kindness. They kindled a fire to warm their shivering frames, and no doubt prepared food to allay their hunger, and to recruit their exhausted natures. This social love dwells in men of every colour, and every clime. It pulsates in all hearts. How can this be maintained, it may be said, in the presence of the fact that cannibalism and human sacrifices, and bloody wars, and nameless cruelties, prevail amongst many barbaric and heathen tribes? My reply is (1), that these cruelties are perversions of this very social sympathy. (2.) That the very existence of tribes implies it; men could not exist at all in unity without this social and kindly affection. (3.) That cruelties in the forms of oppression, murders, and wars, exist even in Christendom, where this goodness is patent to all. That this kindly sympathy does, as a rule, exist in all hearts, however deeply sunk in ignorance and depravity, is proved

First: By modern travellers. Livingstone found it in those dark regions of South Africa which had never been visited by a European until he appeared. Everywhere he found hearts that could be touched with sympathy by the sight of suffering. It is proved also

Secondly: By the Bible. The Bible is a revelation of love, and unless men have the element of love in them, they would be as incapable of understanding its meaning or feeling its power as the ravenous beast that prowls in the forest. What meaning, for example, would there be to a man who had no love in him in the tale of the Prodigal Son, in the story of Jesus and the family at Bethany, and in the other sketches of love that make up the Gospel history! Of what service, moreover, would it be to give a history of Christ's sufferings, to depict Him in agony on the Cross, if humanity had no heart to be touched with sympathy at the sight of suffering? In fact, if the Bible is a book to be understood and felt by man the world over, man every where must have in him the element of love. You may as well bring the magnet to clay as take the Gospel to men who have no love in them. Observe in these barbarians

II. A SENSE OF RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. "And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." Here is a fine subject for a picture. Artistic genius may get for itself immortal fame by transferring this scene with rigorous faithfulness to canvas. The great apostle gathering sticks and kindling a fire, a viper which lay at first torpid in the cold faggots springing into venomous activity and striking at the hand of Paul as the fire began to kindle. The barbaric Maltese looking on with horror and disappointment, feeling for the moment that the man towards whom they had shown "no little kindwas a murderer whom " vengeance suffereth not to That viper seemed to them for the moment, Nemesis, the goddess of vindictive justice, avenging the cause of the innocent and inflicting punishment upon the guilty. This sense of the connection between crime and punishment is so universal that it must be regarded as instinctive. It is a feeling that underlies all religions and runs through all societies, barbaric as well as civilized. This sense led these people to associate murder with crime, and crime with suffering; so far they were correct, they were true in their theology. It is true that they made mistakes concerning retribution, but their mistakes have ever been too prevalent, even in circles professedly Christian. Their mistakes were—

ness

First: That punishment for crime cume in a material form. The sting of the viper they thought the punishment. It was a mere natural occurrence, this spring of the venomous reptile to Paul's hand. They thought it punishment. Men have ever thought punishment comes thus. The fall of the tower of Siloam was a natural occurrence, but some of the people of that day thought that it was a judgment upon those whom it destroyed. A crowded theatre is on fire, ts tenants are destroyed in the conflagration; men say it is

retribution to the votaries of theatrical amusements. Thus, men now often regard some terrible occurrence in nature, as the Avenger punishing crimes. Whereas, the fact is, that nature in her operations pays no attention to moral distinctions; her storms shall shipwreck a Paul, as well as a Nero. Vipers will sting apostles as well as apostates; providence will pamper a Dives and starve a Lazarus. The other mistake which they made respecting retribution was

Secondly: That it followed flagrant crimes only. "This man is a murderer," a tremendous criminal-and therefore, he is punished. Men have the same idea now. Murder they

think the greatest of crimes, and deserving the greatest punishment. But there is a spirit which often possesses men, that calls for greater punishment, even, than a material murder. "The truth is," says Frederick Robertson, in a masterly discourse on this subject, "we think much of crime, little of sin. There is many a murderer executed whose heart is pure, and whose life is white compared with those of many a man who lives a respectable, and even honoured life. David was a murderer. The Pharisees had committed no crime: but their heart was rotten at the core. There was in it the sin which has no forgiveness. It is not a Christian, but barbarian estimate, which ranks crime above sin, and takes murder for the chief of sins, marked out for Heaven's vengeance." Observe in these barbarians——

"And he shook off

III. A FEELING OF A SUPREME BEING. the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harın come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god." The rapidity with which these men changed their opinion concerning Paul-passing from the notion that he was a flagrant criminal to the belief that he was a god, is only an example of that instability and fickleness of soul which ever characterise the uncultured and the untaught. All souls who are not "rooted and grounded" in the

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true faith are as unstable as water." The point, however, which is most noteworthy here is, that that which brought up to them the idea of God, was that which they considered the marvellous. They knew that the natural tendency of the viper's sting was to produce a swelling wound, if not instant death. Because in Paul's case it did not do so, they thought him "a god." They had the feeling that the laws of nature could only be counteracted by God Himself. It was in the wonderful, not in the good, that they saw God. Thus men generally feel. The idea of God comes up to them most powerfully, not in the calm goodness that is present in every part of the universe, but in strange and startling occurrences. The good in them, however, was the natural feeling they had of a god, not their conception of Him. The feeling of God in the human soul is God's own implantation, and is good; the conception formed from it is man's, and may be good or evil. It is in every soul, this feeling. Livingstone says, "That the existence of a God, and of a future state, has always been admitted by ali the Bechuanas. Everything that cannot be accounted for by common causes is ascribed to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, &c. How curiously God made these things!' 'He was not killed by disease, he was killed by God,' are common expressions. And when speaking of the departed they say: 'He is gone to the gods!"" The Brahmins profess that nothing which appears sin to us ever appeared otherwise to them.

These three things, then, sympathy with human sufferinga sense of retribution-and a feeling for a divine beingconstitute what I call good in heathens. Changeful, dark, and tempestuous as are the heavens of men with corruption and crime, these three things, like settled, calm, and bright stars, break ever through the gloom.

CONCLUSION: Several things may be fairly deduced from this subject.

First: The identity in authorship of human souls and divine revelation. The grand rudimental subjects of the Bible are love, retribution, God; and these, as we have seen,

316 HOMILETIC GLANCE AT THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

are written in ineffaceable characters on the tables of the human heart everywhere. What Christ put into his book He put first into the human soul, and thus He is "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Secondly: The impossibility of atheism ever being estab lished in the world. Systems that are inconsistent with the intuitions of the human soul can never stand. They may be fabrics most logical in structure, gorgeous in aspect, but they are on the sand and must fall. The human soul is essentially theistic and religious.

Thirdly: The responsibility of man wherever he is found. The heathens with this inner light of goodness are bound to walk according to their light. "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

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Fourthly The duty of missionaries in propagating the Gospel. Let those who go forth to the heathens not ignore the good in the human heart on all shores and under all suns, but let them recognise it, honour it, appeal to it, develope it.

"The Bible contains only a record of the Divine dealings with a single nation; his proceedings with the minds of other people are no recorded. That large other world-no less God's world than Israd was, though in their bigotry the Jews thought Jehovah was their own exclusive property-scarcely is, scarcely could be name on the page of Scripture except in its external relation to Israel. But at times, figures, as it were, cross the rim of Judaism, when brought in contact with it, and passing for a moment as dim shadows, do yet tell us hints of a communication and a revelation going on unsuspected. Jo, Naaman, Nebuchadnezzar, Hahab, the Syro-Phoenician woman, are examples. They had the light "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."-T. W. ROBERTSON.