can possibly be, and to have it a man needs a sound heart and a clear brain, to give him courage and spirit to walk straight along the path of duty, although he frankly confesses that he has not the slightest idea to what portion of the universe that path will eventually take him.

When, therefore, we hear any persons excusing themselves from joining the company of their brethren who meet together one day in seven for public worship, on the ground that the services are not of a kind to suit them, or that the preacher has nothing to tell them that they did not know before, may we not ask them to consider whether their minds are not running upon self-pleasing instead of the great central thought of our religion--even the loyalty of the heart to God and duty, and the dedication of ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice to God? To say we can do this just as well when we stay at home, is very much like saying that we can each get to heaven by a private ladder of our own; and a man might just as well call himself a patriotic Englishman when he will never stir from his own fireside to join with his neighbours in any object for the promotion of the common good. If God is the Father of all, all of us are brethren, though of different ages and at different stages of growth; and we may depend upon it, we are not going the right way to please Him, if we are always only bent upon seeking private interviews

with Him, and trying to gain some special blessing for ourselves, without reference to the common good, and without caring to encourage one another in a general feeling of loyalty to our heavenly King.

If the services of our Church, which have been in use for some three hundred years, require, in the opinion of many, some readaptation to the wants of the present generation, by all means let those who think so use whatever influence they possess to further the object they have in view; but let none of us forget that faithfulness to Christ means loyalty to duty, and not self-pleasing; and that a religion which causes a man to feel that he cannot join the company of his brethren in praying God to create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within him, unless everything about him is suited to his taste, is scarcely the religion of Him Who pleased not Himself, but left us an example that we should follow in His steps.

XXIII.

Chastening.

"My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons.”—HEB. Xii. 5-7.

THE first remark to be made on these words is, that they were originally written for the consolation of those Jewish Christians who, in the midst of persecution, were almost inclined to despair of the protection of the God in Whom they had been taught to trust, and to fear that what they had hitherto regarded as their highest aspirations had no more chance of fulfilment than an idle dream. There is something in the ancient Jewish habit of mind, with respect to the Almighty, which much reminds one of a spoilt and over-favoured child, who, for want of brothers and sisters to divert attention from himself, is overpowered by a sense of his own personality, and individual wants and feelings, and disposed to think that the first, if not the only, duty of his parents is

to attend to his slightest wish. Indeed, many of the Hebrew writers do not hesitate to personify their nation as the favourite child of Heaven-the son whom God had loved and called out of Egypt, the Israel or Prince who had power to prevail. And it really seems as if the intense individuality of the people, combined with their own deep yearning for the sympathy of a personal God in their national hopes and aspirations, became father to the thought that He in Whom they trusted could not disappoint the longings of His favourite child, and rob him of the glorious future on which his heart was fixed. Not otherwise have we seen some impulsive youth, who as yet has had but little experience of sorrow, and who appears to think that his own wishes and desires should be the measure of his prosperity, altogether astonished and perplexed when some crushing trial has come upon him, deeming it so cruel of God to afflict him, and impatiently asking why he should be deprived of that which he wants so much. He does not at present see that it in no way follows that God has forsaken him because he can no longer enjoy an immunity from sorrow, and that, like a judicious parent, God may suffer even His best beloved children to pass through the furnace of affliction in order to save them from a deterioration of character that would be far worse than any pain. Therefore, although really and truly God cannot be regarded as a respecter of persons, it may

very well happen that at different stages of their education His children may experience, in different degrees, a sense of His nearness and favour; and so the author of our Epistle takes the Jews, to whom he was writing, at their own estimate of their relation to God, and exhorts them in those ever-to-be-remembered words, "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him : for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons." The more, therefore, they regarded themselves as the favourite children of God, the more reason had they for believing that their Father would not see them spoiled, and that their business was bravely and faithfully to learn the lessons which He was teaching them by means of the pressure of sorrow.

The words of our text, then, were originally addressed to men whose instinctive tendency it was to trust in the sympathy of a personal God with His favoured people, whom they believed themselves to be, and who less needed exhortations to have confidence in the reality of His government than to modify their conceptions with respect to the consequences that should result to themselves. What they required to see was, that it did not at all follow, because they were right in having confidence in the sympathy of a personal God with the children whom He loved,