feeling for something the reverse of cle.ssifice.tion-the oneness of national life. And at present they found the spiritual effort by itself severe. They craved some embodi- ment of the ideas and feelings which were now strongly working within them. And their sin in desiring in aid hereof a visible judge, warrior, king, was in kind but like the sin of all those who do not rise to their opportunity and who do live below their time of day, their light, their revelati()'TI,. God is ever, by providence and by word, pronouncing our human nature to be capable of doing better things than it does, and of rising to higher things than it consents to acknowledge by corresponding effort. However on the lower level this people may be beheld, and beheld with some sympathy, as they now yearned for a closer brotherhood, a more homogeneous develop- ment of national life, a semblance still of the perfect model, of which, however strangely, they "judged themselves unworthy." They took, or certainly seemed to themselves to take, a great step in advance in this respect when to-day they not only rejoiced around a king, one of their own choice and of God's distinctest choice as well, but when all of them were united thus to rejoice. There were no longer two kings, one nominal, the other real, nor a people divided into two at least, and e.n army in two camps, but when "all Israel" felt and showed and spoke the great joy with heartfelt, spontaneous unanimity. 2. Akin to this, less acknowledged but not less potent stimulus of a united nation's joy, may be ranged the various life, and character, and age, and condition, all fairly represented, which swelled the bulk of it. All classes of citizen life, and the priest and the warrior; all conditions of the life of that time, and the rich and the poor; all ages of lifetime, the man laden with memories and the young man, the strong and the weak ;-none were shut out from this joy. Aud thus this multifarious composition of it helped to fix the joy. III. OF SOME OF THE LASTING SUGGESTIONS OF IT. 1. May it not justly suggest the thought of the fulnesa and special bliss there is about unselfish joy. Our individual joy is often tainted with selfishness, or self-regard only. Our domestic joy is not unfrequently tarnished by it. Most of the organize.tions of which we form parts are open to fostering in some degree the same partial fellowship of joy. But a general ne.tional joy largely escapes this snare of partial measure. 2. Does it not opportunely suggest the large reserve of capacity of joy there must be at present in human nature? We have just enough, we may bo thankful to believe, to supply to us the requisite light and heat in the history of most men, but there is more cloud and darkness, more rain and cold, than there is of the real experience and outburst of joy. We have no right to be unthankful for what our inner sky is, and for the amount of peace and serenity, warming betimes into cheerfulness and into genialness, granted to us. But where the most and the best of these are true, we can never mistake them for the surrender of our powers, susceptibility, and very self to the amplitude of joy, of which they are capable even here. But least of all is it common to find the maximum of joy spread at the same time over the maximum of people. 3. And does it not betoken something of the rapture of ezpectant humanity-humanity perfected, redeemed, sanctified? God is full of joy. We cannot dare to form an idea of him antagonistic to such a principle. "Fallen short of his glory," as we now are, we have become almost too complacently reconciled to the forfeit paid, to the present toned-down temper of life, to its present strong admixture of sorrow, woe, darkness, and we may detect ourselves sometimes thinking this to be the essential condition instead of the severe rebuke rising gradually into the beneficial discipline of life. But no; "we look for new heavens and a new earth," in which, as surely as "righteousness ehall dwell," so eurely shall joy reign for ever and ever. How universal, how impartial, how perfect in all highest elements of it, will be that harmony of human joy, when the kingdoms of this world shall have all merged in the kingdom of the one great King, eternal, i=ortal, invisible, and he shall have become the Chosen of all nations, of every tribe and family-" great David's greater Sou" I
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vere. 8-15.-The Gadites. Like gathers to like-the brave to the brave, the good to the good. It is human nature at its best which rccoguizes and rejoices in ~u1ieriority, 182 THE FIRST BOOK OF '!.'HE CHIWNICLES. [err. xu. 1-40.