which you are living; know also the tremendous opposition of the rulers of the darkness of this world, the leaders of spiritual wickedness in high places. This is but a stage, by the way. Lazarus was quickened for a few days longer; for a few years longer he lived, we trust, a quiet, holy, useful life-then back to his sleep, where he has laid for all the ages since.

O God, I thank Thee this is not the end! Thou dost not ask me to do everything, and to finish things. Thou dost only ask me to roll away the stone and stand out of Thy gate; if I cannot help Thee, not to hinder Thee, not to be in the way. "Stand out of my sunshine," said Diogenes, when they came to him in the tub; and Christ may well say to many of us, "Stand out of My light; stand out of My way."

As Thomas Guthrie says, "Who springs into the new life that the Gospel brings, who springs into it a complete, a finished Christian?" This is not the end. Not till the sounding of the last trump, and the voice that wakes the dead, and the coming in of the new heavens and the new earth, will the work be finished. Are you working for that?

Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

THE PROPHET'S MANTLE.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH, LONDON,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

TEXT:-2 Kings iii. 4-24.

A FEW words as the Lord may help us, to get some practical help out of this old-world story. The kings of Israel gathered together against Moab; an old, common, familiar, historical setting-Israel fighting against somebody, and Israel, as is usually the case, finding out that her strength lay, not in numbers, not in kings, or in captains, or in stubborn, stalwart, individual soldiers, but that her strength lay in the direction in which she was always prone to forget that it lay that her strength lay in God and in spiritual directions, not in earthly, and carnal, and political, and military quarters. The Lord manifestly, almost sarcastically, leads them into this predicament. First of all, they join themselves together. They are going to make a tremendous onset upon Moab. They are going to "smash the Mahdi," to use a phrase that was familiar with us not so very long ago. They were going to gather together, and

Vol. III.-No. 3.

just pulverize this rebellious Moab once for all. So the one king sent to the other. King Jehoram sent to King Jehoshaphat, and they gathered together, and he said, “I am as thou art, my people as thy people, and my horses as thy horses." Out of that, then, comes a word of personal remark and profit about what is greatly talked about to-day, namely, that we Christians are so much divided. We divide into Israel and into Judah, and Israel and Judah again are greatly subdivided; and many who look at the problem, many who look at the strength of Moab, and the trouble that Moab brings, namely, the powers of evil of every form, say, Now Moab is united. Moab knows his strength. Moab knows what he would be at. But we Christians are too much subdivided, and it would be half the battle, and more than half the battle for Israel and Judah, if all the disjecta membra and all the scattered forces would deploy upon the plain and mass themselves together. The very sight of our strength, and of our greatness, and our union, and our solidity would take the heart out of the enemy." Well, there is something in it, but there is not nearly so much in it as we are trying to make out. Israel and Judah did join together, they did forget their differences, but it was a kind of sham forgetting.

I can imagine that all the different sects might join together the Wesleyans-Primitive, and Wesleyan, and New Connexion (I barely know the names of them)-and the Presbyterians, and even the Episcopalians might come, those royal Christians with the great long pedigree, and the Congregationalists; and we might all stand together, and look into each other's eyes, and lift up great shouts, "We will demolish Moab;" and it would not demolish Moab,

and it would not deceive either God or man. We should only be deceiving ourselves. Here is a union, and a grandlooking union, and yet it is easy to see when you bring these two together, Israel and Judah, that they are not fused together. They are lying together like two stones, and just as they can lie together, so they can fall away. They were not worked into each other; they were not fused into a true spiritual union. It was only a bit of policy and diplomacy. The one king called upon the other, and the one said, "Oh, yes;" and the other said, "My people are as thy people, and my horses as thy horses. We are one." And it was not true, it was not real; from which I say, do not let us hanker so much after this all-embracing union if it is only a sham, if it is only the passing of resolutions, for it is so easy to do things in word, and in committee, and in conference, and on paper, while at heart we are as much back to back as ever we were, and as little really knit together face to face, eye to eye, soul to soul, hand to hand. It was no real union, and that fact came out by-and-bye. It came out when the Lord allowed them, with all their seeming union, and all their seeming grandeur and bravery, to go away on their own course, led by policy, and led by smiles, and led by falsity into this dilemma-man and beast nearly choking for water; and, if Moab had only known, Moab could have come down and smitten them to nothing. Do not let us be too hasty, then, to make unions, or to seek for our great deliverance along that line, for the end of all the bravery of the business was this-" Alas! alas! the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab." All Christianity within England might give up denominational divisions, and the devil have it his own way the same as ever. We might all

unite, and go under the one name, and go under the one flag, and the devil still be the strong rampant devil that he is. It might even be worse. Bad as things are, they might be worse through a general union, instead of better.

This evidently at this stage was no solution of the problem. It was no relief at all.

"But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord?" Ah! now they are coming to their senses. Policy and craft have had their turn, and much they have made of it. You will come to me, and we will forget all our differences, and we will smile at each other. Although the old war is in the heart, we will smile at each other; and we will go, and we will contrive great contrivances; and by means of these we will bring in the kingdom, and attack the enemy in flank and rear. No, no, no! we will not! The great vice of this confederation was that it was too cheap, and slim, and easy. It was a mere working of cards and tricks. God was forgotten, and sooner or later we will find out that, with all our adroitness, and our cleverness, and our leaders, and our policies, and our conferrings, if we are leaving Him out, we are preparing ourselves for a wretched exposure. So did these. It was only policy; it was only craft. All this union was just an elaborate make-believe that they were united, and it tumbles to pieces like a house of cards. God puffed at it and it disappeared.

"Is there not here a prophet of the Lord?" There is a sarcasm in the situation that, after all the sounding of trumpets, and flying of banners, and grand plans and arrangements for circumventing Moab, they themselves are nearly stuck, and then comes the whine, 'Where is God? Oh, now that I have come to man, I have forgotten God."