Go on your way, Love-ease-on your smooth and flowery way-satisfied that all must be right because the world admires and praises, because all men speak well of you, and slander itself can fix on your character no deep stain. Forget the poor drunkard, the ignorant blasphemer, dying without God and without hope-forget him in the costly entertainments of a Dives, the gay society of which you form so brilliant a member. But is the slave to Mammon, the votary of Folly, in less soul-peril than the wretch who never came in his rags to hear your lifeless discourses? Is their laughter never to you like "the crackling of thorns under the pot," the bright flare which so soon sinks down into ashes? You know the errors of the fashionable members of your con

follies; but have you ever warned, ever rebuked, ever employed your vaunted influence to draw the worldlings to something higher than gathering up earth's yellow dust, or raking together its straws? You deem yourself guiltless. Love-ease, because you openly transgress no law is it nothing if the watchman set on his tower, when he should sound the trumpet of warning, tinkles the light guitar; if, instead of putting on the beimet, he is content to toy with the plume; if, when the enemy comes in like a flood, he meet him, not with Truth's keen sword, but with some painted wand of his own? How will you face, at the last awful day, those to whom you now speak but smooth things and prophesy deceits? They listen to you now, and your words are as oil; you must listen to them then, and their words shall be as fire! When that fearful time shall have come, the flatterer's voice shall be silent; amidst the wreck of a lost world, Self-deception shall have perished for ever!

M

UCH has been said and written as to the strange fact that such a servant of God as Hezekiah should have for offspring such a son of Belial as Manasseh. It is frequently cited as an instance of the mysteriousness of God's ways, and the inscrutableness of his dealings with his people. But before thus charging God foolishly with something very like caprice in his actings towards his servants, it would be well for us to inquire whether we cannot find in the history of Hezekiah some clue to the mystery; and whether there was nothing in the life of that king to lead naturally to his son being different from what he had himself been during the earlier part of his reignwhether, in fact, the reaping did not just correspond to the sowing. Perhaps while doing this we may find some lessons of warning for ourselves, in those days when it seems so common a matter for godly parents to have utterly worldly, if not absolutely ungodly, children.

First, notice the time of Manasseh's birth. We are not left in doubt as to this. From his age at the time of his father's death we learn that he was born during those fifteen years which, at the earnest prayer of the king, were so wondrously added to his life. After this marvellous answer to prayer, we should have expected that the renewed life of Hezekiah would have been a life quickened in prayer, and in work for God; and that all the influences that surrounded his son from his birth would have been favourable to his becoming, like his

father in his earlier years, a devoted servant of God. We have no mention of any other son of Hezekiah; and I cannot help thinking that the want of an heir to his throne may have had something to do with the exceeding urgency of the king's prayer for a longer life, and that, in the very words of his psalm of thanksgiving, we have a token that the promise of renewed life gave him hope that this want would be supplied: as we read "The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I da this day" that for the present time; then, “The father to the children shall make known thy truth”— that was his hope for the future years now granted him. Whether this be so or not, the fact is certain that Manasseh was a good gift bestowed on Hezekiah after his recovery from sickness: and as such there was an especial call on the king to surround the child from his birth with every holy influence, both by precept and example; and this all the more as the father knew that his time for this work was short, as he, unlike all other men, knew the time of his death, and so knew that he must leave his son to reign after him at a very early age. Thus the duty was all the more incumbent on him to make ready for that day by earnest work during the years that were granted him. But was it so with Hezekiah? What saith Scripture? "In those dayHezekiah was sick to the death, and prayed unto the Lord and he spake unto him, and he gave him a sign. But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the

:

of heart, and which did not at all interfere with the ease and self-indulgence so pleasing to flesh and blood, and so fitted to foster the hot passions of youth. And we must bear in mind that in those days and in that clime all this would, from the essential attributes of Eastern despotic monarchies, be magnified in a degree of which we, in our days of Christianized civilization and constitutional government, have but a very faint notion.

Even so soon after his marvellous recovery from sickness as the time when the congratulatory embassy arrived from Babylon, we find Hezekiah dilating to the messengers of Merodoch-Baladan, not on the wonderful power and goodness of the God whom he served, but on his own riches and glory. What an opportunity was then lost of showing these heathen ambassadors from a heathen king the difference between their gods of wood and stone, and the living God, who killeth and maketh to live!

Hezekiah was still a true servant of God; but the fine gold was dimmed, the ardour of his love was cooled, and his influence on those around him was no longer exercised in drawing them to God. The "inhabitants | of Jerusalem" are especially mentioned as partaking with him in that "pride of heart" which is so hateful in the sight of God. The worship of the true God was still maintained; for Hezekiah was distinguished from many other of the kings of Judah in that, in his days of prosperity and backsliding, there is no token of his ever returning to idolatry. But it is a little remarkable that in his later days, amid all the great works which he andertook for the outward prosperity of his people, there is no longer any mention of his zeal to maintain the worship of the temple in the splendour which beitted the Mosaic ritual.

What, then, is the sum of the matter as to the ausices under which Manasseh was born, and lived the rst twelve years of his life? Just this, that he grew p in a court where, though there was the outward form f godliness, it had lost its power, because the heart was one out of it, and Hezekiah and his courtiers were set pen the glories and splendours of this world, and no nger gave the love and service of God the first place their heart and life. The "lust of the flesh, the lust f the eye, and the pride of life," like a canker, was at he heart of the fair flower of profession, so no fruit of iliness could be expected. No doubt, Manasseh eard a great deal of the work of outward reformation rought in Judah by the power of his father, and of the uraculous interpositions of God on his behalf; and, ubtless, he was taught the law of God, and told that a worship was both a duty and an excellent thing. sat there could be little heart in the teaching; and all Le religion he saw around him was of an easy-going

Thus Manasseh grew up, amid those who, while professing to serve the true God, were in reality in their hearts bowing down to Mammon. What was likely to result from such a state of things? Could we expect that he should come out of it a true, earnest servant of God, as his father had been? It is a fact so well known as to have grown into a proverb, that precept without practice is of small avail in the training of youth. Young eyes, as yet unused to the many forms and conventionalities of later life, are sharp-sighted to see whether those around them practise what they profess; and vain is the endeavour by word-teaching to make them value that which the life of the teacher shows that he counts of small moment. So to Manasseh the great command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind," would come with little effect from that father and those priests who by their lives evidenced that their love was set upon the world with its pomps and glories. Their example would be much more pleasing to his natural heart, and sadly more effectual in forming his character. The religion which could not keep his teachers from pride of heart, and covetous desires after the good things of this life, and lavish self-indulgence, would seem to him a mere sham, not worthy of regard; and being perfectly effete as to any influence over his youthful passions, would only fill him with disgust at its strict precepts.

Then, left to reign at the early age of twelve, among fawning courtiers and servile favourites, no wonder that he soon broke loose from even the semblance of religious restraints, and, hating the pure precepts of his father's God, whose love had never touched his heart, he soon cast aside his worship altogether, and gave himself up to the abominations of the heathen around him. Their idols did not frown on lust and bloodshed, and, therefore, they were the gods for him. Not desiring "to retain God in his knowledge, he was given up to a reprobate mind, to work all uncleanness with greediness."

There is nothing strange in all this. It is nothing more than the natural and legitimate outcome of his upbringing, amid formal religion and hearts given to the world acting on his natural evil heart. So much for Hezekiah and Manasseh.

Now what of ourselves in these days of much profession and abounding worldliness? Have we no Hezekiahs, who are training up Manassehs? The Church has long been living in prosperous days; no hand of

persecution is raised against her. The world seems to have grown wise. Satan, with his long experience, has learned that while persecution, like a stormy blast, makes the tree strike its roots deeper into the soil, soft winds of worldly favour may make it spend its strength on fair, flourishing leaves of profession, while the root is weak and fruit becomes scanty. Persecution may come yet some day; but it will not be till the Church has been weakened by lying long in the lap of luxury. We have Christians in abundance, and, thank God, many, many true servants of God; but even among them, is there not the taint of worldliness? Even for them, has not earth become so much a home that heaven seems far off, and not altogether so desirable as in the days when the world was no pleasant abode for a Christian?

And what of the children? what training are they getting? We teach them to sing, "I'm a little pilgrim and a stranger here;" but what tokens of pilgrim life do they find in these homes of ours, where every device of the imagination of man seems expended on making our habitations so pleasant that we do not like to think of the day when they shall know us no more? We love to hear the sweet young voices raised in the brave warrior's song,

Oft in sorrow, oft in woe,

Onward, Christian, onward go!
Fight the fight, maintain the strife,
Strengthened by the bread of life;"

but how do they see us carry out the Scripture marching
orders for Christian soldiers? "Thou, therefore, endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man
that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this
life;
that he may please him who hath chosen him to
be a soldier." What do they see in us of self-denial in
fighting the good fight of faith?

Plainly it would be well for us all to see to it, whether we are not by our practice contradicting our profession —of having our hearts set, not on things beneath, but things above; of having our treasure in heaven, and our hearts there also. If it be so, can we expect our teaching to lead to any good, to do anything else than disgust our children with the religion which has so little influence on ourselves?

Christian fathers, you profess that your strongest desires for your sons is to see them servants of Christ; but would they ever discover that from the general tenor of your life and conversation? When it comes to seeking a way of life for them, to choosing a profession, would not all they hear and see of your efforts for their advantage rather lead them to suppose that your great aim for them, as for yourselves, is to have, not a heavenly but an earthly inheritance-to be richer, and ever richer, in the good things of this life-to attain a high position among men, and have that honour that comes not from God but men?

Christian mothers, what do your daughters see and know of deep yearnings over their souls till Christ be formed in them? Is that the prominent thing that

would stand out in their remembrance of your strong love were you hastily taken from them? Or would they not have to recall much-nay, most-of your love as expended in the desire and effort to dress them, and educate them, and give them all accomplishments that would set them out in the eyes of men, so that they may be courted, and admired, and, as a climax, be settled in a prosperous establishment?

Christian parents, in your consultations about household arrangements, and family expenditure, and occ pations, and amusements, what stands forth most pro minently to those young ears, which give more heed than you sometimes suppose? Will they be impressed by observing that God and his will and his service have the first place in your thoughts and affections, and that all other things are subordinate; that you feel and act as stewards of the many good things which you enjoy thankfully as sweet tokens of love from a Father's hand ' Or must they feel that you regard all these good things as your own, out of which, indeed, you rather grudgingly pay a tax to the work for God in the world, but the main part of which you use so as to make as great a show as possible in the world? What is the rule your house, not merely uttered in words, but constantly acted on? Is it, "What saith the Lord?" or is it, Te do as others do?

What is the origin of all that we hear of the children of Christian parents entering so largely into all the gaieties and dissipations of the world, but just that the parents themselves have been so taken up with this world, so anxious to stand well with it, that all the family life, with its associations and occupations, has become so interwoven and entangled with the world, that it seems impossible to withdraw from it without a violent wrench, which would put the whole course home life out of joint. So the young are sacrificed to Mammon, and pass through the fire to the Moloch of this world's maxims and pleasures; and their parents look on and smile, only somewhat puzzled when they fir things going rather further than they expected, ar' shocked at last when they find, perhaps, that their s viewing the whole matter of their father's religion alittle more than a tiresome sham, find it powerless t restrain their youthful passions, or to guard them agains the rationalism and scepticism so rife in literary circles and so, not having the true Pilot at the helm of ther bark of life, make shipwreck of faith and a good science.

Oh, Christian parents! how will you answer to G for those children whom he gave you to bring up f him, but whom you are training up only for the world* True, you may still hope that your children may, like Manasseh, be saved at the last. In spite of all be people's faithlessness to him, God's mercy to them is great, and many a wandering sheep, whose reckless Life has wrung bitter cries from his parents' hearts, is at last brought home safe by the Good Shepherd. But shoul that satisfy you? Will you be content to think that,

instead of lives happily devoted to God from youth, your children will only give the fag-end of a worn-out life and heart to Him who gave all his life for them, even to the death upon the cross? Is it nothing to you that, in the meantime, they are to do the devil's work? For there are but two services; and if they are not to serve God till the eleventh hour, how many may they have helped on in the road to hell, instead of heaven, before that eleventh hour comes !

But perhaps you say, "We teach our children God's Word and will: and that is all we have in our power. We cannot give them the Spirit to convert them. He bloweth as he listeth. We must leave them in the hand of a God who is sovereign in the actings of his grace, and giveth account of his matters to no man." True, his grace is sovereign; but it is as a Sovereign that he says, "The promise is unto you and to your children"-the promise, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy "—the promise, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." That sovereign grace may, through that promise, be grasped and held fast on behalf of our children; but the hand of faith that grasps the promise must be, not a dead, but a living, active faith-a faith that works by love, and purifies and elevates both heart and life.

Such a faith is no light matter of easy attainment; but it is well worth seeking at the foot of the cross, where, confessing our sins of worldliness and self-seeking, we may obtain pardon, and strength to arise, and, casting off the shackles of the world, determine, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Such a resolution honestly made, and by the aid of God's Spirit earnestly carried out, may require much self-denial, but it will bring the peace of God with it to our hearts and homes. When we can say with truth, "I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me"-then there will be such a power and beauty in our Christian life, that our children will be drawn by it to desire to walk with us in the narrow way that leadeth unto life. The seductions of the world will lose their charm, when compared to the happiness to be found in walking so close to Christ as constantly to hear his loving voice, and be guided by his eye. Our prayers for the children whom God has given us will no longered be hindered; and the home where "What saith the Lord?" is the rule of life, will be a home of peace and all holy affections, to which they will ever in afterlife look back as the most hallowed place upon earth.

B. W.

A

XXII

THE PHILOSOPHERS.

ACTS xvii. 17-20.

LTHOUGH it was the idolatry of the Greeks that stirred Paul's spirit, and launched him single-handed on the work, he kept his old rule of giving the first offer of the gospel to the Jews. Even here he began in the synaggue; but, as might have been expected, the mission to the heathen soon sprang to the foreground, and occupied his energies.

In the market-place he discoursed daily to all who were willing to listen. The method indicated by the term "disputed" was universal among the Greeks. It consisted of question and reply. It was both more lively in itself, and better fitted to elicit truth than any of our modern methods. At Tarsus, Paul was trained to such disputations in his youth; and doubtless he felt himself at home in the Agora of Athens. The "vessel" was chosen because of its capacity; or rather, capacity was providentially imparted to the vessel, because such an instrument was needed in the service of the King,

Two of the leading sects into which Greek philosophy after the time of Socrates had broken up, immediately appear upon the field-the Epicureans and the Stoics. These two systems were reciprocally antagonist. In their nature and mutual relations they resembled somewhat the Sadducees and the Pharisees among the Jews. Paul was a Pharisee before he was a Christian, and if he had lived in Athens would certainly have attached himself to the Stoics.

Both sects dealt with the same questions :-with man, his duty, his destiny, his relation to the universe and to God.

Epicurus bought a garden in the city, and taught his disciples there. His main principle was, that the chief good of man is enjoyment. It is due, however, to the founders of the sect to say that they measured enjoyment by a high standard. They repudiated sensual pleasures. It was in the later period of the Roman Empire that this philosophy developed into unbridled licentiousness. But even in Paul's time its maxims tended to degrade humanity. The apostle alludes with horror to its fundamental maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." They ma le special efforts to free themselves

not bring themselves to life again.

The Stoics, so called because their founder, Zeno, taught in a porch (Stoa), were in many respects the opposite of the Epicureans. They taught that man's chief end is to be virtuous. But, alas! they had no certain knowledge of what virtue is; and they possessed no power to lead a human spirit in the right path, even although it had been known.+

When the representatives of these two philosophical sects encountered the learned Jew in the market-place of Athens, they would soon discover that he was not a novice in their own arts. The Stoic system, especially, must have been familiar to Paul in his youth at Tarsus. It is remarkable that from the time of Zeno to the time of Paul, a period of about three hundred years, almost all the leading Stoics were Asiatic Greeks; and three of these, each of them a leader in his day, were of the same province-Cilicia—and two even of the same city-Tarsus-in which the apostle was educated. Discussions between Epicurean and Stoic, in the schools of Tarsus when Paul was young, must have held the same place which the dispute between Romanists and the Reformation holds with us. There was the same interval, the same separation into sects, and the same antipathy.

Both sections, however, soon turned against Paul, as Sadducee and Pharisee, at a later period, combined at Jerusalem for his destruction. All parties were especially scandalized by his doctrine of "Jesus and the resurrection." These philosophers could not bear to be told of a crucified Redeemer. They would not receive the fact on which the salvation of the world dependsthat Jesus died for our sins, and rose again for our justification.

Paul was as eager to win these Greek philosophers as he had been to win those low, ruffian fortune-tellers who haunted the precincts of the temple at Ephesus. He had learned from the Master to have no respect of persons. He looked on the learned and unlearned as all alike lost, unless and until Christ were formed in them. These were noble specimens of humanity, but

* Thoughtful heathens of that time were much exercised about the shadow which the prospect of death casts over the path of the living. They wove many curious and acute reasonings together, by way of covering; but, alas! these threads, though exhibiting great ingenuity, possessed no power. Cicero-"Tusculan Questions," Book L-puts the matter thus -All men are either alive or dead. Those who are alive are free from death, and those who are dead are free from it; therefore all are free, and none should fear. He points out, with laborious hairsplitting, that no man has anything to do with death. It cannot come to the living, for when it comes, he is no longer living, but dead; and it cannot come to the dead, for he is already past it. How poor are these speculations of philosophy, in presence of the gospel of Christ!

See a sketch of the Stoic philosophy at page 358 of this Number, by the late Dr. James Hamilton.

Conceive of a race of intelligent beings springing up and attaining maturity in an hour: suppose that hour to be the beginning of the night. They are Ephemera; their life-course lasts only twenty-four hours. The first half of their existence is night. They exercise their faculties on all the nocturnal phenomena of nature. This night, we shall suppose, has been varied. At first there was darkness; afterwards the stars appeared, and later still the moon. The world, they thought, was now glorious: their privileges were complete. Expectation, imagination, could no further go. At length the day dawns in the east, and the sun rises in his strength. But these ephemeral creatures do not relish the light of day. Their faculties have developed under the feeble lights of the night; their senses have accommodated themselves to their circumstances. They are content with what they possess, and busy themselves in weaving thick curtains to keep out the sunlight.

Such were the Athenian philosophers when the gospel reached them in the preaching of Paul. They had light of a kind. Their light, such as it was, reached them as a reflection from that Sun which they had never seen. But so accustomed were they to the darkness, and se contented with it, that when the Sun appeared they shut their eyes against his healing beams.

The discussions which sprang up in the market-place between Paul and the philosophers soon attracted a crowd. The Greeks were sharp enough to perceive that there was something deeper in the discourse of the stranger than the daily gossip of the streets. By common consent it was agreed that these matters were too grave to be dealt with in the noise and jostling of the market. All felt instinctively that there must be an adjournment. The cry, "To the Areopagus!" w23 raised; and the whole mass-preacher, philosophers, an people-moved together from the low, level market-place up to the venerable rock. The ascent, abrupt on one side, was an easy gradient on the other. The rock rose to a height of about sixty feet above the plateau that lay between it and the much more elevated Acropolis. It was levelled on the top, and seats for the magistrates were cut in the rock. The Temple of Theseus, the most ancient, and still the best preserved of their shrines. was close by. The Acropolis, crowned with the Temple of Minerva, the patroness of the city, overhung the spot, as the Castle rock of Edinburgh overhangs the platea on which Heriot's Hospital stands.

In this open-air court all the great trials of religion and politics had been conducted. Grand associations were connected with the spot. In this case it was Lot the trial of a criminal. No charge was preferred against Paul. It was an adjournment to this place of grate and solemn traditions, that, under the presidency of the magistrates and in presence of the people, the sublime themes concerning man and his relation to God, broached by the Jewish stranger, might be reasoned out. Here