nn unsettled question amongst biblical critics; and a question of bnt little practical moment. We tl\ke the words as a portraiture of a good man. I. A 0000 MAN Ill A HU'MDLE MAN. This is implied. His son! is not "lifted up." Pride is not only no part of moral goodness, bnt is essentially inimical to it. It i~ said that St. Augustine, being asked, " What is the firsc article in the Christian religion?" replied, "Humility.", "What is the second?" "Humility." "And the third?" "Humility," A proud Christian is a solecism. Jonathan Edwards describes e. Christian as being such a "little flower as we see in the spring of the year, low and humble in the ground, opening its bosom for the beams of the sun, rejoicing in a calm rapture, suffusing a.round sweet fragrance, anrl standing peacefully and lowly in the midst of other flowers." Pride is an obsttuction to all progress and knowledge and virtue, and is abhorrent to the Holy ·One, "He resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble;" "Fling away ambition, By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't? " (Shakespeare.) II. A ooon MAN rs A JUST MAN. "The just shall live by his faith." To be good is nothing more than to be just, 1. Just to self. Doing the right thing to one's own faculties and affections as the offspring c,f God. 2. Just to others. Doing unto others what we would that they should do unto us. 3. Just to God. The kinrlest Being thanking the most, tbe best Being loving the mnst, the greatest Being reverencing the most. To be just to self, society, and God,-this is religion. Ill. A ooon MAN IS A CONFIDING MAN. He lives " by his faith," This passage is quoter! by Paul in Rom. i. 17 and Gal. iii. 11; it is also quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 38). • What is faith? Can you get a better definition than the writer of the Hebrews has given in the eleventh chapter and first ver,e ?-" Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." This definition mplies three things. 1. That the things to which faith is directed are invisible. "Things not seen." These things _include things that are contingently unseeable and things that are essentially unseeable, such as thought, mind, God. 2. That some of the invisible things are objects of hope. "Things hoped for." The invisible has much that is very desirable to us-the society of holy souls, the presence of the blessed Christ, the manifestations of the infinite Father, etc. 3. That these invisible things faith makes real in the present life. "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The realization of the hopeable. Now, it is only by this faith that man can live· a just life in this world; the man who lives by sight must be unjust. 'To be just, he must see him who is invisible.-D. T.
Ver. 5.-Moral wrong: some of its national phases. "Yea also, because he trans- gresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at hom~, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people." No doubt Habakkuk was reviled like the other prophets on account of his terrible predictions, as recorded in the precedin~ chapter (vers. 6 and 11). From this verse to the nineteenth the prophet unfolds new visions concerning the national crimes committed by Babylon, and the consequent national calamities appl'oaching. This verse gives some of the national phases of moral wrong as they appeared in Babylon. Evil, like good, is one in essence, but it has many forms and phases. The branches that grow out of the root, whilst filled with the same sap, vary widely in shape and hue. In this verse we have three of its forms. I I. DRUNKENNESS, "He transgresseth by wine;" or, as some render it, "moreover, the wine is treachel'ous." This is one of the most loathsome, irrational, and pernicious forms which it can assume. Drunkenness puts the man or the woi.ian absolutely into the hands of Satan, to do whatsoever he wills-lie, swenr, rob, murder, and luxuriate in moral mud. "A drunken· man is like a fool, a madman, a drowned man ; one draught too much makes him a fool, the second mads, and the third dl'owns him" (Shakespeare). It is the curse of England. It fills our workhouses with paupers, our hospitals with patients, our jails wit.h prisoners, our mad-houses with lunntics, our cemeteries with graves. Moral wrong took this form in ancient Ribylon, and it takes THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK, [ OJI, IL 1-20.