-An absolute law, for excellent reasons: recapitulated here.

Give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever.-EZRA ix. 12.

That ye may be strong,' is added in Ezra; while Moses tells how the weakness would come:

For they will turn away thy son from following me.

-Or, as it was rewritten in later times:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

·

Wherefore, (O study that wherefore !')-come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.-2 COR. vi. 14-17.

Israel then shall dwell in safety alone.-DEUT. xxxiii. 28.

---Such was the law and Israel had not kept it. 'Behold,' said Ezra, making confession for the people, we are before thee in our trespasses.'

We cannot stand before thee because of this.

-In the dust was the only place. It was deep, bitter sorrow, and for a deep, bitter cause.

Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.-JER. ii. 19.

They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: their judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.-HOSEA X. 4.

-And now the people saw it all, and they 'wept very sore.' At first for the past sin; then slowly, added to that, over the coming sorrow, the shadow of which must presently have fallen upon Ezra too. For if it was ever again to be 'well'

with Israel, there was just one thing for Israel to do. And he knew it, yet waited for them to speak first: he would not even suggest. No such work should be done under persuasion it can stand only in deepest repentance and by the grace of God.

There is a time to keep silence.-ECCLES. iii. 7.

-And I think all had been hushed for a while (except for the weeping) with Ezra still prostrate before the house of God, pleading now in silence that the Lord would help the people; when the answer came: the answer from God to the people's hearts, and from the people to the priest.

We have trespassed against our God,-said one of the leaders, speaking then for all the rest,-yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.-EZRA X. 2.

-Hope? O yes, there is always 'hope in Israel,' concerning every sin and every sorrow for sin, if Israel will only rise up and take it. Are you grieving over transgressions? weeping very sore' over broken covenants and commandments set at nought? Yet listen: 'There is hope in Israel concerning this thing.'

But there is only one hope. Go straight back to the place where you began to do wrong, and there begin to do right. Pick up every neglected duty, lay down every forbidden pleasure: walk straight on over stones and dust and floods, but walk straight. As Ezra, seek the law of the Lord, to do it.' And if the right hand must be cut off, the right foot left behind, so let it be.

It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish.-MATT. v. 29.

'It is better to enter into life halt or maimed,' than having everything else to fail of that.

'The people wept very sore.' Alas! the sorrow was not coming on themselves alone, but on the heads of many who in this matter at least had done no wrong. The Lord's people were the offenders; but the poor ignorant heathen wives, and innocent half-heathen children, must share the pain. O that miserable train of consequences which no human hand can stay, and which the Divine hand generally will not! O great conflagrations started by careless hands, and not to be stayed-even with repentant tears-until many a precious thing has been burned to ashes!

There was but one thing to do: and that was to renew their broken allegiance; and straight back to the point where the bond had parted, the poor sorrowing people followed their leaders. No question now of breaking hearts or of broken lives: the broken law was more terrible still. But even the leaders craved help; and then Ezra found that when you take people on your shoulders, you must sometimes carry them a good way. Let us make a covenant, said Shechaniah, to put away all the heathen wives and children, but thou must see us through.

Arise; for this matter belongeth unto thee: we also will be with thee: be of good courage and do it.

-And truly I think Ezra needed all his courage. But he rose up, not losing a moment; his very love for the people making him strong. Then and there, with tear-wet cheeks and failing voices, he 'made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word. And they sware.'

The people departed then to make proclamation, and also arrangements; but Ezra to keep solemn fast for Israel. 'For he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away.'

The story sounds far off and strange to many of you. Yet it is acted out (or half acted out) all round you, and every day. Church members lapsing into forbidden paths; and then hardly recovered from them by some way that seems like death; the ever-recurring test question being now as then :

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.-LUKE xiv. 26.

Away over in Burmah a certain native was converted into a true believer on the Lord Jesus Christ. And setting out 'to do the Lord's will,' the very first thing he had to do was to choose between his two wives. You think that might

be easy, he must have loved one the best; and so he did, but not the right one. The rightful wife-the one first married and put in place-was old and ugly; while the new usurper was young, blooming, and best beloved. Yet she had no right there at all. On the one side the law; on the other his love. He could not settle the question at the Mission House, but went home to fight it out alone; and the struggle was long and bitter. Then the pretty wife was kindly portioned and sent away, and the older head of the house dwelt on in all her rights.

And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the month.-EZRA X. 17.

XXXVI.

Behind the King's Chair.

This is nothing else but sorrow of heart.-NEH. ii. 2.

THE one-man power again. Not 'one man's tears,' as we had it before, but one man's deep sorrow of heart. Nehemiah had had his turn of weeping, but he had it out alone; with no smitten crowd gathering round him to answer his tears with their own. He wept, and dried his eyes, and nobody

marked him.

A good report maketh the bones fat.-PROV. xv. 30.

-But heavy tidings had come to Nehemiah, and in heart he cried out:

My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me !-ISA. xxiv. 16.

In those days of no mails and no telegraph, news travelled slowly, and even chance rumours were far between; and Nehemiah, having learned at last (per running post) that 'a remnant' had returned and rebuilt the temple, took all the rest, I suppose, for granted. From that beginning, surely the prosperity of his people would go straight on and on. Amid all his own private captive sorrows, this thought had been his comfort. And when, after long time, his