V.--Keeping Position. "I beheld the Moon, walking in brightness." as He in Isa. 1 "Walk in the light of the Lord." "Walk in the Job xxxi. 26. light as He is in the light." Isa. ii. 8; 1 John i. 7. If the earth is between the Moon and the Sun, there is an eclipse of the Moon; she gives no light: and so if the world, or worldly things, come in between the Church and Christ, they interrupt His shining upon her; she no longer beholds His face, and consequently becomes darkness rather than light. There is a contrast here. The Moon cannot help interruptions that come in her path, but the Church is out of position at once if for a moment anything comes between her and the light; for such is the will of God concerning her. Again, the young Moon is not lit alone by the Sun-a dim light is reflected back on her from the earth, she has little of her light comparatively from the sun's pure rays-but this can be no longer the case when she is turned full face to the Sun. Then it is only the Sun's light that is reflected. It is often thus also with young members of the Church-when they first bear witness to the light there is something of the world sometimes intermingled; it is not altogether "Christ" whom they represent, but more and more as they turn wholly to Him and become out and out for Him it is "Jesus only." Another fact is though we cannot quite work out the analogy-that there is a side of the Moon unseen by the earth; and there is also a hidden side of the Church which is "not unto the world” (John xiv. 22). VI. Her Influence. "Precious things put forth by the Moon." "To "The same bringeth forth much fruit." "Hath rule by night." Deut. xxxiii. 14; Psa. cxxxvi. 9. I made us kings." John xv. 5; Rev. i. 6. The Moon has a strong influence over the earth,- a power of attraction which is daily witnessed in the ebbing and flowing tides. This attraction extends its power to secret and subtle lengths. In the Himalayas, for instance, a certain plant is filled with a water-like fluid, or dried up, according as the Moon is full or new. And if the Church is true to her Lord, there are no limits either to the visible power, or the secret influences which will go forth from her. "Their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world" (Rom. x. 18). And side by side with this power of attraction in the Church, will be a power of repulsion. "Let her only shine, and the worldly ones will leave her or join her." Some "were the more added," but, "of the rest durst no man join himself to them" (Acts v. 14, 13). It will be so again, if she is a faithful witness and just in proportion as she is so, will there be no possibility of anyone standing on neutral ground in her vicinity. VII. Her Glory. "The light of the Moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven-fold." "The glory which Thou gavest Me have I given them, that they may be one as we are." John xvii. 22. Isa. xxx. 26. Then comes the time when everything shall be hidden in the presence of the Lord; "neither for brightness shall the Moon give light unto thee, . . . but the LORD." Yet "neither shall thy Moon. withdraw itself, for the LORD shall be thy everlasting light,"-(Isa. Ix. 19, 20). Not needed any more to give light in the night season, for there is no night there" (Rev. xxii. 5), the Moon's shining will henceforth be one with the Sun's brilliancy; and the Church-her time for thus witnessing for ever over, because her Lord has appeared-will have become one with Himself in eternal glory,-even the "Lamb's Wife" (Rev. xix. 7). (: "Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of My Father" (Matt. xiii. 43). The Moon never fails in running her course, and keeping the place assigned to her. She is a faithful witness. Shall the thing symbolised fall short of its symbol? Yet is it not so? How often the Church fails in fulfilling her course, even in keeping her place, because she is not obedient to His will; and thus she gives cause to the enemies of our Lord to deny His presence. "Ye are the light of the world, . . . Let your light so shine before men, That they may see your good works, and GLORIFY YOUR FATHER which is in Heaven." Matt. v. 14, 16. CONFESSING CHRIST. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."- Rom. x. 9. JESUS is to be confessed by the penitent seeker as a needed Saviour. This first confession is often made by coming to an inquiry meeting. Jesus is to be confessed as a pardoning Saviour. This is deemed a vital point. Every skilful pastor urges on the convert this confession by baptism and the Lord's supper, and by a constant declaration by the tongue of Christ's forgiving grace. Jesus, as a complete Saviour, able to save to the uttermost from fear and doubt and indwelling sin, is to be confessed to His honour, to the praise of the Holy Ghost, the efficient Agent, and to the glory of the Father. Christ should be the direct object of our confessions, and not self as justified, nor self as cleansed, uor self as filled with the Holy Ghost. St. Paul, to be sure, does seem to put self first in his profession of perfected holiness; but he puts self first as nailed to the cross, and then he magnifies Christ, the inward, living and Almighty Saviour: "I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." There is needless offence given when we profess sanctification instead of humbly confessing Christ, "made unto us sanctification." If our peace is as the Amazon, deep, broad, and continuous in its flow, it is a great mistake to isolate it from its source, and, in our testimony, to eclipse Christ by thrusting our emotions between the hearers and "the Light of the world." Thus did not St. Paul, who, though caught up into Paradise and hearing heavenly things unlawful (impossible) to utter, never forgot to say of Jesus, "He is our peace," He is "the Lord of peace." The separation of the gift from the Giver, and the exaltation of the gift of purity, while leaving the Refiner in the shade, is the fruitful cause of much of the distaste for professions of holiness among good people. Moreover, there is lurking in the words "profess" and "profession" a meaning of pretence, of blowing one's own trumpet, which is not found in the word "confess" and "confession." It is unfortunate that the words "profess" and "profession," as relating to our acknowledgment of Christ, were not in the New Testament translated "confess" and "confession," since there is but one set of words in the original Greek. To the confession of Christ there can be none but captious objections: Christ needed, Christ found, Christ saving from sin "unto the uttermost," Christ dwelling within, Christ keeping from falling, Christ the bread of life,--not a crust, but the "whole loaf,' as Rutherford confesses,-Christ the well of water in the heart, and Christ a perfectly satisfying portion. But why confess Christ a perfect Saviour? For the same reason that He is to be confessed at all. If He is enthroned within and reigns after all His foes are expelled, let Him have the laurels of a conqueror wreathing His brow. This is especially obligatory, since the devil has loudly professed that he has so entrenched himself in the human soul that he is impregnable till death's power is added to that of the Son of God. Why not let people find out by our lives instead of our lips that Christ is made unto us sanctification? Why not by the same method let the world discover your apprehension of the forgiving Christ? The answer in both cases is, that Christ Himself has appointed the instrument by which He shall be confessed, namely, the mouth, while the life confirms what the lips utter. In this use of the mouth lies the test of our loyalty. The more we find in Christ, the higher this test becomes. There is a philosophy of confession which Jesus did not see fit to develop. He grounded this requirement on His own authority, and not on our discovery of His reasons. Nevertheless He had reasons which constitute the philosophy of confession. His Messiahship, His Kingship, must be acknowledged. This can no more be done by an upright life than such a life in time of rebellion can evince loyalty to the reigning monarch with no act or word indicative of such loyalty. Since there were many moral men adhering to the Federal Government, and many supporting the Confederate States, a mute, upright life was not sufficient to determine a man's political principles. Jesus was not satisfied with men's good and beautiful lives. He was everywhere propounding the question-"What think you of Christ ?" "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" He went about seeking recognition, hungering to be acknowledged in His true character and claims. "If any man confess Me before men, him will I confess before my Father." To the unbelieving world He is dead and buried, and, like Caesar, rules the world only through history, through the train of influences originated by Him, in their consciousness that He "is able to save them unto the uttermost who come unto God by Him." So long as Jesus, the adorable Son of God, is the object of our confession, we cannot be excessive, for He is the object of eternal confession in receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." DANIEL STEele. HOW SHOULD THE BIBLE BE READ ?* (PART II.) WE will now take a glimpse at the Book of the Prophet Isaiah; but, for the sake of brevity, will confine ourselves to the second part-from chapter 40 to 66. There are twenty-seven chapters, and they fall into three equal parts of nine chapters each. The concluding words of the 48th chapter-that is, of the first nine chapters-runs thus: "There is no peace, saith the Lord, to the wicked.” and through the words left behind Him, and not by His personal presence. Yet He promised to be present with believers, "Lo, I am with you always." "I will not only be present, but I will manifest Myself unto you." This prophecy is nugatory if there are no witnesses of this spiritual manifesta-heaven-" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to tion, no attestation of the incoming of the personal Christ into consciousness, addressing Himself to our spiritual perception. A good outward life cannot convince the world of this fact. Morality can be exemplified on the plane of nature. Thousands are outwardly as pure as Christians while utterly ignoring Christ's claims. But has the risen Jesus made Himself known to any soul by infallible proofs ? Bring Him to the witness stand. He has important testimony. Let him open His lips, and give to the world proof that its Saviour is invisibly yet gloriously present, that He gives victory over sin, that He is the soul's sanctification, peace, and joy. "The inner life," says Lacodaire, "is the whole man, and forms all the worth of man. Happily, and thanks to God, there are orifices through which our inner life constantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath its pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost of these channels which lead the soul out of its invisible sanctuary; it is by speech that man communicates the secret converse which is his real life." Can any one testify of an indwelling Christ manifesting Himself in the soul's inner life. as the purifier of silver? Let Him speak and confound an infidel world while he confirms the promise of Christ to make His abode with those who love Him. Let Him speak, for there are thousands groaning over the dross discovered within, who are longing to find one able to refine them instantaneously in the consuming fire of His love, without the slow fire of adversity. Let him, by his testimony, make known to an unbelieving Church "the exceeding greatness of Christ's power to usward who believe." If the great Physician has thoroughly healed any soul, let Him stand forth so that a world full of paralytics may see Him, and be induced to apply to Him, and be made "every whit whole." Therefore all the motives of gratitude to Jesus, and of benefaction to men, conspire to impel advanced believers to seize a speaking-trumpet, mount the house-top, and proclaim to a blind world the greatness of its Redeemer, and to a despairing Church the perfectness of her Saviour, who has demonstrated At the conclusion of the 57th chapter-at the end, therefore, of the second succession of the nine chapters the expression is intensified: "The wicked are like a troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." Again, after nine chapters, at the end of the whole book, it is said in the strongest way, "Their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” Now, while these three divisions all declare the misery of the wicked, we find a wonderful contrast when we turn to the middle, to the central chapter, which has thirteen before it, and thirteen succeeding it. It is the fifty-third, the culminating point of all Old Testament prophecy regarding the sufferings and death of the Messiah. Like a mountain peak at dawn of day, the words beam forth: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrowsHe is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." Thus these twenty-seven chapters lie before us, like a mountain landscape, with elevations on every side, but rising in the centre to its most splendid altitude. * An Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Bible Society, held at Basle, June, 1881. Let us now take a cursory glance at the New Testament. We will choose the Gospel of St. John. Children have a great facility in becoming acquainted with it. We will open it in the middle, as it has twenty-one chapters, the middle one is the eleventh. And what does it record? The most beautiful, and at the same time, the most sublime incident in the life of our Lord, His greatest miracle, which caused the hatred and anger of His enemies to rise to the highest point; namely, the raising of Lazarus. From this chapter we can easily review the ten which precede, and the ten which follow it. Let us take the last first. With the twelfth chapter begins the account of the anointing at Bethany, the entry into Jerusalem, the visit of the Greeks, and so the beginning of Passion Week. The thirteenth chapter records the washing of the feet, and the intimation of the traitor. The fourteenth and two following chapters contain the last discourses. Chapters eighteen and nineteen recount the sufferings and death; and the twentieth and twenty-first the resurrection, and some of the appearances of the risen One. But if we look at the first ten chapters, the first shows us the Eternal Word with the Father, then manifested in flesh, witnessed to by John the Baptist, as the Lamb of God, and the Son of God, and the adhesion of the five disciples. In the second chapter we have Jesus at the wedding, where He turns the water into wine; and in the Temple, where He uses the scourge of small cords. In the third chapter Jesus converses with Nicodemus about the new birth, and the gift of the Son, and the Baptist speaks of Him as the Bridegroom. In the fourth chapter He converts the Samaritan, and heals the nobleman's son. In chapter 5, Jesus cures the impotent man; in chapter 6, He is the Bread of Life; in chapter 7, He gives streams of living water; in chapter 8, Jesus is the Light of the World; in chapter 9, He cures the blind; and in the 10th chapter, He is the Good Shepherd, giving His life for the sheep. It is not difficult to put this order and connection before children in a clear and interesting way, so that it may be impressed on mind and memory; and if they have still to learn the deeper sense of what Jesus did and said, yet they have obtained an insight into the arrangement of the book, in which the acts and words of the Lord are presented to them in a continuous order, and this order is a thing especially necessary to children. A forester may We now come to our last point. go into a wood to inspect the various kinds of trees to be found there, and to examine them individually. He may wish to know the different forms of the oaks that are scattered about, where and in what numbers they grow. Another time he may turn his attention to the beeches or firs; or, as a botanist, he may investigate into the flora of the wood. The student of the Bible should proceed in the same way; beginning from the lowest and easiest level, he may first consider the Bible as a book of morality. Leaving all else aside-history, and prophecy, and miracle-he should confine himself to the strictly ethical teaching of the book. The foundation of all morality is laid down in the primitive institution which God has ordained for human life-"Replenish the earth and subdue it," by which man is constituted the moral guardian of the race. In the 2nd chapter of Genesis, the sanctification of the day of rest, as a means of union of man to God is insisted upon. Thus, a certain amount of work, even in Paradise, is enjoined. And a little farther on, God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him. A man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." Words in which the high and deep significance of the marriage state is declared. After the Fall, comes the highly characteristic utterance regarding the dual nature of man: "If thou doest well, shalt not thou be accepted (and especially acceptable to thyself), and if thou doest not well sin lieth at the door. But let it not have the mastery, but rule over it."* Man is thus placed in conflict with himself, and while, at first, the subjection of the earth was confided to him, the victory over indwelling sin is now made his sacred duty, if he would be at peace with himself. After the Fall, while the killing and eating of animals was allowed, the awful word is heard: "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Murder is here declared a crime, the avenger of which is to be human society. When heathenism arose, Abraham received as the foundation of all morality, the Divine declaration : "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect." This is the root, from which the decalogue afterwards sprang. With regard to the education of children, the Divine expression of German translation. confidence in Abraham was given: "I know him, that he shall command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." The Ten Commandments, the compendium of all morality, are chiefly negative; they are for the most part prohibitive. Evil is nearer to man than good, as all experience teaches, notwithstanding the assertion of some theorisers and idealists to the contrary; therefore in any sound code of morals the evil of humanity must be acknowledged, and be contested, or else virtue will only be a baseless structure upon the slough of sin. And yet the positive command of love is contained in the Decalogue, as the blossom in the plant. The two great lines of love are indicated in the books of Moses, though they do not unite as yet: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might;" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." If we proceed on these principles through the prophetical books, we shall find the Ten Commandments developed, and placed in clearer light, and also the two lines of the law of love brought out into fuller radiance. We shall also see the righteous judgment of God against sin made more plainly manifest, for without anger and zeal against sin there can exist no real love and mercy for the offender. At last the morality of the Bible attains its consummation. The moral law, written originally on stone, becomes, in Christ Jesus, a personal life. All the prohibitions are in Him concentrated in holy defiance of evil; all the commandments glow in the light of self-renouncing love to God and man. Thus we recommend the intelligent Bible reader first to consider the book as a compendium of morals. He will bring his conscience face to face with it, and will find that the Bible is in very deed the deepest, and most glorious, and utterly divine revelation of morality. But two other views of truth will have unconsciously presented themselves to the student of the Word of God-the revelation of God concerning Himself, and concerning the human race. God's revelation of Himself joins the first sentence of the Decalogue to His declaration in Paradise: "I am the Lord thy God." shalt not covet." At the beginning, therefore, God's person; at the end, man's evil desires. God, who created the heavens and the earth, stands before us in all His supreme greatness and majesty, and at the same time in all His wonderful condescension to the special work which He has resolved to accomplish with regard to the world and to mankind. This point can be traced out through the whole Bible. We have no time or space for it now. And on the other hand, there is the teaching regarding man. The conclusion of the Decalogue describes him as a being beset by guilty desires, while it was previously said of him that he was made in the image and likeness of God. Herein is his glory, and also his deep humiliation, from which the necessity of a redemption becomes clear. But of this, too, we cannot now say more. We may proceed a little farther, and point out that the Bible is also the book of Divine miracle and of human sin. God's miracles and man's sin correspond with one another. He interrupts for a moment the ordinary course of things, not to supersede the laws of nature, but to bring them and mankind into the right way. But the sins of men must not only be described in words, they must also appear in all their enormity in special histories. Sin may be called the miracle of man, by it he breaks through the order established in himself and in nature, not to restore again, but hopelessly to ruin it. In order to represent the enormity of sin, which man's unaided reason is insufficient to grasp, the Bible must of necessity. relate the most dreadful instances of it, so that, becoming aware of the deadly foe that slumbers in his own heart, man may learn to awake to his danger, and repent of his sin. The consideration of these two points will lead us on to two others, the prophecies of God, and the earnest longing of man. The diligent reader of the Bible may represent to himself two kinds of trees, placed side by side in the wood, the one showing the exceeding grace of God, the other the abounding misery of man; both point to the redemption of humanity by Christ, and to the transformation of the earth and mankind into the kingdom of God. It remains for me just to indicate the wonderful, The other line of revelation regarding man con- but, on the part of the writers, the unintentional nects itself with the conclusion of the Decalogue, harmony that runs through the Bible. It especially and the words spoken in the Garden of Eden: "Thou | lies before us as a fact, in the accordance of the |