build feebly and set np but slight structures, mere huts and shanties. Others work with more ambitious designs, and will make themselves spacious mansions, gorgeous palaces, or rnassi'l-e castles. Whatever a man builds, in that be must dwell. We cannot get away from the results of our own life-work. These will either beoome a shelter to prot.ect us or a ruin to fall about our heads. II. THE SECURITY OF A BUILDING IS DETERMINED BY THE SOLIDITY OF THE FOUNl)A• 'l'ION. Our Lord's imagery would be particularly vivid in his own country. Nazareth is built in II cleft of the hills, some of its houses perched on jutting rocks. A similar character of foundation would be found in the neighbourhood of Gennesaret, where J esue was now teaching. If the foundation is rotten, the greater the builcling the more insecure will it be, and the greater will be the fall thereof when it comes down. It is vain and foolish to be bestowing care on the towers and pinnacles while the foundation is giving way. Efforts spent on mere ornamentation are quite wasted if the question of the foundation has not been first of all carefully attended to. Yet in practical life this is the last thing that many consider. They would reach the goal without entering the strait gate; they would gather the fruit without grafting in the right stock; they would complete the house without attending to the foundation. Yet the first great question is as to what we are building on. III. Tm: FOUNDATION wn.L BE TESTED. All is well at first. The house on the sand looks as fair and solid as that on the rock. Perhaps it is of a more pretentious character. But the calm dry weather will not last for ever. The rainy season ensues. Torrents scour the mountain-sides and sweep the loose soil from the rocks. Wind and rain beat on the house at the same time that it is being undermined by the raging flood that washes the sand from beneath its foundation. This is like the persecution and tribulation that scorch the growth on tbe stony ground (eh. xiii. 20, 21). Trouble is a test of the foundation of a professedly Christian life. Death is a great final test. IV. THE SOLID FommATION rs OBEDIENCE. A careless hearer of this parable might be ready to assume that Christ is the Foundation, and that faith in ):iim is building on that Foundation. Of course, these are troths expressed elsewhere (e.g. 1 Cor. iii. 11). But they a.re not the lessons of the present parable. Our Lord is distinctly warning us against a superficial profession of allegiance to himself (vers. 22, 23). Allie useless if there is not obedience. Faith without works is dead (Jas. ii. 17). In other words, the only living faith in Christ is that which proves its existence by bringing forth fruit in active service. Only they are on the rock who do what Christ teaches.- W. F. A.. Vere. I. 2.-17ie warning in judging. Thus, at the early beginning of the new generations of the earth, did the Author of them, foreseeing their long and ever-broad- ening tumultuous streams, declare this among the essential conditions of a true inheritance in them, that men fear and avoid rather than rush into the seat of the judge. It is a great condition of membership in the new society. To the sounclneea and health of this society many an element must contribute; and to exist it must be healthy. No fencing of it from without, no careful tending of it from without, but only its innermost sound constitution can secure this. As we now survey the complex conditions of human society, we admire that prevision of the Organizer and ultimate Lord of it. And we wonder at the sanitary provision marked so clearly by the exhortation and argument contained in these two verses. Their injunction is indeed one that easily courts superficial lip-objection, but it is also one that does not fail to draw forth a deep "Amen I " from the "good and honest" heart, warned by the disasters, unnumbered and innumerable, consequent on the neglect of it, informed by careful observation of lifo, and matured by experience. When we ask what it really is that is contained in ii, we may at once without hesitation reply that its purport is certainly not to affront reason and common sense; it does not hid ue blind our eyes, either by disuse of them, or worse, by blank contradiction of their testimony; it does not forbid or put some dread ban on our sober use of our faculty of judgment. But, plainly, it is a great direction of life, essentially practical in its significance, and not better for others and the peace of the life of the community than safe for self. Just as those moet emphatic and repeated directions of Scripture to guard the use of tongue and lips with e.11 diligence do not ban the use of them, BO the words of perfeot CD, vn.1-29.] THE GOSPEL .ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. 299
wisdom now before us guard e. dangerous power, e.nd restrain e. disposition ever too willing to e.eeert itself against the fe.te.l abuse of it. For- I. To UNDERTAKE TO JUDGE IS TO USURP A POSITION BETWEEN GoD AND MAN, NOT ONLY UNAUTHORIZED, BUT BOTH ELSEWilEBE AND BEBE IN THE MOST IMPORTANT OONNEOTION EBPEOIALLY FENOED OFF. II, A.MONG A TRBONG OF NEOEBBABY AND INEVITABLE PERSONAL Rl!:BPO~BIBILITIEB, IT 18 TO OOUBT AND EVEN OBALLENGE A GRATUITOUS AND VERY DANGEROUS ADDITIONAL ONE, III. IT BAB IT IN 1TB VEBY GENIUS, AND ALSO AS A NOTORIOUS FACT TO ENGENDER AN INSTINCTIVE RESENTMENT ON THE PA.BT OF THOSE WHO ABE THE OBJl!:CTS OF IT, AND TO PROVOKE BETOBT, IV. IT BREEDS INTBINBIO DANGER TO TlIE DISPOSITION OF THOSE WHO EXERCISE IT, AJID OFFERS INCENTIVE, WHERE DISCOURAGEMENT IS WHAT IS SPECIALLY NEEDED. V. IT DARES OONSEQUENTIAL VEBY PRACTICAL BISKS, FOR THOSE WHO INTRUDE, BTIRBING FOB TBEH JUDGMENT AND JUSTICE THAT MIGHT BLEEP, AND DANGEROUSLY SUGGEBTING THE BELF-ABBIGNED MEABUBE OF IT. If anything might be expected to operate e.s a deterrent upon the habit that has proved itself to have so strong a hold on men, it might well be this dread thought.-B.