Surely man and God are here displayed; the heart which we carry is disclosed, and the heart of Jesus.

But we have more of this still.

In the next chapter, on a like occasion, the action begins with the Lord, and not, as on the previous occasion, with the disciples. But how differently! With what a different motion the heart of Christ enters the scene of human need, from what their hearts had entered it! "I have compassion on the multitude," says the Lord, "because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way."

With the disciples the word had been this-"send the multitude away, that they may buy themselves victuals;" with the Lord the word was this-"I have compassion on the multitude." And He shews how minutely and exactly He had acquainted Himself with their sorrow, taking notice of the length of time they had been with Him, of the journey they had now to take ere they could get food, and of the distance they had come (see Mark viii. 2, 3.) All this is perfect in its season, but it has no answer in the hearts of the disciples-no suited answer-nothing according to its grace and tenderness. The answer the Lord gets sadly betrays what is in us all-slowness of heart in the faith of God, and coldness and narrowness of heart in the love of one another. Their reply to their Master tells us, that the recollection of the late feeding of the multi

tude had entirely departed from them; and they are again only full of the thought, how impossible it was to feed so many people with so few loaves and fishes.

Could we have believed this, I am disposed to ask? Could they have so soon forgotten the lesson of the previous chapter, when all the circumstances of the present occasion were so directly fitted to bring them fully and vividly before them? But they had forgotten it-so indifferent is the heart we carry to the glory of God, and so cold and careless, touching the need and the sorrow of the scene around us.

Surely, then, I may say, we do in these actions of "feeding the multitude," look at the two objects, man and God, or the heart that we carry in us, and the heart of Jesus. And we are to be humbled by the one, and comforted by the other. The contrast is perfect. It is light and darkness, but it is happy to see, that the love of the Lord was not wearied out by what it again and again got from man and in man. He did not give up His disciples after such discoveries as these, but went on with them in patient love even to the end.

And I would say, let us not learn one of these lessons without learning the other. We may learn what man is, that we may be humbled; but we must not, through unbelief, refuse to learn what God is, lest we come short of all true evangelic, Divine, life and consolation. If we know and own that we have destroyed ourselves, let us believingly listen to the sweet voice of God's own

mercy speaking to us and saying, "in Me is thine help." We may go down into the humbling distant place which conscience opens to us, but we must also go up into the high, and holy, and happy place, which faith apprehends.

GEDALIAH.

Does not the history of Gedaliah, in Jer. xl. and xli., afford us some useful instruction, especially adapted to our present times? Israel had long since been carried away captive, and now Judah, having refused to be instructed by the sorrowful fall of her sister, is also taken captive by the king of Babylon, and Jerusalem is burnt with fire. A few are still left in the land, over whom Gedaliah is appointed governor. Thus the threatened judgments of God are poured out upon that once-loved nation, because of their departure from Him; and sorrow, captivity, and scattering are their portion. What, under these circumstances, should have been the conduct of Gedaliah? Surely he should have sought to persuade the consciences of this little remnant to humble themselves before the Lord, in confession, for their own sins and those of their brethren; they should have sent up an unceasing cry into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth, that He would pour out the spirit of repentance into the hearts of the captives, and in due time restore them to their land. But, instead of this, Geda

liah advises them to gather wine, and summer fruits, and oil, and to dwell in the cities they had taken. We read not of confession or humiliation. We find no allusion made to any sorrow or sympathy for their brethren in captivity. They settle down in the land as if nothing had happened, and for a while all apparently prospers-others are added to their number, and they gathered wine and summer fruits very much." But the fearful scenes of treachery and slaughter that succeed, show us how God disapproved of this unfeeling or careless mode of conduct.

Let us profit, dear brethren, from this history, which is written for our admonition. We may look out upon the church of God much after the same fashion as this little company looked upon Israel and Judah. To them all must have seemed irremediably scattered and broken in pieces. There seemed no hope of restoration. To us, in like manner, the church of God presents a sorrowful picture of disunited fragments. Our temptation may be to try and reconstruct some little portion of it for our own comfort and peace, and to rest contented with the seeming prosperity of a small fraction; regardless of the sorrowful state into which the body is sunk. But let us endeavour to keep our hearts and sympathies alive to the whole of God's people; and hold fast the unity of the church, not as a mere doctrine, but as a truth intimately bound up with all our service and our allegiance to Christ; a truth to be maintained in all our ways and in our most private actions.

A GOOD CONSCIENCE.

1 Peter iii. 21, 22.

THE affections and the conscience are both addressed in the precious mystery of the gospel. Provision is there made to engage the heart for God, and to quiet the conscience toward God. This is its glory. This gives a sinner an interest in the justice as well as in the love of God. In one sense it is all love-for love or grace is at the source; but it is grace providing for the demands of justice, and thus giving ease to the conscience, or to the judicial sense of the soul exercised about right and wrong, or good and evil. The gospel provides "the answer of a good conscience toward God,"-and this is done "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." But there is blessed doctrine contained in that.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus was the public witness from God, that He had accepted the previous death or sacrifice and consequently, when understood

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*This is not a good conscience, as being the verdict on our own practical moral ways, but as expressing our state personally or positively before God; as in Heb. ix. 14; x. 22.

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