and reverence as a just and righteous Ruler, whose decrees are not to be mocked or lightly regarded. “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" When men ruthlessly exploit their fellow-creatures, grind the faces of the poor, make their dirty dividends out of sweated labour, coin the misery of the economically helpless into gold, shall we not say in plain terms that what is lacking in their hearts is the fear of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity? When

civilised nations aid and abet each other in nefarious plans for filching from another, weaker, less civilised people its land and liberty, or when they cultivate distrust and ill-will against each other until the dreadful arbitrament of war seems the only way to cut the Gordian knot skilfully made by diplomacy, has not the fear of God's statutes vanished from their darkened minds? To have that fear is the beginning of a true estimate of life; it is to begin to see light in God's light shining through the tangled undergrowth of passion, greed, selfseeking; it is to rise above the ethics of the jungle, which still rule over large tracts of business, while they are supreme in international relationships, where we seem to have hardly emerged from the savage state as yet. But God's law is not merely to be feared; when we recognise its beneficent nature and intent, when we perceive that in fulfilling it we fulfil our own highest possibilities, then we arrive at the stage when we render it our unforced homage, our free and glad obedience, and know it for the law of liberty, the law of Christ, the law of love. "A new commandment give I unto you-that ye love one another."

I need say very little, in conclusion, about this fear of God as it operates in relation to the individual soul. To know at each moment that we hold whatever powers we possess under God and from Him; that we are responsible to Him for the use we make of our faculties; that we stand in a direct, close and intimate relation to One who knows us altogether-that is at once a sobering and an uplifting consciousness; it is in this that men and women have found the strength to overcome the world, to despise its paltry bribes, to withstand its angry threats, to keep their hands clean and their hearts unenslaved, and to tread sin underfoot. Once a soul truly fears God he is liberated from every other fear. In this same consciousness, too, our sorrows may be bravely and patiently borne, instead of crushing us, because they are not inflicted by a blind and callous fate, but are a fast of the Lord's appointing, and part of the counsel of Him in whose loving wisdom it is our own highest wisdom to confide. We do not fear Him as a tyrant, but reverence Him as a parent, whose whole intent towards us is good and gracious; and in His strong hand, though many a hope may fail, and many a star grow dim in the heavens, and the solid ground rock beneath our feet, we are safe. In this world, and in all worlds, we are safe. In a multitude or alone, we are safe. For to fear Him is to trust Him, and to commit our spirits to Him—all whose tenderness we have seen shining in the face of Jesus Christ-for time and eternity. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom," says the Old Dispensation; "but," adds and completes the New, perfect love casteth out fear."

II

THE DUTY OF INDUSTRY

"He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich."-PROV. x. 4.

WE called the Book of Proverbs last Sunday morning a book of every-day religious counsel for every-day folk, a book which has much to say about wisdom, but means by wisdom the art and science of right living. It lacks all romantic touch, it is free from any suspicion of mysticism; in reading its chapters we are caught up into no third heaven-we are, on the contrary, kept uncommonly close to the realities, the tasks and duties and responsibilities of life. It has thus, like the Epistle of James, a special and most useful function to perform.

Many people go to religion, when they do so at all, with a view to escaping from these pressing realities— they like a romantic, or sentimental, or soothing religion, something which shall act as a pleasant opiate, ministering a grateful temporary oblivion of week-day cares and preoccupations. Well, of course, we do not get that in Proverbs; the authors of these shrewd maxims, drawn from close observation and experience, are not concerned with ingenious speculations or soulful yearnings, but with the problem of how men may make the most and the best of life-this life. They do not, for instance, profess to sing the praises of poverty, or to

undervalue security from harassing economic care; their advice is addressed to those who would become orderly, well-reputed, not unprosperous members of the community, leading useful lives, keeping their passions under control, enjoying the affection of their family, the esteem of their acquaintances, and leaving an unspotted name behind them. A very prosaic ideal, in short; and yet, let us be quite honest, the ideal most of us would be abundantly satisfied to realise, the ideal which would give us a happy and healthy race of people if it were steadily aimed at.

Suffer me to say another thing before I come to our immediate subject this morning. The morality inculcated in this book is by no means based on mere selfish calculations; behind the faithfulness in the discharge of our daily obligations there lies all the time a working faith in God who has ordained our lot in His wisdom and righteousness. We are to be obedient, not to a soulless law, which will crush us if we are so foolish as to come into collision with it, but to a beneficent Lawgiver, whose discipline is a parent's discipline, designed to help us and promote our own highest interests. And I ask, is it not good for us so to carry religion into our daily life, to feel that he who exercises the humblest virtues in relation to his fellows, as employee or as employer, as a buyer or a seller, is really serving God— is, indeed, rendering the particular service without which mere emotion, however sincere, is singularly unavailing? People are always trying to escape from that interpretation of religion, on the pretence that it is too low; as a matter of fact I suspect that they find it too hard. I have positively seen it stated in a modern work that it is only the sacraments that

make us sons of God-morality can never do so; and that a fairly faulty life, with frequent sacraments, is more pleasing to God than a life of heroic virtue without sacraments! Now I regard this kind of teaching as simply pernicious; and instead of this morbid, incenseladen atmosphere we had better breathe the clean, wholesome air of morality based on religion which meets us in the Book of Proverbs.

The passages we read this morning inculcate in the plainest terms the duty of industry, indicating its rewards, and warning against the vice of indolence. That is not merely Old Testament teaching; it meets us again in Jesus' Parable of the Talents, with its praise of the good and faithful servant and its vivid condemnation of the wicked and slothful one. Jesus had grown up in an atmosphere which appreciated good and honest work, and set a very high value indeed upon manual exertion. The greatest Jewish rabbis all had a trade at their fingers' ends, and maintained themselves by their labour, as carpet-weavers, needlemakers and the like; and no one looked down on them, but rather esteemed them more highly on that account. Paul wrought with his hands as a weaver of tent-cloth, and as the shuttle flew to and fro, the busy shuttle of his mind was at work likewise, and he wove the strange and intricate patterns of his doctrine. And in the seventeenth century you find the great Spinoza, a son of the same race, writing his philosophical treatises in a humble room, and earning his daily bread by polishing optical lenses. All these men were in the simplest sense of the term industrious, because they instinctively knew that self-respect and happiness lie that way; and Jesus Himself knew the satisfaction of handling tools