so He might raise fallen man again to the glory and honour
which God appointed for men from the beginning, when He said, Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air, and the
beast of the earth; and be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth and subdue it.

SERMON XI. AHAB AND NABOTH

1 Kings xxi. 2, 3. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy
vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is
near unto my house: and I will give thee for it a better vineyard
than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of
it in money. And Naboth said unto Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that
I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.

You heard to-day read for the first lesson, the story of Naboth and
King Ahab. Most of you know it well. Naboth's vineyard has passed
into a proverb for something which we covet.

It is good that it should be so. We cannot know our Bible too well;
we cannot have Bible words and Bible thoughts too much worked into
our ways of talking and thinking about everyday matters. As far as
I can see, the best days of England, the best days of every
Christian country of which I ever read, have been days when men were
not ashamed of their Bibles; when they were ready to live by their
Bibles; to ask advice of their Bibles about buying and selling,
about making war and peace, about all the business of life; and were
not ashamed to quote texts of Scripture in the parliament, and in
the market, and in the battle-field, as God's law, God's rule, God's
word about the matter in hand, which was, therefore, sure to be the
right word and the right rule. People are grown ashamed of doing so
now-a-days; but that does not alter the matter one jot. We may deny
God, but He cannot deny Himself. His laws are everlasting, and He
is ruling and judging us by them now, all day long, just as much as
He ruled and judged those Jews by them of old. The God of Abraham
is our God; the God of Moses is our God; the God of Ahab and Naboth
is our God; neither He nor His government are altered in the least
since their time, and they never will alter for ever, and ever, and
ever; and if we do not choose to believe that now in this life, we
shall be made to believe it by some very ugly and painful schooling
in the life to come.

What laws of God, now, can we learn from this story?

First