In Rebekah's case the root of the treachery was ambition; but here we find a trait of female character. It is a woman's ambition, not a man's. Rebekah desired nothing for herself, but every thing for Jacob: for him spiritual blessing-at all events, temporal distinction. She did wrong, not for her own advantage, but for the sake of one she loved. Here is a touch of womanhood. The same is observable in the recklessness of personal consequences. So as only he might gain, she did not care. "Upon me be the curse, my son. And it is this which forces us, even while we must condemn, to compassionate. Throughout the whole of this revolting scene of deceit and fraud, we can never forget that Rebekah was a mother. And hence a certain interest and sympathy are sustained. Another feminine trait is seen in the conduct of Rebekah. It was devotion to a person rather than to a principle. A man's idolatry is for an idea, a woman's is for a person. A man suffers for a monarchy, a woman for a king. A man's martyrdom differs from a woman's. Nay, even in their religion, personality marks the one, attachment to an idea or principle the other. Woman adores God in His personality, man adores Him in His attributes. At least that is, on the whole, the characteristic difference.

Now here you see the idolatry of the woman: sacrificing her husband, her elder son, high principle, her own soul, for an idolized person. Remark that this was, properly speaking, idolatry. For in nothing is a greater mistake made than in the conception attached to that word in reference to the affections. A mother's affection is called, by many religious people, idolatry, because it is intense. Do not mistake. No one ever loved child, brother, sister, too much. It is not the intensity of affection, but its interference with truth and duty, that makes it idolatry. Rebekah loved her son more than truth, i. e., more than God. This was to idolize. And hence Christ says, "If any man love father or mother more than me, he is not worthy of me." You can only test that when a principle comes in the way. There are persons who would romantically admire this devotion of Rebekah, and call it beautiful. To sacrifice all, even principle, for another-what higher proof of affection can there be? Oh, miserable sophistry! The only true affection is that which is subordinate to a higher. It has been truly said, that in those who love little, love is a primary affection; a secondary one in those who love much. Be sure he can not love another much who loves not honor more. For that higher affection sustains and elevates the lower human one, casting round it a glory which mere personal feeling could never give.

her son.

Compare, for instance, Rebekah's love for Jacob with that of Abraham for his son Isaac. Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son to duty. Rebekah sacrificed truth and duty to Which loved a son most ?-which was the nobler love? Even as a question of permanence, which would last the longer? For consider what respect this guilty son and guilty mother could retain for each other after this: would not love turn into shame and lose itself in recriminations? For affection will not long survive respect, however it may protract its life by effort.

Observe, again: monsters do not exist. When you hear of great criminality, you think of natures originally monstrous, not like others. But none are liars for the sake of lying. None are cruel for cruelty's sake. It is simply want of principle that makes glaring sins. The best affections perverted-that is the history of great crimes. See here: there is no touch of compunction from first to last. The woman seems all unsexed. She has no thought of her defrauded eldest son: none of her deceived husband. There is an inflexible pursuit of her object, that is all. It is wonderful how ambition and passion dazzle to all but the end desired. It is wonderful how the true can become false, and the tender-hearted hard and cruel for an end. Nor is this lesson obsolete. Are there no women who would do the same now? Are there none who would sacrifice a son's principles or a daughter's happiness to a diseased appetite for distinction? Are there none who would conceal a son's extravagance, foster it, furnish it means unknown, or in an underhand way, in what is called the manœuvring of fashionable life; and do that for family advancement from which the strong sense and principle of a father would recoil and revolt? And all this, not because they are monsters, but because their passion for distinction is inflamed, and their affections unregulated.

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Now look at Jacob's sin. He was not without ambition; but he had not that unscrupulous, inflexible will which generally accompanies ambition and makes it irresistible. A bad man naturally he was not: nor a false man: but simply a pliable and weak man. Hence he became the tool of another-the agent in a plan of villainy which he had not the contrivance to originate. He was one of those who, if they could, would have what they wish innocently. He would not play false, yet he would unjustly have. He was rather afraid of doing the deceit than anxious that the deceit should not be done. Here was the guilt in its germ. He had indulged and pampered the fancy; and be sure he who

wishes a temporal end for itself, does, or will soon, will the means. All temptations and all occasions of sin are powerless, except as far as they fall in with previous meditations upon the guilt. An act of sin is only a train long laid, fired by a spark at last. Jacob pondered over the desire of the blessing, dallied with it, and then fell. Now observe the rapidity and the extent of the inward deterioration. See how this plain, simple man, Jacob, becomes by degrees an accomplished deceiver; how he shrinks at nothing; how, at first unable to conceive the plan devised by another, he becomes at last inventive. At first the acted falsehood-a semblance; then the lie in so many words; then the impious use of the name, "The Lord thy God brought it me.' "" How he was forced by fear and the necessities of begun guilt into enormity: deeper and deeper. Happy the man who can not, even from the faint shadows of his own experience, comprehend the desperate agony of such a state: the horror mixed with hardening effrontery with which a man feels himself compelled to take step after step, and is aware at last that he is drifting, drifting, from the great shore of truth-like one carried out by the tide against his will, till he finds himself at last in a sea of falsehood, his whole life one great dream of false appearance.

Let us apply this briefly.

Doubtless perverted good is always different from original vice. In his darkest wanderings, one in whom the Spirit strives is essentially different from one who is utterly depraved. Sensibility to anguish makes the difference, if there were nothing else. Jacob, lying in this way, plunging headlong, deeper and deeper, was yet a different man from one who is through and through hollow. Grant this-and yet that fact of human pervertibility is an awful fact and mystery. Innocence may become depraved: delicate purity may pass into grossness. It is an appalling fact. parency of crystal clearness may end in craft, double-dealing, contrivance. Briefly, therefore

1. Learn to say "No."

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2. Beware of those fancies, those day-dreams, which represent things as possible which should be forever impossible. Beware of that affection which cares for your happiness more than for your honor.

Lastly, in the hour of strong temptations, throwing ourselves off self, distrusting ourselves, let us rest in Him who, having been tempted, knows what temptation is; who "will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it."

XIV.

SALVATION OUT OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH.

"Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did," etc.-Acts ix. 36.

"There was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band," etc.—Acts x. 1.

Two events are connected with St. Peter's stay at Joppa: the miraculous restoration of Dorcas, and the vision which prepared for the reception of Cornelius into the Christian Church. The apostle was at Lydda, when he was summoned by the news of the death of Dorcas to Joppa, about twelve miles distant. Now observe here the variety of the gifts which are bestowed upon the Christian Church. Four characters, exceedingly diverse, are brought before us in this ninth chapter: Paul, a man singularly gifted, morally and intellectually, with qualities more brilliant than almost ever fell to the lot of man; Peter, full of love and daring, a champion of the truth; Ananias, one of those disciples of the inward life whose vocation is sympathy, and who, by a single word," brother," restore light to those that sit in darkness and loneliness; lastly, Dorcas, in a humbler, but not less true sphere of divine goodness, clothing the poor with her own hands, practically loving and benevolent.

We err in the comparative estimate we form of great and small. Imagine a political economist computing the value of such a life as this of Dorcas. He views men in masses: considers the economic well-being of society on a large scale calculates what is productive of the greatest good for the greatest number. To him the few coats and garments made for a few poor people would be an item in the world's well-being scarcely worthy of being taken into the reckoning. Let the historian estimate her worth. The chart of time lies unrolled before him. The fall of dynasties and the blending together of races, the wars and revolutions of nations that have successively passed across the world's stage—these are the things that occupy him. What are acts like hers in the midst of interests such as these and of contemplations so large? All this is beneath the dignity of history. Or again, let us summon a man of larger contemplations still. To the

astronomer, lifting his clear eye to the order of the stars, this planet itself is but a speck. To come down from the universe to the thought of a tiny earth is a fell descent; but to descend to the thought of a humble female working at a few garments, were a fall indeed.

Now rise to the Mind of which all other minds are but emanations—and this conception of grand and insignificant is not found in His nature. Human intellect, as it rises to the great, neglects the small. The Eternal mind condescends to the small; or rather, with It there is neither great nor small. It has divided the rings of the earthworm with as much microscopic care as the orbits in which the planets move: It has painted the minutest feather on the wing of the butterfly as carefully as It has hung the firmament with the silver splendor of the stars. Great and small are words which have only reference to us.

Further still judging the matter by the heart, ascending to the heart of God, there is another aspect of the subject: great belongs only to what is moral-infinitude and eternity are true of feelings rather than of magnitude, or space, or time. The mightiest distance that mind can conceive, calculable only by the arrow-flight of light, can yet be measured. The most vast of all the cycles that imagination ever wanted for the ages that are gone by, can yet be estimated by number. But tell us, if you can, the measure of a single feeling. Find for us, if you can, the computation by which we may estimate a single spiritual affection. They are absolutély incommensurable-these things together, magnitude and feeling. Let the act of Dorcas be tried thus. When the world has passed away, and the lust thereof, "he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." The true infinite, the real eternal, is love. When all that economist, historian, philosopher can calculate, is gone, the love of Dorcas will still be fresh, and living, in the eternity of the illimitable Mind.

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Observe, once more, the memorial which she left behind her. When Peter went into the upper chamber, he was surrounded by the poor widows, who showed him, weeping, the garments she had made. This was the best epitaph: the tears of the poor.

There is a strange jar upon the mind in the funeral, when the world is felt to be going on as usual. Traffic and pleasure do not alter when our friend lies in the upper chamber. The great, busy world rolls on, unheeding, and our egotism suggests the thought, So will it be when I am not. This world, whose very existence seems linked with mine, and to