IL Fine gold is dimmed when bare talents abe wasted ob abused. Intellectual ability, artistic taste, gifts for music, philosophy or science, stored knowledge, refined culture, natural genius, and educational acquisitions are like fine gold. Yet this gold may be dimmed : 1. When the gifts and acquirements are idly Tieglected. Noble promises disappoint the beholder with a miserable failure. Even so coarse a sin as drunkenness has ite victims among the sons of genius. When sensuality, sordid love of money, self- satisfied conventionality, feverish worldly ambition, or any other low pursuit draws the soul away from the high vocation marked out for it by its ovra peculiar gifts, the fine gold is dimmed. 2. When the talents are prostituted to low ends. The gold may be used, but, instead of adorning a temple, it decorates a voluptuary's banquet-hall. The evil use of it degrades the precious metal. Great endowments are too often similarly degraded. They are used for iU. The painter, unlike Pra Angelico, who, working on his knees and for God, made the exercise of his art an act of worship, forsakes his ideal to please the low tastes of his patrons. The writer neglects truth to fiatter the popular cries of the day. The philosophic genius absorbs his mental gifts in mercenary calcula- tions. Thus the fine gold is dimmed.
III. Fine gold is dimmed when youth is ill speht. J!oi jo ' '^o golden age (if life. If not in liberty and ease, for the yoke must then be fitted to the shoulders, .still, in freshness, vigour, and opportunity, it is like the morning going forth in its strength, bright as gold. But when the promise of childhood is belied by the performance of manhood, how is the fine gold become dim! Young men who have not yet lost the bloom of first innocence should beware of the fatal temptations which threaten to cast the beauty and purity of their souls into the mire. We all have an opportunity to begin life well. Some fine gold is then bestowed upon every soid. Let us see to it in these early years that the treasure of a good conscience before God and man is not lost.
IV. Pine gold ib dimmed when a Christian falls into sin. The graces of the spiritual life are as finest gold. God counts his people as his jewels (Mai. iii. 17). Rare, and bright, and beautiful, glorious and golden in the sunlight of God's love, is the character of true saintliness. There is no beauty comparable to the beauty of holiness. But alas 1 when the saint trails his white robe in the foul ways of sin and casts the pearls that adorn him to the swine, how is all the glory and beauty degraded 1 Nothing looks more repulsive than a fine garment besmirched with filth ; it is far worse than the beggar's rags, to which dirt seems natural. The fallen Christian defi'i's himself and dims his gold and brings shame on the Name of Christ by his sin
fle THE LAMENTATIONS OP JEREMIAH. [<«• !▼• 1— 2a
V, Pine oold is dimmed when the Church is couruptbd. Like Jerusalem of old, the bride of the Lamb should be all-glorious with yrace and goodness. The golden perfection of humanity should characterize this society and make it a worthy kingdom of heaven upon earth. But how often has the fine gold been dimmed, in pagan additions to primitive Christianity, in superstitions of the dark ages, in cruelties and immoralilies of the Middle Ages, in Catholic prejudice and Protestant biiterness, in the arid rationalism of Germany and the worldly conventionalism of England 1
Vers. 3, 4. — The violation of maternal instincU. I. Maternai. instincts abb
AMOKO THE MOST WIDESPREAD AND DEEP-SEATED ORDINANCES OF PROVIDENCE. 1.
Widespread. They are shared by the lower animals as well as by human beings. The fierce.st monsters are careful of their cubs. The most stupid know how to tend and rear their offspring. Beaming jackals of the desert have their lairs where they give suck to their little ones. The varied fields of animal life all bear evidence to this wonderful instinct. It is seen among all races of men. Brutal de^iraded classes, untrained savages, fierce warlike people, all possess it. 2. Deep-seated, These instincts are far deeper than any merely social tendency. They are strong and vital as appetites. The mother feels for her child as for part of herself. Many desires and habits will be abandoned befure these instincts will iaiL They outlive virtue and principle and dwell still in the vicious.
II. The VIOLATION of maternal instincts is ONE OF THE MOST HORRIBLE EVENTS.
1. In proportion to the profound and almost universal character of these instincts is the outrage on nature itself that the violation of thcni involves. We judge of an influence by the forces it has to overcome. It must be very strong if it can conquer great resist- ance. To conquer such resistance as that offered by the maternal instincts the evil influence must be powerful indeed. Therefore the violation of these instincts must he a proof of a most exceptionally energetic force of evil. Lady Macbeth must have sold herself to a very demon of ambition before she could unsex herself enough to say—
" I have given suok, and know How tender 'tie to love the babe that milks me : I would, while it was smiling in ray face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gumi^ And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, etc"
2. Moreover, tbe/ateZ effuct of the violation of maternal instincts is another proof of the terrible evils of the corruption that can make it possible. These instincts are essential to the very continnance of life on our globe. Creatures that come into the world with so much feebleness as is the case with human beings would perish were they not pro- tected in infancy by the wonderful passionate care of maternity.
III. That must be a frightful calamity which can lead to the violation of UATEBNAL INSTINCTS. Such was the Calamity of the siege of Jerusalem. Then hunger and despair led parents to neglect their children. The worst mad violation of maternal instincts had been anticipated in a siege of Samaria, when a mother devoured her own child (2 Kings vi. 24 — 29). Such things have been done since. They force us to
•ealize the barbarous cruelty of war whicli some would hide beneath its foolish pomp and pageantry. They also make us see the evil of extreme misery. There is a point beyond which suffering ceases to be beneficial. It then becomes a positive curse. It tears up the very roots of the most precious growths of nature. It drives to worse moral degradation than luxury tempts to, though in the eyes of a merciful God the guilt cannot be regarded witli so much wrath where the misery that urges to it is so pitiable. Therefore it should be the work of the Christian philanthropist to remove physical wretchedness, not only for its own sake, but also as one of the first means tor preventing crime and vice.
Ver. 5. — Severset of fortune, I. Reverses of fortune abb not UNOOMMOir. It li