8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

II. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, and that by seeing him we can see the Father, our own Father in heaven.

IV. THE CONDITIONS MUST BE FULFILLED IF WE WOULD RECEIVE THE BLESSINGS TO WHICH WE ARE INVITED, vs. 6, 7.

1. Seek ye the Lord, for only seeking can one find.

2. While he may be found. The time and opportunity had come.

Cyrus had

offered to permit the exiles to return. The bands were beginning to assemble. After the company had started for Jeru

There

salem it would be too late.
are continually coming to us oppor-
tunities, which will not wait.

3. v. 7. Let the wicked forsake his way. His evil plans and purposes, his evil course of life, wrong objects of pursuit, his selfish and sinful aims and plans of life; two phrases being designed to include all that pertains to the outer and inner life of man. "He must make his heart right, and his outer life also; not his heart only, but his life; not his life only, but his heart no less." Cowles.

The unrighteous man. Literally, the man of iniquity, every one who does wrong and belongs to the kingdom of evil, inwardly and secretly as well as in outwardly wicked ways. His thoughts. "Not merely or primarily' opinions,' views of things, but the moral purposes, the chosen objects for which one lives; the preferences, determinations which control all his subordinate activities." Cowles. Let him return. Man in the Scriptures is everywhere described as having wandered away from the true God. And he will have mercy upon him. He is assured that however far away he has gone, however aggravated his sin, God will not reject him. This takes away one great hindrance to returning to God.

From a photograph. "Come unto me."

Thorwaldsen's Statue of Christ.

And this is the first essential condition of restoring men to God. A religion without forgiveness is of necessity a failure in saving men. For sinners cannot come to God freely, as children, leaving the past behind them, without first having the assurance that God will receive and forgive.

But Remember, that there is no salvation if we insist on continuing in sin, and all the works of the flesh. It is true of ourselves individually and of our country.

Our Country.

"What shall we do we, the American people and the people of every nation to inherit eternal life, that is, to continue to live among the nations of the world? What we do will depend upon our answer to the more searching question, Are we ready to abandon the national sins that beset us, to turn away from the spirit of international rivalry to the spirit of Christ, and to set justice over profits in our national life? If we are ready to do these things, then we will be worthy to live as a nation among the nations. If we are not, then we shall cease to be, and our place will be taken by another."-President Garfield, of Williams College.

Our Young Men.

"There is a story of a rich man who sent to the country for his nephew, whom he had never seen. 'I want you to live with me. You are to have everything you need, and the very best that I can give you. It is my plan to make you my heir. But I must be able to count on you absolutely. Living here in the house with me and having access to my office at all hours, you will know many of my business secrets. You must make them your secrets. Defend them with your life, if need be, but never give them up.' For a time the nephew was true to his trust, then he listened to a man who offered him money to betray his uncle's secrets. When his uncle discovered the treachery he sent the boy back to his home. I am done with you,' he said; you have betrayed the trust I have committed to you.' John T. Farris.

V. GOD'S PLANS AND PROMISES ARE CERTAIN OF SUCCESS, vs. 8–11. For God's promises have back of them all the power of the universe, and are as certain as the process of the seasons.

8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. We see and know only a very narrow sphere, but God sees and controls the infinite universe of ways and means.

Dis

light

9. As the heavens are higher than the earth. This measure of the superiority of God to man becomes vaster as men progress in the knowledge of astronomy. tances in the heavens are too great to be given in miles; they are stated in years," that is, the distance that light, travelling at the rate of 186,330 miles a second, would traverse in a year. "As to the size of the disc-like space which contains most of the stars," Professor Young, of Princeton, says, " its diameter must be as great as 20,000 or 30,000 light years, how much greater we cannot even guess; and as to 'the beyond,' we are still more ignorant.'

And God's plans and methods are as much beyond our comprehension as his universe is beyond our little part of this world.

An exquisite illustration, vs. 10, 11, is taken from the familiar facts we see every year all around us. The rain in the clouds is a mystery. How can water which is 700 times heavier than air, be lifted up on the sunbeams, and float in the thin air! All the rivers in the world are thus lifted up, and come down in the rain. It is a parable of God's Word. All that it promises is certain to be fulfilled. The seed is sometimes long in sprouting, and slow in growing, but the fruits and flowers shall yet cover the whole earth.

"It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining daffodils;

In every dimpled drop, I see
Wild flowers on the hills.

The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town.

It is not raining rain to me
It's raining roses down.

"It is not raining rain to me

But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
May find a bed and room.

A health unto the happy,
A fig for him who frets.
It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining violets."

PRINT vs. 9-16. MEMORIZE vs. 12, 13.

GOLDEN TEXT. - Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. -ISA. 55:7.

Is it to tell the sailors where to go? No, it is to tell them where not to go. Why are stories of bad men told in the Bible, such as the one in to-day's IV. lesson ?

They are a warning. They are pictures of a character that repels us, that urges us not to enter any path that leads to such an end.

See an interesting passage, Paradise Under what influences would so young a king be likely Lost, Book I., lines 404, 405, and the

Could his repentance undo the wrongs he had in- by Geo. P. Brown, Bloomington, Ill.

I. MANASSEH, THE BAD SON OF A GOOD FATHER. HOW HE BECAME A BAD BOY.

"Manasseh was born after Hezekiah's recovery from his terrible illness. He was but twelve years old when he began to reign."

His mother was Hephzibah the daughter of a Zechariah of whom we know nothing. "The son of Hezekiah and Hephzibah was the worst of all the kings of Judah, and had the longest reign." Farrar.

How is it that good fathers have sometimes such terrible sons?

I. "His name, Manasseh, signifies 'Forgetfulness,' and was not a forgetting of other sorrows, but of all that was noble and righteous in the attempted reformation which had been the main religious work of his father's life.". Farrar. His father was devoted to the religion of the true God. His whole life was so lived that every one in his kingdom knew his character, and his good works, so that " King Hezekiah can have no finer panegyric than that of the son of Sirach : 'Even the kings of Judah failed, for they forsook the law of the Most High: all except David, and Hezekiah, and Josiah." "

But Manasseh as he grew up forgot his father's character, and works, and life, and reforms, and the law of God.

2. He was doubtless brought up in the harem. Even his good father could have little influence there, and he was busy with the great affairs of his kingdom. Doubtless he was waited on, petted, flattered, courted, treated as a superior being, whose will should never be checked, nor fancy thwarted; with no hard tasks. Even though his mother Hephzibah, "The Delightful," was as true as Hezekiah himself, there would be many others who would foster his self-conceit.

3. "Had Hezekiah been selfish in his devoutness? or how had the young lad Manasseh so come to hate his father's God? When we ask such questions in a general way, we encounter a mystery that is insoluble; but there are fathers with aching hearts and disquieted consciences who as they have seen their growing boys following standards and ideals diametrically opposed to their own have sometimes felt themselves nearer the answer to the question than they have dared to admit.". G. A. Johnson Ross in S. S. Times.

It may be that Hezekiah was so intensely busy with his reforms and the cares of his kingdom that he found little time to look after his heir and successor. Many a

hard-working business man has neglected his sons, who sometimes have been ruined for want of his training, and has lived to be willing to give up his whole fortune if he could only save his son. Here is a little picture from The Canadian Royal Templar which may be well for such to consider.

At the same time parents who are devotedly religious and live their religion, and are true in their business, and in their home, are the most successful in raising their children for the good of the world.

A Good Start not Ruinous, is the title of an interesting editorial in the Sunday School Times.

"Men often turn out well even if their early environment and training have been good. This would not seem to be an unreasonable truth; yet common talk assumes just the opposite. Ministers' sons and deacons' daughters are pitied as being heavily handicapped in the effort for right living. Facts, here, are worth more than gossip-bred theories. Two magazines The Nineteenth Century in England, and Munsey's in America - have made notable contributions to the truth in this strangely falsified field.

"Canon Welldon, of Westminster Abbey, examined the sixty-nine volumes of the Dictionary of [British] National Biography, and noted the names of men and women who had rendered special service to their nation, and who were children respectively of either lawyers, physicians, or clergymen. The lawyers' children of note numbered

510; the physicians' children, 350; the clergymen's, 1,270. It would not seem to be a heavy handicap in Great Britain to be a minister's child, when such children have outnumbered by almost fifty per cent in notable national service the children of the two honorable professions of law and medicine combined.

"For America, D. O. S. Lowell's study of the census showed that one in every 221 men of special distinction ought to be a minister's son, if these sons bore their full share. But Who's Who in America, instead of including the 51 ministers' sons which that proportion calls for, recorded 898, or nearly eighteen times as many as the normal proportion should show. In other words, while there was only one minister's son to 221 of male population, nearly one in twelve sons of ministers had risen to special distinction. The ministerial family stock of less than half of one per cent of the total population gained eight per cent of the honors.

"Of the names in the Hall of Fame at New York University, ministers' sons form almost one-fifth."

4. "There always existed in Jerusalem, a heathenizing party and it was unfortunately composed of princes and aristocrats who could bring strong influence to bear upon the new king" (Farrar), and attracted him to idolatry.

What Manasseh did was popular and fashionable; following the ways of the greatest, most cultured, most influential nation in the world, then the master of

Judah. The people were doing business with the Assyrians. Trade demanded conformity. Society was dominated by Assyrian influences.

5. 'These worldlings, in their tolerance for the intolerable, could always appeal to two powerful motives of man's fallen nature-sensuality and fear lust hard by hate. There was something in the worship of Baal-Peor and of Molech which appealed to the undying ape and tiger in the unregenerate human heart." Farrar.

Our bodies are a house for the soul.
"The body is as a beast to us, nec-
essary but belonging to one place, be-
neath us, and for one purpose, to be
ridden upon.
Our bodies are meant to
be to us what Nehemiah's beast was to
him, as we read in Nehemiah 2: 12.
'Neither was there any beast with me
save the beast that I rode upon.' Or
we may think of the body not as a
beast to bear us and to do our bidding,
but as a house to be lived in and keep
as a tenant ought to keep his house.
It is thus Tennyson spoke of it:

"The Lord gave the house of a beast to the soul of a man;
And the man said, "Am I your debtor?"
And the Lord, "Not yet but take it and make it as clean as you can
And when you have done so I'll let you a better."""

- From an Address by Robert E. Speer.