his labor, until evening." The world is yielded up to Day and to man.

And now we must go over the ground again, and find a human sense, a Sermon of God to man.

V." Thou makest darkness, and it is night." Nature is a great darkness, in which the kingdom of God appears not. "It is Night;" but a wonderful night. There is a light in nature, a candle of God, shining in the darkness, but the candle is lit, because the Very Light is absent. The face of God is shut out from nature, by nature, I ought to say. The True Light is not to be seen in nature's skies. Nature is a huge organization of Night. God has organized it. He has brought it under law, and made it to reflect His glory, an immense advance upon the lawlessness of the great night. It is not any longer, chaotic night, but Night travelling through vast cycles of changes towards Break of Day,-God's Day. Fallen man needs a screen. He could not subsist in the light of God's Face. He is himself an organization of darkness. His eye, which of all his organs, is most akin to light, is in itself utter darkness. The representative character of nature is the work of God; but there is much in nature, attributable both to angelic and human apostacy

from Him. God is not the author of confusion, or chaos; but He is the Author of Cosmos. Apostacy from God necessarily becomes brutish. Apostacy is night. The devil is Night. He is that old serpent, he is the great red Dragon, he is the leviathan of the abyss, he is the first of the wild and the fierce kind, and the ground and beginning of the wild, beastly life. "He is king over all the children of pride." Only God can set limits to his dominion. Under God, his empire is the whole night of nature and humanity. The Lord Himself, in our nature, found Himself under night. was "with wild beasts" also, and subject to the assaults of the devil. He found how far this life, in the dark house of flesh, and under the darkness of nature, is from God and Heaven, and how near it is to Hell.

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What shall we say then, of the greed and the cunning, the selfishness and tyranny of mankind? Are they not as subtle beasts before God, restless for prey, and stealthily seeking it, under the darkness both of nature and their souls? Such instincts and passions would have no chance before the Face of God. They are only possible on the nether side of the veil. The successes of worldly men are closely analogous to success in taking prey. The principles and affections of our animal nature are

fallen out of the sphere of human harmony, and are comparatively unclean. The clean beasts are only somewhat cleaner than the unclean. To be envious of worldly prosperity, is to be "as a beast before God." For worldly prosperity is of the night-kind, and not of the right human and daykind. Judged from a worldly point of view, the brutish kind of prosperity may be very honorable, and, by all means, let it be honorable. For in its most unexceptionable form, it is a drag and a humiliation, to one who is brought into sympathy with the New Testament style and destiny of man, namely, with "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Such a man feels most acutely, and profoundly, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

On account of the baseness and utter prostration, the subtlety and plausibility of their souls, the Lord speaks of some men as a “generation of vipers." Their very repentance is suspicious. The crocodile sheds tears when about to take its prey. Other men, the Lord styles "swine" and "dogs," and commands, that the right human things of His kingdom be not committed to them. Others again are "wolves" and "foxes," to deal with whom, the Lord counsels His disciples to engraft the wisdom of the serpent on the innocence of the dove.

But God has given all His human beasts a time of grace, in which to work out their salvation and become men, namely, the image of God; or, if not that, then to confirm their brutish life and their downward tendencies, and so to pass on to Eternal Night and the wild beasts.

VI.-"The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God." The violent eagerness of our sensual instincts and passions may well be called "lions." For strength and boldness, they are lions, for subtlety, they are serpents, and for insatiableness, they are wolves. But the wolfine passions assume the garb of innocence and love, and therefore they are as wolves in sheep's clothing. But however they clothe themselves, their nature abides the same,— eager, wily, restless and impatient. There is something ever ravenous about the desires of the natural man. It is scarcely permissible to follow the passions in detail. But take an absolutely necessary department of human activity, and consider, calmly, the eagerness of trade, the stratagems and impetuosity of trade, the noise and tumult of trade, throughout the world. If you would speak of the same under a parable, would it not run thus?"The young lions roar after their prey, and

seek their meat from God." For the profits of trade are a kind of lawful prey, taken from one's fellow creatures. And surely, trade roars after its prey. Does not the trade-spirit mightily vociferate in its quest for the largest possible share of custom? All young lions do the best they can for themselves. If they chance upon plentiful prey, shall they hesitate to appropriate it? Shall they stop to consider that there are other young lions, whole herds of them, who are seeking after prey, and to whom it as much belongs as to them? By no means. The very idea is wholly contrary to the nature of the young lions. lions. Let every lion, wolf, and jackal, keep a sharp look out for himself. That is the manner of the king of the beasts, and the same is law throughout his kingdom. Search and see,

if there be any higher, or holier principle, in the whole brute-universe, than "number One?" Scramble boys, scramble, and if you pick up a little dirt with your bread, who can help it, in a dirty world?

Far be it from me, that I should call the ambitious tradesman, ungodly. With all his cunning and address, does he not seek his prey from God? If by assiduity, tact, or any thing short of downright lying and cheating, he can direct the stream of custom in his own favor, he