different. llenco the importance of early training and direction, so far as one will can alter the course of another. Every individual whose faculties are diverted fmm good purposes is so much gain to tho powers of evil. 'l'here is no neutral ground to which to retire. 'l'o go out of the one path is to go into the other. This was the s:id thou.-.ht that, even while Jerusalem was going down, lower, lower, toward8 tbe hour of its capt7ire and desolation, there were yet in it many men who had the power, if only their hearts had been right, to do much towards saving and blessing their country. But all their thoughts, their utmost acuteness of mind, were given to build and enrich self.-Y. Vera. 23-27.-.A threatened return from cosmos to chaos. It is impossible to rear! this passage without having the first chapter of Genesis brought to mind. Moreover, it was iutended that it should be brought to mind. In Gen. i. we have the brief, sub- lime description, impossible to forget, of the advance from chaos to wsmos. Here in Jeremiah we have a very sad and suggestive indication of possible return from wsmos to chaos. These two words, it will be admitted, are often used very loosely. Particu- larly is this true of the latter, We talk of things having got into a chaotic condition, when if such really were so, it would be a very terrible condition indeed. Far what is chaos 1 It is the state indicated at the very beginning of the Scriptures, the state out of which God fashioned what we call the cosmos or the world. Dear in mind that the creation described in Genesis is not the making of somethir:g out of nothing, but the fashioning of formless, empty matter into an orderly collection of appropriate parts and beyond that an innumerable array of living, active organisms. "The earth was without form and void." Strictly speaking, the earth spoken of in Genesis was as yet an ideal thiug. "And darkness was on the face of the abyss." As the writer of the narrative conceived it, there stretched out from the formless, empty earth an impenetrable, rayless depth of space. This is chaos, where there is no ray of light, not even the slightest beginning of order, not even the smallest seed of life. But with the moving of God's breath upon the face of the water cosmos begins. Light comes; and then day and night are defined, and heaven and earth, and so on through the familiar procession of God's wonderful works, till cosmos gets its terrestrial crown in,the fashioning of man. It is worth while for all who would rejoice in the works and ways of God to get a clear notion of the difference between chaos and cosmos. Then bearing this difference in mind, WHAT A TERillBLE PROSPECT JEREMIAH HINTS AT IN THIS PASSAGE! Just by the profit and glory of the ascent from chaos to cosmos in Genesis do we measure the loss and shame of the descent from cosmos to chaos in Jeremiah. It is earth we see, with the men and women, the domestic and social bonds, city and country, all occupations of mankind, all that is highest in human attainments; and thii1 aggregation, which comes from man's toiling development of the cosmical elements presented to him, is seen sliding back to chaos again. '!.'here can be no mistake about it. Mark, it is not what the prophet hears, but what he sees. " I beheld" is repeated. And looking out he sees uot the accustomed scene of life and activity, but the earth without form and void. He looks for the heavens where dwell the sun by day and moon and stars by night, but there is no light of any sort. The mountains and hills, which always were so significant of strength and grandeur to tl1,: llebrew imagination, show signs of being moved away. No man could be scrn. Theru are several words in Hebrew all rendered by the English word "man," but Jeremiah'" word here is the same with tha.t in Gen. i. 26. '!'hen, moreover, all the bin.ls of the heaven fly away. Other inhabited and cultivated places have become a.s the wilderness, but not as an uninhabited wilderness. Note Isa. xiv. 23: Babylon is there described 1111 being made a possession for th6' bittern. Thus it is indeed desolated, but evidently the birds do not fly away from it. Here, however, even the birds, which so easily flit from place to place, disappear as if they had no hope of making in this place their nests and finding in it their sustenance. Thus every detail points to the chance, tho possibility, of Chaos resuming his ancient reign. But now observe- THERE IS AN ARREST DEFORE SUCll A DEPLORABLE CONSUMMATION. "I will not make a full end." Man the individual and men the social community may slidll a long way towards destruction, may be as it were on tho brink, without a reme,ly; and yet God can so act as to arrest, restore, and consolidate anew, with such internal purity and ~oherency as will defy further lapse. Note the full significance of the use of the wurd 11'.l 'l'HE BOOK 01'' THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. [cu. rv, 1-31.
"6,,-,,os in the Greek Testament. It was into the 1t&a-µos that the true Light came. John's great directing word to his disciples as he saw Jesus coming to him was, "Behold tho Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the r<&a-µos." Where all should hi perfect order, vigorous life, and exuberant fruitfulness, there is discord, contradiction; everything jars, and there is a ncver-intermitting groan of pain. All this Jesus can take away, and mnst take away. It is through him that whatever promisos and hopes lie in ver. 2i are to be carried into effect. 'l'his whole passage, therefore, sucrgests an :i.spcct in which the need of Christ's work and the reality of it may be very profitably considercd.-Y.