for all that is super-human is entirely wanting. Perhaps a second work of that kind can hardly be met with in the world."

You will excuse this long introduction, which, however, will obtain its object, if it enables us to tread again with a firm step upon the soil so rich in miracles as the sacred history, and to which the continued reflections upon the prophetic course of Elisha now lead us back. To-day we again meet with an event which the understanding of the wise of this world will hardly receive without a head-shake of doubt. But we, nevertheless, maintain, that "We have not followed cunningly devised fables:" here also is sure historical ground! and with our- "We were eye-witnesses of His Majesty!" we will stand on our elevation, firm, arrow and ballproof, against all the objections of reason without such experience.

2 KINGS, VI. 1—7.

And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, “Behold now the place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell." And he answered, "Go ye." And one said, " Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants." And he answered, "I will go." So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe-head fell into the water: and he cried and said, "Alas, master! for it was borrowed." And the man of God said, "Where fell it?" And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim. Therefore, said he, "Take it up to thee." And he put out his hand, and took it.

Let us now prepare for a walk. along the banks of the Jordan.

Our path leads us Does it conduct us to

a party of pleasure and amusement? I should say it did,

if as such you

regard the meeting together of the children of God. They meet us, it is true, in their working and every-day dress, but I think it is all the better for that. We seek not clothes, but men; our object is truth, nature, and life. Young, active life unfolds itself in our history, and we shall select five points as worthy of closer meditation: THE WANT OF ROOM,-THE NEW COLONY, THE ESCORT,-THE EMBARRASSMENT, - and THE MIRACULOUS AID. Let us dedicate to them a few minutes' serious reflection.

I.

We are now in Jericho, and arrive there just as the children of the prophets have entered the presence of their master, and informed him that the place they inhabit is no longer spacious enough to contain them, and that a new colony is needful. What sweet and cheering news was this to Elisha's ear! These disciples of the prophet were the flower of Israel; and their numbers had so increased that the extensive colonies of Jericho and Gilgal were no longer capable of holding them. What a pleasing circumstance! Fertilizing rain falls down upon Israel; spiritual spring showers drop from the heavens. Was there a new season of grace linked with the conversion of Naaman? It might be possible; for in the days of Elisha generally things went on more thrivingly in the land than during the Tishbite's sinaitian labours, which were carried on only by the ploughshare. Like the genial, glowing sun, spreading around it light and life, the heart-winning, promise-beaming appearance of the New Testament prophet passed onwards over the fresh ploughed land: then the buried germs of spiritual life everywhere burst through in straws and ears of corn, and the hour of cutting and gathering arrived. It often

happens to the husbandmen of God that they are forced to share the chances of the tillage of the field and the binding of the sheaves. Each is anxious to have Elisha's lot, but how many are doomed so long as they live only to beat stones and throw up furrows. Let them not, however, become either weary or faint hearted, but be full of hope; let them remember the time when, as the promise says, both he who has ploughed and sown, and he who has cut and gathered shall rejoice together.

Thus, then, there is want of space in the colonies, and urgent necessity for extended room. You have already lived to see widenings of space, and still greater than have hitherto been made do we hope for in the future. How limited, for instance, was the district in which formerly you moved with your Christian interest. The hills which bound your valley were the boundaries of your land, to which your love as well as your activity was limited. But now you soar on the wings of liveliest sympathy over mountain and sea, and the poles alone are the bounds of the space which you traverse in the spirit, whilst receiving and returning brotherly greetings. All the heathen world, illumined by the light of the advent, has, with its signals of distress, as with its Hosannas, come within the horizon of your love. Through the deserts of Arabia you extend your helping hand; in Hindostan and Persia you pluck sweet spring-roses; and land, to join in the celebration of divine festivals of triumph, at one time on this, and at another on that, distant coast. How limited was formerly the recognition ground which you kept open for the holy of the Lord. In your sheepfold you had no room for thousands, merely because you missed some human emblem in colour or form, without which you could not

recognise a true Christian. Now you make your sheepfolds more extensive. You now concern yourself more about the life, and are less troubled about its form of appearance, and believe that the one spirit may dwell beneath every variety of external form. And do you not feel yourselves richly rewarded in this more heartexpanded manner of contemplation? If the kingdom of the Lord stood formerly around you like a miserable garden-plantation, now it seems to you as if your eye stretched its view over a boundless forest. How imprisoned-like did you once sit fixed with your Christian life, when as yet the Gospel was only a kind of new law to you, and Jesus another, though a milder Moses, who, having fulfilled the law, yet required faith, repentance, self and world denial, and such like, as the conditions upon which pardon would be bestowed. How sorrowfully did you then pursue your path, your anxious look fixed in the confined circle of your own state of mind, feeling, and conduct; the spirit, so poor in peace, pent in with the one care, how here and how there to act. Now, the barriers of the prison of debt are burst open around you. You have found out that the foundation on which you rest your hope of pardon, instead of being sought for in yourself, lies wholly in Christ; how the grace of atonement precedes faith, not merely joining itself thereunto, much less making itself thereby a condition. You know yourself now to be already righteous, sanctified, nay, perfected, in your Chief; and, as "those beyond," you pass on through this world free, disburdened, and conscious of eternal security, and of your citizenship in heaven. What a blessed extension of space have many of you, for a longer or shorter time, had to rejoice in, inasmuch as the little bark of your

meditations is no longer knocked about, as formerly, upon the erring canal-tides of human pious writings, but sails along the free and open ocean of the word of God himself, and lets the net of thought down into its depth, to come up rich in gold and pearls! How has the world of your spiritual contemplations since become enlarged! What a blessed confidence of riches, hardly yet half measured, elevates your heart, and what a heaven-coloured vista of new prospects of delight lies open before you! Your spirit passes on as if upon the heights of God, and paradise blooms around you far and near.

It only now needs that a more extended space should be given to Christianity than is done by many, who, mistaking the nature of the Gospel, wish to separate so much from the kingdom of God as "profane" in itself, whereas it is only profanable, and in freebooter-like usurpation adopted by the world. Christianity does not, for instance, at all renounce its claim upon the sciences and arts, but regards them as provinces which are only for a time in the hands of the enemy, but which it can, at a proper season, claim back again, and again make obedient to its sanctifying dominion. Music, painting, architecture, poetry, history, nay, even physics and politics, all these and many more besides, belong to it. It concerns us here to distinguish well the cause and faculty themselves from their injurious administration and application, and not with the bath to pour out the child also. Over all those provinces the kingdom of the Lord will one day spread out its beaming wings, and will breathe into them his Spirit, his life. A holy purifying fire will then turn the last remains of a heathenish element in science and art to ashes, and heaven