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learning practical theology, from week to week, by sheer dependence upon the Shepherd of Israel, and towards whose education and maintenance the widow's mite" had been given. How sacred a feeling, how great a responsibility, to be supported by money given by such persons in such a way! Was it to be wondered at, when God told me to go and work in his vineyard in the special way of preaching the gospel, that of all the Colleges I should desire most to become a

student of this one?

Now that an effort is being made to get suitable and healthy buildings for this noble work of training ministers, I feel called upon to plead with the Lord's poor, as well as with his more affluent stewards, to give their prayerful and faithful offerings to this object. Ye widows, ye orphans, ye very poor ones, who are the Lord's, remember us, and let your littles come weighted with faith, and golden with prayer. I covet that you should have your share in the new College buildings which are to be erected. I have long perceived that God cuts off none of his children entirely from the luxury of contributing to his cause. Edinburgh. WM. CHRISTOPHER BUNNING.

SYDN

Want of Naturalness in Preaching.

YDNEY SMITH tells us :-' "I went, for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a very grand and beautiful place in the country, where the grounds are said to be laid out with consummate taste. For the first three or four days I was perfectly enchanted; it seemed something so much better than nature that I really began to wish the earth had been laid out according to the latest principles of improvement. . . . . In three days' time I was tired to death: a thistle, a nettle, a heap of dead bushes-anything that wore the appearance of accident and want of intention-was quite a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and walk upon an adjacent goose common, where the cart-ruts, gravel-pits, bumps, irregularities, coarse ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by neglect, were a thousand times more gratifying than the monotony of beauties the result of design, and crowded into narrow confines."

Now, this is precisely the result produced upon most hearers by a too elaborate style of preaching. At first it astonishes, amazes, and delights; but in the long run it palls upon the mind, and even wearies the ear. The high art displayed in sentences, polished into perfect smoothness, is certainly very wonderful, but it ere long becomes very wearisome, Men cannot for ever look at fireworks, nor pass their days among artificial flowers. The preaching which maintains its attractiveness year after year is after the order of nature, original, unaffected, and full of spontaneous bursts which the laws of rhetoric would scarcely justify. Homely illustrations, a touch of quaintness, a fulness of heart, thorough naturalness, and outspoken manliness are among the elements which compose a ministry which will wear, and be as interesting at the end of twenty years as at first. Of the refined politeness of a drawing-room most people have enough in a single evening; to continue such a manner

of intercourse for a week would be intolerable; but the familiar communion of the family never tires, home's genuine and spontaneous fellowship grows dearer ever year. The parallel holds good between the deliverances of a grandiloquous elocution and the utterances of a warm heart. The Primitive Methodist being asked to return thanks after dining with the squire, thanked God that he did not have such a good dinner every day, or he should soon be ill; and when we have occasionally listened to some great achievement of rhetoric, we have felt the same grateful sentiment rising to our lip. A whipped cream or a sillabub is an excellent thing occasionally, but it is very easy to grow tired of both of them, while bread and cheese or some such homely fare can be eaten year after year with a relish. If it be natural to a man to be very elegant and rhetorical, let him be so flamingoes and giraffes are as God made them, and therefore their long legs are the correct thing; but let no man imitate the proficient in an elevated style, for geese and sheep would be monstrous if perched on high. To be sublime is one thing, to be ridiculous is only a step removed; but it is another matter. Many in labouring to escape rusticity have fallen into fastidiousness, and so into utter feebleness. It may be that to recover their strength they will have to breathe their native air, and return to that natural style from which they have so laboriously departed.

C. H. S.

"And it was so."

A DISCOURSE.

BY C. H. SPURGEON.

"And it was so."-Genesis i. 7.

OU will find these words six times upon the first

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page of revelation.

He said, "Let the dry land appear," "and it was so." He bade the earth bring forth grass, "and it was so." He ordained the sun and moon for lights in the firmament of heaven, "and it was so." Whatever it was that he willed, he did but speak the word, "and it was so." In no single case was there a failure. There was not even a hesitation, a pause, or a demand for a more powerful agency than the divine word. In each case, Jehovah spake, "and it was so." Nor is this first week of creation the only instance of the kind, for in no case has the word of God fallen to the ground; whether of promise or of threatening, the word has been confirmed and fulfilled." As it was in the beginning, it is now, and ever shall be, world without end;" whatsoever the mighty God decrees, foretells, declares, or promises, shall ere long come to pass.

I shall ask you to accompany me in a mental voyage down the stream of history, to show that this has been the case as far as all history is concerned up till now. "And it was so." The Lord's will has been law; his word has been followed by fact. Dictum factum, as the Latins say. We shall then endeavour to show that, with an immutable God, it will be so continually in the great and in the small, in the affairs of the world, and in our own personal matters. What God hath

promised shall come to pass, and at the winding a history, it shall be said, "God said this, and that, and it was so.

We stand at the fountain-head of human history, and hear the Lord declare to our parents, that in the day in which they should break his commands and eat of the forbidden fruit, they should surely die, “and it was so." They died that moment. That spiritual death, which was the great and essential part of the sentence, was there and then fulfilled. The likeness and image of God was broken in them immediately, and we are dead in trespasses and in sins by reason of their death. He warned them also, when his wrath as it were glanced aslant from them to smite the soil on which they stood, that the earth should bring forth thorns and thistles to them, and that in the sweat of their face they should eat bread, and truly it has been so. The earth has yielded her harvests, but she has produced her thorns and briars also; and though the curse of labour has become a blessing, yet man's toil and woman's travail vindicate the divine veracity.

When all flesh had corrupted its way, God repented that he had made man, and sent his servant Noah as a preacher of righteousness to threaten a universal flood. It did not appear very probable that the dense population of the earth could all be swept away, and that the billows should rear their proud heads above the mountains; but it turned out that Noah was no fool, and his prophecy was no raving. God had said the world should be drowned, "and it was so." The sluices of the great deep beneath were drawn up, the cataracts of heaven descended, and none escaped, save the few, that is eight, whom God enclosed within. the ark.

A little farther on, the Lord appeared to his servant Abraham, and told him that the wickedness of Sodom had been so great that the cry had gone up even to his throne; and the Lord communicated to his servant that he would go and see if it was altogether according to the cry thereof; and if so, Sodom should be destroyed. Abraham pleaded, and his intercession almost prevailed; but as no righteous salt was found in the filthy cities of the plain, it was doomed to perish. They had given themselves to strange flesh, and a strange judgment must therefore come upon them. Hell must fall out of heaven upon such abominable offenders: "and it was so," for when the morning dawned, Sodom was utterly consumed, and the smoke thereof went up to heaven. You know how God kept his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were strangers with him, dwelling in tents, looking for a better city, that is, a heavenly. Whatever promise was made to the patriarchs was fulfilled to the letter: in all respects "it was so." When they went down into Egypt, God declared that after four hundred years he would bring them hence; and though the tribes appeared to be naturalised in Egypt, and were rooted to the soil, yet God would bring them forth; and though Pharaoh took strong measures, and thought to hold them fast, yet God had said that they should come out with a high hand, and an outstretched arm: "and it was so." Let the wonders which he wrought on the fields of Zoan, the plagues which overthrew the sons of Ham; let the going forth out of Egypt, and the terrors of, the Red Sea, when the depths covered all the chivalry of Egypt, let these remind you that, as God had spoken, so it was. Pharaoh was hardened

but he was not able to resist the Almighty will he stands for ever in history as a memorial that none shall harden himself against the Most High and prosper, for the Lord doeth as he wills in heaven and in earth, and in all deep places. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

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I should not weary you, I think, if I were to dwell a little while upon the promise that God gave to Israel that he would lead the tribes through the wilderness, and surely bring them to their inheritance. It appeared very unlikely that they would enter into Canaan, when for forty weary years they wandered in the pathless wilderness; yet the Jordan was crossed in due season, and Jericho was taken. He said they should every man possess his portion, and each tribe its lot: "and it was so." The Canaanites dwelt in cities that were walled up to heaven, and they dashed into the battle in chariots of iron, yet were they overcome, for God had said it: " and it was so." He cast out the heathen, and planted the vine which he had brought out of Egypt; he overthrew Og and Sihon, "and gave their land for an heritage, for his mercy endureth for ever." Many a time after Israel had been settled in the land did they provoke the Lord to jealousy, so that he sent prophet after prophet, and their message was, If ye thus sin against the Lord ye shall be given into the hands of your enemies:" "and it was so." But when they were sorely smitten they repented, and they cried unto God, and he had pity upon. them; and then he sent another of his servants with a gentle message, saying, "Turn unto me, and repent, and I will deliver you: "and it was so." In every case he kept his word, whether for chastening them or delivering them. Evermore was he faithful. When, in the later period of their history, Sennacherib blasphemed the Lord, his servant Hezekiah took the cruel letter of Rab-shakeh and laid it before the Lord in the temple, and cried mightily unto him; and Isaiah came with the promise, "He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it." Who could put the hook into the nose of that leviathan? Who could turn him back by the way that he came? The Lord had said it should be done, and it was so;" for that night the destroying angel went through the host of the Assyrians, and there fell of corpses on the plain so many as the leaves of autumn. Hath God promised to rescue his children? Then be assured that, however numerous their foes, his word shall not fail. Then came that dark day when Israel and Judah were threatened with captivity in a strange land. They sinned, and lo! "it was so." They were exiled far away. By the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept; they wept when they remembered Zion; but there came a promise to them-a promise which they had left all unread and forgotten in their sacred books, that after the lapse of seventy weeks they should return again, and once more see the land of their fathers: "and it was so." God raised up for them a friend, and a helper, and the captives came back again to their land.

Let us quote the grandest instance of all. The Lord promised, immediately after the Fall, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. That promise had been succeeded by many others, and those in Israel who knew the Lord waited for the coming of the deliverer. The promise tarried long. Day and night devout men cried unto God,

for their patience was sorely tried, yet they confidently expected the messenger of God who would suddenly come in his temple; and when the fulness of time was come, "it was so." The everlasting God was found tabernacling among men, and they "beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." It was the master-promise of all-the promise of the greatest gift that God has bestowed upon mankind, and that promise was kept, kept to the letter, and to the hour. He had said it should be, " and it was so," though it was a wonder beyond all wonder.

We might pursue our theme, and show you that as far as past events have gone, God's word has been verified. But now, though we keep to history, we shall leave the large volume of the public records, and ask you to take down from its shelf that little diary of yours, the pocketbook of your own life's story, and there observe how God's word has been true. You remember in your youth the warnings that you received, when you were told that the ways of sin might be pleasantness at the first, but would end in sorrow. You were told that the cup might sparkle at the brim, but the dregs thereof were full of bitterness. Did you test that statement in the days of your early manhood? Ah! then I know you cannot deny that it was as God had declared. He said, "The wages of sin is death," "and it was so." He said it would be bitterness in the end thereof," and it was so." He told you that the fascinations of sins were as destructive as they were alluring, and truly "it was so." If you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, you will blush as you answer the question, "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?" It fell on a day, as God would have it, that your eyes were opened to see your lost estate, and there was a voice which spoke in the gospel, and said, "If thou wilt return unto me, return; only confess the transgressions that thou hast sinned against me, and I will forgive thee. Come and put thy trust in my Son, and thy iniquity shall be blotted out like a cloud-thy transgressions like a thick cloud." You came to Jesus led by sovereign grace. You washed in the fountain of his blood, guided to it by the Holy Spirit. What is your testimony? You were promised salvation, pardon, peace. My testimony is, "and it was so ;" is not that yours also? O the joy of believing in Jesus! O the bliss of casting one's self into the Father's arms, and pleading the merits of the Only Begotten! There is a peace of God that passeth all understanding which comes to our faith when we exercise it upon Christ. Peace was promised, "and it was so." Since the time when you believed in Jesus you have had many wants both spiritual and temporal; but he has promised, "No good thing will I withhold from them that walk uprightly." What say you, brethren and sisters? Your needs have come, have the supplies come also? I am sure you will say" it was so"-strangely so-but always so. As my day my strength has been. The shoes of iron and of brass have had rough usage, but they have not worn out. The all-sufficient God has proved that his grace is all-sufficient for us. Our personal history bears witness that, with regard to the providence of God, and to the supplies of his grace, he said he would grant us enough, "and it was so.' He told you that when you believed in his word he would hear your prayers. Three times he put it in varied form, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek