to an Rngel's eye. The '[lrophet still looks, and what does he see? "Then lifted I up mine eyes, 11.ud looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wingF; for they had wings like the wings of a st:o'rk: and they lifted up the ••phRh between the eanh and the heaven." The meaning of this new scene may easily hl' discovered. The cphah, with the woman in it, is carried away between e.arth :md beRven, ,:.e. through the air. Women carry it, becauae there is a woman inside; Rnd two women, because two persons are required to carry so large and heavy n measure, that they lay hold of it on both sides (n • .,-1;1 with the N dropped ; of. Gesenius, 74, 3, A. 4). 'fhese women have wings, because it passes through the air; e.nd a stork's wings, because these birds have broad pinions, and not because the stork is a. bird of passage or an unclean bird. "The wings are filled with wind, that they may be able to carry their burden with greater velocity through the air. 'l'he women denote the instruments or powers employed by God to carry away the sinners out of his congregation, witbout any special allusion to this or the other historical nation, This is all that we have to seek in these features, which only serve to give distinctness to the picture" (Keil and Delitzsch). "Then said I to the angel that talked with me, ·whither do these bear the ephah? And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base." There is no ne.ce~sity for regarding Shinar here as designating any particular geographi- cal spot, such as the laud which Nimrod founded. 'l'he idea may be that this utter worldliness bears men away for ever from the Divine scenes of life. The most practical use I can turn this mysterious passage to is to employ it to illustrate the condition of a trulv materialistic community. I. Suen A OOMMUNITY IS ENCASED BY THE MATERIAL. This woman, the emblem of the worldly Jews, was not only "in the midst of the ephah," but was closely confined there. "He cast the weight of the lead upo:i the mouth thereof." 'l'o an utterly worldly man matter is everything. He is utterly shut out from the spiritual ; there is no glimpse of it, no interest in it. Like the woman in the ephah, he is encompassed by that which shuts him in. The bright heavens and the green fields of the spiritual world are over and around him, but they are nothing to him. He is in the ephah. 1. Your secular scientist is in the ephah. He sees nothing but matter, believes· in nothing but matter. 2. Your sensuous religionist is in this ephah. He judges after the flesh. He lives in the horrors of Sinai, in the tragedies of Calvary; his talk is of blood, and fire, and crowns, aud white robes, etc. The spiritual is shut out from him, or rather he is shut out from it. 3. Your man if the world is in this ephah. All his ideas of wealth, dignity, pleasure, are material. He 'judges the worth of a mari by his purse, the dignity of a man by his pageantries, the pleasures of a man by his luxuries. Verily a sad condition this for humanity. For a soul that was made to realize the invisible, to mingle with the spiritual, to revel in the infinite, to be shut up like this woman ia the ephah of materialism, may well strike us with shame and alarm. ll Suen A COMMlTh'ITY 18 BEING DISINHERITED BY THE MATERIAL. , This woman in the ephah, emblem of the worldly Hebrew, is borne a.way from P~lestin~, her own land, into a foreio-n reo-iou; borne away by two women who had "wrngs like a stork, and whose win;s we;'e foll of wind." Materialism disinherits man. His true inheritance as a spiri;ual existent is "incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away." But materalism carries him away from it-away to the distant and the gross. 1. The process was rapid. No bird so fleet with wing and fo?t as the _stor~, and with th!s fleetness this woman in the ephah was borne. How rapidly do ammalism and worldh- ness bear away the spirit of man from the realm of spiritual realities, from a love of the true and the beautiful! 2. The process was final. "And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base." "To be carnally minded is death." "He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." :Materialism bears the soul away into the "bondage of corruption." Well might the apostle say, "Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies to the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things" (Phil iii. 19). "As you love your soul,'\says Mason," beware ,,f tl,t: world; it bath slain itH thousands and ten thousands. Whnt ruined Lot's wifr? 'l'Lt: world. What ruined Aclian? The world. What ruined Haman'/ The world, tit. vt. 1-15.) THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH. 67
What ruined Judas? 'fhe world. What ruined Simon Magus? The world. What ruined DemRs? 'l'he world, And,' What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, a.nd lose his own soul?' "-D. T.