but in their case it will be by "the law of liberty," the law of the Gospel, the law which, while it is not lowered one iota in its holy, just, and good demands, is now vitally bound up with the facts and the promises which are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, and from which the curse is taken away in Him. In the case of the impenitent unbeliever, at the great day, it will be seen that he has not obeyed, that he has broken the law. The law will then take its full penalty; the curse threatened will be the curse fulfilled. In the case of the pardoned believers, at that day, it will be seen from their works and from their character, from the results that have been wrought in them, the love and the purity and the holiness, that they did accept the pardon of the Lord, and that they welcomed His holy and pure, His sanctifying and purifying Spirit; and judged by this "law of liberty," righteously and openly, he will be not condemned but acquitted, declared to be, what by the grace of God he is, a pardoned and a purified soul. At the judgment seat it will be made to appear how terribly true on the one, "the wages of sin is death: how blessedly true on the other, "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." These are truths; truths that very nearly concern us. Is not this the voice of wisdom, "so speak ye and so do," according to them; to order our speech and to order our conduct with a view to, as it bears upon, the day of judgment: so to speak and so to do? For, and there is a dark back-ground, a dark possible other side, he shall have judgment without any merciful element in it, who showed judgment without any merciful element in it. It is an unmerciful thing, there is no pity or tenderness in it, there is nothing like Christ in it, to disparage the poor, to treat them without respect, to despise them, and he who does this, who does it consciously and deliberately, who makes manifest thereby that the love of the Gospel has no hold upon his affections or his conscience, this man shall be made manifest as an example of the great righteous law of retribution which runs through the universe; he shall be judged without mercy who showed no mercy. "O, thou wicked servant, I had compassion," &c. "If ye forgive not neither," &c. learned from One. If a But there is another side, and the apostle gladly turns to it: "and mercy," he tells us, "rejoices against judgment;" that is to say, a man who is very merciful, whose whole life has been the manifestation of mercy, whose every deed has been done in the The Spirit of spirit of the Merciful One; this man is not afraid of Mercy judgment, he is not cast down in the prospect of it, the Merciful he rejoices against it, having the evidence within himself that it is the mercy of God in Jesus Christ that has enabled him to be merciful, assured that he shall stand in the judgment, not because he has been merciful, or on account of his deeds of mercy, but because through the mercy of Christ, which alone can give him standing there, he feels within himself the presence and the energy of the same spirit of mercy. man has felt the need of, and has experienced the power of, the mercy of God towards himself, he will necessarily show mercy to his fellow-men. This is one of the fruits of the Gospel; one of its sure results, and he may, and he ought to, comfort himself in it as a token that he will be on the side of the Merciful One in the judgment; in the strength of it he may rejoice over judgment. But if he is unmerciful to his fellow-men, if he is unmerciful in especial to the poor, if he tramples on the Royal Law and holds the faith of Christ in such unrighteousness, then he is not safe, and it is the most fatal delusion to think himself His conduct shows that he has no part or lot in the mercy of Christ, in His spirit, or in His power. He is exposed and he is justly exposed, to the rigour of the inexorable Law, all whose demands he must now answer for himself. He has refused mercy, and he has not exercised mercy; "he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy;" "and mercy rejoiceth over judgment." secure. The Gospel of this whole passage is, that there is no lowering, even by a hairs-breadth, of the law of God: it is holy, just, and good, and it remains ever above us with its holy, just, and good precepts, precepts which we are bound to obey in all their No Lowering length, and breadth, and depth, and height, precepts of the Law. which are inexorably just, inflexible, eternal as the heavens. Heaven and earth may pass away but the law of God cannot pass away, not even so much as one jot or tittle of it. There it stands, the Revelation and the Manifestation of the pure and holy Will of the pure and the holy God, who must deny Himself before He can deny, before He can lower or set aside, His Pure and Holy Law. Who would wish that He should, or who would wish for any other Gospel but this? God's Law is Holy, Just, and Good, and, whatever comes of me, that law must be maintained! It is the Gospel of the Scriptures; and it finds a response in every earnest man. There is nothing to be hoped for from the man whose principles are based in the lowering of the law; but there are boundless possibilities of upward progress before him to whom the Law of God is sacred, with whom Duty is a holy thing, and whose watchwords are,"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Observe, it is not enough to stop there, but it is essential to begin there; and he who has little or no veneration for the majesty, the stern inexorableness, the even-handed justice, and who does not stand in awe before the never-to-be-evaded retributions of Law, will never attain to the true sense and feeling of that great remedial scheme by which its Author and Finisher magnified the Law and made it honourable, upheld it in the face of the Universe; the just God, and yet the Justifier of him who shelters himself within the refuge of His grace. GLASGOW. PETER RUTHERFORD. "The human body might well be regarded as a mere simulacrum; but it envelopes our reality, it darkens our light, and broadens the shadow in which we live. The soul is the reality of our existence. Strictly speaking the human visage is a mask. The true man is that which exists under what is called man. If that being, which thus exists sheltered and secreted behind that illusion which we call the flesh, could be approached, more than one strange revelation would be made. The vulgar error is to mistake the outward husk for the living spirit."-VICTOR HUGO. S SEEDS OF SERMONS ON THE SECOND BOOK OF THE KINGS. A People's King and Priest, or Kinghood and Priesthood. IN THE SEVENTEENTH YEAR OF PEKAH," &c.—2 Kings xvi. THROUGHOUT all lands, almost throughout all times, two functionaries have been at the head of the peoples, treading them down by oppression, and fattening on them by their greed. These functionaries do not seem to have been of Divine ordination, for the Almighty is represented as saying, "They have set up kings, but not of Me, they have made princes, but I knew it not." Let us notice each functionary as presented in this chapter-the king and the priest the one named Ahaz, the other Urijah. I. THE KINGHOOD. It is said, "In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father." Here we learn that Ahaz was the son of Jotham, began to reign over Judah in his twentieth year, and that his reign continued for sixteen years. Elsewhere we are told that Hezekiah, his son, succeeded him at the age of twenty-five (See chap. xviii. 17). According to this he became a father when he was only eleven years of age. This we think is a mistake of the historian, although indeed it would seem among the Jews in Tiberias there are mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen. And in Abyssinia boys of ten years and twelve years enter into the marriage relationship (See Keil). The account given of Ahaz in this chapter furnishes us with an illustration of several enormous evils. First: The de-humanising force of false religion. Ahaz was an idolator. "He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel" we are told. Instead of worshipping the one true and living God, he bowed down before the idols of the kingdom. This false religion of his made him so inhuman that he "made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree." Moloch was this idol god of fire, and the Rabbins tell us "that it was made of brass, and placed on a brazen throne, and that the head was that of a calf, with a crown upon it. The throne and image were made hollow, and a furious fire was kindled within it. The flames penetrated into the body and limbs of the idol, and when the arms were red hot the victim was thrown into them, and was almost immediately burnt to death." The revolting cruelty of Moloch's worship is thus described by Milton: "In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Amon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill; and made The pleasant valley of Hinnom, And black Gehenna, call'd the type Thus the idolatrous religion of this Ahaz de-humanised him, by destroying within him all filial affection and transforming him into a fiend. This is true, more or less, of all false religions. Idolatry is not the only religion that makes men cruel. A corrupt Judaism, and a corrupt Christianity, generate in their votaries the same de-humanising results. False religion kindled in Paul the savage ferocity of a wild beast. "He breathed out slaughter." Ecclesiastical history abounds with illustrations. Secondly: The national curse of a corrupt kinghood. "Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At |