and never dream of entering through it into communion with Him who inspires it with the energy of his presence. Tribes whose life is nureed and cradled in the fairest regions of the earth are often meutally the darkest and morally the moet depraved. The worst forms of heathenim have been found in those parts of the world where the Creator bae most lavished the tokens of his glorious beneficence. The sweet associations of rural and pastoral life in a Cbristiu land like oure are connected less than we should expect them to be with quicknese of spiritual per- ception and tenderness of spiritual sensibility. Stranger still that men whose souls are most keenly alive to all the beauty of the world, and with whom it is an all- absorbing passion to search out its wonders and drink in its poetic inRpirations, should fail, as they so often do, to discern in it a living God. Physical science ie to many as a gorgeous veil that darkly hides him, rather than the glass through which the beams of his glory fall upon them, the radiant pathway by which they climb up to bis throne. Their eyes are wondrously" open;" they have a "knowledge of the Most High" in the forms and modes of his working such as few attain to; "visions of the Almighty " in the glorious heavens above and the teeming earth beneath pass continually before them, and yet they see and feel and know him not. How different such a case from that of Job:" Otbat I knew where I might find him I" &c. (Jobxxiii.1-10). Pk.ere you have the passionat,e outbreathing of a soul that is hungering and thirsting after a God that "hideth himself." Here you have God urging, pressing upon men the signals and proofs of his presence without effect. There is no blindness darker and sadder than that of those who boast that their "eyes are open," and yet, in a glorious world like this, can find no living God. II. It is seen in THE INDISPOSITION 011 MEN TO RECOGNISE THE VOICE 01!' GOD IN HoLY SCRll'TUBE. To know that the Bible is a revelation of truth from God, and to know God llS be reveals himself in the Bible, are two widely dliferent things. There are those to whom revelation is as a Divine voice uttered long ago, but " not now; " a voice coming down to them through the ages as in distant echo, but not instant and near. To them these old records may be sacred, veneni.ble, worthy to be pre- served and defended, but in no sense are they a channel of direct personal communi- cation between the living God and our living souls; "inspired" once, but not instinct with the spirit of inspiration now. No wonder the word is powerless and fruitless under such conditions. It is of no use to tell men that the Scriptures are "inspired" if they don't feel God t,o be in them, dealing as a personal Spirit with their spirits to draw them into fellowship with himself. A new kind of consciousness is awakened, a new order of effects produced, when once a man begins to feel that "the written word is the living voice of God to his own soul. He cannot despise it then. It carries with it an authority that needs no e:xtraneollS authority to support it-the true" demonstration of toe Spirit." Apart from this, the soul in presence -of all these Divine revelations is like one under the infiuence of some powerful a.nesthetic, receiving impressions on the outward sense of all that is going on around him, but conacions of nothing. The "eyes are open," but there is no living, spiritual realise.tion. " They seeing, see not, and hearing, hear not, neither do they under- stand" (Matt. xiii. 13; Jolm .xii. 40; 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). III. It is seen in THE PURELY WEAL RELATION IN WHICH MEN TOO Ol!'TEN STAND TOWARDS CHBIBT. By multitudes Christ is seen, as it were, "afar off." He is to them but as the vision of a dream, a vaguP.1 distant abstraction, a mere historic figure, the central actor in a tragical historic drama. They have never entered into any kind of personal relation with him, have never bowed before him in hea;t-broken penitence, adoring wonder, childlike trustfulness, grateful, self-surrendenng love. " Virtue" has never gone forth out of him to heal the disease of their souls, because they have not yet "touched him." There is 11 wide distinction between the know- ledge that comes by mere hearsay and that which comes by personal converse, between a distant vision and the living "touch." Though faith be in great pa.rt blind and unintelligent, yet if there is the quick sensibility of life in it, it is better !han all the clear, unclouded vision of an eye that is no real inlet to the soul, There ts a future manifestation of Christ. "Behold, he cometh with clouds ; and every eye 6 ½&fi see him" (Rev. i. 7). What shall be the relation in which we stand towards DITO then? There are those whose eyes will then be opened 1111 they never were on. XXV, 1-18.) TIIE BOOK OF NUMBERS. 343
before. Shall it be only to have them closed again in everlnstin"' night, "consumed witl! the brightness of hie appearing"? You mast be in living fellowship with Christ now if you would look with joy upon Lim when he comes in his "power and greut glory,"-W,
EXPOSITION.