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Hidings.

I hid myself.-GENESIS iii. 10.

I flee unto thee to hide me.-PSALM cxliii. 9.

E never can know the character of an action truly

WE by its outward appearance alone. The act of

selfishness may be the same in seeming as the act of benevolence that stands by its side. The selfish man, for his own selfish purposes, comes among the charitable with his gift, and none but God sees greed at the heart of the gift, and writes " abomination" upon it.

Satan presented himself among the sons of God, and perhaps some of the sons of God did not know he was there. There was no outward difference between them and him. A young man goes hurrying along a certain road on a Sabbath morning, to meet some companions with whom he has pledged himself to spend the day in amusement and frivolity. In a little while that young man is seen again-at the same hour of the Sabbath morning-hurrying along the same road, but with a heart how changed! with purposes how different! He is going to meet companions in some religious labour. He is going to spend the day in the vineyard, and

among the people of God. So different in character may be two actions which are identical in form.

So here, in those two texts, we have what is outwardly the same action-the action of hiding. Adam is hiding. David is hiding. And yet between the act of the one man and that of the other there is all the difference which must ever exist between things which are morally wide as the poles asunder. The one is hiding himself; the other is hiding in God. Adam hides in fear. David hides in confidence. text shows us the sinner's flight; the other the saint's refuge. Let us consider both.

I.

The one

Let us contemplate the sinner "hiding himself." For is not this flight and concealment of Adam among the trees of the garden like a symbolical representation of what sinners have been doing ever since ?—have they not all been endeavouring to escape from God, and to lead a separated and independent life? They have been fleeing from divine presence, and hiding themselves amid any trees that would keep that presence far enough away.

(a.) One of the most common retreats of the sinner is that of complete thoughtlessness. What countless thousands of human beings have fled to this retreat; and how easily and naturally does a man take part and

place with "all the nations that forget God!" We have said complete thoughtlessness; but it is not complete. If it were, there would be no conscious hiding-no more flight: the forest would then be so deep and dense that no divine voice would be heard at all, and no divine visitation of any kind felt or feared. But it is not so. Now and again a gleam of light will come piercing through. Now and again a voice from the unseen presence will summon the fugitive back. During some hour of the Sabbath day, in the quiet evening, on the sick-bed, beside the dying friend, or while looking into the open grave, the startled soul hears the question, "Where art thou?" and for the moment turns and trembles to the speaker, but then turns again away and flees as before, trying afterwards to forget even such gracious interruptions as these, and to plunge so deeply into thoughtlessness, that they shall not be likely to occur again. Is it not so? Might I not ask some of you how long it is since you seriously thought of God? Have not you to travel back over a good many days, weeks perhaps it may be months-to come to the time? It was when your mother died, or your sister, or when God took your little darling from your arms to his. It was that night when you opened the New Testament and read some of the words of Christ, and felt as if Christ himself were really standing by your side and speaking them to you. But the book was

closed, and then the heart was closed, and then the day was closed, and then you closed your eyes, and you have been among the trees of the garden ever since. You have never heard the Saviour's voice again. Yes; during all that time you have been fleeing-over the space of all those days you have been going to escape from divine presence, to be out of hearing of the divine voice-deeper, deeper, deeper still into thoughtlessness, farther and still farther away from God. You have been meeting the light of each new morning with gladness, but never looking up to his face who causes all its shining-lying down each night in dreamless rest, but never thinking, "So he giveth his beloved sleep!"— grasping the hand of friendship, returning the neighbourly salutation, hastening to fulfil the appointments of business, but always and everywhere fleeing from God-hiding yourself, or rather trying to do so, in the deep thicket of forgetfulness and thoughtlessness. Hiding! No; it cannot be. You might as well try to hide the landscape from the meridian sun, or the shore from the sea which is always embracing it, as expect to be hidden from God. Hidden from him who formed the eye! who planted the ear! who claims the day as his! who also owns the night-to whom the darkness and the light are both alike! Hidden from him who besets us behind and before, whose presence is in every place, "whose eyes are as a flame of fire;" who for him

self acknowledges no distance, notes no passing time; who embraces the universe in the scope of his presence, and eternity in his continual thought! No; it cannot be. But how sadly wrong must matters be within when such an endeavour should be made. And how very wrong it is to make it. How truly are we children of Adam, inheriting his fallen nature, and sharers of his guilty fear. Would not a man's deepest experience, if he would speak it out, find expression sometimes in Adam's language, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."

(b.) The occupations of life furnish another retreat for man when fleeing from God. Man works that he may be hidden. He works hard that he may hide himself deep. The city is a great forest in which are innumerable fugitives from God, and sometimes the busiest are fleeing the fastest, the most conspicuous to us may be the farthest away from him. What a mass of secularities will a man pile up sometimes between his soul and God! and how affecting is it to follow him even for one day in his flight! He flees from his chamber in the morning that the spirit of seriousness may not settle in his heart. He flees from his house without having felt its highest charm, without having thought of the fatherhood of God and of the home on high. Along the busy street, seen by every passer by, he is yet still in flight; and as soon as he begins the business of the day he is

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