. Ver. 1.-The mission of Tyi·e, the commercial. This is the aspect under which Tyro 1s best known and remembered. Dean Stanley gives a brief but characteristically suggestive description of it. "The massive remains of the ancient walls of Arvad, nearly surrounding the island of the modern Ruad, give some notion of the defences of 'l'yre. The limited size -0f the island led, both in Tyre and Arvad, to arrangements which must have rendered them a striking exception to most Oriental and to most ancient cities. For the sake of economizing the narrow space, the houses of both were built up, fearless of earthquakes, to the height of many stories, recalling, says Strabo, the aspect of the gigantic mansions of the Augustan Rome. With this lofty mass of edifices towerin~ on its sea-girt rock, 'l'yre might well be thought a .fit type of the ancient queen of commerce; and the prophet naturally spoke of her as a floating palace, as a ship moored by the long strand,' in the midst of the seas,' with her 'masts of cedar,' her 'sails of fine linen, blue and purple,' her 'mariners, rowers, and pilots.'" The practical point to keep in view is that commercial natiuns are always in peril of getting to merely me other nations, and so to neglect their re.ponsioilities to them. To this danger commercial England is now exposed. Very much of the talk of the day goes on the as~umptiun that the whole world was made for the sake of England. We are being const.'llltly reminded of our individuality, and of the precise mission of the individual; we may be profitably reminded that there is an individuality of nations, and that each nation has its separate mission and responsibility. Dr. Arnolrl illustrates this when he says, "There a.re three peoples of God's election-Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem; two for things temporal, and one for things eternal. Yet even in things eternal they were allowed to minister. Greek cultivation and Roman polity prepared men for Christianity." "God appears to have communicated all religious knowledge to mankind through the Jewish people, and all intellectual civilization through the Greeks." As a distinctively commercial city, we m11.y observe- !. THE MISSION OF TYRE IN CIVILIZATION. The refinement of human society comes about by the operation of the laws of association and emulation, just as does the refinement of the individual and the family. It is by seeing the things others possess, and the ways others take, that we are incited to personal, family, and social improve- ments. Families that shut themselves up from society keep their boorish manners. Nations isolated by natural situation civilize very slowly. Exactly what happens to the young men through Cuntinental travel happens to a nation when it reaches out to other lauds the hand of commerce. In neither case is the result wholly good, but a large share of goodlless is in it, because intellectual growth and moral advancement always go along with the material advantages of civilization. II. 'l'HE MISSION OF TYRE IN TIii! BROTHERHOOD OF THE RACE, The scattering of the nations over the earth ; the development of special race-types; the separations made by antagonistic interests and aggrandizing individuals, all tend to the destruction of the sense of mutual brotherhood. And just this commercial nations revive, by bringing plainly to view how the prosperity of one nation depends on the prosperity of another, a.1,d how the well-being of the whole race-family can alone be secured by universal freedom, peace, and kindly helpfulness. Tennyson reminds of this iu the lines-
" Knit land to land, and blowing havenward, .. , Enrich the markets of the golden year."
ill ITS llll!BlON IN THE DEMAND OF HUMANITY FOB WORK. It is singular th!Lt mlLn's idea of bliss should have become "idleness." The end set before a man in this life is that he shall no longer have need for worl;. Yet work ia man's good-•the Divine idea in OJI, xxm, 1-18,] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 381