I\D!l npprccinto the wonderful messl\ge, and give it from his own mouth to the peop!F!, Such is whnt Levi, 11s nn ideBl priest was and did, and every minister of Divine truth must be and do the same. What a high 1tandard to aim at I How its light condemn~ and abashes most of us! II, Tm: MINISTER OF DIVI':'IE TRUTH AS HE OFTEN 18. The false minister is here represented: 1. As swerving from the right. "But ye are ceparted out of the way." Yc are very different in your conduct from the ideal priest and even from your actual predecessors in office; your careless teaching, your superficial dealing, your contentment with formulas and external rites, aml your personal laxity, have given men a prejudice against religion altogether. Instead of helping men to accept the truth and live godly lives, you have caused even those who wished to do so to take offence and turn away. A sceptical age is necessarily the result of externality and heartlessness in the religious teachers of previous generations. 2. .As leading the people a!ftray. "Ye have caused many to stumble at the Law." Not only by their speech, but by their conduct, do many who profess to be ministers of God's Word lead the people to stumble. Their inconsistent life, their theological jargon, their exclusive spirit, lead the people to "stumble" at Divine things. 3. .As perverting the truth. "Ye have corrupted the cove- nant of Levi." How many there are wlio tamper with the Word of God, who empioy it to support some favourite prejudice, or to buttress their little sect! How far, for example, is our conventional theology from being like the theology of Christ I 4. As becoming contemptible. "Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people." Ministers who hunt after honour, popularity, gain, become contemptible in the estimation of intelligent and unsophisticated souls. The pulpit of England is certainly sinking into contempt with the English people. This is a sad calamity. The decrease in the number of those who attend churches, compared with the increase of population; the growth of a literature in thorough antagonism to the spirit and aims of Christianity; and the fact that the great bulk of the reading and thinking men of England stand aloof from all G'hurches, plainly show that the pulpit of England is sinking into popular contempt. Primates and prelates and preachers are treated with ridicule in nearly all popular literature and scientific discussion. A more terrible sign of the times I know not than this. The "salt" of the pulpit has lost its " savour," and it is being trodden underfoot with disdain and contempt. Trodden underfoot by our authors, scientists, artisans, .tradesmen, and merchants. Gracious Heaven, raise up men for our pulpits, so high in culture, so gifted in faculty, so Ohristly in love, so. invincible in duty, so independent in action, that they shall not only counteract the downward. tendency to ruin, but shall attract to it with reverence the intellect of the age !-D. T.
Vers.10-12.-" One Father." "Have we not all one Father," etc.? "This section," says Keil, "does not stand in any close connection with the preceding one. It does not furnish an example of the stumbling upon the Law mentioned in ver. 8; nor of the violation of the covenant of the fathers (ver. 10); or of the marriage covenant (ver. 14), appended to the neutralizing of the coveaant of Levi on the part of the priests (vers. 8 and 4). For there is no indication in vers. 10-16 that the priests gave any impulse throngh their bad teaching to the breaches of the Law which are here condemned ; and the violation of the covenant of the fathers and of the marriage covenant forms no more a thought by which the whole is ruled, than the violation of the covenant with Levi, in the previous section. 'l'he prophet rather passes over with ver. 10 to a perfectly new subject, viz. the condemnation of marriages with heathen women." From this passage the three following truths are deducible. I. THAT THE GREAT Gon IS NOT ONLY THE CREA.TOR BUT TIIE COMMON FATHER OP MANKIND. "Have we not all one Father? bath not one God created us?" It is clear that the one Father does not mean either Adam the progenitor of the race, or Abraham the Father of the lsraelitish nation, but Jehovah himself. He is the Creator of [1.[l things, but not the Father of all Lhings. We could not regard him as the Father of the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the oceans, the stars, thou.~h he is the Creator of al1 these. All things ~re created by him; but he is the Father of human $On b. "We arc all his offspring." This relatio1,ship implies two things. 1. A resemblance in nature. Children resemble their _pa.rents in nature and attribute,. All intelligent 36 THE BOOK OF MALACHI. [on. n. 1-17,