'To hear the sorrows Thou hast felt,
Dear Lord, an adamant would melt;
But I can read each moving line,
And nothing move this heart of mine.
The rocks can rend, the earth can quake,
The sea can roar, the mountains shake,
All things of feeling show some sign,
Save this unfeeling heart of mine.'

Well, poor mourner, it is something to know that your heart is hard. It is one step towards a cure to be brought to acknowledge the disease. But do not rest here. Take your heart to Christ. He will soften it. Remember His gracious promise, and ask Him to fulfil it in you: "I will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh."

"Oh! Love divine, how sweet thou art!
When shall I find my willing heart

All taken up with thee?

My only care, delight, and bliss,
My joy, my heaven on earth be this-
To hear the BRIDEGROOM's voice."

THERE is a great deal about FAITH in the Bible-its mighty force and wonderful exploits. But there is only one definition of it, and that a very concise one. "Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for." Faith cannot make a thing real, which does not exist; but whatever hath a real existence, faith makes it real to us. And if it is anything we have a personal interest in, faith brings it home to our feelings and convictions. If some one were to place a hundred pounds in the bank in your name, that would be a real fact. But you would not feel yourself at all the richer unless you believed it. It is your believing which gives you a conscious interest in it. In other words, your faith gives substance to your friend's act and witnesses within you, without your seeing the entry, that the money he has placed there for your use is really your own. And it is only by faith, acting thus, that you can become acquainted with Christ. Faith, as it were, gives substance to Him, that is makes Him real to you. Your eyes do not see Him. You cannot hear His voice. You cannot touch Him with your hands nor walk to Him with your feet. But yet we are said to see Him, to hear Him, to go to Him. He speaks, and faith is the ear that listens; He calls us to approach, and faith is the foot that moves

towards Him; He tells us to look to Him, and faith is the eye that sees. Faith is the mouth that feeds on Him and the hand that takes hold on Him. Faith is all that to the soul which every separate sense is to the body-the hand and the mouth, the eye and the ear. This we shall see exemplified while we contemplate Christ under three Similitudes. We are to look to Christ as the BRAZEN SERPENT; to feed on Him as the BREAD of Life; to lay hold on Him as the BRANCH, and to pluck from Him such fruits as shall refresh and replenish our souls. Consider then,—

1. Faith is to the soul what the EYE is to the body. The Eye enables us to see the worth and beauty of things. Choice paintings, valuable jewels, chests of gold might be placed before a blind man, but he would not observe them. So we may set before men who have not faith the most excellent blessings, but they cannot perceive their worth. “The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned." Again, the Eye enables us to discover danger. And if there be a way of escape, it is by the Eye that we are directed to it. A blind man may be just on the brink of a deep river, but unless some one speak to him of danger he doth not suspect any. Or he may be in imminent peril from wild beasts, and there may be a covert at hand, yet can he not flee to it because he seeth it not. So without faith we should be lost, because it is by faith that we discover danger. And by faith we discern the salvation that there is in Christ. We see also His worth, His fitness, and His all-sufficiency. And thus we are persuaded to embrace Him as our Saviour. May this faith be in exercise now, while we direct your attention to the Lord Christ, under the type of the "BRAZEN SERPENT."

BRAZEN SERPENT. John iii. 14; Num. xxi. 9. The occasion of the setting up of this Serpent of brass by Moses was the sin of the people of Israel, and the punishment wherewith God visited their sin. Though God was so bountiful to them they murmured against Him, and complained that the manna was not good enough for them though it came down from heaven. So God was sorely displeased, and sent among them a host of fierce fiery serpents which stung them, so that much people died. There was no charming them, and it was hard to escape from them, for they came in great numbers. So that whithersoever the miserable people turned, there were deadly serpents waiting to torment them. Their venomous fangs inflicted wounds which poisoned the springs of life, and filled them with burning fever. Ah! if you wish to see what dreadful consequences sin brings with it, survey the scene of desolation in the camp of Israel! But God will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger for ever. He told His servant to set up a Serpent of brass on a pole in the midst of the camp where all might see it. And whoever should look on that was to be healed. "So Moses made

a Serpent of brass and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the Serpent of brass he lived." What a movement there must have been amongst the wounded the moment the joyful news spread through the camp that the pole was set up! How would the poor fainting men and women strain their dying eyes just to get one glimpse of it! And those who were so exhausted that they could not stir, how would they implore their relatives to carry them to some spot whence they might, by one glance at the remedy, be redeemed from death. See that mother! Her darling child is bitten. She takes him into her arms and holds him up, and with her gentle fingers lifts up the heavy eyelids, almost closed in death, and cries, "Look, look at yon shining serpent!" He strives to look, and though just now the fiery poison drank up his spirits and swelled all his bursting veins, yet one look quite cures him!

One

Now what if one of those bitten people had refused to look at that brass serpent? Imagine him dying of his wounds, and his brother comes to him and says, "Let me carry you to the tent door. look at yon pole will cure you. I was bitten, and I looked, and now I am quite well: look, brother, look!" "No," says the dying man, "I am sure that cannot cure me- -I am too far gone-it is too late. Oh, I shall die!" "Nay," cries the other, "but you need not die; while you have strength to look there is hope." But the wretched man turns his face the other way. He refuses God's own medicine, and nothing can save him. And thus it is that "wise men after the flesh" despise God's way of salvation, and refuse to "behold the Lamb of God" who alone can take away their sin. For such there remaineth no further sacrifice, no other way of deliverance, nothing but a certain fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation.

Hear the words of our Saviour:-"As Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" thus Jesus Christ illustrates His own elevation on the Cross and the effects of faith in Himself, by the lifting up of the Serpent and the results which followed the Israelites' sight of it.

1. As the lifting up of the Serpent was by the appointment of God, so Christ crucified is God's own remedy for those who are wounded by sin. Moses, you see, was not told to invite the people to bring their brass ornaments, and so to contribute something towards the casting of this serpent. He was to do it all himself. The sufferers had no more to do with its preparation than with its contrivance. All they had to do was just to look at it and appropriate its healing virtue. So in the wonderful method of redemption, man's reason is not consulted, nor his opinion asked, nor his approval conciliated.

"Done is the work that saves,

Once and for ever done;

Finished the righteousness

That clothes the unrighteous one."

Man's reason is for ever scanning it, as with an eye-glass, critically, even sometimes contemptuously; and he often ends by totally rejecting it. But

2. As there was no other cure for the Israelites but the one prescribed, so there is no name given under heaven, whereby men can be saved, but the name of Christ.

3. It was a certain, infallible remedy. So the blood of Christ

CLEANSETH FROM ALL SIN.

4. The Serpent of brass was lifted up in the sight of all; so Christ is set up for all the world to look at. His salvation is called "the common salvation," because it is for all who are willing to have it.

It

All mankind are ruined by sin. This fatal poison has spread itself through their whole nature and corrupted all its streams. has not the same effects in all. Some are excited by it, and evil passions and deeds of violence are the modes in which it displays its malignity. Some are filled with anguish, by which their lives are made bitter unto them. Others are lulled to sleep and cannot be awakened, or persuaded that there is anything the matter with them. Nevertheless, all are badly, fatally wounded, and from the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. But whoever, of all the children of men (let him be ever so far gone), looks to Christ with the eye of faith, receives immediate benefit and begins to feel in himself an effectual cure. It is true that while men are in the wilderness they are liable to get fresh wounds in the fight with sin and Satan. But here is God's grand remedy, Christ crucified. On Him let them fix their gaze; and they shall find the tide of health gushing into their souls and springing up into everlasting life. "They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed."

Come, then, thou poor serpent-stung sinner, who feelest thy misery, and art dying of thy wounds! Be of good cheer; rise, He calleth thee. Thou hast not strength to go to Him. Then look to Him. Cast thy burden of sin on Him, for indeed He careth for thee. Come all of you and gaze on this Saviour lifted up. You who have looked before, come and look again. You cannot look at Him too much or too often. God hath set Him up on high in the view of an expiring world on purpose that all may look to Him. And that not once but often. We are to run the race set before us looking unto Jesus. We are to do this daily, hourly. So shall the wounds the old serpent hath given us be cured. "Iniquity shall not be our ruin." The poison shall be drawn forth, and we shall be healed. But if we will not look we must inevitably die of our wounds.

And do you ask how you are to know that you have looked aright? I answer, You will have spiritual life; just as the dying Israelite, on looking to the Brazen Serpent, found himself restored. You will have peace; the pain arising from a guilty conscience and fear of

God's anger will be eased. And you will also have a dread of sin, which "is as the gall of asps within." Job xx. 14. Though sin may be ever so sweet or pleasant, they who trifle with it find out that, like those serpents, it has a most fatal sting; for the wages of sin is death. But we must proceed. We have seen that Faith is as the Eye of the Soul; for by it we look unto Christ, and are saved.

II. Faith is to the soul what the HAND is to the body.

The beggar who stops you in the street asking for relief, holds out his empty Hand to receive your bounty. Now Christ has alms to bestow, and faith is the empty hand stretched out to take what He gives. If you wished to get possession of the fruit which hangs on yonder tree you would put forth your Hand to pluck it; thus faith procures spiritual blessings; it is the hand by which we pluck fruit from the BRANCH of the Lord, the Tree of Life. If a man had fallen into a pit, and some one were to let down a rope to him, how would he avail himself of the offered help? He would take hold of the rope with his Hands, and cling to it till he was drawn out of danger. And thus it is said concerning the act of faith, "Let him take hold of My strength." And we read in the Bible of our faith laying hold on the hope set before us." Now then let us consider Christ as the "BRANCH."

BRANCH of the Lord, “Beautiful and Glorious." Isa. iv. 2; Zech. iii. 8. Suppose we were walking by the side of a deep river, when suddenly we hear a splash like something falling into the water. We look towards the quarter from whence the sound proceeded, and there on the other side we see some one struggling in the flood! Ah! he is gone and the gurgling wave closes over him! No! there is his head just above the swelling tide close by yonder overhanging trees, and he cries for help. Tell him to seize the Branch that dips into the stream. See! he has got fast hold of the bough, and now he is climbing up and will soon be out of danger. Was not that a Beautiful Branch which saved him from destruction when no other help was near? Take that Branch for a figure of Christ; and the hand by which the drowning boy laid hold on it and clung to it, let it be an emblem of that faith by which the perishing sinner cleaves to the Saviour.

We shall all know what it is to suffer. Man is born to troubles. These are compared to deep waters, and the tide seems sometimes as though it would carry us away; and we "sink in deep waters where there is no standing." David was heard once complaining to God," Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise of Thy waterspouts. All Thy waves and billows have gone over me." And we may be almost ready at times to say the same thing. But blessed be God, this Dinine BRANCH from the Root of Jesse overhangs the deep dark waters. And if we seize hold of it by the hand of faith it keeps us up that we sink not. "In that day," the day of affliction, "the BRANCH of the Lord shall be BEAUTIFUL and GLORIOUS." Therefore