we taste the bitter waters, and compare our present with our past condition, instead of looking up to God, who is higher than the things which are pressing us down.

We

We are brought to Marah, it may be, we murmur; and as murmurings only increase the bitterness of the waters, we cry unto the Lord, and He shows us the tree which immediately sweetens them. There is a tree, and One who hung on it, under the curse of God, when on that tree He bore our sins in His own body. This is God's "ordinance" to us for sweetening the bitter waters. It is the doctrine of the Cross. have learnt its grandest lesson, as being the groundwork of our reconciliation with God, for "God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." It is indeed "Marah" to us, when we begin to discover that sin dwelleth in us. In most cases, it is the sense of guilt, arising from positive transgressions of God's commandments, which affects us at first, and leads us to the Cross as our only refuge; but how is the bitterness, arising from the discovery that, fearful as was the discovery of rebellion against God, and alienation of heart from God, it is nothing compared with the fearfulness of the discovery, that sin and death are our natural constitution, to be met? even by the Cross of Christ. Cast this tree into the waters and they are sweetened. It is not only that your sins have been borne by Christ, but that you yourself have in God's judgment been crucified with Him. "I am," says the Apostle, "crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live." "Our old man is crucified with Him." How are the bitter

waters sweetened! How much deeper does the love of God appear, how much broader the work of Christ, how much more solid the ground on which we stand, when we can dare to see all that we are, as well as to consider all that we have done; and see all judged in the Cross!

An onward journey in the wilderness may bring us to"waters that fail." (Jer. xv. 11.) This is another Marah. Have we learnt how to correct disappointment in our expectation from ourselves? we need to learn the same with respect to others. We expect from them that which we do not find in ourselves, and we murmur; but when the cry comes unto the Lord, again the tree sweetens the bitter waters, or makes those that "failed" us to be the occasion of leading us to the living fountain of waters. It is still Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; but now known not only in what He has done, but in what He Himself is, as never disappointing our expectation from Him, "I am," says He, "the Bread of life; he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst."

Or our Marah has been found in another direction. We have thought to do the impossibility of serving God and mammon-Christ and the world. We set aside the experience of others, and almost the testimony of the Lord Himself, and will needs hazard the experiment. Sure of our value of Christ, and of our real desire to benefit others, we fondly hold to the

Supposed to be an allusion to the mirage, an optical delusion frequent in the desert, tantalizing the weary traveller with the appearance of water.

thought, that the world of our day is hardly the world of past history; that there are so many recognized ameliorating influences at work in the world, that we would fain help them on. But it is not long ere we are brought to a point; either the conscience is to be maintained in its allegiance to God, or surrendered to the world. The world, in seeking its own, cannot afford room for exercise of conscience towards God. No association with the world can be based on such a principle. The world ignores God's right to be heard and obeyed in its matters. Its friendship is enn.ity with God. Again we murmur. Why is it so? Tie cry, and again the same tree heals these bitter waters; the glory of the Cross is discovered, in not only separating us from a world under righteous doom, but as introducing us into "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us;" and we learn to glory in the Cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto us, and we unto the world.

The experience of the children of God in itself is for the most part substantially the same, because it is the result of that which God has made them to be in Christ; but the sweetening of these experiences in God's appointed way, by the use of His "ordinance," Jesus Christ and Him crucified, makes all the difference of the waters in their bitterness occasioning murmuring, or the casting in of the tree which God has pointed out, causing praise and thanksgiving; so that the next stage in the journey through the wilderness is the shade of the palm trees, and refreshment of the wells of Elim. (Ex. xv. 27.)

Israel sang triumphantly and then murmured, and by virtue of the tree cast into the waters were refreshed, and learnt Jehovah as their Healer. Jeremiah triumphed, too, in the Lord. "But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible One, therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed, for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins and the heart, let me see Thy vengeance on them for unto Thee have I opened my cause. Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord: for He hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers." (Jer. xx. 11-13.) But this song of praise is not sustained. The waters were bitter indeed unto the prophet, all his familiars watching for his halting. Speedily he turns from God's deliverance to his actual circumstances, and curses the day wherein he was born. (Verse 14.) He cried not unto the Lord, and found no tree to sweeten the bitter waters. Such will be the case, when our deceived heart would feed upon the ashes of our own experience, instead of the flesh and blood of Christ.

The disciple of Christ has full taste of all the bitterness which belongs to man, and he tastes also of bitter waters that others know not (see Ps. lxxiii.); but he has been taught the secret of how to sweeten these bitter waters, by bringing in Christ and Him crucified in the various aspects in which God presents Him to our faith, and finds his strange character written by the apostle, "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."

PEACE AND SERVICE.

JOHN XX. 19-21.

THE last public act of Christ was on the Cross. The world has never seen Him since He rose from the dead. But though the world may say, "The Lord seeth us not," "Who is lord over us?" Jesus has not finished with the world. He will come again. This will be His next public act: "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." (Rev. i. 7.) The last universal cry of the world, in reference to Christ, was, "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" The next general exclamation will be, "Rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." (Rev. vi. 16.) When Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire, all enemies must be put under His feet; all those who have not obeyed the gospel, will be punished with everlasting destruction. When Jesus died upon the cross, the meek and lowly Lamb put away sin; but when the world again beholds Him, it will be said, "The great day of the wrath of the Lamb is come; and who shall be able to stand?"

It is between these two public acts of Jesus, that the gospel of peace is now preached. Accordingly, we find the Lord, after His resurrection from the dead, ministering the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of peace to His own disciples, and commanding them to go forth and preach it to others. So full of grace is this blessed gospel, that it was to be published first at Jerusalem; the very murderers of Christ were first to hear that