urance, which for ages, amid all shocks, has made the frail creature
of the dust to grow strong and firm and fearless, partaker of the Divine
Nature, what will they give us in its stead? Or do they think us too
strong of will, too firm of purpose? Looking around us, we see nations
heaving with internal agitations, armed to the teeth against each
other, and all things like a ship at sea reeling to and fro, and
staggering like a drunken man. There is no stability for us in
constitutions or old formulae--none anywhere, if it be not in the soul of
man. Well for us, then, that the anchor of the soul is sure and
steadfast! well that unnumbered millions take courage from their
Saviour's word, that the world's worst anguish is the beginning, not of
dissolution, but of the birth-pangs of a new heaven and earth,--that
when the clouds are blackest because the light of sun and moon is
quenched, then, then we shall behold the Immutable unveiled, the Son of
Man, who is brought nigh unto the Ancient of Days, now sitting in the
clouds of heaven, and coming in the glory of His Father!

_THE COMMISSION._

iii. 10, 16-22.

We have already learned from the seventh verse that God commissioned
Moses, only when He had Himself descended to deliver Israel. He sends
none, except with the implied or explicit promise that certainly He will
be with them. But the converse is also true. If God sends no man but
when He comes Himself, He never comes without demanding the agency of
man. The overruled reluctance of Moses, and the inflexible urgency of
his commission, may teach us the honour set by God upon humanity. He has
knit men together in the mutual dependence of nations and of families,
that each may be His minister to all; and in every great crisis of
history He has respected His own principle, and has visited the race by
means of the providential man. The gospel was not preached by angels.
Its first agents found themselves like sheep among wolves: they were an
exhibition to the world and to angels and men, yet necessity was laid
upon them, and a woe if they preached it not.

All the best gifts of heaven come to us by the agency of inventor and
sage, hero and explorer, organiser and philanthropist, patriot, reformer
and saint. And the hope which inspires their grandest effort is never
that of selfish gain, nor even of fame, though fame is a keen spur,
which perhaps God set before Moses in the noble hope that "thou shalt
bring forth the peopl