tion, is in :vain. ~hey judge themselves unworthy of _eternal life; ther, wUl not have Gods Christ to reign over them. And so they sel\l their own doom. 'Ihe time of their .fall is come-the time when the kingdom of God must be taken from them ,md givon to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. But now mark the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of Goel. See how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways pMt tracing out. Thie fall of Israel, so sad in itself, so Fad in relation to the great fathel'II of the house of Israel, so fatal, one would have thought, to the interests of the kingdom of Christ, becomes the riches of the world. From that fall emerges the great mystery of God, which had lain concealed through ages and generations, that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and partakers of the great Messianic promise. 'l'hrough that fall of Israel salvation came to the breadth nnd length of the heathon world. " Tho snlvetion of God is sent unto the Gentiles," and they were rendy to hear it. The light that had been shut up within the four walls of the commonwealth of Israel, and only i;hining as it were through the chinks and crannies of those walls, now that those walls were broken down blazed forth to fill the world with its heavenly brightness. The voice of Divine truth, of which only faint echoes had been heard outside those walls, now went out through all lands in all the fulnese of its converting power. Now were the heathen given to Christ for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession. The fall of Israel was become the riches of the Gentiles, and their loss the world's gain. But the mystery of God was not yet worked out. '!'hat had yet to be unfolded and shown to the world, which St. Paul told the Roman Church, "The gifts and callir,.g of God are without repentance." Israel has not stumbled to his final fall. The eternal hand still holds him up through centuries of darkness; and the eternal voice will yet say to him, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee I" The time will come, for God has spoken it, when the heart of stone, which denied the Lord of glory, will be exchanged for a heart of flesh, which will love and adore him. 'l'he time will come when the long-lost sheep will return to the good and loving Shepherd who is waiting to receive them, "and so all Israel shall be saved." How or when that promised time will come we know not. But we know that it will come. And when it does come it will be to the whole human race as life from the dead. Watch for it, 0 ye Gentile Christians! W a.tch for it, 0 ye 'Sons of Israel I Pray for it, all ye that love Christ! for it will be the day of the fulness of his glory, and the consummation of your bliss.
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AU1'HORS. Vera. 1-10.-.4 picture of the human. In these few verses we·have a graphic picture of some of the experiences of our life and of the instincts or intuitions of our nature. I. A PICTURE OF THE llUII.All. 1. Human suffering. (1) Trouble. Doubtless the first sentiment on escaping death by shipwreck is intense gladness and gratitude, But the next is the consciousness of loss. The man who lands on the island after battling with the waves first congratulates himself and (if he be a devout man) thanks God that his life is preserved ; then he realizes what he has left behind him; and he 1100n becomes conscious of the exposure to which he is subjected-he allows himself to be troubled "because of the present rain, /\nd ~a.use of the cold" ( ver. 2). It is not shipwreck only, but many other kinda of wreck -hich plunge men "into the cold," i.nto adversity, into bereavement of the good which they had enjoyed. (2) Sickness (ver. 8). 2. Un.spoiled human nature. Such is the dire effect of long-continued sin upon the sod, that it often happens that nearly every vestige of the goodness with which our o~eator first endowed us disappears. As God made us, it was natural that we should compassionaf.e our fellows in misery, and that we should be grateful to them for their help. Only too often. however, man is found pitiless and thankless. The shipwrecked mariner is murdered as he strikes the shore; the benefactor reaps no blessing, no honour for hie kindness. Not so, however, here. Here was (1) pity," the barbarous people showed no little kiudness" (ver. 2). Here, also, was (2) gratit'U(U (ver. 10). 3. An ineradicable human conviction. Underlying the conclusion to which tnese natives of Malta came (ver. 4), was the conviction, common to our kind, that llll, X.XVIII, 1-31,] THE AC'rs OF THE APOS'fLEB.