I. WE MAY J,EARN TO BE IDLE. There ie no life 80 undignified aR that which la buRy In trifles, which has learned to enjoy listless honrs. For tlie wandering thought pro- duces the wandering life. "Wanclering e.bout from house to house;" and, having nothing else to build with, too often build e.erial structures of untruths and he.If-truths. II. NoT ONLY IDLE, BUT TATTLERS. '!'he harm the.t has been worked in this wor\..; by busybodies cannot be over-estimated. It is easy to send an arrow into the e.ir, but not to gather it up e.ge.in. It is easy to poison the river of good repute.tion, but we cannot re-purify the stream. It is easy to pluck the flower of a. good man's fame, but we ce.nnot restore its beauty. "Speaking things which they ought not." How few ree.lly make" I ought" govern their lives I Custom and convenience and pleasant- ness too often constrain our speech. People like to startle others, to give the shock of e. new sensation, to e.muse them, to please them. And, alas! it is too true that tattlers and busybodies know how to gratify those they visit. St. Paul thinks in this next verse (14) that marriage e.nd care of children and housewifery are good things (whicl, the ascetic Roman Church seems not to think), and that women so occupied give none occuion to the adversary to speak reproachfull~.-W. M. S. Ver. 24.-Bins that go before. "Borne men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow e.fter." Primarily, these words refer to the ministry. Never act suddenly. You may be deceived, and lay hands on unfit men, dame.ging the Church e.nd dishonouring God. Manner may deceive. Latent sins may slumber beneath specious appearances. Some sins blossom at once, and evil is unveiled. At times the pcisonous springs send forth their deleterious waters at once. Sometimes they are like hidden watercourses flowing beneath the surface soil, and appearing in unexpected places. Moral government e.lways exists, but diversity characterizes the methods of God. Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. Sometimes Ce.in and Ananias e.re punished at once; the one is outlawed, the other dies. But Herod e.nd Pilate waited for a revealing day. Subject-Sins that go before. They have outriders. As with a trumpet-peal attention is called to their advent. We see the evil-doers; vile in countenance, shambling in gait, dishonoured in mien. These sins e.re revealed. We mark lost delicacy, honour, purity, peace, principle, reputation, joy I I. Tms IS SPECIAL OB EXCEPTIONAL. "Some men's sins." Do not, in obaerving them, draw an argument for the necessary goodness of others. The openness of some judgments does not give, necessarily, fair fame to others. In the most decorous life there me.y be secret' sins. The slumbering fire may be in the hold of the stately ship. The hidden vulture may be waiting for the carrion of the soul. But here there is judgment. We look e.round, we see it. Our newspapers, our neighbourhoods say, "Behold the he.nd of God here." Faith is departed ; hope is blighted; beauty is destroyed ; the dark outriders are here. II. Tms IS A BPEOTACLE TO MEN. "They are open beforehand," and not made mani- fest merely in the sense of being sins, but their judgment is with them. For there are two ideas-you may see a sin to be a sin, but you need not have its judgment open. But the translation here requires that we should understand that the jndgment is open, e.s well as the sin. You see not only men's corruption, but their misery; not only their guilt, but their shame. A child might see a poison berry, and know that it is such; or see a snake, and be told it has a sting; but how clear the judgment if, under the one tree, a little child lay dead; e.nd beside the serpent e. man was struggling in throes of agony I . III. 'l'HEY ARE OPEN BEFOREHAND. The.t implies they e.re hints in this world (where there is a place for repentance) of troubles yet to come. They do not exhaust judg- ment; they are premonitions of it. The light of mercy plays all around even the paths of judgment here; for the Saviour of men is able to deliver from every prison-house. The beforehe.nd judgment me.y be e. merciful thing, but let no man deal iightly with it. The gathering clouds presage the fury of the storm; the pattering drops llerald the he.ii and rain ; the reddening light of the volcan9 tells of the desolating lava. "Some men's sins are open beforehand."-W. M. S. Ver. 24.-Sin, that follow afttJr. "Some men they follow after.• Hl!l'e is a revealed I. TIMOTHY, I lH THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. [OH. v.1-26.
fact with no comment upon it, but it is very terrible. A smooth comfortable life and yet a life of respectable sin I No blame, no opprobrium, no ostracism from so~iety. Men deceive themselves. They ~o. into the slreets of their Nineveh but no prophet 1 reproves them. The waters are nsmg, but no Noah warns them; all is placid and full of repose. I. THE oon"BCTJON BETWEEN A IIAN AND urs BINB. " And some '714m they follow after." Our sins are like us; they reflect our faces; they are mirrors which will one day show us ourselves; thev follow after us by a moral individuality; they will each fly to their own centre. Our sins are not resolvable into some generic whole as the sin of man. The blight in the summer-time is not so disastrous in defacing beauty the locusts of the EnsL are not ao devasting in their all-devouring flight, aa are our i:oop,11 of sins. They f,,llow after us, and blight our immortality. II. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SHAME AND BIN. "They follow after." That is the reason we are not ashamed of them. Sha;:ne for sin is not sorrow for sin. The Hindoo is only ashamed when he is discovered. That is not ii;rief at sin: it is horror at being found out. Sins that follow after are not much thought about. The world has given us carte blanche if we preserve our position in society. What men shrink from is exposure and shame. If all sins were revealed, who could bear it? If the earth were a moml mirror, who could walk upon it? But detection surely comes in God's way- in God's great day when he shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.-W. M. S.