or, of any man's ever having seen or heard anything so great, so solemn, so celestial on this side the gates of heaven."*

ANNOTATIONS.-Ver. 1.-" The earth is the Lord's." To Jehovah the earth belongs. “The object of the beginning of the Psalm is to show that the Jews had nothing in themselves that could entitle them to approach nearer or more familiarly to God than the Gentiles."-Calvin. "And the fulness thereof." All that it contains-minerals, vegetables, animals, intelligences. "The world and they that dwell therein." "The word translated world is a poetical equivalent to earth, denoting specially, according to its etymology, the productive portion of the earth, and thus corresponding indirectly to the Greek oìxovμévn, or inhabited earth."-Alexander.

Ver. 2.-" For he hath founded it upon the seas." To the Hebrew the earth was a plane, surrounded by the ocean stream. Water was everywhere beneath the earth, as rivers and springs showed. The mountains were the pillars that held it in its place. "And established it upon the floods." Holdeth it fast upon the floods. Why do not the waters that surge around it, swell within its bosom, and roll over its surface, engulph and destroy it? Here is the reason, "He it established upon the floods." He holds it fast; He gives it a firm anchorage amidst the surging waters. ARGUMENT.-The whole Psalm contains three subjects. (1.) God's mundane property and man's moral obligation. (2.) The soul's cry and the true response. (3.) Jehovah's demand and man's enquiry. But we can only in this article reflect upon the first which is contained in the first two verses.

HOMILETICS.-These two verses may be looked upon homiletically in two aspects, as presenting the mundane property of God and suggesting the moral obligation of man.

I. THE MUNDANE PROPERTY OF GOD.-The text leads us to consider two things concerning God's mundane possessions.

First: Their extent. (1.) "The earth." That is the whole terraqueous globe. All the acres are His, all the seas and rivers, all the mountains and valleys are His. (2.) "And the fulness thereof." The gold and the silver, the pearls and the diamonds, all the plants and the flowers and trees embedded in the soil, all the tribes of life that teem in the ocean, that crawl in the dust, that roam in the fields, that crowd the air-all are His. The fulness thereof. How full is the earth! the germs of numbered generations of plants, and animals, and men still slumber in its bosom.

* See "David, King of Israel," by Rev. W. Blackie. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

More will come of it than has yet appeared. (3.) "The world and they that dwell therein." Perhaps men are specially referred to here. All souls are His. The soul of the father and the son are His. These are large possessions, but what are they to His immeasurable estates. The Great Universe is His with its ten

thousand systems. The earth and its fulness to the whole creation are less than an atom to the Andes, less than a dewdrop to the ocean, "Behold the heaven, and the heaven of heavens is

the Lord's."

Secondly: Their foundation.—On what ground does He claim all that? Creatorship. He owns the globe because He made it. “He hath founded it upon the sea and established it upon the floods." The property which we regard ourselves as having the strongest claim to is the produce of our own skill and energy. That which would never have been had I not worked for, is mine in the highest sense in which a creature can hold property. But our productions are not creations. They are but combinations of elements and forces that exist independent of us. What God claims He has created. "All things were created by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made."

II. THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF MAN. God's mundane possessions powerfully urge on man several obligations.

First: It urges him to be just. "Will a man rob God?" Yet the men who use the earth and its productions and their own talents as if they were their own are in spirit robbing God. You have nothing that you can justly call your own. Even your existence belongs to another. Justice requires you practically to recognize that you are trustees, not owners.

They are only tenants at
Their lands were held

Secondly It urges him to be humble. What are the largest land-owners on the face of the earth to Him? In what sense are the acres they call their own theirs? will, liable to ejectment at any moment. by others only a few years ago, and they may pass into other hands on the morrow. "The earth is the Lord's," not theirs. And the more of it they have as their mere legal due the more humble they should be before God.

Thirdly It urges him to be thankful.

:

How thankful we

ought to be to the Great One that He has allowed us to make

use of His earth and its productions! It is His earth that has given us a tabernacle for our souls and that keeps that tabernacle in constant repair. It is He that has given us ourselves with all our capacities of improvement and pleasure. How thankful should we be. "Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless and praise His Holy Name."

Fourthly: It urges him to be acquiescent. Fall in with God's methods in disposing of His property. He has a right to do what He likes with His own. If He chose to shake the earth with thunder, to rive it with volcanoes, or to deluge it with oceans, who are we that we should complain? And if He should choose to strip us of our enjoyments, reduce us to suffering, and cut short our days, has He not a right to do so? The language of Job should be ours, "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord."

CONCLUSION.-Let the text be written on our hearts. It is engraved on the front of the Royal Exchange in London, but how few of the busy crowds that pass that edifice pause even to read it, and fewer still to ponder it in their hearts. The busy traders labour and accumulate as if the earth was theirs. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulnes thereof," therefore be just, be humble, be thankful, and be acquiescent.

THE PROBABLE END OF THE EARTH.

"Is it not probable, it may be asked, that the time will come when the globe itself will come to an end! And if it be so, conscience detect the provision that is possibly made for this consummation of all things? We have seen that the atmosphere has for long been undergoing a change; that at a very early period it was charged with carbonic acid, the carbon of which now forms part of animal and vegetable structures. We saw, also, that at first it contained no ammonia; but since vegetation and decomposition began, the nitrogen that existed in the nitrates of the earth, and some of the nitrogen of the atmosphere have been gradually entering into new combinations, and forming ammonia; and the quantity of ammonia, a substance at first non-existent, has gradually increased, and as it is volatile, the atmosphere now always contains some of it. The quantity has now become so great in it, that it can always be detected by chemical analysis. There is an evident tendency of it to increase in the atmosphere. Now supposing it to go on increasing up to a certain point, it forms with air a mixture that, upon the application of fire, is violently explosive. An atmosphere charged with ammonia is liable to explode whenever a flash of lightning passes through it. And such an explosion would doubtless destroy perhaps without leaving traces of the present order of things."-DR. LUIDLEY Kemp.

A Homiletic Glance at the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians.

The student is requested to keep in mind the following things, which will throw much light upon the Epistle. First: The circumstances of the writer when he wrote. He was a prisoner in Rome. During his residence there, in "his own hired house" (Acts xxviii. 30, 31), from the spring A.D. 61 to 63, he wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Philippians, Philemon, and to the Ephesians. It is generally supposed that this Epistle to the Ephesians was the first he wrote during his imprisonment. Secondly: The cir➡ cumstances of the persons addressed. They lived, it is thought, in Ephesus, an illustrious city in the district of Iona, nearly opposite the island of Samos, and about the middle of the western coast of the peninsula commonly called Asia Minor. It had attained in Paul's day such a distinction as in popular estimation to be identified with the whole of the Roman province of Asia. It was the centre of the worship of the great goddess Diana. Paul resided here on two different occasions. The first, A.D. 54, for a very short period (Acts xviii. 19-21); the second, for a period of more than two years. The persons therefore addressed in this letter are those whom he had converted from paganism, and in whom he felt all the interest of a spiritual father. Thirdly: The purpose of the letter. The aim of the Epistle seems to be to set forth the origin and development of the Church of Christ, and to impress those Ephesian Christians, who lived under the shadow of the great temple of Diana, with the unity and beauty of a temple transcendently more glorious. For the minute critical exegesis of this apostolic encyclical, we direct our readers to the commentaries of Alford, Webster and Wilkinson, Jowett, Harless, Stier, Eadie, Hodge, and last, though not least, Ellicott. Our aim will be to draw out, classify, and set in homiletic order, the Divine ideas reached by the critical aid of such distinguished scholars.

Subject: IDEAL MARRIAGE.

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies; he that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."-Ephes. v. 22-33.

ANNOTATIONS.-Ver. 22.-" Wives, submit yourselves." Ye wives unto your own husbands. "So the oldest MSS., and by the testimony of

Jerome, the Greek MSS. in his time. The other MSS. fill up in different ways; a sure sign that the shorter reading is the genuine one."-Alford. Submission, however, is implied, and is expressed in Verse 24. Submission is, indeed, the duty which the Apostle enjoins from verse 21st of this chapter to the 9th of the following one. The Apostle instances three classes of persons under subjection, and these in order of inferiority—wives, children, servants, and stating after each the duties of the classes to which they are respectively under subjection-husbands, fathers, masters; and the whole of the passage which we have selected for consideration refers to subjection in the first class; namely, of wives to their husbands. "Your own husbands,”—roîs idious ȧvdpáσw-in contradistinction to those of others. "As unto the Lord." This does not mean that the duty is to be rendered to a husband as to a Lord, but as to Christ, who is the Lord and Master of all. Obedience to the husband is to be rendered out of love and loyalty to Christ.

Ver. 23.-"For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church." The Apostle adopts from the Old Testament the image of marriage so frequently employed to represent the relation between God and His people. (Psa. xlv.; Isaiah liv.; Jeremiah, iii. 11.) Christ is the head of the church, the guiding and controling spirit of His people, and so is the husband. "He is the Saviour of the body." "He himself is the Saviour of the body."-Ellicott. Why the Apostle added these words it is not easy to determine. Two reasons have been suggested; one is, in order to mark the difference between the cases otherwise so agreeing, as if the Apostle had said, the husband is like Christ the head, but he is not like Christ the Saviour: the other reason is, that it is introduced in order to express the idea that the rulership of the husband should be like that of Christ—a rulership to bless and to save. Ver. 24." Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing." "Therefore," ¿λλá, “nevertheless." There is no reason why our translators should have given àλλá a syllogistic force, and render it therefore, as though it introduced the conclusion of the preceding argument. "In every thing." This of course must be taken with qualification. It means in everything that is right and proper.

Ver. 25.-" Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it." How did Christ love the Church? It was a spiritual not a carnal affection; it was a disinterested not a selfish affection. His love was pure and self-sacrificing.

Ver. 26.-" That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." "That he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the laver of the water in the word." (Alford.) It is thought that there is an allusion here to the various ablutions in the ancient East of those who were about to be married, especially those in high life. Such cleansing continued in some cases for twelve months. See Esther, ii. 12; Psa. xlv. 13, 14; Ezekiel, xvi. 7-14. "With the washing of water," rather as Greek "with," or by the laver of the water; viz. the baptismal water.