I shall break there the yokes of Egypt. There are many yokes which are laid on men's shoulders from which they may well wish to be freed; and there is one yoke concerning which no such thought need be cherished for a moment. There is the yoke of -

I. HUMAN OPPRESSION. The sad story of the human race is, to a very large extent, the history of human oppression. "Man's inhumanity to man ' may well "make us mourn" as we dwell upon it. And among his various cruelties and wrongs we have to give oppression a prominent place - political, domestic, personal oppression. It includes the denial of the rights of manhood and of womanhood, the exacting of hard and burdensome labor, or of heavy and excessive tribute, or of a dishonoring and hurtful homage, the inflicting of pain and suffering of many kinds. It seems to be in the nature of sin to harden men's hearts against one another, until they not only endure but positively enjoy the sight of the oppression they impose. Ezekiel speaks of" the yokes of Egypt." No doubt that country, in the plenitude of its power, exacted tribute, enforced labor, laid heavy burdens upon many of its own subjects or (as in an earlier time, when Israel was under its heel) on other peoples. But when the Babylonian power came up and subdued it, its hard hold on these had to be relaxed, its yoke was broken in twain. This, in the providence of God, has frequently happened. Power becomes wealthy; wealth leads to luxury and indulgence; indulgence leads to effeminacy and decline; weakness succumbs to some other power that has arisen; and then and thus its "yoke is broken."

II. THE SERVITUDE OF SIN. "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants [slaves] ye are to whom ye obey? Ye were the servants [slaves] of sin" (Romans 6:16, 17). Sin conducts, by sure steps, to spiritual bondage; it lays a hard and heavy yoke upon the soul; it may be that of a grasping selfishness, or of an absorbing worldliness, or of a degrading vice, or of such a fatal habit as that of procrastination. But it is a hard bondage, a cruel yoke, which must be broken if there is to be spiritual liberty and eternal life. God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, can and does break this deadly yoke.

1. He fills the soul with a sense of shame, and with a holy, renewing sorrow.

2. He leads the awakened soul to a Divine Savior, in whoso love and service the bond is broken.

3. He gives to the seeking, trustful soul the cleansing, liberating power of his Holy Spirit; and thus the yoke is broken and the man is freed. There is another yoke of an entirely different nature; it is in -

III. THE SERVICE OF JESUS CHRIST. "Take my yoke," he says; "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." In that which is the service of love and of righteousness there is real liberty and lasting joy. - C.

(Zechariah 7:12): — A great and good man who served and suffered for Christ in North Africa seventeen centuries ago won for himself a noble name by which he is still known, Origen the Adamantine. There isn't a boy nor, in her own quiet way, a girl who does not feel some glow of heart or flush of face at the magic of this name, "the Unsubduable," "the Invincible." But he was not the first who bore the name. It was given long before by God Himself to His captive prophet in Babylon, whose forehead, as he faced the people, whose hearts were cold and hard as stones, might well be firm as adamant, since, in his very name, Ezekiel, he carried the great power of God. Now, what is adamant? Look at a lady's finger ring, and find among the precious stones set in its golden circle one that is quite clear and lustrous, and that throws off from every facet whatever rays of light are falling upon it. We call this sparkling gem, as you know, a diamond. But that is just another form of the word adamant, which we owe to the old Greeks, who naturally called the precious stone which could not be broken, adamas or "the unsubduable."

1. The diamond now flashing on your mother's finger was not always the hardest of stones. It was once a bit of soft, vegetable matter. For the diamond is not really different from the coal which makes our winter fires, and which, long, long ages ago, was a thick, steaming forest. Hence it is quite true that "the sunbeams are driving our railway trains." And the exiles in Babylon, who had grown so adamantine in evil that the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God made no more impression on their hearts than your penknife on the angles of a diamond, were once boys and girls playing in the streets of Jerusalem, singing the songs of Zion, and dreaming their day dreams of ministering to the Lord like Samuel, or fighting with Goliaths like David, or leading the dance of triumph like Miriam. This terrible process of heart petrifying, or turning to stone, comes about by the action of the wise and good, though solemn and awful, law of habit. "The oftener, the easier." How woeful to reach at last the state when, as regards all that is highest and best, one is "past feeling," as though the conscience had been burned with a hot iron, or the heart made as hard as an adamant stone! From which may the good Lord deliver us!

2. We may find a promise of better things even in Zechariah's awful image of disobedience. The exquisite diamonds, or carbon crystals, are combustible, and, if subjected to a sufficient degree of heat, will pass off in carbonic acid gas. Fine ladies need not be so proud of their diamonds, since they may all be dissipated by fire; and poorer folks need not so greatly covet their possession, since they are breathing out diamond essence with every exhalation! And if we were so foolishly greedy as to want our diamond breaths back again, they would poison us. However this may be, it is certain that hearts as hard as an adamant stone are every day being softened, melted, transformed, by the fire of God's holy love, which saves the sinner by consuming his sins.

3. But "the broken heart," though it may seem strange to say so, is the stoutest and bravest of hearts. The true hero has always a tender conscience. He who fears God has no other fear. If Christ is your Master, and you are learning in His school, you may well appropriate the sturdy words over the gate of Marischal College, Aberdeen: "They say: what say they? let them say." God has His diamonds as well as the devil. Against the whole "House of Disobedience" stood up the son of Buzi, the prophet of the exile, in the strength of God. If the people were hard as flint in their own evil ways, he was firm as the adamant, which is harder than flint in the service of God. They did well to call Origen, the Adamantine, the Invincible, for when, at the age of sixteen, his father was thrown into prison for his confession of Christ, he wanted to go and suffer with him; and when it was shown him that this was not his duty, he wrote to his father not to falter in his faith for their sakes, for he would undertake the support of his mother and his six younger brothers. And nobly did he fulfil his promise, selling his books, working early and late as a teacher in Alexandria, and inspiring his pupils with such devotion that they called his college "a school for martyrs."

(A. N. Mackray, M. A.)