Moloch, of which we read several times in the Old Testament; as ugly and accursed a superstition as men ever invented.

What deliverance was there for them from these abominable superstitions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was God's kingdom, and not Moloch's at all; to know with Micah and with David that the hills were molten like wax before the presence of the Lord; that it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations of the world; that it was he who made the sea flee, and drove back the Jordan stream; that it was before him that the mountains skipt like rams, and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of shaking were God's battles, with which he could fight for his people; that it was he who ordained Tophet, and whose spirit kindled it. That it was he-and that too in mercy as well as anger-who visited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and earthquake, and great noise, and storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire. That the earth opened and swallowed up those whom God chose, and no others. That if fire came forth, it came forth from the Lord, and burned where and what God chose, and nothing else. Yes. If you will only understand once and for all that the history of the Jews is the history of the Lord's turning a people from the cowardly slavish wor

ship of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning mountains, and all the brute powers of nature which the heathen worshipped, and teaching them to trust and obey him, the living God, the Lord and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be clear to you throughout; but if not, then not.

You cannot read your Bibles without seeing how that great lesson was stamped into the very hearts of the Hebrew prophets; how they are continually speaking of the fire and the earthquake, and yet continually declaring that they too obey God, and do God's will, and that the man who fears God need not fear them-that God was their hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore would they not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

And we, too, need the same lesson in these scientific days. We too need to fix it in our hearts, that the powers of nature are the powers of God; that he orders them by his providence to do what he will and when and where he will; that, as the Psalmist says, the winds are his messengers, and the flames of fire his ministers. And this we shall learn from the Bible, and from no other book whatsoever.

God taught the Jews this, by a strange and miraculous education, that they might teach it in

their turn to all mankind. And they have taught

it. For the Bible bids us as no other book does-not to be afraid of the world on which we live-not to be afraid of earthquake or tempest, or any of the powers of nature which seem to us terrible and cruel, and destroying; for they are the powers of the good, and just, and loving God. They obey our Father in heaven, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them. And therefore we need not fear them, or look on them with any blind superstition, as things too awful for us to search into. We may search into their causes; find out if we can the laws which they obey, because those laws are given them by God our Father; try, by using those laws, to escape them, as we are learning now to escape tempests; or to prevent them, as we are learning now to prevent pestilences: and where we cannot do that, face them manfully, saying, 'It is 'my Father's will. These terrible events must be

'doing God's work.

They may be punishing the 'guilty; they may be taking the righteous away 'from the evil to come; they may be teaching 'wise men lessons which will enable them, years 'hence, to save lives without number; they may be preparing the face of the earth for the use of 'generations yet unborn. Whatever they are

'doing they are and must be doing good; for they 'are doing the will of the living Father, who 'willeth that none should perish, and hateth no'thing that he hath made.'

This, my friends, is the lesson which the Bible teaches; and because it teaches that lesson it is the book of books, and the inspired word or message, not of men concerning God, but of God himself, concerning himself, his kingdom over this world and over all worlds, and his good will to

men.

SERMON XIV.

BALAAM.

NUMBERS XXiii. 19.

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

IF

[F I was asked for any proof that the story of Balaam as I find it in the Bible is a true story, I should lay my hand upon this one only-and that is the deep knowledge of human nature which is shown in it.

The character of Balaam is so perfectly natural, and yet of a kind so very difficult to unravel and explain, that if the story was invented by man, as poems or novels are, it must have been invented very late indeed in the history of the Jews; at a time, when they had grown to be a far more civilized people, far more experienced in the cunning tricks of the human heart, than they were, as far as we can see from the Bible, before the Babylonish captivity. But it was not invented late; for no Jew in these later times would have thought of