciful Physician. nothing to the matter immediately in hand. For what is that matter? To magnify the law of love, to shew who fulfils it, and who not. Inasmuch then as Christ Himself, He who accounted Himself every man's brother, in its largest extent fulfilled it, shewed how we ought to love and whom; and inasmuch as it is His example, or rather faith in His love towards us, which is alone really effectual in causing us to "love one another with a pure heart fervently," He might well propose Himself and His act in succouring the perishing humanity, as the everlasting pattern of selfdenying and self-forgetting love, and bring it out in strongest contrast with the selfish carelessness and neglect of the present leaders of the theocracy. They had not strengthened the diseased, nor healed the sick, nor bound up the broken, nor sought that which was driven away (see Ezek. xxxiv. 4), while He had bound up the broken-hearted (Isa. lxi. 1), and poured the balm of sweetest consolation into all wounded spirits. Moreover, even the adversaries of this interpretation must themselves acknowledge the facility with which all the circumstances of the parable yield themselves to it; and it certainly affords a strong presumption that a key we have in our hand is the right one when it thus turns in the lock without forcing, when it adapts itself at once to all the wards of the lock, however many and complex. Of course, this deeper interpretation was reserved for the future edification of the Church. The lawyer naturally took, and was meant to take, the meaning which lay upon the surface; nor will the parable lose its value to us, as shewing forth" purge the conscience." The law, whether the pity and love of man to his fellow, because it also shadows forth the crowning act of mercy and love shewn by the Son of man to the entire race. And who else but such a Divine Physician shall give him back what he has lost, shall heal and bind up the bleeding hurts of his soul? Can the law do it? The apostle answers, it could not; "If there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law" (Gal. iii. 21). The law was like Elisha's staff, which might be laid on the face of the dead child, but life did not return to it the more (2 Kings iv. 21); Elisha himself must come ere the child revive. Or as Theophylact here expresses it: "The law came and stood over him where he lay, but then, overcome by the greatness of his wounds, and unable to heal them, departed." Nor could the sacrifices do better; they could not "make the comers thereunto perfect," nor "take away sins,” nor natural or revealed, could not quicken, neither could the sacrifices truly abolish guilt and reconcile us unto God. The priest and the Levite were alike powerless to help: so that, If then we regard it as so doing, the traveller in the eloquent words of a scholar of St will be the personified human nature, or Adam Bernard's, "Many passed us by, and there as he is the representative and head of the was none to save. That great patriarch, race. He has left Jerusalem, the heavenly Abraham, passed us by, for he justified not city, the city of the vision of peace, and is others, but was himself justified in the faith travelling toward Jericho, he is going down of one to come. Moses passed us by, for he toward it, the profane city, the city which was was not the giver of grace, but of the law, and under a curse (Josh. vi. 26, 1 Kings xvi. 34). of that law which leads none to perfection: But no sooner had he forsaken the holy city for righteousness is not by the law. Aaron and the presence of his God, and turned his passed us by, the priest passed us by, and by desires toward the world, than he falls under those sacrifices which he continually offered, the power of him who is at once a robber and was unable to purge the conscience from dead a murderer (John viii. 44), and by him and his works to serve the living God. Patriarch and evil angels is stripped of the robe of his ori- prophet and priest passed us by, helpless both ginal righteousness; nor this only, but griev-in will and deed, for they themselves also lay ously wounded, left full of wounds and almost mortal strokes, every sin a gash from which the life-blood of his soul is copiously flowing. Yet is he at the same time not altogether dead; for as all the cares of the good Samaritan would have been expended in vain upon the poor traveller, had the spark of life been wholly extinct, so a recovery for man would have been impossible, if there had been nothing to recover, no spark of divine life, which wounded in that wounded man. Only that true Samaritan beholding was moved with compassion, as He is all compassion, and poured oil into the wounds, that is, Himself into the hearts, purifying all hearts by faith. Therefore the faith of the Church passes by all, till it reaches Him who alone would not pass it by" (Rom. viii. 3). If it was absolutely needful to give a precise meaning to the oil and the wine, we might SCRIPTURE EXPOSITOR. say with Chrysostom, that the wine is the blood of Passion, the oil the anointing of the Holy Spirit. On the binding up of the wounds one might observe that the sacraments are often spoken of in the language of the early Church as the ligaments for the wounds of the soul. It is, moreover, a common image in the Old Testament for the healing of all spiritual hurts. When we find the Samaritan setting the wounded man on his own beast, and therefore of necessity himself pacing on foot by his side, we can scarcely help drawing a comparison with Him who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich-the Son of man who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister-" who His own self bare our sins in His own body." Neither is it farfetched to see in the inn the figure of the Church, the place of spiritual refection, in which the healing of souls is ever going forward-by some called on this last account an hospital-whither the merciful Son of man brings all those whom He has rescued from the hand of Satan, and in which He cares for them evermore. In harmony with this we find Christ's work continually set forth in Scripture as a work of healing; for instance, Mal. iv. 2; Hos. xiv. 4; Ps. ciii. 3; Matt. xiii. 15; Rev. xxii. 2; and typically, Numb. xxi. 9. And if, like the Samaritan who was obliged on the morrow to take his departure, He is not always in body present with those whose cure He has begun, if for other reasons it is expedient even for them that He should go away, yet He makes for them a rich provision of grace during His absence, and till the time of His coming again. It would be entering into curious minutia, which rather tend to bring discredit on this scheme of interpretation, to affirm decidedly of the two pence, that they mean either the two sacraments, or the two testaments, or the word and the sacraments, or unreservedly to accede to any other of the ingenious explanations which have been offered for them. It is sufficient that they signify all gifts and graces, sacraments, powers of healing, of remission of sins, or other powers which Christ has left with His Church to enable it to keep house for Him till His return. As the Samaritan took out two pence and gave them to the host, and said, "Take care of him;" even so the Lord Jesus said unto Peter, and in him, to all his fellow-apostles, having first promised unto them heavenly gifts, and richly furnished them for their work, "Feed my sheep," ""Feed my lambs." To them, and in them to all that succeed them, He has committed an economy of the truth, that as stewards of the mysteries of God, they may dispense those mysteries as shall seem best for the health and salvation of His people. And as it was said to the host, "Whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee;" so the Lord has promised that no labour shall be in vain in Him, that He 125 will count what is done to the least of His brethren as done unto Him, that they who "feed the flock of God," "not by constraint but willingly, nor for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind," they, "when the chief Shepherd shall appear," "shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away" (1 Pet. v. 2).-Trench. SCRIPTURE EXPOSITOR. "Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with THIS passage will receive some illustration from Bruce's remarks in his travels to discover the source of the Nile; where, speaking of the head-dress of the governors of the province of Abyssinia, he represents it as consisting of a large broad fillet, bound upon their forehead, and tied behind their head. In the middle of this was a horn, or a conical piece of silver gilt, about four inches long, and in the shape of our common candle-extinguishers. This is called kirn, or horn, and is only worn at reviews, or on parades, after victory. The crooked manner in which they hold their neck, when this ornament is on the forehead, for fear it should fall forward, seems to agree with what the Psalmist calls "speaking with a stiff neck;" for it perfectly shews the meaning of speaking with a stiff neck, when you "hold the horn on high," or erect, like the horn of a unicorn.-Burder. "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."-JOHN Xvii. 5. GOD is said to glorify any person, when He gives him glorious qualities and powers; or by revealing and manifesting those glorious qualities which he hath; or when he doth receive him and treat him agreeable to his glory. The meaning of Christ's prayer, then, must be of one or the other of all these senses. When He prays that the Father would glorify Him with that glory that He had with Him before the world was, if it be taken in the first sense, He desires that God would bestow upon Him as Mediator, or God incarnate, a glory suitable to that glory He had with Him from all eternity. If in the second sense, He desires His glory may be revealed, or become conspicuous in His human nature. If in the third, that God would receive Him honourably and agreeably; which sense is the chiefest, for it containeth the other two. ing, then, in short is, that He might be received to the full enjoyment of that glory which He had before the world was.-Manton. The mean "And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?"-1 PETER iii. 13. THE word translated followers in this text should read imitators; and so, whereas following is either of a pattern or an end, the former must be meant here, by the natural importance of that word; and hence, by that which is good, is not to be understood created goodness. The words are capable of being read, Him that is good, or, which is all one, the good. And so it is the increate good, the blessed God himself, formally considered under the notion of good. The plain sense of this scripture is, that nothing can harm you if you be like God.-Howe. "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them."-DANIEL ii. 35. THIS is an allusion to the ancient method of threshing out the corn. Corn, at the time that the above prophecy was written, was not threshed out in a barn, as is the custom among the moderns, but upon an area, or threshing-floor. This area, or threshing-floor, was made in some open place, generally near the house, where the wind had free access to it upon all sides, and upon the summit of some high spot of ground. It was of a circular form, raised in the middle, and sometimes paved with flints, but more usually laid with clay, consolidated with great care, like the groundfloors which are to be seen in many parts of the country, and smoothed by a heavy roller. The corn was beaten out by the hoofs of cattle, or the trampling of horses driven over it, which was the general custom; though sometimes done by flails, or by a sort of carriage, without wheels, dragged over it, or by a board or beam, set with stones or pieces of iron, with a great weight laid upon it, and drawn by yoked cattle. It was then winnowed and cleaned from the chaff by a kind of shovel, which threw it across the wind, by which means the chaff was carried quite away: and so it was, says the prophet, that the four great monarchies should be swept before the kingdom of Christ; and so it is that all its enemies and opposers shall be scattered and for ever lost.-M.M.E. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge." -PSALM XIX. 1, 2. The heavens declare that glory which is above all expression, and beyond all apprehension. God speaks to the inhabitants of the earth by the heavenly bodies. Though nations understand not one another's language, yet all nations understand this language that God speaks to them by the works of His hands. These all shine out gloriously, they move orderly, and continue to all generations. They are as glorious now as they were the first moment that they were made, and came out of the hand of God. This is that which the Lord hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven (Deut. iv. 19); namely, the sun, moon, and stars; not that men should worship them, but admire and praise the God that made them: and if the pavement of heaven be so glorious, oh what then is that glory which is within! Of all ingredients, light is the most excellent. This is that which makes one star differ from another in glory. "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all."-Dyer's Mount Sion. A JEWISH APOLOGUE. As Abra'am sat in his tent-door, And free his own great, gushing heart; A weary tottering man drew nigh, And Abra'am kindly help'd him in, And spread his couch and wash'd his feet; Allay'd the painful, pressing din, And set before him fruit and meat. But when the guest forbore to pray, Before whom only he would kneel; A noble anger swell'd his breast; Out in the night mid snares and foes, He strove to thrust his helpless guest. Then the Lord's voice fill'd all the tent: "O Abra'am! Abra'am ! have I borne This man an hundred years, and sent Him food and raiment spite his scorn; And canst thou not bear him one night, When he so slightly troubles thee?" And Abra'am, humbled in the light, Embraced the stranger pleadingly! O spirits bound unto the vile, Think of the patience of the Lord, VII. 127 formity of the secret world of souls. Could a human being for a single week be invested with a mysterious power of seeing into the hearts of those around him, and detecting all the feelings and motives that are working beneath the breasts of his fellow-men, doubtless, even to man's imperfect moral sensibility, the disclosures thus made would be too horrible for endurance, and the fatal power of And know this, at thy returning thou wilt surely find the ing. THE DIVINE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. THE feelings of Jesus, I have said, in beholding and living amidst the moral ruin and degradation of mankind, were not those merely of an exquisitely pure and sensitive human spirit-they flowed from a far deeper and more awful source. It was not merely the gentle-hearted and pitying Man of Nazareth that trod our fallen world-it was nothing less than the world's great Creator that, concealed in that humble guise, surveyed and moved for thirty years amidst the ruins of His fairest, noblest work, lying wide-spread around Him! For though this, indeed, is a thought into which our imperfect minds can but faintly and inadequately enter, are we not borne out by Scripture authority in the affirmation, that grief for the moral ruin of humanity is an emotion to which the Divine mind is not a stranger? You all remember that remarkable passage in the Book of Genesis, in which the mind of God is represented as filled with sorrow and indignation at the sad issue of His great creating work-"When God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that the imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, it repented God that He had made man upon the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." "When Jesus was come near the city," it is written, "He wept over it." On the authority of the Word of God, then, as well as from the reason of the thing, we hazard the assertion that one awful ingredient in the sufferings of that mysterious Mourner must have been grief for the desolation of His grandest work-the anguish of spirit with which for thirty years He beheld everywhere confronting Him the proof that the soul of man was a ruin. When Jesus walked our world, His eye, we may well believe, was not arrested by the bustle and importance of its outward scenes and interests. From all mere external things His observation was ever diverted to what from all other eyes was hidden, the awful mystery and moral de that which would be intolerable even to a fallen and imperfect being, was a spectacle from which the eye of the pure and holy Jesus could never for a moment escape. All hearts were unveiled to Him. He surveyed not merely the forms and countenances of human beings; a thousand indications tell us that He "knew what was in man"-that He read their souls. And everywhere as He looked, He saw that soul, that had sprung a pure, holy, happy thing from His hands, now filled with selfishness and pride, and envy and impurity, and all ungodliness-that soul that had been destined for the companionship of God and angels, now ripening for the blackness of darkness for ever! And can we doubt that His was an anguish at the sight into which no finite mind can enter? He could feel for external sufferings: He looked up to heaven and sighed for the deaf; He wept and groaned in spirit for the dead. But what were external suffering and death to this? To Him the world was strewn with a more awful than material desolation-with the wreck of spiritual grandeur, the memorials of lost and ruined souls: "O my Father!" we almost hear Him exclaim, "is this the world over which the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ?"— Rev. John Caird. THE BRUISED REED AND SMOKING FLAX. I WANT to say one or two things to LittleFaiths this morning. Those saints of God who are called bruised reeds and smoking flax are just as safe as those who are mighty for their Master, and great in strength, for several reasons. First of all: The little saint is just as much God's elect as the great saint. When God chose His people, He chose them all at once, and altogether; and He elected one just as much as the other. If I choose a certain number of things, one may be less than the rest, but one is as much chosen as the other; and so Mr Fearing and Miss Despondency are just as much elected as Great-Heart, or Old Father Honest. Again: The little ones are redeemed equally with the great ones! the feeble saints cost Christ as much suffering as the strong ones; the tiniest child of God could not have been purchased with less than Jesus' precious blood; and the greatest child of God did not cost Him more. Paul did not cost any more than Benjamin-I am sure he did not-for I read in the Bible that "there is no difference." Besides, when of old they came to pay their |