ness was disciplined and enriched by the most varied culture, and they bowed in adoration and tears at the foot of the cross, and felt that there alone they could leave their sins and sorrows. It will be in vain that you plead then the defectiveness of the light; it has been bright enough to enable millions to find their way to heaven, and it has lost none of its lustre with the flow of years. And if the light be sufficient, you will not surely allow that your natural powers of intelligence are defective. Were this the case your unbelief would be your misfortune, not your crime. These two things lie beyond question—that you have light enough, and that your faculty of understanding is vigorous enough for all the service which God requires at your hands. Why then do you not believe? Is it not that there is in your life something-I say not what, but something, or perhaps many things which plead for continuance, some lust which pleads for gratification, and which keeps Christ standing at the door? Is it not that the spirit of the world has taken possession of you, the thirst for wealth, for honour, for pleasure, and that you feel this to be incompatible with a life of true and earnest godliness? It is to this very thing the apostle refers in those startling words. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not lest the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ should shine into them. What say you? Will you submit to this blinding process? Or, will you cry to the Great Healer, and say to Him, "Lord, that I may receive my sight?" The vail, you will remember, cannot remain for ever. The hand of death will tear it away; but the light which then will fall upon your eyes will not be the light of salvation, but that which discovers to you, when too late, the blessedness which you have bartered for the pleasures of a day. Oh! how thin a partition separates this world from that to which we are going. A pulse stopped, a heart arrested, and the vain and bewildering enchantments of this life will drop from you, and

before you will stand, in full disclosure, the solid, abiding realities of eternity. May the Lord strip from you the vail of sin to-day that you may enjoy, even now, some faint glimpses of the glory yet to be revealed.

Halifax.

ENOCH MELLOR, M.A.

Homiletic Sketches on the Book of Psalms.

OUR PURPOSE.-Many learned and devout men have gone philologically through this TEHILIM, this book of Hebrew hymns, and have left us the rich results of their inquiries in volumes within the reach of every Biblical student. To do the mere verbal hermeneutics of this book, even as well as it has been done, would be to contribute nothing fresh in the way of evoking or enforcing its Divine ideas. A thorough HOMILETIC treatment it has never yet received, and to this work we here commit ourselves, determining to employ the best results of modern Biblical scholarship.

OUR METHOD.-Our plan of treatment will comprise four sections:-(1.) The HISTORY of the passage. Lyric poetry, which the book is, is a delineation of living character, and the key, therefore, to unlock the meaning and reach the spirit of the words, is a knowledge of the men and circumstances that the poet sketches with his lyric pencil.(2.) ANNOTATIONS of the passage. This will include short explanatory notes on any ambiguous word, phrase, or allusion that may occur.-(3.) The ARGUMENT of the passage. A knowledge of the main drift of an author is amongst the most essential conditions for interpreting his meaning.-(4.) The HOMILETICS of the passage. This is our main work. We shall endeavour so to group the Divine ideas that have been legitimately educed, as to suggest such thoughts, and indicate such sermonizing methods, as may promote the proficiency of modern pulpit ministrations.

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Subject: PICTURE OF SUFFERING SAINTHOOD.

(Continued from p. 76.)

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Why art thou so far from helping me," &c.-Psa. xxii.

AVING already offered historical and exegetical remarks on this Psalm, we have now, according to our promise, to gather up and arrange its Homiletic suggestions. In order to economize space, we must omit the printing of the entire text, and request our readers to keep the Psalm open before them while they study our observations. We shall endeavour to bring the whole of these thirty-one verses under two general heads.

I. The PRAYER of the righteous under great suffering. Whether the Psalm represents the experience of the pious writer himself, or all the righteous of the nation collectively, or Him who was pre-eminently the "Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," may be a matter for debate; but one thing is clear, that the sufferings of the good are the grand subject. It gives us humanity, consciously righteous, praying under overwhelming suffering. We have here to notice

First: The sufferings. In analyzing these sufferings we find them to be of two kinds, spiritual and social. (1.) Spiritual. Here is a consciousness of two most distressing things. (a) Here is a feeling of God's desertion. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?" "Our Lord appropriated these words to Himself when on the Cross (see Matt. xxvii. 46), substituting for the Hebrew verb the corresponding word in the Aramæan dialect then in use among the Jews." The language as used by Christ, must be taken in one of two senses. Either as expressing a fact or a feeling;—a fact in relation to God, or a feeling in relation to our Lord. In other words, it must be considered either that God had actually deserted Him, or that Christ merely had the feeling that He had done so. Which is the more probable? I accept the latter, and elsewhere I have endeavoured to vindicate the point. * There is perhaps no feeling in the universe more distressing than the feeling of Divine desertion, this is hell. God disregarded his prayer. daytime, but Thou hearest not." unanswered, though it had been and in "the night season;" and addressed to Him in whom "His fathers had trusted," and who had "delivered them." What greater distress can there be than the feeling that all our cries to God are unanswered? Here then is suffering, of the most poignant and terrible description. Let the soul feel that it has lost God, that He has withdrawn from it, and disregards for ever its cries, and can it have a deeper and a darker hell? Saul at Endor is an example. The sufferings were (2) Social. (a) The sufferer was the victim of social con

(b) Here is a feeling that "O my God, I cry in the He felt that his prayer was incessant in the "daytime"

See "Genius of the Gospel," r. 708.

tempt. "I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head." There is he contemptuous laugh. The sneering, jeering grin. The contemptuous look. "They shoot out the lip." They made grimaces in order to express derision. There is the contemptuous nod. "They shake the head." All this describes almost to the letter what Christ had to endure from His enemies

when suspended on the Cross. "And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save Thyself. If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross, &c. The contemptuous language, "He trusted to the Lord that He would deliver Him." Social contempt is an element of severe affliction to all endowed with social love. To feel cast off by society is next in distress to the feeling of being cast off by God Himself. The sufferer was the victim of social cruelty. The savage cruelty of His enemies is graphically depicted in verses 12 to 18. "Many bulls have compassed me," &c., &c. They were as savage as bulls, "ravening" lions, and ferocious dogs. "They pierced His hands," "they parted His garments," they "cast lots for His vesture." The effect of all this cruelty upon Him was (1) Physical exhaustion. "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like potsherd and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws : and Thou hast brought me into the dust of death." His strength was gone, his faculties were prostrate, the tide of life had almost ebbed its last drop away. (2.) Skeletonic appearance. "I may tell all my bones; they look and stare upon me." He was all but dead. A ghastly, feebly-breathing corpse. Such is the suffering here depicted,-spiritual and social. Sufferings more agonizing, more overwhelming, can scarcely be imagined; and all endured by a nature that felt itself to be righteous. The sufferer might well exclaim, "All ye that pass by, behold, and see if there be any sorrows like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger." (Lamentations i. 12.) Whether Christ is the sufferer here depicted or not, one thing is obvious, that no

man or body of men ever appeared in history to whom the language so fully and faithfully applies. Martyrs have suffered, but on the rack and in the flames they have felt God to be with them. Amidst social contempt and cruelty they have felt conscious of the Divine Presence. We have next to notice

Secondly: The Supplications. In examining the supplicatory part of this Psalm, there are three subjects worthy of notice. (1.) The character in which God is addressed. He is addressed (a) In His absolute character. "Thou art holy.” The sup

my

pliant, amidst all his wretchedness, holds on to the conviction that God is holy. God's holiness is perfect, underived, the immutable standard and universal fountain of all virtue. He is "Light." Hell feels and acknowledges this. (b) In His relative character. (1.) The God of his fathers. He regarded him as the God who "inhabited the praises of Israel," as the God in whom "his fathers trusted," to whom they cried in their distress, and were delivered (verses 3 to 5). (2.) The God of his earliest life. "But Thou art He that took me out of the womb: Thou didst make me hope when I was upon mother's breasts. I was cast upon Thee from the womb: Thou art my God from my mother's belly." This means, I Owe my life to Thee, Thou broughtest me into the world, guarded me in infancy, and caused me to trust in Thee from my earliest years. "Thou art my God from my mother's belly." And in the first verse he exclaims, "My God, my God." Though the sufferer felt that God had deserted him, he still held on his claim to Him as his God. His sufferings consumed not his faith: though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (2.) The object for which He is addressed. He prays for two things. (a) The approach of God towards him. "Be not Thou far from me." This is repeated in the 11th and 19th verses. He implores the Almighty to cross the awful chasm and draw near to him. God's presence is the great want of the soul. In it there is "fullness of joy;" nowhere else. (b) His deliverance from suffering and death. "Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling from the power of the dog." A man's life is his "darling" treasure. "Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give in exchange for his life." God alone can preserve life, and redeem it from the power of its enemies and the source of its sorrows. (3.)

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