ought to do from the trammels of a sensual bondage, mindful of our own rank and of our destiny: let us beseem ourselves comely, "for our conversation is in heaven.” Brethren, the need for a warning like this, an exhortation like this, based upon the memory of such privilege, has not certainly ceased. The world, in which many of you mingle in six days' passionate toil, the ordinary cares of labour made a very drudgery by the fierce competitions of the time, has yet, unhappily. a power on the seventh, when another lordship should take the possession of your soul: and there are none of you, perhaps, that are so free from its influences of distraction or depression, that you are above the chance of taint, and above the need of warning. cannot be amiss, therefore, for us to-day to remind you of your heavenly citizenship, that you may be grateful as you think upon its source, that you may be stimulated to discharge its duties, and that you may be comforted amid life's perils and sorrows by the thought of the immunities which it confers"For our conversation is in heaven."

It

Ezekiel's Vision.

I have somewhere seen a picture, which, in brief words, and from dim memories only, I will endeavour to describe. The scene is in the far East; the hour, when the earth is just lighted up with that rare, oriental sunlight which we Westerns long to see; the time, the sultry August, when the fierce sun has it all his own way, and the country has a sickly cast upon it, as if it fainted with the intenseness of the glare. The plain is scorched and arid, and the river running between its sedgy banks seems to have hardly strength enough to propel its own sluggish stream from the mountains beyond. Beneath a group of ancestral palms stands a knot of Egyptian peasants, swarthy and muscular, talking wildly to each other, and with eyes strained wistfully in the direction of the south, in which quarter there seems to hang an indescribable haze, the forecasting shadow of some atmospheric or other change. Why look they there so eagerly? Why do they gaze so intently just where the river faintly glitters on the horizon's dusky verge? Oh, because they know, from the experience of

years, that the time has come for the inundation of the Nile. They do not know the processes, perhaps, by which the waters are gathered; how in the far Abyssinia the sources of wealth are distilled; but, as certainly as if their knowledge was profound and scientific, do they calculate upon the coming of the flood. And they know, too, that when the flood does come, that scorched plain shall wave with ripening grain, that there shall be corn in Egypt, and that those blackened pastures shall then be gay with such fertile plenty, that all the land shall eat, and shall be satisfied; for "everything shall live whither the river cometh." And so marvellous shall be the transformation, that the Turkish description of the soil of Egypt shall be almost realised that for three months the earth is white like pearl, for three months black like musk, for three months green like emerald, and for three months yellow like gold. This picture has struck me as being a very vivid and forcible representation of Ezekiel's vision, embodied in the experience of Eastern life. Nothing, surely, can better represent the moral barrenness of the world-a wilderness of sin than that plain, on which the consum

ing heat has blighted and withered the green earth, and induced the dread of famine; nothing can better set forth the grace and the healing of the gospel than the flow of that life-giving river; nothing can better image to us the attitude befitting all earnest Christian men than the wistful gaze of those peasants to the place whence the deliverance shall come, that they may catch the first murmur of the quickened waters, and feel and spread the joy. Of course, there is a spiritual application of the vision before us: it seems to have been given for the gladdening of the stern Ezekiel, as well as ourselves; for the inspiration of the hopes of the olden time, as well as for the rejoicing of these latter days in its fulfilment. The spiritual application, I need not remind you, applies to the gospel of Christ, made effectual by the Holy Ghost for the healing and for the salvation of men. You will not fail to remember that the gospel is often presented to us in the Bible under the same figure. Under the similitude of living water, its blessings were promised to the Samaritan woman. The great and divine Teacher, who lifted up His voice on the last great day of the feast, announced that the

heart of each believer should be as a fountain of living water; and in identity with the seer of the olden time, and with the evangelist of the new, John tells us of the river of life, "clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God, and of the Lamb." We cannot err, therefore, on this occasion, when we present the holy waters as emblematic of the scheme of perfected atonement, made efficacious by the power of the Spirit of God, and adapted to the salvation of the world.

"I Stand between the Living and the
Dead."

Literally it is true, in connexion with this subject, I stand between the living and the dead. How difficult it would be, how impossible it would be to classify the individuals that are now before me as to educational status, as to their intelligence, as to their tempers, as to their moral culture, as to any one subject upon which it is possible to classify individuals; but to the broad eye of God, looking down upon us now, there are just two classes—the living and the dead!