The returning sinner is resolved to break this covenant, to abandon this service for ever, rather than that God in judgment, should arise and do it. "And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand." The language of the returning soul is, "What have I any more to do with idols?" "Other Lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but by thee only will we make mention of Thy name." "What wilt Thou have me to do?" "The dearest idol I have known," &c. (3) It implies a hearty reception of the terms on which a covenant with God can be made, "God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." "And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat.” "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." "If any man will come after me let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." "Are ye able to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with?" The day of God's power will be acknowledged by the returning soul, and Christ's own condition heartily accepted. feet only but also my hands, and my head." "Not my II. WHAT COUNSEL AND DIRECTION CAN WE OFFER TO THOSE WHO HAVE IT IN THEIR HEART TO MAKE A "COVENANT WITH THE LORD ?" (1) Be not satisfied with only having it in your heart to make a covenant with the Lord. The fact that it is in the heart is a sign for good. All such desires are good, and they come from God. But the best desire would be worthless if it did not grow into a fact. Thoughts of good might be conceived in the soul, when the ability to give them an outward shape might fail. In the case under consideration it could not be so. David did not build the temple. God did not mean that he should, but God was pleased with the desire that David had in his heart to build it. A good purpose should be followed by a prompt execution of it. "I will arise and go to my father, and he arose," &c. "One thing have I desired of the Lord,' &c. John Howard would never have bettered the condition of criminals in the prisons of Europe if he had only desired to do it. A youth will never be a scholar by merely desiring to be one. (2) Let the past mistakes which you have made through trusting to your own hearts set you upon your guard against trusting them in the future. You have been deceived a hundred times in this way. You have been cheated into this folly of procrastination, and found that it has not made the work of decision easier, but more difficult. "Go thy way at this time, and when I have a convenient season I will call for thee." That convenient season never came. If religion is the summum bonum, why delay ? Is there anything gained by delay ? (3) If you make a covenant with the Lord, resolve that it shall be a perpetual one. The Lord has no pleasure in spasmodic services. These are a dishonour to our Master, an injury to the individual soul, a trouble and a hindrance to the church. "Will ye also go away?" "No one having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." did run well who hath hindered you?" "They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten." "If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." "Ye Of all the compacts which we make, this one is the best. "Be ye reconciled to God." JOHN LEWIS. Tenby. Germs of Thought. THE PREACHER'S FINGER-POST. Phases of a Corrupt Government. "THEN THE BAND AND THE CAPTAIN AND OFFICERS OF THE JEWS TOOK JESUS, AND BOUND HE WAS CALAPHAS WAS HE, WHICH GAVE COUNSEL TO THE JEWS, THAT IT WAS EXPEDIENT THAT ONE MAN SHOULD DIE FOR THE PEOPLE." John xviii. 12-14. IN these verses human government appears I. ENDEAVOURING ΤΟ CRUSH THE RIGHT. "Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him." Why did the government of Judea desire so earnestly, and labour so indefatigably for the destruction of Christ? Was there anything in His genealogy to account for it? No. He was one of their own race-a Jew, who by birth came down I from the most illustrious of their ancestors. Was there anything in His Was He appearance? hideous in form or countenance, somewhat monstrous or repulsive in presence? Not so, I trow. In bodily presence imagine Him to have been the highest beauty idealised, "altogether lovely." Why then? He was the embodiment and fervid and fearless Advocate of RIGHT, right between man and man, and man and God. The government was wrong, wrong to its very core, and it could not bear the right. The Right flashed on their souls as sunbeams on diseased eyes. Hence they were determined to put an end to it, to kill it, to bury it, and to seal it down so that it should rise no more. Corrupt governments are always against the right, hence the persecutions and the martyrdoms. Human government appears here— II. Endeavouring to crush the right by the EMPLOYMENT OF HIRELINGS. the Who were now employed? "The band and captain," were the Roman cohort, and the officers were the apparitors. There are in all countries and under all governments, multitudes of men so utterly dead to the sense of justice, and the higher instincts of manhood and independency, that they are ready at any hour to sell themselves for pay to services the most dishonourable and unrighteous. These have ever been, and still are, the ready tools of despots. From these come, for the most part, the soldiers who, at the command of the authorities for the time being, will engage in the most iniquitous crimes with malignant enthusiasm and ruthless cruelty. Alas, that creatures formed in the image of God, endowed with grand possibilities, commissioned by heaven for services of justice and beneficence, should be thus SO embruted and fallen! As we look upon them trooping forth, bearing with them the implements of cruelty and death at the bidding of their masters, we are urged to cry out with the prophet, "Can these dry bones live?" Can these thoughtless bipeds ever become men, alive with the sense of manly independence and personal responsibility? Human government appears here the High Priest that same year.' This Annas is pronounced by Josephus to have been the most fortunate man of his times. He had occupied the post of high priest for not less than fourteen years, and four of his sons had also filled that eminent office, and now his son-inlaw Caiaphas occupied the distinction. His venerable age, his great abilities, his ancient title to the priesthood, invested him with great legal authority. Because the enemies of Christ wanted their diabolical conduct and intentions towards Him to be sanctioned by law, they now commanded their hirelings to take Him to Annas and Caiaphas. They gained their purpose, and went forth to enact the infernal tragedy of Calvary under the authority of law. The greatest crimes ever perpetrated under these heavens have been per petrated under the sanction of law. "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die." Despots say that law must be respected and sustained. But no, if the law is unrighteous, let it be despised and trampled out. What is wrong in morals can never be right in any law. Human government appears here— IV. Endeavouring to crush the right UNDER THE PRETEXT OF A MISERABLE EX PEDIENCY. "Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews, that. it was expedient that one man should die for the people." This counsel is to be found in chap. xi. 49, 50. In relation to this counsel three remarks may be offered. First: That it was apparently adapted to the end. Christ was alienating the people from the institutions of the country, and shaking |