circumventing Him all the while. The people shouted hosannas, and three days afterwards were shrieking for His blood. One disciple who had dipped in the same dish, and been trusted with His inmost counsels, deceived and betrayed Him; another was ashamed of Him; three fell asleep while He was preparing for death; all forsook Him. Yet nothing is more surprising than that unshaken, I had well-nigh said obstinate, trust with which He clung to His hopes of our nature, and believed in the face of demonstration.

As we mix in life, there comes, especially to sensitive natures, a temptation to distrust. In young life we throw ourselves with unbounded and glorious confidence on such as we think well of an error soon corrected: for we soon find out-too soon-that men and women are not what they seem. Then comes disappointment; and the danger is a reaction of desolating and universal mistrust. For if we look on the doings of man with a merely worldly eye, and pierce below the surface of character, we are apt to feel bitter scorn and disgust for our fellow-creatures. We have lived to see human hollowness; the ashes of the Dead Sea shore; the falseness of what seemed so fair; the mouldering beneath the whited sepulchre and no wonder if we are tempted to think "friendship all a cheat-smiles hypocrisy-words deceit;" and they who are what is called knowing in life contract by degrees, as the result of their experience, a hollow distrust of men, and learn to sneer at apparently good motives-that demoniacal sneer which we have seen, ay, perhaps felt, curling the lip at times, "Doth Job serve God for naught ?"

The only preservation from this withering of the heart is love. Love is its own perennial fount of strength. The strength of affection is a proof not of the worthiness of the object, but of the largeness of the soul which loves. Love descends, not ascends. The might of a river depends not on the quality of the soil through which it passes, but on the inexhaustibleness and depth of the spring from which it proceeds. The greater mind cleaves to the smaller with more force than the other to it. A parent loves the child more than the child the parent; and partly because the parent's heart is larger, not because the child is worthier. The Saviour loved His disciples infinitely more than His disciples loved Him, because His heart was infinitely larger. Love trusts on-ever hopes and expects better things; and this, a trust springing from itself and out of its own deeps alone.

And more than this. It is this trusting love that makes men what they are trusted to be-so realizing itself. Would

Trust them.

you make men trustworthy? Would you make them true? Believe them. This was the real force of that sublime battle-cry which no Englishman hears without emotion. When the crews of the fleet of Britain knew that they were expected to do their duty, they did their duty. They felt, in that spirit-stirring sentence, that they were trusted; and the simultaneous cheer that rose from every ship was a forerunner of victory-the battle was half-won already. They went to serve a country which expected from them great things, and they did great things. Those pregnant words raised an enthusiasm for the chieftain who had thrown himself upon his men in trust, which a double line of hostile ships could not appall, nor decks drenched in blood extinguish.

And it is on this principle that Christ wins the hearts of His redeemed. He trusted the doubting Thomas, and Thomas arose with a faith worthy "of his Lord and his God." He would not suffer even the lie of Peter to shake His conviction that Peter might love him yet, and Peter answered nobly to that sublime forgiveness. His last prayer was in extenuation and hope for the race who had rejected Him, and the kingdoms of the world are become His own. He has loved us, God knows why-I do not-and we, all unworthy though we be, respond faintly to that love, and try to be what He would have us.

Therefore come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. Oh, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world' can not withstand forever. Learn the

new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love as He loved. Go forth in this spirit to your lifeduties: go forth, children of the Cross, to carry every thing before you, and win victories for God by the conquering power of a love like His.

XVII.

THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO MEN OF

WEALTH.

'And Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break . away every man from his master. Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men, whom I know not whence they be?"-1 Sam. xxv. 10, 11.

I HAVE selected this passage for our subject this evening, because it is one of the earliest cases recorded in the Bible in which the interests of the employer and the employed, the man of wealth and the man of work, stood, or seemed to stand, in antagonism to each other.

It was a period in which an old system of things was breaking up, and the new one was not yet established. The patriarchal relationship of tutelage and dependence was gone, and monarchy was not yet in firm existence. Saul was on the throne but his rule was irregular and disputed. Many things were slowly growing up into custom which had not yet the force of law; and the first steps by which custom passes into law from precedent to precedent are often steps at every one of which struggle and resistance must take place.

The history of the chapter is briefly this: Nabal, the wealthy sheep-master, fed his flocks in the pastures of Carmel. David was leader of a band of men who got their living by the sword on the same hills: outlaws, whose excesses he in some degree restrained, and over whom he retained a leader's influence. A rude irregular honor was not unknown among those fierce men. They honorably abstained from injuring Nabal's flocks. They did more: they protected them from all harm against the marauders of the neighborhood. By the confession of Nabal's own herdsmen, "they were a wall unto them both by night and day, all the time they were with them keeping their flocks."

And thus a kind of right grew up: irregular enough, but sufficient to establish a claim on Nabal for remuneration of these services; a new claim, not admitted by him: reckoned by him an exaction, which could be enforced by no law;

only by that law which is above all statute-law, deciding according to emergencies-an indefinable instinctive sense of fairness and justice. But as there was no law, and each man was to himself a law, and the sole arbiter of his own rights, what help was there but that disputes should rise between the wealthy proprietors and their self-constituted champions, with exaction and tyranny on the one side, churlishness and parsimony on the other? Hence a fruitful and ever-fresh source of struggle: the one class struggling to take as much, and the other to give as little as possible. In modern language, the Rights of Labor were in conflict with the Rights of Property.

The story proceeds thus: David presented a demand, moderate and courteous enough (vs. 6, 7, 8). It was refused by Nabal, and added to the refusal were those insulting taunts of low birth and outcast condition which are worse than injury, and sting, making men's blood run fire. One court of appeal was left. There remained nothing but the trial by force. 66 Gird ye on," said David, "every man his sword."

Now observe the fearful, hopeless character of this struggle. The question had come to this: whether David, with his ferocious and needy six hundred mountaineers, united by the sense of wrong, or Nabal, with his well-fed and trained hirelings, bound by interest and not by love to his cause, were stronger? Which was the more powerful-want whetted by insult, or selfishness pampered by abundance; they who wished to keep by force, or they who wished to take? An awful and uncertain spectacle, but the spectacle which is exhibited in every country where rights are keenly felt, and duties lightly regarded-where insolent demand is met by insulting defiance. Wherever classes are held apart by rivalry and selfishness, instead of drawn together by the-law of love wherever there has not been established a kingdom of heaven, but only a kingdom of the world-there exist the forces of inevitable collision.

I. The causes of this false social state.

II. The message of the Church to the man of wealth.

I. False basis on which social superiority was held to rest. Throughout Nabal's conduct was built upon the assumption of his own superiority. He was a man of wealth. David was dependent on his own daily efforts. Was not that enough to settle the question of superiority and inferiority? It was enough on both sides for a long time, till the falsehood of the assumption became palpable and intolerable. But palpable and intolerable it did become at last.

A social falsehood will be borne long, even with considerable inconvenience, until it forces itself obtrusively on men's attention, and can be endured no longer. The exact point at which this social falsehood, that wealth constitutes superiority, and has a right to the subordination of inferiors, becomes intolerable, varies according to several circumstances. The evils of poverty are comparative-they depend on climate. In warm climates, where little food, no fuel, and scanty shelter are required, the sting is scarcely felt till poverty becomes starvation. They depend on contrast. Far above the point where poverty becomes actual famine, it may become unbearable if contrasted strongly with the unnecessary luxury and abundance enjoyed by the classes above. Where all suffer equally, as men and officers suffer in an Arctic voyage, men bear hardship with cheerfulness: but where the suf fering weighs heavily on some, and the luxury of enjoyment is out of all proportion monopolized by a few, the point of reaction is reached long before penury has become actual want: or again, when wealth or rank assumes an insulting, domineering character-when contemptuous names for the poor are invented, and become current among the more unfeeling of a wealthy class-then the falsehood of superiority can be tolerated no longer: for we do not envy honors which are meekly borne, nor wealth which is unostentatious.

Now it was this which brought matters to a crisis. David had borne poverty long-nay, he and his men had long endured the contrast between their own cavern-homes and beds upon the rock, and Nabal's comforts. But when Nabal added to this those pungent biting sneers which sink into poor men's hearts and rankle-which are not forgotten, but come out fresh in the day of retribution-" Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master," then David began to measure himself with Nabal; not a wiser man-nor a better-nor even a stronger. Who is this Nabal? Intellectually, a fool; morally, a profligate, drowning reason in excess of wine at the annual sheep-shearing; a tyrant over his slaves-overbearing to men who only ask of him their rights. Then rose the question which Nabal had better not have forced men to answer for themselves. By what right does this possessor of wealth lord it over men who are inferior in no one particular?

Now observe two things.

1. An apparent inconsistency in David's conduct. David had received injury after injury from Saul, and had only forgiven. One injury from Nabal, and David is striding over