He saw that God was honoured by this state of "order and steadfastness in the faith." CONCLUSION: What a glorious state of manhood is revealed in these few words! How great a power has man naturally a power to live in two worlds at once, furnished with a system by which all the various grades, classes, races of the world, may be "knit together" in love and heart, endowed with a generosity enabling it to arrive at the highest happiness of others and the glory of God. What is man? Subject: THE INTERNAL WORKINGS OF GENUINE REPENT ANCE. "For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter."-2 COR. vii. 11. The Bible says a deal about repentance, its nature-Job xlii. 5; Psalm li.; Ezekiel xxxvi. 35; Matt. xxvi. 24; Luke xv. 35; xviii. 13; 2 Cor. vii. 9. About the necessity of repentance-Ezekiel xiv. 6; Matt. iii. 1; iv. 17; Luke xiii. 13; Acts iii. 19; Revelation ii. 5; etc., etc. The preceding verse has already engaged our attention, in which was contrasted godly and worldly sorrows contrasted as to their nature and results.* This verse leads us to consider the internal workings of genuine repentance, and several phenomena are specified here. "Behold I. SOLICITUDE. this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness " (σπουδήν). Men who have repented are no longer unconcerned about spiritual matters, but are cautious, careful, diligent. They do not walk as fools, but as wise men, "redeeming the time." The necessity of carefulness may be argued from three facts. First: The corrupting influences of social life. Secondly: The agency of tempting spirits. The great arch-tempter has millions of tempting spirits under his command. They all work insidiously, skilfully, persistently. Thirdly: The remaining depravity of our own nature. In the best of men in this life some elements of depravity remain more or less powerful. These are tinder for the devil's fire, a fulcrum for the devil's lever. Hence be careful. II. DEPRECATION. "What clearing of yourselves." The meaning is, how anxious to show your disapproval of the evil of which you have been guilty. Instead of covering it up you confess it, instead *See page 53. of excusing it, you denounce it. You deprecate your past life, as an outrage on morality, as an offence to Heaven. Thus genuine repentance ever works. The converted drunkard denounces drunkenness, the converted liar denounces falsehood, the converted debauchee denounces unchastity, the converted thief denounces dishonesty, etc. Thus the repentant sinner is anxious to clear himself of it. III. ANGER. "What indignation!" Against what? Against sin as sin, wrong as wrong. Repentance generates a deadly hatred to evil. This is a holy anger. We have little faith in the moral excellency of those who cannot go into flames of indignation whenever the wrong appears before them. There is a time to hate. There is no good man who is not a hater. "Rough Johnson the great moralist professed Right honestly he liked an honest hater." "Who is offended and I burn not," says Paul. The stronger a man's love for the right, the more tremendous his anger against the wrong. Strong love for the thing loved, necessitates strong hate for the thing hated. "Dante, who loved well because he hated, hated wickedness because he loved."-Browning. When a repentant sonl muses not only on the sins of others, but on his own past sins, the fires of indignation kindle into a blaze. The man who has not indignation for sin has never repented. "Do not I hate them, O God, that hate Thee, ?" IV. DREAD. "What fear!" Fear, not of suffering but of sin; not of God, but of the devil; not of losing property, health, or even life itself, but of losing any of the great elements of moral goodness. This fear is in truth the highest courage. The man who dreads the morally wrong is the true hero. In truth this fear is but a modification of love. It is love dreading to displease or injure in any way the object on which it has centered its affection. V. EARNESTNESS. "What vehement desire! "-what longing for a higher life! "What zeal!"-what intense desire to eschew the wrong and to pursue the right! "What revenge!" (ekdikesin)-exacting a punishment. What a craving to crush the wrong! All these expressions mean intense earnestness, and earnestness not about temporal matters, which is common and unvirtuous; but about spiritual matters, which is rare and praiseworthy. Genuine repentance is antagonistic to indifferentism; it generates earnestness in the soul; it leads to the most strenuous efforts, to the most vehement cries to Heaven. "We are living, we are dwelling "Worlds are changing, heaven beholding; Thou hast but an hour to fight; Love's pure banner, now unfolding On-right onward for the right. "From the crimes that men are crushing, Man's dire curse and slavery's To deliver him now rushing, "Fear not! spurn the worldling's laughter; Friendship's favour trample thou; Thou shalt find a long hereafter To be more than tempts thee now. "Oh, let all the soul within you For the truth's sake go abroad; Strike! let every nerve and sinew Tell on ages-tell for God.” over us through all the helplessness of infancy and childhood. To them we owe our progress-in physical strength and growth, in intellectual culture and power, in moral purity, goodness, and force. Without "lover and friend' we should be little more than seed without soil, without germination or development. To them we owe our pleasures. The interchange of thoughts and loves, the intermingling of heart and soul with them are amongst our highest enAh what joyments. me! would life be without "lover and friend"? It would be as bloomless and as shrivelled as plants without water; it would be utter desolation, an intolerable burden. are many ways by which we lose them. Sometimes by mutual misunderstandings. Certain things are said, certain deeds are done which are misinterpreted and misrepresented; thus the friendship is disturbed and broken up, and the "lover and the friend" are "put far away" in heart and sympathy. Sometimes by local changes. Our" lover and friend" are removed to scenes too distant for mutual visitation and intercourse, and the thoughts of each other die out and memory fades; thus they are lost. But there is one way in which it happens to all, and in which the separation is complete DEATH. Who that has reached maturity cannot adopt these words," Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me"? The older we become, the more extensive the loss, the more profoundly conscious is it felt. Even Byron, who was comparatively a young man, uttered the wail "I loved, but those I loved are gone; Had friends, my friends are fled. How cheerless feels the heart alone, When all its early hopes are dead." 'Southey, in advanced years, said, "There is now no human being left who can talk with me of old times, not one who nursed me in infancy, nor played with me in my father's house." “To a man,” says Dr. Johnson, "who has survived all the friends of his youth, all who have shared his pleasures and his cares, engaged in the same pursuits, and filled their minds with the same conceptions, this full peopled world is a dismal solitude." Ah, how utterly desolate one becomes as one grows old! Fénelon somewhere expressed a wish, that all who were friends should die together on the same day. What old man or woman cannot say with George Herbert : "What have I left, that I should stay and groan? The most of me to heaven is fled; PRAYER.-"In extemporary prayer what men most admire, God least regardeth namely, the volubility of the tongue. It is the heart keeping time and tone with the voice which God listeneth unto. Otherwise the humblest tongue tires and loudest voice grows dumb, before it comes half way up to heaven. Only the conformity of the words with the mind, mounted on heavenly thoughts, is acceptable to God."-FULLER. Seeds of Sermons from the Minor Prophets. If the Bible as a whole is inspired, it is of vast importance that all its Divine ideas should be brought to bear upon the living world of men. Though the pulpit is the organ Divinely intended for this work, it has been doing it hitherto in a miserably partial and restricted method. It selects isolated passages, and leaves whole chapters and books for the most part untouched. Its conduct to the Minor Prophets may be taken as a case in point. How seldom are they resorted to for texts ! and yet they abound with splendid passages throbbing with Divine ideas. It is our purpose to go through this section of the Holy Word; selecting, however, only such verses in each chapter and book as seem the most suggestive of truths of the most vital interest and universal application. Having passed rapidly through Hosea and Joel, two of the Minor Prophets, we come now to Amos. He, we are informed, was a native of Tekoa, a small region in the tribe of Judah, about twelve miles south-east of Jerusalem. Nothing is known of his parents. He evidently belonged to the humbler class of life, and purFrom his flock he was divinely sued the occupation of the humble shepherd. called to the high office of prophet; and though himself of the tribe of Judah, his mission was to Israel. He was sent to Bethel, into the kingdom of the ten tribes. He commenced his ministry in the reign of Uzziah, between 810 and 783 B.C., and therefore laboured about the same time as Hosea. In his time idolatry, with its concomitant evils and immoralities of every description, reigned with uncontrolled sway amongst the Israelites, and against these evils he hurls his denunciations. The book has been divided into three parts: "First, sentences pronounced against the Syrians, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Jews, and the Israelites, chapters i. and ii. Second, special discourses delivered against Israel, chapters iii. to vi. Third, visions, partly of a consolatory and partly of a comminatory nature, in which reference is had both to the times that were to pass over the ten tribes previous to the coming of the Messiah, and to what was to take place under His reign, chapters vii. to ix. His style is marked by perspicuity, elegance, energy, and fulness. His images are mostly original, and taken from the natural scenery with which he was familiar. No. XCIII. Subject: NATIONAL DEPRAVITY. "The Lord God hath sworn by Himself, saith the Lord the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces: therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein."-AMOS vi. 8. In order to show the voluptuous debauchees referred to in the preceding verses the terrible judgments that would overtake them, Jehovah is here represented as making a solemn oath. Whether the city here refers to Samaria or Jerusalem, or both, is of little moment. The subject is na tional depravity, and we infer from the words, I. That depravity may EXIST IN A NATION WHERE THERE IS |